The Geography of Girlhood (10 page)

overdosing on that great, triangular height.

I think of you nearing the top,

the way those ancient stones must feel,

the atoms of heat tittering around you.

I imagine you opening yourself up to the world,

to storms and pyramids,

to all these small, immaculate dangers

that make up our lives.

Tonight is my dad’s birthday and

Susan made turkey spaghetti

(somewhere between a vegan

and red meat meal).

When we all sit down,

my dad holds up his mug of beer

and makes a toast, something mushy

about how he loves us all

and he always will

and he’s glad we’re all home safe.

Then he gets up and goes around the table

and kisses Susan full on the mouth

and dips her like they’re on the dance floor

and my sister says,
People! Please!

Spencer and I crack up

and he gives me the tiniest little smile.

How we all came together,

I have no idea, but however it did,

it happened,

like a miracle of science,

of chemistry or biology,

we came together

and we stayed.

A new guy moved into our neighborhood

and my sister says I can have him.

He’s too young for her

even though he’s cute.

I see him outside his house doing chores

today when I’m walking the dogs

down to the beach.

She was right.

He is cute.

Cuter than cute.

He gives me a wave and

my heart thumps

and I start imagining

everything that could happen;

our whole story unfolds

in four seconds flat.

Isn’t it strange the places on the map

your heart can take you?

And then you figure out

sometimes it’s okay to stay still for a while,

you don’t have to go everywhere all at once,

you can see a boy

and you can love him for a minute

and maybe it’s real and maybe it’s not

but sometimes all you have to do is

wave back and

keep going.

I keep going

all the way down to the shoreline.

You’d think the dogs would love it here,

the way the salt kisses the stones,

but something scares them

about the way the waves

recede and return

out and back in again.

I take my mother’s globe

out of my backpack,

the globe that’s been given from her to me

and from me to my stepbrother

and now back to me again.

I take aim and throw it out into the sea

and it seems like for a second

the dogs might swim after it

but they don’t.

I stand there watching it

and after a while it starts drifting out

farther and farther and I know now

I’ll never see her again

and it took me a while to figure out

that’s not good or bad

it’s just the way

it is.

I am back in my hometown. I am eating biscuits at the

café, I’m writing a novel on my arm. This is the first

part of Chapter 1, near my wrist. On the way to break-

fast, I see a white horse, its knees buckling into the

pasture. It’s summer again and the clamor for shellfish

is on; the tide’s out and birds and businessmen both are

up to their elbows in sand. It’s so postcard-perfect here

that I’m building a tolerance for beauty. Things I hate,

like bird shit and link sausage, flatbed trucks and

tattooed forearms, even they seem charmed. At the

beach, as the gulls get luckier than the grocers, I think

of the white horse fallen down, the fingers of water

that manage to poke their way into everything, my little

life on its tiny plate, with a side dish of sky and a spoon

to go with it.

I don’t even bother knocking on my stepbrother’s door,

I just barge in and pull him off his bed

and say,
You’re coming with me.

All the way down to the docks,

he won’t talk to me

but that’s okay because I shove him in the dinghy

and I say,
Row
and he does.

We take turns rowing

until we are in the center of the bay

and I say that I’m sorry for leaving him like that

but sometimes you have to do stupid things

to swim your way back into the smart ones.

After a second, he says,
Fine. I forgive you.

I look at his often-annoying face

and I lean over and whisper

into his mostly dirty ears

the first of many stupid warnings

and tall tales that I plan to

spend his life telling him.

I guess if you look at it

I’m right where I started

and everything is still trees and water and rain

and small town, small town,

but no matter how you slice it,

it is my life

and I am floating right out here

in the middle of it.

Kirsten Smith
is the cowriter of the feature films
Legally Blonde, 10 Things I Hate About You, Ella Enchanted
, and
She’s the Man.
Her award-winning poetry has appeared in such literary journals as
The Gettysburg Review, Witness, Massachusetts Review
, and
Prairie Schooner
. She lives in Los Angeles, where she likes going to rock shows and hanging out with her dogs. Her Web site is
www.kiwilovesyou.com
.

The author gratefully acknowledges the following publications in which several poems in this book have previously appeared:
Hayden’s Ferry Review, Left Bank, The Massachusetts Review, North Dakota Quarterly, On the Bus, Rush Hour, Shenandoah, Soundings
East
, and
Witness.

Utmost love and gratitude to Mel and Katie Aline, best friends, beautiful parents and purveyors of the finest writer’s colony
on the West Coast. Infinite thanks to Susan Phillips, the best teacher I’ve ever had. Thank you to Steven Malk, punk rock
agent extraordinaire, for inspiring this endeavor; Megan Tingley for her belief in the book; and Amy Hsu for her wonderful
and precise guidance. To Ryan Latimer, Gregory McCracken, Stacey Lutz, and Micah Rafferty for their collegiate encouragement,
when it was most needed. To Catalaine Knell, for always reminding me I am a poet. To Seth Jaret for his enthusiasm and creativity.
Love and kisses to Noel Krueger for being the girl I’ve always looked up to. Many thanks to Shannon Woodward for lending her
foxiness to the cover of this book. To Brandon McWhorter for his creativity. To Elwood Reid and Doug Cooney for their inspirational
work and wisdom. Thanks to The MacDowell Colony, who provided the picnic lunches that fortified many of these poems. To Shauna
Cross for her witty prose. To Alene Moroni, Michael Hacker, and Doug Wyman for their constant and true friendship. Thank you,
Lusty, for being such a drama king. And thanks to the movies, Madonna, and Courtney Love, all of whom inspired me to leave
town and then come back again.

As the ferry coasts into downtown,

all lit up and windy and magic,

I realize kids who grow up in cities

must never dream of

going anywhere else

because they’re already there
.

P
enny is ready to escape the pocket of home, ready to be in love, ready to find her way in the world. Navigating the choppy
waters of teenage life, she confronts the complicated truths of her not-quite-normal family, the highs and lows of high school,
her lost mother and her lost best friend, and one alluring bad boy who just might be more adventure than she bargained for.

Written in raw, captivating verse, Kirsten Smith’s powerful novel explores the heartbreak and humor of what it really means
to be a girl stumbling towards adulthood without a map.

PRAISE FOR

the geography of girlhood

“A
quirky
and
poignant
story filled with wonderful details.”

—Curtis Sittenfeld, author of
Prep

“Smith’s poems are
tender maps
of
beauty
and
pain
, of longing and hard-won truths, of a young girl’s journey to womanhood.”

—Sonya Sones, author of
What My Mother Doesn’t Know

“Totally
fresh
,
innovative
, intimate, sad, exciting, and unforgettable.… Makes you feel like you are not as alone as you thought you were.”

—Jennifer Belle, author of
High Maintenance