Useless Dresses

Maybe my mother is the reason I’m repelled by anything feminine.

From infancy to second grade, my hair refused to grow anywhere past the tops of my ears, leading to too many well-meaning strangers commenting with “Oh, what a darling little boy!” and “How old is the handsome man?”

Mom overcompensated, to say the least. Most days I found myself frilled up in pink and glitter with oversized and weighty bows pinned forcefully to my skull. And most days, I muddied up the silly outfits playing tag and run-around-screaming-because-it’s-recess (a favorite among my friends) during the day.

Afternoons, I tip-toed off the bus to find Mom looking down on me with a fevered look before she dragged me into the house for another beauty session. As she wiped me down and pulled a new, equally over-the-top outfit from the closet, the same mantra would spew from her perfectly plumped lips. “Katelyn Beaumont, you are a lady. Ladies do not roll around in the mud.”

I spent my childhood frustrated by the routine, and rebelled against everything pink and puffy as soon as I learned how. That’s when the problems between us began.

Em, on the other and more manicured hand, was born my opposite in all things feminine. When Mom’s conquest on me failed, she turned to her younger daughter. Emily took to the beauty pageant-esque without a moment’s hesitation. Her dark, luscious hair grew down to her knees at one point, always braided up with ribbons and spiced with glitter. That was years ago. She still braided it often, but her beauty routine had diminished dramatically since Mom’s death.

After nearly a week of playing the role of a normal student, a boredom set in. A thick, all-encompassing, suffocating, boring boredom. I enjoyed sitting through whole class periods without getting into any kind of trouble—an impulse I found surprisingly easy to suppress. But without chaos to stir up, I stayed more under the radar than I wanted.

I found myself with a plethora of acquaintances, and Rich—he might not be quite a friend yet, but he always stood out in my mind when school entered dinner table conversations.

“Do you have an extra pen?” The high pitched question stung cold up my spine and wrenched me from my thoughts. I looked up to find a skinny collage of pinks and greens standing over me. I was finishing up the lunch period sitting slouched against the red brick of the school’s back wall. The tiny intruder managed to create a sizeable shadow over my already cold form.

“Erm, yea,” I said, scanning my surroundings to find nothing but red brick and the blinding snow that covered every horizontal surface in the city. I looked closer at the person in front of me and found a tiny girl with mousy brown hair, leaning over me with her nose scrunched up in some sort of quizzical expression. I ripped my backpack from my shoulders and dug around for a pen that still had ink in it.

“What’s this?” she asked, taking the black ink pen I handed her and rolling it around in her thin fingers.

“Didn’t you ask for a pen?”

“No, I mean like an orange one,” she corrected, scrunching up her nose again and returning my pen. “Don’t you have an orange one?”

“Only black.” The mousy girl’s eyes popped open at my revelation.

“That’s weird.”

I wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so I shrugged and looked back down at the snow, expecting the girl to leave. When I looked back up a few moments later, she was gone.

“Why are you sitting out here?” The voice rang sharply through my head, forcing a short squeak from my throat. I craned my neck to the left, where the girl sat Indian style ten feet away. She didn’t look at me, but stared at the graying sky. Before giving me time to answer, she twisted her whole body to face me, though her eyes still pierced the clouds. “You’re new, aren’t you?”

“Well, ye—”

“I know you’re new, because you’re sitting out here. You wouldn’t be sitting out here if you were here at the beginning of the year. Or a month ago, actually. And actually, haven’t you heard? How long have you been here?”

“A week, I—”

“That’s a long time to be sitting in one place.”

Once again, I felt speechless. A silence stretched quickly between us.

“You’re not very girly, for a girl,” the mousy stranger observed suddenly. I turned to her again, noticing finally the pale pink of her blouse and the light creases of her faded skinnies. A mint green scarf covered her throat and chin, a matching private’s hat swallowing the top part of her skull, where medium brown hair waved down in perfect ringlets to her shoulders.

Compared to her, my navy sweater and blue jean combo looked absolutely masculine—though she looked more like she belonged in a Justice outlet than a high school.

“You’re extremely girly,” I said. “For a girl.”

Finally, the girl looked at me, her caramel eyes wide again and accented with watermelon colored eye shadow. Then she grinned, her cheeks scrunching up with her nose this time.

“Milly!” she screeched, leaning toward me with a weird satisfaction.

“Uh.” I can feel my mouth falling open.

