Bright Purple: Color Me Confused with Bonus Content (14 page)

“Someone ought to set that girl straight,” he says.

I laugh. “Was that a pun?”

“Maybe.”

“I wish she would go back to straight.”

“Well, that’s probably not going to happen, Ramie. you might as well accept that Jess is a lesbian and just move on. Just get over it, you know.”

“That’s easier said than done.”

He nods. “Yeah, I’m sure it is. If it makes you feel any better, even my dad is a little stumped about this whole thing.”

“So, he knows about Jess?”

“Yeah. I heard him and my mom talking. Jess’s mom and my mom are pretty good friends, you know. Mrs. LeCroix told my mom the whole story.”

“So, what does your dad plan to do?”

“He said he’s praying about it.”

Just then the doorbell rings. “I wonder who that is,” I say, starting to get up.

“Why don’t you let me get it?” he offers.

The next thing I know Jess is standing in my house and both Mitch and I are kind of speechless. Like, speak of the devil. Not that Jess is the devil exactly. But, still, it’s pretty weird seeing her here, especially after we were just talking about her.

“You didn’t return my call,” she says, looking down at the floor.

“Sorry,” I say in a halfhearted way. “I was kind of knocked out by the pain pills.”

She glances over at Mitch and then back at me. “Yeah, I can see that.”

I stare at her. Now what is
that
supposed to mean?

“Anyway,” she continues, “I wanted to come tell you that I’m sorry. I told your mom yesterday, but I thought I should tell you too, in person, you know.”

“Oh.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

I take a step closer to her now. She’s barely in the living room, but I’m clean over on the other side. Mitch is about halfway between us, leaning against the couch and watching.

“You didn’t mean to hurt me?” I repeat as I slowly walk toward her.

“It was an accident.”

I just shake my head. “Wow, that was some accident, Jess.”

“I didn’t do it on purpose!”

“Fine,” I say in an irritated voice, holding up my bandaged left wrist as if it’s a visual aid. “Whatever.”

“I
didn’t!
”

“Then why did you come here?” I ask. “Why are you telling me that you’re sorry?”

“Because I’m sorry you got hurt.”

“Oh, but it’s not your fault?”

“I
told
you, I
didn’t
mean to do it!”

“Hey, I never said you did,” I say in a quiet but cynical tone. I’m getting mad now. Why did she come here to say she’s sorry if she’s not? Why does she seem so intent on torturing me like this? Why can’t she just leave me alone? I want to scream!

“You might as well say it, Ramie. Everyone else is saying it!”

“I can’t control what everyone else is saying, Jess.”

“Maybe not, but you don’t have to add fuel to their fire.”

“What?”
I stare at her as if she’s a stranger. Once again, I’m trying
to remember why we were ever friends in the first place. How could I stand being around her all those years? Was I really that desperate?

“You
know
what you’re doing, Ramie. Oh sure, you pretend to be this strong and caring Christian, but you’re just a phony—a big hypocrite. you’re turning everyone against me, and you know it.”

“You are totally crazy, Jess!” I glance over at Mitch now, hoping that maybe he can jump in and say something to help, but he seems just as bewildered as I am.

“Thanks.” She tosses us both a plastic smile. “That’s just the kind of affirmation I was looking for tonight. Thanks for caring, both of you.”

“Why am I always the bad guy with you?” I demand. “Like you pretend to come over here to apologize to me tonight, but then you end up pointing the finger at me again. Like your problems are all my fault, Jess. I don’t get you. It’s like you want to blame me for everything.”

“I’m not blaming you for everything. But, hey, if the shoe fits, wear it.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” I demand.

“It means that you are not totally innocent, Ramie. you can’t keep playing the poor little victim all the time. And you can’t keep casting me as the evil and twisted friend who is ruining your life.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The way you go around acting like
poor Ramie
, like this is all about you, like you’re the only one who’s hurting here. Well, here’s a news bulletin: I’m hurting too!”

