Harmless (2 page)

I'm not an irresponsible person. I know the dangers of getting in a car with a boy you don't know. Especially if he's been drinking something that burns your throat and comes con-cealed in a paper bag. But I wasn't worried about DJ. I felt like I already knew him. And anyway, we left the bottle down by the river and I could tell that he hadn't really had much more than a few sips. He hadn't even brought the bottle. One of his friends had.

The truth is I wanted to make out with him. I wanted to feel his lips on mine and even his hands on my body.

“You're really cute,” he said when we were both sitting in his car.

“Yeah, you too.”

Then he started kissing me and we barely ever stopped.

Until we stopped.

I knew people talked about me. Some people probably thought I was a slut. Some probably thought I was bitchy. Some people probably thought I was stuck up because I lived in a huge house with a swimming pool. They didn't know how I used to live before Mom met Carl. They didn't know any-thing about me. Nothing at all.

Anna

Things started to change
for me right away when I became friends with Mariah. People started to notice me. Nothing against Emma. She's always been my best friend, but when we were together all the time, just the two of us, we were kind of invisible. Now there was Mariah and Emma and me. MariahEmmaAnna. Three best friends. Three is the magic number.

Getting noticed reminded me of those days just before and after each of my early-childhood birthday parties. I used to have these huge parties. Because my parents didn't want any-one to have hurt feelings, they insisted I invite every single kid in my class. I remember going to school with a big bundle of brightly colored envelopes and I remember all the little
hands scrambling for one to tear open. Bowling! Pizza! A pup-pet show! I remember the excited whispers. And the Monday after, there was still talk about Anna and her party.

But by Tuesday or Wednesday, just as sure as the shredded paper from the brightly colored envelopes of my thank-you cards was swept up and put in the trash, I was forgotten.

I'm an only child. It's just me, Mom and Dad. Three makes a family. But I wanted a sister. I would have even settled for a brother but what I really wanted was a big sister, which, my mom always pointed out, was biologically impossible. When I then asked why I couldn't have a little sister she would tell me that I filled them with as much joy as they could ever imagine. She said they wanted me to have every opportunity in life and to have everything I needed and they were worried that they wouldn't be able to give me all that if there were more mouths to feed.

Mom waited until I turned thirteen to tell me that three didn't make a family: they'd really wanted to have another child, and they'd tried and tried and they'd even had two mis-carriages before they finally gave up. I guess she figured I was old enough to finally hear the truth. I don't know if all those other stories about the love I filled them with, and wanting me to have opportunities, and worrying about mouths to feed, were lies or half-truths.

I'm not really sure what the difference is anyway.

Sometimes at night when I'm alone in my room and the lights are out and the house is quiet I try to picture them. My two little miscarried siblings. A sister and a brother. I named
them Ruby and Silas. I've always loved the name Ruby, and Silas, well, Silas is Silas. He's just the best brother in the whole world. I picture my Ruby and Silas with curly red hair, which is funny because nobody in my family has red hair. Or curls. I guess when I think about it, in my mind they kind of look like the Raggedy Ann and Andy I kept with me in my bed until I was ten and realized the time had come to give them up. I don't know what happened to them. They just dis-appeared from my life.

Since I'm an only child I tend to get a lot of attention from my parents. My mom has flexible job hours, which means she's home when I get back from school every day. She runs a program at the college for kids who come from poor neighborhoods and underperforming high schools. She helps them fit in. She's not a professor like Emma's parents. She's an administrator, which doesn't come with an impressive title or a big office. I used to feel lucky, but having Mom here all the time started to get on my nerves when I wanted to spend more time hanging out with Mariah. And Emma, of course.

Sometimes we'd go to Emma's house. This wasn't a problem because Mom's used to me going to Emma's after school. At Emma's the three of us would sit in the basement and listen to music and talk and complain about our teachers. Sometimes we'd go down by the river or walk along the train tracks or just sit out in the fields behind school when none of the teams had practice. On those days I'd tell Mom that I was working in the library. She said fine as long as I came home before dark.

