"Do you want a grape spear, or a pineapple heart?" Damian held the skewers of fruit in his hand, proffering them to Janis.
"I swear to god you've got to stop doing this."
Janis was lying on her back on her bed, flipping through her recently finished sketchbook. She liked to do that sometimes—go back over her old works, remember the feelings she had as she wrangled images onto the paper. Sometimes it was embarrassing, but she tried to empathize with her past self more and more instead of judge. It was one of the things her therapist emphasized—being ok with whatever journey she had gone on and where it had taken her along the way.
"Yeah yeah, I know. Which fruit? Pick your poison."
"Honeydew. Like last time."
"No. I refuse. Honeydew is an abomination, not a fruit."
"If it's so bad, why would you give it to Phillip in the first place? Asshole." Janis tossed a pillow at Damian and he ducked, protecting his face with the grape skewer.
"Here, just take the pineapple heart. Before it makes me cry." Damian returned to Janis's bed, tugging the first grape off the wooden skewer with his teeth.
"You've gotta stop doing this Dam, he's clearly not into it." Janis bit off one of the points of the star, leaving dark lipstick on the rest.
"I can't rest until my conscious is clear," Damian protested.
"And meanwhile, you're missing out on whatever Northshore show choir twinks there are! The world is your gay little oyster, you just have to shake this urgent need to prove to some old camp fling you're not crazy. That ship has sailed."
"He was not a fling!"
"Sure. I refer to my earlier statement: you're missing out now."
"Yes, because suburban Chicago is just swimming with gay boys for my fancy. How can I rest knowing he thinks I'm some obsessed psycho?" Damian yanked the last grape off and flicked the skewer into the garbage bin by Janis's mini-fridge. He rested his head on her stomach mournfully.
"Dam, you were some obsessed psycho," Janis retorted. She flipped the page and re-oriented the sketchbook to take in the next drawing.
It was the figure of a girl, a model of femininity. The silhouette had all the curves, but was also disarmingly masculine—large biceps, wide shoulders, heavy proportions on the legs. Janis had been pushing the limits, trying to get a feel for what transformed a silhouette from fem to masc to somewhere in between. On either side of the figure, penciled in more lightly, were more traditional feminine and masculine outlines, she had practiced on the edge before tackling the androgynous icon in the center. It was hard to defy the norms—she remembered feeling her pencil tug in, wanting to slim out the limbs, tuck in at the curves, conform to whatever ideals occupied her mind.
"I like that," Damian pointed at the androgyne in the center of the page. His finger traced, following the vague lines down the figures body.
Janis's heart sped up and she knew Damian could feel it through her stomach—she still wasn't really used to showing people her art. She knew she'd have to get comfortable with it if she ever wanted to apply to art school, but Damian was the first person she ever let casually peruse her work. His compliments still made her feel this awful mix of embarrassment and pleasure.
His praise seemed oddly out of place though, especially considering how she had felt for that picture in particular. She had drawn it on a day when she felt like she didn't belong in her own body.
She knew she was a girl—she wanted to be a girl, she felt feminine, she embraced the hormones that came along with her body parts—but on that day when she had gone to get dressed, everything felt distinctly wrong. She felt too large and wide and tall and thick in the areas that women shouldn't be, but men should. She had put the frustration down on paper, trying to capture the strange in-between-ness that she had felt.
She hadn't known how to describe it at the time. She'd had the same body issues that most other girls did—pinching the flab on her stomach, refusing to wear shorts or bikinis or tank tops at different points in her life as different body parts came to her awareness, even trying on anorexia and bulimia for size when they first came into fashion. Looking back on it, she still wanted to cringe. If only she could go and tell early, pubescent Janis to save her breath and wait for her own—very real—issues to come along, to leave the fads to the people who truly struggled with them.
But the gender thing—that had been weird. She'd never felt like such a stranger in her own skin before, looking at all the parts that comprised her and feeling distinctly wrong in them. It had passed after a moment, but it left her feeling shaken, staring at herself standing there in fishnet tights, denim shorts and a big, oversized army jacket. Shapeless, a little grungy, but still fem. She never wanted to not be fem.
"Speaking of my lonely love life, how are things on the Cady-front for you?"
"Get off," Janis groaned, shoving Damian's head off her stomach before her could feel her heart rate spike again. "That was a fluke, not a thing. I'm not into her."
"It was a fluke that you made out with Cady? Or that you've been acting weird ever since?"
"I was drunk too that night," Janis hedged defensively. "And obviously it's a bit weird after, especially since she's pretending it didn't happen. We could have just laughed about it or whatever," Janis muttered, flipping the next page sharply.
"Riiight," Damian leaned on his elbow and looked at Janis, raising an eyebrow. She kept flipping stoically.
"You shouldn't be drinking alone, babe," Damian whispered.
"Drop it," Janis threatened.
"Fine. I just worry about you, that's all."
"I said drop it. It's not like that anymore." Janis didn't know what was worse—Damian thinking she had been drinking alone when she hadn't, or Damian knowing she had gone and made out with Cady (a very drunk Cady, but Cady nonetheless) completely sober. And would do it again in a heartbeat.
