Like It Never Happened (10 page)

“Rebecca is in search of an old man to seduce,” announced Tim.

Charlie didn't miss a beat. “How about over by the grill? It's like a mustache convention.”

My father's friends were all retired air pilots. Their mustaches were permanent, the glue that held their faces together.

“Go ahead.” Tess poked me. “Select your Humbert Humbert.”

Charlie draped one arm over Tess, the other over Tim. He didn't exactly meet my eyes. “Where's Gallagher?” he asked.

The backyard was getting crowded. “I don't see her,” I said.

“Who don't you see?” Liane came up behind me and slipped into our circle. She was stunning in a black-and-white-striped dress, her cheekbones glowing, hair untamable.

“Speak of the devil!” cried Tim.

“You're just in time to save Rebecca's innocence,” said Charlie.

“That's funny.” Liane turned to me, frowning slightly at my outfit. “I thought her innocence expired long ago.”

“Same,” said Tess.

“What is
Lolita
about, exactly?” asked Charlie.

I had missed this about the Essential Five—the way everything fell haphazardly into perfect order—but currently it was making me nervous.

“It's about pedophilia,” Tess explained, “but also about desire and language and wanderlust and, like, America.”

“Go America!” chanted my mother as awkwardly as possible. She was shuffling toward us, several friends in tow. The women clutched margaritas and peered at us with tight, lipsticked smiles.

“This is my daughter Rebecca!” Mom was using her tour guide voice, touching the top of my head like I was a prized rosebush. I could already tell she had been drinking. Not that I held it against her—probably my life would have been easier if Mom had been more of a drunk.

“And this is her boyfriend, Char-lie!”

Or maybe not.

Mom fondled Charlie's shoulder. Miraculously, he seemed unbothered. “Hello,” said Charlie, shaking the hand of each completely indifferent woman. “It's nice to meet you all.”

My mother flashed me a look that said “I told you so,” and also “Aren't you a little drama queen?” and also “You can thank me later.”

It was a lot of infuriating things for her to say at once. She attempted to drift away, but I stomped after her, my cheeks blazing.

“Are you kidding?” Panic cracked my voice.

“Oh, look at them! Nobody's even upset!” Mom whispered, before breaking from my grasp to assist Mrs. Almeida with the potato salad.

And, in fact, my friends did not look upset. Everyone except Liane was convulsing with laughter. Rolling her eyes, she beckoned me over.

“They already knew,” Charlie explained, sliding his arm around my waist and pulling me close.

“What?” I backed away.

“He spent the last week of summer negotiating his way out of the pact,” Tim said.

“He owes us,” Liane said. “You both do.”

I locked eyes with her, desperately trying to make sense of the timeline.

“But ultimately we couldn't really blame him,” said Tess. “Camp sounded like torture and besides, you two are perfect for each other.” She winked at me.

I looked at Charlie in disbelief. Camp was torture? On the last night, he had won an award for being the Counselor Most Dedicated to Fun.

“You hate me?” he spoke into my ear.

“You wouldn't call me.”

“I wanted to kiss you with a free conscience.” He returned his arm to my waist, but he didn't kiss me.

“We have something for you.” Liane directed this to Charlie. “Only we have to present it to you privately.”

“Yes, privately,” agreed Tess. “And we also need something to toast with.”

She was swift, darting to the booze table and seizing a bottle of Jack Daniel's by the neck. “Nobody cares about the whiskey, do they?” Tess asked, climbing the steps to the back door. Stealing a glance at my parents, who were laughing uproariously beneath the plum trees, I led my friends upstairs to my bedroom.

They sank into a careful arrangement, as if we hung out in my room all the time. The girls sprawled across the bed, Charlie spun circles in my desk chair, and Tim perched on the wide windowsill. I hovered in the door frame, wondering what would happen next.

What happened was Tess uncorked the whiskey and took a swig straight from the bottle. Coughing and sneezing, she passed it to Liane, who was surprisingly more composed about the whole process. I wondered what would happen if my parents caught us. Presumably there was a rule against drinking hard liquor in my bedroom.

In the backyard, the party raged. An earnest U2 song replaced Carly Simon. If there was ever a night they wouldn't notice, this was it. When the bottle came my way I took a drink. Flames licked my chest, but it wasn't exactly a bad feeling.

