Freighthopping
Title: Freighthopping
Pairing: girl!Bert/girl!Gerard
Rating: I'd love to pass this off as an R, but it doesn't quite make it.
Summary: Gee should probably be afraid of Bert, but she's too busy falling in love with her.
Author's Note: Genderswap high school AU. This started off as my BBB, but due to circumstances out of my control (read: I am lazy and had finals) I never got to finish it. Instead I cut it down, edited the shit out of it, and made it into a fluffy little one-shot. Because the world needs more genderswap Bert/Gerard high school AUs, amirite?
Disclaimer: Pretty sure Bert McCracken isn't a teenage girl. Not so sure about Gerard, but either way this is a pack of lies.
Betas: yan_tan_tether, shitgun
Gee meets Bert outside of the principal's office one day when they bump into each other and Bert swears loud enough to make the secretary turn pale. She's got eyes bluer than pretty much anything and tangled black hair that is probably dyed and definitely dirty. She's not pretty, not in the way that, say, Mischa Barton is pretty or Britney Spears is pretty, but she's something.
She looks like the kind of girl her mom is worried about her turning into, the kind of girl who drinks and swears and refuses to be an asset to society. She looks like she has Problems Adjusting.
She stands up on her tiptoes, grabs Gee by the shoulders, and snaps, "Watch where you're fucking going, you cock," and then beams like she just won the lottery. That's when Gee realizes she has to know this girl.
***
Her name is Roberta, but she never calls herself that because Roberta is a name for fucking old crusty lesbians who work as children's librarians and talk to their cats. That's what she says, anyway. She's probably new, because Gee can't imagine she's just been hanging around school for years without her noticing. Bert gets noticed, one way or another. Like when she walks up to Gee the day after they meet, kisses the edge of her mouth, and says, "I'm going to the woods to smoke up. Meet me in five minutes." Right in front of the captain of the girls' soccer team.
Which means that by the end of the day half the school is gossiping about how Gina Way is a dyke and probably has AIDS, but that's par for the course and doesn't bother her more than it normally does.
When she goes out back Bert's lounging in this old ratty armchair that somebody apparently abandoned in the fucking woods behind the school. She's got her feet propped up on a stump and her face turned up to the grey sky, shivering a little. There's no real wind and the smoke hangs around her head like a cloud, pearly-thick and peppery. It looks like a picture, the kind of thing that Gee draws when she's drunk and alone and there's no one to talk to about the things she sees in her head. She doesn't move over when Gee asks her to, just raises her eyebrows and grins in this sly come-on-I-dare-you way, and Gee winds up sitting on her lap just to make her stop smirking. It works, too, right up until she lights the joint and Gee takes a deep toke and ends up coughing her fucking lungs up. It's deeply embarrassing, especially since she's been stealing cigarettes from her mother since the age of fourteen and should be used to a little smoke by now, and it makes Bert start laughing this manic laugh that's stuck somewhere between cute and crazy.
"Cute" is what Bert calls Gee a little later when she's stoned and more comfortable than she's even been in her whole fucking life, even though her feet are sticking out at a weird angle and her face is somewhere near Bert's neck and her mouth is kind of dry and cottony.
"You're too fucking cute," Bert says, one arm resting on Gee's shoulders. It feels heavy. Everything feels kind of heavy, like someone filled the world with lead when she wasn't looking. "Run away with me."
And the weird thing is she doesn't think it's weird. Doesn't say anything about how they just met, and what the fuck, and are you a lesbo or what? Instead she asks, "Where to?"
"Nowhere," Bert says. "Let's steal a car and find a road. We can set this school on fire and just fuckin' get out. Drive around the world forever. It'd probably take that long to see everything. Promise you'll come?"
Before Gee can answer that Bert kisses her again and laughs again and Gee feels weird, the kind of weird that starts in your toes and climbs up and makes your face feel hot.
Bert kisses people a lot, boys and girls and pretty much anyone who can stand her- and a few people who can't- but she kisses Gee the most and Gee's not sure how to take that at first. Mostly that's because she's never really kissed anybody before, but also because she feels a sinking twisty sort of feeling when she sees Bert kissing anyone else. She tells Mikey about that one day, and Mikey just gives her one of those blank eloquent looks she's been giving since she was three and asks if she ate the last Pop-Tart. A few days later she mentions in a sort of absent-minded way that there are a bunch of rumours going around about Bert, that she used to live in Utah and her family's Mormon, that she was a junkie and lived on the streets for a while, that she got kicked out for sleeping with somebody and maybe getting pregnant, maybe having an abortion, who knows, that this is her last chance and if she fucks up again she'll go to juvie or an asylum or something. Mikey doesn't say that she believes the rumours, but Gee yells at her anyway for giving a shit about what a bunch of asshole preps think and then goes to sulk in her room and listen to Iron Maiden for a while. Mikey eventually knocks on the door and apologizes, and Gee nods and lets it go.
