Read Uses for Boys for Free Online Page B

around.
     “They might fit me,” I say quietly.
    The girl holds out the shoe. I step closer again and rest the T-shirt and scarf on
     a shelf. I take the shoe from her and turn it over in my hand. She’s still looking
     at the ground, but I can tell her eyes are looking around. She has a narrow face.
     Narrow eyes. Her dress is thin and stretchy and I can see her hip bones. Her breasts
     are even smaller than mine. She’s wearing high-heeled sandals and her hair is thick
     and long and straight like a child’s. She’s beautiful. She’s beautiful and I want
     to know her.
    Toy tells me every great thing she’s ever found at Goodwill. She tells me about this
     dress, the black dress and the other dresses, a rainbow of dresses that she’s found
     here. She looks at the ground when she talks and her eyes slant and dart over to mine
     and then back. I sit down on a bench and take off my sneakers. The wingtips fit and
     they’re perfect. I look at Toy and Toy’s looking at my feet and she says it too. Perfect.
     Just like that.
    “They’re perfect,” she says and then she sits down and takes my scarf off the shelf
     in front of us.
    “I saw this,” she says. “I wish I’d taken it.” She’s holding it up to the light and
     the gray cliff of Gibraltar is neatly in the center. “It’s cool,” she says.
    I reach for the coveted scarf. “I’ll loan it to you,” I say and I hold my feet out
     in front of me admiring the shoes.
    Toy and I shop together. There are a pair of sailor pants with a boy’s name embroidered
     on the inside. There’s a bright blue mohair cardigan. We stand in front of the mirror
     and try things on. I dip my chin so my bangs fall forward and I look at her eyes in
     the mirror but she looks only at herself. She puts a dress on over the one she’s wearing,
     twists her hair up and holds it on top of her head. The she turns to me.
    “What do you think,” she says. And then she says, “My boyfriend would love this.”
     And she emphasizes the word, love. “He would love this,” she says. And she emphasizes
     the word, boyfriend. “My boyfriend,” she says.
    I look at myself in the mirror and dip my chin. She has a boyfriend, I think.
    After we had sex the first time, Joey took the condom off and placed it next to the
     bed. “I’m your boyfriend now, you know,” he’d said and when he said that, I made fists
     and filled his armpits. Stretched out the fingers of my hand and compared them to
     his. I think about Todd. His hand over my mouth. Toy turns around in the mirror.
    “He would love this,” she says again, pulling the short black dress off again.
    In the end I let her buy the scarf and she buys the short black dress and I buy the
     wingtips and the sailor pants and the T-shirt from the Mystery Spot. We each buy a
     few old Vogue magazines. We stand on the sidewalk and I hold our bags while Toy reapplies her lipstick.
     She does it without a mirror and when she’s done, she looks up at the pregnant sky,
     heavy with clouds. I’m holding her bag in my hand and feeling like she could just
     walk away at any second and nothing will have changed.
    I need something to change. I look up at the sky and try to figure out what to say.
     Toy stretches and then yawns.
    “Let’s go to my house,” she says. And then she takes her bag and walks toward the
     bus stop.

 
    best friends
    The bus winds through the city and out to Toy’s neighborhood on the other side of
     the suburb from mine. She’s talking about her family.
    “From daughter to wife,” is how she describes her mom, as if repeating something she’d
     heard. “He left us” is how she describes her dad. “The stepfathers,” she says, “aren’t
     worth describing.”
    “From stepfather to stepfather,” I say.
    “Me too,” she says. And now her father has new kids. “Better kids,” she says. “His
     finally-got-it-right family.”
    I stare at her profile.
    “I’m the fucked-up daughter with the