Smallmaneuvers copyedit

That afternoon, when I thought my parents were gone on a walk, I stumbled into them downstairs. I was on my way to get another glass of soda, which we’d gotten with the pizza. I

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hadn’t heard what they were talking about, but the way they stopped when I walked in gave me the sense it was probably about me.

“There she is,” my dad said, turning on his smile. There was sawdust on the knees of his pants. He was eating Heidi and Tracy’s cold waffles and bacon from breakfast. There was a half-

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finished pint of beer.

“Yep,” I said. “She is.”

Mom asked what I’d been up to. I’d been listening to music in my room. She slid out one of the chairs at the table. “Come and sit down a second,” she said.

She asked me if I’d had a good time, and I said yeah, which was true. It’d been fun to stay up late and be stupid and hyper—even if I didn’t really get that hyper, and actually didn’t stay up that late.

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“So, what’s it feel like to be fourteen?” Dad asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Not any different, really.”

Last year it had been versions of “How does it feel to be a teenager?” or “Does it feel

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different to be a teenager?” or just “Uh-oh, a teenager!” Tracy said her parents said all the same

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kind of stuff on her birthday, stuff about how they couldn’t believe it, and Heidi said that her

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parents always asked her all sorts of unanswerable questions, questions that she’d have to answer

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twice because of how she’d have to answer them once at her mom’s house, and then another time

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at her dad’s.

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“Well,” my dad said, “It’s only been a couple of hours. Give it some time. Things change.”

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2 “True,” I said, thinking This feels pretty familiar.

He started up again: “A couple more years, you know, and you’ll be driving.” I knew about this possibility. “You’re getting to that age now where’s it’s going to be more and more freedom, which is the fun part, but that freedom means more and more maturity, which isn’t always fun. And sometimes, socially…socially, you just really have to remember who you are and not get distracted or too influenced by what other people are doing.”

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“Okay,” I said.

My dad wedged off a piece of waffle and pushed it through the syrup and melted whipped cream. “Do you know what I mean?” he asked, stuffing the food in his mouth. “Does that make sense?”

“I guess,” I said.

“He’s just making sure he says the stuff you’re supposed to say as a parent,” my mom cut in. “It’s our job.” She joked and made a scrunched-up face and shook her finger at me like she was telling me to stop. It was supposed to be funny.

Between bites of waffle, Dad was looking over at Mom and then looking over at me. He was trying to tell her something without saying it out loud, but she didn’t seem to be getting it. I thought that, if I moved slowly enough, maybe I could slip away without either of them noticing.

Then I saw I was wrong. Mom wasn’t the one who didn’t get it, it was Dad—she was trying to say something back, something he seemed to be misunderstanding.

“So Emma,” he finally said. “We can go buy you some new ones—I totally don’t mind doing that—but those shorts, the ones like Heidi was wearing, those shorts have to go away.”

“I just got those,” I said. My mom was frowning at my dad, shaking her head. “Mom bought them.”

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3 We’d even gone shopping together. I helped her pick out a new dress, and we shared a fitting room. I remember her standing to the side so I could have the mirror. I’d told her that Heidi had a pair of shorts I liked, ones I’d wanted to get, and she asked if they were the right ones. She’d even told me they looked nice.

“Em,” she said, “You’re right. I did buy them, but I shouldn’t have. It’s okay. We’ll get you some other ones, something just as cute.”

“You said you liked them.”

“I know,” she said. Now my dad was frowning. “It’s not that I don’t like them.”

“It’s—” my dad said. He looked to my mom for help, but she wasn’t going to offer any.

“You can’t blame the clothes, but—It’s that you’re not a kid anymore. Certain clothes have certain connotations now.”

I didn’t know what to do with that word: connotations. I had ideas about the things he was talking about—things like the old guy in the grocery store who just randomly told me how he liked my smell, or the guys at school asking girls for bra pics. I think I was supposed to feel a certain way about those things, at least in my dad’s mind, though I’m not sure I did feel the way he wanted me to. Mostly, I was trying to figure it out because it was confusing as hell. And what

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I was figuring out—and what I wanted my dad to figure out too—is that people will come up with whatever connotations they want to. People see what they want to see. You can’t do anything about that.

“Didn’t you once tell me that men weren’t supposed to tell women what they should wear?” I asked him.

“Well—” “This is both of us saying this,” Mom said.

Stephanie Podmore 3/8/2015 10:21 PM Comment [1]: I really love Emma’s response to this issue. It’s such a good message for the reader. I’d like to see one more sentence that brings it back to her to show her standing up for herself even more (even if just as a thought). It could go here or after the Goodwill box part of the scene.

Maybe something like “I don’t care what people think; I’m going to dress the way I like—the way that makes me feel comfortable and good about myself.”

4 “And I reserve the right to contradict myself.”

“Do we all get that right?” I asked.

“Sure,” he said, “but I still get to tell you that you can’t wear those shorts.”

I’d hardly even worn them. Plus, I had board shorts that were just as short and those didn’t seem to be a problem. Apparently faded denim held some magic power. “What am I supposed to do with them?”

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“That’s up to you,” he said.

“It doesn’t feel that way.”

His eyes narrowed.

“There’s a Goodwill box is the basement,” Mom said. “Just throw them in there.”

“Is that it?” I asked. I told them I’d been doing homework and wanted to get it done.

“What homework?” he asked.

I started to answer, but Mom jumped in, “Yes, that’s it.”

I was going to say Biology, but I didn’t have any Biology homework. I actually didn’t have homework at all, because I’d wanted to make sure I got it done before the sleepover.

“Thank you,” my dad said as I walked away, soda-less.

Happy Birthday! I mouthed once I was around the corner, lifting my glass for a toast they couldn’t see.

Afterward, I put the shorts in the Goodwill box, which is where they stayed for weeks. I left them there long enough for my dad to go check and make sure I’d told the truth, long enough

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for the whole episode to get replaced by some other episode, and then I went back downstairs and reclaimed them, stashing them in the bottom of my closet. I even wore them to school once, Stephanie Podmore 3/8/2015 10:45 PM

hidden under a skirt I’d planned to take off before first period, but I never did.

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