On the Cusp of Ladyhood

I was surrounded by pink.  And flowers.  And every type of Beanie Baby ever made.  I took in the room around me, trying to figure out where to begin the destruction.

I could start with ripping the “Kutest Kitties” poster that resided right above my bed off the wall.  Or taking down the purple flowered curtains and throwing them in the fireplace in our living room.  Or, if I wanted to really go big, I could start painting my Piglet pink walls something more sophisticated, like blue or white.  This looked like the room of a child, not a freshman in high school.  I mean, I was on the cusp of becoming a lady.  I wasn’t a little girl anymore, no matter how much my family wanted to constantly remind me or what my bedroom looked like.

I spent all summer trying to not be that awkward preteen that would come home everyday from school and watch Disney Channel or go to sleep with my teddy bear tucked under my arm. Instead, I would sneak into my older sister Wendy’s room and read her journal to see how a teenager, excuse me, I mean, a lady acts.  And pink walls, flower curtains, and a Beanie Baby collection did not make the cut.  Instead, it was about carrying yourself with poise (whatever that meant) and looking put together.  And Wendy was the most put together person I knew.  She was a senior in high school now and her room looked nothing like mine.  Her walls were white, she had art and pantings on them, and instead of Beanie Babies, she collected pictures of her and her friends.

A knock brought me out of my thoughts and redecorating ideas.  I looked up and for a second, forgot how to breathe.

“Hey Lily.”  It was Mason.  He was standing in my doorway and he was smiling at me in that way that made me want to giggle uncontrollably.  His hair was perfectly quaffed up and to the side and I know that he gets it like that by running his fingers through it.  I’ve seen him do it plenty of times.

“Wendy and I are going to watch a movie downstairs.  Do you want to watch it with us?”

I wanted to respond but all I could think about was the fact that Mason’s eyes were the color of my frog Beanie Baby.  Wait, no, I mean, the color of forest evergreen.  Then I realized that those eyes were able to see the embarrassment that I called my room.  In all its childish glory.  I could feel my cheeks beginning to burn as I nodded, unable to let the words out.

“Awesome, I’ll see you down there,” he said with a smile on his face before turning around and walking towards the stairs.  I listened to the sound of his footsteps until they became so muffled by the carpet that I couldn’t hear them anymore.  I looked around my room and let out a sigh, my shoulders dropping.  There was so much to fix and I didn’t have the slightest clue on where to begin.  I leaned back and flopped on my bed, discouraged and humiliated.  I was 14, not 10.  Time to grow up and stop acting like that awkward girl I once was, and apparently still seem to be.

I covered my face with my hands, ashamed Mason had to see me in such a young, immature setting.  Granted, he’s known me for a little over a year now so luckily this wasn’t his first impression of me but in that time, I have managed to not let him into the room I once called my sanctuary.  I’ve had a crush on him since the moment I saw him sitting at our kitchen table.  I had gone downstairs to the kitchen to get something to eat that wouldn’t hurt my braces when I saw him sitting there in his school sweatshirt, tapping his pencil against the side of his head.  He was staring down at an open notebook in front of him, a couple papers strewn in a neat pile in the middle of the table.  I froze at the bottom of the staircase, the sight of an attractive, yet unfamiliar guy making my feet unable to continue forward.

“Oh, hey Lily,” my sister said, bounding down the stairs behind me.

The guy at the table looked up, locking eyes with me for the first time.  I was surprised by the butterflies that erupted in my stomach at his gaze.

“Lily, this is my friend Mason from school.  Mason, this is my little sister Lily,” Wendy said, motioning between us.  “Mason came over to study today.”  He suddenly got up from his chair, with a kind smile on his face and walked over to me, reaching his hand out.

“Hi Lily, it’s nice to meet you.”

The kindness in his smile never faded and all I could do was smile tightly so my braces didn’t show and slightly nod, shaking his hand.  Wendy started over to the table Mason had been sitting at and he followed.  She sat down in the chair across from him and grabbed the pile of papers.

“Isn’t she adorable?” Wendy asked Mason, her tone light and cheerful.

Yes Wendy, I was about as adorable as a a piece of pizza you accidentally dropped onto the floor. 

A couple months after that and numerous study dates at our house, Wendy and Mason made it official and I had the pleasure of falling in love with my sister’s boyfriend.  That doesn’t seem very poised or put together, does it?

