If I Should Be Quite Honest

3

I start to see men a little differently, after Grayson had a stern talk with me. It was weird. Suddenly, you have fifty pairs of eyes on you and you're on a pedestal with a spotlight for all to see. I know it's not really that way, but I suddenly become weirded out by my male teachers. Mr Jones, Mr Fletcher in Biology and Mr Greenberg in Applied Maths. I suddenly don't like their smiles and their slight touches on my hand when they hand me my work. Their smiles are kind, but their mind may be saying something entirely different.

When I get home, I lock myself in the bathroom and look at myself. I put my bag on the tiles and frown. I've done this before, but naked. I used to be twelve and stand right here and will my boobs to grow and my bum to get bigger. I didn't happen though. I stayed weird looking, flat chested and bare as the day I was born.
Until I didn't. I was suddenly fourteen and my hips grew and my chest hurt as I noticed my breasts enlarge. I was alarmed, and I began to perspire more, my face cleared up after a lifetime of a variety of creams, and I got weird stares and the boys would be nicer to me. Then Mike Jameson took his hockey stick and flipped the hem of my skirt, peering under it, he and his mates laughing.

I remembered getting more angry than embarrassed, because my sisters had raised me to never allow that kind of behaviour go unnoticed. That behaviour, even concerning our brothers, wouldn't fly.
I charged at him before Miss Vernon could shout at me, and I punched him right in the face. I pushed him to the ground and rained weak slaps and hits to his face. He blocked all of them with his arms, but he still called out in anguish, while everyone watched. When I was pulled off of him, they all laughed as he was escorted off the field.
When Mr Turner, our principal, made us apologise to each other, he hissed that he'd get me back, when we left his office.
I stood there, my head on one side, while I tried to figure out what he could possibly do to me that I couldn't do back ten times worse.
I'm still waiting.

He's more mature now, I guess, in his tight suits and fancy ties, his used to be, unruly, curly brown mop cut and slicked back.
He looked like a stick broker. A seventeen year old stock broker. He hung out with Taron, so I mostly avoided sitting with them at any chance, but the other day, I had dropped my art folder and Mike had picked it up. He shifted through it, smiled and handed it back to me, "You're really good," he told me, walking away, swinging his duffel bag.
I had stood there in the hall, confused as fuck. Certain people managed to do that to me.

I turn this way and that. I lost my baby fat in that awkward year too, until Ren worried that I was deliberately not eating. I proved her wrong, eating all I could, until I put on a little more weight. But I was confused. I wore all I could to cover myself up as best as I could, so no guy, no matter how ridiculous I found it, would get any ideas. But I guess it was the tits.
I wanted to flatten them. They felt like balloons sometimes. I wished I could take a pin to them and pop them, but you and I both know that wouldn't exactly work.
I planned everything down to the way I walked. Carla liked to sway her hips deliberately, especially when she wore a short pencil skirt, testing the limits of the sixth form dress codes and violations. I was different. I couldn't be fashionable. I didn't have the mind for it. I knew purple, yellow and green wouldn't work well together, but I spent my money on the best books for school and a really good scientific calculator and oil paints. Sometimes, I bought the ice cream when we escaped to the park. But that was it. I didn't buy expensive clothing. I was saving up.
I peel off my clothes and look at myself in my underwear, plain black. I didn't need cute underwear, no boy was going to see it. No one really saw my underwear, unless it was my sister's when I changed in front of them. They saw my boobs too and Amara was still at the stage where she'd giggle and go, "Ummm," covering her eyes, but peeking through her index and middle fingers. Silly little girl. She was seven, small, slight and cute. A few of her teeth were still coming in, so she talked with a lisp, and played up to it too, especially to Jacob and Remi, who would pick her up and coddle her.
She wasn't annoying, I'm not getting at that, but I knew how to spot an opportunist.