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“Still,” says Joelle. “Everyone knows she’s been with, like, the entire planet.”
“What an unpleasant visual,” says Ash. “Gotta love how the leotard rides up her butt.”
“Luke doesn’t seem to mind,” says Joelle. She catches my face. “I mean, he’s really really hot, but it’s a good thing you guys aren’t boyfriend/girlfriend and all that.”
“Oh, please. Who needs a boyfriend?” says Ash. “It’s not like we’re gonna get married anytime soon. Anyway, like Audrey keeps saying, college is right around the corner.”
It’s not supposed to bug me that Luke’s such a player; everything’s supposed to be casual. But in our friends-with-benefits arrangement, it seems like he’s the one who gets all the benefits. “Any other hot guys here?” I ask.
“I hope so,” Ash says. “I haven’t hooked up in weeks.”
Joelle runs off to get us some “soda”, which means that there’s beer that we’ll have to hide from Joelle’s dad, who probably won’t come out of his office over the garage long enough to see anything anyway. Me and Ash follow Joelle into the den. All the usuals are there: tramps, witches, devils, football players dressed like cheerleaders, cheerleaders dressed like football players. “So original,” says Ash. There is a guy wearing a plaid jacket with a fish tank on his head. When we ask, he says, “I’m swimming with the fishies”. Red plastic fish are glued to the walls of the tank. His teeth make a white piano in his blue-painted face.
Almost immediately, Ash starts dragging me over to every reasonably cute guy who doesn’t already know us from school. Joelle runs around taking bad pictures with her digital camera. Luke goes from girl to girl, stealing witch hats and pretending to poke people with a pitchfork he’s stolen from one of the devils. As if it’s my fault that everyone thinks she’s a slut, Pam Markovitz huddles with Cindy Terlizzi on the couch, Cindy shooting dirty looks and Pam smirking at me. I ignore them, talking to this person and that person, trying to relax and have a good time, but I feel like I’m far away and watching everything on a TV screen. Ash is getting sick of me being so gloomy, so she flirts big-time with Fish Tank, looking to hook up. At random intervals, cell phones ring and jingle and sing, and people go all yellular, shouting over the music, “What? WHAT?”
I down the rest of my beer and go over to the cooler for another one. I don’t even like beer.
“Awwww. Why so sad? Where’s Mr Popularity?”
I turn and see Chilly. He’s wearing baggy jeans, high-tops and a T-shirt that says “Insert Lame Costume Here”. Apparently it was good enough for Joelle, because he’s not wearing a tutu.
“Who?” I say.
“You know who,” he says.
“I don’t,” I say. Chilly gives me the creeps. He has eyes like radioactive algae and a wormy mouth. We learned a word for wormy in biology. Anneloid.
“I’m surprised to see you here,” he says. “Don’t you have a few thousand tests to study for? Another foreign language to learn?”
“Croatian,” I say. “But I can do that tomorrow.”
“You are such a good, good girl. Doesn’t it kill you that you aren’t graduating number one?”
As of the end of last year, I was number four in our class and had to work my butt off to get that much. A lot of people think that I’m some kind of genius because I skipped a grade, but I don’t think I’m much smarter than anyone else. I’m just weirder.
“There’s eight months to graduation,” I say. “Anything can happen.”
“Nah,” he says. He takes a sip of his drink, not beer but ginger ale. “You’ll never catch up with Ron. He’s got everyone beat. And Kimberly would rather commit ritual suicide than let anyone take her number two. I forget who’s number three, but whoever it is, you won’t budge them.”
“You sleep through all your classes. What do you care?”
“I don’t care at all. My test scores will get me where I want to go.”
“Oh, I’m sure they will,” I say. I resist the urge to puke on his shoes. I cannot believe that I ever went out with him. I want to jam my finger into my ear and scratch the memory out of my brain.
He takes a step closer to me, his algae eyes scraping across my chest. “Wanna hook up?”
“No,” I say.
“Come on,” he says. “You’re free, I’m free.”
I think, You’re always free. I look around the room for Luke. A mistake, because Chilly snorts.
“Don’t worry about him. He’s already occupied.” Chilly touches my cheek with a sandpapery fingertip. “He won’t mind sharing.”
I slap his hand and walk away. I can hear Chilly laughing behind me and I wish I’d thrown my beer in his face or something dramatic like that. But the drama queen stuff is Joelle’s job, not mine, and Chilly knows it. It’s why he likes to bother me.
When I’m upstairs in the bathroom, I swig the beer and check my make-up in the harsh light. I look like the Empress of the Undead, if Empresses of the Undead are pouty and pathetic. What’s the use of planning a big break-up if the person you’re breaking up with is too busy yanking on tails and poking people with pitchforks? I suddenly do not want to be at this party at all. I wonder if I should call my mom and ask for a ride home.
