Harmonious Hearts 2017 Read online

  I knew right away what she was referring to. At this point, I would say she was halfway to getting over herself and bothering to take other people’s feelings into account.

  It was at lunch, and I was sitting outside doing homework rather than playing with the other kids. The teacher had hauled out the goalposts and a couple games of soccer had sprung up on the field. With my hand-eye coordination being a grand total of zero, I opted for finishing my work to give myself more time after school for fun.

  Ginger had clearly just been playing as she was positively dripping with sweat. She stopped in front of me and blocked my light, which forced me to look up at her. Breathing heavily and in her well-used gym clothes, she stood just so the sun hit her back and lit up the stray hairs that had come loose from her ponytail.

  Now at this point it’s important to note that I at least knew I wasn’t straight. I hadn’t yet realized that I could like girls, but I did know something wasn’t quite right with how I looked at the other kids. When I look back now, I was, to put it simply, so gay for her. At the time I may have mistaken those feelings for disdain.

  “Why don’t you want to be my friend, Radley?” she asked with a huff. Her hands rested squarely on her hips, and she looked very much like the answer to this question was the most important thing she would ever hear.

  “You were being annoying,” I told her.

  “I was trying to be nice. Everyone wants to be my friend. I’m the nicest.”

  “You were being annoying,” I repeated and returned my attention to my math homework.

  “Radley, Radley, Radley,” she sang. She plopped down next to me and plucked the pencil out of my hands. “Why is your name Radley? I looked it up one time and it said that’s a boy name.”

  “I like my name…,” I mumbled. I refused to look at her this time and instead worked out the math problems in my head.

  “I thought it was a nickname before.”

  That was something I definitely hadn’t known. “You did?”

  “Yep.” She popped the last letter and then giggled. “Boo Radley was a character in a book. Have you read To Kill a Mockingbird?”

  “No.”

  “Sorry I called you Boo. That was mean. But I still thought Radley was a nickname. Like Ginger.”

  “Ginger is a nice nickname.”

  “You think?” She brightened up considerably and tapped the pencil against my shoulder. “I remember you laughed when I spilled that paint.”

  “It was funny.”

  “Yeah, it was,” she sighed. “But I messed up my dress. I like Ginger better than Kylie. And I like being Ginger Rogers. Maybe I’ll ask my mom and dad to change my name. I watched her movies, you know. She dances all pretty.”

  I did look up at her then, and she was smiling at me in a teasing way with one corner of her lips quirked up.

  “I looked up what Radley means too,” she continued. “It means ‘from the red field.’ Neat, right?”

  Maybe she was bothering me about the supposed gender of my name because all through my childhood I was a massive tomboy.

  “I didn’t mean to annoy you,” she said, and finally she handed my pencil back. I went back to solving the problems, but I let myself listen to her talk.

  “Honest, I didn’t. Names are just funny. None of the new kids know my real name. Or birth name. Ginger is my real name, I think.”

  I let her go on, and even when I finished my homework, I pretended to redo equations so she wouldn’t go back to the soccer game and leave me alone.

  THE MORNING after Ginger got back into town, I showed up at her house at the crack of dawn and practically dragged her out with me. She barely had time to throw on a sundress and a pair of sandals, and there wasn’t a lick of makeup to be seen, but she had never looked more gorgeous. The early light caught her hair in an orange halo, and I took a moment before driving off to stare, to take in the sight of the most beautiful girl I had ever known. I locked that image away in my mind in case the day didn’t go as planned and drove us off toward the field.

  It was only a few minutes to the school and the farm next door, and in the middle of July at six in the morning there was no traffic to slow us down. She stumbled across the parking lot behind me, still half-ensnared in the fog of sleep. I didn’t tell her I had been up since four working up the courage to get her.

  We ducked through the opening in the fence and made our way to our patch of dirt, the same place we lay together that first day. She made a move to sit down, but I stayed upright. The sun blinded me, but it was easier looking at nothing than at her with what I was about to confess. I did wonder if she already knew, the same way I could read her feelings for me plain as day. If she did know, maybe she already had a reaction planned for if I ever told her.

