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Samantha
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“DO BALLS REALLY turn blue?” Elphaba said as she swung past Glinda.
“No, they just ache. Why, is Zev pushing third base?”
The director called down from the stage rigging. “One more minute, Samantha. We’re almost done.”
“Hey, no problem. This is great.” She swam through the air, making fish lips at Jamie. “No, not really, but I hear guys complain about them all the time.”
“Not sure I’m cool being your go-to scrotum resource.”
“Well, I’m not asking Brace.” She handed Jamie her cellphone.
On it was a text from Zev: Scored us tickets to M.I.A. @ Summerfest!
“Um, that’s months away.” Jamie skipped around a swinging Samantha. “Going to the chapel, and they’re gonna get married.”
Samantha could not help but laugh. “It’s your fault. I took your advice.” On hers and Zev’s third date, she had played him some M.I.A., a Sri Lankan woman whose raps and beats were edgy and catchy enough that anyone would be intrigued. She told Zev that when she watched him and the rest of the team pile out of the locker room, then skate across the rink all she could hear was the galloping thump of “Boyz” and its celebratory rant about crazy playas. She told him: it triggers something primal and sexual, some illogical place that responds to what would make my feminist side scream. Zev’s mouth had hung slightly open at that.
Jamie waved her wand in circles through the air, practicing her witchy goodness. “Is he a good kisser?”
“Yeah, he’s nice. A little conservative. I could handle some tongue.”
Jamie unleashed a campy giggle and batted her eyes. “Goodness, Elphaba, you really must control yourself.”
Samantha’s harness rapidly dropped by a foot. “Hey!”
“Sorry,” the stagehand called from above. He pulled her up again, but the wires were now at different lengths and she rose sideways.
“This is making my cramps like ten times worse. Uhhh. Check my butt, Jame, I would die if I bled all over the stage.”
“That would be awesome. Wicked meets Madame Butterfly.”
“Shut it.”
“Nope, you’re fine.” Jamie tapped Samantha’s shoulder with the wand and said in a sweetly sardonic voice, “Simply click your heels and all your misery will be gone.”
“Imma clickin’ and it ain’t working.”
“What do cramps feel like? I would love to have a period, just once.”
“Are you crazy? It feels like someone’s carving a jack o’ lantern inside my belly. That’s like me wanting to know what it’s like to get kicked in the nuts.”
Jamie gazed at Samantha as they reeled Elphaba up to the rafters.
“You comfortable, Sam?” the director asked.
“Sorta.”
“Think you can do ‘Defying Gravity’ from here?”
“It’s the singing while going up that’s going to be tough. I’ve never had to project from a rope before. It’s like I don’t have anything to push from.”
“Well, let’s try it. Take her down.”
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ON THE WALK home, Jamie was quieter than usual.
“I didn’t mean to suggest you don’t deserve a period,” Samantha said.
“I know.” Jamie nodded. “It’s no big thing.”
“You want one of my pads to try?”
“S’okay.” Jamie slung a hand over Samantha’s shoulder. “I can always grab one of Mom’s if I want to try it. I was just thinking how shitty it would be if our parents said we couldn’t hang out. We would have never been in this play together.”
“I know. That would suck.”
Grandma said Mom and Dad were too lenient. But Mom said it was better to bring the kids’ friends into the home rather than forbid them and find out later they’d been hanging out and doing drugs. If she ended up thinking the kid was bad news, which she sometimes did, she would talk to the kid or their parents. The funny thing was, the Heathrows weren’t exactly crazy about Jamie running around with the granddaughter of Senator Larson.
“It must have been hell for your mom and Lucy.”
“Yeah, I guess.” Honestly, Samantha hadn’t wanted to think about that part. Yes, they were both snooping in on Lucy’s blog and it was totally possible that her mom was the “Vicky” that “Liesl” referred to. And that eventually, Mom would—at the least convenient moment—come plop down on Samantha’s bed and spill her guts, tell Samantha way more than Samantha wanted to hear to make up for the fact that she’d kept it quiet so long. But no, just no. Not to mention the almighty shitstorm that would ensue if Grandma ever caught wind of it.
Jamie ignored the passing stares of the shoppers as they walked the sidewalk along Main Street. “I wonder if we could help her. Talk her out.”
Samantha couldn’t be sure if the stares came because Jamie still looked a bit like a boy or strikingly pretty. Maybe both. “No way. I’m not talking to her about that stuff. That’s way too personal, Jame.”
“Not face-to-face, alexander-dum-ass. By commenting.”
“Rolf68 is already trying that.”
Honestly, “Liesl” staying in the closet could be better for “Vicky.” But why did Samantha even have to consider this? It was no fun anymore. Sure, Samantha liked getting to know Lucy. But it was becoming too much to take in. She preferred the woman up on a festival stage holding court in ripped jeans not a church podium struggling along with the mortals.
“Did you read the last post about her feet?” Jamie asked.
“Yeah. God.” Samantha nodded.
“I started a poem about her. Needs work.”
“Text me it tonight. We’ll figure it out.”
They crossed the lift bridge. Jamie stopped midway and gazed down at the melting river, which flowed past in gray chunks. “My folks are considering Minneapolis for reals next year.”
“That school with the GLBT program that Lucy mentioned?”
“Yeah.” Jamie’s face pinched. “Cooper.”
“That’s awesome.” Samantha made herself smile.
“Yeah. It is.”
A chill breeze blew up, glancing off the ice, and they continued to the end of the bridge.
“Maybe I could be an honorary gay and join too.”
“Of course, you’re totally queer at heart. Yunno, it’s mostly straight kids there anyway.”
But they both knew the Larsons weren’t moving to Minneapolis. Ever.
“Man, it’s really great, Jame. Really great. You totally deserve this.”
They walked up the street in silence.
The first thing Samantha was going to tell her mom—if the woman ever got up the nerve to really talk to her again—was that you didn’t have to be “in love” with someone to have your heart torn out.