15 Kierra
15
Kierra
Thirteen Years Old
Three painful, unruly years of suffering, and I was officially free from the torture and agony of wearing braces.
Brace Face was officially retired.
“They look great, don’t they?” Mom mentioned as I stared in the bathroom mirror after we got back from the orthodontist’s office. I had a hard time realizing that it was my reflection staring back at me. My teeth were straight, white, and beautiful.
I could smile without having a whole wire contraption move up with the curve of my lips. The kids at school would no longer have the pleasure of calling me names, even though their stupid nicknames for me weren’t even creative. Getting dressed, I wouldn’t stretch out my shirts anymore, either.
Life was about to be better than it ever had been, and I couldn’t stop giggling to myself about it.
“I am so hot!” I exclaimed, striking a pose in the mirror.
Mom laughed but agreed. “You are beautiful,” she said. She kissed my forehead. “But you were always beautiful, Kierra.”
“Yeah, yeah, you’re my mom so you have to say that, but look at me!” I grinned as big as possible. My cheeks rose so high that my eyes closed from how hard I was smiling.
I headed to school feeling as if I were on top of the world. The whole day, I walked around with the biggest smirk on my face ever. I wanted everyone to see that smile of mine after all they’d seen were braces.
After school, I headed to the locker room and switched into my white outfit for softball practice. I never felt more confident in my life as I headed out for practice. As our team practiced, the guys’ baseball team and the track team were outside warming up, too. There were dozens of my peers around, and I made sure to smile toward as many as I could.
That was until people started whispering and pointing in my direction. At first, I thought it was due to my bright, shiny new smile, but then I realized they weren’t smiling at me, they were laughing at me.
Rosie came darting over toward me with a frown on her lips. “Uh, Kierra?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t freak out…” she started.
Which was enough to make me want to freak out.
“What? What!”
“You got your period, and it’s leaking through your white pants.”
What?
What!
I glanced down at my pants and then looked up to see everyone laughing at me. My stomach knotted up from panic as their laughter grew more and more. Everyone was laughing except for Gabriel. When I looked at Gabriel, he was frowning and looked sorry for me, and that only made me angrier and more embarrassed.
I dropped my catcher’s glove and darted toward the locker room, completely humiliated by the whole thing. You could imagine my surprise when I heard Gabriel’s voice in the locker room calling out toward me.
“Kierra? Are you in here?” he asked.
“Just leave me alone, will you!” I barked, feeling tears building in my eyes as I hid in a bathroom stall, completely mortified that I’d finally became a “woman” the day after I’d finished being called Brace Face. Only to have that reveal happen so publicly in front of all the kids who bullied me for years.
What was even worse was that Gabriel had witnessed the embarrassment. I’d have to keep my window shade pulled for months for fear that he might actually see me and mock me.
I sat in the bathroom, sobbing my eyes out, as Gabriel stood on the other side of the door. “You’re not even supposed to be in the girls’ locker room!” I shouted.
“You think I want to be in here?” he grumbled. I hated the sound of his voice, and I hated how it squeaked every now and then, too. Some days, Gabriel’s voice sounded like a five-year-old’s, and others like a fifty-year-old’s. And in between those two, he sounded like my favorite thing in the world. I didn’t understand that part, yet. But sometimes his voice made me feel safe.
“If you don’t want to be here, then just go,” I ordered.
“I am,” he stated, but I noticed his feet not moving at all.
“No, you’re not.”
“Yeah, I am just… Here,” he spat out, holding his hand beneath the bathroom stall. In his hand was a duffel bag.
“What’s that for?”
“I had some clean stuff I was gonna wear after football practice. Some sweats and boxers. I figured you might want it. I stuffed some of those pad things in there, too. My mom had some extras in her car.”
My chest tightened as I froze. Was he…offering me his clothes? So I wouldn’t have to walk out of the locker room completely embarrassed? Was he helping me out?
“Is this some kind of trick?” I asked.
“Look, if you don’t want the freaking clothes, then fine. I’ll take them bac—”
Before he could rescind his offer, I leaped from the toilet seat and snatched the bag from his grip. I held it close to my chest, uncertain what to say. I combed my hair out of my face and opened my mouth to speak, but before I could, Gabriel’s feet disappeared. The locker room door opened and shut quickly after, showing that he pretty much darted out of the room.
The tears kept falling from my eyes as I changed into Gabriel’s clothes. I wore his briefs, slapped the pad on them, slipped into his black sweatpants, and then tossed on his football shirt with our school logo on it.
