I had the trailer to myself until about three-thirty.

Another Country -23-
Erin Halfelven

I had the trailer to myself until about three-thirty. Instead of trying on the pink bra, I just put it into the lower drawer on my bedroom dresser that I had decided was least likely to be opened by someone who wasn’t me. Not counting the girl who looked back at me from the mirror. I stuck out my tongue at her, but she refused to look any less cute.

I wondered without wanting to know if Josh really liked the way I looked. He certainly seemed to have feelings about me. Another thing to wonder about, the girl I could see in the mirror was smiling now.

That was when I heard the concrete block outside groan under a weight it had not been designed for, followed by a knock that rattled the whole door in its frame.

"It's Chud," said a voice, unnecessarily. For a moment—but no.

I was sitting on the end of the bed in the new bra and the beige chemise and a pair of shorts, which is not how I would have chosen to be found. I grabbed a t-shirt off the chair and pulled it on before calling out, "Hold on."

I checked the mirror. Less girl, more Bobby, but not by much.

"Take your time," he said. A pause. "There's a lizard out here looking at me."

"He lives there. His name is Gerald." I didn't actually know if it was Gerald. Gerald was just the name of the lizard that lived in the backyard. There had to be several Geralds, a dozen or more, probably. Mom named them all Gerald. How many names does a group of identical lizards need?

I unlatched the screen and pushed it open for him. Chud angled himself sort of sideways with his head down and worked his way into the little trailer the way you maneuver a sofa around a corner. He straightened up, and his hair brushed the ceiling.

"Nice," he said, looking around.

"Sit down before you put your head through the roof." Was Chud actually taller than Josh? Apparently.

He folded himself onto the little couch, which accepted him with a protest vote. I sat back down on the end of the bed. We looked at each other.

"Josh sent you," I said.

He didn't deny it. "He said you weren't at school."

"I wasn't."

"He wanted to know if you were okay."

"He could have come himself."

Chud stretched his long arms along the back of the couch. "Yeah, well." The meat of his upper arms looked like two hams hiding in a polo shirt.

I frowned at him, then looked at the floor. Gerald, or one of the Geralds, made a small sound outside. Do lizards even make noises?

"Are you okay?" Chud asked, his voice leaking something like concern. I remembered that we already shared a secret.

"I'm fine." I picked at a thread on the hem of my t-shirt. Under it, the straps of the bra sat against my shoulders, present and accounted for. I'd been wearing it for two hours. It wasn't as bad as I'd expected, which I wasn't sure how to feel about. My mouth opened, and something fell out. “Mom took me to get fitted for a bra this morning.”

I don't know why I said it. Maybe because Chud already knew about the chest situation in a way that felt past the point of pretending.

He was quiet for a moment. "How weird was that?" The corners of his mouth stretched just a bit.

“Too weird." I thought about it. "Mrs. Merrit did the fitting. Josh's mom."

His eyebrows went up.

"She was very professional about it," I added. "She didn't make it into a thing."

"Huh," said Chud. He seemed to be considering this carefully, the way he considered his free throws. "Is that what you're wearing now? Under the shirt?"

I nodded.

He nodded back. He wasn’t half-smiling anymore.

"I don't know why I told you that," I said.

"Because there's nobody else you can tell," he said, without any particular emphasis, just stating a fact the way you'd state the weather.

That sat in the space between us for a moment. Chud was a friend, and he held what I’d told him like a friend holds your coat when you need to climb a tree.

"Josh doesn't know," I said. "About the bra. About any of the—the medical stuff."

He nodded again, shifting his weight slightly and making the couch groan.

"Does—does he talk to you about me?"

"Sometimes." He unfolded one arm from the back of the couch to reach over and flick something off his knee. "He's confused."

He’s confused? “He kissed me."

"I know."

"And then he ran away."

"I know that too. Like I said, he’s confused.”

I felt my face getting hot. "How do you know everything?"

He smiled, not the savage grin he sometimes used on the court, something quiet. "Josh talks a lot when he doesn't know what he's saying."

I lay back on the bed and stared up. The ceiling felt close, like it was leaning in. "What am I supposed to do, Chud?"

“About?”

I waved a hand at myself, meaning all of it. The bra. The chest. Josh. The whole impossible pile.

He was quiet long enough that I looked over at him. He was looking at the little black-and-white TV, which was off, just a gray square on the shelf.

"One thing at a time," he said finally. "That's all you can do."

"That's not very helpful."

"No," he agreed. "But it's true."

I sat up again. Outside, the desert afternoon was doing what it did — baking quietly, smelling of dust and dried grass and whatever the oleanders were doing. School would be letting out about now. Kids heading home on their bikes, Josh among them probably.

"Tell him I'm fine," I said.

"Are you?"

I thought about the fitting that morning, Mrs. Merrit's matter-of-fact kindness, Mom watching from across the shop. I thought about lunch at Papagallos and the waiter who hadn't looked at me the way I expected people to look at me. I thought about the bra sitting against my shoulders right now, doing what it was supposed to do, the logic of it airtight in a way that still annoyed me.

"Getting there," I said.

Chud nodded like that was a reasonable answer. He unfolded himself from the couch in stages and navigated back to the door. On the threshold, he stopped, ducking slightly.

"For what it's worth," he said, "Josh has no idea what he's doing either."

"That's a little comforting," I said. "Actually."

He gave the couch-not-the-court smile again. "Yeah," he said. "I thought it might be." He got himself out the door, negotiating Gerald's concrete block on the way down. It didn’t crumble.

I listened to his footsteps cross the yard and fade.

Then I lay back on the bed and thought about what he'd said, then I stopped thinking about it and just looked at the ceiling, and after a while longer I fell asleep.

I didn't dream about anything in particular.

That was probably okay too.