“Yes?” I answer.
“Why?” Adam asks. He doesn’t look like he’s joking.
But to confirm: “Are you joking?”
“I’m totally serious. Why do you shave your legs?” They’re both squinting at my shins. I wish I wore Adam’s jeans again, even if they are dirty.
“Because we’re supposed to. Don’t you?”
“No,” they say together.
“But you have to. You’ll get sick. Body hair carries germs. It isn’t sanitary.”
“Who the hell told you that?” Charlie is looking at me like I’m crazy.
“My uncle.”
“Russell told you you’d get sick if you didn’t shave your body hair?” Adam’s voice deepens, clearly concerned for some reason.
“But that’s stupid,” Charlie adds. “You’ve seen guys’ legs before, right?”
I know that some men keep their leg hair, but Russell says it’s a disgusting habit and they’re going to get sick.
“What about PE?” Charlie says. “Don’t you see the other guys in the locker room?”
“I never had PE.”
“Never?” Adam asks.
“When I was really little, but not in years.”
Adam looks suspicious. “But it’s a required class.”
“I don’t know. I never had to take it,” I say.
“You should still know this stuff,” Charlie grumbles. “Everyone took that puberty class in sixth grade.”
I didn’t. Russell never signed the consent form, so when the boys and girls were split up to watch the video, I was sent to the library.
“So…” I say, “you really don’t shave?”
“I really don’t,” Adam says. “Guys don’t shave their legs. Except swimmers, because it’s supposed to make them faster—which I don’t get, because how much can leg hair slow you down? But no, it’s just something girls do.”
“But why just girls?”
“Because,” Charlie says, “no one’s gonna go out with a girl with hairy legs and pits—Wait a minute!” He grabs my sleeve. “Does this mean you shave your pits?”
I pull away.
“Quit it,” Adam says, moving to sit on the orange plastic bench between us. “New topic. Do we need to get the bumper rails for you, Charlie, or do you think you can handle it without them?”
“Right,” he says, “as if you will ever beat me at bowling.”
Adam grins over at me as if we’re in on a joke, and I smile back.
WHEN MY ALARM goes off at six on Monday morning, I see the twenty-dollar bill beneath my shell. Through slices of pain, I walk to my attached bathroom, whimpering as every movement pulls the cuts on my legs. Tears sting my eyes, reminding me how much I embarrassed myself last night. Russell never gets mad at me for crying, but it’s still humiliating.
I use the toilet, then consider showering, but everything hurts too much. For a moment I stand in front of the floor-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door, looking at the horizontal red lines from my collarbone to my waist. He’s never done that before, never the front. It makes sleep impossible. I can’t lie on my stomach. I can’t lie on my back. But I have to, and it hurts.
I turn around to see the long red stripes from my shoulders down the back of my legs. The legs that are pale and skinny, and according to Adam and Charlie, strangely hairless. I know Russell is just worried about my health, but I don’t want to shave anymore, not if no other boy does it.
I feel another surge of regret knowing he’s gone to work and I’m home. I hate that I keep doing stupid things. I hate it when he’s mad at me. I hate that the proof of how he feels is still all over me.
I turn around to face the mirror again and look into my eyes. When I was in the third grade we had to do a genealogy assignment, and my mother told me that no one in our family had eyes like mine. The only person I knew from Mom’s side of the family was her sister, Russell’s wife, but she died when I was five, so I barely remember her. My mom never spoke to any of her other relatives. I knew something had happened, some falling-out with her parents, but she never wanted to talk about it, and at the time I wasn’t curious enough to ask.
My father didn’t have any brothers or sisters. His parents were old by the time they had him. He said they called him their miracle because they didn’t think they could have children. I don’t remember either of his parents, since they both died when I was still a baby.
It hits me all of a sudden—my parents lost their parents. But they always seemed so happy. Was it real? I can picture them looking at each other, smiling right into each other’s eyes. Hers were bright blue. His were faded green. Mine are both, and sometimes when I look in the mirror, I can see both of them looking back at me.
“HAVE YOU HEARD from Julian?” Dr. Whitlock asks the second I get to her office on Wednesday.