Rules for Being a Girl Read online

  “Obviously,” Bex replies with a rueful smile. “No, um, honestly? My ex and I have been trying to work it out, and it’s just been . . .” He waves a sheepish hand. “Yeah. It’s just been.”

  I blink. “Oh.” I keep my voice neutral, like teachers talk to me about their various romantic relationships all the time and he’s the fourth or fifth of the week. I really don’t want to think about what getting back together with his ex-girlfriend has to do with him not getting a lot of sleep—or, more truthfully, maybe I do, even if that’s totally crossing the line.

  “Anyway,” Bex continues with a twist of his lips, “we ended it for good last night. Thus”—he gestures down at himself—“the desiccated corpse you see before you today.”

  I smile. “That sucks.”

  He shrugs. “It’s for the best,” he admits. “The thing about Lily is that she’s just really—” He breaks off. “I’m sorry. This is literally the last thing I should be talking about right now.”

  “No, no,” I say, totally curious. I can’t help it. I pull one leg up underneath me on the sofa. “It’s okay.”

  “I mean, it’s not, probably,” Bex counters with a shake of his head. “It doesn’t exactly win me any points as an authority figure, that’s for sure. But I don’t know, you just kind of seem, like . . . older than other girls in your grade. Has anybody ever told you that?”

  Nobody ever has, actually; I think about how I secretly played Littlest Pet Shop until Chloe caught me at it halfway through seventh grade. “I do?”

  “Yeah,” Bex says, no hesitation at all. “Honestly? I’ve taught a lot of teenagers. And I like teenagers, don’t get me wrong. But sometimes I listen to what, like, Emily Cerato and her friends are talking about in my classroom, and I think . . . Marin’s not like that. It’s like you’ve got an old soul or something.”

  Pleasure blooms inside my chest, huge and sudden. “Well,” I say, ducking my head down and smiling at my planner. “Thanks.” When I look up again, Bex is smiling back.

  We stay there for the better part of an hour, him grading and me working on a set of calc equations that aren’t due until halfway through next week. It’s after four when Bex finally stands up and stretches, his shirt coming a little bit untucked, so I can see a flash of smooth bare skin at his hip.

  “Okay,” he says, stifling another yawn with a guilty smile. “Time to get out of here, Lospato. You need a ride home?”

  “Oh!” It’s the first time he’s offered since that day a few weeks ago, when he told me not to tell anybody. And I didn’t tell anyone, not even Chloe, and maybe there’s a part of me that’s been holding my breath, waiting for him to ask again. “That’d be great, actually. Thanks.”

  Bex nods, and I grab my stuff before following him out the side door and across the mostly empty parking lot, both of us squinting in the white light. The weather report keeps threatening snow.

  “Shoot,” Bex says as he’s digging his keys out of his messenger bag, smacking the palm of his hand lightly against the hood of the Jeep. “You know what I didn’t bring you again today?”

  “Uh-oh,” I say with a laugh. “Let me guess.”

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” he mutters, buckling his seat belt and turning up the heat. “I mean, sleep deprivation, for one, but that freakin’ book has been sitting on my hall table since Halloween, and literally every morning I think, Don’t forget to bring that to Marin. And every morning I walk out of the house without it.”

  “Sounds like you should write yourself a Post-it,” I tease him.

  “If I thought Post-its were enough to get my life in order I’d literally buy stock in 3M,” Bex says with a grimace. Then a thought seems to occur to him.

  “Actually,” he continues as we pull out of the parking lot, “are you in a hurry to get home right now? We could go pick it up on the way.”

  That surprises me. “You don’t have to do that,” I say cautiously. On one hand it’s not like I’m not curious about where he lives—I’m super curious, actually—but on the other I don’t want to be a pain in the ass. “You can just bring it to me on Monday, right?”

  He stops at a traffic light, fixing me with a dubious look. “Monday, possibly next week. Or next year. Maybe the year after.”

  “I mean, point taken,” I say with a laugh. “Let’s go.”

  Bex lives in a romantically dilapidated Victorian house carved up into three or four apartments. When we pull up to the curb he tilts his head toward the front walk. “Come on in,” he says, turning off the engine. “It’s freezing out here.”

