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Robin is beginning to feel guilty. When Matt had assumed her to be a boy, she thought time would make his mistake obvious. After she hesitated at one of Matt's plans or yelped at a friendly hit in the arm, she'd expected the ruse to be through. Instead he simply called her a wuss, teased her for a few minutes and their friendship continued on interrupted.
Never did she think she would be excitedly watching the clock behind her teacher's head and waiting for the last bell of the day to ring. She's one of the first out the school's front doors, hopping onto a street car before most students have finished putting on their backpacks. Tonight won't be her first sleepover, far from it, but it's the first she's spent with a boy. Her first as a boy too.
She's not yet ready to give up this brief vacation from the expectations and social pressures of girlhood. Being percieved as a boy by Matt has come with new freedoms she's never had before. It had untethered her from her usual self-consciousness, too focused on whatever trouble Matt had dragged them into. This friendship has come more naturally to her than any other she's had before. What a shame it's all built on a lie.
This may be her only opportunity for this indulgence. She wants to hold onto this until the mask finally slips. As the streetcar slows for her stop, she clenches her hands into fists, rallying herself. There's no reason she can't pull this off. If Matt hadn't noticed yet, why should he have to notice now? The slight difference between a normal hangout and a sleepover is surely one she can manage.
She beelines for the bathroom when she gets home, eager to wash away the makeup she'd worn to school. After several iterations of splashing cold water and scrubbing with a washcloth, her face is her own again. Tugging off her shirt, her fingers fumble awkwardly when she reaches to unclasp her bra from the back. When her frustration bubbles over, she pulls it over her head. What does she care if it gets stretched out?
The outfit she'd planned out is already awaiting her beneath her bed. Baggy pants, baggier shirt, and the tightest sports bra she has. Weeks of this, and it still gives her a thrill to dress this way. To see a boy staring back at her in the mirror. Maybe someday she can do this again, even after this deception inevitably falls through. Maybe for Halloween.
In both her excitement and nervousness for the sleepover, her suitcase has been packed and waiting for days now. It rolls along behind her down the stairs, thunking loudly against every step. She pulls it to the end of the porch, where she can sit on the steps with a view of the street and wait for Matt to come to take her away. Her heart jumps at every car that passes.
Managing to get permission for this weekend had been an uphill battle. Her mom had been hesitant to grant her permission to spend the night at a boy's house. It had taken some legwork to assuage those fears. Sure, she'd lied and told her Matt was gay. She'd even claimed they needed to work together on a class project - nevermind the fact they didn't go to the same school. She can't imagine her mother would have been thrilled by the real story of her coming across him in the woods tossing stolen bikes in a river. Any guilt she felt over her fibbing was worth it to get to this sleepover.
Seeing a crimson SUV slow in front of her house, Robin thinks she now understands the relief a castaway feels upon seeing a boat arrive to their desert island. The door slides aside, Matt popping out to beckon her over. She hops to her feet and eagerly jogs over. The suitcase clatters along behind her, threatening to tilt onto its side with every swivel.
Matt helps pull her suitcase in, tossing it into the back row of seats. She clambers in behind it, brushing some of the crumbs lodged in the leather seats aside before she sits down. There's crinkled bags of goldfish crackers on the floor, alongside an empty cardboard timbits container open on its side. Matt's backpack is by his feet, and she wonders if he hopped into the car immediately upon getting home.
"Don't mind me up here!" The woman in the front seat pipes up as Robin buckles herself in. "You boys can talk like I'm not here."
Robin straightens in her seat when the woman catches her eye in the rearview mirror, nervous despite the warm gaze behind her round glasses. Her hair is the same dirty blonde as Matt's, though it's nicely combed and trimmed, falling in a neat bob just below her chin. She gives Robin a friendly smile, one she struggles to earnestly return.
"Is that your mom?" she hisses over to Matt.
"What do you think, man?" he laughs, "I've got some other woman hired to chauffeur me around?"
"I wish!" Mrs. Johnson chuckles from the front. "Would make my life a heck of a lot easier."
Robin's manners seem to kick back in as her nerves settle. She blurts out a thank you to Mrs. Johnson a few minutes into the drive, her voice cracking awkwardly. Matt's mom laughs, telling her that she never would have made 'him' walk, and that she's excited to meet 'him' aftering hearing so much about their band. Matt flushes, uncharacteristically bashful, before he starts to rifle through his bag. He produces a notebook, scribbling 'Sleepover Plan' at the top of a page.