She can't really blame Mikey for caring. She cares too.
***
Gee cares what people think more than she'd like. She cares that as soon as she hit junior high the kids she used to hang out with started calling her a loser. She cares about the looks she got the first time she dyed her hair. She cares about that time the bitchy girl in her math class left a SlimFast on her desk "just to help you out." She cares about the Friday nights she spends alone. She cares about the way people point at her house when they walk by and the way they look her family over when they go to Mass. She cares about every veiled insult and muffled snicker, every cold shoulder and every fucking parent-teacher conference that ends, inevitably, with somebody telling her to just try a little harder. She does her best not to care, but she can't seem to break the habit.
But Bert doesn't give a fuck. She talks back and she argues and she gets drunk in World Civ and throws up in the potted plant by the window and she flips off teachers and when Marilyn, who is the head of student council and therefore evil incarnate, says something snide about the way she smells she just grins this wide, wide grin and screams a long wordless scream into her face. People who try to fuck with her end up getting punched in the face, and even the ones who are bigger than her- which is pretty much all of them- end up bruised and bloody. The word slowly spreads that the McCracken girl is a fucking violent psycho as well as a homeless junkie slut and people start to move away from her in the halls, clearing a space to walk through.
It's not like the way they give way to the cheerleaders or the rich kids. More like the way people board up their windows when a storm's coming.
Bert's kind of like a hurricane. Unstoppable like that. Gee feels like she should be afraid of her, move away like everyone else, but when she's with her everything comes sharply into focus and the world is a fuckload more interesting. When she's with Bert things that were important, like Fs in chemistry and getting caught stealing whiskey from her mother's stash and that bitchy girl in math class, fade away. She's in colour, shaded in right to the edges. Everything else is grey.
***
Gee asks her about the rumours one time when she stays the night. It's a Tuesday, which means that Gee technically isn't supposed to have anyone over, but her mom loves Bert. The only people she ever sees Gee hanging out with are Rae, the girl she met in the comic book shop downtown, and Frankie, Mikey's friend from P.E. with the weird hair and all the band patches on her backpack. Having someone new around is a total novelty, and when Bert talks to Mrs. Way she's really polite and careful, like she doesn't want to fuck it up. Which she doesn't- she says that she's not used to parents actually liking her, and she wants to enjoy it as long as she can.
Bert's lying back on her bed, hands tucked under her head and humming tunelessly, and Gee's sitting up next to her and drawing, and the question worms its way out of her mouth.
"Bert," she says, and Bert jumps a little and opens her eyes- she must have been asleep, or at least drifting. "Are they true?"
Bert yawns hugely, like a kitten. "Are what true?"
"The things they say about you."
Bert goes very still, like someone's shone a spotlight on her out of nowhere and she can't remember how to move. She doesn't ask who “they" are because she already knows the answer. There's always a they.
"Some of them," she says. Her voice is weird and her eyes are really big and she's not moving at all, which freaks Gee out more than anything because Bert's never really still. She's a natural born fidgeter.
It doesn't all come out then, because Bert only talks about that kind of thing- home stuff- in fits and starts, but over the next few days she lets a few things slip. Carefully at first, testing the waters, then going back to add details and flesh things out. It builds up in Gee's head like a story.
Bert talks about how her parents gave her an ultimatum when they found out she'd lost her virginity to some guy- shape up or ship out- and how she chose ship out. How she spent a year moving from couch to couch, sleeping in garages and other people's cars. How she dropped so much acid that sometimes when she closes her eyes she can still see things moving. How she went a few weeks without eating because she didn't think it was safe to take food from any of the people she knew. How her parents found her one day in a park, and her mother cried and hugged her even though she hadn't showered in a long, long time and her father just shook his head and said "come home." How she said no, but ended up sneaking back into her room through the window a few days later and praying nobody would hear her.
"They didn't even say anything when I came into the kitchen the next day," she tells Gee one Friday night when they're in the basement watching Stars Wars (or, more accurately, while Gee's watching Star Wars and Bert is calling Luke Skywalker a cockfarmer and making up dirty lyrics to sing to the theme tune). It's kind of out of the blue, as though she's just picking up where they left off. "I could tell they wanted to- especially my dad- but they barely even looked at me. I wish they'd just said 'I told you so.' They were fucking thinking it anyway. But they didn't say a word. When we moved here they told me that if I didn't stay clean they'd put me in private school, and that was it. They just want to forget."