  I was overthinking, and everything I planned to say disappeared from my mind.

  “Ginger,” I began, “you know I like being around you.”

  “I like being around you too.” The sharp intake of breath was not missed.

  “I think you’re really great, and I wish we could have been friends sooner, but I’m glad we’re friends now.”

  We both let silence fall. I stared off to the east, over the seemingly endless rows of wheat. The rising sun dyed the tips red, and I reached out blindly until I found her hand. I held it like a lifeline, for if nothing else I would have these last moments of simply being. No complications, no expectations. Just two girls standing together in a red field, both thinking exactly the same thing and yet unable to say what it was.

  And thankfully, neither of us had to.

  I always thought I would kiss her first, that after all that time wondering how it would feel to have her lips moving against mine and my hands tangling in her hair, I would be unable to resist making the first move. I might have done it if she hadn’t pulled on my hand until we were standing chest to chest and brought our lips together. She moved hesitantly, cautiously, desperately. At first I didn’t move at all. My shock at her boldness had me rooted to the ground, unable to lift a hand or answer her kiss.

  When I did find myself, I let go of anything I had presumed worth worrying about and responded with fervor.

  “I love you, Ginger,” I managed to gasp out between kisses. She didn’t say anything, only laughed joyfully and lost whatever inhibitions she had come in with. She was unlike anyone I had ever kissed before. It was like kissing Ginger should be, with all her fire and energy and life.

  We lay in the field until midday, our legs tangled and my head on her chest feeling her heart beat, bringing me immense pleasure as I made it speed up. When she whispered my name to me over and over, it sounded not like a tease this time, but like a song.

  FRISK GILLESPIE is a twenty-year-old writer living in Canada. She spends most of her time reading fantasy novels and fan fiction, watching children’s cartoons, going rock climbing, and playing video games on easy mode. She has a totally professional diagnosis of “too gay to function,” which makes existing around cute girls quite a difficult task. She also has an actual chronic pain condition, but with treatment she’s able to keep up a part-time job, which gives her money to spoil her girlfriend. This is her third time being published in Harmonious Hearts.

  Bubblegum

  By Malcolm Shearrion

  Scarlett starts off the school year as Roy O’Ryan. Stuck with a teacher who believes in strict, old-fashioned rules regarding gender, she struggles with her identity and fears coming out. Can a friendship with a quirky, bubblegum-obsessed boy named Tracy help Scarlett learn to accept herself?

  IT’S A simple request, plain and straightforward, and none of the other kids put much thought into it. The teacher—she’s a young, brown-haired woman with carmine lips and a fresh-out-of-college smile that the students are sure will be gone come December—watches them from the front of the room as they sort themselves into two lines, sweaty newly fifteen-year-olds in short, parallel scores like little soldier boys. Scarlett leans back on her chair, hesitant, her
fists opening and closing around the bunched-up fabric of her pink tank top. It’s not rocket science, she tells herself, digging her front teeth into her bottom lip, staining her sun-kissed skin red with irritation. It’s not brain surgery. It’s lines.

  Girls in one line, boys in the other.

  The boys watch her expectantly and whisper, waving her over with too-big, callused hands. They’re football players and nerds, emos and would-be actors. They’re short hair and muscles, broad shoulders and narrow hips. It’s seventh period—drawing—and they reek of gym class and school lunch. Scarlett stares back without moving.

  The girls are watching too, but none of them beckon her over. They’re dressed the same as her, light pink frills and tight blue jeans, little white sneakers and lacy bra straps. But their hair is long, and their chests bulge subtly beneath their low-cut shirts. Scarlett knows which half of the room she matches. It isn’t theirs.

  The teacher clears her throat, looking her attendance sheet over until she finds what she’s searching for.

  “Roy?” she asks. She locks eyes with Scarlett and nods. “Roy, sweetie, can you please get in line?”

