Five Moments of Marjane

5.

Amelia and Marjane paint wounds on their faces for Halloween—dark rings around their eyes, lips cracked and stained with fake blood. They smear eye shadow around their necks to make bruises in the shape of hand prints.

“We look like twins,” Marjane says and squirts blood onto the fake knife sticking out of her stomach. Her pregnant belly is real, but Amelia’s is a volleyball stuffed under her shirt.

Their homeroom teacher sends them to the vice principal. He rubs his temple and sends them home to change. They walk holding hands, kicking up brown leaves in the gutter.

“Let’s take the baby trick-or-treating,” Amelia says.

They eat Mike and Ikes and the baby flips.

“Feel him, he’s wild,” Marjane says and places Amelia’s hands next to the knife.

4.

In the back of Walgreens, Marjane pokes at the pregnancy tests with her toe, straightening them into a line. She taps her fingers against the strap of her backpack. “I’ve only got three bucks,” she says.

“Just steal one,” Amelia says and plucks one from the bottom row. She rips the tab off and fishes inside the three-pack. “Here.”

Marjane slips it in her pocket and Amelia follows her out of the store. She gives her cover as Marjane squats behind a Volkswagen.

“You couldn’t have waited until we got to your house?” Amelia says and jumps out of the way of the spreading puddle.

“And have my mom find out, hell no. It’s turning blue. Is that good or bad?”

“Shit, I don’t know, we forgot to steal the directions.”

3.

At the carnival, Tim spends an hour, and at least thirty dollars, in hopes of winning Marjane a stuffed animal. He shoots water into a clown’s mouth, making a tiger rise and rise until the bell rings. She stands at his side, half in hope and half in boredom. He finally wins.

“Thank God,” Amelia says.

“Who even asked you to come?” Tim says.

Marjane’s prize is an ugly blue scraggily looking thing. It’s her fault. She’s on her fourth beer and when the guy behind the counter says, “Which one, Miss?”

She says, “How about the tiger?”

He rolls his eyes. “That’s part of the game.”

She picks the next thing she sees, a bear. She carries it by one arm, ashamed of it as they walk around eating funnel cake. Tim drops Amelia off and he and Marjane are alone in the car. She looks at him and the ugly thing he won for her and she decides after three months of no’s and maybe laters that tonight she’ll let him fuck her. When it’s over, she wipes up the pink mix of blood and come from the back seat and tells Tim, “I didn’t think it would be as awful as this.”

2.

Amelia and Tim share cigarettes and a fondness for Marjane’s long black hair. Amelia remembers how it smells of apples as Tim grinds his fingers into the seam of her jeans.

“If I ask her to have sex, you think she’ll say yes?” Tim says, giving up on making Amelia come.

“She might, but she’s a virgin,” Amelia says and replaces Tim’s hand with her own. “Tell me how you’ll dot it, tell me how you’ll touch her.” He whispers and Amelia comes and comes.

1.

Under a magnolia tree, the girls imagine their lives. They put fat fallen blossoms in each other’s hair.

Marjane says, “I’ll be notorious and bed dozens of men. I’ll be a drinker and live in six European countries before I die.”

Amelia says, “I’ll follow you to Paris where I’ll go to the Sorbonne and eat nothing but delicate pastries.”

A bloom falls from Marjane’s hair and Amelia bends to replace it.

“I’ve changed my mind,” she says and pushes the white flower over the top of Marjane’s ear, “Let’s imagine ourselves, always, like this.”