Laura Ruby - Good Girls (18 page)

"Where are we going?"

"Around," she says. "We're enjoying this lovely evening. You want a cigarette?" She holds her pack out to me.

"Ugh. No, thanks."

We walk. She finishes her cigarette and lights another one. I wonder how many she's planning to smoke, because my feet are starting to hurt.

"I never thought I'd like you this much," she says. "I used to see you in school or at parties and I'd think, What a priss, what a princess, what a nerd. Who does she think she is?"

I laugh. "I didn't think I'd like you, either." I thought about what Ash said to me in the car last winter. "I guess I was kind of jealous of you."

"You thought I was a slut," she says. "Don't deny it. I heard what people said about me."

I blush, and I hope she doesn't notice. "What's a slut, anyway?" I say. "Why isn't there a name for guys who do the same thing?"

251 "Player. Pimp," she says.

"Please," I say. "Those are compliments."

"Anyway," she says. "I was with a lot of people. That wouldn't have been so bad if I was having a great time with all of them. Maybe there are girls who just have fun all the time--they're like boys or something. But that wasn't me. Some of the guys were bad, some were boring, some were just nothing. After a while, what's the point?"

"Well, that's why you stopped. Isn't that the point? Self-respect? Knowing what you want, blah blah blah?"

She drops her butt to the pavement and grinds it under her shoe. "I have to tell you something. You're probably going to hate me for it, and I won't blame you. I did it before I knew you."

My stomach drops and I wrap my arms around my waist. Luke. She's going to tell me she was with Luke. I wasn't wrong, I'm not wrong. But, I remind myself, it doesn't matter now. "You don't have to tell me any- thing."

She digs around in her purse and pulls out her little digital camera, flipping through the pictures. "Here," she says. "Look."

I take the camera. On the screen, I see Luke's naked chest, my blond hair streaked with black. I blink, not understanding. What is this doing on her camera? I don't get it, I don't . . .

252 Wait. "You took this?"

She pulls another cigarette out of her purse. "Yeah."

I realize my mouth is literally hanging open, and I snap it shut. "But why?"

"Because it wasn't fair," she says. "Everyone called me a slut, but then there you are, sneaking off with him every minute. We all knew what was going on, but no one called you a slut. No, it was just me. Cindy, too, and she's a virgin. Cindy just because she's friends with me." Her hand is shaking as she brings the butt up to her lips. "At Joelle's Halloween party, I saw you go upstairs, and I saw Luke follow you. So I went, too. I opened the door and took the picture."

"And then you sent it around to everyone?"

"Only a few people," she says.

I grip the camera tighter. "But you sent it around."

"Yes, I sent it," she says. "I told everyone that some- one had sent it to me. I guess they sent it to all their friends, and then their friends sent it. Like that."

"My dad got this picture," I say. "My dad."

She nods. "I know."

"I can't believe this," I say. "I can't believe you'd be such a bitch."

One side of her mouth curls up, and she takes a drag on the cigarette. "Sure you can. It's why you like me."

"Like you? I want to freaking kill you!" My whole body feels hot and clammy. "Do you have any idea what

253 you did? The notes, the e-mails, the whispering, the star- ing? Mr. Zwieback found this on the library computers. Mr. Goddamn Zwieback! Even Ms. Godwin thinks I'm some kind of slut now. Do you have any idea what that's like?"

But of course she knows. "I was thirteen when I first went down on a guy."

"What?" I say. I'm used to her "sassy" pronounce- ments about sex, but now I have no time for any of it. "Never mind. I don't want to know. I'm going back inside." I whip around and walk away, still holding the camera. Pam's behind me, talking to my back as if we were still having a pleasant conversation.

"Seventh grade. Aaron Roth. It was at his Bar Mitzvah. Funny, you know? Getting a blow job at your Bar Mitzvah. Now, there's a rite of passage."

I keep walking. She follows.

"Here's the thing," she says. "I didn't like it. I thought it was gross. But afterward, I felt so powerful. I couldn't believe that I could do that to someone else. Make them lose control like that. I walked around the party, looking at every guy there, thinking, I could blow you and you and you and you and you. I thought I owned them all. I thought they were mine. I thought I was the sexiest girl in the world."

I'm still walking.

"Aaron Roth did, too. For a while. And then he

254 broke up with me and told everyone I gave bad head. Can you believe that? If I'd been two years older, I would have smashed his teeth down his throat for say- ing it. But I was thirteen. And I didn't know what to do. Except maybe give more guys more head and try to get better at it. Prove I was sexy. Prove it to everyone."

That does it. I stop walking and turn around. "Are you insane? Do you really think I'm going to feel sorry for you?"

Her face is veiled with smoke. "No. I don't feel bad for me, so why should you?"

