forefinger, I go to pop the blemish. What erupts on my fingertips is not the usual translucent goo but instead that same black mucus that’s been haunting me. A scream escapes before I’m able to stifle it and I’m quick to wipe the shit off on my jeans as my mama bursts in. She wants to know what the problem is. She and I both. I’m not expecting to see Misty at school again, ever, resigned to thinking she was dead and buried under the tree in her backyard. But she prances into science, having grown a half a foot taller and cutting a more womanly figure. Other than the physical change, she seems okay. Like maybe it was all a fever dream. But the residue of the pod is still stuck beneath my fingernails. Misty sits down next to me without looking in my direction. “Were you sick?” I ask her. “You missed the dissection.” She just shrugs her shoulders, like she could give a fuck. She looks so different now, just a glimmer of the girl I first befriended. Her brown eyes once wild and full of life now stare blankly like a doe’s head mounted on the wall. She doesn’t talk to me during class. She keeps her head stuck down in her notebook, scribbling what the teacher is saying in chicken scratch. I’ve never once seen her take notes before. In the hallway, I try to catch up with Misty. She weasels her way through the crowd way quicker than I can, though, and I catch her at her locker just as the bell rings. She’s got her math textbook in hand and slams the metal door shut. “What?” she practically spits at me when I approach. I open my mouth to speak but she takes advantage of my shock and snaps at me again. “You were staring at me the entire class, like some fucking lesbo.” It takes me a while to think of what to say, with all the blood draining from my face at the accusation. I feel sick. Something ugly has burrowed its way under Misty’s skin. “You look different,” I say with some difficulty, over the frog in my throat. The laugh that follows is a mean, arrogant one. She takes the opportunity to hurl another insult my way. “Don’t worry, short stuff. You’ll grow into your nose eventually.” Just like that, she’s off, and I know our friendship is over. I cry the entire walk home. Mama says this happens to everybody. Girlfriends grow apart, become young women who are more interested in getting a boyfriend than playing with each other. I tell her if this is normal I don’t want to become a young woman. She says I don’t have any choice. I know she’s right, the parasite that is puberty has already taken root in me like it did Misty. Last year, a girl at our school killed herself right before her thirteenth birthday. I am starting to believe she had the right idea. That night I can feel it creeping over me, cold and wet and reeking of sulfur and I know it will take me. And I will be released from the pod as an alien being, a woman, my former self sheathed off of me in the harvest.
52
