Girl by Blake Nelson

Chapter 3

After I saw Todd Sparrow something deep inside me began to change. It was not a big change and I didn't shave my head and I didn't really think any differently about my life or Hillside or anything like that. But one glimpse of Todd and you immediately realized how limited you were and all the things you could do if you could just break out of your normal existence and stop worrying about what everyone thought. That's probably what happened to Cybil, she felt that freedom and she didn't know what to do with it but she had to do something. So she shaved her head. That was my theory. Cybil wouldn't really discuss it. And we were having frozen yogurt at Sunset Mall one day and I was jabbering about Todd and life beyond the boundaries and Cybil said, "Wait until you get out there. Then you can see how great it is." Which seemed sort of pretentious. But of course she had spent a whole day with him and shaved her head and what had I done? Not much. So I just ate my yogurt.

Meanwhile back at school Greg was getting scarier by the second. After he went out with Darcy she made the mistake of telling everyone about their date and all the things he said. And besides that he was in the chimpanzee phase of his hair growth and he looked pretty ridiculous. And then me and Darcy were standing by my locker and he came over and he was all agitated and trying to say something and finally he spit it out, "Thanks a lot for spreading all those rumors about me!" And then Darcy freaked out and yelled at me because I told her to be nice to him. But it was her own fault because she told everyone how weird he was.

But the real reason for tension between me and Darcy was Mark Pierce. He kept asking me out. And he was a senior and popular and a jock and I guess people were surprised that he liked me. And it was an awkward situation because if you're not that popular, people don't want you to suddenly start going out with popular people because it screws up the social order. And Darcy and I never had dates freshman year and now I was getting some and she was stuck with horrible Greg Halverson, who might be okay to have in your band but not as a boyfriend or even to have publicly following you around.

Dating Mark Pierce. It was so weird. He'd call me on Thursday and ask me if I wanted to do something on Friday and I'd say, "I'd love to," which was what you were supposed to say. And we'd go to a movie or for pizza and then we'd park someplace and make out which was fine except I knew he was on this schedule in his mind and pretty soon he would want sex. And I didn't really dislike him and I wouldn't even mind that much if he was the first one because Cybil and Richard were doing it and Rebecca Farnhurst had done it and Wendy Simpson did it with a boy from Bradley Day School when she was drunk. So Mark would be okay. And it was inevitable anyway. And it didn't seem like you were really part of things until you did it because that's what everything was about, like jokes and TV, and even the ends of extension cords were either male or female and when you plugged them together, what was that? But then I also remembered when Tracy Schwartz did it in junior high and how terrible that turned out. And after the Tracy thing me and my best friend, Carol Mahoney, even made a pact that we would only do it for love, especially the first time. But we were just little kids then, in junior high, and this was real high school now, which was a totally different situation.

And then Thriftstore Apocalypse was going to play at this new all-ages place called Outer Limits. But Darcy was so scared of Greg she wouldn't go. And I couldn't drive. And it was the only time they played since Julie's party and I didn't want to miss it so I called Mark Pierce. The show was in the afternoon and Mark picked me up and you could tell he had trouble figuring out what to wear. He had an old sweater with holes in it that maybe he thought was alternative or grunge or something. And he was nervous and he couldn't find the place and you could tell he never went downtown. And then I saw the Outer Limits sign and I was like, "Turn! Turn!" but he couldn't because he went too far. So we went around the block but he couldn't get back because it was a left turn only. And he was getting so pissed and I felt bad for him and I thought I should have just taken the bus.