"I meant with Cady," Damian backtracked, sensing Janis's frustration. "I worry about you with Cady."
They didn't talk about her slip-ups much. Once she went through treatment for them, she tended to want to leave them there. Damian knew facts and a couple details, but he knew that he was the only one who did—Janis kept her cards close to her chest. He made a point not to mention things like drinking habits, or her family, or food. The way he managed to work their friendship around those topics amazed Janis—and made her feel very loved. Even when he was being a total pain.
"I told you, I don't like Cady."
"Good. She's way too much of a plastic now for you anyways," Damian rolled onto his back, staring at Janis's ceiling, on which she had painted a giant uber-vivid mural of the constellations. The stars painted over the blue and purple and black background were also in glow-paint, so when the lights were off the ceiling over her bed came alive.
"Cady isn't plastic, she's just getting her feet," Janis rolled over and faced Damian, laying her sketchbook between them.
"Getting her feet? Is that what you call it?"
"Oh knock it off Damian, she'll come around. Regina hasn't turned on her yet, as soon as she does Cady will understand."
"Is that what it should take though? Shouldn't she just have trusted us from the beginning?"
"I mean, that's what it took for me, remember? It feels nice to bask in the glow of whatever Regina has for a while. Then you realize what a monster she is. In that order."
"You missed a step—the basking, the complete and utter betrayal and then the realization. In that order," Damian peered at Janis knowingly, but she just lay there, looking at the ceiling, taking in her handiwork. When her parents allowed her to move into the converted garage, it had been the first project she tackled.
"Do you miss it?" Damian asked.
"Miss what?"
"Being friends with Regina."
Janis turned back to the ceiling. Damian had never asked her that before—once she had told him the story, he was eager to jump on the Regina-bashing bandwagon with her. He knew it made her feel better about what had gone down, but he didn't really know much about her life before.
"I don't really miss it," Janis finally said. "As in, I wouldn't want to be a plastic now. But before all of that popularity bullshit became a thing, being friends with Regina was really fun. Her mom let us do whatever we wanted when we would have sleepovers, and always took us to Six Flags in the summer, and Regina gave the best presents at birthday parties. She was also just a force—I don't even know how to describe it. Like she is now, but for better reasons. She gave the best pep talks, and was always so real with the teachers, but would still somehow convince them to give us extra recess, or the lunch lady to give us more dessert. She even convinced my dad to let us watch a PG-13 movie once," Janis chuckled. Damian's eyes widened. Janis never talked about her dad, much less chuckled about him. And if Regina had convinced the man to let them watch a movie like that. . .
"So it was nice. Before she got mean. Once she did though. . . it just wasn't the same. I began worrying, and I never had to worry before. I kept telling myself that she was Regina—she had done all these things before, told me a million times I was her best friend, why did I need to worry? I talked myself down—I didn't force myself to kiss a boy when we played spin the bottle at her seventh grade birthday party, and I kept wearing my old bathing suits, even though she said they were embarrassing and I should get rid of them. I never crushed on the same boys as her either. Which is probably what led up to whatever went down. I don't know." Janis fell silent.
Damian didn't say anything, processing what she had told him. As much as he loved Janis, he often didn't know what to make of her disclosures—she was tempestuous with her emotions, and it wouldn't be unlike her to tell him all of this one moment and refuse to speak about it the next.
"Cady reminds me of her," Janis said finally.
"How?" Damian asked.
"Just the way she is, the same type of forcefulness and can-do attitude and presence. You know what I'm talking about. That was what Regina was like, before."
"And now Cady is slipping in the same way," Damian finished her thought.
"Kind of," Janis hedged. "I think she's just blinded by it though. Or I hope so."
"You're not just justifying her actions right? Saying it's ok right up until it's way past ok?"
"I don't think so. I mean, don't get me wrong, she's been treating us kind of shittily lately, and it's up to you to decide when you've had enough of that. I think she'll mess up though—tell Aaron she likes him, or assume she's invited to something, or wear the wrong outfit on a Tuesday or whatever."
"And you plan on being there to catch her when she falls," Damian almost sounded disappointed.
"Don't you?" Janis asked.
"Of course. But I'm not the one she's pretending to not have kissed."
"Damian!" Janis laughed and swatted Damian with a pillow.
"Hey, hey, watch the nose! My mom paid a lot of good money for this schnauze," Damian held his arms up, protecting his face.
"Cady is being a little plastic bitch, but she's still Africa-weirdo-Caddy underneath. Now go eat your sad rejection fruit and let me finish going through this book."
"If I bring you some honeydew will you let me watch?"
"Only if you're nice," Janis scoffed.
"I think the honeydew is enough of a concession," Damian sashayed back to the bed, the fruit skewer in his hand from his now-dismantled edible arrangement. Janis smiled and patted her stomach as she took it. Damian plopped his head back down and they returned to her sketches, their gazes lingering on charcoaled shadows and lacy figures.