Rules for Being a Girl

“I’m off tomorrow,” she explains, prying her milk shake out of the cupholder and slinging her bag over one narrow shoulder. “I’m spending the weekend at Kyra’s.”

I frown. “Really?”

Kyra is her slightly younger cousin, who lives in Watertown and is super into her Greek Orthodox youth group. I know her from years of going to Chloe’s birthday parties, and she’s cool in a straightedge kind of way, but I definitely wouldn’t call them super close.

“Why?”

She shrugs. “My parents want us to be friends, I don’t know. They’re probably hoping she’ll teach me to pray in Greek.”

“Oh man,” I tease. “Good luck, Kyra.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Chloe rolls her eyes. “Thanks for the ride, Jacob. I’ll see you guys Monday.”

Once she’s inside, Jacob turns to me, his sharp face familiar in the light from the dashboard. “You need to get home right away?” he asks.

I glance at the clock, hesitating. I’ve got a little over an hour before my curfew, truthfully, but I also know what he’s actually asking, which is whether I want to go park under the copse of trees at the far end of the Bridgewater parking lot and mess around for a while. “Um.”

“We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do, obviously,” Jacob says quickly.

“Gee, thanks.” I make a face.

“Oh, come on.” Jacob frowns, wounded. “You know what I mean. I’m not trying to be some, like, pressuring douchebag. I just meant—”

“No, I know.” I wave a hand to stop him, a little embarrassed. He’s right, actually—Jacob’s never given me a hard time about the fact that we haven’t had sex yet, even though I can tell he’s a tiny bit disappointed every time we’re getting up to something and I finally stop him. And it’s not even that I don’t want to, necessarily. I meant what I said to Bex the other day—Jacob is great. He’s smart. Everybody is always saying how funny he is. He’s the assistant coach of his little brother’s peewee basketball team, for God’s sake. And if sometimes I feel like I’m still kind of waiting for some crazy zing of recognition, some feeling of Oh, it’s you—well, this is high school, not a Netflix original rom-com. There’s no reason to be such a girl about the whole thing.

Finally I sigh, reaching out with one finger and snapping Jacob’s seat belt lightly across his chest. “Let’s go,” I tell him.

Jacob grins.

Three

Gracie has a chess tournament in Harvard Square the following weekend, so I tag along with my parents to go see her play. The thing about competitive chess is that even at the middle school level—especially at the middle school level—the various matchups are basically more complicated than March Madness seeding, which means that over the years I’ve spent an awful lot of time sitting around in random auditoriums waiting for it to be my sister’s turn to wipe the floor with supposed prodigies from Newton and Andover.

Today the proceedings are even slower than usual; somebody’s little brother is kicking the back of my chair periodically, and the dry, forced heat is making me yawn. Gracie sits to my side with her eyes closed and her head tilted back against the red velvet auditorium seat, listening to Christmas music. My phone buzzes with a text from Jacob—a Bitmoji of himself snowboarding, his tongue hanging out like a dog’s. I stopped him—again—before things went too far the night of Emily’s party, though he didn’t actually seem put out about it. He’s spending this weekend at his cousin’s house in Vermont, so possibly he’s too excited about “shredding the mountain”—his words, not mine—to be annoyed about not getting into my pants.

“I’m going to find a coffee shop and do some homework,” I finally whisper.

My mom nods. “Don’t go too far,” she instructs, fishing a ten-dollar bill out of her purse and handing it over. “I’ll text you before her match.”

In the end I post up at the big Starbucks near the T stop, the windows fogged with the damp chill outside. I pull my laptop out of my backpack and watch the tourists and college kids waiting in line for their coffees, the hipsters with their tattoos and undercuts. Sometimes I think it would be cool to look a little more like them, to try bright pink hair or an eyebrow ring or whatever. Then I imagine the curious looks and snarky comments I know I’d get if I ever did anything like that at Bridgewater, and it seems safer to just blend in.

“Marin?”

I look up and gasp, almost knocking over my cup at the sight of Bex standing next to my table in jeans and a worn-in hoodie. With his glasses and his coffee cup he looks like a college kid home for the holiday weekend, messenger bag slung over his shoulder and laptop tucked under one arm.

“I thought that was you,” he says.

“Oh!” I steady my cup on the table, offering him a smile. “Hi.”

“Sorry,” he says, “am I traumatizing you right now?” He grins. “I saw my first-grade principal at the pool once, and I don’t think I ever really recovered. A nun in a bathing suit, just to burn that image into your mind like it’s burned into mine.”

I raise my eyebrows. “Nuns are allowed to wear bathing suits?”

“Apparently.” Bex shudders, then nods his chin at my computer. “What are you working on?”

I glance down at the screen with gritty eyes, then back at him. “My admission essay for Brown,” I admit.

“Really?” He frowns. “Deadline is coming up, right? It’s not like you to have put it off this long.”