Francine & Earl

Fran the Man*

Francine Waters had always been abnormally large.

She was accustomed to the stares people gave her when they took in her 6"2 stature. Her peers hid malicious giggles and leers behind their hands in an attempt to muffle their whispers and play their part as politely judgmental, as she brushed past them and their sharp-eyed interest. The weight of stares pressing into the back of the football jersey she worked so hard to earn was carried with her, getting heavier with each passing day.

Resistance to their oppressive gaze was futile. All people saw when they looked at her was a waste of the title "girl," so what good would her saying anything do? Of course, she could always whip around and face the people who delighted in their daily routine of flinging words at her back just to see if they had the courage to throw them in her face, but what would that accomplish?

She deserved it. The universe was getting back at her for ruining her mother's one and only dream of her daughter becoming a "proper young lady," letting all of the preconditioning her mother attempted to do go to waste. She was meant to grow up a gentile Southern belle, never a hair out of place or a curse escaping her pink glossed lips. A dream that would involve Francine having a small stature and long hair, with a tiny button nose and a football player for a boyfriend, if the people in her small town were to be believed.

Her mother never got her wish.

All she got was a daughter that could compete with a skyscraper in the height department. A daughter with short cropped hair to make it easier to play sports. A daughter who had a strong jaw, large nose, and constantly chapped lips from the cold when she was on the field. A daughter who instead of dating a football player, was on the football team.

Francine knew her mother was disappointed in the way her daughter's genes decided to sabotage all her potential femininity. Sighs would escape her parent's lips when she ran off to the gym and turned slight curves into sharp muscle. Yet, for as long as she could, Francine ignored it. The signs didn't exist as long as she didn't glance long enough to read them.

But, that Monday of her junior year changed everything.

She made her way to the locker room when she entered the school building. Everyone on the team knew she did a morning run around the track, and didn't come so they could give her privacy. The real reason no one showed this early was because they would never be on Dempsey High's premises until it was deemed necessary.

She hummed to herself, quietly pushing open the doors. In the morning, the school was basically deserted and she hated making loud noises. Visions of horror movie villains would pop into her head, but even then, whatever it was might be too intimidated by her size to chase her around the halls.

"I mean, how could any girl look like that? You're sure she's a girl, right?"

Francine stopped before heading to her locker, pausing at the sound of a voice. The deep timbre of Corey Russo filled the locker room, the new kid's voice echoing along with the sound of water dripping from a shower that had not been fully turned off. From what she observed over the past few weeks, he was the quiet guy trying to prove himself useful on a team of extroverts, and that was all she could get from his actions because she didn't know him well enough.

"Man, I don't even know. With the way she dresses, who knows what's hidden down there."

She furrowed her brow, leaning against the locker behind her. The other voice was Victor Harris. They were lab partners and sat two seats apart at the lunch table the football players claimed as their own. She guessed that he took Corey under his wing, and she couldn't help but add that to her growing list of things she liked about someone she was beginning to see as one of her closest friends on the team.

"What's her name? Pam? Sam? Jan?" Corey questioned, and Francine heard a thud of what she assumed was a locker closing.

Vic chuckled.

"Close. It's actually Francine. The mike*."

Francine silently panicked as the room grew quiet. What was she supposed to do? Walk off like she didn't hear them? Pretend like she wasn't hurt by what they said after she left?

"Fran the Man?" Corey asked incredulously, and her heart dropped. She continued to listen in, eyes burning as she rested her head against the lockers. Her ears honed in on the tap of water droplets from the showers, and her own shallow breathing.

Vic and Corey shared a laugh at her apparent nickname. They probably weren't the first, and they definitely wouldn't be the last. So many people had likely been stifling a laugh when they saw her, humoring themselves with her appearance now and doing it for years. At least she was finally in on the joke, and was now aware of her true infamy.

"That's the one," Vic said, and there was another thud.

"Have you seen her when she changes, man?" Corey asked, and Francine's stomach roiled in disgust.

"Of course," Vic said with a laugh. "I think we've all snuck a peek, even though there's nothing much to look at anyway. I still wonder why Coach lets her change in here. He probably thinks of her as a guy too!"

The boys guffawed, the noise echoing in the now cramped-feeling locker room. Of course she could go to the female space down the hall, but she preferred the camaraderie and energy of her team on game days, and the joking around after practice. It didn't help that many of the girls in the changing area thought that she would stare at their scantily clad forms instead of pulling on her own gear, buying into their small town's small mindedness that only a lesbian would want to be on the football team.

"I know! Like, why wear a bra if there's nothing to put in it? She might as well get a dick forreal to make it official," Corey continued. Francine roughly wiped at her eyes and pressed her head harder into the locker.

"And have you heard her voice? I swear, her balls dropped before mine."

Their laughs reverberated around the room, and Francine was done.

She walked around the wall that hid her, not being able to stand it anymore, the slap of her sneakers deafening to her ears. The boys whipped around to investigate the noise, seeing her likely blotchy face and red eyes, amused looks quickly slipping away.

Hands raised, Victor had the audacity to look guilty. She knew that he knew if she said one word to Coach, things would go south. It was difficult enough to convince the school to let a girl on their failing team, and Coach Powers didn't want to lose his investment after he was finally reaping the rewards. That was all she was—proof that Dempsey High was willing to be inclusive, but only if a person was useful.

"Frannie, how much did you hear?" Vic questioned, voice soft and a hand on the back of his neck as he looked up at Francine through his dark lashes in his usual 'aw shucks' expression.

"You know we didn't mean it right. We were just joking around."

Corey nodded vigorously in agreement, bottom lip caught in his teeth and an embarrassed flush creeping up his pale neck.

"It doesn't make it okay!" Francine yelled, fists clenched at her side as she watched Victor's eyes narrow in defense. "You know how I feel about what people say, and you said you understood. You said you'd never do something like that to me."

It hurt for her to hear him shorten her name in a term of endearment, to hear the name that he gave her as their friendship progressed come out of his mouth, a mouth that had just fixed itself to call her a man only a few moments before.

"It's common knowledge anyway! How could you not know how much you look like a man? It's not like we're wrong. We tease everybody on the team, you just need to toughen up and stop acting like a bitch," Victor shouted back, pushing himself up off the bench between the rows of blue lockers, while Corey began inching away towards his gym bag on the floor.

Francine moved to where she was right in front of Vic, looking down at him and past the point of anger, before grabbing him by his cotton t-shirt. His eyes widened in shock when the floor disappeared from under him, and for once Francine was thankful for her height advantage.

"You want to see a man? I'll show you a man."

And she punched him in the face, forever solidifying her unfortunate nickname.

*mike: the middle linebacker; like the quarterback of the defense