It’s not like I really could help it though.  I loved the way he would always close his eyes when he laughed really hard, especially when he was watching his favorite movie 21 Jump Street.  And the way his dimple on his left cheek would show when he smiled, like when he talked about how happy he was when he went to his older sister’s wedding.  It’s like everything about him made my knees want to buckle or scribble his initials in Sharpie on my school notebook.  But that’s not where his initials were.  They were written in my journal, one I started writing after I started reading Wendy’s.  I filled the pages with how cute I thought Mason was, little quirks I noticed about him, and how much I actually did love him.  My journal was the only place I didn’t have to hide this truth.  I could spend hours writing about my day and all that happened, but most of the time, I wrote about Mason.  It was torture, being in love with my sister’s boyfriend and I never knew what to do about those feelings.  He was usually at our house after school everyday, being all cutesy with Wendy and it hurt that nobody looked at me the way he did with her.  He would smile at her and look into her eyes, doing all that romantic crap that used to appall me.  Now it only made me jealous.  Because here was Mason, a perfectly beautiful, smart, kind, and funny guy, making my sister happy, while I sat in my room writing in my journal about how I wished that was me.  I just wanted to be happy and loved like Wendy was, and a lot of that came from Mason.

A sudden soft noise appeared the floor below me, reminding me that my sister and her boyfriend were waiting for me to start a movie.  I sat up on my bed and looked around, deciding that there was too much work to be done that evening.  Revamping my image would have to wait till tomorrow. 

“Lily, c’mon, we’re ready to start the movie!” I heard Wendy shout from downstairs.

At her words, I slowly dragged my body up and towards the door.  Past the pink walls, the flower curtains, and the Beanie Babies.  Past everything that signified who I had been for pretty much the past 14 years and everything I was trying to grow out of, towards the people I was striving to be like.

My feet quickly padded down the stairs and into our family room.  Mason and Wendy were seated next to each other on the couch, Wendy curled up by her side.  The side made me want to puke and cry from heart break at the same time.  But mainly just puke.

“Lily, can you pass me the remote?” Mason asked.

“Yeah,” I muttered.  “What are we watching?”

“21 Jump Street.”

“I should’ve known,” I smiled a bit, handing the remote to him.  He smiled back up at me and I actually had to stifle a giggle.  He clicked play and I took a seat on the ground, my back leaning up against the bottom of the couch.  My usual position.  And I sat there for the next hour and forty nine minutes, listening to Mason bust up laughing and Wendy whisper to him lovingly.  Mason had bought me a copy for Christmas and I remember blushing when I opened it that morning.  I knew this was his favorite movie so for him to have given me my own copy, it was like he was officially sharing it with me.  He was giving me a piece of him and that meant the world to me.  I had grown attached to Mason, with seeing him so much and being around him for quite awhile.  He never treated me like I was Wendy’s younger sister, like I needed to be babied or anything.  Mason just treated me kindly and as if I was one of his peers.  He would always say hi to me and ask how I was doing, which was more than what most guys I went to school with would do.  He went with Wendy to my volleyball games and even made a sign once that said “We’re With #2”.  He would help me with my homework if I got stumped and would try to make me laugh if I came home from a tough day at school.  I could see why Wendy was so in love with him, because they were the exact same reasons I was in love with him too.

I couldn’t help but roll my eyes when I heard Wendy whispering again so when the credits started rolling, I jumped up off the floor and scurried back to my room, briefly saying goodbye to Mason before he left.  I immediately went to my nightstand to grab my journal, just wanting to write about Mason’s smile today.  Man, did he have a good smile.  But when my fingers grazed across the cover, it wasn’t my journal in my hand.  It was Wendy’s.  

“Wendy!” My voice carried through the house.  I flipped through the pages, pages I had already read as Wendy’s footsteps got louder.

“What?  Why are you screaming?” Wendy asked, standing in my doorway, confusion and slight annoyance painted on her face.

“Why is your journal in my room?”

“I don’t know.  We probably just mixed them up by accident.”

My heart started thumping loudly in my chest, imaging Wendy’s eyes falling on the words I had written about her boyfriend.  Her boyfriend that she was head over heels in love with.  Her boyfriend that I was head over heels in love with.

“Yours is probably just in my room.  Here, c’mon, lets go get it,” she said, motioning me with her towards her room.

I wasted no time in closing the space, following at her heels till we got to her sophisticated space.  She went around to her side table but came up empty.  She walked over to her backpack in the corner but came up empty again.  She wandered over to her desk and flipped through the papers on top of it.

“I’m not seeing it Lily.”

I could feel my eyes grow wide at her comment and like a thin layer of sweat was growing on my upper lip.  This can’t be happening right now.  I could feel my anxiety slowly begin to build and I knew it was going to lead to some sort of outburst.  Signs of puberty, my mom would say.

“Where could it be Wendy?  I need my journal!”

“You know what, I think it might of gotten jumbled up in my homework earlier.  There were a lot of papers all over my desk.”

“Well where is your homework?”

“It’s with Mason.  I gave it to him so he could compare our notes.”

I wanted to throw up.  My journal, full of confessions of how much I liked Mason, was with him.  That time I didn’t even try to hold myself up.  I let my knees buckle right out from under me.