She's quiet then, maybe crying, maybe not. Probably not; Gee can't picture Bert crying, any more than she can picture Bert shaving her legs or going to church or actually enjoying The Phantom Menace. She doesn't know what to say or how to make it better, so she just takes Bert's hand and they stay like that for a while, not talking. After a few minutes Bert sits up and moves closer, sort of curling around Gee, and says, "I really like you, you know."
"I know," says Gee, but Bert shakes her head.
"No, you don't, you fucking retard," she says, and she's still shaking her head when she catches Gee's mouth with her own.
Bert's kiss is not soft or gentle, probably because Bert is not soft and gentle. She kisses like she's drowning, like if she breathes Gee in long enough she'll keep floating on. It's deep, and it burns.
It's not like it's the first time it's happened, but it feels like a first time. It feels serious, and Bert's not there when she wakes up, and Gee worries about it by herself for two straight days before telling Mikey.
***
Mikey's curled up in bed with a cold she caught from Frankie, watching Batman Returns and drinking orange juice, but when she sees Gee's face she turns off the TV and waits.
Nobody waits like Mikey. When she wants to, or even when she isn't thinking about it much, her face goes completely empty like she's waiting for you to fill her head up with whatever's in yours.
"I kissed Bert," she says, figuring she might as well get to the point before she loses her nerve.
Mikey looks nonplussed. "Well, yeah," she says. "You kiss Bert all the time. Gabby Saporta has a bet going for when you two are gonna do the nasty."
"No, I mean I kissed Bert," Gee insists, plopping down on the foot of her bed. She tries to do it gently, without making the bed dip too much; whenever Mikey's sick she's always afraid that she'll make it worse somehow, like when she had the stomach flu and Gee made her a milkshake to make her feel better and she ended up puking all over the living room floor. "I kissed her for real. For serious. It was- there were teeth in there, you know?"
"Oh." She takes a drink of her juice, tapping the edge of the glass with one idle finger. "How was it?"
Gee squirms a little. She's not exactly uncomfortable- she's never uncomfortable with Mikey- but she's the next best thing. "Well, I didn't see fireworks behind my eyes or anything. Not that I expected to, not really, but they talk about that kind of thing in books, and it didn't happen. And my lips kind of went numb at one point. And I think I might have bitten her chin."
"Are you going to do it again?"
Gee traces a stain on the coverlet, the purple one from the time they were watching Beetlejuice and Mikey got so scared of the sandworm that she spilled a glass of grape soda all over the bed. It's shaped sort of like a violin.
"I want to," she admits, and her voice is smaller than it's ever been. And she's not scared, just like she's not uncomfortable.
Mikey looks at her for a while longer, nodding a little the way she does when she's sorting things out.
"Do you love her?" she asks finally, in her raspy little sick voice.
"Does it matter?"
"Yes."
Of course it matters to Mikey. It always matters to Mikey. Gee considers lying, but not for very long. Lying to Mikey is verboten. She never lied to her about anything, not even Santa Claus.
"I don't know," she says instead. "I don't know how to tell."
"I think you're just supposed to know."
"That's fucking stupid," Gee mutters. She feels kind of pissed off, not at Mikey or for any good reason, but pissed off nonetheless. "Who thought up that bullshit system anyway? They should be able to diagnose you, do a CAT scan or something so you know for sure. Nobody would ever get divorced then." She looks at Mikey from under her bangs. "Do I look like I'm in love?"
Mikey shrugs. "You look like you're about to puke."
"Huh," Gee says. That's something, she supposes.
It's hard to tell what Mikey's thinking. She reaches out from under the covers and pats Gee's knee in a comforting kind of way, like she's sorry she's such a wimpy confused fuckup, but all she says is, "You'll figure it out. Can you get me a glass of juice? This one's all warm."
***
Gee sort of expects Bert to disappear for a while after that, or at least start avoiding her, and when she doesn't see her around school the next day she figures she's right. But when she gets home there she is, sitting on her lawn with her shoes off. Apparently she was sent home early for cursing thirty times during a two-minute oral presentation on The Catcher in the Rye.
"And I didn't want to go home," she tells Gee, pulling her down beside her, "because then my fucking parents would get disappointed at me. So I came here instead. Your mom made me hot chocolate." She grins like a wolf and adds, "I think I'm gonna marry her."
Gee thinks about Morrissey singing "There Is a Light That Never Goes Out" and the mournful way he says "I never never want to go home, because I haven't got one." It usually bums her out, but today, with the sun bright and warm and Bert's feet in the grass, it kind of makes her smile.
