I am Thirteen today.
I have to say, it feels different from twelve in some way…maybe because I actually think one of the boys in my class, Ian, is cute – whereas last year he was just annoying.
Not that he notices me – except to tease me about the books i read, yank on my hair and cheat off my Vocabulary tests.
He notices Tiffany, though.
Tiffany is my best friend.
The only other non-disgusting boy i know is Tiffany’s brother, Tim. He is an Older Man though…he’s in High-School, so he’s past that braid-pulling stage.
Tiff and I are the only two non-Christians in our school, which I suppose gives us a common cause.
She is the exact opposite of me – confident, pretty, and a total rebel. She’s constantly getting into trouble with the nuns.
I wish I had her guts.
But i’m more the quiet, bookish type.
Or, at least I used to be. I am learning. If you want to survive 8th grade in a Catholic school, you need to have a backbone – and i tend to let people push me around too much.
I know I am expected to be like the rest of these stupid girls, chasing after the boys and wearing tight jeans…but i mean i’m thirteen, for chrissakes.
The girls at school – don’t even get me started. I hate them, to be honest.
They make fun of me because my nose is always in a book and I don’t try to dress like I’m in a ZZ-Top video.
The boys, well they tease me sometimes; just today Ian tied my braids to the back of my seat in Religion class. But they don’t really bother me too much – at least they’re way nicer to me than the girls…
They’re always following Tiffany and I around – well, following her around; to them i’m just some tomboy bookworm. But Tiffany is really pretty.
And she wears tight jeans.
Well, no one’s perfect…
She tries to get me to wear her clothes but i would look pretty stupid in them; where she fills out her clothes, i’m flat as a board still.

Last night i slept over at her place, to celebrate my birthday (a miracle, since my mom keeps me on a such a tight leash i feel like i’m going to choke to death most of the time), and she tried to give me a “makeover”.
For some reason, i let her curl my stick-straight hair into some kind of Farrah Faucet ‘Do, put pink lipstick on me and – here comes the worst part – stuff tissue into my size AA bra.
Which is how i learned that Tiffany wasn’t as “developed” as i’d thought…
So last night, her mom was out on a date with her guitar-player boyfriend and Tiffany and i had the place to ourselves – her older brother was out with friends.
Tiffany’s mom is the exact opposite of mine. She leaves us alone in the house and never notices when a beer or two is missing.
The first thing we did was put on The Cars as loud as the stereo would go, and steal a couple beers off the back porch.
We sat in Tiff’s room, me in front of the vanity mirror and her standing over me with a curling iron (which she kept burning me on the ear with).

“You need a little help in the chest department,” she said, looking at me critically.
I looked at her like she was crazy.
“How am i supposed to do anything about that?” i asked.
“Pray!” she teased. “Maybe He’ll give you some like Dolly Parton if you’re lucky.”
I wrinkled my nose in disgust.
“Gross. I don’t know how she walks around with those things…”
“Or,” she said, looking slyly at me, “you could Stuff”.
“Stuff?”

She slowly reached into her shirt and right in front of my eyes, pulled out practically a whole roll of toilet paper from her bra.

“Oh, Jesus Christ!” i said, taking a quick swig from my can of Old Style to steel my nerves.
“What?” she said, surprised. “All the girls do it, you know.”
“Well, not ME.” I said, crossing my arms in front of my chest just in case she decided to lunge at me with a roll of TP.
“Oh, come ON…” she said, pleading with her best Puppy Dog eyes. “Just try it…just to see how it looks…don’t you want to know what you’re going to look like some day?”

I looked at Tiff’s chest. Even without the stuffing, she still had more than i did up there.
I admit that was a little tempting.
After all, i didn’t have to go out in public like that or anything.

“C’mon…”
I gave up.
“Ok, fine. But not so much! I don’t want to look…unbalanced”.

Tiffany gave me a funny look, then shook her head as she walked into the bathroom to get my new “chest”. She came out with two big handfuls of TP, holding them out to me.
Sigh.

