Double Date Dare -3- (Patreon)

3.

When Sandy returned with a simple denim purse for me – with my wallet inside – we headed out to Aunt Julia’s car, Sandy and I climbing in the back like we always did so we could talk.

At least, that’s what we would normally do. This time, though, my thoughts were a bit preoccupied, and after a couple of aborted attempts to start a conversation, Sandy simply squeezed my hand and sat back to listen to the radio. Aunt Julia had tuned in to one of the jazz stations she liked to listen to after she got off work, and something by Cannonball Adderley was playing.

I know what you’re thinking. This SHOULD be the point where I’m freaking out about going out dressed as a girl, right? Well, I got over that whole thing years ago.

Just because it had been quite a while since we’d brought Donna out to play didn’t mean that I hadn’t spent a lot of time, at one point, in the role.

Growing up best friends, boy or girl had never really been a big thing for Sandy and me. We’d play with the same toys together, whether that was dolls at her place or building blocks at mine, and we’d always have fun. From what our folks had told us, we were two the first time we’d swapped clothes. 

I only vaguely remembered it myself, like you do with things from when you were a baby. Green was both of our favorite colors, and Sandy had wanted my green Ninja Turtles tee-shirt and taken it. She’d given me her yellow tee with the ducks on it, and I’d been okay with that. In fact, I still had that tee-shirt at the house as part of the wardrobe of one of the teddy bears who sat on my bed.

Don’t lie, boy or girl, everyone loves teddy bears.

Over the years, it had just become one of those things we did occasionally. We’d go out to play in the yard, and Sandy would want to climb a tree but had worn a skirt? We’d swap. If we went to each others’ houses and got nasty, no big deal, we’d put on some of the other’s clothes to wear home. 

Perhaps it was something our folks should have put a stop to, but all they’d ever said to us about it was to be careful about doing it around other kids. We didn’t really get it but had listened, and when we’d gotten to kindergarten – the same class, of course – it hadn’t taken us long to notice how different our friendship was from most of the other kids.

This would normally be the point in the story where I’d go on about trying to fit in with the boys, Sandy going off with the girls, and all that stuff. To be honest, though, we just kinda did our own thing together and left the other kids alone most of the time. We weren’t unsociable, we would play with the other kids and stuff, but neither of us ever fell into the trap of letting people tell us we couldn’t include each other when we did. 

If the girls invited Sandy to play tea party and I wanted to play, she expected them to let me. If I was asked by some boys to play soldiers or ninjas, something Sandy always loved to do, I would fight to include her, too, because why would I want to play with anyone who wouldn’t let my best friend join in also?

It was Christmas break in first grade that we finally had the talk from our folks about boys and girls and about why it was more than just what was between our legs that was supposed to matter. It all came about because Sandy wanted us to have matching Christmas dresses and had thrown a fit in the dress shop when our parents wouldn’t buy me one. 

I was crying too, not because I cared about the dress really, though they were very pretty, but because I hated seeing my best friend, my sister, so upset. We left the store without buying anything, and when we got home, our parents gathered around us to talk to us.

We weren’t stupid kids. When our parents talked to us about sex and gender, we’d gotten it easily and clearly.

That didn’t mean that we really cared, though.

In the end, it came down to our folks looking at the two of us, sitting on the couch holding each other and both sniffling, and asking me if I wanted a Christmas dress like Sandy was getting.

I answered yes without hesitation, not because I cared about the dress, but because I loved Sandy so much and knew what it meant to her. I said as much, or as close as I could with my six-year-old logic. Our parents had looked at each other again.

When Christmas came around, we got our matching dresses and a few other paired outfits, both boy and girl. We were told we could wear our matching outfits whenever we wanted except for school, with that same stipulation on both the boy and girl outfits so as not to seem unfair. We were both happy as could be.

Of course, around that time, Sandy was starting to discover her girl-side coming into full bloom, much to her mother’s delight given how much of a tomboy she had been as a tot. We wore the boy outfits a time or two, but more often than not, Sandy wanted us to wear our skirts and tops or our dresses together, and I was happy to agree. It was just clothes, and it was a way for me and my sister to be closer.

With it just being clothes, I had never thought twice about going out dressed either way. Wynnwood isn’t the biggest place in the world, but with two elementary schools and three separate high schools, it was certainly big enough we didn’t worry about running into people we knew. Perhaps we should have, but by the time I was old enough to be concerned about it, we had been going out as two girls for years, and it seemed silly to worry about.

