Chapter 13
TURNED INTO A GIRL
JOEY
Peppermint Sky by Abi Carter
I’ve been turned into a girl. And I hate how much I don’t hate it.
I leave my hair down in soft waves instead of the practical ponytail I usually wear.
Bypass my usual jeans for a sundress I’ve barely worn because there’s never been a reason.
Paint my nails a soft pink I’ll chip off tomorrow morning mucking stalls.
All because a boy let me remove his mask in a dark studio, and I slipped home at dawn still wearing yesterday’s clothes, bargaining with the floorboards not to betray me.
Jesse promised he’d text later. We’d figure out when to see each other again, and that promise is the only thing making this endless day bearable.
By the time the sun sets, he still hasn’t texted. I pick up my phone and type out a message.
Joey: How did rehearsal go?
I send it before I can second-guess myself, not wanting to sound desperate, but he promised we’d see each other tonight. The message shows as delivered but not read.
I head into the kitchen for a glass of water.
Mom and Dad are settled on the sofa, her feet tucked under his legs while she reads a book and he scrolls through channels on the TV.
This is what they do every evening. This is what steady looks like: two people who chose each other decades ago and still find the same couch at the end of every day.
I’ve never questioned it. Never envied it.
But tonight the simplicity of them aches in a way I can’t name, because I don’t know if what I have with Jesse will ever look this easy.
Mom glances up as I pass by, taking in my appearance. “You look nice. Are you going out tonight?”
I was supposed to. Now I don’t know anymore.
“I wanted to wear something other than jeans,” I say, filling a glass at the sink.
“You never wear dresses. Didn’t realize you even owned any except the one you tore at the party,” Dad says.
“Can’t a girl wear a dress in her own home?” I protest and immediately regret it when I get strange reactions from both of them. I never raise my voice, at least not at them. Unlike my sister, whose dramatic behavior filled the house with high-pitched scoffs and indignant protests on a daily basis.
“What’s gotten into you?” Dad asks.
Mom’s book sits forgotten on her lap. She watches me with the particular stillness she uses when she’s reading a horse’s body language, the same patience, the same quiet assessment.
“Nothing. I’m hungry.” I rummage around in the refrigerator until I find something I can stomach and retreat to my room.
But I pause in the hallway, one hand on my doorframe, the lie still warm on my tongue. It’s not the dishonesty that unsettles me. It’s how easy it was.
I’ve never had a secret worth keeping before. Every crush, every small triumph, every feeling I ever dared to have became shared property, filtered through Maggie’s opinions. And I never minded because I didn’t know there was another option.
But Jesse is mine. Completely, selfishly mine.
No one else’s fingerprints on him. No one else’s commentary shaping what I feel.
And I’m not ready to hand that over—not to my parents, not to Maggie, not to the complicated history between our families that would turn this new and fragile thing into everyone else’s conversation.
I close my bedroom door and press my back against it.
The girl my parents raised would never choose a secret over their trust. But the girl Jesse’s hands were on last night? She’d choose it again tomorrow.
I check my phone. Still delivered. Not read.
I try again.
Joey: Where are you?
Nothing.
The rational part of my brain says he might be busy. Rehearsals run long. Not everything is about me.
But I’ve been here before.
I was sixteen, standing barefoot in a tide pool with Jesse’s hand warm in mine.
He was different then—easy, open, the kind of boy who laughed with his whole body and never seemed to carry anything heavy.
We’d grown up trading music like secrets, his earbuds pressed into my palm so I could hear whatever new song had wrecked him, scribbled lyrics passed between us on napkins and torn notebook pages.
He’d play me something and watch my face while I listened, and I’d pretend not to notice how much my reaction mattered to him.
Music was our language before we had words for what we were.
But when I crouched to trace a starfish clinging to the rock, he knelt beside me so close that our shoulders touched.
I looked up and caught him watching me with something new behind his eyes.