"So what are you feeling tonight, Birdman?" he asks, clicking the pen once and pointing it at Robin. "You talked big game about your Mario Kart 64 skills. I hope you're ready to back that up now."
"Oh I will!" she bickers back, grinning.
"Alright, Mario Kart it is." Matt says, scribbling it down into the notebook as he talks. "I'd say Mario Party after I win… and a movie after dinner. What else?"
"What about your boys' plan for dinner?" Mrs. Johnson calls back towards them.
"Pizza?" Matt muses, looking at Robin for agreement. "Okay. Pizza. Pepperoni, plus one meatlovers. From 241."
His mom tuts in dissoproval, and Robin is quick to reassure that she isn't picky about pizza. Matt just continues on undeterred, steering the conversation towards what beverages and desserts they should get. They're settling cookies or ice cream when the car pulls into a driveway.
Robin gawks at the house. Its two floors seem expansive compared to her one-story home. And they have white stone pillars on the porch. Something has to be elegant if it has pillars.
"Ice cream's better if we're watching a movie." Matt tells her as he hops out of the car behind her. "Takes longer to eat. And nothing on your hands if we're playing video games."
Robin nods mutely as she follows along behind him, dragging her suitcase up the concrete steps of the Johnson family front porch. She reaches out to let her hand brush against the pillar as she passes by it. Matt's mom kindly holds the door open for them both, and she hauls her overpacked bag inside.
Just a few steps past the front door is a staircase leading up to the second story. Robin cranes her neck up curiously as she passes. While the stairs are covered in thick carpeting, the flooring is all wooden. Probably made with some fancy tree, if the swirled grooves in them indicated anything. She follows them to another set of stairs under the first, which leads them down to a basement. Matt happily tells her that this is where they'll be spending the night.
Robin gawks as she descends. The style of decor in the basement is in stark contrast to the bougie stylings of the rest of the house. Movie posters and comic book covers are plastered everywhere, to the point that the wall beneath is barely visible. Fairy lights are strung like garland above the fireplace, casting a dim glow over the room. Before them is a leather couch longer than Robin's bed, sitting in front of a tremendous CRT TV. Robin abandons her suitcase to scramble over the bookshelves, crouching down to pore over Matt's collection.
"Did your mom let you decorate the basement yourself?" Robin asks, open-mouthed when Matt nods. "Ugh, that's such crap! My mom doesn't even let me choose how my room's decorated."
"Guess it'd be better to keep having sleepovers over here then." Matt hums out proudly.
They start up a game of Mario Kart 64, and before the race has started they're already making bets against each other.
"Whoever loses, has to eat a slice of banana… dipped in mayonaise." Matt says, smirking.
"Ew, Matt, I don't want to do that." Robin gags, sticking her tongue out.
"Well then, don't lose!"
As much as her mom hates her spending her time after school and on weekends playing videogames, that practice is finally paying off now. The playful joking at the start of the round yields to a silence only broken by the frantic clicking of joysticks and buttons. It's a close race, but Robin squeaks out a victory by a hair.
"This is bullshit." Matt grumbles as her Yoshi happily holds up the trophy cup. "The only reason you won is because of that fucking blue shell you got on the last lap! If we played with no items, you would be eating this right now."
"You were the one that chose the settings!" Robin sputters, "Don't be a sore loser."
Matt rolls his eyes, but concedes, marching to the kitchen to prepare his punishment. Robin is thankful Mrs. Johnson seems to be elsewhere while they slice up a banana, slathering it with mayonaise. They end with a half dozen prepared dollops, and only when they're done does Robin consider that they didn't need to use the entire banana. Matt picks one up, quirking his head thoughtfully as he swallows.
"Not as bad as you'd think." He says, "The banana, uh- it's weirdly kind of like a banana cream pie somehow. Actually pretty good."
"What? Really?" Robin gasps, reaching over to take a slice for herself. "I wanna try it!"
"Nuh uh!" Matt protests, snatching the plate and holding it out of reach. "These are mine now! Go get your own banana!"
"Come on, just let me have one!" She insists, squriming to try to get past Matt to grab a slice. At last she manages to to nab one chunk, eagerly popping it into her mouth before Matt can have a chance to take it back.
The taste is retched. It's mushy and the mayonaise is almost ice cold. She forces herself to swallow but gags, coughing and sputtering. Matt tosses the plate aside, falling into hysterics.
