~BAILEY~

13:03 27 May

“I think this girl band thing just might work.”

Jack was just standing there, smirking just a little, with his hands in his jacket pockets; but in those girls’ distressed black skinny jeans and poet blouse, with the choker and bomber jacket and his hair in a braid falling forward over his left shoulder…

He didn’t look like a boy. He did look really girl-type cute.

Someone wolf-whistled.

-oh my GOD, that was me!

I flushed. GOD that’s embarrassing.

I was pretty sure I was a lesbian at this point, considering how bad I was at telling when a guy was supposedly attractive, but Jack was putting off some real confusing vibes.

“Wow, you girls look great,” Jack said, smiling.

“You ain’t so bad yourself, cuz,” Mel told him.

“So, what now?” Kelly said.

“Hot Topic?” Jack suggested. I hadn’t even realized he knew what Hot Topic was. When he noticed we were all looking at him, he shrugged. “Band tees?”

“Works for me!” Kelly said, and Mel and I nodded.

“Cool!”

Once we’d dealt with the rejects pile, we left the clothing area and walked back out to the front of the store. Jack took charge of putting everything we were getting together on the counter, and the goth chick (I thought she was a chick, anyway; she was kinda cute) dealt with the transaction pretty emotionlessly. I made another mental note never to go into customer service; I had a suspicion that it sucked out your soul.

“Have a nice day ladies,” she (they?) said in a monotone as we took our bags. I checked Jack; that happened to him a lot, and he’d kinda freaked out a little at Wendys, but this time he just smiled politely at her and turned to lead the way out the door. I always felt a little bad that he didn’t do well with his anxiety about talking to people, but he seemed okay to go without correcting people. I’d keep an eye on him just in case, though – I’d been looking out for him since kindergarten and I didn’t plan to stop any time soon.

We got our thrift store purchases in the bags we’d brought, and then set off for the mall.

“I haven’t been to Hot Topic recently,” Kelly mused as I pedaled. “I need to reestablish my emo cred, get one up on my nemesis.”

“You have a nemesis?" I asked. "Why do you have a nemesis?”

“It’s… there’s this whole, like… thing.”

“‘This whole thing’.” Could that be any more full of the vague? “Sooo… who’s your nemesis?”

“Uh, Kelly Norbeck.”

“Norbeck? …I don’t remember another Kelly in our grade.”

“No, you, um, remember when we had our assigned third-graders we were supposed to help teach or whatever?”

“In Mrs. Hoskins’ class in sixth grade?”

“Yeah. Kelly was Sarah’s third-grader.”

I did some math real quick.

“I’m sorry, your nemesis is a fifth-grader?”

“Sixth, now, technically. Unless she got held back.”

I rolled my eyes. “Right. Of course. Big difference.”

When we got to the mall, Jack and I locked up our bikes on the rack out front, then we all went inside. Jack looked briefly stunned, but Kelly was right at home – she actually relaxed.

“Wait,” she said, “is that the same goth behind the counter?”

Mel shook her head. “Can’t be!”

“If there’s an easy way to tell them apart, I sure can’t see it,” Jack said, brow furrowed.

“Maybe they’re twins?” It was the best suggestion I could come up with.

We all just sort of looked at each other and shrugged. It wasn’t that it mattered, really, or that it was any of our business, but it did sort of bug me not to know. I shrugged again and we kept walking. I hadn’t been to Hot Topic in a while, so while Jack made a beeline for the Band tees, I decided to browse the accessories.

“Oh! Ooh…” Those gloves Kelly had found at the thrift store were cool, but – yes! They had fishnet sleeves here, and those would be perfect on her, with like a band tee with the sleeves ripped off. And not too hot, if we ever got a chance to be on stage. I looked around for her.

She was watching a girl about our age, cute in an emo-goth way, with black-black feathered hair down to her shoulders, and pouty lips. Kelly was probably more interested in her outfit though, a black bustier-style top over a gauzier black blouse, with a black skirt and purple leggings. Not the clothing style we were going for, though, which reminded me of what I was doing.

