If I Was Your Girl

Amanda hangs out all night with the girls before finally going home. It’s one of the first times she feels like an ordinary teenage girl. The next morning, Anna calls Amanda and begs her to go to church. She’s hesitant since she hasn’t been to church in a long time, but she finally gives in. Her dad warns against it since he worries how the people at church will treat her if they find out the truth, but she goes anyway.

The car ride is awkward, as Amanda realizes that Anna’s parents are really strict. However, the church sermon strikes a chord in Amanda. The pastor says that Christians are “too concerned with the external, with our appearances […] when we should be concerned with the internal” (87). Amanda feels reassured that maybe the people in her life might actually care about who she is on the inside, not who she once was on the outside.

Amanda watches Grant at football practice. She tries to invite him over to her house, since her dad won’t be home until late, but he acts strangely and backs out. She calls Virginia for advice. Virginia reassures her that everything will be okay; Grant probably just has his own secret issues, too.

Amanda goes mud trucking with Grant and his friends. They ride alone in the truck, and Amanda tries to get him to play the truth game that Bee taught her. She admits that he was her first kiss, and they kiss again. She’s on his lap, her “hair draped around [him] like a curtain” (102), when suddenly they’re interrupted by Grant’s friend, Rodney, the owner of the truck.

Amanda and Bee hang out and go to a fast-food restaurant to eat. Amanda is shocked to see Grant cooking the food. He runs outside and admits that he’s been working forty hours a week and is ashamed about it. 

Amanda thinks back to a fight that occurred between her mother and dad. There was a lot of yelling, and she realized that they were fighting about her. Her dad wanted to toughen her up by getting her to do more boy things, while her mother was afraid that “putting me closer to the people who were bullying me would just get me bullied more” (112). The fight ended with her dad throwing something, and she and her mother went to stay with her parents. 

Amanda and Grant watch the movie Amélie together, and he’s trying really hard to understand the plot. She puts her legs over him and admires their shape because “they were the only parts of my body that had felt feminine all along” (116). She brings up the truth game again, and he gets angry because he’s tired of her trying to pry into his personal history. He says sorry for his outburst and admits he’s just not ready to tell her about his family yet. Her dad comes home and is angry that there’s a boy in the house.

Amanda is in the locker room and undresses for PE. Layla is surprised to see that Amanda doesn’t have a sports bra on because she says the run will be painful without one. Amanda realizes there’s a lot of things about being a woman that she doesn’t know.

In the car later with her dad, she’s embarrassed to tell him that she needs new bras, but she finally does. He’s angry with her for trying to date and says that “People like you get killed by people like” Grant (128). Amanda’s angry, but she also knows that a part of him is right to worry.

Grant takes Amanda to meet his family one night, demonstrating that he wants her to know more about him. His family has been living in a trailer in poverty ever since his dad left, and his mom has been dealing with mental health issues. Amanda enjoys the dinner and conversation with Grant’s mom, but most of all, she’s happy that he revealed this part of himself to her.