I’m still trying to decide when I bump into Luke in the hallway. Before I know what’s up, he’s pulled me into one of the bedrooms and shut the door with his foot.
“Hey,” I say.
“Hey yourself,” he says. He—or someone else—has taken off the white collar, so he’s all in black. He looks more devilish than the devils do. I think that if there is a real devil, he has golden hair and round blue angel eyes, just like Luke.
“What?” he says, because I’m staring.
“Nothing,” I say. “Look. I’ve got to go.”
“Come on! We haven’t even had a chance to hang out yet.”
“That’s because there are too many other kitties around here,” I say.
“You’re not jealous,” he says.
I roll my eyes, hard. He has one hand around my upper arm and he squeezes. He’s smiling, and I hate him for just a second. As usual, it passes.
“Let go,” I tell him.
“Is something wrong?”
I sigh. Everything is wrong. Maybe it’s the beer. Note to self: beer.
“Have I told you how amazing you look tonight?” he says.
I know when I’m being played, but the compliment cheers me anyway—that’s what kind of dork I am. “Thanks,” I tell him. He leans down to kiss me and I pull away. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
Surprise. “Why not?”
“Just ’cause, OK?”
He doesn’t believe me. I don’t believe me. My body is practically squealing with happiness. I’m sure he can hear it.
He tries to kiss me again and I turn my face. “What’s the matter?” he says, concerned for real now. His hand falls away from my arm.
“I’ve been meaning to tell you.” I take a deep breath. “I don’t want to do this any more.”
“Do what?”
“What we’re doing.”
He doesn’t answer. He tips his head and seems genuinely perplexed. It pisses me off.
“I don’t want to do what we do. I don’t want to…” I look for the right words. “I don’t want to be involved with anyone right now.”
He frowns—blinking, quiet. “But I thought we were cool,” he says, finally. “I thought we were just hanging out.”
“Hanging out. Yeah, I love that,” I say. What I don’t say: I love that we’ve hooked up at every party every weekend for the last two and a half months but somehow we’re not involved. I love that we go to the same school but I don’t get much more than a “hey” in the hallways, no matter how many times your tongue has been down my throat.
Of course, since I don’t actually finish the thought, since I haven’t said anything like it before, he has no clue what I’m talking about. I stand there, watching the expressions march across his face. I can imagine what he’s thinking: Did she just say something about LOVE? Does this mean we can’t hook up? Should I hook up with Pam Markovitz instead? What’s going on???
I almost feel bad for him. That’s what devils do: they make you feel bad.
I must be staring again, because Luke’s frown smoothes out. He’s got these perfect lips, full and pink. Pretty girl lips on a boy’s rough, stubbled face. I can’t help it, I think it’s hot. And he’s so close I can smell him. Warm and clean and sort of soapy-spicy. It’s a great smell. It’s a smell that can make you drunk. I wonder if I am. Can almost two beers make you drunk?
His frown is totally gone now, and mine must be gone, too, because he ignores what I said, reels me in and kisses me. I feel the press of his chest and the weight of his arm around my waist, all those heavy bones, and I think: OK, fine. But this is it. After this, no more dumb high school hook-ups with dumb high school boys, no matter how hot or soapy-smelling they are. I’m done with this. Done.
Maybe because he can sense it, or because he’s afraid I’ll change my mind, Luke takes his time, lips barely touching, barely brushing mine. The music thumping downstairs plays a heartbeat under my feet as the kiss goes from sweet to serious—slidey and sideways and deep. Like always, a thousand flowers bloom in my gut, my skin tingles everywhere and my brains sidle towards the door.
I don’t know how much time goes by before his fingers are crawling under my various shirts and he’s pushing me backwards towards the bed. Another not-so-good idea. On the bed, he could work me up, peel off all the layers till there’s nothing left to cover me and it’s too hard to say no.
I say, “No.”
He mumbles something against my collarbone, something beginning with “I—I want, I need, I-I-I.” It makes me so mad. Isn’t it enough that I turn into some sort of panting, slobbering wolf-girl when he’s around? I should let him see all of me? Have all of me? Just because he wants it?
I plant my feet and steer him around. I put my hands on his shoulders and sit him down on the edge of the mattress.
“What?” he says.
“Shut up.”
I drop down in front of him. I can’t make him listen or understand or care, and I don’t even want to. But I want to do something. Make him feel me. Make him beg me. Make him be the naked one.
And so, I do.
With Luke’s low groan in my ears and my eyes shutting out the world, I don’t hear the door open behind us, I don’t see the flash of light.
The Photograph (#ulink_558d1465-8aa0-526b-b908-a6bbb44d3848)
Ash is not a morning person. She is also not a neat person.
