yogurt at their window, and while this didn’t necessarily make me feel any better, it was nice to know that Janice really was my best friend, and when I asked her things like, “Do boys want our vaginas to taste like mouths?” she always knew the answer. She knew things nobody else did, just as I knew things nobody else did, like if Janice had to be a lesbian she’d do it with ABOB since ABOB was the manliest girl she could think of, or that Janice was five pounds under the normal weight for a five-foot-six girl, but that she still believed herself to be twenty pounds overweight, and whenever she thought she was getting fat she fasted and cleansed, stirred lemon and cayenne pepper and molasses into a tall glass of water and drank it all—her only meal for two days—then ground her teeth at night, wearing away the enamel, not to mention building up a fluid in her jaw that hurt when it got below freezing.
I knew that her dermatologist grabbed her breasts once to “look for skin cancer underneath.” I knew her father practiced witchcraft in the secrecy of their basement. I knew that she cried whenever Sneaker Pimps came on the radio because theirs was the song she masturbated to for the first time (wrapped a carrot in Saran Wrap and inserted it inside her), and while “6 Underground” was blasting in her room, her younger brother Ed fell down a flight of wooden stairs. He was knocked unconscious, and Janice had no idea, until her mother got home from the grocery store and flung open Janice’s door, finding her, carrot and all. She called her a “dumb shit,” a “filthy whore,” and I knew this was what Janice still believed about herself (though she would never tell the story in this way).
Before I introduced Janice to the Other Girls, I had always referred to them as just that: these other girls in my biology class who liked to swear excessively in casual conversation. At lunch, it was fuck green beans, fuck milk, fuck eating for the sake of eating, fuck everyone in line—“Would you?” one of the Other Girls asked Janice. “Would you fuck everyone in line?”
Janice laughed. She took to them immediately. There was nothing that anyone could ever say that would shock Janice (“Your brother will never walk again,” the doctor told them all), nothing that anyone could ever do to make her open her mouth in surprise. Janice had always been bolder and brighter than me—even her eye shadow seemed to scream as she walked down the halls—always discovering the world one second before I did, even drew me a map of my own vagina once so I could put in a tampon for the first time, and I was in the bathroom wide-eyed, saying, “ Not the pee hole?” and she was arms crossed, on the toilet, saying, “Of course not the pee hole.”
Janice admired what she called the Other Girls’ “enterprising speech patterns,” while I feared them, and we both felt we had to resort to mockery in order to survive the day. Janice called me after school and said, “Hello, my fucking friend.”
I laughed.
“Let’s go to the fucking beach so I can wear my new fucking bikini,” she said. So we went to the beach nearly every day that September, and Janice wore her new fucking bikini that was purple and had white fucking flowers adorning the bottom.
“It’s still so fucking hot,” Janice said. We were sitting in the back of her mother’s car like professional passengers, French manicures on our toes, hemp bags across our chests. We were freshmen now. This meant no more pink, no more looking good on purpose, and no more laughing too hard. Half of our new friends starved themselves for religious reasons, though they never went to church and prayed only before a history test, and if we had religious thoughts, they were only worries that we would die while wearing our retainers and then have to wear them for the rest of eternity. “Isn’t it fucking fall?”
“Technically, not until the fucking autumnal equinox,” I
I knew that her dermatologist grabbed her breasts once to “look for skin cancer underneath.” I knew her father practiced witchcraft in the secrecy of their basement. I knew that she cried whenever Sneaker Pimps came on the radio because theirs was the song she masturbated to for the first time (wrapped a carrot in Saran Wrap and inserted it inside her), and while “6 Underground” was blasting in her room, her younger brother Ed fell down a flight of wooden stairs. He was knocked unconscious, and Janice had no idea, until her mother got home from the grocery store and flung open Janice’s door, finding her, carrot and all. She called her a “dumb shit,” a “filthy whore,” and I knew this was what Janice still believed about herself (though she would never tell the story in this way).
Before I introduced Janice to the Other Girls, I had always referred to them as just that: these other girls in my biology class who liked to swear excessively in casual conversation. At lunch, it was fuck green beans, fuck milk, fuck eating for the sake of eating, fuck everyone in line—“Would you?” one of the Other Girls asked Janice. “Would you fuck everyone in line?”
Janice laughed. She took to them immediately. There was nothing that anyone could ever say that would shock Janice (“Your brother will never walk again,” the doctor told them all), nothing that anyone could ever do to make her open her mouth in surprise. Janice had always been bolder and brighter than me—even her eye shadow seemed to scream as she walked down the halls—always discovering the world one second before I did, even drew me a map of my own vagina once so I could put in a tampon for the first time, and I was in the bathroom wide-eyed, saying, “ Not the pee hole?” and she was arms crossed, on the toilet, saying, “Of course not the pee hole.”
Janice admired what she called the Other Girls’ “enterprising speech patterns,” while I feared them, and we both felt we had to resort to mockery in order to survive the day. Janice called me after school and said, “Hello, my fucking friend.”
I laughed.
“Let’s go to the fucking beach so I can wear my new fucking bikini,” she said. So we went to the beach nearly every day that September, and Janice wore her new fucking bikini that was purple and had white fucking flowers adorning the bottom.
“It’s still so fucking hot,” Janice said. We were sitting in the back of her mother’s car like professional passengers, French manicures on our toes, hemp bags across our chests. We were freshmen now. This meant no more pink, no more looking good on purpose, and no more laughing too hard. Half of our new friends starved themselves for religious reasons, though they never went to church and prayed only before a history test, and if we had religious thoughts, they were only worries that we would die while wearing our retainers and then have to wear them for the rest of eternity. “Isn’t it fucking fall?”
“Technically, not until the fucking autumnal equinox,” I
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