  “Oh!” I was fully expecting to wait in the car, peering up at the mismatched windows and trying to figure out which one belonged to him; the thought of seeing the actual inside of his apartment has my heart doing backflips inside my chest. There’s a part of me that wants to text Chloe right this second. Another part of me never wants to tell her at all. “Um, okay.”

  The hallway inside the house is overwarm and violently wallpapered, cabbage roses in aggressive pinks and fuchsias. A dusty chandelier casts dim, dramatic light across his face.

  “Watch yourself,” he says as I follow him up the staircase, nodding at a place where the maroon carpet is peeling up off the tread. “My mom won’t even come visit me here anymore. She thinks she’s going to break her leg or get lead poisoning or something. She sends me real estate listings for these renovated, dorm-looking condos like every single day.”

  “Aw,” I say. An image has started to form in my head of Bex’s parents: stern and mostly humorless, the kind of classic New England WASPs we read about in The Wapshot Chronicle at the beginning of the year. I feel like he’s probably lonely in a family like that. “I think it’s great.”

  As promised, the Franzen book is sitting on the table in Bex’s tiny foyer. He hands it over, and I tuck it into my backpack, but instead of herding me back out onto the sidewalk like I’m expecting, he slings his messenger bag over a teetering coatrack and shrugs out of his jacket.

  “You hungry?” he asks, putting a hand on my shoulder for the briefest of moments before heading toward the narrow kitchen. “I’m just gonna grab something to drink before we go.”

  I shake my head. “I’m okay,” I say, letting a tiny breath out as I hear him open the refrigerator. I don’t want him to catch me gawking, but I can’t stop looking around, wanting to commit all of it to memory: the worn leather sofa and the antique desk strewn with papers, the shelves and shelves of books. He’s got actual art on his walls—real paintings by actual artists, nothing like the scrolly Live Laugh Love canvases my mom is always buying at HomeGoods and hanging on every available surface. A wine crate full of records sits next to a turntable by the window.

  I creep farther into the living room, pulling an album out of the pile and turning it over: Nina Simone Sings the Blues. The sleeve has gone slightly fuzzy around the corners from being handled. I don’t know anything about her, but I make a mental note to google her so I can drop her into conversation later on.

  “Whatcha looking at?” Bex asks, coming into the room behind me and peering over my shoulder, a bottle of flavored fizzy water in one hand. His whole house smells like him, coffee and something that might be incense; there are more books stacked in the fireplace, a basket of New Yorkers overflowing on the hearth.

  I hold up the record, turning to face him. “Do you actually listen to these?” I ask.

  Bex smirks. “Yeah, smarty-pants,” he says. “Sound quality is way better than Spotify or whatever.”

  “Is that true?” I ask. “Or is it just, like, what they tell you at Urban Outfitters to make you spend more money?”

  Bex’s eyes widen. “I don’t get my records at Urban fuckin’ Outfitters,” he says with a laugh, reaching out and taking the album gently from my hand.

  “Oh no?” I ask, thrilled and a tiny bit horrified by his language.

  Bex grins, a flash of perfectly straight teeth. “No,” he says, lacing his fingers through mine
and tugging me a step closer to him. “I get them at a record store, like a person with half an ounce of self-respect.”

  I make a quiet sound then, not quite a laugh, startled by the contact and the movement and the sudden suspicion that something bad is about to happen. He reaches out and pushes a loose strand of hair away from my face.

  I don’t have time to register any of it though, because that’s when Bex puts his free hand on my cheek, ducks his head, and kisses me.

  My brain shorts out for a second, lights flickering during a thunderstorm. It’s like his mouth is pressed to someone else’s, not mine. I stand there frozen and let him do it in the moment, until I feel his hand move down from my face toward my chest. Suddenly every panic response in my body comes screaming to life.

  “Um,” I yelp, pulling away and taking an instinctive step backward. My neck feels like it’s on fire. My skin is two sizes too small. “What are you doing?”