“Ok…so i just…stuff it in?’ i asked, feeling really stupid. What if her brother came home early?
“Yep,” she said, grabbing some pink nailpolish, jumping on the bed to apply it to her toes.
I began to stuff. It looked awful and felt worse. I looked at myself in the mirror, my orange “Survivor” T-Shirt popping out in weird lumps.
“This is stupid,” i said, turning to the side, hoping a different angle might help things.
It didn’t.
Tiffany rolled her eyes to the ceiling at my stupidity.
“Ok, let me do it…”

She crawled across the bed on her knees, her wet feet lifted up so her polish wouldn’t smear.
She stuck her hand down my shirt, all business-like, like she shoved her hands down her girlfriends’ shirts everyday…then she pulled out my sad little wads and began to fold them over neatly into little pillows.

“You have to place them the right way,” she said, reaching into my shirt again and carefully stuffing my bra – properly. “And you need some makeup,” she insisted, grabbing my chin before i could argue and smearing some awful-smelling pink goop on my mouth.
When she was done, i basically looked like my own self, but with neon-bubblegum pink lips and fake -looking boobs.
“Ugh,” i said, mooshing my lips around into different weird shapes, sort of mesmerized by the bright pink smear as it moved around like a little plump baby mouse on my face…
“Stop that!” Tiffany scolded, pinching my arm. “Now, try looking sexy.”
I looked at her.
“You know,” she explained, “like Blondie. Make a face like this…”
She leaned forward, leaning her head back and pursing her lips, her eyes smouldering into the mirror – lifting her long blonde hair up off her neck. She looked like a movie star.

“I can’t do that,” i said.
I’d look stupid next to her. It was hopeless.
I am never going to be the kind of girl that boys drooled over.
Which reminded me of something -
I looked over at her wide-open bedroom window.
“Hey,” i said, “Is your perverted neighbor home?”
Tiff’s next door neighbor was this gross old man, like probably Thirty or something, who we caught watching though his window one night when we were practicing our kissing technique on each other. Tiff says if we’re ever going to get good at kissing boys, we have to practice.
She glanced over at the window and shrugged.
“I dunno…”
“Tiff, i don’t know why you don’t just close the shades!”
She smiled a weird little smile and said, licking her lips at her reflection, “I don’t mind. I kinda like it…he’s cute”.
“Jesus,” i said. She is just beyond me, sometimes. “Well anyway, i can’t look the way you do, Tiff. I don’t have the…equipment.”
She stopped making eyes at the mirror and straightened up.
“Cor,” she said, giving me her Serious Look.
“What…?”
“Do you know what Ian Roberts said to me today at lunch?”
I had noticed the two of them at the pop machine – i figured he was flirting with her and my chest had clenched up all funny.
“No…” i said.
“Well, he told me that he thinks you’re really pretty. He says he likes your hair, and that your eyes look like Pat Benetar’s”
I looked at her in disbelief – “You are making that up, Tiff.”
“No, i swear!” she said, crossing her heart and kissing it up to God.

I didn’t say anything. I thought it was a little weird that he would say he liked my hair, considering his favorite nickname for me was Strawberry Shortcake. My hair wasn’t nearly as red as that, more of a reddish gold, really – but i got the point.
“And you know who else thinks you’re pretty?” she asked, a sly look on her face.
This was too much.
“No. Who?”
My head took a quick inventory of all the boys in my class. God, hopefully it wasn’t Mike Stanlin. He is totally gross – he always has a hard-on when he gets called up to the math board and winks at me in the lunchline.
“Guess”.
“Oh, God,” i moaned. She was going to draw this out for as long as she could. “Er. Mike Stanlin”.
Tiffany squealed with disgust – “Eeeww! God! No – well, yeah, but he doesn’t count. He’s a Mutant.”
I had to agree with her there.
“Well, then i give up,” i said, turning to pick up my can of beer and pretend i had lost interest.
It got her every time.
She pursed her lips at me, hands on hips.
“Alright, alright. Fine. I’ll tell you…” drawing it out, “It’s my BROTHER!”

