You Between the Lines

by Katie Naymon

The one who kisses boys on the dank bus on the sixth grade DC trip, giving in to cracked-voice cheers and the first of many clammy hands to trace her outline against the one who shaves because a boy smirked at the tufts growing from her tight-crossed legs, a pre-teen unknowing, staring at the one squeezed into black polyester, pressed into the hungry groin of a boy swaying to Top 40, grateful to feel so small like the one who inhales root beer Chapstick off the lacrosse captain, takes off her shirt before he asks, lies about her music preferences to the one who can’t hold her liquor or feel guilty after dribbling peach vodka in a basement, letting needy blazer boys touch the one who says she just wants to be friends before they have the chance to say it first because the one who’s a gymnast, twisting in a ball pit, nursing scraped knees and just watching the decadence of being someone else is also the one who decides she is pretty with the lights on, with arms uncrossed and breath slow enough to catch.