“Jonny, why are you such a girl?” he asked, grinning down at me.

“Is Mom at home?” Donna asked, taking turns with Rod ruffling Oscar’s ears.

I nodded.

“You guys going to the park?” she asked, looking at Rod, not me.

“Yeah, I guess,” Rod said, not looking at me either. “I have to put some stuff in the house,” he added, waving at his books.

“Me, too,” Donna agreed. “And I’ll need to tell Mom that I’m home. Meet you guys at the park,” she promised, heading off back the way I came. “Jon,” she said as she passed me. “What did the doctor say was wrong with you?”

I shrugged. “He wants more tests,” I muttered. I resented her sort of co-oping my walk with Oscar into some sort of social thing with Rod.

“I’ll be right out,” said Rod, heading toward his own front door. I kind of resented him, too. He was acting like he thought we were still friends.

Donna waved at him, and he paused on his doorstep to watch her go. She was only fourteen, but she already had the family curves like Mom and her sister, Aunt Hilda.

Oscar, aka Fooler, tried to follow Donna at first but then returned to me, sitting on the sidewalk so he could look up at me more easily. Why do old dogs drool like that? I didn’t have anything to wipe his face with in my pockets, just the bag I had brought for picking up after him.

I grabbed a few wisps of autumn grass and tried to clean him up. He thought this was me offering him a treat. “No!” I told him. “Don’t eat the grass! Silly dog!” He wagged his tail, clomped his jaw and gave me the puppy dog look. I laughed at him.

Rod laughed, too then finally disappeared inside his house and Fooler and I continued toward the park. After the corner, it would be one block over and diagonally across the street. I thought about maybe just following the block around back to our house, but Rod caught up with us before we got far enough to take that option.

“Hey,” said Rod, falling in beside me.

“Hey,” I responded. I glanced up at him. Rod’s birthday would be the end of the month; he would turn sixteen almost two months before me — he was already taller and bulkier, half a foot and twenty pounds at least. He had turned into something of a bully since we started junior high two years ago and he got his growth spurt. Or at least, he hung with the crowd of bullies. Why was he being nice to me, now?

“Your sister has done some growing up,” he commented.

Oh. I glared at him.

He shrugged. “She’s taller than you,” he said.

I ignored him. I hadn’t had a growth spurt and Donna had, so yeah, she was two or three inches taller than me. He didn’t have to point it out, though.

We reached the corner where we had to cross two streets to get to the park. Fooler wanted to take a shortcut, trying to drag me diagonally across the intersection. “No!” I told him.

Rod took the leash out of my hand, yanked it hard enough to get the dog’s attention and said in a commanding voice, “Heel!”

Fooler, summoning up memories of leash training I’d totally forgotten he ever had, fell in behind Rod and followed him around the crosswalks. “You are such a wimp,” he said to me, handing the leash back as we entered the corner of the park. When I reached for the leash, he grabbed my wrist and pulled me close.

“Hey!” I yelped. “Let go!” I was afraid — what was he doing? But all he did was muss my hair, laugh and let me go.

“Jonny, why are you such a girl?” he asked, grinning down at me.

I stared at him.

“Let’s take Fooler to the dog park,” he said, motioning to the fenced off far corner of the green space. “It’s got a fence around it, and he can play with other dogs.”

I nodded vaguely. The dog park was new and Fooler loved it. We walked slowly that direction and I tried to avoid looking at Rod. It wasn’t easy because I knew he was watching me and grinning. Had he noticed my chest? I felt self-conscious.

“We used to be good friends,” Rod commented. “We even used to get in trouble together, sometimes.”

“Yeah, well,” I muttered.

“Remember when we went down to Santee Creek and hunted mudbugs?” He waved generally in the direction of the creek north of our subdivision.

I nodded. “Crayfish,” I said. Rod has an uncle from Louisiana where they have some odd names for things.

“What were we? Eight? You didn’t want to get muddy so you sat on the bank with the bucket and I brought the crayfish to you.” He laughed. “Then you slipped when you stood up and fell in the creek. You got all muddy, anyway, and all the bugs escaped.”

Well, it was kind of funny now. I made a noise.

“See?” said Rod. “You giggle like a girl, you carry your books at school like a girl.” He leaned over as it to look behind me. “You’ve even got a round little bottom like a girl.”

My eyes got wide, I know they did. Now I wanted to turn around and look at my ass. I didn’t, of course.

We reached the gate of the dog park and Rod took over getting Fooler inside and getting his leash off. “Go have fun, Oscar,” he ordered the dog. The old guy didn’t need a second invitation, but shot off toward a border collie he sort of knew from previous visits. They were the only two animals in the large dog side of the park and they were soon doing the play-bow and sneezing at one another.

We stood there at the low fence watching the dogs, then moved away from the gate when a couple arrived with a pair of golden doodles. The man just grinned at us but the woman gave me an odd look and I wondered what she thought she was seeing.