I nod as I walk closer. “Yeah, I can see you’re hurting, Jess. I can see that you’re totally miserable. But it’s your fault. you brought this on yourself.” I turn and look at Mitch. “I don’t know why they call it
gay,
” I say to him. “It sure doesn’t look like it’s making her happy!”

Jess takes a step toward me now, and we’re only a few feet apart. Her eyes are narrowed in anger and her hands are curled into tight fists. It looks like she wants to hit me, like she wants to finish what she started, and suddenly I feel seriously scared. “You’re the one who’s making me miserable!” she yells. “You’re the one who seems set on destroying my life!”

“Okay,” says Mitch, stepping between us, his back to me. “Calm down, Jess. Getting upset is not going to help—”

“Don’t tell me to calm down!” she yells.

“If you can’t calm down, I think you should leave,” he says in a very grown-up voice that makes me appreciate him even more.

“This is between Ramie and me, Mitch! It’s none of your stinking business!”

“Ramie is
my
girlfriend,” he tells her. “So that makes this my business. And I can understand how that might make you jealous, but you’re going to have to get over it because Ramie is not a lesbian and she never will be.”

Okay, I’m kind of shocked by this. But at the same time I’m relieved. I’m glad he said it. It’s something I’ve wanted to say myself but just couldn’t put into words. Then Jess does something I’ve never heard her do before. She uses some bad language. She cusses at both of us. Then she turns around and storms out, slamming the front door so loud that one of my mom’s glass figurines falls out of the window and crashes onto the slate floor.

I’m shaking as I lean into Mitch. “Thank you,” I tell him.

He runs his hand over my hair. “What a witch,” he says. “It’s hard to believe you guys were ever friends.”

“She’s changed, Mitch.” I press my head into his shoulder as tears begin to pour down. “She’s really changed.”

M
Y DOCTOR GIVES ME THE OKAY TO GO TO PRACTICE DURING THE NEXT WEEK
, but only to stay in shape, and I must wear a wrist splint. He makes me promise that I won’t do anything that might stress my wrist. No scrimmages, no passing drills, and no direct contact. Mostly I just dribble and jog and try to shoot with one hand. Then I sit in the bleachers and watch as the others play, or else I do my homework. It’s better than nothing. I also keep stats for our first preseason game, which we lose. And then I go back to my doctor the following week, telling him that I think my wrist is almost well, but he’s not convinced.

“You can keep going to practice,” he says. “But no actual games until the real season begins. Isn’t that after Christmas anyway?”

“Yeah,” I admit with disappointment. “But we have Rendezvous next weekend. It’s an invitational tournament, and everyone was hoping I’d be able to play.”

“Sorry.” He frowns as he closes the chart. “The last thing you need is to play a bunch of games all in one day, Ramona.”

I know he’s probably right, but everyone on the team is really disappointed. Well, everyone but Jess. I’m sure she’s elated. But she and I do not speak. We keep a good distance between us. And we don’t even make eye contact. Sometimes I imagine that she doesn’t even exist, or that I don’t know her, and that I never did.

Frankly, I’m surprised that she hasn’t quit the team. Everyone treats her like she’s carrying some dreaded disease. But then she loves basketball. I guess she loves it enough to put up with the crud that girls toss at her. And I have to admit that I don’t mind when they do. Of course, I don’t say any of that stuff myself. I know it’s not Christlike. But I don’t defend her either, even though I know that too isn’t Christlike. Jess has obviously found a different place to get dressed down. We never see her in the girls’ locker room anymore. I’m guessing she uses a stall in the restroom, since I saw her coming out of there once with her gym bag, completely dressed. And she probably showers at home. I know it must be inconvenient, but it’s an inconvenience she has brought on herself. I don’t see any reason she should make the rest of us suffer.

