Before that, Sean Nessel was the kid who chased me around the playground during recess. I’d be out of breath, hiding from him under the slide, but he’d always come for me. Even when the other boys, boys like Dev, would be throwing a tennis ball against the school wall. They wanted to play Pegs. Sean wanted to chase me. And I let him chase me for at least the first half of recess. I loved it. I loved the thrill of being wanted by him, even though I couldn’t explain that in my little silver leggings and my pink T-shirts and my boots or my high-tops with all the studs on them.
“I’m gonna get you tomorrow, Jensen,” Sean would yell to me with a huge smile, his face streaked with red before he went over to join his friends at the wall.
I didn’t meet Donnie until sixth grade when we got to middle school. Back then it was just me, Cate, and Suki. Cate would say to me, “I can stop him, B. I’m bigger than him.” And she was bigger than him for a while—her round body didn’t get muscular until we got to middle school and all stretched out. Sean was wiry then, lean with popping muscles, but not a monster, before he shot up to whatever tall height he’s at now.
Did I want him to stop chasing me? I lived for him to chase me. But I didn’t know how to say that to Cate. To anyone. So I went home that night and demanded that my father take me to the mall to get running sneakers.
“You have sneakers,” he said, looking down at my high-tops. With their gold glitter laces.
“Not ones like these. Sneakers that’ll make me run fast.”
“Okay, but is there a reason?”
“Because I need to outrun someone.”
My father was concerned. He looked at me, serious. “A bully?”
“Bully, no! Sean Nessel is chasing me all over during recess.”
My father’s face. Like a proud papa. Sean Nessel, the kid with the foot, chasing his baby girl.
“You know what it means when a boy chases a girl, don’t you, Blythe? It means that he likes you.”
When I went to school the next day, I hid my new sneakers in my backpack like a secret weapon. I didn’t want Sean to know what I had. It would be a surprise. A sneak attack. A sneak-ers attack.
In class, during a small break, he walked by my desk on his way to the water fountain. He bent down, whispering to me, “I’m going to get you today, Jensen.”
I gazed up at his face. No hesitation. “I’ll be waiting,” I said.
He smiled so big that I thought his face would explode. I couldn’t even sit in my seat right, I was so excited. Cate turned around, her pudgy face desperate. “What’s going on?” she mouthed.
I shrugged. It was my thing with Sean. Our game of chase. I didn’t want her or anyone else part of it.
Later, when the bell rang, I told Suki and Cate not to wait for me because I had to go to the bathroom. I ran over there, sat in the stall, and changed into my new sneakers. Teal and purple. Shoved my boots in my backpack. Hung it up in my locker, then walked to the school door. My heart racing. My body pounding. I opened the door and stood at the top of the steps, searching for Sean until I found him playing Pegs at the wall.
I strode over slowly, so out of breath already, my body throbbing. I wanted to scream his name, holler for him. Come and get me. But I didn’t have to. Because he spotted me through everyone. His face beamed. Then he looked down at my feet, and his mouth dropped open wide. He laughed, rested his hands on his hips, nodded, and without any warning, rocketed toward me.
I pivoted and ran, faster than I ever had before, zooming between kids, not stopping for a second. I could hear him catching up, behind me, grunting. Then I just felt him all of a sudden, his body tackling me into the mulch near the tire swing. My face skidded across the wood chips and then a thud of both our bodies, together and then hitting the ground. There was a moment or two that the air completely escaped me and maybe the same happened to Sean because he rolled off me and we both wriggled on the ground, gasping.
That’s when the recess teacher sprinted over, grabbed Sean by the hand, and hauled his body up to stand. “I saw you, Sean,” she yelled. “I saw you leap on top of Blythe. I saw you chase her. I saw you attack her. What on earth were you thinking?”
I couldn’t even gulp a breath of air to defend him in the moment. My leggings were torn up at the knee, my face dirty and full of mulch. A bunch of girls, including Suki and Cate, lifted me up. Suki frantically saying over and over in my ear, “Are you okay, B? Are you okay?”
The recess teacher, I can’t even remember her name now, dragged Sean away. His face never left mine until she brought him inside.
Later the principal asked me, “Was this a game you were playing, Blythe? Did you want to be chased by Sean?”
“Yes,” I told her. Yes. Was there any other answer?
6
ALI
You know when you’ve exercised a lot at the gym, or run a few miles or so, or played an intense game of some sport and you’re sore the next day? Everything hurts. Even when you’re not moving, it hurts. Like all your muscles have been crunched between two metal clamps. Well, that’s what I feel like. My vagina, as in my actual vagina, hurts. As if someone tore something out of it. There are muscles, tissue inside
