The Female of the Species (3 page)

I'm the guy who other people want to be.

I see it in their looks when I sink a three-pointer, hear it in the collective roar from the stands when I score the game-winning touchdown and do a series of backflips—and fuck the ref for throwing an “excessive celebration” penalty flag, anyway. I can do those things and look good before, during, and after, knowing the whole time that I'll have at least one tit shot texted to me that night. And then on Monday I can go to any one of my classes and deliver a speech, nail an exam, or speak in a foreign language the entire time without blinking because I am the whole package. I get girls, I get trophies, and I most definitely am going to get to be valedictorian.

Except . . . I'm not.

Alex Craft is.

I'm sitting next to her in the guidance counselor's office with my mouth hanging open just enough that I've probably disqualified myself from salutatorian as well.

“I don't understand,” I say for the third time. “I've got a 4.0.”

“So does Alex,” the guidance counselor says. “And she's taken more weighted classes than you have.”

“But I want . . .” I close my mouth then, aware it's more than a want, it's a
need
.

If I can't get a scholarship, I won't be going to college. I'll be another senior who says they're taking a year off first, and then ends up trying to pay for my kid's college from behind a burger grill, wondering what the fuck happened. And then my kid'll do the same thing and when I retire I can cede my spot in the drive-through to my grandkid. I can keep my body in shape anywhere, but my brain is going to rot in this shitty little town because I'm too poor to get out of here without a free ride.

I'm so focused on me, I'm not sure I've heard her right when Alex says, “You should just give it to him.”

Alex, who could write a book about things that aren't fair. That guy in the woods had it right three years ago—I'm a douchebag.

Miss Reynolds's eyebrows come together. “Class rank is not given, Alex. It's earned.”

“It's nonsensical for me to have it. I'm not going to college.”

Now the guidance counselor's mouth tightens as she says, “We've talked about this and—”

“Why wouldn't you go to college?” I interrupt Miss Reynolds, turning to look—really look—at Alex. I don't think I've ever been this close to her, and when she turns her head, I see how green her eyes are.

She shrugs. “I can't conceive of myself outside this place.”

“Oookaaaayyyy,” I say, glancing at the guidance counselor. She smiles at me encouragingly, but her eyebrows are still stuck together in concern
.

“It's very simple,” Alex says patiently, dividing her words between the two of us. “We've both earned it. He wants it. Give it to him.”

The way she says this makes it seem so easy that I know I'm wearing a
yeah, see?
look on my face. But the guidance counselor sighs and shakes her head.

“I can't just arbitrarily decide who is the valedictorian.”

“You're misinterpreting where ‘arbitrary' fits in this conversation,” Alex says.

Miss Reynolds closes her eyes and pinches the bridge
of her nose. I get the feeling she's had many, many conversations with Alex that end this way. When she looks up, she's got her professional face back on.

“A lot of things can change before the end of the year,” she says. “And, Jack, you need to remember that being salutatorian is nothing to sneeze at.”

Which to me sounds like:
Alex is very unlikely to make any mistakes, so you need to start adjusting to the new reality
.

Alex and I walk out of the office together and I find myself in an awkward situation that only people from small towns can appreciate. I know Alex Craft. I know her in the sense that I could pick her out of my class photos from kindergarten on. I know her because people don't leave this place and our parents know each other—hell, I'm pretty sure my mom dated her dad. I know her because everyone knows everybody here, and Alex especially because her sister is the only reason a news crew has been in this town, ever.

I know Alex Craft. And I have nothing to say to her.

But I want to find some words that will make her look at me again, because I liked the way her green eyes stood out among all those freckles. And the part of me that goes to AP English digs that she's smart, while the part of me that slaughters freshmen with dodgeballs is kinda turned on by the idea that I'm competing against her for something.

And she's walking away from me.

I know how to do this. I know the things to say to people that will keep them at arm's length while reinforcing how cool I am. I know how to speed up or slow down to give them the idea that you're really not into talking to them and the distance between the two of you grows even though you're the only ones in the hallway. I know how to make a joke about taking a shit and duck into the bathroom for a few minutes until they're gone.

