A Little Bit Ninja

19: A Little Bit Stalkerish and One Big Date

This was the other reason I couldn’t tell Abe what happened. He’d think I was dressing like a girl so as not to be confused with a “genderless freak”. Or worse, he’d think I wanted to impress Landon.  

The latter almost wrecked my resolution to be myself, without reference to what others thought of me. I would almost rather keep up with the tomboy façade—which includes suffering through the daily infringements upon fashion that were fast becoming splinters under my fingernails—just so he couldn’t have the satisfaction of believing that I changed the way I dressed for him.

In the end, Abe believed me when I told him the truth—the other part of it anyway. I wanted to wear skirts and do make-up. I’d been hypocritical all these years as I’d laughed and pointed at the girls wearing insensible (read: super cute) shoes.

 Landon’s reaction to my new look cemented the un-invitation to hang out with Abe and his friends. Never again did Landon show any interest in me, besides enjoyment in wrecking my life on bank holidays—until two days ago. And any other guy who came over with my brother’s friends, and said hi to me in an overfriendly way, never came back.

And it’s not like I suddenly couldn’t get along with Abe. I felt the shift in our relationship from mostly friend and a little bit sister, to more little sister than friend. We were still cool, but around his friends it wasn’t the same. I wasn’t just one of the guys any more.   

“Hey,” Abe looked at me questioningly, bringing me back to the present. “I was just asking. I don’t care if she wears guy clothes. It’s probably better than what you girls are rigging up for Friday.”

He gave an involuntary shiver as he looked at the little biker shorts, upon which Erica was carefully bedazzling words across the rear end.

“Does he really wear stuff like that?” Abe asked, a little sickened I’m sure, at the thought of watching a concert where a guy prances around in spandex booty shorts.

Erica, Millie and I exchanged amused glances before tides of laughter overcame us.

“Why in the world would you think he’d wear these?” Erica said from the floor where she’d been rolling among the sparkle glue, poster boards, and markers.

“When Beyonce came you copied her outfit from one of her videos, and with J-Lo you did that butt padding thing,” he shrugged. “And you half-way dreadlocked your hair when you went to Ke$ha. Didn’t you?” the confidence drained from his words as his speech progressed.

“Yeah, well, we aren’t about to dress up as guys,” Erica snickered.

I laughed again, but his guess was pretty close. We decided that if Justin were a girl, he’d be Brittany Spears. So we spun our ensemble ideas off of Brittany’s original, school girl look. I’d insisted on the undershorts, keeping in mind the very real possibility of my Friday night action including roundhouse kicks while sporting the plaid, pleated skirt.  

Abe shrugged again, like he didn’t think the idea were so farfetched.

“Well, um, I need to talk to you,” he said looking at that text from Landon again. “So come get me when you’re done with this.”

He waited for a nod from me before ducking out of my room.    

“So Jade, who was that girl you friended last night?” Millie asked with her eyes back on the laptop.

She was probably checking her Facebook right then, taking a break from her Justin research.

“Yeah, she looked just like you. You could be sisters,” Erica added, as she paused her bedazzlement to look up at me.