The ones who doused themselves in Axe body spray and revved the engines of their souped-up secondhand cars in the parking lot for attention. Dale was right; I’d been scared of those boys then, but not one of them would have stood a chance against a Vandenberg boy.
“Never let them see you falter, Imogene,” Dale continued. “Remember, you’re in control in this classroom. Don’t let them forget it.”
“I just—” I returned for a moment to the bus, to Duggar Robinson telling me stand, so confident that I would submit. “How do you get them to like you?”
Dale bobbed his head in his hands, considering. “Yes, being liked is nice, isn’t it? I wasn’t quite the most popular boy in my class back in high school, so it’s definitely nice to be liked. But to be frank, Imogene, it doesn’t matter if you’re well liked here or not.”
My palms felt sweaty, and I swiped them across my thighs under the desk. I kept myself from saying but it does.
“What matters is that you’re respected.”
I nodded, wishing I agreed.
“Now, let’s see that lesson.”
After the bell for third period rang, I stood before the class and talked about the earliest known evidence of a domesticated dog, a jawbone found in a cave in Iraq and dated to about 12,000 years ago. I talked about selective breeding, about how the gray wolf evolved into the modern canine. The boys seemed interested and asked questions, wondering how man taught the wolf to be submissive, to be subdued, to obey the will of a master. It wasn’t until one of the boys in the back raised his hand and asked (to the delight of his friends) what the men did to the wolves that couldn’t be tamed that I realized the joke—they had made an unspoken agreement that the wolves were women.
“Gentlemen, please.” Dale made a settle-down motion from his desk.
I feigned ignorance to the joke. “The tamer wolves were more likely to survive and evolve into dogs,” I admitted. “But, the wolf was also domesticated at a time when humans weren’t very tolerant of carnivorous competitors. Humans were already successful hunters without wolves, and wolves don’t exactly like to share.”
“So why do we even need them?” the same boy from the back called. His friends snickered.
“More than likely, it was the wolves that approached humans, not the other way around. The ability of dogs to read human gestures is remarkable, and with this ability, having these protodogs on a hunt gave people an advantage over those who didn’t.”
“So you’re saying the wolves tamed us,” Dale volunteered. I glanced at him and he winked. I felt faint from gratitude and—perhaps something else?
I turned back to the class. “Dogs may even have been the catalyst for our civilization.”
Nobody protested. The bell rang, and as the boys collected their books, I turned towards the chalkboard to hide my grin, feeling as though I had just won something.
_ _ _
Clarence was feeling well enough to watch lacrosse practice that afternoon. He sat next to me on the wooden bench facing the practice field, a white splint taped over the bridge of his nose.
“How are you doing?” I asked. I felt a little awkward, having not talked to him since depositing him at the hospital, but I knew not to talk to him would only make the situation more uncomfortable.
“Okay,” he said, his voice dolefully nasal. “The doctor said there shouldn’t be any change in the size or shape of my nose.”
“That’s good.”
“My cousin, he broke his nose playing hockey three different times when he was in high school. He never even saw a doctor. He’s got this big bump in his nose now.”
I searched Clarence’s face for a hint as to what my reaction should be. “Yikes.”
“I didn’t want a bump in my nose. I’m glad I won’t have one.”
“You should be. You have a nice nose.”
Clarence grinned widely and then put a hand to his splint. “Ow.”
We turned to watch the boys running drills up and down the field. While waiting his turn in line, Duggar stuck his stick between his legs and rhythmically thrust his hips forward, poking Baxter in the back.
“Coach, Duggar is poking me with his shaft,” Baxter called.
Larry groaned. “Robinson, stop poking Baxter with your shaft.”
Clarence took out a notebook and started doodling. I peeked over his shoulder to see what he was drawing. On the page was a massively muscular Mexican luchador poised for a fight, his fists held up in front of his bare chest and his eyes narrowed behind his mask.
“That’s really good.”
Clarence jumped and shut the notebook.
“Whoops, sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“It’s nothing. It’s stupid.”
We turned back to the field. After a moment, Clarence turned to face me again.
“His name’s El Músculo. He’s just this character I draw sometimes.”
“That’s cool. Are there others?”
Clarence nodded, and he smiled shyly as he flipped through his notebook and showed me a few of the other characters he’d invented. A skinny masked man with a gun slung over each shoulder and a sly grin, a spandex-clad woman with hair that flowed past her waist and enormous breasts. Larry blew his whistle; practice was over.
“Do you want one?” Clarence asked.
“Oh, no, that’s—”
“Here.” Clarence flipped to a finished drawing of El Músculo and ripped out the page, which he then handed to me. “Take it.”
I held the drawing in my hand. “Thank you.”
The boys ran off the field to the locker rooms. I turned to slip Clarence’s drawing into my bag and felt someone standing behind me. I turned around to find Duggar, his eyes magnified behind his goggles.
“Hey, Squeak,” he said, “how about you spend less time flirting with your boyfriend and more time watching the practice?”
I looked at Clarence. He’d busied himself with packing up his backpack, his eyes unwilling to meet mine. I turned back to Duggar and his bug-eyed stare, feeling like a sample beneath a microscope, his to poke and pick apart and eventually throw away. The thrill of my afternoon victory drained away; before Duggar, I was fourteen again, unsure of myself, unsure of anything.
_ _ _
I waited until a few days after my fourteen birthday party, which Stephanie left early from to hang out with Keith Stern (she’d told me she had a dentist appointment her mom couldn’t reschedule), to confront her. I waited until before gym class, when the locker room was nearly empty, to stand by her gym locker and say, “You’ve changed.”
“For gym class?” It wasn’t clear whether this was a joke or a communication failure. Stephanie reached up to the top shelf for her sneakers. She’d purposely ordered her gym shirt a size too small, so that when she raised her arms a strip of her stomach showed.
“I mean, you’re different than the person I used to know.” This was more than likely a line I’d taken from a TV show. Ruth Walter was the only one left in the locker room, and she watched us from the sinks excitedly.
“Having a boyfriend doesn’t make me different, Imogene.” She squatted to lace up her sneakers.
I fought an urge to stomp my foot, to slam a locker door, to somehow express the frustration I was feeling with an ineffable blast of sound. “Yes, it does! They change everything!” I knew, by they, I did not mean boyfriends; I meant boys.
Ruth