Best Friends Forever (29 page)

My heart sank, knowing that I was just a convenience. It sank even farther when I realized that I wouldn’t say no, that I’d take whatever I could get of my best friend’s time, no matter what the circumstances.

“We’l have so much fun!” she said, al cheerleader-bouncy.

“Okay,” I said as Mr. Newsome slammed the door, set his briefcase on his desk, and bel owed, “Attention!” which was how he typical y began class. Val zipped back to her desk. I opened up my backpack, sighing. In my darkest moments—usual y the ones in the middle of the night, when I’d wake up sick to my stomach and queasy with regret about what I’d eaten—I would think that Val bothered with me only because she liked the idea of herself as a good person. You’re so

loyal, the cheerleaders would say, and Val would tel them, Wel , I’ve known Addie for a long time. I can’t just turn my back on her.

Poor thing.

On Friday night, I came home from babysitting to find Val sitting on our front step with a zippered nylon case ful of makeup in her lap instead of an Encyclopedia Brown book, and a jel y jar ful of vodka tucked into her pocket where her red rubber bouncy bal used to be. I had let her paint my face, let her dress me in black tights and a black, ruffly skirt that fel to the tops of my knees, with a scoop-necked black bodysuit underneath and a denim jacket on top.

“You’ve got the best boobs,”

she’d said, pinning one of her rhinestone pins to the jacket’s lapel, and I’d blushed and said,

“They’re

big,

anyhow,”

and

Val

had

said, “Big is good!”

We’d said goodbye to my parents, and I’d fol owed Val out into the mild, smokysmel ing autumn night and walked with her to Pete Preston’s street…but once we were there, I lingered at the curb, my mouth dry, my hands sweating.

“Come on,” said Val. She took my arm and tried to pul me across the street, but I was bigger than she was, and I wasn’t moving. The Prestons’ front door was open, and kids were streaming inside. Al of the lights were on, and I could hear a Wil Smith rap song blaring through the open windows. Val’s eyes were bright as she shook her shoulders to the beat.

“I don’t think this is a good idea.”

“Of course it’s a good idea. We’re going to have so much fun!”

I shook my head again. Pete was the footbal team’s captain. His parents had gone to London for the week and decided that Pete was old enough to be left home alone, with the car keys and forty dol ars for food and incidentals. Pete, delighted, had invited al of his friends to a party, and now it looked as though more than half the school was there. “I don’t know anyone,” I said as a pack of girls in lace-up Chuck Taylors and pouffy hair bounded through the front door.

“Yes you do.” Val pointed at a group of boys in varsity jackets standing in the front yard, laughing. “See?” I watched as Dan Swansea high-fived one of his teammates and walked through the door. “It’l be fine.”

Reluctantly, I let her lead me across the street into Pete Preston’s house, into the heat and the noise of the crowded kitchen. A battered metal keg stood on the kitchen table, next to a stack of blue plastic cups. At the counter, four red-faced boys were hooting and laughing as they tried to flip quarters into their cups. Girls stood behind them, chattering and clapping when one of the quarters found its mark. We went upstairs to dump our coats on a bed, then came back to the kitchen, where I edged into a corner.

“Here.” Val handed me a cup of beer. She wore a short pink skirt, white tights, and a striped rugby shirt. Her hair was in a French braid. Dainty gold hoops hung from her earlobes.

She was so pretty. It gave me a pang that was both pride and regret. I took a sip and winced.

I’d never had beer before, and it was terrible—watery and sour.

“Now go say hi to Dan,” Val said.

I shook my head. I wasn’t going to say hi to anyone. I wasn’t going to talk to anyone, I wasn’t going to look at anyone, I wasn’t going to do anything but stand in a corner, next to a shelf fil ed with Mrs. Preston’s col ection of dusty Hummel figurines, and drink my beer and wait. Making the first move was not part of my fantasy. In my dreams. Dan noticed me first.

That could stil happen. Maybe he’d see me, standing in the corner. Maybe he’d get sick, or get in a fight, and I’d help him. I’d put an ice pack on his nose or something, and he’d look at me with his groggy eyes (groggy was good, I’d determined, dizzy was excel ent, and passing out, then waking up with his head in my lap would be best of al ). He’d look at me, blinking, and slur, You’re beautiful.

“I’m okay. You go.”

