Chapter 2

Curly began piously, “‘Little Rowdy loved this frog,’” that’s what Cal called me sometimes, after his toy. Rowdy is a puppet but it means, um, happy and active or something.”

I nodded. Okay. Rowdy the toy, Rowdy the boy, Rowdy the frog. Never heard about Rowdy before, or a Rowdy doll, though some of my old Barbies had been a bit, well, precocious. Anyhow, Curly pulled at my arm and went on,

“My darling froggy, wild and free, why’d you go and die on me? You left me here alone and sad, and now I feel like shit, real bad. So God of frogs, I know you’re there, please take Rowdy Junior, um, somewhere.”

I had my mouth shut so tight that my eyes clamped closed to help keep the hysterical laughter from bubbling forth. Curly had tears in his eyes as his ragged little boy’s tenor dribbled to a halt. From beside the porch came a plaintive male voice, “That’s not what I said!”

At that exact moment Curly’s mother called him home. She wanted to ask him about a missing box and a towel. Cal winked at me and dodged around the back of our houses into the trees that lined the creek there. I ran back to join him. My mom’s voice trailed behind me like a cat on Halloween—“Mirandahhhh!” but I outran her.

* * * *

I was out of breath when I caught up to him. My own reddish brown hair was tangled with twigs and apple blossoms from not ducking. I must have looked like shit. My mind flew into overdrive and suddenly I hoped he’d kiss me, you know, all that romantic stuff…though, a boy? Well, like my mom said, how would you know if you didn’t try?

Enough. I caught up to him. At least he didn’t have the redhead affliction. I looked more like his brother than he did. His hair was ashes and earth mixed together, odd, different, but it suited him. His eyes were dark, and I couldn’t even tell you if they were brown or blue. Maybe they changed.

He did reach out and catch me and keep me from falling into the creek though. And he welcomed me with another hymn:

“Cheese is yummy, this I know, cuz the farmer told me so. Squeeze their boobies, out comes milk, it’s so tasty when you’re sick.”

While I caught my breath, he went on to sing, “Cleaning up the heaves…” and then we both were laughing too hard to sing anything at all. I thought, now, kiss me so I’ll know! Maybe I could like boys. But all he did was look at me wistfully. And I knew.

“You’re wishing I was a guy, aren’t you?” I almost laughed. It figured.

His face turned red.

I said, “Well, I do, too. I think.” I started to cry.

Well, that went well. Comforting his brother over his frog-loss, then running into the woods, then standing here with a guy I barely knew, laughing, and now crying. He took my arm and drew me to the grass with him, not worrying as he should (gay, you know) about grass stains. Damn him. Then I saw he had tears on his face, too.

I wallowed around in my misery until my inner bitch made me stick my face up close to his. Why wouldn’t he kiss…? Oh, yeah. The gay thing. Maybe I shouldn’t think about his problems, but he’d thought enough about Curly’s to provide an entire funeral for his frog. I didn’t need to be selfish. I could be just as nice as he was. Maybe he wanted me to kiss him? One side of my nose started twitching like it did when Mom served me Brussels sprouts. Nope. Ain’t gonna happen. Which made me giggle.

I blurted out, “Doesn’t matter if I’m a boy or a girl, we still aren’t gonna kiss each other, are we?” And I snorted. So of course he had to kiss me, and you know what, we both liked it, I think because we knew it wasn’t going to lead to anything else. Call it ‘practice.’ At least it made us stop crying. Both of us.

Sometimes things lead to other things as surely as kicking a rock can start a landslide. This wasn’t one of those times. Not like you’d expect anyway, roses and romance and best friends all through high school, marriage, and—ugh.

But, yes it was, because as we sat up with our knees touching, looking at each other, I knew something had started with that kiss, even though it wasn’t a romance. “What are you thinking about?” he asked me with a wistful half smile.

“Boobs,” I blurted. “Gym class. All the girls in my class naked in the shower room. All of them innocent and only sneaking glances at each other to measure their own progress or compare how big their busts are getting. No one else is getting…trying…no one is looking back, or doing the old vee thing, you know, checking out the eyes, the chest, the—uh—crotch and then back up again.” I reached out and patted his knee, realizing I’d upset him somehow. “What? What is it? What did I say?”

He looked up at me from under long lashes. Damn. I felt butch all over all of a sudden. This trans thing I may or may not have going (which I wasn’t ready to open up, like a long-awaited Christmas gift that may or may not be your heart’s desire) either way, I was okay because I liked girls. There! Oh my God, I’d almost said it out loud! But I hadn’t, so it wasn’t real yet. Whew!

He said quietly, “You’re so lucky; if you get—hot—nobody can tell. But with me…yeah, the shower room, the guys all totally comfortable, goofing around, and me, praying, I mean, we used to have a swim team in junior high—everyone had to be on it. And…well, I wasn’t the only one who got—something obvious,” he added bitterly, “on the freaking diving board.”

I interrupted, “An erection?” I blinked, trying to make it easy, or a joke.