"I feel like things should be weird," she says. "Don't you think things should be weird?"
"No," Bert replies, rolling her eyes, and tries to stuff a handful of grass down the back of Gee's shirt.
And she really doesn't. Being with Bert isn't really like being with a friend- it's not like the way it is when Gee hangs out with Rae, who mostly likes to talk about comic books and Warcraft and the D&D club she wants to start at her school across town. It's not like going out with someone, either. It's not like those kids at school who hold hands all the fucking time and wear each other's rings and jackets. It's not like anything, really, except what it is.
What it is is sneaking out of the house at two in the morning even though you've got nothing to do and nowhere to go. It's smuggling vodka to school in a thermos. It's making out in empty classrooms and fields and sheds and closets and, on one memorable occasion, at a school assembly in the middle of a speech about the importance of keeping the school peanut-free. There are cheerleaders sitting nearby, and their little mumbles and hisses of disgust make Bert grin and wave her middle fingers in the air like she's directing air traffic.
("Kissing is weird," Gee says one day. "Even when you like it it's such a weird thing to like, you know? I mean, when someone spits on you that's gross, so it should be even more disgusting when someone sticks their tongue in your mouth. It's like they're spitting in your mouth if you think about it, right? It should be gross. But it isn't. Except for when it is."
Bert looks at her very seriously and asks, "So you're saying you want me to spit in your mouth?"
"No."
But she does anyway.)
Being with Bert is dangerous. It's messy. It's fucking weird.
It's kind of awesome.
And one night Gee pokes her head into Mikey's bedroom and says, "I'm in love with her."
Mikey doesn't look up from her GameBoy. "I figured," she says. "Have you guys done it yet? 'Cause I've got five bucks on you holding out until prom."
***
Gee does not hold out until prom. She holds out until the day they're home alone and it's raining outside, when the grey light in the basement makes everything softer. Bert pokes her in the side and whispers, "It's raining. Sit on my face."
It probably shouldn't be romantic, but Gee figures if she starts giving a fuck about "should" now she might as well just throw in the towel completely.
***
"There should still be trains around," Bert says one morning. They're skipping second period together, curled up on that chair in the woods. It's wet from yesterday's rain and starting to smell a little musty. "Like in old movies where bums just hop on them whenever they want. We could pack all our stuff in those bundles on sticks-“
"Bindles. Those are called bindles."
"How the hell do you know that?"
"I'm not sure." Gee closes her eyes. Everything feels damp and fresh and shivery today, even the wind. "I shouldn't, I'm failing English. And math. And probably Spanish."
"I don't give a fuck," Bert assures her. Her legs are dangling over the edge of the chair, not quite brushing the ground. "Trains, man. You don't need to pass English, you need to pack up everything and live in a fucking boxcar with me. Or a caboose. Yeah, definitely a caboose."
"I thought we were gonna steal a car."
"Nah, a caboose is better." Bert squirms a little so they're face to face and bites Gee's nose. Not for any reason as far as she can tell. Maybe she just likes the way she tastes. "We can have dogs," she whispers, her eyes lighting up like the idea has never occurred to her before. "Little ones with big black eyes and no fur."
"Right," Gee says, trying not to smile. These are, after all, serious life plans. "We're going to travel the world in a caboose. Just us and a pack of tiny dogs."
"And a banjo," Bert adds. "You, me, the dogs, and a rusty banjo. So we can, like, sing about our hopes and dreams and shit. Can you play the banjo?"
"Nope."
"Me neither." She leans into Gee's neck and sighs deeply, then bites her again. Gently this time. "Travel the world," she murmurs, in a sing-song kind of way, "and see the pyramids and the Eiffel Tower and piss off of the Great Wall of China. And that building with all the pillars and shit. We could spray-paint our names on the side of it in a big puffy fuckin' heart." She looks up at Gee and smiles sideways at her skeptical face. "Hey," she says, a little louder. "I'd do it, asshole, don't give me that look. I'd pack up everything and leave. S'long as you came with."
"And as long as we had a bunch of little dogs."
Bert doesn't even bother to respond to that. The dogs, apparently, are non-negotiable.
Bert believes in everything she says, totally and completely, so when she says that she'd pack up everything and leave Gee knows she's not making fun of her. She believes in a future that includes the both of them together, drinking and fucking and living in a caboose and seeing the sun every day. And playing banjo and flipping off the world. Bert believes in all that, but most of all she believes in love, in letting it take her over and just burn.
It should be weird. But it isn't.
"Well?" Bert nudges her with her chin, her blue eyes sharp and hopeful. "What do you think?"
Gee doesn't say anything, because she's too busy believing.