Liane removed a folded sheet of paper from the pocket of her dress. She presented it to Charlie. “I haven't quite mastered the legalese,” she said. “But I think I got the point across.”

Charlie hummed to himself as he read over the note. Expressionless, he grabbed a pen off my desk and uncapped it with his teeth. “The deed to Rebecca?” he asked, scrawling something on the page.

“Every square inch of her,” confirmed Tess.

“Use once and discard,” said Tim.

I felt my eyes go wide with horror.

“The condom, that is.”

I moved across the room to grab the note from Charlie, but he held it high above his head before passing it to Tess. Like the whiskey, the note made the rounds. I had to refrain from lunging like an idiot while everyone scribbled their names.

Finally, Liane dropped the page in my lap.

Be it resolved that the five essential members of the Thespian Troupe of Bickford Park Alternative School of the city of Portland shall amend their pact such that members “Rebecca Rivers” and “Charlie Lamb” are hereby authorized to perform the necessary acts associated with dating each other provided that these acts do not interfere with or compromise the collective artistic potential of the Essential Five. The foregoing resolution is hereby consented to by the Essential Five as evidenced by their signatures hereto.

I looked at Charlie, slumped in my desk chair. His lips were twisted in amusement but his gaze rested somewhere on the carpet. Days ago, on the bus, I had wanted to crawl inside his mind and see the scenery the way he saw it. Now I wasn't sure I wanted anything to do with the corners of Charlie Lamb's mind.

I tried to take a quick inventory of the ups and downs of our friendship, or flirtation, or whatever it was. The way he smiled at me outside of the hotcake house last December: up. The way he ignored me all summer at camp: down. The way he kissed me on the ride home: up, up, up. Followed by a long, confusing silence.

I kept trying to catch his eye, but he wouldn't actually look at me.

I signed my name. It was too late to do anything else. And besides, I told myself, maybe the pact had been the problem all along.

For a while our friends teased us. Tess wanted to know who had come on to whom. Tim asked, “Did you lock eyes across a crowded sing-along?” and Tess said, “No, I bet they were partners in a three-legged race.”

“Hot,” said Liane.

Tess asked if we used the top or bottom bunk.

Charlie, for his part, displayed the right amount of embarrassment and triumph on his perfectly proportioned face. But he also acted like I wasn't there, and I had to wonder why it felt so shitty to get exactly what I had always wanted. I guess I hadn't imagined it involving so much paperwork.

Liane kept reaching across the bed to reclaim the bottle. I watched her from the corner of my eye, looking for the moment she transformed from regular Liane to drunk Liane. But either I missed the moment, or there wasn't one.

Outside, the party was dying down. Somebody turned Bruce Springsteen on full blast. Somebody turned the music off altogether.

When engines started rumbling in the street, my friends filed out of my bedroom and down the stairs. I lingered on the front porch while they went their separate ways. In the backyard, my parents slurred appreciation for their departing guests. My mother kept pushing leftover shrimp cocktail on people.

From behind, somebody draped her long arms around my neck. I smelled Liane's shampoo—the cheap, fruity stuff from Costco.

“Guesswha,” she whispered in my ear.

“What?” I asked. I couldn't take my eyes off the street, where my boyfriend was saluting me good-bye.

“He told me first.” She straightened her spine until she was a full head taller than me.

“Told you what?”

“That you kissed. That you . . .” She gestured with her hand, implying waves rolling, or some kind of sexual satisfaction I had never achieved.

“When?” I asked quietly.

“After,” she confirmed. “He showed up at my tree house like twenty minutes after you left.”

I looked at Liane in the porch light. Her jaw was tense, her eyes glazed. There were a lot of things she could have said to me, and only one thing I owed her.

“I'm sorry,” I said.

“It's fine.” She shook her curls. “I mean, you tried to tell me.”

“Not very hard.”

“Not very hard,” she allowed. “Good night.”

“Can I walk you home?” was all I asked.

She dismissed my offer with a wave. “No thanks.”

I watched her manage the porch steps one at a time. “We'll meet again in Moscow,” she said, slurring a little so it sounded like “Moschow.”

It was what my character said to Charlie's in
The Seagull,
right before our onstage kiss.

