Out of Order (3 page)

“The older gentleman with the moustache?” Jessa asked, sounding intrigued.

“Yeah. He bought me my gramophone too. It was a cover up. Apparently the guy was married, and I walked in on my mom blowing him.”

We erupted into a horrified chorus of “eww!” Jessa looked disgusted.

“That’s abhorrent,” she said, wrinkling her delicate nose.

“No shit,” Kate deadpanned. “Oh, turn here or you’ll miss it!”

“Yes, ma’am,” the driver said, turning the huge vehicle onto Brandon’s narrow one-way street. It was lined with drooping poplars on both sides, so close to the street that I worried about the limousine being scratched by the low-hanging branches.

“Brandon doesn’t think he’ll be getting any of that tonight, does he?” Kate asked Jessa outright. Jessa flushed a little across her chest but didn’t break a sweat.

“Of course not. We’ve already thoroughly discussed the matter. He is fully aware of my commitment to Jesus Christ and my pledge to wait until marriage.”

Kate snorted and raised an imaginary glass. “To the best night of our lives,” she said sarcastically, “and to Brandon’s blue balls.”

“Hear, hear!” I laughed, raising my own hand, fingers curled and pinky extended gracefully. Ricky followed suit, smirking a little under her blush.

“Funny,” Jessa said as we pulled up in front of Brandon’s house. “Now shut your blasphemous pie hole, Brandon’s coming over. Hi, sweetie! You look so handsome!”

“This is going to be
awesome
!” Brandon said as soon as the driver opened the door for him and his friend, Robert. Robert shyly said something to the same effect but with less enthusiasm… and eye contact.

“
Somebody
looks cute tonight,” Ricky whispered to me while Brandon asked the limo driver to turn up the radio. I raised my eyebrows at her. Why couldn’t she have noticed this fact
months
ago and saved us all the aggravation?

“You should go for it,” I whispered back encouragingly. The last time we’d all gone to a dance together had been spring formal, just days after Ricky’s disastrous break-up with Mike.
That
had been quite the fiasco; I was sure prom would be a million times better.

“S
HE
WON
’
T
stop crying,” Kate said conspiratorially, draping her arms around my shoulders. “I don’t know what else I can do.”

“He is such a douche bag,” I said, shaking my head and allowing myself to be led to the bathroom. I could hear Ricky’s sobbing the moment the door swung open.

“There you are!” Jessa said when she spotted me. “Oh thank the Lord. Relieve me, please. Save me.” Then, louder, “Erica, Corinna’s here!”

The sobbing subsided a little. There was a hiccup and then a tentative, “Corey?”

“Yeah, I’m here,” I said, walking over to the stall that poor Ricky had locked herself in. “What happened?”

“J-Jess?”

Jessa heaved a long-suffering sigh and rolled her eyes. “Mike showed up with another girl,” she said, examining her nails. She was not unsympathetic, but Kate said she’d been trying to convince Ricky to come out of the bathroom for almost an hour while I was doing my prefect duties as coatroom girl.

“That’s all?”

“Ricky found them sucking face.”

“He had his hand up her skirt!” Ricky sobbed, muffled by her hands over her face.

“Yikes,” I said, wincing. “But you only broke up—”

“Three days ago!” Ricky yelled. “Three fracking days is all it takes to get over me and hook up with that… that… that slut! I
know
he was seeing her before we broke up. He’s felt off for
weeks
.”

“Oh, honey,” I said softly. “It isn’t the girl’s fault. It’s that two-timing asshole’s fault. You know that.”

“It’s only her fault if she knew about you, which I know from experience isn’t usually the case,” Kate piped up. “Remember when Mason cheated on me? The other girl was just as upset. They’d been going out just as long as he and I had been!”

“In that case I’m pretty sure
you
were the other woman,” Jessa pointed out. “But you don’t blame Katherine for that debacle, do you, Erica?”

“I guess not,” Ricky sniffled.

“Then don’t blame the other girl,” I said. “She’s a victim of Mike’s—” I waved my hand around, searching for the right word.

“Debauchery?” Kate suggested.

“Also adultery,” Jessa butted in. “You can’t forget about adultery.”