Pairing: girl!Bert/girl!Gerard
Rating: I'd love to pass this off as an R, but it doesn't quite make it.
Summary: Gee should probably be afraid of Bert, but she's too busy falling in love with her.
Author's Note: Genderswap high school AU. This started off as my BBB, but due to circumstances out of my control (read: I am lazy and had finals) I never got to finish it. Instead I cut it down, edited the shit out of it, and made it into a fluffy little one-shot. Because the world needs more genderswap Bert/Gerard high school AUs, amirite?
Disclaimer: Pretty sure Bert McCracken isn't a teenage girl. Not so sure about Gerard, but either way this is a pack of lies.
Betas: yan_tan_tether, shitgun
Gee meets Bert outside of the principal's office one day when they bump into each other and Bert swears loud enough to make the secretary turn pale. She's got eyes bluer than pretty much anything and tangled black hair that is probably dyed and definitely dirty. She's not pretty, not in the way that, say, Mischa Barton is pretty or Britney Spears is pretty, but she's something.
She looks like the kind of girl her mom is worried about her turning into, the kind of girl who drinks and swears and refuses to be an asset to society. She looks like she has Problems Adjusting.
She stands up on her tiptoes, grabs Gee by the shoulders, and snaps, "Watch where you're fucking going, you cock," and then beams like she just won the lottery. That's when Gee realizes she has to know this girl.
***
Her name is Roberta, but she never calls herself that because Roberta is a name for fucking old crusty lesbians who work as children's librarians and talk to their cats. That's what she says, anyway. She's probably new, because Gee can't imagine she's just been hanging around school for years without her noticing. Bert gets noticed, one way or another. Like when she walks up to Gee the day after they meet, kisses the edge of her mouth, and says, "I'm going to the woods to smoke up. Meet me in five minutes." Right in front of the captain of the girls' soccer team.
Which means that by the end of the day half the school is gossiping about how Gina Way is a dyke and probably has AIDS, but that's par for the course and doesn't bother her more than it normally does.
When she goes out back Bert's lounging in this old ratty armchair that somebody apparently abandoned in the fucking woods behind the school. She's got her feet propped up on a stump and her face turned up to the grey sky, shivering a little. There's no real wind and the smoke hangs around her head like a cloud, pearly-thick and peppery. It looks like a picture, the kind of thing that Gee draws when she's drunk and alone and there's no one to talk to about the things she sees in her head. She doesn't move over when Gee asks her to, just raises her eyebrows and grins in this sly come-on-I-dare-you way, and Gee winds up sitting on her lap just to make her stop smirking. It works, too, right up until she lights the joint and Gee takes a deep toke and ends up coughing her fucking lungs up. It's deeply embarrassing, especially since she's been stealing cigarettes from her mother since the age of fourteen and should be used to a little smoke by now, and it makes Bert start laughing this manic laugh that's stuck somewhere between cute and crazy.
"Cute" is what Bert calls Gee a little later when she's stoned and more comfortable than she's even been in her whole fucking life, even though her feet are sticking out at a weird angle and her face is somewhere near Bert's neck and her mouth is kind of dry and cottony.
"You're too fucking cute," Bert says, one arm resting on Gee's shoulders. It feels heavy. Everything feels kind of heavy, like someone filled the world with lead when she wasn't looking. "Run away with me."
And the weird thing is she doesn't think it's weird. Doesn't say anything about how they just met, and what the fuck, and are you a lesbo or what? Instead she asks, "Where to?"
"Nowhere," Bert says. "Let's steal a car and find a road. We can set this school on fire and just fuckin' get out. Drive around the world forever. It'd probably take that long to see everything. Promise you'll come?"
Before Gee can answer that Bert kisses her again and laughs again and Gee feels weird, the kind of weird that starts in your toes and climbs up and makes your face feel hot.
Bert kisses people a lot, boys and girls and pretty much anyone who can stand her- and a few people who can't- but she kisses Gee the most and Gee's not sure how to take that at first. Mostly that's because she's never really kissed anybody before, but also because she feels a sinking twisty sort of feeling when she sees Bert kissing anyone else. She tells Mikey about that one day, and Mikey just gives her one of those blank eloquent looks she's been giving since she was three and asks if she ate the last Pop-Tart. A few days later she mentions in a sort of absent-minded way that there are a bunch of rumours going around about Bert, that she used to live in Utah and her family's Mormon, that she was a junkie and lived on the streets for a while, that she got kicked out for sleeping with somebody and maybe getting pregnant, maybe having an abortion, who knows, that this is her last chance and if she fucks up again she'll go to juvie or an asylum or something. Mikey doesn't say that she believes the rumours, but Gee yells at her anyway for giving a shit about what a bunch of asshole preps think and then goes to sulk in her room and listen to Iron Maiden for a while. Mikey eventually knocks on the door and apologizes, and Gee nods and lets it go.
