I am a new shape. And they hate that shape.
My foot starts twitching of its own accord, and I’m dizzy with the anticipation and the knowledge that it could be hours (hours!) before Joe logs on and we can enter back into banter and whatever that other thing is: daring each other to push it further? Anticipating what could be? Gambling? I’m not sure, but it feels good and buzzing and warm, and it makes me ill with anxiety. I can’t decide what makes me more nervous: the idea that it might happen in real life, or the worry that it might end before it begins.
I’m not a person who would kiss someone else’s boyfriend. Except that I am someone who is desperate to kiss Joe. I’ve never been two people at once before, and I don’t like it.
I send Elise a few more chats, begging her to stop being a good student and gossip with me instead. When that fails, I get up and sneak myself another mug of coffee from behind the counter. Paul winks at me. I head back to my table and stir in the requisite three and a half packets of sugar.
“Tabitha?”
Alison doesn’t speak to me ever anymore. But Jemma butts in from time to time. I don’t even hate it. It still feels good to have her close by, even though it then feels totally terrible if I actually listen to the words she’s saying.
I look up and for a split second forget she’s not my friend anymore. She has on the same style hoodie she wears almost every day, today in red, and she crosses her arms awkwardly over her chest. She’s not pretty, not hot, not popular or talented in any particular way. She’s smart, which is why I liked her so much. She’s ambitious and listens to NPR and has a really fascinating opinion on almost everything. Including, lately, me.
“I mean this as, like, friendly advice,” Jemma starts. Alison looks on with interest. Hugs The Fountainhead to her chest like a raft. “But one of the seniors told me I should mention to you that the black eyeliner is, like, a little out of control this week.”
Oh right. This. This is why we aren’t friends. Now I remember.
My skirts. My makeup. The looks I give boys. Maybe even the looks they sometimes give me.
The looks her brother, Devon, gave me.
And okay fine, the fact that I started touching my hair a lot around him, and wearing extra makeup and my smallest skirts when I went over to her house. I started flirting. I guess that was sort of bad.
But not that bad.
“And today . . . are you wearing some kind of crazy padded pushup bra?” Jemma continues. “Because, um . . . that is a lot of cleavage. And my mom said some of the teachers are mentioning it as being a problem too. . . .” Jemma keeps the same look of bullshit-concern on her face for all of this, even cringing with mock humility at the word bra. We’re sixteen, not seven. The girl has seen my nipples, for chrissakes. We compared nipple size in the seventh grade. I lent her one of my training bras when her mother wouldn’t get her one. We Googled “blow job,” like, two years ago when we heard everyone was giving them.
“I’m wearing a normal bra,” I say, as if that’s somehow the only pertinent part of the conversation so far. Jemma gives me a look like she doesn’t buy it, and I wish this was a problem a change of bra could solve. “What did you need, Jem?” I immediately wish that I’d stopped myself from using a nickname. It hurts, the remembered intimacy hanging in the air between us.
“You’ve just changed so much.”
“I haven’t changed at all,” I say. And this I actually mean. Because a sudden jump in cup size isn’t the same thing as changing who I am. Can’t you be bookish and chill and also sort of a little bit hot? I’d still rather spend my Saturday nights curled on the paisley couch with a book and a chocolate croissant. I just want to do it with makeup on.
“It makes me sad, seeing you like this, hearing people talk about you the way they are, asking me what’s going on with you,” Jemma says, gesturing vaguely at my face and maybe my low-cut peasant top, which is hardly stripper wear or anything. “We said we’d never dress like those girls, remember? We said we’d never prioritize guys over everything else. We weren’t going to be like this.”
Maybe I shouldn’t have let Paul go behind the counter. I’m obviously not capable of being on my own right now. Paul would have chimed in with something snarky and cool, something that shows Jemma’s a bitch and that I don’t care.
I open and close my mouth like a fish because I can’t think of actual words to say in response.
“You’re becoming this Other Person,” Jemma says very, very slowly. “And hanging out with Elise . . .”