S
chool started and Mr
.
McFadden allowed the five of us to audition first, presumably so he could proceed to sleep through the sad attempts of the nonessentials. When it was Hadley Clarke's turn, she took the stage and clasped her hands behind her back, like somebody about to deliver her first book report. She wore vintage overalls and oversized glasses. The idea that Hadley and I had something in common just because our mothers had once coached each other through “deep, cleansing breaths” had never seemed more absurd.

“I would like to audition for the part of Blanche DuBois,” said Hadley.

Total silence.

Mr. McFadden peered down the row of seats, where the five of us stared at Hadley in shock. “That's not how it works,” he said, somewhat gently. “Everyone will get the role to which he or she is best suited.”

“Right, I know the rules but I just wanted—” Hadley's voice wavered. “I just wanted to be clear about my intentions, and I—” She steadied herself and took a breath. “I intend to play Blanche DuBois.”

Her eyes were focused on the back wall of the auditorium.

Mr. McFadden tapped his pen against his clipboard, clearly annoyed. “Please perform your selected material, Ms. Clarke.”

I half expected Hadley to break the second cardinal rule of auditions: no material from the actual play. But she didn't. She performed the monologue from
Steel Magnolias
about how men are supposed to be made out of steel, but really it's women.

Afterward we filed out of the auditorium and stood in a circle on the steps. Liane was the first to comment on Hadley's transgression, saying, “That was so weird.”

“Do you think she's trying to start an uprising?” Charlie asked.

“The revenge of the secondary characters,” Tess warbled.

Tim nudged my shoe with his. “Do you and Hadley Clarke have some old score to settle?”

Everybody looked at me, I guess because Tim's idea would have made for an interesting story. But no; the bulk of my history with Hadley had occurred while we were both still in utero.

“Do you think she has a shot?” I asked, sounding more nervous than I really was. Physically, I was all wrong for the part. To blanch something means to drain it of color, and I was dark where Hadley was practically translucent. But I was also Mr. McFadden's favorite.

“No way,” said Charlie.

Tess and Tim swept their heads back and forth. Even Liane put a comforting hand on my shoulder.

“Rest assured,” she said. “The lead is yours.”

On Saturday morning my mother burst into my room with a grave, “Rebecca, I have to tell you something.”

I sat up and gave her my full attention. Because that's what you do when a person rouses you from the depths of sleep to inform you that your sister or somebody has died.

“Charlie is outside, and he brought yellow roses.”

I gave my eyes a moment to focus on my mother's face, already caked with beige makeup at nine in the morning. Then I pulled the sheet over my head.

“It's okay,” she said. “He probably doesn't know. Boys don't usually keep track of these things.”

“Know
what
?” I groaned, unable to fathom why Charlie would think it appropriate to a) buy me flowers or b) deliver them at the crack of dawn.

“That yellow means friendship.”

In my cocoon of sheets, everything was warm and cream-colored. I could pretend I had no unpredictable boyfriend and no melodramatic mother.

“He also brought doughnuts.” She added an irritated sigh, like doughnuts were the nail in the coffin—the underline beneath
just friends.

“Glazed or powdered?” I pulled the sheet away from my face. “Because glazed means
Marry me
, but powdered is more,
Join my cult
.”

Handing me a hairbrush, my mother left the room.

Charlie was indeed on the front porch, smirking behind the bouquet. It was clear he meant the roses as some kind of joke, and not as an actual attempt to romance me. I went to put them in the kitchen and when I returned he handed me a doughnut—a maple bar garnished with bacon bits.

We sat on the steps, bare knees touching. Charlie didn't kiss me hello. We hadn't yet integrated kissing into our daily lives. If kissing wasn't the main event, it didn't happen at all.

“Why so early?” I asked between bites.

“I always wake up early.” He sucked the sugar off his fingertips.

“Why?”

“Because otherwise there wouldn't be enough hours in the day.”

Charlie and I didn't necessarily have a lot in common. Every time my head hit the pillow, I wondered why I had ever left my bed in the first place.

I could smell the soap on his skin. His T-shirt was perfectly white, perfectly unwrinkled, making me wish I had showered.

“Is that your bike?” I asked dumbly, referring to the one leaning against the porch.

“Yeah.” He swallowed the last bite of his doughnut. “Go get yours. We'll ride to the waterfront.”

“Don't have one,” I said quickly.

Charlie stared.