When I get in her car on Monday morning, there are old Styrofoam coffee cups strewn on the floor and one attached to her lips. Sheets of paper, crumpled napkins, and random changes of clothes—fresh and foul—litter the backseat.
Sticking to the dashboard is a quarter of a glazed doughnut, age indeterminate. Me and Ash have been friends since the sixth grade and she’s been driving me to school since the day she got her licence, so I’m used to her morning-fog face, her bloodshot eyes, her endless coffee and the disgusting mess that is her personal universe. It’s not even so disgusting any more. I grab a handful of napkins and bravely peel the doughnut off the dashboard and dump it in the ashtray, which is filled with butts from Ash’s on-again, off-again smoking habit.
I don’t say anything for a few minutes, waiting until Ash has more caffeine in her system. After a while, she grumbles, “What are you so happy about?” She pumps the gas pedal of her old Dodge to keep it from dying out at the stoplight.
“Who says I’m happy?” I ask her.
“Because you’re not complaining about the dumb party or the itchy costume or how long it took you to get the make-up off or the fourteen thousand college essays you had to write yesterday,” she says. “That means you’re happy about something.”
Ash is not happy. Fish Tank, she’d told me on the way home from the party, had some girlfriend who went to the Catholic high school, so didn’t want to hook up with Ash or anyone else. I didn’t tell her about ending it with Luke. For some reason, it had felt like a secret, something that was more special because I was the only one in the world who knew it, or at least the only one in the world who knew I was serious about it. Sunday morning, I sat in church while the pastor—the really boring one—babbled on about some dumb movie he saw and what Jesus might think of it, going on so much and so long that he seemed to be putting himself and the rest of us to sleep. So instead of listening to Pastor Narcolepsy, I told God what happened (yeah, yeah, as if she didn’t know already). Anyway, I said that it was over and that I was OK. I said I felt strong, like I’d broken a spell. I swore that I would concentrate on my work again, that I would be back to myself. I would no longer be operating in a Luke-induced lust haze. I would be myself again.
But with the harsh Monday-morning light piercing my eyes, with Ash mumbling like an old drunk into her coffee, I decide to go public.
“I’m not exactly happy,” I say. “But I feel really good. I broke up with Luke on Saturday night.”
“You did what?”
“I broke up with Luke.”
Her mouth hangs open. Then she says, “How can you break up with a guy if you’re not even going out with him?”
This annoys me. “We’ve been hooking up for the last two and a half months, Ash. We were doing something. And now we’re not.”
“Right,” says Ash. She jams her coffee cup into the cup holder. “Ten bucks says you’ll change your mind.”
“I’m not going to change my mind.” I check myself as I say this, wondering if I’m telling the truth. But I am. I feel it. At the party, as Luke was buttoning up his shirt over that body, a body so perfect that it was like a punch to the throat, I’d said, “Well, it’s been fun. ‘Bye. Have a nice life,” and walked out of the bedroom without looking back. “I just don’t want it any more, that’s all,” I say.
“Can you hear yourself?” she says. “You don’t want Luke DeSalvio. Everybody wants Luke DeSalvio. Hell, if you guys kept hooking up, maybe he’d ask you to the prom.”
“I’m not going to keep hooking up with some random guy in case the cheerleading squad isn’t available to escort him to the prom.”
“Bite my head off, why don’t you?” She drums her fingers on the steering wheel. “He’s not exactly random. I thought you liked him. I thought you more than liked him.”
I sigh. “I do. I did. I can’t figure out if I wanted him or I just wanted, well…”
“You dog!”
“That’s the point. I’m not. I’d like to be able to talk to the person I’m hooking up with.”
“Talk? To a guy? What for?” She sees my face and laughs. “Kidding, kidding.” She digs around underneath the doughnut for a still-smokable butt, giving up when she doesn’t find one. “I guess I’m just surprised. I mean, I think it’s totally the right decision. It’s great. It does say something that he went for you, though, as much as I hate to say it.”
“Thanks a lot,” I say.
“You know what I mean,” she says. “You, Miss Skip-a-Grade, 9.45 GPA, off-to-the-Ivy-League prodigy—”
“I wish you would stop saying that.”
“And him with the bazillion varsity letters, the golden tan, and the…”
“Amazing ass?”
Ash pulls an I’m-so-shocked face and adopts her British accent. “Such a cheeky girl!”
“Such a dorky girl,” I say. “Who knows why he was hanging out with me. Maybe I was next on the list.” I reach back and rebundle the hair at the back of my head, thankfully blonde again. “I tried the casual hookup thing. It’s not for me. It’s like I was trying to be someone else. Trying to be him.”
Ash considers this. “I’m not sure that’s such a bad idea. To try to be like guys. Look at them. They just do whatever they want and nobody cares. Why shouldn’t we be like them?”
