Barbara the Slut and Other People (17 page)

I called my mom and she started screaming, “I knew it! I knew it!” before I could even tell her. She must have pushed her twelve o’clock back, and I thought about the patient sitting in the waiting room and listening to her yell, “I knew it!”

Then I called my dad and he said, “Congratulations, angel, that’s very exciting,” which is exactly what I knew he was going to say. Everything went exactly the way I thought it was going to go. I had tried to pretend that I didn’t know I was going to get in, but like I said, the odds were pretty good. In addition to my grades and test scores, it just so happened that both of my parents went to Princeton. When I was in the process of applying, the admissions counselor at school told me that one other student from Ashwell had been admitted to Princeton, three years ago, and she wasn’t a legacy but she was black. What she actually said was, “She had a diverse background,” which didn’t make any sense.

I spent the afternoon looking at the course catalog and making a list of classes I wanted to take. When I was done with that I downloaded a picture of four girls on the Princeton cross-country team and Photoshopped my face onto the one who looked the most like me. The girls had their arms around each other like older, sweatier versions of the girls in my elementary school yearbooks. It took me an hour but I did a good job. I printed it out on photo paper and put it in my mirror with the pictures from Turks and Caicos and a math team picture from when we won the New England Meet junior year.

I went for a run and let my parents pick George up from after-school. When they got home with him we went out to dinner at the Indian place, and when we got back my mom took a new Princeton sweatshirt out of her bedroom and a cake box out of the cabinet over the stove. My dad got a bottle of champagne out of the fridge and poured glasses for the three of us and a glass of milk for my brother.

“To Barbara the mathematician,” said my dad and raised his glass.

“To Barbara, my college girl,” said my mom.

“To Barbara the Slud,” George said and thumped me on the back.

I froze.

My dad put his glass down on the counter too hard.

“What?” said my mom. “What did you say, George?”

George looked at her and at my dad. He looked at me and then looked away and drank all of his milk.

“George, that sounded like a bad word,” said my mom. “Did you mean to say a bad word?”

“No!” said George. “It’s not a bad word.”

“Where did you hear that?” said my dad.

“It’s not a bad word,” said George.

“I’m sure that’s not what he meant,” I said. “I’m sure it’s not what it sounds like.”

My mom looked at me and started cutting the cake, a coconut cake like the one from Connie’s on Cape Cod. Everyone was silent. I ate two big pieces and tried to calm down.

“Here come the freshman fifteen,” my dad said when I finished.

“Neil!” said my mom.

“Sorry.” My dad winked at me. “But keep up the running.”

My mom rolled her eyes.

When we were done eating I went to my room. My stomach churned. I e-mailed my guidance counselor about Princeton and finally my mom knocked, even though the door was open.

“Hi honey,” she said. “Is there anything you want to talk about?”

“No,” I said.

“Is everything okay at school?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Well, when George . . .” she said.

“George is retarded,” I said.

My mom studied me. “I can tell you don’t want to talk about this, Barbara. But calling your brother retarded is not the way to get out of it.” My mom’s therapy voice makes me want to crawl back into her womb where I can’t hear her.

“Everything is fine,” I said. “I don’t know where George got that. But everything is fine.”

“Okay,” she said. “I need you to tell me if I should worry.”

“Okay,” I said. “I will.”

•   •   •

The next day was Friday and I tried to forget about my mom and dad and George. I wore my new sweatshirt to show everyone at school that I was out of there. When I got to homeroom Ms. Constantino congratulated me. Then the bell rang and she made announcements about next week’s finals that nobody listened to.

“And we have our second early-admission notification,” she said. “Barbara Murphy was admitted to Princeton University.” Somebody booed. Ms. Constantino looked up and frowned. “Barbara is the second student from Ashwell ever to be accepted to Princeton, so congratulations, Barbara.”

“Slut,” said a girl in the back of the room.

“Kelsey! See me after the bell!” said Ms. Constantino. She looked at the paper in her hand and read, “The shoe drive will end next Friday, December twenty-third. Please bring in new or gently worn shoes and deposit them in the boxes by the main office and the gym entrance.”

I tried to hurry out of the classroom when the bell rang.

“Who do you know in admissions?” said Joanna DeMarco. She stuck her tongue in her cheek and pumped her hand like she was giving a blow job.

•   •   •

At lunch I went to the cafeteria to get chocolate milk and somebody yelled “whore” so I went to eat in my car. When I finished my coconut cake I felt better and decided to spend the rest of the period reading in the library instead of listening to “Tiny Dancer” on repeat.

Roger Vasquez was sitting outside the library with Lacey Hill on his lap and Melissa Knight next to him.

“Hey Princeton slut,” Roger said when he saw me.