I was convinced that Mariah and DJ were doing it even
though she never came out and said so and I never asked. But that's what happens when you date an older guy. I was pretty sure Silas and Bronwyn were doing it. You could just tell by the way they looked at each other like they had the most won-derful secret in the world between them. I hadn't seen Mariah and DJ together but I was sure they looked at each other the very same way.

She talked to him a lot on her cell phone but he wasn't really around that much. He was always just about to show up and then he'd call, or sometimes he wouldn't, because something came up. The few times he did show she would leave us and hop into his car and he would wave from the driver's seat and they'd be off. I'd watch his green station wagon speed down the road with a big hollow feeling in the bottom of my stomach.

They were planning a party at his house when his parents were going to be out of town. It was going to be a small party. Just their closest friends. That meant Emma and me. Me. I was one of Mariah's closest friends.

Emma

When we first moved up here
I wouldn't come out of my room for three days. My parents tried bribing me and then threatening me and finally they just brought in dinner on a tray and we all sat on my floor and ate spaghetti carbonara. On the fourth day my mom knocked on the door and told me there was someone here to see me. Anna walked in. She had straight brown hair and bangs. She was about my height but heavier than me and her toes pointed in a little and it looked as if her shoes were two sizes bigger than mine.

“I heard you just moved into the neighborhood and you'll be going to my school.”

“Where'd you hear that?”

“My mom. She's downstairs. Do you wanna come over to my house?”

And with that I left my room. I went over to Anna's and then we played every day until school started, by which time I was already known as Anna's best friend, Emma. That was six years ago. Now I'm three inches taller than she is.

Sometimes I wonder if we'd ever have become friends if her mom hadn't made her come over that day. If I'd just started third grade as the new kid from the city who didn't know anybody maybe I would have become best friends with Sharon Bender or Tammy Frost or someone else or nobody. But that isn't how it happened. We became Anna and Emma.

It's not like I never had any other friends. The kids at school have always been pretty nice to me. I've hung out with other people, but whenever it would get to something I'd do more than once or twice, Anna was always there, asking what's up with you and so-and-so or inviting herself along to the movie or over to my house or whatever. It's a small world at Orsonville Day School. Everyone knew from those first days of third grade that I was paired off with Anna. That's just who I was, I was Anna's best friend, and unlike shedding the tomboy thing, I couldn't just shave my legs and wear mascara to change that.

Maybe that sounds harsh. I don't mean to be harsh. Anna has always been a very loyal friend, and that counts for some-thing. It counts for more than that; it counts for a lot. I mean, one thing we know about animals in captivity is that they need companionship. For starters, nobody wants to go to the zoo to see lonely monkeys or seals or lions. That's just plain sad. When you go to the zoo you want to see monkeys picking things out of each other's fur or seals touching noses underwater or
lions lazily swatting their tails at the rocky earth, napping side by side.

Mariah was the first person to come along who didn't seem to mind having Anna around and this made me like Mariah even more. The three of us were quickly becoming the best of friends. My social circle was growing.

One afternoon after Anna and Mariah left my house Silas came down to the basement. He was just getting back from basketball practice.

“What's up with that chick Mariah?”

“She's my friend.”

“Awwww. How sweet. E.P. has a new friend.” E.P. Short for:
Emmalus Painintheassicus
.

“Shut up, Silas.” Why was it that I could never come up with a rude species name for him?

“You should know this about your new friend: lots of peo-ple talk about her. Lots of guys do. Guys in my class.”

“Yeah, what do they say?”

“They think she's hot.”

“Well, she has a boyfriend.”

“I heard. Some guy from Orsonville High?”

“Yeah. DJ. He's cool.” I still hadn't ever talked to DJ but I wanted Silas to think I knew him. I wanted Silas to know I had a life; that my circle was expanding. “He's older. He's a senior.”

