Jumpstart the World (6 page)

The whole thing just seemed unusually cool.

“Hey,” he said. “Oh. Sorry. Didn’t know you had company.”

“Totally okay,” I said. “Totally. Come in.”

He stood in the middle of my living room, and everybody looked at everybody else.

It struck me that we were drinking beer. And Frank might disapprove of that. Seeing as we were all underage. Not that I ever thought he would tell me what to do or rat me out to my mother or anything like that. I just didn’t want to do anything that would cause him to respect me less.

But if he had thoughts about the beer, he didn’t share them. Verbally or otherwise.

“You guys were so quiet. I didn’t even know you were having a party.”

“Little party,” I said.

“That’s great that you decided to celebrate your birthday.”

Shane said, “You didn’t tell us it was your birthday.”

“It’s not.”

“Well, close,” Frank said. “Only a few days late.”

I wanted to change the subject, so I introduced him around. First to The Bobs, then Shane, then Wilbur. Then Annabel, who I still didn’t really feel like I knew at all. Wilbur looked Frank right in the eye when I introduced them. I thought that was interesting. I didn’t know what to make of it. But it was interesting.

“Molly asked me to come by. She wanted me to announce in advance that tomorrow is homemade-chicken-noodle-soup night. She says she’ll make an extra-big batch if you’re definitely coming by.”

“I’m definitely coming by.”

“Good. It’s a date, then. Tomorrow afternoon about six. I’ll let you guys get back to your party.”

I was feeling so happy that he had come by. It was all I could do to keep from smiling too widely the whole time I was walking him to the door.

But then, the minute Frank walked out the door, something very weird and bad happened. And it really caught me off guard. Because I was feeling completely relaxed with those guys. Not anticipating any trouble.

The Bobs looked at each other. Then at Shane.

Little Bobby said, “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

Shane said, “Probably, yeah.”

Big Bob said, “Could be. Could just be.”

“What?” I asked. “What are you thinking?” I could tell it was something about Frank. Just by the timing. And their faces and voices were making me uncomfortable.

Little Bobby said, “FTM.”

Big Bob said, “How sure are you?”

“Seventy percent. At least.”

“I’d go eighty-five,” Shane said.

“What are you talking about?” I asked. My irritation sounded much more evident than I was hoping. “I don’t even know what FTM is.”

“Trans man,” Shane said.

Annabel was in the kitchen or the bathroom. Or somewhere. Wilbur looked at the hardwood floor and said nothing at all.

“Could somebody please speak English?”

“Transgender,” Bobby said. “Female to male.”

My stomach burned in a weird way. I could hear my own pulse in my ears. “Are you talking about Frank?”

“That guy who was just here. Yeah. Pretty sure.”

“Then I think you need to leave.”

It came out sounding smooth. Cool. Not huffy or out of control at all. Like I’d just suddenly made up my mind and then the words said themselves.

They all looked at me. Shocked. Even Wilbur looked up. Full-on surprise.

Little Bobby immediately tried to smooth it over. “Elle, we didn’t mean it like … It’s not an insult. We weren’t saying anything bad about the guy.”

“Really. I think it would be best if you all went home.”

Annabel showed up just in time to hear that remark. She stopped and stood very still. Her face an absolute blank. Obviously wondering how things could have taken such a sudden wrong turn in her relatively brief absence.

Shane said, “Elle. Coming from us, that’s practically a compliment.”

I didn’t answer her. I was done with her. I was done with all of them. I didn’t even want to deal with them while they were gathering up to go. So I just crawled out on the fire escape. As far as I was concerned, the party was officially over.

I could hear their voices inside. Saying stuff like Maybe we should go talk to her. And Does she really want us to leave? And then also some slightly more indignant things, like Where does she get off acting like FTM is an insult? And Why do we keep apologizing? We didn’t do a damn thing wrong.

I heard Bobby say, “When she acts like she doesn’t want friends, she’s a good actor. Maybe we should just believe it.”

