My Invented Life (6 page)

“Dad’s black, and Mom’s white,” he says.

“Oh, sorry, bro,” Bryan says.

“I’m not your bro.”

Abort mission rescue. I walk away, choosing to let Bryan think his awkward moment passed without witness.

An hour later the screen door in the kitchen bangs shut. I put my ear against the wall that separates my room from Eva’s. I hear drawers open and close. She must be home, though I didn’t hear her car in the driveway. It coughs like a chain-smoking geezer when she shuts off the engine. I go to her room anyway, and find Bryan ransacking her top dresser drawer. He closes it when he sees me.

“If you want to check out some really cute underwear, come to my room,” I say. The second the words leave my mouth, I turn away in embarrassment. “Do-over,” I yell from the hall.

I go back to the door. “Oh, hi, Bryan,” I say. “Did Sapphire post the playbill yet?”

His eyes are sparkling. “Sapphire never showed,” he says, playing along.

I sit down on the edge of Eva’s bed. He sits next to me so close I can feel his warm breath on my cheek. Suddenly my biggest fear revolves around unsightly earwax.

“How’s it going with your dad’s girlfriend?” I say to remind him of our last intimate conversation.

“The worst.”

“You should ask Nico for advice. His mom has a live-in boyfriend.”

“I don’t want to talk to anyone else about it. It’s too private.”

His skin smells of sun-dried wildflowers instead of
cigarettes. The sexy scent soothes me and makes me stupid at the same time. Or at least that’s my lame excuse for what I say next.

“Do you know that Eva . . . might be a lesbian?”

He stares at me for a long moment. “You mean she’s gay? It doesn’t matter. You’re the one I’ve always wanted,” he says, wrapping his arms around me.

Total drivel. One too many visits to Bryan Fantasy Land have wrecked my grip on reality
.

When I say, “Do you know that Eva . . . ?”

Bryan says, “Eva what?”

“Thinks she’ll get the lead in the play.”

Bryan looks puzzled. “Of course she will. Slam dunk.”

“Doesn’t it bother you?” I ask.

He stands up and paces the room. “Going out with the most talented girl at school? No. But I wonder what she sees in me sometimes.” He sags like BlueDragon when he gets pushed away from someone’s tuna fish sandwich.

“Not true. You’re brilliant. You got the lead in
Hansel and Gretel
.”

“That was years ago, and it wasn’t Shakespeare.”

“You’ll be better at Shakespeare,” I insist.

He moves in close again. “You’re good for me, Roz,” he says in a husky voice.

“What are you going to do about it?” I whisper.

He looks at my lips. “I can’t.”

“Can’t what?” If you could see dignity, mine would resemble a well-chewed doggie toy. I feel more humiliated than during my first pap smear.

Eva’s car engine coughs. I throw her pom-poms at him, wishing that they were spiky instead of fluffy.

Eva the Diva waltzes in. “What’s going on?” she says.

“We were just talking about how perfect you are,” I say. “Ciao!”

After retrieving the photograph of Bryan hidden under my bed, I search the back of the closet for the hockey stick Dad gave me, a mistake on his part six Christmases ago. My zeal for the sport far exceeded my skill. Eva went to the emergency room with a fractured toe, and she wasn’t even playing. I place Bryan on the floor, raise the wooden stick over my head, and slam down hard. “Take that, you
dog-hearted horn-beast
,” I say.

When I hear Eva’s footsteps coming down the hall, I throw my quilt over the shattered glass and lie on top of it one second before she throws open my door. With nary a comment on my odd lounging spot, she perches on the edge of a chair piled with dirty clothes, holding her back as straight as an ice pick. She softens me up with the silent treatment.

“What’s wrong?” I picture myself as an innocent daisy.

“You’re a villainous contriver.” Translation? She knows me too well.

“What?”

“That’s Shakespeare. It means you are a sneaky twit. What were you two doing?”

“Nothing,” I say softly. Saying too much in my own defense might come off as lying, which, admittedly, I’m doing. “What did he say we were up to?”

“Nothing.”

“See?” I reach for my toes to hide the relief on my face.

She sweeps a stack of papers from my desk onto the
floor. “I know what I know.” Her lips have a pale cast to them.

