way she laughed and smiled. Just be Shannon, I thought to myself. And for
five minutes, I was.
Charles was looking at me strangely, the way I’d seen men look at
Shannon. He asked if I’d like to see a movie on Saturday. The movie he
suggested was vulgar, worldly, one I would never want to see, but I was
being Shannon, so I said I’d love to.
I tried to be Shannon on Saturday night. The movie was terrible, worse
than I’d expected, the kind of movie only a gentile would see. But it was hard
for me to see Charles as a gentile. He was just Charles. I thought about telling
him the movie was immoral, that he shouldn’t be seeing such things, but—
still being Shannon—I said nothing, just smiled when he asked if I’d like to
get ice cream.
Shawn was the only one still awake when I got home. I was smiling when I
came through the door. Shawn joked that I had a boyfriend, and it was a real
joke—he wanted me to laugh. He said Charles had good taste, that I was the
most decent person he knew, then he went to bed.
In my room, I stared at myself in the mirror for a long time. The first thing
I noticed was my men’s jeans and how they were nothing like the jeans other
girls wore. The second thing I noticed was that my shirt was too large and
made me seem more square than I was.
Charles called a few days later. I was standing in my room after a day of
roofing. I smelled of paint thinner and was covered in dust the color of ash,
but he didn’t know that. We talked for two hours. He called the next night,
and the one after. He said we should get a burger on Friday.
On Thursday, after I’d finished scrapping, I drove forty miles to the nearest
Walmart and bought a pair of women’s jeans and two shirts, both blue. When
I put them on, I barely recognized my own body, the way it narrowed and
curved. I took them off immediately, feeling that somehow they were
immodest. They weren’t, not technically, but I knew why I wanted them—for
my body, so it would be noticed—and that seemed immodest even if the
clothes were not.
The next afternoon, when the crew had finished for the day, I ran to the
house. I showered, blasting away the dirt, then I laid the new clothes on my
bed and stared at them. After several minutes, I put them on and was again
shocked by the sight of myself. There wasn’t time to change so I wore a
jacket even though it was a warm evening, and at some point, though I can’t