“So if you assigned a poem promoting torture, I should just dissect the rhyme scheme and talk about the descriptive language? You’re saying I should not stand up against torture?”
“I didn’t assign a poem about torture. I assigned a classic Dylan Thomas poem about a universal human experience.”
Maggie is looking at Ms. Mulder like she’s asked us to dig a mass grave and fill it with teacup puppies. Ms. Mulder is looking at an insulated lunch bag on her desk. She’s never going to get to that sandwich if she doesn’t give up.
“All right. You didn’t do all the analyses I asked for, but your writing was quite good, and clearly you thought a lot about the poem. I’ll give you a B plus, but the next one had better be perfect. Ask Greer if you need help.”
This is why I don’t want to talk to Maggie. Maggie makes people do what they don’t want to do. Like change a C minus to a B plus or admit they have a huge crush on their mom’s client’s son.
“That seems like a good compromise,” I say before Maggie can say anything else. I slip my finger through one of the loose loops in her scarf and tug. I can’t argue with her, but I can unravel her knitting if she doesn’t get moving. “See you tomorrow,” I say to Ms. Mulder as I lead us out.
“Do not go gentle to fourth period!” Maggie says, once we are in the hallway. “Rage, rage against—”
“Everything?”
“At least something, Greer. You’ve got to rage against something.”
CHAPTER 4
What would I rage against if I was a raging sort of person? Maude and Mavis.
And who are Maude and Mavis? They are my breasts.
My boobs.
Jugs.
Knockers.
Mammos.
Hooters.
Melons.
Rack.
Simon & Garfunkel.
Lovely lady lumps.
Ta-tas.
Remember what I said about me and math? If breasts were math, I wouldn’t just be ahead of all the kids in my grade, I’d be one of those freakishly gifted kids who had to bring her breasts to college because they were too big for high school. They’d give me a year’s worth of AP credits just for putting on a tank top.
They are not going to set any world records, but to put it in simple math terms, they are significantly larger than the mean, the median, and the mode.
Not everybody realizes this immediately, because I’ve been wearing size XXL shirts since ninth grade. Men’s XXL shirts. Even XXL ladies aren’t supposed to have honkers like these.
If I tried to put on the kind of shirt my friends wear, the fabric would burst Hulk-style.
My mom thinks that wearing baggy clothes makes me look fat. Not fat. “Heavy.” That’s Mom’s word for fat. (She would never say “fat,” though I’m sure she has an idea of what the optimal ratio of pounds to inches should be.)
She has average-size breasts. C cups, probably. I must have inherited these things from some chesty old lady on my dad’s side.
Here’s what my friends say about them:
That’s right. Nothing. We don’t talk about them. Not my mom. Not even Maggie. Maggie knows I’m not thrilled, but if I told her how I really felt, she’d be disappointed in me. She’d either try to get me to show up to first period in a bustier to deliver a lecture to certain individuals about harassment or decide there’s no time like age almost-sixteen for permanent body-altering reduction surgery and start interviewing plastic surgeons about how much breast tissue to chop off. I’m not ready to do either of those things right now. I would just like to finish high school.
I’m not the only person who doesn’t want to talk about their body. I mean, little things, sure. Someone tall might say, “I can’t find any pants long enough,” or each of us might point out our own zit. But when something gets worse or weird or whatever, we don’t talk about it anymore.
An example. During Eating Disorders Awareness Week every February, a nurse from the district comes to an assembly to tell us to be on alert for eating disorders. She makes it sound like it will be easy to spot them. Like kids are standing in the lunchroom saying, “I am only going to eat eraser dust from now on. And if that becomes too much temptation, I will start using those stubby pencils from Ikea that don’t have any erasers at all.” And then we will form a trust circle around her and she’ll eat a sandwich.
But it’s not like that. Most people keep their stuff to themselves.
We had a swimming unit in gym during the fall of freshman year. I was already feeling self-conscious about my shape, but at least they separate boys and girls for anything that involves sex education, swimsuits, or sleeping bags (like the service learning retreat at Camp Hide-Yer-Weed). They made us wear these old Kennedy team suits from 1975, because some of the girls only own triangle bikinis, which do not stay up well when you’re trying to learn the fly. The Kennedy suit is a maroon one-piecer cut so high around the neck it’s practically a turtleneck and so stretched out that the crotch hangs to your knees. I could still squeeze myself into a 36 then, as long as I didn’t try to breathe too deeply.
We got ready, ran through the shower, and lined up against the wall freezing our butts off while Ms. Reinhold lectured us about water safety.
I was trying not to stare at Nella Woster, but it was hard to figure out how she put on the same ugly, old suit as the rest of us and made it look like she was an extra in a rum commercial. Every curve was perfect. It must be hell to shop with her. I bet she has a hard time ruling anything out because it all looks good. “I guess I’ll have to take everything.” “You can have it all for free if you’ll just Instagram yourself in our brand.”
It was about at this point that Jessa Timms, super jock and possible bodybuilder, started to walk past me, stopped, looked at my chest, and said, “Whoa, Greer! You’re built, girl! I thought you were just a little big.”
My face turned the same color as the swimsuit. I was slouching so much I was practically bent in two. No one laughed, just kind of gasped, like they couldn’t believe Jessa would say that. We have rules, Jessa! We don’t say things about people’s bodies in front of them. But for the rest of the hour, I noticed girls checking me out, confirming. Yeah, she’s right. Greer Walsh is stacked. Even though honestly, I was nowhere near the size I am now.
That one day on the pool deck freshman year is as much of a discussion as I’ve ever had about them. But I bet other people talk about them a lot.
CHAPTER 5
There’s this questionnaire online called “Is breast reduction surgery right for your teen?” Half the questions are about “your teen’s” pain, growth, genetics, scarring, “onset of menarche and regularity of menstruation,” “motivation and psychological readiness,” “emotional maturity,” and a bunch of other stuff that’s none of anybody’s business. There’s a list of things you’re supposed to ask your doctor, too, and even though I’d rather not ask her any of them, I know I have to get over it if I want to know more about the surgery. So when we went for physicals just before school started, I decided that when she said, “Greer, would you like your mother to step out of the room while we do the exam?” I was going to say yes.