“I know you,” Girl said to a teen boy with curly hair down past his shoulders, like Paul Stanley, her favorite band member from Kiss.
“Yeah?” he replied with a sleepy-eyed smile.
“You’re Brandon. You used to pick on my brother.”
Brandon’s face fell, and Girl was filled with exuberant joy. This was the revenge she had waited her whole life for.
“Your brother? Who’s your brother?”
“Brother Lillibridge.” Brandon was squirming, really actually squirming, his head down, his chest and shoulders moving awkwardly. Just then Brother walked up. As metalhead as Girl dressed, Brother was just as punk. His hair was naturally black, and one side was shaved to the skin. He wore cut-off army pants and a black Dead Kennedys T-shirt, with a skateboard in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Two earrings pierced his left ear.
Brandon looked up at Brother. Brandon had topped off at five foot seven, but Brother was not yet done growing at six foot four—he wouldn’t stop growing until he reached six foot nine in his twenties. Girl suspected that he willfully grew so tall so no one would dare to pick on him ever again. Brandon had to bend his neck and take a half-step back to look into Brother’s green eyes.
“I am so sorry, man,” Brandon spluttered. “I can see you’ve changed. Look, let me shake your hand, and be friends, okay?” Brandon took Brother’s hand and shook it. Brother looked tall and bored. Girl was exploding inside with sweet revenge. Who’s the geek now? she wanted to ask them.
the trestles
When Girl moved back from Alaska, she became Brother’s baby duck, following him everywhere. She didn’t call any of her old friends—they were too “good-girl” for her now. They didn’t have sex or get high or even smoke cigarettes. Liz was still gone at the foster home, and she didn’t know how to find her. Brother’s world became her world.
Brother made her get up early every weekday to catch a ride downtown with Mother. His friends all lived across town, and Mother’s office was halfway there. From Mother’s office they caught the number seven bus to Brighton or Pittsford, depending on the day. Sometimes they wandered Cobbs Hill with Brother’s friends, looking for but never finding weed. If they could find a ride, they went to the trestles.
The trestles were a series of train bridges that spanned the brown water of the Erie Canal. Teenagers congregated on them to get high, play music, and watch the bravest of them jump into the water below. Brother jumped, Girl did not. Once, Girl walked down the embankment to swim in the water. The canal turned her white high-cut swimsuit the color of coffee with cream, and no matter how many times she washed it, it never turned white again.
For those who did not care to jump into the canal, there were two options when a train came by: gather on the concrete stanchion below the tracks, or sit on the iron trusses next to the train tracks themselves, where the wind and dust tornadoed around you. It was here that they sucked on torn pieces of cardboard that someone said was homemade acid. By the time Girl and Brother got home, they both regretted that decision.
“I’m gonna tell Mother,” Brother said.
“Don’t tell Mother,” Girl said.
“She can take me to a hospital and they will give me drugs to make it stop,” he insisted.
“Do what you want, but don’t you dare tell her I dropped acid, too.”
Girl went to her bedroom in the attic while Brother made his confession. Mother came up shortly thereafter. When Girl looked at Mother the acid made Mother’s bad eye glow extra red and loom twice the size of her normal one. Mother’s mouth was the hard straight line that broadcast, “I am so disappointed in you.”
“Did you drop acid too?” she asked Girl.
“Drop acid” sounded so funny in Mother’s mad voice, but Girl managed not to laugh. “No. I just took some Vivarin,” Girl answered. She figured Mother couldn’t complain about caffeine pills because she lived on coffee.
Brother was in his bedroom, watching TV. A commercial came on for Purdue chicken, with raw chicken carcasses dancing across the screen. The carcasses spoke to Brother through the television. Brother never ate chicken on the bone again.
Alone in her room, Girl’s heart was pounding so hard she could feel it in her fingertips, which she held out in front of her face. She stared at her hands, turning her head to one side, then the other. Next she looked at her feet. She had tan lines from her shoes, and her toes were white. Her two-toned feet scared her. Girl was convinced if she fell asleep, she would die, so she stared at her feet all night long, and didn’t close her eyes until she heard the birds singing their morning song. She never got high again.
catholic school
As soon as Girl moved back home and it was too late to change her mind, Mother informed her that she was being sent to Our Lady of Mercy, because “you need the structure only an all-girls Catholic school can provide.”
Fuck. Navy-blue-and-white uniforms. Transferring buses downtown. Most importantly: no boys. The girls here were different—you didn’t have to be pretty to be popular, or even good at sports, and no one teased the geeky girls. Popularity was based on one thing only: money. Jessica was popular because she lived in a mansion on East Avenue, one that had
