I wait for a little more comfort, but it doesn’t come. My parents are pretty cool parents. They trust Owen and me. They have a sense of humor. They know when to back off and when to push. They don’t freak out when we bring home a grade lower than an A minus. And they were generally chill when I came out to my family during breakfast one morning last Thanksgiving break. But “Oh” and “Okay” and “We want you to be happy” are about the extent of their support. And hey, that’s more than a lot of kids get, especially in the South, where going out in public as a queer person can be like tiptoeing through a minefield.
Still, when I started dating Charlie, Mom got a little squirrelly. She’d stare at Charlie’s and my joined hands a little too long and she asked way too many questions about how things had changed between us. To her credit, I don’t think she cares what gender I date or who I like. With Charlie, she was honest-to-god worried about romance ruining things with my best friend.
A best friend is an irreplaceable person in a girl’s life, Mara, she said more than once.
It was annoying, but eventually, I agreed. At least that’s what I told her. In truth, I was worried about Charlie and me because I was incapable of being a normal girlfriend. A good girlfriend. I was defective, and ultimately, I knew Charlie would figure that out.
Not that I’d ever tell Mom any of that. My mother and I . . . well, we operate on a need-to-know basis. When I was younger, we were the kind of close that meant a phone call home at midnight whenever I tried to sleep over at a friend’s house. She’d come pick me up and I’d spend the rest of the night snuggled in between her and my dad. Owen would join us in the morning, bashing through their bedroom door and hurling himself onto the mattress. I was happy there. I had friends, but I just didn’t like being away from home, being away from the people I trusted the most.
The people I knew would never let anything bad happen to me.
All that changed after eighth grade. I tried to act like I always had, tried to make myself feel close to my mother again, telling her little things about my life in a desperate attempt to connect. But it all felt hollow. I know she felt it too—?felt it and was completely confused and hurt by it.
“So have you picked out your outfits?” Mom asks now, a smile on her face while she pours herself another cup of coffee. The subject change is glaringly obvious, but it’s better than an I told you so. Still, I can’t help but smile a little, thinking about Empower’s newest mission, taking on Pebblebrook’s violently inequitable dress code. Empower is the feminist group and newspaper I founded freshman year, and my plan is to push every possible limit of the dress code without actually violating it. I’ll get hauled in to the office, probably more than once, and despite Principal Carr’s inability to find any infringement according to his handy-dandy measuring tape, he will demand that I change. I’m a distraction, he’ll say. Boys will be boys, he’ll say. If I’m a nice girl, I should know better, he’ll say. Because that’s what he says to any girl who shows a deltoid or has naturally long legs under her skirt or has to wear anything above a AA-cup.
And that’s when I’ll breathe fire.
For a second, I get lost in the simple beauty of it. The way I’ll take him down with words, with defiance, with cool logic and reasoned arguments. Just thinking about it calms me down, makes me feel as though I’m in control. Charlie says I’m obsessed with it—?control. And she’s a little right, though she doesn’t know why.
The Dress Code Takedown is one of the few things I’ve shared with Mom. I knew she’d love the idea, and honestly, I wanted to make sure she wouldn’t ground me for all eternity if I end up in detention.
As expected, she literally squealed when I told her about it. The woman has two great passions in life: refinishing old furniture to look even older, and feminism. Before she and my dad opened the store five years ago, she wrote op-eds for Ms. magazine and still does a few times a year. She’s always tried to let Owen and me make up our own minds about stuff, and when I started Empower, she cried. Actual tears that required a tissue.
“Nothing’s final, but yeah, I’ve got a few ideas,” I say, licking my yogurt spoon clean and tossing it into the sink.
“Let me know if you need help. I pushed quite a few boundaries back in my day.”
“You didn’t burn your bra on the quad, did you?”
“No, I rather liked my bra. Although I did retaliate against my cheating boyfriend in high school by filling his locker with water balloons.”
“Water balloons?”
“They were very special balloons.” She winks at me and I can’t help but laugh.
Mom laughs with me, the golden-brown curls I inherited springing into her face, but then her expression sobers. She sets down her mug and comes over to me, cupping my face in her hands. “You know I’m very proud of you. It takes a brave person to challenge the institutional misogyny of the patriarchal system.”
Even though I want to roll my eyes at Mom’s verbose dramatics, a flicker of warmth spreads through my chest. But it blinks out with the next breath. Mom doesn’t know how much of a coward I really am. She’d write one hell of a cautionary op-ed if she knew the real reason I started Empower.
“Ugh, why are Mondays a thing?” Owen asks as he walks into the kitchen pulling on a dark-green Pebblebrook sweatshirt.
“Inevitable consequence of the weekend,” I say as Mom pats my cheeks once and releases me.
“Good morning, son of mine,” she says.
“Grunt.”
I bust up laughing while Mom whacks Owen on the back of the head with a rolled-up magazine. “Go to school. Be good.”
“Always am,” he says, chipper as usual, even though he still looks half hung-over and exhausted. Must’ve been some party.
Mom forces us to endure kisses to our foreheads and we grab our bags, heading outside at the same time. Owen frowns at his phone as I unlock the Civic and toss my stuff into the back seat.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
Owen’s frown deepens. “Nothing. Just . . . Hannah’s not answering my texts or calls.”
“Did you guys have a fight?”