“But you
should
forget about the lecherous, adulterous, selfish asshole,” I finished, leaning against the divider between stall doors. “So come out of there, clean yourself up, and
show
him that you’re over him.”

“But I’m not over him!”

A couple of giggling girls, breathless from dancing, staggered into the bathroom. “Get out of here before I disembowel you and then strangle you with your entrails,” Kate said with complete seriousness. The girls, ninth graders, looked at her dumbly for a second before turning tail and dashing right back out again. I gave her a thumbs-up.

“You don’t
have
to be over him,” I said. “You just have to pretend to be and then shove it in his face!”

There was a click as the lock unlatched. Ricky opened the door a crack and peered at me through it. “Really?”

“Yeah. Stick it to the asshole!” Kate said, pumping her fist.

“You are a strong, independent woman,” I said, looking at her blotchy face sincerely and trying not to notice the globs of partially dried snot that ringed her nostrils. “Who don’t need
no man
to tell her how to live her life!” I snapped my fingers in Z formation and pursed my lips, hoping to get a laugh.

Ricky giggled, her look of despair momentarily replaced by a smile.

“See, just like that,” I said quietly. “Now come on out and show that jerk how much he doesn’t matter to you.”

Ricky opened the door of the stall a little wider, frowning. “He did matter to me. Does matter, I mean. He was my—I mean, you know he was my first.”

Jessa murmured something under her breath that might have been, “Should have waited until marriage. Then you wouldn’t have this problem,” but we all ignored her. She and I were the only ones still virgins, and my virginity wasn’t the result of religious obligations, but lack of suitable suitors. Or any suitors, for that matter.

“He may have your virginity, but he will never take your pride,” I said.

“Or your self-worth,” Kate added. “Self-confidence. Self-love?”

“That just sounds like you mean masturbation,” Jessa said, touching up her lipstick in the mirror.

“I’m sure Brandon knows all about that,” Kate grumbled.

“You suck,” Jessa harrumphed.

“I have to, because I know
you
don’t.”

Jessa’s affronted little noise of distress cracked me up while Kate just looked smug. Ricky laughed too and pushed open the door the rest of the way, clutching her purse.

“Thanks, you guys,” she said, sounding slightly hopeful. “You are true friends.”

“No. We’re not true friends until we tell you that you have snot all over your face, and it’s very distracting,” Jessa said, pulling a pack of tissues out of her little gold clutch and offering it to Ricky. “It’s grossing me out.”

“Sorry,” Ricky said, taking a tissue and walking to the mirror. “Oh my God, you’re right. I’m disgusting.”

“You’re not disgusting,” I protested. “You’re beautiful.”

“Under all the snot,” Kate interjected. I shot her a glare to the best of my ability, but no one ever seems to get them. My mom’s evil eye gene had managed to skip right over me.

“Even with the snot. Although, here, let me help you—” I grabbed a handful of paper towels and wet them, going after her snot and smeared makeup with a vengeance.

“You are such a good friend, Corey,” Ricky said, crying again. “What did I ever do to deserve you guys?”

“I don’t know about you, but I think it was all the homework help. You basically got me through algebra single-handedly, and you’re not even Asian,” Kate said, laughing.

“That’s racist,” I said halfheartedly. I wasn’t in the least bit offended. The Asian jokes got old after a while, and Kate and I had been friends since the third grade. I’d heard them all.

“No, what’s racist is your abandonment of your roots,” Kate said. “Who’s ever heard of an Asian sucking at math as hard as you suck at math?”

“First of all, I’m Vietnamese,” I pointed out for the hundredth time—as if it mattered. No one in a small town cares what
flavor of Asian
you are when you’re one of three nonwhite students in your graduating class. “Secondly, I don’t
suck
—”

“You suck,” all three of the other girls said in creepy unison.

Ricky began to dig through her purse for her eyeliner to attempt to correct the damage her crying had done. (It was impossible. Her eyes were far too red, her cheeks too splotchy.)

“Wow. Okay. Nice to know how valued I am in our social circle.”

“You hold our social circle together. Without you, there would be no circle. It would be two separate line segments.”

I stared at Jessa blankly, waiting for more explanation. She rolled her eyes at me.