"I knew I could get you to eat it!" He shouts triumphantly. "I knew it!"
Mario Party is next on the schedule, and it similarly takes little time for them to bicker over it. On one of the last few rounds, just after Matt finally pulls ahead, a Chance Time gifts Robin all three of his stars. Mrs. Johnson appears with their pizzas partway through Matt's rant about the unfairness of Mario Party. At Matt's insistence, they don't end up finishing the game to 'protect the controllers from grease'.
Slice of pizza in one hand, Matt rifles through the DVD shelf. He pulls one out, proudly bringing it back to the couch to push the cover into her face. On it is a woman in a tattered nightgown, desperately clawing her way out of the ground. She's held in place by a decaying hand around her throat, which sticks straight out of the dirt she's trying to escape from.
"It's rated R, but I got a high school kid in to give it to me for five bucks." Matt tells her, grinning sneakily
"What if your mom comes back down?" Robin asks, wringing her hands. "Won't we get in trouble?"
"Nah." Matt assures, "She's anti-censorship. She won't care."
Matt doesn't bother asking her before he puts the movie in. Of course he wouldn't. Who would pass up watching a horror movie at a sleepover, right? Only wimps and babies. And girls.
The first jumpscare of the movie makes Robin choke on her pizza, which Matt is still laughing at by the time it happens a second time. She starts fiddling with her food instead of eating, squeezing the slice like a stressball during the tense scenes. Matt mocks her with his mouth still full, only pausing to commentate on the realism of the film's gory effects.
By the halfway point of the film, Matt wipes his hands on his shirt, hopping up from the couch. With the TV being the only light, he dissapears a few steps from the couch. Shakily, Robin sets her plate down onto the coffee table, pulling her knees to her chest. There's movement to her left, and she registers something coming towards her. Screeching, she tumbles off the couch before recognizing it as a blanket.
"For fuck's sake Jay, I thought that would help!" Matt laughs as he sits back down.
Robin coughs out an embarassed 'thank you', pulling the blanket around herself. She peers out over her knees for the rest of the film, still flinching at every jumpscare. But having the blanket does help, and she keeps the fabric balled up in her fists till the credits roll.
"Alright, alright fine. Lesson learned about showing you anything scary, I guess." Matt scoffs as he stands and stretches. "I'll grab a baby movie to put on."
"I- I wasn't scared!" Jay insists, but is careful not to refuse the offer.
"Sure, Bird." Matt says as he looks through his DVDs. "Whatever you gotta tell yourself, man."
The slow opening credits of Fox and the Hound, panning over an animated forest, is a welcome change. She perks up at the start of the instrumental score. It's like finding water in a desert after that horror movie. The music grows faster and more intense with the fox being chased, escalating until its mother is shot. Right on cue, Matt snarks about the tired trope of dead moms in Disney features.
The little fox cub and the dog meet in the forest, away from their respective homes. It oddly reminds her of her own meeting with Matt. He picks up on it too without comment from her, sparking a conversation about who would be which animal. After a discussion lasting the majority of the film, they settle on Matt as the fox and Robin as the hound.
At some point in the movie, she's startled by the sound of Matt snoring. He's still sitting upright, with his head resting back against the cushions. Robin tries to see it through to the end of the film, but lying back on the couch, she finds her exhaustion catching up to her. Before the credits roll, she gives up and lets her eyelids flutter shut.
Morning light pouring through the windows stirs Robin from sleep. She squints, the sunrise peeking over the trees blinding in the early morning dusk. Even the TV feels uncomfortably bright now. It's gone to the DVD menu while they slept, now playing the same short jingle on repeat.
Groaning, she rolls to shove her face into the couch cushions. Shifting in place makes her notice the damp fabric of her pants is clinging to her thighs. They're soaked through, she realizes, and a moment after shifting she's hit by the pungent smile of iron.
She kicks the blanket away, tumbling off the couch and onto the carpet. The room is too dark to see much, but she swipes a finger across the fabric of her pants.
It's wet. Her heart drops to her stomach.
When she pushes herself upright, there's a feeling of something warm spilling out of her, like a cup tipped over. She squeezes her legs together, trying to stem the flow.
No. No. Nononono.
Shuffling forward on her knees, she runs her palm over the fabric of the couch. And there, though scant after passing through her pajamas, is that same wetness. Robin presses her face into the unblemished half of the cushion, stifling a long whimper. Matt is snoring on the other end of the couch, drooling and blissfully ignorant to the nightmare Robin has found herself in.
