“Oh, yeah?” Girl replied. She’d show him that girls could do anything boys could do. Besides, maybe that guy on the bike was watching.
Girl waited till Brandon had the football in the middle of the field, then ran full speed at him, catching him around the waist with both her arms, and knocked him flat on his back.
“No girl can get you down, huh?” She was triumphant.
“I can’t believe you did that! Everyone was watching!” Brandon was livid.
“What? You said no girl could take you down.”
“Everyone saw me get tackled by a girl!” Brandon stormed off. Girl looked for the bikers, but they were gone. She couldn’t stop thinking about that one guy, though. Chevy. Even his name was cool.
She saw him again at an AA dance a few months later, and this time he spoke to her. Rose-Marie and Girl were wearing their matching red sweatshirts and tight black jeans and doing their synchronized left, right, left, turn dance moves to “Funky Cold Medina.”
“Hey, I’m Chevy,” he said when the song ended. He still had that bandana tied around his head, and his face was scruffy with a few days’ growth of beard. The leather jacket, jeans, and cocky smile rounded out his look as Mr. Cool. Girl couldn’t believe he noticed her.
“I know who you are,” she said, trying not to sound impressed. “I saw you at the picnic last summer.”
“Dance with me. I’ll come and find you for the first slow song,” he said, walking away in his black cowboy boots that made him just an inch taller than Girl was in her white sneakers.
Girl kept looking for him as she and Rose-Marie danced to “Wild Thing,” “Mony Mony,” and other eighties hits, but he never came back as promised.
spring 1992
Girl met another Chevy when she was eighteen, but he wasn’t the right one.
Wrong Chevy and Girl were playing cards with some mutual friends at the Sober Barn, a nonprofit organization where teenagers could hang out away from the temptation of drugs or alcohol. Girl was a freshman in college, and Sharon had just taught her to play euchre. They sat around the one-room cabin on old donated sofas playing cards night after night. Wrong Chevy was a few years older than Girl, but still in college. He was preppy and muscular with thinning blond hair and freckles. Girl was surprised when he asked her over to his apartment. Jocks didn’t normally go for Girl—she didn’t have enough style, or confidence, or something. They kissed and he pulled off her clothing to gasp at her matching black bra and panties (thank God it was clean laundry day). When he drove her home, though, he said, “I can’t believe you let me go so far. I thought for sure you would slap me.”
Girl was confused. Was he just seeing how far she would go? Didn’t he like her? Hadn’t he wanted to mess around, or was this some sort of test she failed? He called again a few days later, when Girl was making chocolate chip cookies. She left the batter half-mixed on the counter and drove to his house. She’d finish it later—if she delayed, he might change his mind.
Girl let him borrow her car after his was stolen from the university parking lot. He brought her a rose when he returned it. She went to his apartment on Valentine’s Day with a box of homemade cookies and a handmade card, and he had a pair of earrings for her, along with a card with a picture of a girl picking her nose. “I picked this one for you!” it said. They didn’t go anywhere—he didn’t have any money, but had too much pride to let Girl pay—but Girl bought him groceries and he cooked for her in his studio apartment. He put his arm around her in front of their friends at the Sober Barn, and to Girl, that was all that mattered.
One night a new girl, Marian, joined the gang. Wrong Chevy leaned over to Girl and whispered in her ear, “That is the most beautiful girl I have ever seen!”
Girl looked at Marian: chestnut brown hair, no makeup. Most people would probably say that Girl was the prettier of the two. But she was clean-looking, sporty, and sincerely nice to everyone, including Girl, Wrong Chevy’s girlfriend. Within a few days Girl and Wrong Chevy broke up. He and Marian would marry two years later at a 9:30 a.m. ceremony in a Catholic church when Marian was twenty years old and three months pregnant.
After Wrong Chevy and Girl broke up, he and Girl remained friends. Girl still secretly hoped he would change his mind and come back. He was selling a computer and she needed one, so she agreed to buy his, even though it was older and crappier than the one at her mother’s house. Girl hoped if they hung out enough, he’d remember what he had originally seen in her. When he suggested they drive to his brother’s house to look for the manual to the computer, Girl agreed, even though she knew she’d never read it.
Wrong Chevy and Girl drove to the edge of the city and parked in front of a small house with white peeling paint and cracked concrete steps, the yard completely surrounded by a chain-link fence. It wasn’t a bad neighborhood—small neat houses mostly—but it was a just a few blocks from Jay Street, which Mother had told Girl to avoid at all costs.
Wrong Chevy and Girl walked into his brother’s house without knocking. Two women were in the living room. He introduced them to Girl as the middle brother Sammy’s girlfriend and the older brother Timmy’s wife. The women were just a few years older than Girl, pretty and friendly, with trendy clothes and highlighted hair. The oldest brother was at work and the one they called Sammy was asleep, so Girl and Wrong Chevy decided to come back another day.
They went back a few