I spit my mouthful of beer onto my shirt – the tissue underneath soaking it up so that i had two soggy blobs right in the middle of my chest.
Her brother? Tim??. But he was Fifteen! He was in High-School…
He smoked.
Filterless Camels.
Do not ask me how i know this little detail. I’d just noticed it one day as he set down the pack on the kitchen table. Their mom didn’t care that he smoked.
He got good grades, so she let him do what he wanted. As far as i knew, he didn’t have a girlfriend anymore – he used to, but they broke up for some reason.
He has really, really blue eyes.
He always hangs out with us when i sleep over – as a matter of fact he always seems to be around when i am here.
He always tickles me, and calls me “Scarlett”, like in Gone With the Wind.
But it isn’t like i like him or anything.
And besides, i am just a kid. He is a High-Schooler.
It could never be…
For some reason, Scarlett O’Hara popped into my mind, and i imagined myself, all ruby-lipped and wearing hoop-skirts, pushing him away as he roughly pulled me in for a kiss…

“Um, Hello….?!” Tiffany snapped her fingers under my nose, “So?”
“Um.”
“Well? What do you think of that? He made me promise not to tell you, but he’s always hanging around, drooling….you mean you didn’t notice? God you can be a dork sometimes…”

I thought about this as i stared at my wet T-Shirt, Farrah-hair and bubble-gum lips.
Is this what boys liked? Is this what Tim wanted me to look like?
I had noticed his Farrah Faucet and Blondie posters in his room, so apparently.
I will never understand boys for as long as i live.

Now of course who should happen to come through the front door that very minute but – you guessed it – Tim.

“Hey, Girls!” he shouted into the empty living room.

In a panic, i slammed the door to Tiff’s bedroom and whipped off my soaking shirt.
“Shit, shit shit!” I threw the soaking mess of tissue into the toilet and flushed, watching it go down to be sure all the evidence was destroyed – “Do you have a shirt i can borrow?”
Tiff was laughing hysterically. Damn her. She doubled over, clutching her stomach.
Totally useless to me.
I heard Tim on the other side of the door – “Hey! Are you guys in there, or what?”
I heard the doorknob jiggle.
“Ooooh, crap!”
Tiff pulled herself together at the last second and tossed a T-Shirt to me just as the door began to open.
“What’re you girls up to in there?”
“Noooothiiiiing,” we said in unison as I pulled the shirt over my head.
The door opened the second i covered my chest.
Tim froze at the door, staring in at us – staring at my crossed arms just covering myself, my Farrah-hair and bubble-gum pink lipstick.
“What the hell is goin’ on in here?” asked, laughing. “And what is that crap on your face? Lemme guess – Tiff put it on you. I swear, Sis…”
“Close the door!” we screamed at him.
He closed it.
Tiff and I looked at each other and both burst out laughing, falling to the floor, howling like maniacs.

A minute or so later we heard Tim take the Cars off the stereo and put the TV on.

“Hey”! Tiff yelled, jumping up and throwing the door open, “we were listening to that, Asshole!”
Tiffany has a foul mouth sometimes.
“Yeah, yeah – i’m gonna watch MTV. You girls will just have to wait till it’s over.”
I followed Tiff into the living room, sliding down the hall in my socks – we don’t have cable at our house, so MTV is definitely something i am interested in watching.
We sat on the couch, me on one end and Tiff at the other, giving me The Eye to let me know she’d sat there on purpose so Tim had to sit next to me. I ignored her. He stared straight ahead, his feet up on the coffee table and a beer in his hand.

“Hey,” I said, “we forgot to bring our beer!” I leapt over the back of the couch, running back to Tiff’s room at top speed – i didn’t want to miss a minute of MTV.
I heard someone following me and had a feeling it was Tim.
It was.