“Kelly!” I called over the strains of Fall Out Boy. She turned and, when I made a ‘c’mere!’ gesture, joined me.

“What’d you find?”

I held up the package. “Hm?”

“Hm!” she agreed, snatching it with both hands.

I went back to browsing, Kelly moving with me for a bit before something caught her eye and she wandered off. I found myself standing in front of the hair dye, and on a whim I picked one up, then just sort of stared at it. It was a shocking purple, which would be a radical departure from my ordinary hair color.

Should I really go for it? I know Jack and Kelly said I’d look good, but… I was really worried that someone would actually ask if I was a lesbian. It had never happened so far, but I wasn’t very confident I could say ‘no’ convincingly. And it was sort of the stereotype, at least at our school, that dyed hair = lesbian. Though I wouldn’t be surprised if Jack hadn’t noticed. A lot of things seemed to slip by him. Like locker combos or people thinking he was a girl.

“You’ll look good!”

I whirled, yelping something unintelligible, and startling Jack who was standing behind me.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to sneak up on you!” He held up a plaid skirt, looking embarrassed. “I, uh, wanted a second opinion, Kay says I should try this on.”

“Yes!” that came out quick “I mean, only if you want to? But I bet it’d look good. It’d really help sell the image, I mean.” He already looks pretty enough that people think he’s a girl, I bet everyone would believe it if he was wearing a skirt. And he said ‘as long as we don’t make fun of him’, right? “I promise, if it looks bad I’ll tell you, I won’t laugh.”

He chewed his lip for a while, muttered something about ‘trying new things’, and turned toward the changing rooms. I trailed behind him on his way there.

Mel met up with us at the changing rooms, holding up something folded in her arms.

“Soooo?”

“Oh, fine,” Jack said. “Guess it’s not like it’s the first time.”

Mel squealed and clapped her hands as he closed the door.

“The first time what? What did you give him?”

“Black Canary costume.”

“What?”

“We were looking through old photos at Jack’s house yesterday, and we found one of you and Jack and I on Halloween when we were like four. Hang on, I took a picture.”

She pulled a phone out of the side pouch of the backpack she was carrying.

“Isn’t that Jack’s phone?”

“No? Jack’s is-” she dug in the pouch on the other side of the backpack and pulled out an identical one. “-here it is. …huh.”

“You have the exact same style of phone. Are you sure you guys aren’t twins?”

“If we are, our parents got some ‘splainin to do,” she said. “Anyway, here.” She opened a picture on her phone and handed it to me.

It was three little kids, one of which was clearly me, dressed as Supergirl; and two others dressed as Wonder Woman and Black Canary. Either of them could have been Mel – which meant the other one was Jack. My jaw dropped.

“Jack dressed up as Black Canary?”

“Yep,” Mel said, smirking.

“How do I not remember this. This is amazing. Text me this!”

“There’s another one of us in princess dresses and you dressed as Robin Hood.” That sparked something; I hadn’t remembered that at first either, but something about green tights and ‘saving the fair maidens’ was coming back to me.

“Omigosh, I think I do remember that! I- wow!”

“Wow, what?” Kelly asked as she walked up.

“Reminiscing about when Mel and Jay and I were little,” I explained.

“We were talking about some old photos and it brought back some stuff we’d forgotten.”

“Memory is a fickle thing,” Kay said sagely, tapping a rolled up poster to her temple.

“Ooh, poster?” Melody asked.

“Yup, Nine Inch Nails.”

“Cool! Remind me to grab one on the way out!”

I cocked my head.

“Do you guys hear someone giggling?”

They paused and we all listened for a moment, but it wasn’t repeated. Maybe it was just the store music?

The doorknob clicked, and we all watched as it eased open.

Jack came out of the changing room in a Buffy t-shirt, definitely girls’ cut; leather jacket, with studded shoulders; a plaid skirt that looked shorter than the one he showed me, halfway down to the knees; black leggings; and the combat boots and studded wristbands and choker he’d already been wearing. She (what?) He gave a shy smile, resting one hand on a tilted hip.

“Alright, how bad do I look?”

Something fluttered in my tummy.