Everybody Sees the Ants (22 page)

“Sure.”

“Isn’t it hard to stay a virgin with an older boyfriend? I mean—don’t you feel pressure?”

Ginny starts to laugh, and I begin to feel stupid for asking. “I’m
sooo
not a virgin, Lucky.”

“Seriously?”

She nods. “Yeah—not since I was your age.”

“But what about the others? In the car? Didn’t you all say you were virgins?”

She sees that I’m feeling embarrassed, and puts her hand on my knee and squeezes. “We said that to make you feel better, man. But I think Annie might have been telling the truth. The others? No way. I was there when Shannon lost hers.”

“Ew, really?”

“Well, I wasn’t
in the room
, but I was nearby—at a party.”

“Doesn’t sound romantic to me,” I say, patting my scab a little because it stings from embarrassment.

She gets serious and faces me. “Look at me.” I’m looking at my shoes. She reaches to my chin and tips my head up to look at her. “Look at me, Lucky.”

I look at her.

“A girl’s first time is pretty much
never romantic
.”

“Really?”

“Hell no, man. Are you kidding?” When she sees I’m not kidding, she adds, “Think about it. Imagine you and I were
going to have sex right now. First of all, how romantic is the playground? Ew, right?”

“I’d take you somewhere else, you know, with a bed,” I say, though this is getting a little too weird and I don’t want to talk about it anymore.

“And?”

“And then it would be romantic,” I say, trying to do that thing Dad does, that inflection that means
this is the last word and the conversation is over
.

“Oh my God, Lucky. You really haven’t thought about this shit, have you?”

I don’t say anything.

“Stop and really think about it,” she says. “And then tell me what would make you so romantic compared to other guys.” She looks at her watch and lights another cigarette. “Five minutes until our ride gets here. Do you want me to teach you how to kiss?”

“What?”

But before she can answer, she is kissing me, on the lips, forcing my teeth open with her tongue. I lean forward so far on the swing that I nearly fall off, and I have to grab the chains to stabilize myself. This is not a sister kiss. She caresses the back of my head and stops between each tongue kiss to lightly lick my top and bottom lips. I now have a boner that will never go away. Never ever.

She stops and takes a drag from her cigarette. “So—is it really like licking an ashtray?”

I say, “I’d say… no.”

She gets up and paces in front of the swings. I stay seated. Of course.

“See how you were so caught up in that? See how you couldn’t move your arms?” I nod. She’s right. I couldn’t. “That’s what your first time is like. It’s a crazy mix of fear and excitement and white noise and—uh—lust, I guess. It’s
not
romantic.”

“But that
was
romantic,” I say.

“But that wasn’t your first bonk. It was just one little kiss.”

She may think that, but to me that was not just one little kiss. The ants say:
Pay attention, Mr. Romance. She’s got a point
.

I think about it. “I
was
kinda paralyzed.”

“Exactly. And you will be when you do it the first time. So don’t put any high expectations on it. Just try to get through it without hurting anyone.”

“Hurting anyone?”

“Yeah. Guys hate being out of control. And they hate emotions. And they hate feeling let down. So try not to take it out on the girl, ’kay?”

“I don’t get it.”

She takes a long drag off her cigarette and aims her ear to the sound of the approaching car. “Every asshole I know in school blames the girl after their first time—for it being a letdown. Guys don’t think about what it’s like for us.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“Seriously. You have to think about more than getting laid. Otherwise you get so caught up in the sex stuff you’re, like, a date rapist or something, you know?”

I have no idea what to say to this, so I don’t say a word.

“And don’t think that kiss meant anything.”

“No. Of course not.”

“It didn’t.”

“I know. I—” Before I can say the rest of that sentence, she kisses me again. And I kiss her back.

Right then I know I am hopelessly in love with Ginny Clemens. Not in a real-world sense but in the same way I could be in love with a movie star. I am so glad I told her everything tonight—about my parents and the scab and even the banana incident.

Though I half lied about that, because I didn’t tell her that the kid they blindfolded in the locker room was me.

And I didn’t tell her that they took all my clothes and left me slumped naked and puke-covered in the corner of the locker room, sobbing.

And I didn’t tell her someone took pictures with a cell phone.

And I didn’t tell her that I nearly went home and shot myself that day with the gun Dad keeps on the shelf in his bedroom closet. How I would have, if only the gun had been loaded.

Because I couldn’t face another day.

In the car Annie offers me her leftover Wendy’s cheeseburger and fries. I say yes even though I’m not hungry. The girls talk about their play,
The Vagina Monologues
, and I am completely lost in their lingo.

“Shan, you need to up the tension more during the Bosnian part. Annie has the happy parts so hyped, we need you to be more intense and dark, you know?”

“And, Maya, you can’t laugh during ‘Crooked Braid.’ You can’t even smile.”