  “Easy,” Bex says immediately—holding his hands up in surrender, a half smile playing across his face. “I thought you—” He breaks off, clearing his throat. “Easy.”

  “Um,” I say again, taking another step toward the doorway. I remember my mom once describing going out to dive bars in her twenties, how at the end of the night the bartender would suddenly shut off the music and turn the lights all the way up, the fun abruptly over and the whole world in stark relief. “No, I just—I should probably go.”

  “Oh! Yeah, totally,” Bex says. He pats his pockets, flustered. “Lemme just grab my keys and I can—”

  “You know what?” I shake my head. “It’s not too far from here. I can totally walk.”

  Bex frowns. “Marin,” he says. “Hey. Can we just talk for a—”

  “That’s okay,” I say, my voice canary-bright and maybe a little hysterical. “We’re totally good, I swear.” I gesture toward the doorway. “I should. Um. Enjoy your weekend!”

  I thunder down the narrow stairs and hoof it all the way home, even though it’s freezing—my hands jammed in my pockets and a cold wind slicing through my coat. My mom is in the kitchen when I get inside, gathering ingredients for a winter spice cake to bring to my gram while Gracie plays chess on her laptop at the kitchen table.

  “Hey,” she says, setting the bag of flour on the counter. “I was wondering what happened to you.” She looks at me for a moment, eyes narrowing like possibly she can see the blood moving under my skin. “What’s wrong?”

  I hesitate for a moment, gaze flicking back and forth between my mom and my sister. I have no idea what to say. If I’m being honest with myself, there’s always been a tiny part of me that wondered if maybe some of the stuff Bex said wasn’t totally aboveboard, if a teacher that chill and funny—and, okay, hot—was too good to be true. If sometimes his attention didn’t feel . . . different. But I said yes to the ride anyway, didn’t I? I sat with him in the newspaper office.

  I agreed to go over to his house.

  I mean, what did I think was going to happen?

  “Nothing,” I say now, clenching my fists around the straps of my backpack, then turn on my heels and head upstairs. I shut my bedroom door behind me, digging my phone out of my pocket and scrolling to Chloe’s name before realizing I have no idea what to tell her. God, there’s probably not even anything to tell. I’m blowing this way out of proportion, most likely. Maybe it’s not even that big of a deal. After all, it’s not like some creepy perv forced himself on me in a dark, deserted alley. It’s Bex.

  It’s Bex.

  And he kissed me.

  And maybe I wanted him to, in a way? Except also, I didn’t.

  I’m still clutching my phone like a weapon when suddenly it buzzes in my hand, startling me so badly I drop it altogether, watching it skitter across the carpet like it’s got a mind of its own. I reach down and pick it up, then drop it again before finally getting a grip, Jacob’s name flashing across the screen. We’re supposed to meet a bunch of people at Applebee’s tonight, I remember as I hit the button to answer. I’m supposed to go hang out with all our friends.

  “Um, hey,” I manage, hoping I’m just imagining how fake and squeaky my voice sounds. “How was your practice?”

  “It was awesome,” Jacob tells me cheerfully, then launches into a long, convoluted story about Joey and Ahmed getting into a fight over whose gym socks were stinking up the locker room that meanders for the better part of five minutes. He’s calling from his car, the blare of the radio audible in the background.

  “What about you, huh, babe?” he asks finally. “What are you up to?”

  “Um,” I stall, making a million infinitesimal calculations in the space of a couple of seconds. I can picture him so clearly, his hand slung casually over the steering wheel and everything in his life exactly the same as it was two hours ago. “Not much. Just hanging out.”

  “You sure?” Jacob asks. “You sound weird.”

  “I do?” I don’t know what it means that I’m surprised that he noticed. “Just tired, I guess.”

  I can’t decide if I’m hoping he’ll press it or not, but Jacob just hums along, as usual.

  “Take a nap,” he suggests cheerfully. “I’m gonna go home and take a shower and then I’ll come pick you up for dinner, okay?”

  I glance across my bedroom, catching sight of my own reflection in the full-length mirror on the back of the door—my braid and my uniform, the slightly wild expression on my face.

  “Sure,” I say, looking away again. “Sounds great.”