And some much quieter mumblings from Shane, which I didn’t like, even though I missed about every other word. But it
was something like Can’t you see what’s going on? and that she’d explain it later. Which made me feel much better about the fact that I wouldn’t be seeing them again.

After a few minutes, it seemed quieter. I was trying to figure out if they were all really gone when Wilbur climbed out on the fire escape with me.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” I said. I didn’t mind his being there so much. Because he hadn’t said anything about Frank.

“I don’t think they meant any offense by it.”

“Yeah, well, it was a stupid thing to say.”

We sat there for a minute in the dark, watching people and cabs go by underneath us. It was perfect for Wilbur, who always liked to look down anyway.

“Is everybody else gone?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“Did they elect you to come talk to me?”

“No. My own idea.”

After a while, I decided that I needed to know where Wilbur stood on all this. In case it turned out I didn’t want him sitting on my fire escape with me after all.

“Do
you
think he is?” I asked. Trying not to tip my hand and let him see how much rested on his answer.

“I don’t know.”

It’s hard to describe the way he said it. Not like he couldn’t really figure it out. Not even like he had no opinion. More like if he had a guess, he wasn’t about to share it. But it didn’t feel like he was just afraid of my reaction. It felt more like he declined to offer judgments about people. Which I decided was okay. I mean,
I would have liked a solid No, definitely not. But you had to respect him for that. So I let him stay.

“They weren’t trying to say anything bad about your friend. I know that, because I know them. They would almost, like, have
more
respect for him if he was trans. So I guess they never thought you would see that as, like … a bad thing.”

“I don’t,” I said. “I just don’t think he is. And I think they should just be careful what they say about people.”

“Yeah, I guess,” he said. He had a weirdly soft voice. Like he was afraid to let any volume out of his mouth to touch the world. Like his voice might cause some kind of explosion on impact. But I liked that gentleness. It reminded me a little bit of Frank.

We sat and watched the traffic awhile longer. The air was starting to feel barely cool, and a light breeze had come up. I breathed as deeply as I could. I was still rattled by what had happened, and I was feeling it like a vise around my heart and lungs.

After a while, Wilbur said, “I’m gonna take off now.” He came and sat closer to me. I watched in the dark as he took off something he was wearing on his wrist. A wide band of some sort. He reached his hands out.

“Give me one of your hands,” he said.

I gave him my left hand, even though I didn’t know why. He put the band on my wrist. Secured it with the two snaps.

“Happy birthday,” he said. And kissed me on the cheek.

I looked at my wrist more closely in the light from inside. It was a wide leather bracelet made from a piece of black leather over a piece of gray leather. Both layers were cut into long, lengthwise strips, so it separated out into thin strands and it looked like
you were wearing a dozen really skinny gray and black leather bracelets.

“Thank you. I really like this.”

“It looks good on you.” A brief, awkward silence. Then he said, “I like your friend Frank. Whatever he is.”

He slipped through the window and I heard the front door close behind him.

And then I was alone. Really, completely alone.

FIVE
When Your Hair Turns Sweet Sixteen

W
hen I showed up for homemade-chicken-noodle-soup night, Frank said, “I like your friends. They seem really nice.”

“I’m not so sure anymore,” I said.

“Really? I thought you liked them.”

“Yeah. I guess I thought so, too. But now I’m not so sure.”

“What went wrong?”

I couldn’t look at him. I just kept looking down at the table. I could feel both cats rubbing against my legs. Taking turns. I wished we didn’t have to talk about this. That I could change the subject.

“They just seem a little … judgmental.”

That sat on the table for a while in silence.

Molly was dishing up soup. When she set the bowl in front of me, she said, “Were they judging
you
, honey?”

“No,” I said. And I didn’t say anything more.

We had all been eating for a few minutes when Frank said, “I don’t know how bad it is. Because I wasn’t there …” Yes you were,
I thought. Well, practically. “But don’t be too quick to throw friends away. They can be kinda hard to replace. And then even when you get new friends, turns out
they’re
not perfect, either.”