After calming myself enough to exit the locker room, I hurried out to the parking lot, where Dad was waiting to pick me up.
The moment he saw me, he arched an eyebrow. “Whose clothes are those?” he asked me.
My cheeks heated as I slid into the passenger seat and snapped my seat belt on quickly. “It doesn’t matter. Drive, Dad.”
He shook his head. “Those are boy’s clothes. Kierra Elizabeth Hughes, why are you wearing—”
“ I got my Aunt Flo, Dad! ” I shouted at him, bursting into tears. Even with the change of clothes, I still felt humiliated and tired, and in a hurry to leave the school premises as soon as possible. The last thing I needed was my father asking me why I was wearing some boy’s clothes. I was still traumatized from the past fifteen minutes, which felt as if they’d lasted for fifteen years. I couldn’t believe that I’d have to return to school the following day. If anything, I should’ve been online finding a one-way ticket to Iceland or something.
Dad still didn’t drive. He just did that dad thing that dads did when they appeared completely clueless to the reality around them. “Wait, why are you crying? What does that even mean, Kier—”
“ My period, Dad! ” I said as I tossed my hands in the air in complete defeat. “I got my period in the middle of practice, and everyone saw it on my white uniform, and now I am humiliated and need you to drive right now because I need to get as far away from this place as possible.”
Dad blinked a few times as he gripped the steering wheel. “Ohhh.” He nodded. “Got it. Now look, Kierra. I know this is more of a mother-and-daughter conversation that should take place. But I want you to know that getting your period is a beautiful, natural thing and—”
As he spoke, a few girls walked past the car and pointed at me, giggling.
I leaned toward him and slammed my hands on his shoulders. “Dad, please. This is not the moment for you to be all awesome and girl-dad, okay? I need you to drive.”
“Right, okay, let’s go.” He put the car into drive and I slunk deeper into the leather seat of his car, wishing that I could melt into the fabric and never be seen again.
After we got to the house, I hurried inside with the duffel bag and shot straight past Mom in the direction of my bedroom.
“Well, hello to you, too, Kierra. Are you—” Mom started, but I didn’t stop at all.
As I hurried away, I heard Dad say, “She got her Aunt Flo today.”
I slammed my door shut quickly before I could hear anything else.
***
“What is it?” Gabriel asked, opening his bedroom window that I’d been pounding on for the past minute or so.
I shoved the duffel bag his way. “Here.”
“Oh. Thanks.” He scratched at the back of his neck. “You all right?”
“Why do you care?”
“ I don’t ,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “But my mom told me I should ask you if you were all right.”
“I don’t want you to just ask if I’m all right because your mom told you to ask me.”
“Fine, pretend I didn’t ask.” He went to close the window.
“Wait!” I yelped, darting my hand through his window to stop him from shutting it. “I have something else for you. One second.”
I hurried back to my window, climbed inside, and grabbed the plate of cookies Mom made for me from my desk. I darted out the window and headed back to Gabriel. “Here.”
“What’s this?”
“Period cookies.”
His eyes widened with complete disgust. “You made cookies with your period?!”
“What? No, weirdo. My mom made cookies to celebrate me getting my period. It means I’m a woman now.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Oh.” He picked up a cookie and bit into it. “Cool.”
I wasn’t sure what else to say to him, so I said, “Whatever. Bye, dick.”
“Bye, Penguin,” he replied before snatching another cookie. He shut his window as I climbed back into mine. Then I thought about him all freaking night.
***
The next month, there was a knock at my window. I went to open it to find Gabriel standing there with a plate in his hands.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Cookies. For…you know…”
I scrunched up my nose. “How do you know I need cookies now?”
“Because I guess that thing happens to girls every month around the same time, so I made cookies with my mom so you wouldn’t become a grumpy ogre.”
“Oh…” How sweet and kind of mean? I didn’t know. Gabriel confused my mind more than any other person ever did. I took the cookies and I bit into one. “Thanks.”
“Are they good?”
“Yes, but I like oatmeal cookies the best.”
“Nobody likes oatmeal cookies the best, except for old ladies who live with fifteen cats.”
“And me,” I said, taking another bite. “With raisins. But these are good, too.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
“Well…” He took a deep breath. “Bye.”
“Bye.” I stood still as he turned around and started walking to his window. “Hey, Gabriel?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you want to be friends or something?”
He scratched his chin and shrugged. “Okay.”
He made me oatmeal cookies every month after that.
With raisins.