She can't really blame Mikey for caring. She cares too.
***
Gee cares what people think more than she'd like. She cares that as soon as she hit junior high the kids she used to hang out with started calling her a loser. She cares about the looks she got the first time she dyed her hair. She cares about that time the bitchy girl in her math class left a SlimFast on her desk "just to help you out." She cares about the Friday nights she spends alone. She cares about the way people point at her house when they walk by and the way they look her family over when they go to Mass. She cares about every veiled insult and muffled snicker, every cold shoulder and every fucking parent-teacher conference that ends, inevitably, with somebody telling her to just try a little harder. She does her best not to care, but she can't seem to break the habit.
But Bert doesn't give a fuck. She talks back and she argues and she gets drunk in World Civ and throws up in the potted plant by the window and she flips off teachers and when Marilyn, who is the head of student council and therefore evil incarnate, says something snide about the way she smells she just grins this wide, wide grin and screams a long wordless scream into her face. People who try to fuck with her end up getting punched in the face, and even the ones who are bigger than her- which is pretty much all of them- end up bruised and bloody. The word slowly spreads that the McCracken girl is a fucking violent psycho as well as a homeless junkie slut and people start to move away from her in the halls, clearing a space to walk through.
It's not like the way they give way to the cheerleaders or the rich kids. More like the way people board up their windows when a storm's coming.
Bert's kind of like a hurricane. Unstoppable like that. Gee feels like she should be afraid of her, move away like everyone else, but when she's with her everything comes sharply into focus and the world is a fuckload more interesting. When she's with Bert things that were important, like Fs in chemistry and getting caught stealing whiskey from her mother's stash and that bitchy girl in math class, fade away. She's in colour, shaded in right to the edges. Everything else is grey.
***
Gee asks her about the rumours one time when she stays the night. It's a Tuesday, which means that Gee technically isn't supposed to have anyone over, but her mom loves Bert. The only people she ever sees Gee hanging out with are Rae, the girl she met in the comic book shop downtown, and Frankie, Mikey's friend from P.E. with the weird hair and all the band patches on her backpack. Having someone new around is a total novelty, and when Bert talks to Mrs. Way she's really polite and careful, like she doesn't want to fuck it up. Which she doesn't- she says that she's not used to parents actually liking her, and she wants to enjoy it as long as she can.
Bert's lying back on her bed, hands tucked under her head and humming tunelessly, and Gee's sitting up next to her and drawing, and the question worms its way out of her mouth.
"Bert," she says, and Bert jumps a little and opens her eyes- she must have been asleep, or at least drifting. "Are they true?"
Bert yawns hugely, like a kitten. "Are what true?"
"The things they say about you."
Bert goes very still, like someone's shone a spotlight on her out of nowhere and she can't remember how to move. She doesn't ask who “they" are because she already knows the answer. There's always a they.
"Some of them," she says. Her voice is weird and her eyes are really big and she's not moving at all, which freaks Gee out more than anything because Bert's never really still. She's a natural born fidgeter.
It doesn't all come out then, because Bert only talks about that kind of thing- home stuff- in fits and starts, but over the next few days she lets a few things slip. Carefully at first, testing the waters, then going back to add details and flesh things out. It builds up in Gee's head like a story.
Bert talks about how her parents gave her an ultimatum when they found out she'd lost her virginity to some guy- shape up or ship out- and how she chose ship out. How she spent a year moving from couch to couch, sleeping in garages and other people's cars. How she dropped so much acid that sometimes when she closes her eyes she can still see things moving. How she went a few weeks without eating because she didn't think it was safe to take food from any of the people she knew. How her parents found her one day in a park, and her mother cried and hugged her even though she hadn't showered in a long, long time and her father just shook his head and said "come home." How she said no, but ended up sneaking back into her room through the window a few days later and praying nobody would hear her.
"They didn't even say anything when I came into the kitchen the next day," she tells Gee one Friday night when they're in the basement watching Stars Wars (or, more accurately, while Gee's watching Star Wars and Bert is calling Luke Skywalker a cockfarmer and making up dirty lyrics to sing to the theme tune). It's kind of out of the blue, as though she's just picking up where they left off. "I could tell they wanted to- especially my dad- but they barely even looked at me. I wish they'd just said 'I told you so.' They were fucking thinking it anyway. But they didn't say a word. When we moved here they told me that if I didn't stay clean they'd put me in private school, and that was it. They just want to forget."
