Her final present from her father was a twelve-pack of condoms and box of spermicide suppositories. “Knowing you, this will be gone in a week,” he said. She had just lost her virginity a few months before, and she looked down so he wouldn’t see the shame his words brought. She said nothing, and he handed her an envelope containing a funny card with sixty dollars inside. Girl spent every penny of it on presents to give to Mother, Stepmother, and Brother when she went home to spend Christmas with a real tree and stockings hung by the chimney with care. She was happy to have enough money left to buy something for Suzy, too. Girl bought her a blue-and-black satin teddy that she really wanted for herself, but she would never spend that much unless it was for someone she loved. Suzy thought it was too slutty to ever wear and stuffed it in the back of her nightgown drawer so her mom wouldn’t find it. At the mall, Girl found a music box in the shape of a carousel and bought it for Mother, but when she opened the box in her room at Mother’s house, it looked cheap and stupid. She hid it in her closet and tried not to cry.
boys
Father didn’t mind if she had boys spend the night, even if it was on the rare occasion that he was sleeping at home. Once she had gone to a party with her friend Cindy and a guy named Richard that she and Cindy both had a crush on. He had blue eyes, long chestnut hair, and broad shoulders, and he always wore a denim vest with a Harley-Davidson patch on the back over his black leather jacket. He was only fifteen, but his girlfriend had already graduated high school and had a baby, so she didn’t go to parties. The three of them stood at the end of the hall at the party, peering into the living room.
“I feel so out of place,” Cindy said.
“I do, too,” Girl replied. She didn’t even know whose apartment it was—some friend of Richard’s that she had never met. But she had always wanted to go to a real party like they showed in the movies: cigarette smoke clouding the air, a keg in the kitchen sink, loud heavy metal music blaring from the silver boombox on top of the fridge.
“But you don’t look out of place—look at you!” Cindy said. The apartment was filled with Native Alaskans—you didn’t dare call them Eskimos if you didn’t want to fight. In fact, now that Girl looked around, they were the only non-Natives there. With Girl’s dyed black hair, dark eyes, and black leather jacket, she did look like everyone else there, unlike Cindy with her blond hair and preppy clothes. Girl left Cindy and Richard in the hallway and walked into the living room, feeling for the first time that she didn’t stand out. Girl knew one or two of the kids from school, and obviously they knew she wasn’t Native, but they didn’t seem to care. Alex, a girl she hung out with in the smoking section at lunch, held a glass bong to Girl’s lips and after two hits she wasn’t insecure about anything. “Whoa,” Girl said. She had never used a bong before, and the room was suddenly throbbing around her, like her pulse was vibrating the light. Alex held up the pipe again, but Girl shook her head, instead going over to the kitchen table where everyone was drinking beer and playing quarters.
“What’s quarters?” she asked, embarrassed that she had never heard of the game.
“You bounce a quarter on the table into a cup, and if you miss, you have to drink. If you get it in the cup, you pick someone else to drink,” Aidan explained. She had seen him around school, but never talked to him before. “Come sit down,” he said.
“There’s no room,” she said.
“You can sit on my lap.”
Aidan was Native Alaskan, with long frizzy black hair and slightly almond-shaped eyes. At East Anchorage High, there wasn’t any tension between Native and non-Native students that she could see. The tension was between the preppy kids and the “stoners” like Girl. Aidan was definitely a stoner, and Girl had a thing for dudes with long hair.
How did people even bounce a coin on a table anyway? Girl wondered. When Girl dropped her quarter, it just lay on the tabletop and mocked her. Aidan was the only one she knew at the table, but whenever one of his friends bounced their coin into the red Solo cup, they always picked Girl to take a drink. She hated beer, but drank it anyway. She wasn’t going to look like a wimp in front of a bunch of seniors. She liked sitting on Aidan’s lap. She liked that he wasn’t afraid to kiss her in front of his friends.
The party was apparently for some guy Stan’s eighteenth birthday. He had short black hair and big wire-rim glasses.
“It’s your birthday, you have to chug!” one of the women yelled, and Stan put the