Lacey turned around. “Barbara the Slut,” she said and stood up.

I walked into the library and headed for the desk across the room. The librarian had headphones on and was looking at her computer.

“Not so fast,” said Melissa. She grabbed my bag and it slid off my shoulder and onto the floor.

Lacey got in front of me. “You think you’re so great.”

“No,” I said.

She pushed my chest and I had to take a step back. I felt like I was going to pee. I tried to get out from between her and Melissa. Roger was standing in the door of the library.

“What’s the re-tard going to do when you’re being a sl-ut at P-rince-ton?” said Melissa.

I thought Lacey was going to push me again, but she grabbed my boobs and dug her fingers in. I took her wrists and tried to get her to let go. I wanted to say something but no words would come out. Finally I yelled, “Help!”

The librarian took off her headphones but didn’t stand up. “What is going on here?” she said.

“Nothing.” Lacey smiled at her. She patted me on the head. “See you later, Barbara.”

“I need help.” I grabbed my bag and ran toward the desk.

“Pussy,” said Melissa.

When I got to the desk the librarian looked at me and I turned to see the three of them leaving.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I’ll look for the book myself. If I can’t find it I’ll come back.”

“Okay,” said the librarian and put her headphones back on.

I went back to the stacks but two kids were making out on a step stool. No one was in the library classroom so I went in and lay down under one of the tables and looked at the wads of gum. I couldn’t stop shaking.

When the bell rang I got out from under the table and took my sweatshirt off. I looked into my shirt and my boobs looked okay. I put the sweatshirt in my locker and went to chemistry and then AP Calculus. Mr. Monahan was really excited about Princeton and gave me a hug. It made my throat tighten and I had to pull away from him. After calculus I got my bag and my sweatshirt out of my locker and went outside.

In the parking lot I heard a car accelerating behind me and something heavy hit me in the back of the leg. A Diet Coke can rolled away. The car sped past me and a girl leaned out the window and yelled, “Go kill yourself, slut!” It was Amber Battaglia, and the car looked like the CR-V that Jesse Spence got over Thanksgiving, and as it drove away I tried to remember if Amber and Jesse knew each other or not.

My leg was throbbing when I got to my car. I got in, locked the doors, and tried to get the key into the ignition but it took me a minute. I drove home slowly because I was worried that if I drove fast I would get in an accident. I thought about what it would feel like right before, and how quickly it could be over. No one would put a cross with flowers next to the accident site because my parents would think it was trashy, and no one at school would do that for me. George would do it if he knew I wanted him to, but he wouldn’t know I wanted him to.

When I got home I didn’t want to go inside, so I started the car again and drove back to school. My heart was still beating too fast when I got there. I felt panicked that they weren’t going to let George go because it wasn’t five o’clock, but they did because I told them that our pretend dog Lemma was dying and George had to come say good-bye. George looked happy to see me until I pulled him into a hug and whispered, “Start crying right now.”

Since George was the smartest kid in the world, he started sniffling.

When we got outside he said, “Can I watch a movie with you tonight?”

I thought about taking him to a movie right then but I was scared to be in a dark theater. “Yeah,” I said. “We can watch a movie tonight.”

“Where are we going?” said George. “This isn’t the way to go home.”

I had been planning on driving around, but he wasn’t going to go for it.

“We’re going to get ice cream,” I said. I turned around again.

“Ice cream is for the summer not the winter,” George said.

When we got to Friendly’s he reconsidered and ordered a Jim Dandy with scoops of strawberry, chocolate, black raspberry, mint chocolate chip, and Vienna mocha chunk. I didn’t have a good feeling about it, but when it came in a huge wineglass-shaped dish, it was the perfect sundae. We ate half of it and then I sent George out to the car with my keys and he came back with his backpack and my book for current events. I read and George did his sudoku book, and when the sundae melted we took sips of it.

We left Friendly’s at five and we got home at the same time as our mom. I didn’t think my parents would be there because it was their date night, but my mom said they were going to a nice restaurant and she wanted to put on a dress.

I went to my room to put my stuff down and got into bed. I felt sick from the sundae. My mom came in to tell me she was leaving. She was wearing a black sweater dress and a turquoise necklace and I wondered if I was going to be beautiful like her when I was somebody’s mom.

“Are you okay, honey?” she said.

“Yeah,” I said. “I ate too much ice cream.”

“It was sweet of you to pick George up early,” she said. “Were your teachers excited?”

“Yeah,” I said.

My mom kissed my hair and left.

Now that I was in bed and I wasn’t shaking and my heart wasn’t beating in my ears and I wasn’t distracted by George, I was mad. Roger Fucking Vasquez, I wanted to kill him. I got out of bed and looked him up in the phone book.

I dialed his number and got his mom.