She's quiet then, maybe crying, maybe not. Probably not; Gee can't picture Bert crying, any more than she can picture Bert shaving her legs or going to church or actually enjoying The Phantom Menace. She doesn't know what to say or how to make it better, so she just takes Bert's hand and they stay like that for a while, not talking. After a few minutes Bert sits up and moves closer, sort of curling around Gee, and says, "I really like you, you know."
"I know," says Gee, but Bert shakes her head.
"No, you don't, you fucking retard," she says, and she's still shaking her head when she catches Gee's mouth with her own.
Bert's kiss is not soft or gentle, probably because Bert is not soft and gentle. She kisses like she's drowning, like if she breathes Gee in long enough she'll keep floating on. It's deep, and it burns.
It's not like it's the first time it's happened, but it feels like a first time. It feels serious, and Bert's not there when she wakes up, and Gee worries about it by herself for two straight days before telling Mikey.
***
Mikey's curled up in bed with a cold she caught from Frankie, watching Batman Returns and drinking orange juice, but when she sees Gee's face she turns off the TV and waits.
Nobody waits like Mikey. When she wants to, or even when she isn't thinking about it much, her face goes completely empty like she's waiting for you to fill her head up with whatever's in yours.
"I kissed Bert," she says, figuring she might as well get to the point before she loses her nerve.
Mikey looks nonplussed. "Well, yeah," she says. "You kiss Bert all the time. Gabby Saporta has a bet going for when you two are gonna do the nasty."
"No, I mean I kissed Bert," Gee insists, plopping down on the foot of her bed. She tries to do it gently, without making the bed dip too much; whenever Mikey's sick she's always afraid that she'll make it worse somehow, like when she had the stomach flu and Gee made her a milkshake to make her feel better and she ended up puking all over the living room floor. "I kissed her for real. For serious. It was- there were teeth in there, you know?"
"Oh." She takes a drink of her juice, tapping the edge of the glass with one idle finger. "How was it?"
Gee squirms a little. She's not exactly uncomfortable- she's never uncomfortable with Mikey- but she's the next best thing. "Well, I didn't see fireworks behind my eyes or anything. Not that I expected to, not really, but they talk about that kind of thing in books, and it didn't happen. And my lips kind of went numb at one point. And I think I might have bitten her chin."
"Are you going to do it again?"
Gee traces a stain on the coverlet, the purple one from the time they were watching Beetlejuice and Mikey got so scared of the sandworm that she spilled a glass of grape soda all over the bed. It's shaped sort of like a violin.
"I want to," she admits, and her voice is smaller than it's ever been. And she's not scared, just like she's not uncomfortable.
Mikey looks at her for a while longer, nodding a little the way she does when she's sorting things out.
"Do you love her?" she asks finally, in her raspy little sick voice.
"Does it matter?"
"Yes."
Of course it matters to Mikey. It always matters to Mikey. Gee considers lying, but not for very long. Lying to Mikey is verboten. She never lied to her about anything, not even Santa Claus.
"I don't know," she says instead. "I don't know how to tell."
"I think you're just supposed to know."
"That's fucking stupid," Gee mutters. She feels kind of pissed off, not at Mikey or for any good reason, but pissed off nonetheless. "Who thought up that bullshit system anyway? They should be able to diagnose you, do a CAT scan or something so you know for sure. Nobody would ever get divorced then." She looks at Mikey from under her bangs. "Do I look like I'm in love?"
Mikey shrugs. "You look like you're about to puke."
"Huh," Gee says. That's something, she supposes.
It's hard to tell what Mikey's thinking. She reaches out from under the covers and pats Gee's knee in a comforting kind of way, like she's sorry she's such a wimpy confused fuckup, but all she says is, "You'll figure it out. Can you get me a glass of juice? This one's all warm."
***
Gee sort of expects Bert to disappear for a while after that, or at least start avoiding her, and when she doesn't see her around school the next day she figures she's right. But when she gets home there she is, sitting on her lawn with her shoes off. Apparently she was sent home early for cursing thirty times during a two-minute oral presentation on The Catcher in the Rye.
"And I didn't want to go home," she tells Gee, pulling her down beside her, "because then my fucking parents would get disappointed at me. So I came here instead. Your mom made me hot chocolate." She grins like a wolf and adds, "I think I'm gonna marry her."
Gee thinks about Morrissey singing "There Is a Light That Never Goes Out" and the mournful way he says "I never never want to go home, because I haven't got one." It usually bums her out, but today, with the sun bright and warm and Bert's feet in the grass, it kind of makes her smile.