If our folks thought the whole thing was weird, they never said another thing to imply so. Instead, I got a new name, Donna, when I was dressed to match Sandy, or when we swapped or just played dress-up with her clothes.  When Aunt Julia decided to start giving Sandy lessons in deportment, I joined in along with her, even through the ridiculous stuff nobody did any more like walking with books on our heads. 

We learned to walk in heels together, do makeup together, and even sew and bake together. Sandy loved the makeup but didn’t care for the Suzie Homemaker bits I liked more, but we both had fun with it all because we were doing it together.

And like most things, it was Sandy who brought it all to an end.

I still remembered the day clearly. We had turned thirteen a week earlier – June babies! – and I had come over to her house to hang out. She and her mom were gone, but never in my entire life had I felt like Sandy’s home wasn’t mine, so I’d used the spare key to let myself in and walked up to Sandy’s room to get ready.

At the time, she had two vanities set up in her room: one for her and one for me, with my own cosmetics and accessories since our colorations were so different. Sandy had been crabby all week, so I’d decided to take the initiative and brought over my things for a sleepover. I was half-way through my makeup when Sandy and Aunt Julia returned. I was smiling and expecting Sandy to be excited to see me there.

Instead, when she walked into her room and saw me, she screamed at me to get out.

I was stunned and froze. That seemed only to make her angrier, and I didn’t know what to do when she grabbed me, pulled me up, and shoved me out the door.

I still remember every word she screamed at me that day too. About how I wasn’t allowed in her room anymore. About how I was a stupid boy and didn’t understand her. About how she didn’t want to see me again.

When she slammed the door behind me, I felt something in me break.

I didn’t say hi or good-bye to Aunt Julia before I left that day. I walked home, washed off my makeup, took off my pretty lilac dress, and that was that. Donna was gone.

It wasn’t the first fight me and Sandy had ever had – you don’t grow up with someone without having spats – but it was the first time I remember us being separated for days, not because of distance, but because of choice. I would try to call her, and she wouldn’t answer. I’d go over, and Aunt Julia or Uncle Leon would turn me away with a sad look on their faces. I didn’t know what I’d done, but I knew that something had irrevocably changed between us, and after the second time I was turned away, I just sat in my room and cried.

It was almost a week later that she’d walked into my room. I’d thought about pushing her away like she had me, about hurting her like I had hurt, but I didn’t. Instead, I listened.

It was her first period. It hurt, and was messy, and made her feel terrible.

She was sorry about what she said. Sorry about what she’d done. She wanted me to forgive her.

I did.

Of course I did. She was more than just my best friend: she was my sister.

But I was still hurt and mostly stuck to the letter of her screaming. I hadn’t stayed the night at her place since, nor had I set foot in her room in four years. I knew she’d said what she did out of a place of personal pain, but I couldn’t just let the pain it dealt me go without acknowledgment.

Donna died that day, along with our almost twinspeak level of communication. So did a lot of my openness, I guess, since when we returned to school that fall, I just didn’t feel up to all the social things I had done before. Sandy tried to pull me back into them, but there was a barrier between us for the first time in our lives. It wasn’t a big barrier, but it was there, and I don’t think either of us were really sure how to take it back down.

I’d seen the first signs that maybe we could go back to how we were over the summer. The lava cake incident was the first time since the period fiasco I’d worn her clothes, and it was at her recommendation. She’d even invited me up to her room, and when I’d tried to refuse, she’d done her Sandy thing, grabbed my hand, and pulled me in anyway.

I don’t think our folks realized how big a step that was, but me and Sandy had.

The room had changed quite a bit. The pop band posters had been replaced with art prints, the walls had been re-painted from pastel pink to bright orange, and our twin vanities were gone as well, with a single larger one in their place on the wall.

My vanity was gone… but there, on one side of the table, were all my cosmetics and my accessory box. Sitting on top of the box was a framed portrait of the two of us in our first grade Christmas dresses, smiling and hugging.

I looked over at Sandy. Her eyes were closed as she leaned against her door, gently nodding to the music. Cannonball Adderley was gone, replaced by Herbie Hancock, according to the satellite radio’s screen. She looked happy, and I couldn’t help smiling as I watched her and fiddled with the hem of my skirt. She was wearing a similar outfit to mine, except with a black tank top and skirt, though the flowers looked almost identical.

For the first time in four years, we were a matched pair again, so different, but so alike… and it felt good.

It felt GREAT.

I’d forgiven her for what happened four years ago. Maybe, now that we’d found this part of ourselves again, I could let it go myself.

I turned back to my own window and grinned at my reflection.

‘Hello, Donna,’ I thought to myself. ‘It’s good to see you again.’

It was. And it was good to be back.