“No, of course not,” Mom answered as she filled a pot with water and sat it on the range to boil. She wiped her hands on the front of her jeans and walked over to the side of the island counters opposite me. She, too, rested her elbows on the counter and leaned down so that when I looked up at her, we were close to eye level. “You have the choice to be strong, to face who you are, to take risks. Those are choices. But you can no more choose liking girls than I could choose liking men,” she smirked, one side of her face revealing a deep dimple. “And trust me, little girl, I could never choose not to like the fellas.”
Eyes rolling dramatically back into my head, I released a put on groan. It didn’t really bother me to hear my mom talk about her love life, but it was in the mother-daughter contract that I pretend it did. In that moment, hearing her talk about the choices we make, I knew what I really wanted to ask.
“How can I get Lennox to see who she really is?” I asked.
Mom sighed and I knew she wasn’t sure exactly how to answer. With a tap of her fingers, she answered, “Well, you can’t.” I started to open my mouth to argue, but she held up her hand to stop me from cutting her off. “I know it’s not what you want to hear, but how can you be so certain you know who Lennox is? She’s a new friend, you don’t know her that well. When she tells you who she is and what she wants, your only choice is to respect her choices.” She stood up straight then and went to check the boiling water. With her back to me now, she finished her motherly advice. “If you want to know what I think you should do, my advice is there’s only one thing you can do. If you want to be Lennox’s friend, you show her she can trust you and that you won’t judge her. And before you get lippy, you need to realize that you are judging her right now.”
The weight of what she said felt heavy on my chest and I knew that meant she was right. I was being judgmental. No matter how much I wanted Lennox to have a sudden epiphany that caused her to live her truth and jump into the LGBT community with both feet, hers wasn’t my story to dictate and I was being a bit of an ass.
I thought about everything that had so convinced me that Lennox was into girls. Could it be wishful thinking? Could I have imagined all those looks between us and the way she seemed to tease me? Crap. My unrequited crush had me projecting my own baggage onto this chick who was probably just friendly because she was new to our school and in need of a friend. I had to stop. I needed to stop reading into what it had meant when she said that she was choosing not to be gay. I needed to stop reading into the look in her eyes when she had insisted that she wouldn’t be gay. I had to stop before I became a fixated dudebro who couldn’t accept someone else’s boundaries. Full stop, all the stops. I just had to stop.
Chapter Six
Lennox
It hadn’t been the whole truth, the story I told Hannah.
It hadn’t been my depression that my dad had been worried about. It was true that I was depressed, but that had barely registered as important in his mind. He only cared that my “troubles” at school were going to cause a problem with the neighbors, a problem at church, a problem with my reputation. What happened at school had only been part of it. Yes, I had managed to get away from Nick and Dalton in the hall that day. My arms had fingerprint shaped bruises on it from the force they’d used to try to pull me into the stairwell, but I had squirmed away and hoped it was over.
It hadn’t been.
What I hadn’t told Hannah was that Nick and Dalton were not only brothers but my neighbors, so even when I went home from school, I wasn’t safe. I mean, for the most part, that’s an exaggeration. My house had a locked door and they couldn’t get me or anything like that, but it was like I could feel them out there, two houses away. What I also hadn’t told Hannah was that even though Columbus is a city, most people in my neighborhood went to the same church. Nick and Dalton were there, too. Before we moved, I used to have panic attacks whenever I left my house because there was nowhere I could go where they weren’t. Sometimes I thought they were my own special punishment for being . . . I don’t know. Whatever I am.
But most of the time it didn’t matter because it was all just feelings. They made me nervous. They said stuff at school that embarrassed me. It hurt and it stuck with me and it made me constantly feel like I was this giant mistake, but I could push through it.
That day, though, something had shifted. The look in their eyes as they had hissed in my ear that we should compare dick sizes wasn’t that mean, teasing glint that let me know that while they were cruel, they were having fun. They both had a look of hatred, like something under the surface was eating away at them. I knew if I didn’t get away, they were really going to hurt me.
That same night, after dinner, Dad had told me to take out the trash. It was such a simple request, but it made my heart feel like it had stopped right in the center of my chest. I looked at the door and didn’t move.
"Lennox," Dad said, his voice steel.
I took the bags and walked to the alley. The streetlights were on outside, but they didn’t light up the area near my garage. It was dark and the gravel crunched under my feet. I could feel a humming under my skin and every noise, even the way the wind crept across my skin, made me freeze.
Suddenly a silent, shrill whistle lit me up like fireworks and my blood ran cold. They were there. I whipped around and saw Dalton and Nick, leaned against the garage door, smoking with their hoods up. As soon as I saw them, something in me gave up. All the thoughts I’d normally have, the questions that would gnaw at me, just melted. It didn’t matter how long they’d waited for me to take out my bag of trash. It didn’t matter that they were that desperate to get me alone. All the fight was drained and I knew I wouldn’t be getting away. It sounds crazy, but some part of me felt like I was meeting my destiny in this dark alley with the breeze kissing my skin.
Afterwards, in my bed, I stared at the ceiling and tried to ignore the ache from where their hands had pried into places that weren’t for them to touch. Never had I hated myself so much. If I was born different, this wouldn’t have happened. If I’d like dolls, wanted to braid my hair, worn skirts. If I hadn’t been something that they felt the need to try to figure out, they would have kept their hands to themselves like they did with other girls and I would’ve been able to be what I so desperately wanted to be: invisible.
But everything changed that night. Before they got me that night, I could ignore it all. I could face school each day, come home, do homework, and mark off the days on the calendar. I could tell myself that being bullied was a rite of passage and play “it gets better” commercials on my phone. I could blog and play Sims and invent lives that were so much easier to swallow. None of that would be possible anymore.
I knew as I stared at the ceiling that I wouldn’t be going back to school. That Hell would freeze over before I ever again darkened the doors of Martin Prince High. I would have to tell my parents, have to come clean about what things had been like the past few months, have to look in their eyes and see the blame that was under the surface. I shut my eyes. It would have to wait for the next day. There was no fight left in me that night. As sleep took me, my last thought was hopeful: if everything could get so bad so quickly, maybe someday, just as quickly, things would get good.