Silas bounced his basketball a few times on the floor. Then he started bouncing it off the wall. He fixed his eyes on me. “Well, all I can say is be careful.”

I now ask myself why I didn't listen to Silas when I have to
admit, as strange as it sounds, I don't think he's ever been wrong about anything.

But I didn't listen. Instead I grabbed the basketball from him. “What's that supposed to mean?”

“I don't know. You're still a kid and she seems different. She seems older than you.”

“Well, she's not. She's three months younger than me. And anyway, I'm not a kid.”

He took his basketball back and cradled it in his lap. He looked carefully at me. Maybe he was reevaluating me. Trying to see me differently. Trying to see through the bars, beyond the description next to my cage. Emmalus Painintheassicus: generic human little sister.

“It's just that I can't picture you going out with a senior. That wouldn't be right. That would mean you'd be going out with someone in my class and it's just that I know those guys too well to let any of them go anywhere near you.”

So I was wrong about the way he was looking at me, but I didn't hold that against him. I guess it goes both ways. I had a hard time seeing what everyone else saw in Silas. Silas the senior, the star athlete, the Columbia-bound perfect boyfriend with a killer body. I still know things about Silas. I know that certain movies make him cry and that his farts make our dog get up and leave the room. That's the thing about being in a family. No matter how old I get and no matter what happens to me or any of us, I'll always be his little sister and he'll always be my big brother.

At least I hope this is true.

The party at DJ's was on. It was going to be on a Friday
night. Mariah suggested I tell my parents I was sleeping at Anna's. Anna would tell her parents she was sleeping at my house. Mariah would make up something else, she said she'd done it before and it was no problem. She said we'd have nothing to worry about.

Mariah

I didn t start at ODS
until seventh grade. ODS stands for Orson-ville Day School, but everyone just calls it ODS, which is pretty funny because it sounds like you're saying Odious, and if you ask me, that name suits this school perfectly. By the time I got here everyone was already established in little cliques and everyone knew everything about everyone else because that's what happens when you all go to school together from the time you're five years old.

I spent seventh grade as kind of a loner. I spent most of eighth grade with this group of really annoying girls who never talked to anyone else and finally stopped talking to me when I dared to sit with other people during lunch. That's when I decided to avoid cliques altogether. This year I had a
few different friends before I met DJ and before I started spending the time that I wasn't spending with him with Emma and Anna. I knew some people thought they were losers, especially Anna, but I didn't care. At least Emma and Anna were cool enough to want to get out of Odious and maybe meet some of DJ's friends from Orsonville High.

Before we moved here, I lived in Dexter County. It's about forty-five minutes away. I didn't go to a private school because there is no private school in Dexter County and also we didn't have much money then. It was just Mom and me in our little apartment and she worked a lot and sometimes that was hard, but in other ways it was easier than it is now even though we live in a big house with a pool. For one thing, there was no Jessica. Now, even though Mom doesn't work anymore, she has to spend a lot of time on Jessica, taking her to dance classes and piano lessons and even a mother-daughter book club where I guess they don't care if you're really mother and daughter or not.

Mom met Carl online. I think they only went on, like, three dates before he asked her to marry him, and before I knew it we were packing up our apartment and I was writing all these essays about what a great opportunity it would be for me to go to an institution as well regarded and academically challenging as Odious. To tell the truth, Carl wrote the essays for me. Or maybe it was his assistant. Or his secretary. I think he has both. We all pretended like I was doing the work but I wasn't. I could have. I'm not a bad writer. I'm also pretty good at math. When it comes to factors and ratios and properties, I know how to solve those kinds of problems.

I wonder sometimes what Carl's online profile looked like. If he were being honest he would have written something like this:

Balding middle-aged widower with bad temper, boatloads of money and a motherless daughter seeks pushover with no spine to live in my huge house and take care of my child even if it means ignoring your own. No ugly chicks need apply.