At some point, I noticed that while I was peering over the counter at the wire bins of bagels, the hot guy with the plastic serving gloves was staring straight down my shirt, still wearing that same half smile. I followed his look down to my chest to see that not only were the tops of my breasts popping over the tank like a couple of freshly baked bagels, they were spilling out of the bra enough that there was a slice of deep pink areola visible on each side. I wasn’t charming and adorable. I was nip-slipping the bagelmeister.
“The rest plain,” I said, pulling the jean jacket closed. That’s when I discovered that it didn’t really close all the way, something Bagel Boy probably realized before I did.
“You sure? Those honey-oat ones are—”
“Yeah. Just plain. And a tub of cream cheese.”
“Okeeee,” he said. And packed up everything with no more flirty smiles.
I put my own dirty Friday shirt on as soon as we got back to Maggie’s.
This doesn’t happen anymore because I don’t let it happen anymore. I shut down the flirting before it starts, with a big gray sweatshirt and no tolerance for overly friendly conversation. I shut it down before it peers down at Maude and Mavis and either gets stupidly excited or morbidly curious. Before I have to wonder whether it’s me or them.
Or I did, anyway, until Jackson showed up in the re-lo binder’s number one Starbucks and I let myself wonder.
CHAPTER 9
We are doing a unit on volleyball in gym.
Volleyball includes a lot of jumping.
I avoid unnecessary jumping.
Most girls do a quick change in the locker room—pulling off sweaters, pulling on T-shirts right over their usual bras. It’s just gym. I, on the other hand, head to a bathroom stall, take my last deep breath for the hour, and wrestle a black overhead sports bra, at least a size too small, directly over my regular bra. I need all the support I can get. The sports bra squeezes and compresses everything into a single mound—kind of a unibreast. Or a superboob. I pull on my dad’s old 2008 Run for the Zoo 5K shirt. He has a good collection of race-day shirts going back years. When I was smaller I used them as sleep shirts because they were worn in and soft and made from that breathable athletic fabric, but this is the only one that fits now. That year when Dad checked in late, there were only XXLs left. Now I wear it pretty much every time I know the Illinois Department of Education’s obsession with daily phys ed is going to make me sweat.
Leaving the stall, I stand in front of the mirror. The shirt drapes over the squeezed-in superboob, my shoulders curve forward and in, and my arms cross low. I pull at the shirt, wishing it could just float out a half inch around me on all sides instead of obeying whatever laws of physics or apparel tell it to cling to me. I look like a big shapeless blob, with stick legs poking out below. I look like a giant, featherless chicken.
Which I am, clearly.
“Walsh! Let’s go!” says Ms. Reinhold, breezing through the locker room, not even looking at my chicken body. I slump out to the gym, hearing her rounding up stragglers behind me. “Woster, noooo. Jeggings are not gym clothes. You can wear school sweats.”
A minute later, Nella Woster and Ms. Reinhold appear in the gym, Nella in a pair of saggy maroon sweats cinched tight around her waist. “Nice sweats, Nella!” yells Griffin Townsend. Nella sticks out her tongue at him and catwalks to the warm-up stretches.
She’s not showing off; she can’t help having exactly the body that whoever decides what’s perfect decided is perfect. She could show up in a clown wig and look hot. I could show up in a clown wig and it still wouldn’t be the funniest-looking part of me.
We are divided into two lines to learn the underhand serve. Except for Jessa Timms, who plays on the volleyball team, most people’s balls go wide, fall short, or fly high, coming down on the other side of the net like a gently falling leaf, which would give the other team time to sit down with a notebook, track the trajectory, discuss who was going to return it, take a bathroom break, and then smash the hell out of it.
My serves coast just over the net, one after another. Ms. Reinhold nods her approval.
“Let’s try some overhand.”
Again, a handful of kids make it, most do not. After a couple of tries, I understand where the toss has to be in order to meet my hand at the right point. Most people are throwing too high or too close. Even though I haven’t played, the weight and the pressure and the curve of the ball feel right. I’m able to get most of them over the net. Jessa Timms drills every ball like a machine gun, jumping to meet the ball in the air.
Ms. R is watching me closely, and I shift a little uncomfortably. I know she’s the volleyball coach, and I know that since the volleyball season changed to winter, not as many girls go out for it. A part of me wants to mess it up, so she stops thinking I’m good, because I don’t want to have to explain why I’m not interested in playing any sports.
But another part of me keeps hitting them over the net, swinging my arm harder and harder, because it feels good to be good at something besides math.
“Why don’t we try a little real-world practice, gang,” she says. She puts half the kids on one side of the net, half on the other, and shows them how to rotate players through. “Just see how long you can keep the volley going.” I line up with my class but she says, “Not you, Walsh. Timms, come over here, too.”
She pulls us to a corner of the gym. Behind us there are slaps and cries of pain and roars of laughter as people hit the ball with no understanding of technique. Someone shouts “Fuck!” and Ms. Reinhold yells back, “You should not be passing with an open palm. And watch the effenheimers!
“You ever play?” she asks me.
I shake my head.
“I want you to see where the real power in a serve comes from.” She tosses Jessa the ball and says, “Show her the run-up, but don’t actually hit it.”
Jessa tosses the ball up and kind of launches herself at it. I cringe like she’s going to spike it down on my face, but she just catches it and grins.
Ms. R has her show me a couple more times, then we both try it. The first time I make the leap, the unibreast heaves up and down, feeling like it’s doubling the pull of gravity. The sports bra has pulled halfway up and stopped, so there is essentially a tight horizontal band of elastic bisecting my chest in the middle. I tug it back into place and steal a look at the class, but everyone else is playing or grabbing at Nella’s sweats.
Coach Reinhold and Jessa Timms are watching my feet, asking me to jump again and again while they correct the steps. I’m pretty sweaty, and between every jump I have to readjust my bra. There’s a pain in the sides of my breasts every time I hit the ground, and the bra is pulling on my shoulders like if you stuffed a backpack with bricks and wore it backward, but I can feel I’m getting it. They decide I’m ready to try an actual serve.