Maya nods. “I know. I can’t help it. I love that part of the story.”

“I dig that, but you can’t, okay?”

Maya says, “We got signs up all over ASU campus today. The girls in my dorm all say they’re coming.”

“I hope we pack the house, man,” Karen says. “I want to make a shitload of cash for the crisis center.”

“That’s so cool,” I say. “You donate the money?”

“That’s the whole point,” Ginny says. “The monologues are staged all over the world so people can raise money and help survivors in their communities and in other countries.”

“Awesome,” I say, and I think of her parents, who drag her to church, and how proud they should be that she’s doing something to help others. I think of how she can’t tell them. She’s like a kindness ninja. Sneaking around in order to help people.

When we get to the rec center, the door is open, and a woman about Mom’s age is there, reading through a three-ring notebook.

“You guys ready to rock this?”

In unison the girls answer, “Hell yes!”

“Who’s this?” she asks, looking at me.

“I got Lucky,” Ginny jokes.

I wave a little and introduce myself. “I’m Lucky—a friend of Ginny’s.”

She waves back. “I’m Jane.”

She raises her eyebrows at Ginny, and Ginny shrugs.

I sit in a seat toward the back, where a few others are sitting, and I watch the girls ready their scripts and coordinate their lines, and then they do the show from beginning to end, and I am completely dumbstruck by
The Vagina Monologues
.

First off, it’s about vaginas. I mean, obviously, right? But until I hear them talking about it, I’ve never really thought about vaginas like this. You know, the way I have a dick and I use it to pee all the time. Girls have vaginas, and they have all sorts of stuff to do with it. Periods and babies and sex and going to the gynecologist, which doesn’t sound like a lot of fun, but in the show they make jokes about all of it and completely crack up.

But then it’s about rape. And how vaginas are treated by men and soldiers and people who want power. There are these two parts where I’m crying, you know? Because these two girls are talking about how they were gang-raped by soldiers in Bosnia. And there’s this other part about some guy who beats up his wife so bad she nearly dies. Heavy shit, but really good because these girls are making it real or something. And then after some horrible story about what’s happening to girls and women in Congo, there’s a moaning monologue. They all pretend to have orgasms in different ways—Jewish ones and Irish ones and overly theatrical ones (I didn’t even know girls could
have
orgasms). And then they chant hilarious vagina slogans and make us laugh all over again. It’s a roller coaster about vaginas—a fucking amazing roller coaster of
reality
.

It’s the reality I’ve wished for every day of my bullshit life.

Toward
the end of the school year, more questionnaires came into my locker. At this point I realized someone must have made copies, because there was no way my originals could have lasted this long.

The answers were consistent—
pills, car fumes, pills, drug overdose, gun to the head, pills, self-drowning
. (Which is one I just don’t get. It seems too difficult to actually work.)

I was pulling a 102 percent in social studies class, and Mr. Potter and I were bonding in that student-teacher way in which he almost treated me like an adult.

One day after class I told him about the questionnaires.

“I know I wasn’t supposed to continue collecting the data, but it’s out of my control.”

“Have you saved them?”

“Some.”

I played down the seriousness of it. “I mean—these are probably pranks. I got a bunch about jerking off to death and stuff like that. I don’t think anyone is serious.”

He nodded, and I instantly regretted telling him. If he told Fish about this, I’d be in huge trouble all over again.

“You’re not going to tell anyone, are you?”

“Not unless you think I should.”

“Nah. I think it’s just people trying to yank my chain.”

A week later, Charlotte’s handwriting appeared again.
If you were going to commit suicide, what method would you choose?
She answered:
I’d hang myself. Probably next week
.

I didn’t sleep that night.

In front of Granddad’s camp, there was a plywood structure, kind of like department-store dressing rooms. In each area there was a noose. Like gallows with privacy walls. We were hanging, but our hands were under our chins, so we weren’t dying. In fact, we were talking to each other.

CHARLOTTE:
I can’t believe I’m going to die.

ME:
You don’t have to. You can pull your head out and jump down if you want.

CHARLOTTE:
I brought this on myself.

ME:
No, you didn’t.

CHARLOTTE:
I told my mom what happened. She told my dad. He said I shouldn’t wear short skirts.

ME:
That’s stupid.

CHARLOTTE:
But he had a point. He said, “You think a jury who hears that you dress like a slut will think different?”

ME:
People are assholes.

CHARLOTTE:
Yeah.

Granddad approached us then. He looked at the plywood gallows and climbed into the next stall, placed his head in the noose and his hands under his chin, to hang on.

GRANDDAD:
What the hell is this about?

ME:
I don’t know. I think it’s about the questionnaires I’ve been getting.

GRANDDAD:
You thinking about killing yourself, son?

ME:
No. But I think Charlotte is.

CHARLOTTE:
Nah. I’m fine. Everyone thinks about this shit, don’t they?