Naturally I do the right thing, change the subject by pointing at the literature about gay teens that now blankets the floor. “Did you know that Amelia Earhart was rumored to be a lesbian?” Silence. As the void created by her nonanswer expands, I have no choice but to fill it. “And Margaret Mead. Even Plato.”

“Plato was a lesbian?” Eva says.

“ROTFL,” I say. The furnace-air dries my throat. If only I could crack open the window, but I don’t dare leave the quilt covering up Bryan’s mangled picture. “Why don’t you want to talk about it?” I say.

“I told you already. It has nothing to do with me.” She picks up one of the printouts and tosses it into the trash.

“You shouldn’t be scared to come out.”

Eva looks at me like I might start spooning applesauce into my ear any minute. “Maybe you’re fascinated with this topic because
you’re
the lesbian, Roz,” she says. “Maybe
you
should come out.”

I laugh out loud. Boy-crazy Roz comes out as a lesbian? What a farce. Then I stop laughing. A minute ago Bryan made it abundantly clear he doesn’t want me. If I can’t have him, I don’t want a sorry substitute boyfriend. And girls
are
better than boys, actually. Prettier and easier to understand.

If I came out at school, the limelight would be mine for once. My name would grace the Grand Marquee. ROZ PETERSON starring as the First Lesbian on the Yolo Bluffs HS stage. Sure, rumors float around that so-and-so might be gay, but no one shouts it proudly from the
rooftops. I’d have the lead in a play written and directed by me. Pretending to be a lesbian is insane, of course, but as a person of the theater-geek persuasion, I pride myself on occasional acts of insanity.

“You really are considering it, aren’t you?” Eva says. Do I detect a shred of admiration beneath her scorn? “You probably think it would make you popular.”

“Do not!” I say. I hate that she sees how shallow I am.

“You wouldn’t last a day,” she says, smiling at the idea of my pain and suffering. “You’d beg the parents to transfer you to a new school within a week. I dare you to try it.” She imagines me going up in flames and laughs with genuine pleasure. “Oh, and if you make another move on Bryan, your life won’t be worth living.” She exits like the divas in the old movies.

I roll off my quilt and bury the remains of Bryan in a brown paper bag at the bottom of my wastebasket. The quantity of broken glass in my life keeps mounting. I wonder what Sierra would make of it.

After dinner I attempt oblivion through chemistry homework. Minutes later, I hurl the offending textbook across the room. My computer signals an e-chat in progress. Tempting, but I must decide something first. I prop my elbows on either side of the keyboard and stare at the blackness outside. To be or not to be (a lesbian)—that is the question. Translation? Even occasional acts of insanity require preplanning.

Mom says to create a list of pros and cons when making a difficult decision. I bet she’s never imagined one like this.

I’m an intuitive person, a person ruled by my heart. And at this precise moment my heart churns with resentment. Eva has Bryan wrapped around her petite little finger. Sapphire will give her the lead in the play. Eva will cut me out of her life forever; when I visit her on her deathbed, she’ll refuse to see me. Her condescending dare this afternoon grates against my one last nerve. I know this is the right moment to press my impulse-control button, but I can never find it when an impulse has me in its grip.

I ball up the list and toss it into my wastebasket. It hits the inner rim and bounces out, an omen I choose to ignore. I log on to the chat. Eva is there.

Isis (me): just so u heard it from me 1st, i have a grrlfriend

Not the full coming-out I planned, but oh well. The cursor blinks as the stunned theater geeks take in the news. I’m about to exit when a reply pops onto the screen.

D-Dark-O (Nico): cool

And more follow.

DulceD (Carmen): go for it

SkateGod (Bryan): got a webcam?

The worm!

ItGirl (Eyeliner Andie): grrl from YBH?

Eyeliner Andie usually lurks in the background during chats. I’m flattered to hear from her.

Isis to SkateGod: i don’t believe in webcams

Isis to ItGirl: UCDavis freshgrrl, ttfn

After exiting, I don a sexy nightgown from Victoria’s Secret and throw on a Fountains of Wayne CD. Dancing calms me. Besides, it’s almost impossible to bite your nails while doing the pogo. I picture P. Tom at my window and wonder why the poor guy doesn’t hitch south to Los Angeles where he’d be better rewarded for his efforts. Our town motto reads: Orchards, orchards everywhere, dropping rotten fruit.