"I feel like things should be weird," she says. "Don't you think things should be weird?"
"No," Bert replies, rolling her eyes, and tries to stuff a handful of grass down the back of Gee's shirt.
And she really doesn't. Being with Bert isn't really like being with a friend- it's not like the way it is when Gee hangs out with Rae, who mostly likes to talk about comic books and Warcraft and the D&D club she wants to start at her school across town. It's not like going out with someone, either. It's not like those kids at school who hold hands all the fucking time and wear each other's rings and jackets. It's not like anything, really, except what it is.
What it is is sneaking out of the house at two in the morning even though you've got nothing to do and nowhere to go. It's smuggling vodka to school in a thermos. It's making out in empty classrooms and fields and sheds and closets and, on one memorable occasion, at a school assembly in the middle of a speech about the importance of keeping the school peanut-free. There are cheerleaders sitting nearby, and their little mumbles and hisses of disgust make Bert grin and wave her middle fingers in the air like she's directing air traffic.
("Kissing is weird," Gee says one day. "Even when you like it it's such a weird thing to like, you know? I mean, when someone spits on you that's gross, so it should be even more disgusting when someone sticks their tongue in your mouth. It's like they're spitting in your mouth if you think about it, right? It should be gross. But it isn't. Except for when it is."
Bert looks at her very seriously and asks, "So you're saying you want me to spit in your mouth?"
"No."
But she does anyway.)
Being with Bert is dangerous. It's messy. It's fucking weird.
It's kind of awesome.
And one night Gee pokes her head into Mikey's bedroom and says, "I'm in love with her."
Mikey doesn't look up from her GameBoy. "I figured," she says. "Have you guys done it yet? 'Cause I've got five bucks on you holding out until prom."
***
Gee does not hold out until prom. She holds out until the day they're home alone and it's raining outside, when the grey light in the basement makes everything softer. Bert pokes her in the side and whispers, "It's raining. Sit on my face."
It probably shouldn't be romantic, but Gee figures if she starts giving a fuck about "should" now she might as well just throw in the towel completely.
***
"There should still be trains around," Bert says one morning. They're skipping second period together, curled up on that chair in the woods. It's wet from yesterday's rain and starting to smell a little musty. "Like in old movies where bums just hop on them whenever they want. We could pack all our stuff in those bundles on sticks-“
"Bindles. Those are called bindles."
"How the hell do you know that?"
"I'm not sure." Gee closes her eyes. Everything feels damp and fresh and shivery today, even the wind. "I shouldn't, I'm failing English. And math. And probably Spanish."
"I don't give a fuck," Bert assures her. Her legs are dangling over the edge of the chair, not quite brushing the ground. "Trains, man. You don't need to pass English, you need to pack up everything and live in a fucking boxcar with me. Or a caboose. Yeah, definitely a caboose."
"I thought we were gonna steal a car."
"Nah, a caboose is better." Bert squirms a little so they're face to face and bites Gee's nose. Not for any reason as far as she can tell. Maybe she just likes the way she tastes. "We can have dogs," she whispers, her eyes lighting up like the idea has never occurred to her before. "Little ones with big black eyes and no fur."
"Right," Gee says, trying not to smile. These are, after all, serious life plans. "We're going to travel the world in a caboose. Just us and a pack of tiny dogs."
"And a banjo," Bert adds. "You, me, the dogs, and a rusty banjo. So we can, like, sing about our hopes and dreams and shit. Can you play the banjo?"
"Nope."
"Me neither." She leans into Gee's neck and sighs deeply, then bites her again. Gently this time. "Travel the world," she murmurs, in a sing-song kind of way, "and see the pyramids and the Eiffel Tower and piss off of the Great Wall of China. And that building with all the pillars and shit. We could spray-paint our names on the side of it in a big puffy fuckin' heart." She looks up at Gee and smiles sideways at her skeptical face. "Hey," she says, a little louder. "I'd do it, asshole, don't give me that look. I'd pack up everything and leave. S'long as you came with."
"And as long as we had a bunch of little dogs."
Bert doesn't even bother to respond to that. The dogs, apparently, are non-negotiable.
Bert believes in everything she says, totally and completely, so when she says that she'd pack up everything and leave Gee knows she's not making fun of her. She believes in a future that includes the both of them together, drinking and fucking and living in a caboose and seeing the sun every day. And playing banjo and flipping off the world. Bert believes in all that, but most of all she believes in love, in letting it take her over and just burn.
It should be weird. But it isn't.
"Well?" Bert nudges her with her chin, her blue eyes sharp and hopeful. "What do you think?"
Gee doesn't say anything, because she's too busy believing.