Instead of classic cars decorations and a chrome shine, her room was painted a dark, nighttime blue with all the baseboards and edge work done in gold. She had string lights around her closet in a shockingly Pinterest-esque style, and there was a missing door so that I could see how neatly all her sweaters and jackets were arranged. Mine, if hung up at all, were usually dangling by one side of the shoulders and the hangers were never facing in one uniform direction. I pulled out a desk chair and sat down.
“Wow, look at you,” I said. “So neat.”
With what I was beginning to think of as her classic Lennox head dunk, she looked down and smirked. “Yep. My parents are neat freaks and I guess it rubbed off on me.”
“So, hey. This is probably really weird since we just started hanging out, but I wanted to know if you wanted to join me on a little project over the rest of break,” I propositioned, my hair falling into my face as I leaned on my elbow.
Like a puppy, Lennox tilted her head to the side before answering. “What kind of project?”
I paused. How could I explain to this girl that I just met, this girl I was admittedly starting to have a pretty major crush on, that my life had been too easy and I wanted to try to shake things up by willing things to happen to me? And, more importantly, how could I do it without sounding like an idiot or a jackass?
“Well,” I started. “I’ve been kind of privileged.” I used the “P” word, hoping that it would at least somewhat smarten up my whole plot. “My parents are divorced, but my mom is really cool and supportive. I’ve been out as gay since seventh grade and no one has hassled me. I have friends. I kind of feel like nothing has ever happened to me.”
Lennox’s eyes met mine and I shit you not, it was like something from a movie. I couldn’t break eye contact with her because I was distracted by the intensity of the ocean water shade of her eyes. They were like pictures of the Carribean they were so sharply pigmented. I literally got so distracted that I didn’t hear what she said in response. “Huh?” I asked. Good job on that sounding smart thing, I thought.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Lennox said as she leaned back on her elbows. “Going through shit isn’t the only way to gain life experience and if it is, you’d rather yours be dull.”
I wanted to argue with her. To point out that her dad was a professor, her mom ran a blog, but mostly stayed at home, and she lived on one of the ritzy streets in town. I wanted to tell her she didn’t exactly seem like a poster child for traumatic life events. Instead I moved from my chair and stretched out next to her on her comforter, propping myself up on one elbow so that I was almost hovering above her. I kind of couldn’t stop looking at her again, which could’ve gotten pretty awkward, but for some reason, it didn’t.
“Yeah?” I finally asked. “Did something happen in Columbus?”
For half a second I thought she wouldn’t answer, or that she’d get defensive at my questioning. Instead, she plopped the rest of the way down onto her pillow, her eyes like magnets to the ceiling above.
“There was this pretty bad period, maybe a couple weeks, right before we left,” she started. “It’s actually the biggest reason why my dad took the job at Marshall. He wasn’t desperate for a gig or anything. It’s because he didn’t —"
She broke off. I thought about reaching over and smoothing down the spikier pieces of her undercut or just putting a hand on the back of her neck. Something compelled me to comfort her and something else, something much more insistent and bright, warned me that that would be a horrible idea.
“My parents were starting to get scared of how bad my depression was becoming. I wasn’t eating and at home I wouldn’t talk to anyone. And it’s because of these kids,” she paused again, but this one didn’t last nearly as long and with her usually strong voice breaking just a little, she continued. “They started joking all the time that I must be trans. That because I dress like this and have my hair like this, I must think I’m a boy, you know, all that shit. And to be honest, it wasn’t that hard to tune them out at first. What difference does it really make what some ignorant assholes say?” She rolled back onto her elbow and manipulated her body so we were facing each other, our knees touching in the middle. “It was when they started asking . . . what I have. That’s when it started being too much. Every day in history, these two boys. Twins that I grew up with. They’d ask if I’d transitioned, if I had a dick. Then they started not letting it go when class was over. They’d follow me into the halls and ask if I wanted to compare dick size. I couldn’t get them to stop following me and it was getting worse; they’d grab my arm and try to make me go with them to, I guess, compare.”
Her eyes started to tear up and she used the end of her sleeve to wipe them dry. I waited before I said anything because her breathing was still coming in jagged little gasps and I knew from my own life that when you get like that, where you’re trying so hard not to cry, the least little thing someone says just opens it all back up and then you get going so hard you could just float away on tears like in Alice in Wonderland.
“Did you tell a teacher or anything?” I asked.
She nodded. “They told me just to ignore them. That they were just curious and didn’t mean to be rude. They didn’t get it. They thought it was no big deal.”
Her quilted bedspread was made of a spectrum of purples and blues and I started to pick at the strings that formed between squares. Curling them between my fingers and rolling them into knots. I didn’t know what to say. As though my hand was possessed, I reached out and grasped hers, squeezing her fingers tightly between mine. “I’m sorry,” I said.
“The way they looked at me when they grabbed my arm . . ." she trailed off and got that look again, that dead eye, staring at nothing look. “I knew it was a big deal.”
A big deal. That felt like such an understatement. If some boy grabbed me and tried to pull me off somewhere, I’d be so scared. I imagined the thoughts that must have gone through Lennox’ head. I imagined if that had happened to me, how angry Marley and Jake would’ve been on my behalf. How they would’ve been ready to kick their asses, especially Marley. Then I thought about Mom and the fire that would burn behind her eyes if something like that happened to me. How lawyers and press would’ve been called if the school didn’t react just the right way.
“God,” I said, “What did your parents do?”
Lennox’s face went whiter than usual and her eyes rolled straight down in that way that was quickly becoming a tell for when I’d put my foot in my mouth. She was quiet for so long I thought maybe she wasn’t going to answer at all, but finally she spoke.
“My mom didn’t say anything. She never says anything about anything controversial or upsetting. She just looks at my dad and lets him take the lead,” she swallowed loudly before she went on and I could tell she was struggling to continue. “My dad was mad. At me. He said I brought this kind of stuff on myself by being so confusing and that if I would just act like a girl, people would pay less attention to me.”
I knew it was insensitive, but I just stared at her waiting for a sign that this horrible story was a joke. The boys I could understand—they made me sick and angry, but that was the world we lived in. There were bigots who didn’t like what they didn’t get. But her parents? I couldn’t even wrap my head around that. How could your parents let something like that happen to you and not only not want to destroy the person who hurt you, but actually blame you for their behavior?