Maybe this is the consequence of her lying. Something that makes it obvious that she's a fraud. Just the natural result of pretending to be a real boy.
She reaches for her suitcase, frantically tearing it apart in search of pads. A mess of clothes slowly spreads across the floor behind her. Of course she didn't pack any! She was pretending to be a boy. What kind of boy has a period?
The pajamas she never changed into are at the bottom of her suitcase, and she wraps the shirt around her midsection. The gives another barrier between her still flowing blood and the unsullied fabrics and carpet surrounding her. Tugging it secure, she pushes herself to her feet and scrambles up the main floor.
With the same care as a burglar, she begins to frantically tear through the cupboards of the Johnson family home. Her effort produces photo albums, packs of toilet paper and a dusty, unused bread machine, all of which she roughly shoves back away. When she moves on to the kitchen, she at last finds a plastic bottle of dish soap beneath the sink.
Snatching it, she rushes back to the couch. Only then does it occur to her that she has no reference for how to clean a bloodstain. She hovers the bottle over the cushion, hesitating. Can she squirt it directly onto the stain?
"Are you okay, honey?" She hears from above, and she's sent flinching backwards.
"I- I- I-" She stammers out, voice wobbling. "I-uh. I'm fine! Just- uh- up a bit early. "
Mrs. Johnson meets her gaze from the entrance of the basement, in fuzzy house slippers and a bathrobe tied over her pajamas. When she meets her eyes, Robin suddenly finds herself fighting tears. Matt's mom walks down the stairs, sniffing once at the air and grimacing. Her eyes flicker over the pajamas tied like a diaper around her waist. Robin tugs at it self consciously, hoping it's at least covering the places where blood seeped through.
The blanket she had tumbled off the couch in is still half-wedged in its cushions, spilling out onto the floor. She lurches for it, yanking it out too late. Mrs. Johnson is already crouching down beside her, adjusting her glasses to examine the cushion. Robin clenches the blanket in her fists once more, silently begging this nightmare to end.
"I'll get the hydrogen peroxide. Why don't you run over to the bathroom?" Mrs. Johnson tells her, and Robin is shocked by the calm in her tone. She doesn't even seem mad. "Feel free to take a shower, if you'd like ."
Pushing herself back up, she waddles along like a penguin in an attempt to stem the flow of blood. Even with the flannel, she doesn't trust it not to bleed through. It's a relief to reach the bathroom tile, impossible to stain and easy to clean.
Sitting in the tub, she peels off her ruined clothes. The tub's porcelain is frigid against her bare skin, sparking trails of goosebumps up her legs. Shivering, she drops the clothes on the tile, cringing as the smell of iron deepens. It's not until she turns the shower on, safe under its white noise, that she lets herself stop fighting the tears.
How had she been so confident in her appearance as a boy yesterday? Had her body clock kicked this off a few hours earlier, Matt would have seen his friend mysteriously bleeding through 'his' pants. Mrs. Johnson finding her instead wasn't much better. All this humiliation is just postponing the inevitable.
The sound of knocking pulls her out of her self-pity.
"I'm going to leave your suitcase and some pads out here." Mrs. Johnson calls out through the door. "I don't get more than spotting anymore, but it never hurts to keep them handy. I'll also leave a plastic bag you can put what you were wearing in there. Is there anything else I can grab you, hon?"
"N-no." She stutters out. "Thank you, Mrs. Johnson."
Robin washes her skin until it's only still red from over-scrubbing. That song, Best of Friends, from Fox and the Hound plays ad nauseum in her head as she gets dressed. Softly, she hums along, and tries to ignore thoughts of friends kept apart by who they were born as.
The warm and earthy aroma of coffee greets her outside of the bathroom, leading her to the kitchen. She finds Mrs. Johnson there, mug in hand and a newspaper splayed out in front of her. Before she can embarrass herself again, Robin pauses at the edge of the kitchen, running over possible lines in her head.
Midway through her contemplation, she shifts her weight. The floorboard under her lets out a squeak that ruins her chance to spend more time thinking. She stumbles fully into the kitchen, pushing down the impulse to sprint back into the basement.
"I- I'm sorry, Mrs. Johnson" Robin stammers out in a hushed voice, approaching the edge of the table.
"What?" Matt's mom asks, placing her finger down on the newspaper to look up at her "Speak up, please."
"But what about- won't that wake Matt up?"