Rod snorted.

“What?” I asked.

He shook his head. “She’s wondering why I have such a tomboy of a girlfriend.”

“She is not!” I looked away. My eyes were burning.

Rod stepped closer and put a hand on my back. I tried to shrug him off but his hand stayed there. He started remembering another story.

He said, “We were ten and we went to visit my uncle in Julian, we stayed a couple days, camping in his backyard with my cousins.” Rod might have been talking to himself since we weren’t looking at each other at all, but his hand was still on my back.

I nodded. He couldn’t hear that, of course, but he went on. I already knew the story he was going to tell. “We went exploring, just you and me, and we found this cruddy old house on, like a country road outside of town.”

“It looked like no one lived there,” I put in. We were in the shade of some big trees and his hand felt warm.

Rod laughed. ‘Yeah. The yard was overgrown, the windows were dirty, there were broken boards in the porch that you could see. The screen door had a rip in it.”

“Uh, huh,” I grunted. We were almost laughing again, remembering.

“It had a tin roof,” he said. “I threw a rock up there just to hear what kind of noise it made.”

“It must have sounded like thunder inside,” I said. He took his hand off my back and pushed at my shoulder so we were facing each other again.

Rod grinned wide. “That old man came rushing out the door, yelling at us.” He laughed out loud. “I didn’t know what he was saying but he was scary. It was summer and he had on way too many clothes, like he was cold and couln’t get warmed up.” Rod looked right at me, grinning. “We started running to get away and you ran into that tree limb.”

I nodded. “Right across the eyebrows, knocked me down. It hurt.” I pushed his hand off my shoulder, and he let me.

Rod was still smiling. “I had to come back for you, you were crying and couldn’t see where you were going.”

“Yeah, well…”

“That old man picked up a rake or something and shook it at us. I ran all the way back to Uncle Andy’s place, towing you behind me like a kite.”

We grinned at each other, but I knew my face had turned red, I could feel the heat. Why had he touched me like that? “I was trying to keep up, cause I thought if I fell down, you would just drag me home.” A noise escaped me and Rod burst out laughing.

“I might’ve,” Rod admitted. “That old man scared both us.”

“We laughed a lot about it later,” I said.

“I laughed right away,” he said. “I thought it was funny when I realized the guy wasn’t chasing us.”

He looked at me and my face got hotter.

“You were crying. You cried a lot.” He grinned at me, a little less friendly of a grin this time. He put a hand on my hip this time and I pushed it away immediately.

“I was scared.” I felt my face get hotter. Was I scared now? It was something like being scared.

“Then when I made you see how funny it was, you giggled.” Rod kind of rolled his eyes. “It was like you couldn’t laugh like a boy, you giggled like a girl.”

“I just laugh quieter,” I protested. His fingers were around my wrist, his thumb in the palm of my hand. I wrapped my fingers around it; his hands were so much larger than mine.

“Yeah, you laugh like a girl, all giggly and high-pitched,” he said. “Why do girls do that? Sometimes they act like they’re afraid to laugh out loud. Why do you do it?”

I glared at him but he just shrugged then pointed with his other hand.

My sister, Donna, waved at us from the far corner of the park. Rod waved back and let me go.

I took a step away. Had we really been holding hands?

I looked at Donna — had she seen us, doing whatever we had been doing? I wasn’t sure if I wished she would just go away but I certainly hoped she hadn’t seen what we were doing. Whatever it was.

She’d taken time to change clothes. Instead of the blue skirt, white blouse and loafers she wore to school, she had on pink capris, a flowered top and sneakers. She’d tied her hair back in a ponytail, too. She looked really cute.

“Sometimes, you’re more of a girl than Donna is,” Rod commented.

“What?!” I crossed my arms over my chest.

“Yeah, like that,” he said. “Girls do that.” He reached out suddenly and mussed my hair again. “And like if I did that with Donna’s hair, she would either kick me or slug me.” He was still grinning and shaking his head, before suddenly looking alarmed. “Aw, jeez, Jonny, don’t cry!”

“You’re bullying me!” I snapped at him.

He put his hands up, making pushing motions. “Yeah, get mad. Don’t cry.”

I turned away from him, trying not to sniff. Fooler came over and looked through the fence at me, his tail waving. Were the things Rod was saying true?

“Yeah,” Rod said. “I guess I put up with you turning out to be gay for two more years, but when we got to junior high, I had to cut you loose.”

“I’m not gay,” I protested. Had it been like that?

“I don’t really care,” said Rod, the guy who used to be my best friend. “But if you’re queer for me — well, that just ain’t gonna happen.”

If it wasn’t…. What the heck had we just been doing? I remembered his remark about the lady with the goldens thinking I was his girlfriend.

I thought I really should kick him, but instead I ran to intercept Donna, taking Fooler’s leash with me. I’d give it to her and she could bring the old dog home, but I had to get away.