As She Grows Read Free Page B

wearing. Carla’s girlie girl like that: pink nail polish, silver glitter on her cheeks, fuzzy miniature stuffed animals hanging off her backpack.
    “Sparkles. You like ’em? My dad bought ’em for me. Cool, huh?”
    “Ya,” I reply sarcastically.
    “I’ll put some on you today, okay? They’ll look great.” Carla is always trying to make me look more girlie, she thinks I’m too much of a tomboy. She’s always telling me to stand up straight, roll my slouching shoulders back, put on some lipstick. “You have such a pretty face,” she says. “You should use it.”
    “Sure.” I roll my eyes, but secretly smile. I’m used to her up there, floating above my head. And she is used to me down here, occasionally trying to stick a pin in her.
    “Yo, wanna ditch first period and chill at the mall?”
    “Sure,” I say, “but won’t you get in trouble?”
    “Fuck it,” she says, flicking her hand in the air, and we turn around and head toward the mall. Carla is on the line at school, and the principal has already pulled her in three times this year, saying that she can’t miss any more days. She takes basic-level classes and she says she knows she’s dumb and won’t finish school anyway, so what’s the point? Besides, she wants to be a makeup artist and she doesn’t need high school for that. She thinks it’s unfair that I’m so smart, that I can miss classes and I still get C’s. She jokes about it, but I know she hates me for it. I know it, because she always points out my spelling mistakes on the birthday cards I give her.
    It’s hard to explain it to Carla, so that she’d understand me. Inside my head, my world is full of colour and beautiful words. Outside, it’s ugly and harsh. In grade three I sat in an orangecarpeted office, on the floor. A doctor lady in a long skirt and glasses that dangled from a string around her neck passed me toys and told me to draw squares. After going back to her office three times, the lady told my grandmother two things: I was really smart and I also had a learning disability. I remember looking for the wheelchair they were going to put me in, only Elsie told me they don’t have wheelchairs for brains.
    And so I have three voices: one in my head, one in my mouth, and one in my hands. Each speaks a different language, but it’s the voice in my head that matters most; the one that understands things. It’s in my head where I understand Elsie’s belief that the easiest place to lose yourself is in a bottle. It’s in my head where I find certain things depressing because I see myself in them, like a fountain in the rain or a running shoe on a highway. Only, my mouth doesn’t understand this language. It tries, but it confuses the vocabulary and things end up sounding simple or angry or dull.
    My hands are the worst of all. My hands want nothing to do with me, they make no attempt to understand my mind. It’s as if they’re angry to be slaves to my thoughts and are determined to do their own thing. In class I look down at my pen, clutched between fingers, and feel as connected to my body as to the chair I’m sitting on.

    Carla and I smoke a blunt behind the Dumpster by Home Hardware and cut up each student we see walking to school. Ugly shirt. Lazy dog tits. Fat pig. I suck hard on the butt, and soon feelthe inside of my skin start to disappear, slowly, starting with my fingertips and then my tongue. The jagged corners of buildings smooth out like peanut butter and the weight of me is lifted.
    We head toward the mall because there’s nowhere else to go and Carla has to pee. Thoroughly buzzed, we do dumb things like throw jelly beans down on unsuspecting heads from the staircase. We heat up quarters with our lighters, drop them on the ground, and wait for the squawks of old ladies who scorch their frugal fingers. We sit at the edge of the fountain and inconspicuously reach down behind us, into cold water, sweeping up handfuls of dimes and pennies.
    “Listen,” I