  Slowly, her cheeks burning, Scarlett slides into place between a scene boy and a jock. The former pays her no mind, shuffling back to let her in only when her elbow brushes against his chest. The latter scoffs and steps away dramatically. You don’t belong here, his eyes say.

  I know, Scarlett wants to tell him. I don’t want to be here either. But she doesn’t.

  “I think you’re in the wrong line,” the scene boy says as the teacher sorts the lines into groups of four, a girl to every boy, for seating. He has a soft, raspy voice, and when he talks, he takes off his beanie and lets his long hair cascade down his back. There’s a cherry hair clip in his bangs, and beneath the waistband of his torn black jeans, Scarlett catches a glimpse of bright pink.

  “I’m Tracy,” the boy says, pulling his hair back under his hat and blowing a blue bubble-gum bubble. “You?”

  “Roy,” Scarlett says.

  “If you say so.” Tracy reaches into the pocket of his oversized plaid sweatshirt and produces two gumballs. He holds them out to Scarlett—pink in his right hand, blue in his left—and raises an eyebrow. After a moment, Scarlett takes the blue one, and Tracy nods. He pops the pink in his mouth and breathes out a giant bubble.

  “I still think you’re in the wrong line,” he says when the teacher dismisses them to their new seats. “But that’s okay.”

  “YOUR FIRST assignment,” the teacher says cheerfully, fanning her tacky blue nails out on the desk in front of her and smiling with too much energy, “is to draw a self-portrait. I’d like to get to know you all since we’re going to be working together this year. You can draw it however you’d like. Just make it unique to you.”

  Scarlett starts sketching, her head a circle in the center of the page, her too-short blonde hair sticking out at angles. Tracy pokes her in the ribs beneath the table. A thick layer of rubber bracelets coats his arms, some red and black with band names in silver print, others pastel blue and adorned with pink and white rhinestones. He’s got his paper covered already with an androgynous cartoon face, the head half-shaved, the pupils shaped like music notes, the mouth wide and pouty and dripping with candy-colored lipstick.

  “Gum?” he asks, blowing a bubble. It’s pink this time.

  Scarlett takes the blue gumball from Tracy’s hand and bites it in half, works it over her tongue, and blows a bubble. Tracy grins and leans forward on the table, pink meeting blue in an indirect sort of kiss until Scarlett’s bubble pops.

  “That’s you?” Scarlett asks, running her finger across the edge of Tracy’s paper.

  “That’s you?” Tracy replies, pointing. “You drew your hair wrong. Let me help.”

  He reaches over, pencil in hand, and covers the head of Scarlett’s portrait with two long, flowing, golden pigtails that go off the sides of the page. He gives her bangs, short and choppy, and a white rose behind one ear.

  “You’re better at this than me,” Scarlett says.

  “I’m all right, I guess.” Tracy shrugs, sliding the paper back across the table. “You just gotta draw what feels right sometimes.”

  “It’s a portrait,” Scarlett says. “Aren’t you just supposed to draw what you look like?”

  Tracy blows another bubble. He colors the ends of his hair bright red.

  “She said we could draw it however,” he says. “Why draw what is there when you could draw what should be there instead?”

  Scarlett shrugs. She draws herself a yellow sundress over narrow shoulders and a round chest, but that doesn’t look right. She erases and draws a baggy sweatshirt in its place. Tracy nods his approval.

  “You’re getting it,” he says. He sets his pencil down, cracks his knuckles, and smiles. “What was your name again?”

  “Roy.”

  And the smile disappears.

  THE TEACHER hands the portraits back the second Monday of the year. Tracy’s looks even better fully colored, the background a tangle of black and silver knots, his skin pink and blue with little hearts beneath the eyes. Scarlett’s is half-finished, but there’s a bright red A in the corner.

  “Creative,” the teacher’s loopy cursive reads. That’s it. “Creative.” Tracy has a paragraph on the back of his.

  “I don’t really care for self-portraits anyway,” he says when Scarlett points it out. “You want to know something?”

  “Travis!” the teacher calls, and Tracy cringes a bit, smiling coyly.

  “Yes, ma’am?” he asks, his voice cracking.