  Seven

  “Okay,” I say to Chloe the following night, holding my hand out for the bag of Tostitos she’s holding. She came over to my house after our lunch shift at her parents’ restaurant, the two of us sprawled out on the floor in my room. “Can I tell you something weird that happened?”

  Chloe bites the corner off one triangle-shaped chip, delicate. “Literally always.”

  “No, I know,” I say, rummaging through the bag until I’ve gathered a salty handful. “This is really weird though, not like, ‘Jacob watching those pimple-popping videos’ weird.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Chloe says thoughtfully, “I think those videos are kind of relaxing.”

  “Oh my god!” I drop my chips back into the bag. “Ugh, you’re so gross.”

  “They are!” Chloe grins. “Okay, okay, go, tell me the weird thing.”

  I nod, taking a deep breath and telling myself there’s no reason to be nervous—after all, it’s just Chloe. “Okay,” I say again. “So Bex offered to give me a ride home after school yesterday.”

  Chloe’s eyes widen. “He did?”

  “Yeah,” I say, “but that’s not the weird part. Or I mean, I guess that’s part of what’s weird, now that I’m saying it out loud, but—” I tilt my head back against the edge of the bed and tell her the rest of the story, ending with the kiss. “I bailed out super hard right after that, obviously. But now I don’t know, like, what to do about it.”

  Chloe doesn’t say anything for a moment. When I look over at her she’s breaking a tortilla chip up into a hundred little pieces, arranging them in her lap like a mosaic. “Are you sure?” she finally asks.

  I frown. “What do you mean, am I sure? Like, about what happened? Yes, I’m sure. I was there.”

  “No, I know, I just mean—” She stops. “Like, are you sure he was actually trying to—like, you didn’t just walk into him, or whatever?”

  “Yes, I’m sure,” I snap, although suddenly there’s a tiny part of me that isn’t. I sit up a little straighter. “Do you think I’m making it up?”

  “Of course not,” Chloe says, gathering the chip crumbs up off her lap and tossing them into the wastebasket tucked under my desk.

  “Really?” I ask. “Because it sounds like maybe—”

  “Marin!” Chloe laughs a little then. “Come on. Hey. It’s me. That’s not what I think.”

  “But?” I prompt.

  “No buts!” Chloe promises. “That’s awful, if he did that. That’s
totally gross. Was there like—” She breaks off.

  “Was there what?”

  “I mean, what exactly happened?” she asks, pulling her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. “Like, was it just a grandma kiss? Was there tongue? What?”

  I think of his hand on my face, his palm sliding southward. It feels like somehow I’m not explaining this right. “No,” I admit finally. “No tongue.”

  “Okay,” Chloe says, sounding relieved. “Well, that’s something, at least.”

  “I guess.” I blow a breath out. “I’m sorry. I’m just—yeah.” I spin around on the carpet, lying back on the floor. “Do you think I should tell somebody?” I ask the ceiling.

  “You just told me.”

  “No, like, DioGuardi or someone? I mean, I didn’t even tell my parents.”

  “What,” Chloe asks, “to, like, try to get him in trouble?”

  “I’m not trying to get anyone in trouble,” I say, popping up on my elbows.

  “No, of course not,” she says quickly. “I didn’t mean that how it came out. I guess I just . . . obviously I believe you about what happened, but are you sure he didn’t just, like . . . get confused by your vibe, or whatever?”

  I startle. “My vibe?”

  “You know what I mean!” Chloe defends herself. “Or maybe you were confused? I’m definitely not saying you were, I’m just trying to figure out—”

  “I’m not confused.” Ugh, this isn’t going how I thought it would at all. I take a deep breath, try to regroup. “It was weird behavior, right? Objectively, for a teacher? It was inappropriate.”

  “Yes, of course. One hundred percent,” Chloe says, even as she’s shrugging noncommittally. “But it also sounds a little like maybe you’re freaking out a disproportionate amount? I wasn’t there, obviously, but, how many times have we talked about how hot he is, or whatever? Maybe he was just picking up what you were putting down, or trying to make it not weird, or—”