Short story

I've decided to give short fiction another try. Working on novels is kind of exhausting, and I'm getting a little tired of my characters. I remember having a lot of fun writing short stories in high school. So I'm going to set a goal (yay for setting goals) to write a short story every [recurring time period]. Every week? Every day? Every other day? Some regular time. To be figured out later. And I'm not going to worry about making these polished works of art. I'm just going to have fun. Here's the first one, clocking in at 928 words. Tell me if you like it.


Being the new kid at school sucks balls, but it isn’t all bad. You can reinvent yourself, but you have to be careful of the way the people at school want to interpret you. Halfway through my first day, things were looking pretty good. No one had decided to beat me up, and there was a certain someone I already had my eye one. Shelby Barnes. Blond hair, bright blue eyes, great body. I was already in love. We had two classes together. In the second one, English, two minutes before ending bell, I finally got up the nerve to make my move.

“Hey, your name’s Shelby, right?”

“Yeah. Hey, you’re new, aren’t you?”

“Yeah. I just moved from two towns away with my mom and sister.”

“Well, it’s nice to meet you. I hope you like it here.”

The bell rang, then, and we all gathered our things to go.

“See you later, bro!” Shelby said.

Oh my gosh. He thinks I’m a dude.

GIANT PAUSE IN THE STORY

Okay, I should admit, this shouldn’t have surprised me that much. I’m just writing down what was going through my head at the time, but I’ll admit that, if I had stopped to think about it, I wouldn’t have been all that surprised that he mistook me for a guy.

But it hurt. And that made it shocking.

BACK TO THE MAIN STORY

He thinks I’m a dude. He thinks I’m a dude. Crap. Now what?

Now we go and slink off to the nearest bathroom. The girl’s bathroom. And find some sympathetic female to commiserate with.

Only there was no one in there. And, now that I was a little calmer, I doubt many girls would have anything useful or sympathetic to say about my situation. I am probably the only girl in the history of the universe that has been mistaken for a guy by the guy she likes. So. What to do.

I could see a few options:

1.Tell him I’m a girl.

2.Don’t tell him I’m a girl, and hope he figures it out on his own.

3.Pretend to be a guy to get closer to him.

a.Then tell him I’m a girl

b.Never tell him I’m a girl and love him from afar (across that great gender divide).

c.Hope he’s gay.

None of these appealed to me. Number one would make everything awkward and he would probably hate me. Number two will probably never happen, and just turn into number three, which has no happy endings.

I flushed the toilet for appearances and went to gym, brooding over my fate.
Once there, several other people mistook me for a dude, despite that fact that I very clearly came out of the girl’s locker room. It came to a head when I was sitting next to the fat, asthmatic kid after twisting my ankle during dodgeball.

“Hey, bro, what’s up?” he said politely.

“I am NOT a bro!” I shouted, halting the game for a few seconds. I lowered my head, turtle-like, into my shirt, and play resumed. Crap. I was never going to live that down. The fat kid blinked at me.

“Oh. Huh. I guess not. Now that I’m really looking, I can see—”

“Aw, look, just shut up, okay. It’s not like I didn’t sort of invite this reaction with my behavior.” Somehow I was now pouring my heart out to the fat kid. How did that happen? “I mean, I guess it’s to be expected that people will treat you differently if you refuse to conform to the accepted social norms. But I’m not trying to be a rebel. I just want to be comfortable. Is there anything wrong with not wanting to have to worry about doing my hair or choosing an outfit in the morning? It’s not my fault I also have no curves. At all. Ever.”

Great, now I’d worked myself up into a depression. Smart move, Jennings.

“Well, hey, have you ever thought about changing your appearance to be a little more… girly, without being more uncomfortable?”

The suggestion made sense, but something in me just rebelled against the idea.

“I dunno. How would I do that?”

“Well, you could try wearing more girly colors?”

“Then I’d just look gay.”

“You could try wearing tighter clothes, to show off your feminine curves.”

“I just said I don’t have any!”

“What about skirts?”

“What? No, those are way too girly.”

“No, there are ways to wear skirts that aren’t too girly. For one thing, you wear them over pants. Not like tights, but like jeans and stuff.”

“Hm.” I considered it. I didn’t have any immediate objections. “But will that make me look more like a girl? Or just stupid.”

“We could go shopping and see?”

I turned to look at him. “You and me?” Incredulousness painted my voice. “Are you serious?”

“Sure. I don’t conform to accepted social norms either.” He grinned at me. I grinned back, slowly. I think I liked this kid.

PAUSE

Not like that.

UNPAUSE

The skirt idea was okay, but we decided that afternoon after consulting our older sisters that simply combing my hair a certain way and wearing different, still comfy, clothes would be the best course of action. The fat kid’s older sister, whose name was Melanie, also advised me to simply be patient. She said I would always have a streamlined figure, but that I would fill out enough to look feminine if I gave it enough time. That was the hardest advice to follow.