Instead I take a few extra inches in my stride until I'm keeping pace with Alex. I see her eyes flick in my direction for a nanosecond when she picks me up in her peripheral, but she doesn't slow down.

“Crazy, huh?” I say.

“Excuse me?”

“The valedictorian thing. Crazy.”

She stops at her locker, gaze going to the hallway clock instead of me. “I don't know that it's crazy so much as an indication that we're both intelligent people.”

“But you're
more
intelligent.”

Alex spins her combination lock. “Not necessarily. I've never been quite clear how such a thing is determined.”

“They take your GPA and—”

“I know how the school does it,” she says, snapping her locker open. “I mean in general.”

“Oh,” I say, because I can't really think of anything else.

The bell rings. The sound slices through the hall, scattering all the words I'm trying so hard to accumulate between us. She jumps as if she wasn't expecting it, her hands curling into fists.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

“No,” she says immediately, the unexpectedness of the question prompting an honest answer.

“Can I”—
help? Have your number? Touch your arm? Get you to look at me again?—
all of these things are utterly lost as my name comes rolling down the hallway in Park's drawl.

“JAAAAAAACK,” he's calling for me, more than a little obnoxious as he turns the corner to find me at Alex's locker. The halls are filling up and there's no reason for him to think that I've actually been talking to her. Except she's finally looking at me again, waiting for me to finish whatever this sentence is going to turn into.

And I can't come up with a single goddamn word. My mouth is hanging open and it's like she's the hook and I'm a fish and I can't do anything but flop around when Park pushes his body against mine so that we're touching from toes to forehead and all I can think is
Jesus, really? Right now? This is the moment he chooses to pull out a joke from seventh grade?

“Jack, baby,” he says. “I missed you so much.” He
clenches my head in his hands and covers my mouth with his thumbs and fake kisses me so hard I swear I'll have bruising tomorrow. “And you, girl,” he says to Alex after pulling away from me. “I could just eat you up.”

He's going for her with a big dumb grin on his face, absolutely certain that she will have no problem with him smashing his fingers into her lips and his face up to hers. Her expression doesn't change; that slightly confused look that had been directed at me as I struggled with words now turns to Park as the fist that never unclenched finds a target.

She drops her shoulder to gain some momentum as she takes a jab at his crotch, one bony knuckle protruding on purpose for maximum effect as if she wants to pop his testicles like water balloons.

And he goes down like a box of rocks.

We are having a funeral for Park's balls.

That's how it seems, anyway.

After Alex brought him to his knees in the hallway and walked away like she'd done nothing more than litter, Park curled up into the fetal position. He pulled the hood of his sweatshirt up over his head so that nobody could see his face while he recovered his masculinity, and everyone gave him a wide berth. The hallway was totally silent except for the occasional
What happened?
followed by an explanation, followed by the kind of respectful silence we reserve for male groin injuries.

Jack tried to talk to him but got only grunts in response, and everybody decided to leave him there and went to class. Mr. Franklin walked past a few minutes
ago, and I imagine he'll say a lot of understanding things that end in “buddy” for a while until he can coax Park up off the floor.

Miss Hendricks wasn't quite sure what to do because she isn't equipped to offer support to Park, and not forceful enough to make us stop talking about it. So instead of discussing
Crime and Punishment
—which Alex is calmly sitting in her seat reading—we're talking about the fact that Park was dick-punched.

The guys are laughing their asses off. They keep reenacting it and attempting to fist-bump Alex, but she couldn't be less interested. The girls are split into two camps: the ones who have on very straight faces and keep saying that Park could be
seriously injured
, and those who find it genuinely amusing every time one of the boys involved in the instant replay pretends to reinflate their balls by blowing on their thumbs.

I'm part of this last group.

Branley, who everyone knows is a Friend to All Penises, isn't making much of an effort to control her volume, and her natural soprano is grating on my nerves.

