If I Was Your Girl(11)

“I don’t think I want to.” I fidgeted in the chair, biting my lip. I imagined all the things I couldn’t tell her. Could never tell anyone.

“You don’t have to,” she said. She blew her hair back into place and reached for her pipe and a shimmering plastic baggy. She carefully stuffed dried green leaves into the bowl.

“Could I get high first?” I said, my hands balled in my lap.

She tilted her head. “I already think you’re cool, you know. You don’t need to smoke to impress me.”

“No,” I said. I imagined my insides taut like piano wire, humming as they prepared to snap. “I just want to … I want to relax. I haven’t really relaxed since … well, since ever.”

She nodded, once, and put the pipe and the lighter on the table between us.

“It doesn’t always make you relax,” she said. “For the record I don’t think it’s a good idea. I’m not your mom, though.”

Two more thunderous peals growled at us before I worked up the courage to touch the wavy-lined blue-and-green pipe. Its glassy surface felt like the unicorn tchotchkes in Mom’s bedroom. I almost laughed at the association as I picked it up and held it. The mouthpiece tasted warm and wet as Bee instructed me on how to do it.

“Don’t cough yet,” she said as smoke flooded my lungs.

I held my lips shut. My chest heaved and my eyes watered. Finally the sizzle in my chest hurt too much and I let the coughs come. A blinding halo surrounded my head as I bent double, coughing long after my lungs were empty.

“I think I did something wrong,” I said. “Nothing’s happening.”

“Everybody says that,” Bee said. “Give it a sec.”

I leaned back in the chair and closed my eyes, a tingling feeling beginning to spread through my body. I felt brave and free in a dizzy, nauseated way.

“So I guess it’s up to me to start.” Bee lit another cigarette and thought for a moment. “I competed in beauty pageants until five years ago.”

A laugh sprung from my insides, buzzing through my lips before finally breaking free.

“If you weren’t high I’d take offense.”

“I’m not high,” I said. My voice sounded slow and warped, like it came through a pink toy-store bullhorn, which made me laugh even harder.

“You’re high,” she said. She waited for me to calm down and then handed me her phone. I took it, just barely getting my breathing under control. On the screen was a photo of a girl with long, bleached hair curled in perfect ringlets, wearing a silver sequined gown.

“I think you’re a lot prettier now,” I said. I meant it. A warm wave ran from my toes up to my head.

“Our peers disagree,” she said. “Whatever. I could be her again if I wanted to be. They’re jackasses forever. Your turn.”

“My ears aren’t pierced.” I remembered asking my parents when I was little, and how embarrassed and confused I’d felt when Dad responded angrily. My emotional life had already begun to collapse at that point, but something about that particular dressing-down knocked loose the floodgates, and months of bottled up loneliness, fear, and shame poured out. I remembered lying on my bed after Dad was done yelling at me, listening to the cardinals outside, and wondering if that was the last time I would ever cry, if God had decided I only got a set amount of tears in my whole life.

“Seriously? That’s all you’ve got?”

“You said to start small!” I protested. “Okay fine. How’s this instead? I’ve never been drunk.”

“Well, you’re high as shit right now, so I’d say you’re well on your way. My turn: I’ve gotten to at least third base in every bathroom at school.”

“With who?” I said, loud enough to startle myself. I started giggling again, but did a better job keeping it in check. “With whom, I mean. Whom.” I liked the way “whom” felt in my mouth.

“Your turn,” Bee said, shaking her head.

“Ohh-kay,” I conceded, dragging the word out like a disappointed child. A bubble hovered at my mind’s edge, waiting to pop. I existed in the moment, free from the past and the future. “I switched schools because someone beat me up. You can still feel the stitches above my ear.”

She took a long drag on her cigarette, lighting the tip bright red, and held it for a while. “A year ago I spent a month at Valley down in Chattanooga.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Loony bin,” she said, tapping her cigarette on the table’s edge. Ash floated to the ground.

“I tried to kill myself my sophomore year,” I said.

Her eyes widened. “How?”

“It was a few weeks after my mom broke her leg. Her prescription painkillers were sitting out. I took too many.”

“How many’s too many?”

“Whole bottle,” I said, chewing my fingernails.

“Why, though?”

I just shook my head.

“I’m glad you didn’t,” Bee said. “Kill yourself, I mean.” She met my eyes as she put her cigarette out on the table. “I’m bisexual.”

“Really?” I said slowly, trying to fit this fact in with everything I knew about Bee. I wondered if any part of me had suspected. “Have you ever dated a girl?”