Girl Watching (excerpt) | Body of Land

By Phoebe Lupton

We were thirteen.

I was seeing her properly.

Her hair was even blonder than I’d remembered,

if that were possible,

and her white skin had a reddish tinge as if blood ran faster through her body than through

mine.

The conductor called upon her to sing by herself,

to judge whether she’d be a good fit for the Soprano section or the Alto section.

When the girl stood up,

a group of around five or six other girls who looked eerily like her cheered,

and she said,

sheepish and sarcastic,

I have a fan club!

Still too shy to speak to her,

I let her speak to me.

We were in the bathroom,

me having pissed out the two gallons of water that I needed to lubricate my overworked vocal

cords,

her splashing her face,

made hot from dancing.

Her voice was just as sparkly as her hair.

Just as straight, too.

We ran to a dance rehearsal for a showtune we were doing,

and I tried to hold her ponytail in my peripheral vision,

but a strand of hair fell in front of my eye and curled.

I stopped looking at mirrors.

I began to see my reflection in places that weren’t meant for reflecting —

windows,

walls,

white girls’ faces.

Nothing was more beautiful than everything that wasn’t me.

This wasn’t sexuality,

this was self-loathing,

and I couldn’t tell whether it came from my crotch or the colour of my hair.

It was a kind of hair that could never belong to other kinds of girls,

only the kinds of girls who were my family.