Not friendship. Something deeper. I could taste the salt on the breeze between our mouths, and every nerve in my body tuned to the frequency of him.
A wave surged over the rocks and soaked us both. We fell over laughing, the moment broken by cold water and tangled limbs, but the charge of it hummed between us the entire walk home while his hand kept finding mine.
I was so certain we’d crossed a line we couldn’t uncross.
So certain that when I texted him the next morning, I didn’t even hesitate.
But he didn’t respond. Or the day after.
Days bled into weeks, and when I finally saw him again, he couldn’t meet my eyes.
A wall stood where there’d never been one before, and I had no idea what I’d done to put it there.
No more earbuds. No more lyrics. The boy who used to share every song in his head went quiet, and the silence between us stretched into years.
I would replay that afternoon in my head, searching for the moment I’d ruined it. Too eager? Too obvious? Too much?
I won’t survive the not-knowing twice.
I pull off the sundress, toss it into the hamper harder than necessary, and trade it for my pajamas. A thin cotton tank top and sleep shorts that say I’m done waiting around for a guy to decide I’m worth responding to.
Except the anger won’t hold. It’s a costume, same as the sundress, and underneath it is the thing I don’t want to name. I press my face into the pillow and breathe until the tightness in my throat loosens. My phone sits dark on the nightstand.
I put in my earbuds and shuffle through playlists, searching for something that doesn’t remind me of him. Except every song does. I pull them out and lie in the silence instead.
The house grows quiet around me. I slide under my covers and stare at the ceiling.
There’s a tap against my bedroom window.
I hold still, listening. Probably a branch scraping in the breeze. But the sound comes again, more insistent. Too rhythmic to be random.
I slip out of bed and cross to the window. Pushing the curtain aside, I peer into the darkness.
Jesse’s face pops into view and I slap a hand over my mouth to stop from screaming. He stands in front of the window, hands shoved deep in his jeans pockets, hair mussed as if he’s been running his fingers through it for hours.
“What the fuck?” I whisper-shout, sliding the window up.
He’s here. He came. And I hate how much that matters when I’ve spent all night convincing myself it wouldn’t.
“Why didn’t you answer my texts?” I grip the windowsill.
“My phone died during rehearsal,” he says, jaw tightening and agitation flickers across his features. “I didn’t have my charger in the car, and I drove straight here. I had to see you.”
“Didn’t rehearsal end hours ago?”
He blinks as if the hours between rehearsal and now are a gap he can’t quite account for. My stomach tightens.
“It ran late. I’m sorry.”
“I’ve been sitting here in a stupid dress, watching my phone, not knowing if you’d changed your mind about us.” I raise my voice.
The corner of his mouth twitches. “You wore a dress for me?”
I place a hand on my hip. “That’s what you took from that sentence?”
He leans into the window frame, craning his neck to get a better look at me. I plant my palm on his forehead and push him back out, but I can’t help laughing, the tension easing inside of me.
“I would have really liked to see that.”
“You would have, if you’d shown up earlier,” I say, and his grin fades.
He’s quiet for a moment as he taps a restless rhythm with his fingers against the windowsill.
“I got into it with the band.” His voice drops, rough and unsteady.
“About what?”
“I left them at the show last night. I broke protocol,” he admits.
“Oh,” I say, blinking against the knowledge that it was because of me that he left the way he did.
“Tommy and Luke were pissed, and they’re right, I could have blown everything. I should have come straight here after but I—” He stops and swallows hard. “I wasn’t in a good place, Joey. And I didn’t want to bring that to your door.”
But he came anyway. He’s standing at my window instead of letting the silence come between us.
I’m more relieved than angry, and right now that’s enough.
“Hold on,” I whisper. “Meet me in the barn. My parents will hear if we talk here.”
He nods and disappears into the shadows. I grab my boots and slip out of my room as quietly as possible. The house is silent as I make my way through the dark kitchen and out the back door.