On Friday, Valerie smiled at me as I entered the chemistry classroom. "Good work getting our principal in trouble."

"Thanks." I felt myself blushing. Her compliment made me feel somehow prouder.

That's when Dennis came in. He pointedly ignored me, and seeing him do that made laugh inside, because he was as much of the reason for Runsberger's hot water as I was, despite him being Runsberger's bro. "Valerie," he said. "Chad's sick today, huh? You gonna come to lunch with me?"

"No," she said firmly.

"Why not?"

"You know why, Dennis."

"Well, when you change your mind, you know where my car is." A lewd smirk on his face, he left, still avoiding catching my gaze.

"What was that about?" Trish asked Valerie before I could. Trish was standing with Reba, and the four of us sat down at our shared table.

"You know Dennis and I used to go out, right? I dumped him when I caught him cheating on me. Anyway, he keeps joking about me cheating on Chad with him. It's really gross."

"Have you told Chad?" I asked.

Valerie looked down like she was ashamed. "No."

"Why not?"

"Chad doesn't need to worry about that. Dennis is his best friend, and I think he's just joking, anyways. Besides, Chad would probably think I was... leading Dennis on or something. I don't know."

I waited for Trish or Reba to say something, and when they didn't, I stated the obvious. "That's ridiculous! You should be with someone who trusts you, Valerie."

"Chad does trust me."

"Then why would he think you were leading Dennis on?"

Anger became evident in her tone. "I don't know."

I continued to stare at her, wanting a better answer, and she finally said, "I don't want to talk about this anymore with you, Dallas. You're not a great source of relationship advice, anyways; I mean, how many relationships have you even been in?"

Again, I looked around our table, hoping Trish or Reba would come to my defense, but neither of them did, and I suddenly felt embarrassed for my lack of romantic and sexual relationships.

Later, at lunch, it was me and Alex and Sharkbite and Eric, which was weird. Benny had caught the cold virus that was going around. The four of us rode in Sharkbite's care, on the hunt for fast food. Alex and I hunkered down in the backseat, while Sharkbite drove and Eric sat shotgun.

In the midst of our drive, Alex told Eric, "Hey man, thanks for reblogging all of my Inspired by Finland posts. It's pretty rad of you. You've gotten me lots of new followers."

"No problem, dude. I love Finland. The snowboarding season is like...nine months sometimes. We get cheated here in Cali."

"Have you gone boarding there?"

"I've gone in Iceland. But after that, I wanna explore all those Nordic countries."

It felt weird seeing them talk to each other, like old friends. I knew they hung out sometimes since Sharkbite was their mutual friend, but since Alex and Benny had started hanging out with Sharkbite a lot more this year, I wondered if they hung out with Eric more than I knew.

"Dudes," said Sharkbite. "Quit with the bromance; you're making me seriously uncomfortable." I was about to call him a masculinity police officer, but before I could, he pointed out the window and said, "Check it out. Long Legs." He was pointing at a girl who was walking on the sidewalk wearing a flowing dress and high heels.

"No," said Alex, matter-of-factly. "Rockin' Rack before Long Legs."

"Looks like a Lush Lips to me," said Eric as we drove past her and all turned our heads.

This game seemed like a game they'd all played before, but it was new to me. Normally I would try harder to fit in and act like a dude, and I would even aim for another alliteration to be cooler, but I'd been feeling like a super feminist, so I said, "You guys really shouldn't reduce girls to their features."

Sharkbite gave me one of those "you're an overreacting woman" looks. "Why?"

"Because it's freaking rude!"

"It's not like we're catcalling, okay?" said Sharkbite. "She can't even hear us. Besides, everyone reduces me to my feature." He held his arm up, donning each toothy indentation that decorated it.

"Well a shark bite is a pretty fly feature."

"So is a rockin' rack," said Alex, so I hit him in the arm.

"What kinds of girls are you into, Dallas?" asked Eric, like he was trying to ease my discomfort.

I looked up at the roof of Sharkbite's car, trying to think. "Milla Jovovich, Fifth Element. All the chicks in Death Proof. That one main viking chick in Vikings. Girls like that."

"So you like girls who do masculine things? That surprises me; Dylan told me you have the hots for Valerie Devant."

I could see Sharkbite's smile in the rearview mirror as he said, "Who doesn't?"

"I don't know what I like, I guess. I'm inconsistent."

"I have a type," Eric replied.

"What?" I asked. 

"Girls," he moved his eyebrows up and down.

We all laughed, and I said, "Good answer." 

"If a girl is pretty and nice and she wears dresses, then I'm into it," said Sharkbite.

"I like that new girl. Justine," said Alex.

"Dude, you've been crushing hard on that chick," said Sharkbite.

"The chick with gauges?" I asked, and when Alex nodded, I continued, "Dude, go for it. She was listening to Meshuggah in the halls yesterday. I could hear them through her headphones."

Alex's eyes widened with excitement. "Are. You. Serious?! I'm sold!"

* * *

After lunch, I thought about how I'd had a pretty good time with Sharkbite and Eric and Alex, even though I'd started to feel worse about objectifying women lately, now that my commitment to feminism was more serious than ever before. And I hadn't liked how Sharkbite had said, "If a girl is pretty and nice and she wears dresses, then I'm into it." Into it?

The girls who looked pretty and nice and wore dresses were the ones who were so vulnerable to objectification, but that wasn't their fault. Society made those women vulnerable.

Mom had once told me that back in the day girls had to wear skirts to school, and that wearing pants amounted to an act of defiance. I would've defied my way to the principal's office, for sure, and gotten OSS for refusing to wear skirts. Runsberger was too easy to picture in this 1960s scenario.

For a brief period in middle school, I had started wearing dresses and skirts. I'd been labeled as a tomboy in elementary school, and for some reason I had thought that was a bad thing and had started thinking that wearing skirts was the price I needed to pay to really fit in.

Complete discomfort is the only way I can describe how wearing a dress or skirt made me feel. Not only did I feel naked from the waist down, but I also felt...inviting. Even as a seventh grader, I made tons of man-heads turn, toward me and up me and down me. I'd felt like I had just given everyone an invitation to drool over me like I was a cupcake decorated for consumption, and that's when I realized fitting in just didn't matter much to me.

So I finally started wearing baggy band shirts toward the end of eighth grade. When I came out freshman year, some people told me that it "made sense," like the signs had been there. I would wonder if my discomfort at being an objectifiable and objectified girl had anything to do with me being a lesbian, often concluding that it didn't. But maybe it did; maybe I felt better not having dudes check out my legs. If I were straight, would I have minded so much? Maybe I would, though. Being straight didn't necessarily mean you wanted that kind of attention, right?

Even though I liked checking out other girls' legs, I wondered if the act was all that ethical. I wondered if it was okay that girls were made into such vulnerable beings, and that I, like all of my dude friends, was taking advantage of that.