“You still have that awful lipstick on,” he said, catching up to me and looking down at my mouth.
“Oh,” i said, putting my hand over my lips. “It’s awful, isn’t it?”
“Pretty awful,” he said, smiling. “C’mon, lets get it off you.”
Well, i didn’t know how he planned to do that, but my Gone With the Wind vision flashed through my head again and i felt myself turn bright red.
I looked up at him, and croaked out, “Uh, OK…”
He grabbed my hand and yanked me into the bathroom, and i just stood there like an idiot as he ran a washcloth under some water.
Oh.
He turned to me, grabbed my chin and slowly began to wipe the lipstick off my mouth.
“There,” he said, looking at me with those huge eyes. “Much better. You don’t need that stuff anyway.”
“Uh…thanks.”

I should probably mention here that i am not a complete loser. I didn’t really think he was going to kiss me; or if i did, i wasn’t going to faint or anything.
It wouldn’t even be my first kiss.
That was Ian Roberts, back in the 1st grade. Yeah, that Ian Roberts.
We were just little kids, before the boys and girls started dividing into separate Tribes.
Of course, maybe turning Thirteen means we’re supposed to call some kind of truce…
Anyway, Ian was the first boy to kiss me; i was nine, and it was up in a tree. He kind of took me by surprise – and from that point on we’d been sworn Enemies.
But i didn’t get that same weird mothlike feeling in my stomach like i did when Tim was wiping the lipstick off of me.
That was different.
It was starting to look like Thirteen meant a lot of things were going to be different.

“There,” he said again.
Then he just stood there, looking at me. I didn’t know what to do so i cleared my throat and said “Uh, nice bathroom…I…like the…colors.”
“Oh, er. Yeah. I helped to paint it.”
“Oh…that’s…uh, cool!”
Then we just stood there like we were simpletons, looking at each other out of the sides of our eyes.
“Hey, Scarlett,” he said, “You’re beer’s getting warm.”
“Oh…right. I’ll go get it. Now.”

Tim moved slightly to the side as i went past him – and when i brushed up against him, i swear to God he inhaled…
I felt a strange shiver go all though my body.
I felt him walking close behind me as i walked down the hall and turned into Tiff’s room.
I half expected him to follow me in, but he didn’t. He kept on walking into the living room, and i felt his eyes on me as he passed – it felt almost like fingers on the back of my neck.
Is that creepy? Or good? Probably crazy.
I picked up my beer, which was getting warm, and took a big drink.
And then i took another.
Then Tiff hollered at me to hurry up already and come sit down.
And that’s what i did.

So now everyone was back in position on the couch. I was still feeling all funny from the Bathroom Incident (as it shall be recorded in history when i become famous). I kept sneaking looks at Tim; watching the light of the T.V. flashing across his face and such.
I looked at his arms – he had a lot of muscles. I hadn’t really noticed that before.
Good God! What is happening to me?
When i was twelve i was never such a total mush-brain!
And all of a sudden, I can’t concentrate on MTV because of a boy!
What is with that.
Well, i didn’t know and i don’t know – but it sure was odd.
I looked at his arms again. I liked his arms.
I didn’t even realize i was staring like some kind of Mongoloid Retard until he – of course – caught me gaping at his arm-muscles.
He looked a bit startled, and then a slow smile spread across his face – and, he was blushing.
Blushing!
We locked eyes for a second and then the phone rang.
I jumped.

“Fuck,” said Tim.
’I’ll get it!" said Tiff.
“I need to go to the bathroom,” i mumbled.

I really didn’t have to go to the bathroom, unless you count the fact that I felt like I needed to splash some cold water on my face.
And it’s lucky I didn’t, when you consider what happened next.
The phone was for Tiff – and from the sounds of it, it was a boy.
I was right.
She gave me an excited look and, pointing to the receiver, she mouthed “It’s Roger!”
Roger being the boy down the street who she currently had a crush on.
Next week it would be someone else…
She grabbed the telephone and dragged it down the hall into her room and shut the door.
Tim rolled his eyes at her and jumped up to straddle the back of the couch.
I was still planning on my trip to the bathroom, so i hitched myself up and threw one leg over the back of the couch, then the other.