I think she's full of it, but I'm still too mad. I don't want to care about what happened to Pam in junior high. Everyone on the planet has seen this picture, this picture that she took, a picture that she sent around. I didn't do anything wrong.

"It just got to me," she says. "Everyone thought you were this nice girl, this good girl, but you were doing everything that I'd done. So why were you still good? And I'd quit guys. So why was I still a slut?" She stares off into the distance, at the lights from the hotel. "I know it wasn't your fault. I know that it had nothing to do with you. It's all me. I'm sorry. I don't know what else to say."

I think about Joelle's party, what I said about Pam, what Ash said, what Joelle said, what we all said. Pam was a whore, she'd been with everyone, she'd do anything. We

255 said it out loud, and it didn't matter who heard.

I try to stay angry, to hold on to it. You were humil- iated in front of your parents and friends and the whole school, I tell myself. You had to live through Chilly taunting you and rockheads propositioning you and a doctor jamming his salad server inside you and your father shunning you.

But, I think, even with all that, I'm okay. Partly because I have Pam for a friend.

If I was looking for irony, I found it.

"Go ahead, smash it if you want," she says, gesturing to the camera in my hand. "I'd smash it. It cost three hundred dollars and I bought it myself. If you smash it, it will make you feel better."

"It will make you feel better," I say.

She juts out her chin. "You want to hit me?"

"Don't be an idiot."

"You hate me, and that's fine," she says. "I was going to wait until after the prom to tell you, but I couldn't stand it. All this stuff, these dresses; asking my mom over to your house. No one's met my mom. Not even the guys I slept with."

I feel like a balloon someone's pricked with a pin, my skin slackening, my breath slipping from me. "I thought you slept with Luke," I say.

"What?" she says, her eyebrows flying up into her hair.

256 "I thought you were a slut and he was a player. Then Chilly told me that you guys had been together, so I broke it off with Luke."

"Chilly," she says. "I should have hit him harder. I should have taken a baseball bat to his knees."

"Yeah, well. I blamed him for this picture."

"He's a schmuck anyway." Pause. "You really thought I'd been with Luke?"

"Yeah."

"I wasn't. Ever." Her expression says it all: she thinks I'm a lunatic. "If you thought I was with him, why did you want to be friends with me?"

"I don't know," I say. "It's not like I planned it, which is so weird because I plan everything. I just did it without thinking. Then, later, I figured we had some- thing in common. And I thought you were funny. You weren't who I thought you were." It's my turn to shrug. How do you explain those kinds of things?

"I thought you were funny," she agrees. "For a while, I almost forgot what I did to you. I felt like someone else, and you seemed like someone else, so . . ."

"It was us, though. We were us."

"I can just say I'm sorry. I know it was mean. Really, really mean. More than mean."

"It was," I say.

"Yeah," she mumbles.

She seems like she might cry, and I won't have any

257 more people who aren't supposed to cry crying; other- wise I might lose it for good. "So," I say, "while we're doing this born-again thing, this clean-slate thing, why don't you delete it?"

I hold her cigarette while she fumbles with the cam- era. There's a beep. "Okay," she says. "It's gone."

I nod. "Good. Let's go back inside."

We start moving, faster than before. I can feel her looking at me. "That's it?" she says, "That's all you're going to say?"

I have no idea what I'll think about this tomorrow, but tonight it's clear. "That's all I'm going to say this minute."

She takes a deep breath and squares her shoulders, so broad in that halter dress. She goes to take a drag on her cigarette, but changes her mind and throws it to the ground. "How about I take a new picture of you?"

"Now?"

She holds up her camera. "Why not?"

"Here?"

"No, on Jupiter," she says. "Yes, here."

I stop walking. "I guess."

"Stand sideways, you'll look skinnier. Oh, don't look so pissy, everyone looks skinnier sideways. Now smile." The flash is blinding.

She presses a button on the camera and shows me the photo. I see a dark-haired princess person in a pretty

258 princess dress. Her smile is bright and sad at the same time, like the moon's.

"Who the hell is that?" I say.

Pam saves the picture and drops the camera in her bag. "I don't know," she says, "but I'll send you a copy. Maybe there are some people you could show her to."

259

T he final class ranking: Audrey Elaine

Porter, 2/314. During my salutatorian speech at

graduation, I say that although I'm ranked sec-

ond, I get to speak first, and that's got to count

for something. I tell the audience that when I was

told I had to write a speech, I had no idea what I

would say; I'm more of a facts person, I'm more

260 of a numbers person--ask Mr. Lambright, my English teacher. How do you cram the last four years into a few paragraphs? How do you make people remember from the beginning all the way to the end? How do you help everyone understand how wonderful it was and how horrible it was and how everything it was?

