Was it such a bad thing? Such a bad word? There was more that covered my bones, more that protected me from hurtful, confusing words.
Chubby. Puffy. Thick. Each one pricked my ears. Grown-ups always thought you weren’t listening. Always thought you weren’t really able to grasp what they were whispering about.
I hid behind worn, wide-legged jeans and No Fear T-shirts that were two sizes too big. A tent that covered me and drew over all that I did not want exposed. I had round owl glasses that I was constantly pushing up, wrinkling my nose to see better. I was not young enough to be a cute little girl, but not old enough to be even considered pretty. The “awkward” phase is what they called it. As if I didn’t feel abnormal enough, it had to be labeled with such a word. “She’ll blossom, you wait and see. My youngest was like her.”
Blossom? Was I a flower? When would this blossoming finally happen?
Mom began to fold the shopping bag and held it against her chest, her expression softening.
“We could go shopping for some new clothes? Maybe something more, well—just you and me could go?”
Something more attractive. Something more like what Marlow would wear?
As though on cue, Marlow slipped into my room.
Nothing Marlow wore could hide her beauty.
I remember the morning when it confronted us all. She came down to breakfast and straight into the net of “the moment.” When the culmination of all the little changes collected, to the point where it was enough to make us all realize she was not a little girl anymore. Her shape was one that did not draw in comments. The reactions were silent. Words were not appropriate in response to her outline, her legs that sprouted out so quickly Mom had to buy her new clothes twice in a month. She was a gazelle. The ideal form of what men and women feasted their eyes upon.
She was now of another world.
I saw the look in Dad’s eyes. The near embarrassment of staring at her. The quick lowering of his eyes down to his newspaper.
It was hard not to stare at her. She was twelve and could pass easily for a teenager. She had a confidence in her posture that I never would. I don’t think her skin had the ability to ever grow a pimple, let alone any sort of blemish. It contained a remarkable smoothness that made me want to run my finger over her forearm to see if it was real. To say she had grown into a beauty was ridiculous. She had always been one.
Yet I found it all so peculiar. The prowess she suddenly wielded over everyone. The measurement of her waist. Her breasts. Her legs. Her neck. Her cheekbones. Her eyes. Her lips. The exact formation and outcome of every cell was worth so much. The weight.
The weight she now carried.
“You want to borrow something of mine?” Marlow asked, her head resting on part of my bedroom doorframe.
Her hair was slicked back into a low ponytail; it wrapped around her neck and down over her shoulder. She looked so grown up and yet so eager, so ready to be of use no matter how small. I almost lied and told her I would love to borrow something.
I could see Mom shift her shoulders uncomfortably. Ever since Marlow got her period before me, she looked at her as if she were something that had malfunctioned. She displayed an uneasy energy around her that she wasn’t able to hide.
Mom shook her head. “I don’t think your size would work.”
“What about some of my sweaters? Isla, you’d look great in the tan—”
“Thanks, Marlow. But I’ll take her to the mall before school starts Monday.”
Her words were polite, affable—how one would speak to a bank teller. This was the bar she had somehow set for them, mother and daughter.
Soon, Marlow would be navigating the halls of Henley Middle School, a place I felt I had finally conquered in some limited capacity. I would be one of the older kids, two grades ahead of her, and she would be starting at square one.
By the second day of school, Marlow had already intoxicated the entire student body with her presence. She was a sweeping force, putting Moses parting the Red Sea to shame with her ability to silence any section of the hallway she passed. Kids went out of their way to make room for her, as if their touch would taint her. I wasn’t surprised. Not really, anyway. I would feel a familiar sting anytime I heard whispers that grew into loud voices. No way, they’re sisters? How is that even possible? Didn’t you hear how they found her?
In the past, I would at least have had Sawyer to lean on. We would have sat back together, making our own jokes as we took in Marlow’s newfound fame. But everything about him was different. Quieter. Bigger. Cloudier. He had shot up a full head taller than me, and his hair had started to darken and thicken. It was shaggy and covered his ears and sometimes his eyes. I wanted to brush it away badly, but touching him now was a foreign thing. It seemed to have dawned on him over the summer, as his limbs sprouted out longer and skinnier than ever, that it didn’t bode well for him to have females as his closest friends.
The changes were small at first. A breakfast skipped at our house because of an early soccer practice; he’d grabbed a granola bar instead. Going over to the Bollinger twins’ house to study for the exam, since “Topher was really good at math and everything.” Lingering longer at his locker until I went on without him to the bus.
“Sorry, I forgot something,” he would say when he finally caught up, an apologetic smile mixed with a little shame. Shame because he knew I wasn’t that stupid, and for saying something so generic.
On the bus, he began to sit next to Topher, their heads bent over together. Greta would be his replacement, as she stiffly slid in next to me.
Eventually he wasn’t waiting for me or walking with me at all.
Oliver would often join me instead. He never got the urge to separate himself from me like the bad part of an apple that gets lopped off.
“Why aren’t you trying out for soccer like the other boys?” I asked, hands tugging at my backpack straps.
He squinted up at me. His growth spurt had not hit him like the others. “Why aren’t you over there with Marlow and her groupies?”
“Fair enough,” I replied as he smirked.
The following afternoon, Marlow ran up from behind and linked arms with me as a flock of sixth and seventh grade girls looked on with envy. Why was I the one who got to walk with Marlow Baek? Who was I, anyway? The pudgy girl with baggy clothes and stringy hair.
“Sawyer is just trying to be one of the guys now,” she said in my ear.
“What makes you say that?”
“Isla, I know it’s been bothering you.”
I scoffed. “And when did you get so wise?”
“I’m not. But remember I’m here, too, you know.” She elbowed me and smiled.
I nodded and looked ahead to our bus.
