Have another little piece of my heart now, baby. You know you got it if it makes you feel good. Glenda, my best friend’s mom, harmonizes with Janis Joplin’s gravelly voice like she’s singing the sacred anthem of wild women everywhere. She has a beautiful singing voice, so I try not to be too mad that the song has been on repeat for the last hour, but it’s grating on my already fried nerves. When we finally cross back into Wisconsin, less than two hours from home, I feel like I’ve stepped into my favorite pajamas after a long day. The hurly-burly left in me begins to settle.

Since we were little, Molly and I have lived down the street from one another in a small farming community tucked neatly between sprawling corn and soybean fields. There’s a church on every corner and across the street from each one is a hole-in-the-wall tavern. We’re more like sisters than anything, Molly and me, which I suppose makes Glenda like a second mom. As a special end-of-the-school-year treat, Glenda decided to bring us along on her work trip “to the Windy City,” as she called it. “We’ll have some big city fun for a change,” she said.

Earlier this month, Molly and I graduated from eighth grade with high honors and hugs from our teachers who were sad to see us go. We were among the few students who made them feel good at their jobs, while our peers slept through class or flung paper footballs or were so stoned they didn’t know what town they were in. Molly and I don’t know how to be anything other than well-behaved, so we didn’t feel a celebratory trip was necessary, but we jumped at the opportunity to get out of town.

If you could see me telling this story, you’d notice I use air quotes at the part where Glenda talks about her “work trip.” See, Glenda said her boss, Dr. Dan, had been invited to present at a medical conference at a fancy hotel right on Michigan Avenue. Glenda drove us down and we met up with him for dinner Friday evening. From there, the two of them spent the entire weekend flitting around like kids our age. Glenda claimed we had to stay with Dan at the hotel so she could help him set up and hand out informational packets during his presentation, but neither of them set foot in any conference while we were there, let alone presented at one. They did, however, make good on the promise of a fancy hotel on Michigan Avenue. I’d never seen such glamor in all my life.

When we got to the hotel, Molly began to spy and run interference whenever things between Dan and Glenda got too friendly. For a while now, Molly and I have suspected those two are having an affair. Together they exist in a secret world, one built solely on wanting. They look at each other and hearts pop out of their eyes like cartoon characters in love. Also rather suspect, the way they frequently have to “go check on something” together.

I don’t understand it, seeing as how Glenda’s already married to a good man, and Dr. Dan, a wormy dentist with a lame sense of humor, is not the kind of guy you blow your life up to be with. Something about grownups I’ll never understand, the way they want what they don’t have, the things they feel robbed of by the choices they themselves made. They pine for an outcome better than the one they got and lose all sense of themselves in the process.

To pass the time on the ride home, and maybe to avoid thinking about what Dan and Glenda did when we weren’t looking, Molly and I wave and make silly faces at people in passing vehicles. Our girly, doe-eyed charm elicits smiles and polite waves. We giggle uncontrollably when the occasional waver hams it up for us, and we log all our findings in a shared spiral notebook that we carry wherever we go.

In the pages following our data, we write backstories for the most attractive male drivers. We craft them into boyfriends or husbands in our fantasies about womanhood, and we fill the pages with tales of exciting drama, raw emotion, and happy endings. The visions of romance make my insides fizzle and pop, carbonated worry. Far as I can tell, to get from girl to woman, one must summon a boatload of courage, and I have no idea when or how that happens.

The sky has a tangerine tinge as the late afternoon sun smolders on the horizon. We look up from our notebook as a tan sedan merges onto the highway and hovers in the lane next to us. The driver is a beefy middle-aged man wearing a dark tie and a tight white button-down. Molly waves first, and he smiles politely. I lean over Molly and wave theatrically. He waves back, nothing striking about him or his responses.

Molly adjusts the straps of her bra, as they have fallen down her bony shoulders, bright blue stripes against her tan skin. She brushes her wispy blonde bangs out of her face, jots our newest data in the notebook, and taps the pen on her chin while she analyzes everything.

“Only one percent of men in ties have been silly while driving,” Molly, the budding scientist, reports.

Something catches her attention and she looks back out her window toward the tan sedan.

“What the…” Molly gasps.

I lean forward and follow her gaze. The man is thrusting his hips toward his steering wheel, and his khaki pants are unzipped. A tornado siren goes off in my head when I realize he’s stroking himself. Hot crimson embarrassment floods my cheeks, and I wonder if he realizes we can see what he’s doing.

He looks down at his lap and then at us, sneering and aggressive, with a needling stare that commands but also begs us to witness him in this way. So, yes, I think, he knows we can see him. I recognize desire in his eyes, and some kind of proud desperation. Dan’s eyes glow the same way when he looks at Glenda’s body, scanning her up and down, letting his gaze linger around her breasts and ample behind. Hungry but satisfied at the same time.

I feel trapped in Glenda’s car, completely stuck in this moment. I’m sweating even though cold air from the rear vents is tickling goosebumps on my bare arms. Suddenly Glenda’s laissez-faire parenting style, something I usually find favorable, seems completely irresponsible. Too afraid to speak, I grab the pen and hastily scribble LOOK AWAY. Molly and I stare forward for what feels like an eternity until he finally speeds off.

I inch as close to Molly as my seatbelt will allow. I’ve always been compelled to protect her. Sometimes she seems too fragile for this world. Maybe we both are, unspoiled and untouchable. I fear this is what attracted the man in the tan sedan to us. Maybe our innocence is a type of juju that rouses guys like him, men who will keep coming to flaunt their masculinity in our naive faces. Once in our orbit, they’ll become like bees in springtime, hovering wild-eyed over our flowering bodies, possessed by all the ways they can pleasure us into full bloom.

I think about my cheekbones, how the baby fat has melted and found its way to my chest. I think about my hips, which began swelling the month my period came and I started bleeding painful blood. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t completely enamored with this new body, but the fear in me wishes I could send it back. Reverse time by six or seven years so I look as young and vulnerable as I feel. When you’re little, people don’t think twice about you. You’re just there, like a handbag, one of your mom’s accessories. A non-sexual extension of her womanhood. Safe, in other words.

I fold my arms across my stomach and slouch lower in my seat so less of me can be seen from outside the car. Molly, on the other hand, sits taller, reaches into her pocket, and pulls out a tube of sparkly Lip Smacker lip gloss. She rolls it onto her puffy lips the way Glenda applies her dark red lipstick, with precision and calm. Molly looks older, more mature, and inexplicably relieved.

I return to the notebook, still unable to use my voice: This wasn’t supposed to happen. My hand shakes as I reach for Molly. She brushes me off.

“Don’t. We’re fine. Better than fine, actually,” she insists, more confident than I’ve ever heard her. I watch in bewilderment as Molly tussles her wavy blonde curls until her hair looks thicker and more voluptuous. She beams as she takes the pen from me, turns to a new page, and writes today’s date: June 30, 1996.

Last night at dinner I saw Glenda smile to herself after Dan sneakily squeezed her rear end and gave it a little pat. An act of intimacy I was surely not supposed to see. Glenda looked flushed with joy and confidence. For what reason, I couldn’t tell you, but she was positively glowing in the spotlight of that man’s lust. This is how Molly looks as she writes four more words: We are women now.

– Carrie Hinton