“You and I became friends on the first day of third grade. You made friends with Erica in chess club and introduced her to me during the Christmas play. That same year I made friends with Katherine through dance class because she was in the other third grade class and introduced her to
you
in art club on Valentine’s Day. Erica and Katherine made friends with each other at
your
birthday party in June, where the four of us made that pact to be best friends forever. Had you and I not been friends, or if we had had a falling out sometime before Katherine and Erica became friends, or if we’d stopped being friends and made them choose sides, you’d have Erica and I’d have Katherine, but no social circle. You are the… radius?”

I was amazed at Jessa’s flawless memory. I could hardly remember a time before the four of us had been best friends. Instead of saying that, I smiled and said, “You suck at geometry harder than I do, but I concede your point. I am the nucleus of the atom that is our social group.”

“You are a very good nucleus,” Ricky hiccoughed, desperately powdering her nose. She was heinously pale, almost a whole shade lighter than the lightest makeup, and wearing anything on her skin made it look like a bad fake tan. (A bad fake tan that stopped at her jaw line and didn’t really help at all with the blotches.)

“Thank you.”

Ricky finally gave up trying to correct her makeup and shoved everything back in her purse, swearing bitterly. Jessa overlooked the bad language and kept quiet, thank God.

“Am I really going to go out there?” Ricky asked, wringing her hands. “What if he notices that I’ve been in here this whole time?”

“I’m sure he wasn’t paying attention,” Jessa said soothingly, petting Ricky’s mousy brown hair.

I glared at Jessa. “Is that really helping?” I asked her, crossing my arms. Jessa shrugged and continued to pet Ricky. “But yeah. He’s too busy showing off how much of a huge jerk he is to notice. Besides, it isn’t any of his business what you do anymore.”

“It’s not?”

Kate jumped in with an enthusiastic, “No, because you are a strong, independent black woman—”

“I’m not black.”

“Who don’t need
no man
—”

“Didn’t Corey already say all of—?”

“—because you, girl, are fabulous and smart and awesome, and he’s just the dirt beneath your shoe, okay? You need to brush him off your knees, get back up again, and walk all over his sorry ass!” Kate looked at Jessa’s raised eyebrows and sighed. “You need to walk all over his sorry behind. Now, repeat after me!”

Ricky sighed, but she was smiling.

“I am a strong—” Kate repeated slowly.

“I am a strong, independent black woman who don’t need
no
man!” Ricky interrupted, flipping her hair over her shoulder dramatically. “Because I am fabulous, and he is the first step beneath my shoes and stuff, walking all over that bad boy, yep.”

Jessa put a hand over her mouth to stifle the giggles. Kate and I didn’t even bother. We looked at each other and burst into obnoxiously loud laughter.

“Come on, Rick Roll, let’s get outta here,” I said once the stomach cramps subsided, throwing an arm around her shoulder. Kate put her arms around both of us, initiating a group hug.

“Come on, Jess, get in here!” Kate warbled, hugging us tighter. Jessa rolled her eyes again, as she was often wont to do, but tentatively got into the group hug anyway.

“Girl power!” Ricky laughed from her position as the crushed Oreo icing center of our hug.

“Girl power!” the other three of us chorused, laughing and falling all over each other.

“How am I going to get back at him?” she asked, muffled by our bodies. “He humiliated me.”

“That’s easy,” Kate said brightly. “You humiliate him back.” A devious smile found its way onto her face as we broke the hug. “Did you ever tell him about your pregnancy scare?”

We formulated a plan and then walked out of that school bathroom with poise and sophistication. Ricky was nervous but put up a good front. We hunted Mike down and found him by the vending machines with his new girlfriend on his arm.

“Hey, asshole!” she said, grabbing his arm.

He turned to look at her, affronted. If he were a cat, his neck hair would be standing on end.

“Ricky? What?”

“I can’t believe you would
do
this to me,” she shrieked dramatically, her eyes wet with what were probably genuine tears. “After all we’ve been through!”

“Erica, this really isn’t the time or place to throw a hissy fit,” Mike said, rolling his eyes toward his new girlfriend. She didn’t go to our school so I didn’t know much about her. She was a cute blonde with hipster glasses and a purple streak in her hair.

“This is exactly the time
and
place. I can’t believe you’d leave your pregnant girlfriend for this slut!”