  “Can you tell me what the elements of design are?”

  He rattles them off like it’s second nature, then returns his attention to Scarlett.

  “Your name is Travis?” she asks.

  Tracy shakes his head.

  “I told you,” he says calmly, taking the cherry clip from his hair and pinning it to Scarlett’s shirt, “I’m Tracy. Who are you?”

  “You keep asking me that,” Scarlett says.

  “Because you never answer.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “You never give the right answer,” Tracy says. When he doesn’t elicit a response, he adds quickly, “It’s okay if you don’t know the right answer. You can just say so. I didn’t know for a long time.”

  But Scarlett shakes her head.

  “I’m Scarlett,” she says. Tracy seems content with her answer.

  “That’s a pretty name,” he says. He reaches into his pocket again—Scarlett knows what’s coming before his hand reappears—and holds a gumball up, pressing it gently to her lips, grinning sheepishly. She sticks her tongue out at him around the gum.

  It’s pink.

  SHE’S NEVER gone clothing shopping before—not like this, at least, Tracy dragging her through aisles upon aisles of blouses and skirts, with two homecoming tickets stashed away in the bottom of her purple wallet. Tracy’s hair is tucked beneath his hat, his hands encased in a pair of fingerless gloves.

  “How come you go by Tracy?” Scarlett asks, pausing to twirl the fabric of a dark blue dress between her fingers.

  “I was going to be Theresa if I was a girl,” Tracy says matter-of-factly.

  “Are you a girl?”

  Tracy shakes his head.

  “I’m a Tracy,” he says, chuckling under his breath. “Here—that one’s too big. What about you? Where’d Scarlett come from?”

  “It just sounded pretty,” Scarlett confesses. She moves on to another dress, frilly and white with a single shoulder strap. “Is it bad?”

  “It’s perfect,” Tracy says. “I knew a Scarlet in first grade. One ‘t,’ though, not two. Yours is two, right? You should try something on.”

  Scarlett shrugs and eyes the dress longingly. Tracy must notice. He reaches for it, drapes it over one arm, and grabs Scarlett once more by the wrist, dragging her aimlessly through the meandering labyrinth of the department store until they reach the fitting rooms. Sca
rlett stares the doors down anxiously. Men. Women. The signs stare back, unwavering, mocking her quietly.

  “You’re a girl, right?” Tracy says as though reading her mind. “So you use the women’s. Here. I’ll stand by the door for you.”

  Scarlett scurries into the room and locks the door behind her, then sheds her T-shirt and pulls the dress over her head. It hangs lamely on her thin frame, the hem reaching almost to her ankles, the shoulder strap falling off her arm. She shrugs it off and puts her own clothes back on.

  “It’s a no?” Tracy asks as she steps back out, holding the dress away from her body between a thumb and forefinger.

  “It’s a no,” she says.

  Tracy takes her by the hand. “We can look somewhere else.” He returns the dress to its home. “Scar?”

  “Let me just try one more on,” Scarlett says, holding up a sleeveless dress the bright red of her namesake. Tracy grins, flashing her his teeth, and leads her back to the fitting room.

  She stands in the single-stall room and looks her reflection over for what feels like hours before Tracy knocks on the door. She opens it slowly, cautiously, and stands aside. Tracy looks her up and down, smiling affectionately.

  “What?” she asks, her face hot. “Does it look bad?”

  “No,” Tracy says, pulling her into a hug. “You look beautiful.”

  NOT A month passes before the teacher gives the same order, sitting at her desk with one leg crossed over the other, the words dribbling from her lips like cigarette smoke. “Get in two lines, class—boys right here and girls over there.” Tracy and Scarlett exchange glances across the table. Tracy’s is bored, lackadaisical, his eyes half-lidded with weariness. He gives Scarlett a reassuring thumbs-up, his metal bracelets clanging against each other like tiny cymbals, his rings shining brightly in the fluorescent lights of the classroom. The other kids stand up and separate around them, ponytails and perfume in one line, facial hair and deep voices in the other.