“Hi, may I please speak to Roger?” I said.

“Sure, just a minute,” she said. I heard the phone hit a table or something, and she called, “Roger, it’s a girl!”

“Hello?” said Roger.

“It’s Barbara,” I said. “If you ever call me a slut again, I’ll tell everyone at school you couldn’t keep it up when we fucked. Okay?”

He didn’t say anything but I could hear him breathing.

“And I heard you need a baseball scholarship because you’re so dumb, and you probably wouldn’t want me to call your recruiters and tell them that you do steroids and you’re suffering from testicular atrophy.”

More breathing.

“I’m sure you don’t know what that means, but it’s when your balls deflate.”

I hung up because it didn’t seem like Roger had anything to add. I didn’t think threatening Roger was going to make things better with Lacey or Melissa or anyone else, but I did think he was going to make the right choice.

Next I looked up Jesse Spence’s address and went downstairs.

“We have to go out for a minute,” I told George.

“You said we were going to watch a movie.”

“We will when we get back.”

In the car George announced that it had been one minute.

“A minute means a lot of minutes,” I said.

“No it doesn’t, it means one minute.”

“Okay, well, we’re going out for a lot of minutes.” I pushed the tape into the deck and “Tiny Dancer” came back on. George sang along, and I felt my forehead relax. When we got to Jesse’s house the CR-V was in the driveway. I told George to stay in the car.

“Have a good time,” he said.

I squeezed his knee. I didn’t know what I was going to do without that kid.

I got out and walked across the lawn. It was a cold, clear night.

I knocked. I hoped Jesse’s parents were out dieting or something.

Jesse answered the door after a minute and looked surprised.

“Listen, I’m sorry about Amber throwing that soda at you,” he said, almost whispering. “I didn’t know she was going to do that.”

“Uh,” I said.

“Okay,” he said, “have a good night.”

I put my hand on the door. He looked up the stairs behind him, and then back at me.

“Do you want to hang out again sometime?” I said. “I’ll break the rule.”

“What rule?” he said.

“I don’t sleep with people more than once,” I said.

“Jesus, Barbara.” He stared at me and I stared back. “Do you ever wonder why people call you names?”

“No,” I said. I started to shiver.

“I don’t want to sleep with you again,” he said. “I wish I knew about the rule before.”

“Well,” I said. “Sorry.” I heard a door open upstairs.

“You should go,” he said. “I hope your leg is okay.”

“I didn’t sleep with Roger,” I said.

He opened his mouth but nothing came out.

I walked back across the lawn.

By the time I got to the car I was really cold.

George took my hand and rubbed it between his.

“Is that your friend?” he said.

“No,” I said.

“He’s not my friend either,” he said.

I drove. George kept my hand and rubbed it until my skin burned.

P.E. (a.k.a. Alicia Erian)—thank you for telling me I could do it, thank you for teaching me how, and thank you for a decade of advice, encouragement, and love. Colum McCann—thank you for being my champion and for pushing me further than I thought I could go. Peter Carey—thank you for making magic at Hunter and for saying that sometimes it’s enough to be funny. Nathan Englander—thank you for being my mentor and my friend, thank you for being there for me at every stage of this book, and thank you for teaching me so much of what I know about words, sentences, and stories.

Phil Klay—thank you for making me write this book (I should have known it would take a Marine), and for reading every word one million times. Jessica Ruth Lacher—thank you for also reading every word one million times, and for all the tough love.

To my agent, Duvall Osteen—thank you for believing in me, thank you for guiding me, thank you for doing all the hard parts. You’re a real badass, and I’m grateful and honored to have you as my agent and my friend.

To my magical editor, Becky Saletan—thank you for seeing what I hoped you would see in this book, and for editing it so organically and so brilliantly.

To the team at Riverhead—Geoff Kloske, Claire McGinnis, Glory Anne Plata, Katie Freeman, Jynne Martin, Michelle Koufopoulos, Deborah Weiss Geline, Meighan Cavanaugh, and Rachel Willey—thank you for everything. I’m so lucky to work with you.

Casey Leon—thank you for reading and laughing. Kate Sarrantonio—thank you for your careful and conscious reads.

Thank you to all the writers, teachers, friends, and other champions who inspired me, taught me, read for me, and supported me before, during, and after this book—there are too many of you to name but you know who you are.

To my family—you’re the most important characters in my life, even though you aren’t characters in this book (I hope you’re grateful for that). Thank you for always listening to my stories, even when they were super fucking boring. Thank you for your unlimited love and support.

And even though Honey is dead and Rhoda and Tallulah can’t read, thank you to my three dogs for keeping me company while I worked, for inspiring me, for making me laugh, and for rescuing me from the loneliness of being human.