“Fine.” She pumped herself another beer and marched away. I put my cup down next to a china shepherdess and shoved my hands in my pockets. Time passed. The boys tossing change into their cups got louder. As I watched, one of them pul ed one of the girls into his lap. “Ry-an! I swear,” she said, before he closed her mouth with a kiss. I picked up my beer and sipped it slowly, just to have something to do with my hands. When it was gone I spent twenty minutes edging my way through the five feet to the keg, and pumped myself a refil .

“Ry-an, I swear!” I whispered to myself, and went back to my corner. When my cup was empty, I went looking for Valerie.

She wasn’t in the dining room, where more boys sat around the table, playing a drinking game that involved singing in a language that might have been French and moving their cups and bottles back and forth, faster and faster. She wasn’t in the TV

room, which was thick with loud conversation and with cigarette smoke. Nobody was in the living room. Pete stood at the door with a hockey stick. “Don’t even think about it,” he growled as I tried to peek past him, and I murmured, “Sorry,” and hurried away before he could ask what fat Addie was doing at his party.

I walked through the laundry room, then the kitchen, then past the powder room, where, from the sounds coming through the door, someone was throwing up. I pul ed the biggest book I could find—a col ection of Ray Bradbury short stories—of the bookcase in the TV

room, went to the screened-in porch that was a twin of the one at my house, and checked the Swatch I’d bought with my babysitting money. It was ten-fifteen. I was giving Valerie until eleven, and then, with or without her, I was going home.

At eleven, I stomped through the house, glaring into each of the rooms. No Val. I went outside, letting the door slam shut behind me, when I heard familiar laughter and saw me, when I heard familiar laughter and saw a flash of blond.

In the backyard, four boys stood in a semicircle around a tree with their hands stuck in their jacket pockets or holding bottles of beer. Valerie was sitting on the ground, her back against the tree trunk, giggling. A cup of beer had spil ed next to her, soaking the ground, and there was a lit cigarette burning between her fingers. I pushed through the boys and looked down at my friend. “Val? What’s going on?”

“We’re playing spin the bottle,” said one of the boys.

“Let her play, too,” said Val. There was something funny about her voice. She sounded like a tape being played on a Walkman when the batteries were dying. One of the boys looked me up and down, then shook his head. “We don’t need her.”

I swal owed hard. Valerie was trying to push herself upright. Her rugby shirt was rol ed up, exposing a crescent of pale bel y. Dan Swansea leaned down beside her, and I felt my heart twist. Were they together now? Was he her boyfriend? Val giggled, shaking her head as Dan leaned close, whispering something in her ear. I felt like I was going to throw up. Val knew how I felt about Dan; she was the only one who knew.

As I watched, Val reached down the front of her shirt, pul ed her lacy pink bra out from underneath her shirt, and stuffed it in her pocket. “Oops.” She giggled, then burped against the back of her hand and tugged the hem of her shirt down.

“Val,” I said. “I want to go home.”

“I’m having fun,” she said. “Aren’t you having a good time?”

I looked down at her. She was drunk, I decided. “Actual y, no.”

“Look, just go inside and wait for me. I’l come get you when we’re done.”

“Okay.” My face was burning, my head echoing with the words We don’t need her. Of course they didn’t need me. I wasn’t what boys wanted. Valerie was.

“Give me twenty minutes!” Val cal ed. I didn’t answer. I went upstairs for our coats, then sat on the porch, holding my book tightly, reading the same page over and over until the words quit making sense. It was twenty-seven minutes, according to the glow-in-the-dark hands of my Swatch, before I felt my friend’s hand on my shoulder.

“Let’s go.”

I jumped to my feet and pul ed on my coat. As soon as we got out of the house, I was going to ask why she’d even bothered bringing me. I was going to tel her that she’d used me for the very last time. I was…I turned and got my first look at Val by the light of the moon. Half of her hair hung in tendrils around her cheeks. Her eyes were red and puffy, and there were pine needles stuck in her braid. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said, her voice cracking. It took her two tries to put her hands in the right sleeves and get her coat zipped. She yanked a knitted hat over her hair. “Let’s go.

”

“Where were you?”

She paused for so long that I’d given up on getting an answer when she said, “In the woods.”

We were halfway down the street before I got up the nerve to ask another question.

“Did something happen?”

