Rules for Being a Girl

“No, no, no, I definitely don’t need that,” Gray protests, but when he tries to get to his feet his whole face goes sweaty and ghost pale.

“Okay,” he says, sitting back down hard on the floor with a grimace. “Maybe I do.”

He seems to register me for the first time then. “Hi,” he says.

“Hi,” I say. “You want me to call your moms?”

Gray shakes his head. “You can, but it’s going to be hard to get them,” he tells me. “My mom’s got a late-afternoon class. And my mom’s in court.” He looks at me, offering a weak smile; he’s hurting badly, that much is clear, though he’s trying not to show it.

“See, this would be one of those times where it would be useful for me to call them two different things.”

The ambulance arrives a few minutes later, a pair of tersely efficient paramedics peppering Gray with questions, moving his ankle gently this way and that. The one who’s a woman doesn’t look much older than us.

Do you know what you’re doing? I want to ask her, flinching as Gray grimaces in obvious discomfort. Do you know how important he is?

Finally they seem to agree it’s likely broken and he needs to get an X-ray, boosting him to his good foot and loading him up onto a stretcher. He’s taller than both of them, and broader; they remind me of a couple in a fairy tale trying to transport a fallen giant.

“I’ll get over there as soon as I can,” Coach Arwen tells Gray, taking off his hat and scrubbing a nervous hand through his salt-and-pepper hair so it sticks up in all directions like the scientist from Back to the Future. “Do you want to have one of the guys ride along with you, keep you company?”

“I’ll go,” I hear myself say.

The crowd of faces turn to look at me at once. “Who are you?” the male EMT asks.

“I’m his girlfriend,” I blurt.

Gray raises his eyebrows with a smile. This is the first time I’ve used the g-word in front of him. Actually, it’s the first time I’ve used it at all.

I leave messages for both his moms on our way to the hospital, then settle myself in a waiting room chair while the nurse takes him for X-rays, texting my own parents and the rest of the book club to let t

hem know what’s going on.

Tell Gray we love him! Elisa texts back, along with a string of on-theme emojis. We won the game.

Finally the nurses let me go and hang out with him while we wait for the X-rays to come back.

“Hi,” I say, sitting down in the visitor’s chair beside his hospital bed. He’s still in his lacrosse uniform, a stretch of painful-looking turf burn on his forearm from where he fell.

“I’m on a lot of drugs,” Gray announces grandly. “So, you know. No funny business.”

“I would never,” I assure him, looking down at my hands for a moment. Lately I’ve been biting my fingernails again, a habit I kicked back in second grade when my mom took to painting them with white vinegar, and my cuticles are ragged and raw.

Gray smiles a lazy, loopy smile. “It was nice hearing you call yourself my girlfriend back there.”

I grin and roll my eyes. “It seemed faster than identifying myself as, like, founder of your feminist book club and new pal who sometimes hangs out in your bedroom.”

He leans his head back against the pillow, his gaze surprisingly keen. “It does have kind of a ring to it, I guess. Then again, so does girlfriend.” He reaches for my hand. “I like you so, so much, Marin,” he tells me. “And not just because I’m a little stoned at this particular moment, and not just because I can’t get enough feminist theory in my life. I think you’re smart. I think you’re funny. And I think you’re fierce as all hell.”

I try to stave off the sudden rush of emotion—fear of getting hurt again, relief that he’s okay, and something altogether bigger and warmer than that, something that fills my chest until it feels like I might burst from the sheer expansive size of it. “I bet you say that to all the girls,” I finally say.

I’m kidding, but Gray doesn’t smile.

“I don’t, actually,” he says as he sits up in his hospital bed. “I really don’t.” He tugs on my hand then, pulling me forward until our faces are nearly touching.

“You my girlfriend?” he asks, and his voice is so quiet.

I’m too busy kissing him to reply.

Twenty-Nine