Rendezvous is on the first Saturday of Christmas break. It’s a two-hour bus ride to Arrington, but we make the most of it with lots of junk food and card games and craziness. BJ brought her CD player, and we even take turns dancing in the aisle. It’s like a party on wheels. Somehow Coach Ackley manages to sleep up front. And clear in the back, all by herself, Jess appears to be sleeping too. However, I know it’s just an act. For one thing, Jess is such a light sleeper that our noise would keep her awake, but besides that, she’s never been able to sleep in a moving vehicle. What a faker.

Our team wins its first game and hopes rise, but then we lose the next one by just a few points, and then we’re creamed in the third one, which puts us out of the tournament.

“We needed you out there today, Ramie,” says BJ as we trudge back to the bus.

“Yeah,” says Lauren. “I was wishing I knew some kind of magic trick so we could trade Jess for you.”

This is followed by laughter, including mine. But I feel a twinge of guilt when I notice that Jess is within hearing distance. Still, she wasn’t exactly having a good game today, and there were several times when the team’s patience wore thin with her bad attitude. Toward the end of the second game, just when it looked like our team might’ve been making a comeback, Jess goes and gets us a technical foul. After that, team morale went right down the toilet.

“Maybe Jess should switch over to the guys’ team,” says Amy a little too loudly. “They could probably use a tough guy like her.”

This time our laughter is interrupted by a loud, “Shut up!” followed by some off-color swear words.

“LeCroix!” barks Coach Ackley as he’s walking up behind us with the ball bag hoisted over his shoulder. “Give me thirty!”

“Right here?” Jess stops in the freezing parking lot that we’re crossing.

“Hit the pavement!
Now!
”

Jess drops to the icy ground in pushup mode, and Coach continues walking toward the bus. Meanwhile, the rest of us stand around her in a semicircle, staring as Jess begins doing her mandatory pushups. She still has on her sweaty uniform, whereas the rest of us have all showered and changed into regular clothes. Her dark curly hair is matted down and sticking to her forehead, and her face is blotchy and red as she huffs her way up and down, up and down. Lauren is counting for her, but then a girl from the JV team joins her, saying, “Seven
butch
pushups, eight
butch
pushups . . .”

Soon others chime in and everyone is counting “
butch
pushups” as if it’s the funniest thing ever.

“Stupid homo,” says another girl.

“It’s jock-chicks like her that make us all look bad.”

Some crueler and even more vulgar comments are tossed out, and finally, feeling ashamed for all of us, I go back to the bus.

Coach Ackley’s nose is stuck in
Sports Illustrated
, and he merely grunts as I walk past him. The JV coach has her eyes closed as she listens to her MP3 player, just basically checked out.

I go back through the bus about midway and sit down, watching the circle of girls through the window. The way they’re clustered around Jess reminds me of the kind of mob that gathers when a fight erupts, with bloodthirsty kids watching and egging the fighters on for their own selfish entertainment. And then it hits me. The scene out there reminds me of something else too, something I’m not willing to face or even acknowledge just now.

Pushing unwanted images from my head, I try to grasp that it’s Jess who is at the center of this mob, and I try to remember exactly why and how this happened. Didn’t she bring this on herself by using bad language? I find it hard to believe that this person on the ground, the foulmouthed lesbian girl who is being humiliated and teased, is really my old best friend. How can that be?

I can’t take it anymore. I just look away. They all make me sick. Jess makes me sick. This whole stinking world makes me sick. I close my eyes and wish it would all go away.

Now they are piling back onto the bus. Gay and butch jokes are still being tossed about, but not quite as loudly. Not that it matters, since both the varsity and the JV coach appear to be totally tuned out anyway. I try not to look up as Jess comes in the door. But I can see that her face is even redder than before. She doesn’t say a word as she makes her way down the crowded aisle amid the quiet but jagged taunts. I keep my eyes down as she huffs past me, her gym bag brushing against my shoulder. BJ, directly behind her, stops at my row and looks at me. I scoot over and she takes the empty seat
beside me. Then BJ slumps down, folds her arms across her chest, and lets out what sounds like a very frustrated sigh.