He gave me a crazed grin and said, “Hey, Scarlett – you still ticklish?”
Oh, no.
“Oh, no. Uh-uh…”

I stuck my hands under my armpits and hunched myself over so he couldn’t get to me – which did me no good since at that moment he lunged at my feet.
It took all my self-control not to have a response.
If i concentrate really hard, i can control my ticklish-nerves in my feet.
Tim tried really hard, holding my legs out from the couch so that i had to just pray that my underwear wasn’t showing under my skirt. I suspect he was hoping it would.
His eyes kept going to my legs, like maybe i wouldn’t notice.
Then, he did something I didn’t expect…

I think I will remember for the rest of my life that the song “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” by The Police was playing on MTV.
Tim jumped forward with a crazy grin and a strange shine in his eyes that gave me goose-pimples when I looked into them the second before he pounced.
We’d been in tickling-wrestling matches before – in fact i’d pinned him once or twice.
But this time, things were different.
He tackled me, like i expected – like millions of times before – but he somehow did it gently. It was almost like we moved in slow motion, as i fell backwards onto the couch, my legs tangled up with his. Then he was on top of me, somehow ending up laying between my legs as he buried his face in my neck, my hair sticking in his mouth, and ran his fingers up and down my sides. We were both laughing hysterically, breathing hard, and i couldn’t think or see, all i could concentrate on was his fingers climbing up and down my ribs, and:

Every little thing she does is magic, everything she do just turns me on…

I don’t know when we both stopped laughing but all of a sudden it was quiet except for the music. I don’t know when i had wrapped my arms around his waist, or when my legs wrapped aroung his hips, either.
Tim’s fingers became slow and gentle on my ribs, and i felt his breath hot on my neck, and then his mouth.
I was breathing funny – my whole body was hot; I couldn’t tell if it was him or me or the both of us.
Then i felt it – something hard between my legs.
Oh, my God.

“Urrrgh, God,” I said.

I put my arms by my sides, trying to control my breath – and he slid his hands down my sides to grab my hands. His lips very softly moved up my neck to my ear.
I felt something jump in my belly – deep inside, bellow my belly-button.
And then a kind of weird ache.
I squeezed his hands.
Then i squeezed my legs.
He made a soft little noise, and pushed his hips against me.

“Umm!” I said.
He lifted his head to look at me -
“Are you ok?” he asked, looking worried, his face all red and flushed.
“Yes…”, i said, giving him a Look; I was not sure i could get enough breath to talk.
“Well then why’d you make that funny noise?”
“You were making funny noises too!”
“No I wasn’t…”
“Oh, will you shut up, just shut up…”

He did, and put his head back down, into my neck, kissing me there, and then my chin, and then my lips…
It was the best kiss of my whole life.
Which i know isn’t saying much, but still.
It was…amazing.
Then my Scarlett O’Hara vision flashed into my head and i started to laugh.
I couldn’t help it – everything was so…ticklish.

“What’s so funny?” Tim asked, looking a little defensive.
“Oh, it’s just…something i was remembering about earlier tonight.”

He looked like he didn’t believe me, so I told him.

“You mean, you wanted me to kiss you before? In the bathroom?”
“Well – the thought had occured to me…”
“Gone With the Wind, huh?” he said, smiling down at me. “Y’know, that’s why I like you, Scarlett. You have the craziest imagination. You’re the smartest girl i’ve ever met, did you know that?”

No, i hadn’t known that.
I think i blushed then.

“I mean it,” he said. “You remember that story you showed me and Tiff, that one about the Wolf and the Moon?”

I did. It was the first story i had shown to anyone – I knew that those two wouldn’t make fun of me, and would give me their honest opinion.
I remember feeling a warm flush in my chest when they told me how good they thought it was.
“Yeah,” is what i said.
“Well, I knew you were different when you read that story. It was amazing. Really! I wish I could write like that.”
It occured to me then how funny it was that we were having this conversation while he was laying on top of me.
“You know, it’s funny that we’re having this conversation while you’re laying on top of me,” I said.
Tim laughed, and kissed my hair.
I put my arms around him and squeezed.
Thank God I had taken that toilet paper out of my bra.