When Chris Collingwood belts out “Stacy’s mom has got it goin’ on,” I turn up the volume. You can write a song about lusting after your girlfriend’s mother. My imaginary grrlfriend at UCD is small potatoes by comparison. When the song is over, I surf the Web to research my role tomorrow. Yes, I’ve watched
Ellen
reruns and seen Melissa Etheridge on the music video channel, but they’re
middle-aged lesbians. I need to know how young, hip lesbians dress. While I get nowhere on fashion, Eva IMs me.

Her: what the hell r u doing?

Me: accepting your dare. *thumb on nose and fingers wiggling*

A
t four in the morning
, the cockroaches and I are awake. The cockroaches, btw, are having more fun. When the sky lightens to pale gray, I revive myself with minty toothpaste and a pathetic fantasy. After my heroic coming-out, Eva sees that the whole enchilada is no big deal. She breaks up with Bryan and tells the world that
she’s
the lesbian. For the encore—Bryan serenades me with a ballad he wrote in my honor, begging to be my boyfriend.

Today the curtain will go up on my play,
The Lesbian of Yolo Bluffs High
. Time to resurrect the floral miniskirt and velvet leggings I rejected on Monday. I can be a femme lesbian, at least. Except for the hair. The hours before an opening are always the hardest. Maybe I should invent a new nervous mannerism—a sexy one for a change—like running one finger under my bra strap or licking my lips. Just kidding. Or not. I shake my bosoms at the mirror. I don’t like the way they jiggle back at me.

Things get worse. At school someone has scrawled R
O
Z
I
Z
A LE
Z across the front of my locker in dark plum lipstick. Gossip—defying the laws of physics—travels
faster than the speed of light. People look at me as if I made a full-blown announcement over the PA rather than a quasi announcement in a locked chat room.

Then things get better. The grind of skateboard wheels on pavement alerts me to Bryan’s approach. He slaps my backside in a flirty way as he passes.

“You’re still cute, queer,” he says. A bluebird of happiness rises in my chest. Bryan Fantasy Land is open for business as usual.

Some things remain the same, only more so. When I plunk down in the seat next to Carmen, she cringes like I’m a half-eaten mole Marshmallow dragged in and plague-infested fleas are about to spring on her.

“You told me to go for it,” I say, patting her arm.

“Unhand me, you uncouth maid,” she says.

RoZ haZ cootieZ.

When the lunch minute rolls around, I fly down Main Drag Street on my scooter, painting a trail of chrome across the storefront windows. At VideoCorral I ask the twenty-something employee to suggest a lesbian film. I refrain from adding a stupid remark like, “It’s for a friend.” She scrapes her teeth across her tongue stud while she thinks. Only good recommendations will come out of a mouth like that. She pulls down
Better Than Chocolate
.

I tuck the DVD safely in my bag and roll over to visit Zip-Stop Jenny, a convenience store owner and overt lesbian. We happen to be on a first-name basis because of Mom’s moratorium on junk food in the house. I grab some chips from the rack and pour myself a cup of gnarly coffee. I scrutinize Jenny with new eyes while I pay.

“Any gum-buying, Birkenstock-wearing customers lately?” I ask. “P. Tom must have to stock up now and then.”

“Just you Peterson girls buy Juicy Fruit these days,” she says. “I’ve been meaning to ask you about that. Learned any ‘juicy’ secrets about your neighbors?”

I raise my foot to show off my stylish winter boots. “These feet have never touched Birkenstocks,” I say.

Jenny leans toward me and waves a hand over my head. “You are one of us, now,” she whispers. “We meet after midnight at the stone circle.”

Another mythical incident in my invented life
.

I wish someone would invite me into a secret lesbian club. When I show Jenny my winter boots, she leans in and lowers her voice.

“The Peeping Tom hit Harrison’s place. He must’ve gotten pretty bored watching reruns of old game shows.” Lesbians like to gossip as much as everyone else. Big surprise.

Fifteen minutes into fifth period—it’s not my fault the lunch minute passes too quickly—I skirt the soccer field, where Jonathan cuts a sad figure on the damp grass. He looks like a well-dressed version of the Thinker. I veer from the path and drop down next to him.