So, I say, I came up with a few rough statistics in an attempt to capture our high school experience in the best way I know how. In the four years we attended Willow Park High School, there were

5,600 pencils

10,000 pens

200,000 caffeine fixes

4,700 books bought

367 books sold

165 books lost

34 books stuffed in garbage disposals

13 books thrown out of moving vehicles

63,000 homework assignments

256 dogs who ate them

45,000 poor study habits

450 science experiments

162,000 unfortunate experiments with fashion

14,000 bathroom passes

261 15,000 hall passes 4,000 lame passes 2,800 tests passed 234,900 rumors passed 158 stupid boyfriends 143 psycho girlfriends 222 broken hearts 64,000 crazy dreams 150,000 sleepless nights 302 phones ringing 145 phones taken 3,082 tests taken 2,000,000,001 tears cried 2,000,000,001 tears dried 3,000,000 lies 5,000,000 truths 252,000 changes of clothing 45,233,000 changes of personality 141 detentions 62 eyebrow piercings 21 belly piercings 9 "other" piercings

262 14 tattoos

5 languages spoken

3,000 papers written

75,000 instant messages

1 too many photographs

247 games lost

532 games won

56 teachers

A trillion lessons

78 awards

3,000 friends

63,000 hugs

A zillion words of encouragement

315 success stories

Zero regrets . . .

I was told that under NO circumstances could I ad- lib it, that I had to present whatever I turned in to the principal's office for approval--a formal speech that included quotes by Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Edison, and one of the Popes--but I totally say whatever I wanted to say, and there's nothing that Mr. Zwieback or the rest of them can do about it. They don't even care; they give me my diploma and call it a day.

263 Plus, my speech has kicked Ron Moran's lame vale- dictorian ass, thank you very much.

After the ceremony, me, Ash, Pam, Cindy, and Joelle gather in the football field with our parents, congratu- lating one another, hugging one another, and generally being stupid and giddy. My mom and dad can't stop kissing me and telling me how proud they are, and then kissing each other, which normally would embarrass me to death but now seems sort of cute.

"Your parents," says Ash, laughing.

"Yeah," Pam says. "They're so happy it's disgusting."

"They're just relieved," I say. "They probably thought this year would never end. The little accident has finally graduated."

"Oh, please, Audrey. Ever since I've known you, your parents have always looked like that," Ash tells me. "They've always been happy. Face it. They're not nor- mal."

"Don't be surprised if they spring a baby brother or sister on you while you're at college," Pam says. "They're pretty hot, you know. For old people."

I'm trying to wrap my brain around this: my parents are happy, my parents have always been happy, my par- ents are hot, when Ash pokes me and whispers, "And speaking of hot. . . ,"

Luke is standing in front of us. "Great speech," he says. With his index finger and thumb, he flicks my

264 gold tassel and walks away before I can answer, his gown streaming behind him like a cape on a super- hero.

"Who was that?" says my mom, moving to stand next to me.

"Oh. A guy I know," I say.

The guy I know shows up at my house the next day. My dad answers the door and, because of his dad radar, is immediately suspicious. Against his better judgment, he calls me down from my room.

I see that my dad hasn't invited Luke into the house; I have to go out on the porch. My dad stands behind the screen door for a minute, glowering like a guard dog. After he's gone, Luke says, "Your dad is going to get his lawn mower and try to clip me down, isn't he?"

"You run faster than he does," I say. "It shouldn't be a problem."

We sit down on the porch steps. He pulls out his cell phone, flicks it open, and shows me the screen saver. It's me in my wedding dress. The message I'd sent him with the picture said: "No, it's not a proposal, just an apol- ogy. I'm sorry for everything. I suck (and not in the good way)."

"Hot girl," I say. "Who is she?"

"Thought you could tell me."

"Can't help you," I say.

265 He snaps the phone shut. "Heard you guys made an entrance at the prom. Nardo filled me in."

"We did. You should have been there," I say.

"Went last year with a senior girl. I rented the tux, paid for the limo, bought the corsage, know the drill," he says. "I didn't think it would be worth it. Besides, there was only one girl I wanted to ask, and I was still mad at her."

I'm not sure what to say, so I don't say anything. We sit there for a few seconds. "What are you doing in the fall?"

"Rutgers," he says. "Undeclared major. You?"

"Cooper Union. Architecture."

"Sweet. That's in New York City?"

I nod. My heart is doing an imitation of the mambo, and my head bobs along with it. A bird calls, Heeeeere birdy birdy birdy birdy, and I imagine Cat Stevens sali- vating at the living room window.

"My grandfather's bald," Luke says suddenly.

"Huh?" I say. "Random much?"

"My brother's losing his hair, too."

"Your brother? Which one?"

"Jeff."

"But he's only, like, twenty-two or something!"