“Actually, Millicent Frankie Southbend. That’s my mom’s last name. She got it from…” The girl—Milly—continued to ramble, but I did my best to tune her out—the inhumanly high pitch of her voice rung my ears and shot at my spine. Eventually, her voice dropped off into another set of silent moments. “I’ve seen you before.”

“Hm?” I hadn’t been listening.

“I’ve seen you before. With that tall guy.”

“Rich,” I confirmed, focusing in on Milly again.

“That’s your name? That’s a boy’s name.”

“What? No, the tall guy is Rich.”

“Oh,” Milly said, then took a couple deep breaths. “I’m sorry.”

I blinked heavily.

“I’m being annoying, I’m sorry.”

“Oh, um…” I began to notice a pattern of speechlessness on my part in this conversation.

“Mom says I won’t make friends if I talk so much,” Milly said, her voice deepening to a more tolerable pitch. Her eyes dulled over as she spoke, as if she forced the life out of them. “What’s your name?”

“Kate,” I said, stretching out the name in hesitation.

“That’s a pretty name.” Milly looked to the snow, a dejection playing her expression that seemed unnatural on her features.

“Hey, thanks,” I said, trying to lighten the suddenly plummeting mood. “What happened a month ago?” I wondered.

“Lunch is over!” Milly exclaimed, scrambling to her feet and taking in a long breath of frosty air.

“But the bell—” A sharp bing interrupted me. “But how did you know…?” I cut off my question when I noticed Milly rounding the corner at a near sprint. I jumped to follow her, an impulse I didn’t think about until I found myself running through a thick crowd of teenagers.

When I lost sight of her, I halted to catch my breath. I was still outside the building, and the freezing air stung my lungs as I tried to even my heartbeat.

“What’s the hurry?” I recognized Rich’s deep voice instantly, and turned to see him standing beside me.

“Nothing,” I replied. “I was just, I don’t know.”

“Well,” Rich started, leading me through the crowd into the building. The heating system warmed my insides immediately, making me realize how chilled to the bone I’d become during lunch. “Ok. Your nose is all red.”

My hands flew immediately to cover my nose, and I glared slightly at Rich—though I didn’t mean to.

“It gets that way in the cold.” My voice is muffled under my hands, but Rich heard me anyway.

“A white person thing, I guess.”

“Hrmph.”

“Hey, put your hands down. I can’t understand you.” He took my wrists to uncover my face. “Almost matches your hair,” he noticed, then grinned slightly.

“Shut up, Ramsey,” I said, feeling Rich’s warm hands on my wrists. I pulled them away to run my fingers through the wispy hair on my head.

“It’s Rich,” he corrected. “My dad’s name is Ramsey.”

“Really?” I asked. When he nodded, a laugh burst from my lips. Rich’s family moved from Egypt 16 years ago—right after Rich turned two. “That’s awesome. And cliché. But awesome.”

“Yea. It’s weird to wonder how I ended up with the name Richard.”

“Maybe your parents wanted you to fit in here,” I said. I wanted to change the subject—I had something else on my mind—but I knew it would be rude. So I waited, something I’d been doing a lot since I made the oath to myself to not be despised.

“Have you ever met anyone under 45 named Richard?” Rich asked, baulking at his parent’s choice. I shrugged.

“What happened a month ago?” I asked.

“That’s random. What do you mean?”

“I was sitting out by the side of the school, and this girl comes up to me and says she’s surprised I’m here, after what happened a month ago.”

“So that’s where you run off to at lunch,” Rich said. “Why don’t you sit with me?”

“Do you know a girl named Milly?” I asked. Rich seemed surprised at my sudden barrage of questions, but he answered eventually.

“Yea, Milly Southbend. Everyone knows her. She’s…” He trailed off, his brow furrowing as he searched for a proper adjective.

“Odd?” I suggested.

“Yea, a little odd. But not so much, after that other thing you asked about. What happened a month ago.”

“What happened?” The ding of the bell prevented Rich from answering me.

“Aw, I can’t be late again, I’ll talk to you later. After school.”

“I take the bus.”

“Oh—what? A moneyed senior with no ride?” Rich’s mouth arched up again, just slightly. “Ok, tomorrow. Before school. I’ll find you. Bye!”

Then he was gone, slipping into an emptying hallway. I rushed the opposite way, realizing I had class as well—and remembering I wasn’t supposed to be tardy.