“What if he can't have kids now?” she asks, a perfect little pout following up her intense concern for Park's man parts. “That's just
crazy
.” More emphasis than necessary is put on this last word, and she glances at Alex as she says it, who turns a page of Dostoyevsky.

A little burn of resentment starts down in my belly
and I try to quash it, fast. I don't know if it's because Alex and I have established a kind of companionable silence after incinerating three dead puppies, or if it has more to do with the fact that Branley now traipses around holding Adam's hand.

But I really want her to shut up.

Seeing the two of them together hasn't been easy. I finally answered a call from DickFace (he's been renamed in my phone, all heart emoticons removed) about a week ago. I guess it was our official breakup, even though he'd been sharing one chair with Branley at lunch ever since Sara sent me that screencap.

“Babe,” he'd explained, unable to drop the endearment even as he dumped me, “it's
Branley Jacobs
. I have a shot at
Branley Jacobs
. I can't pass that up.”

I guess he expected some sort of congratulations from me as he climbed the social ladder, stepping on the skull of the preacher's kid so that he could jam his face up the skirt of the blond cheerleader. And he seems pretty happy. So, whatever. Fuck him.

“Fuck her,” Sara says as she flops into the chair next to mine.

“Right?” I agree, but can't stop my eyes from going back to Branley as she keeps using words like
vicious
and
dangerous
.

Branley is kind of perfect. One of those girls who wear matte foundation and always look like a porcelain
doll, except I think if you spread a doll's legs as far as hers go, they would break. I can say this with some accuracy because of the pics she sent my boyfriend.

Ex-boyfriend.

I concentrate on that (
ex-boyfriend ex-boyfriend ex-boyfriend
) and flip open my own copy of
Crime and Punishment
as I try to distract myself from a visual I accidentally created. A picture of Branley's perfectly molded, heart-shaped face, breaking into shards under my fist. I clench my fists and my teeth, warping a classic paperback and shredding my own enamel at the same time.

Miss Hendricks finally gets everyone in their seats and Branley passes my desk, leaving the scent of strawberry-vanilla shampoo in her wake. She tosses her phone into her open backpack on the floor, and I can't help but glance at it.

I expected to see a selfie background, something coyly posed and angled for maximum cheekbone effect, probably shot from above to make sure the cleavage gets its due. Instead it's her little sister holding a vanilla ice-cream cone while a clearly well-trained Saint Bernard stares longingly, dual slobber chains caught in midwobble.

Nice. I want to punch a Saint Bernard owner, the most patient people on earth.

Good job being the preacher's kid, Peekay. Good fucking job.

We use objects to navigate spaces, making a map in our heads as neurons fire, pathways so well-worn we don't even know we reference them as we move from one location to the next, the same pattern. Every day.

There are things in place to help us, signs in certain colors and shapes. Arrows pointing. Symbols indicating. Making your own framework is more entertaining, more personal. Less constricting.

The blue house she would've seen last.

The tree that has bloomed three times since then.

The dirt road that used to be gravel, the gravel road that is now paved, the paved road that is disintegrating back into gravel.

Here in this building I have the dent in the locker
where I broke my wrist after hearing a rape joke, dropped as casually as pocket lint.

A ceiling tile still knocked askew two years after I took a vicious kick at thin air and my shoe flew off. No one has noticed it.

The residually sticky spot on the wall outside the science classrooms where the anatomy classes hang their posters with double-sided tape every year, the obligatory genitalia comically large. Nothing hangs there now but a thread of my own hair, torn out.

No one sees me do these things. Until today.

Now there is a new place, a place where a boy came at my face with his hands, his mouth open, tongue out. A place where he fell, pale-faced. A place where his tears pooled afterward. It is a place where I did not mean to, but it happened.

I use my markers as I go from place to place. Seeing evidence of my small rebellions, spots where my wrath was allowed to vent and has impacted the world around me, no longer safely encapsulated inside. My life is made of these tiny maps, my paths always steady as I move inside a constricted area, the only one I should ever be allowed to know.

My violence is everywhere here.

And I like it.