“I mean, my sister's old one might still be in the garage, but I don't know how to ride it.”

“How. Is. That. Possible?”

“One extracurricular, remember?”

“Riding a bike is not an extracurricular. It's like tying your shoes or brushing your teeth or putting bread into the toaster. A totally necessary survival skill.”

I shrugged. Miraculously, I had survived sixteen years without mounting a bicycle. But Charlie was pulling me up from the porch. He righted his bike and patted the seat. “Get on.”

“Nope.” I had a strict policy against learning things in front of other people.

“Yup.” Now he was tenderly stroking the seat.

I stood my ground.

“Afraid you can't do it?” he taunted. “Afraid of falling on your ass? Afraid that of the seven billion people on earth you are the one inherently incapable of riding a bicycle?”

“That won't work,” I said, annoyed.

Charlie swung one leg over the bike. He stepped on a pedal and let the bike coast across the sidewalk, gently bumping over the curb. “Maybe you're wise to abstain,” he said. “I mean, this takes talent.” He pedaled in circles, barely yielding to a passing car. “Now that I look at you . . .” He crossed his arms over his chest, somehow managing to stay upright. “You've got the wrong build. Your body type just isn't conducive to cycling.”

He zigzagged across the street, cocky and graceful.

“You're an asshole,” I told him.

Charlie rested one foot on the ground so that he and his bike assumed the same quizzical posture. Matching his gaze, I went and seized the handlebars. Once he had relinquished the bike, I swung my leg over the frame and—like I had watched my sister do a million times—pushed off on the pedals.

Because the wheels were narrow and the street was wide—because I was dumb and the world was cruel—I promptly toppled over. I landed on my right side, still straddling the fallen contraption. Tiny pieces of asphalt were lodged in my flesh. Charlie folded in hysterical laughter, like my fall was the punch line he had planned.

I wanted to hurl the bike in his direction. I wanted to stomp inside the house and slam the door.

But I was sixteen years old. He was my first boyfriend. And I was still wondering, on a per-minute basis, what it would be like to sleep with him. So I walked back to the curb, wheeling the bike apologetically.

“Teach me,” I said.

Charlie and I went into the alley where there wasn't any traffic, and for the next three hours we repeated the same exercise. I mounted the bicycle. He gripped the back of the seat and I pedaled forward, supported by the infallible physics of Charlie's feet on the ground. The problem was that he would eventually let go, and I would sail down the alley for approximately two seconds before gravity defeated me. The alley was littered with broken glass and bottle caps. By noon I was bleeding in three places.

“Every six-year-old can do this,” Charlie said, losing patience.

“I know that!” I snapped. “Obviously you're a terrible teacher. If every six-year-old can do this
completely impossible
thing, then there is something you're not telling me!”

A flashback dropped me in our old Volkswagen, my teenage sister at the wheel. Dad was teaching her to drive stick. The car met almost twenty sputtering deaths before Mary erupted into sobs, screaming at Dad to tell her the secret.

“Just balance,” said Charlie, pulling at his hair. “When you feel yourself falling, just don't fall.”

I tried to keep a neutral face. I didn't want Charlie to see me realizing his total brilliance. He was correct; it had not occurred to me to balance—not really. To use my own weight against the force of gravity. That was the secret to riding a bike.

Wordlessly, I pushed off. When I felt myself falling, I balanced instead. It was like walking the elevated perimeter of the sandbox, or sliding down a railing. It was easy.

I wasn't so confident in my turning skills. At the end of the alley I dismounted and yanked the bike into position before pedaling back to Charlie.

“Thanks,” I said coolly, returning the bike to his arms.

Grinning, he let the stupid thing fall to the pavement. It had taken so much abuse already. Charlie pulled me close and kissed me hard. I felt like I deserved that kiss more than I had ever deserved a kiss. All at once I forgave him for his coldness at school, the ironic flowers, and everything else.

“I have to go home and get some work done,” he murmured.

I nodded. I wanted him to stay, but I also wanted to be a certain kind of girlfriend. Namely the kind who doesn't make demands—the kind you might describe as “low maintenance.”

At home, a strange car was parked in the driveway, engine running. License plate with
California
written in that smug cursive.

A long, tanned leg emerged. She was wearing a pale pink sundress. She looked like a country club wife, which was approximately the last thing I had ever expected her to resemble.