You
are, I was thinking. But of course I didn’t say that out loud.

All I wanted was to talk about something else. So, without realizing I was about to, I took the conversation in a very weird new direction.

“What do you think is wrong with me?” I asked.

They were both silent for an uncomfortable length of time. I was half wishing I’d kept my damn mouth shut.

Molly spoke up first. “Why do you think anything is wrong with you?”

“Why do I fit in with them? Four of them are in that group because they’re gay. So I’m not saying that’s something wrong with them, but I guess it makes them different. Hard to fit in or something. Then before I met Annabel, I couldn’t figure out why she hung out with them if she’s not gay. But then when I met her, then I knew. So, what’s wrong with me that I fit in with them but not anywhere else?”

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with you,” Frank said. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with any of them. And I think you could probably fit in a lot of places, but I think the hair thing just got you off on the wrong foot, and I think they just happened to be the first ones who got to know you.”

“I think it’s because I’m not beautiful,” I said. Surprising myself yet again. I just seemed to be on a roll, spitting out things I hadn’t even known I was thinking. And I was also vaguely aware that I was ignoring everything Frank had just said to me. And I’m not sure why. Because usually everything Frank said
seemed important. “Sometimes I think even my own mother would love me more if I were beautiful.”

“But you are beautiful,” Molly said.

She said it like she really meant it. Like she believed it. I believed that she believed it. But she was still wrong.

“I’m not,” I said. “I know I’m not.”

“I’ll prove it to you.”

She got up from the table and rushed off into the bedroom and came back with an expensive-looking camera and a lot of other equipment, like some freestanding lights and a meter and stuff. She had to make several trips.

In between trips, Frank said, “Did you know that Molly is a photographic artist?”

“No. I had no idea.”

I had never thought much about Molly. Never wondered who she was or what she did. Now I had this bad sense that she was taking an interest in me. And I’d have to start liking her. I knew as soon as I got to know her better, I’d have to like her. I think that’s why I’d been putting it off.

“I’ll show you so you can see it with your own eyes,” she said, bursting back into the room. “Just be as close to yourself as you can possibly bring yourself to be.”

I sat in the corner of the darkroom—their converted second bedroom—watching Molly work. On a high wooden stool, sitting on my hands. I wasn’t sure what I was about to see.

“The thing to remember when you look at these,” she said, “is to give up the idea that there’s only one kind of beautiful. Hollywood has narrow ideas about beauty.”

“So does my mother.”

“Well, try to get your ideas to loosen up. Try to look at yourself the way you would look at somebody else. Imagine it’s your job to hire a model. Look at these photos and see if you would hire this girl.”

She started hanging wet black-and-white prints on a line, like a clothesline. I got up off my stool and felt my way over in the dim red photo light and looked at them close up.

In some of them I was looking away. I liked the angle of my jawline. It looked solid and strong. My hair being mostly gone really shifted the focus onto my face. I hated my freckles, I always had, but when I thought about this being some other girl I might hire as a model, they didn’t look all that bad. On somebody else, I guess I would just think: freckles. Rather than: freckles—bad.

In one picture, I was looking right into the camera, and my eyes were so intense I almost had to look away. I stared right into my own eyes as long as I could. There was plenty going on in there. They were like a window into something that just kept going. I never knew my face showed so much of what was going on inside. I had a cute, small nose. But that wasn’t even the important part. It was what I saw inside those eyes.

“I
might
hire her. I’m still thinking.”

“That’s a start,” Molly said. “You just keep thinking.”

I left her in the darkroom and found Frank again in the living room. Lying on his back on the couch, his eyes half closed. I thought about how hard Molly said he worked.

“How’d that go?” he asked. He never entirely opened his eyes.

“Better than I thought it would, I guess.”

I sat cross-legged on the floor next to him. He was wearing shorts and a sleeveless undershirt, and he had his arms folded
behind his head. He had a lot of hair under his arms. And on his legs. And he was starting to get a five o’clock shadow. I could see the dark shape of a beard starting to form on his face.