"I know. He's freaking out. So's Eric. It runs in my family. My mom's dad was bald by the time he was twenty-eight. Her brother was only twenty-five." Luke puts a hand on the top of his head. "I figure I should

266 enjoy it while it lasts, you know? That's how I think about a lot of things. You should just enjoy them. I mean, maybe I'll be bald next year and maybe I won't. I can't worry about it now. Do you know what I'm saying?"

Great. Metaphors. That's what I need in my life, more metaphors. "I'm not sure."

"We had a good time, didn't we?"

The heat rises in my cheeks. "Yeah. We did."

"Well," he says. "Except for the dumping thing. And the treating-me-like-I'm-some-sort-of-leper-horndog-for- practically-the-whole-year thing."

"Except for that. I'm sorry about that."

He doesn't answer; he just props his elbow up on his knee, his chin in his fist, and gazes at me--like he's already moved on, like all of it was something that happened a decade ago and why get all worked up over it? I think about how he tried to go down on me that one time and maybe I could have let him--it might have been okay, it might have been . . . nice. But then again, maybe it would have been a disaster. I hadn't trusted him. I didn't know him. I didn't know myself.

He bumps my shoulder with his. "I guess I shouldn't worry about losing my hair. You wanted me for my body, anyway."

"Watch it. I can always get my dad again," I say. "I'm

267 pretty sure he's in the kitchen, sharpening his knives."

He laughs. "Touched a nerve?"

"You touched all of them," I say, picking at my fingernails. "The nerves, I mean." I feel so stupid, sitting here. He's been inside me and I've been inside him. I've swallowed his spit, his sweat, and he's swallowed mine. How do you talk to a guy after that? How do you start talking to a guy after that?

"You told me once that you'd read Moby Dick and you thought it was funny."

He nods. "Yeah, I did think it was funny. Why?"

"What else?" I say.

"What else what?"

"What else should I know about you?"

"Let's see. I'm five foot ten and weigh 162 pounds. I like dogs, moonlit walks under the stars, and milkshakes I can share with that special someone."

"You are so not five foot ten."

"You can check my license." He picks up my hand. "You seeing anyone?" he asks me. "Nardo--Ash--said you weren't."

"No," I say. "You?"

"Gave it up for Lent." He runs a finger in the spaces between my knuckles. "I told my mom I'd bring the van back by six today, but do you want to go to the beach tomorrow?"

I'm surprised. "The beach?"

268 "Yeah, the beach. You know, sand, water, bathing suits. I'll do my best to win you a really huge, really ugly stuffed animal on the boardwalk. On the way, you can ask me all the questions you want."

"I don't know," I say.

"Come on," he says. "It'll be fun."

I think, Yes! I think, No! I think, There's no way this will work. I'm still me and you're still you--I'll obsess, you'll flirt, we'll go down in flames. I think, I'm leav- ing, you're leaving. Rutgers is too big and New York City is too big and there's too much to do and too many people to meet. We're seventeen years old and eighteen years old, we'll come home older and won't know who we are anymore, as if we ever did. Maybe it's better to leave it where it is, while we don't hate each other . . .

"Hey," he says, giving my hand a squeeze. "Stop it. Stop thinking for one second. We have the summer. You can't know everything that's going to happen."

"I--"

"You don't know everything."

He's right. There are a billion things I don't know, as this year has proven. Why not take a chance? We do have the summer. Two whole months of it.

"Come on, Audrey." He drops my hand and holds his up like I've pulled a gun. "I'll keep my mitts to myself, if that's what you want."

269 I admire his long fingers. They look strong, like they could last a while, a half hour maybe. But I'm more greedy than that. There are other things I want, too. His brain, maybe even his heart. I'll start with those and see what happens. "Okay," I say. "The beach it is."

He smiles. "I'll see you tomorrow, then. Ten too early?"

"No. I'll be ready."

"Good," he says.

He hops down the stairs and takes the driveway in a jog. Then he turns around and runs back.

"Forget something?" I say.

"Yeah," he says, and leans down and kisses me-- short and sweet. A casual, friendly, see-ya-later kind of kiss, the kind we never got to have before.

After he's gone, I sit there a long time, watching the clouds form and re-form, feeling the warm breeze, the kiss on my lips, just trying to be still, just trying to be. It's hard, being. Hard not to pit yourself against your- self, hard not to measure and compare and rank yourself against everyone else. It'll take practice, and I'm not sure if it will ever work. Then I remember some dumb saying, or maybe a song, about having the same sky over us and the same stars shining down on us and the same God smiling with her big God teeth, and think now that it's corny, but true. Our moon is the same moon, our sun is

270 the same sun, and the stars will sparkle for us no matter who or where or what we are--not sluts, not players, just people. We can all look up and say, Okay, there's the South Star, there's the Big Dogpile, there's the Little Dipshit.

Twinkle, twinkle.

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