"Matt?" She asks, laughing. "I wouldn't worry about him. He'll sleep through almost anything."
At Mrs. Johnson's reassurance, she repeats herself with a bowed head, standing beside the table with clasped hands.
"Oh, that's alright." She chuckles easily, smiling at her. "That comes with the age you're at. I remember there was a time I bled through my pants and onto a chair in French class. Haven't been more embarrassed all my life."
Robin chuckles, though the imagery in the story makes her shudder. Never again will she forget to bring a pad with her, she tells herself. This was embarrassing enough once through.
"Sit, love." Mrs. Johnson instructs, pointing to a chair beside herself. "I never said you had to stand."
Robin takes a seat, fiddling with her hands nervously. She looks over the table, for a magazine or anything else she could distract herself with until Matt wakes up. Beside her, Mrs. Johnson flips through the newspaper until she pulls out a page and pushes it across to Robin. It's the puzzles and comics section.
"Something to do while he's sleeping." She tells him, pushing a pen across "See if you can give me a kickstart on the crossword."
When Matt finally emerges from the basement, hair poking wildly in different directions, Mrs. Johnson dissapears into the kitchen. Within minutes she reappears with plates of food - pancakes, fruit and sausages. Robin loads her plate up eagerly, starving after barely eating half a slice of pizza last night. They're heavenly. Soft, fluffy and perfectly round.
"My mom always does an oatmeal bar when we have guests." Robin sighs out wistfully. "I wish she would do pancakes."
Mrs. Johnson perks up, remarking that it sounded like a fun idea. Matt shoots Robin a glare when his mom turns back to the stove, one that she can tell means 'don't give her any ideas'. She gives him a sheepish smile and an apologetic shrug. The arrival of another stack of pancakes to the table distracts them from their silent conversation.
Mrs. Johnson settles down to join them with her own plate, piled with smaller, mishapen pancakes for herself. She thinks to pipe up with another thank you, but instead has to fend off Matt from trying to swipe the best fruit from her plate. She blocks his fork with her own, but his other hand sneaks past to nab a sausage link. Matt gloats triumphantly, gesticulating with his fork wildly. Splatters of syrup hit the table.
"Matthew!" Matt's mom scolds from the kitchen. "Please. We have a guest."
"Jay doesn't care, mom!" Matt protests.
Between the two of them, they make their way through several full stacks. Robin is the first of them to tap out, content to watch from the sidelines while Matt eats another few himself. Despite the sugar and the shock from this morning's surprise, she still feels half-asleep. She guesses Matt feels similarly, as neither of them talk much during breakfast.
"I think it's time we get Jay home then." Matt's mom tells them when she collects their plates from the table.
"Why can't Jay stay the night? It's a Saturday!" Matt protests, springing fully to life. "He can borrow my clothes if he needs to."
"I'm sure he will get a much better rest at home." She asserts as she sets the dishes into the sink. "And besides, I would bet neither of you worked on any homework last night, did you?"
Their silence gives the answer away.
The incriminating pair of underwear and pajama pants are stuffed at the bottom of Robin's suitcase when they leave, triple wrapped in plastic bags Mrs. Johnson had provided. Even so, she finds herself sniffing the air, anxious that she'll catch a wiff of that telltale copper smell. When Mrs. Johnson slows in front of her house, she snatches her bag from the third row before Matt can attempt to help, hurriedly jumping out of the car with it.
"And young man!" Matt's mom calls out, and for some reason she finds herself blushing like she's been paid a compliment. "Don't forget that you're always welcome in our house."
"I won't!" She shouts back, beaming. "Thank you, Mrs. Johnson! Bye Matt!"
A strange feeling stirs as she walks up the steps of her house. It's a melancholy comfort to have Matt's mom accept her so wholeheartedly, because it means such acceptance is possible. There exists a life she could be living where all of this is easier.
Her mom could be that, if she wanted to. She simply doesn't.
But Mrs. Johnson knew, and she still talked to her like she was a boy. Like she could be a boy, if she simply chose to be one. And it occurs to Robin, that if one person would do that for her, there must be others too. Ones that would treat her as a guy, simply because she asked to be treated like one.
It's possible that this is not be the hopeless, transient fling she thought it to be. Perhaps this lie she's been living can actually be the truth. And it feels to her like she's been given permission to envision that future. One where her and Matt's band could exist in the way that they envisioned.
Maybe she can be Jay for a long time. No.
Maybe he can be Jay for a long time.