She gave a short laugh, then wiped underneath her nose with the back of her hand. I fol owed her through the Biancos’

backyard and climbed over the low rock wal of the field that ran behind Main Street. We were walking home. “Are you…” I had to proceed careful y or she’d forget who she was real y mad at and be mad at me instead. “Are you okay?”

“I told you, I’m fine.” She kept her head down and kept walking.

I thought of what else I should ask her, thinking back to health class, to the What’s Happening to Me? book my mother had bought me. “Did you and Dan…” I swal owed. “Did he use something? A condom or something?”

“I told him no,” she said. Her voice was thin and bleak. I looked at my friend and saw that she was crying. “He said not to be a prick tease. He said I showed him my…” She wiped her eyes, then waved her hand in front of her chest. “We were playing Four Minutes in Heaven.

We were just fooling around, and that part was okay, but then he

…he…”

I swal owed hard. “Was it your first time?”

Valerie made an unpleasant sound, half snort, half sob. “Are you kidding me? You thought I was a virgin?” She gave the word a nasty, sarcastic spin.

“Guess not,” I said softly. She gave another choked sob and wiped her eyes again, and I wondered if it occurred to her that I was a virgin.

I felt the balance shifting, the fulcrum tipping, as if she were the hurt child and I the capable grown-up, the one who would take care of things. “We have to tel someone,” I said.

Her head jerked up. “No! No we don’t!”

“Yes, we do, Val. He raped you.”

She bent her head. “It wasn’t like that.”

“If you told him no, and he didn’t stop? That’s exactly what it’s like!”

“It wasn’t like that,” she repeated, her voice a whisper.

“How much beer did you drink?” I asked.

“Did you take anything else? Did he give you something?

“I just had beer. Not that much. A few cups. Addie, listen, it’s okay. It’s fine. What happened…it was no big deal, and if we tel someone, then everyone’s going to know.”

“But he raped you,” I said.

“It was my fault,” she said. “I shouldn’t have gone with him. I shouldn’t have played

…Addie, please,” she said, and grabbed my hand. “Don’t tel anyone. It’s okay. It’s no big deal. Real y.”

“He can’t just get away with this,” I said. At that moment, I could feel the cloak of responsible adulthood fal ing over my shoulders, making me brave in a way I never had been before.

“I’l tel my parents. They’l know what to—”

“Don’t say anything. I mean it. Don’t.” We walked through Mrs. Bass’s backyard, Val half running, me struggling to keep up. When we reached Crescent Drive, Val stood at the base of my driveway, as I walked to the front door, into my warm, lit living room. My mother was out on the porch with her notebook and her tea. My father was in the basement—I could hear the hum of something, a dril or a sander. Jon sat at the kitchen table, working on a puzzle. I waited, breathing in the smel s of home, until my mother came into the living room and saw me. “Addie? Are you al right?”

I looked through the window and saw Valerie standing at the base of the driveway.

“Something happened to Valerie,” I said. I’m doing this for her, I thought as my mother looked at me, waiting for me to say more. I

know better than she does. I know what she

needs.

THIRTY-EIGHT

Valerie and I spent Saturday night at the Four Seasons in St. Louis. On Sunday we stayed at the Ritz-Carlton in Atlanta’s Buckhead neighborhood. My friend, I discovered, had developed a taste for fivestar hotels in the years since I’d known her.

“Let me do the talking,” she said in Atlanta after we’d handed off the car to the valet guys (they’d had the good manners not to wince at the sight of it) and gone inside. I stood back, awaiting a repeat of the previous night’s performance, wondering what the clerk would make of her, with her head swaddled in a fringed scarf, her eyes hidden behind enormous sunglasses, and half a dozen shopping bags from Saks and Neiman Marcus in her hands.

Probably he’d think that she was a rich lady who’d had a face-lift, I decided. I probably looked like her nurse.

I caught a word here and there as Val leaned close, her hand on the clerk’s forearm:

“public figure” and “discretion” and

“pay in cash” were a few of them. A moment later, after the exchange of a significant stack of bil s, she had the room keys in her hands. “Do you need to be validated?” the clerk cal ed after her, and Val grinned and said, “You could tel me I look pretty.”

I rol ed my eyes as Val approached. “I got them to give us a room without a credit card. I registered as Betty Rubble,” she said, heels clicking over the marble floor.