Plastic Confidence (Good Bye Trilogy #1) (3 page)

THREE

It was a week after Krysta had given me the OUIJA board and I had forgotten all about it. Emmy, Angie, and I were outside on my lawn, within eye sight of my mother, playing Scrabble. I hated Scrabble. Our daily play dates were becoming so dull and we grasped on to whatever we could to keep our friendship alive. We couldn’t go biking. We couldn’t play in our fort in the forest behind Emmy’s house. We couldn’t do anything fun.

Angie placed the tiles down to make the word Donkey on the board after Emmy played the word Rocket. I threw my pieces up in the air and growled out in frustration.
Stupid Scrabble
. At the least, I could have been winning but no. I was so done with being a bored twelve year old. Mom looked up from the newspaper ten feet from us and gave me a disapproving look. It was actually the look she saved for when I was being a total brat. I was getting that look a lot lately.

“
Jules Delaney! Why are you acting like you are two years old?” Mom snapped at me. The two other girls looked wide eyed as their eyes jumped from me to my mother and back. I started to cry and ran into the house, yelling that I hated my life. This was the worst summer ever. Not even the glorious time I had had at camp could make this summer a memorable one. I felt like a hostage. No, I
was
a hostage.

I threw my head into my pillow on my waterbed and sobbed. Minutes later, Emmy and Angie were standing against my bedroom wall, waiting for me to stop my crying fit. I was embarrassed that I had ruined our game.

“I’m sorry that I ruined the game,” I whispered, as I hiccupped in my post crying fit. My friends were prisoners, too, but I seemed to be the only one taking it so hard.

Both girls climbed on top of me and we all hugged. I heard them muttering that they hated this summer and they just wish that we could go play on our own for just one day. I nodded
, as I sniffled, and tried to muster up a smile for them.

They
could barely smile back and we all knew why. This was the worst summer in the history of all summers. Emmy got up and started eyeing everything in my room with fascination. I did have a cool room. I watched her go through my CDs and books. When she saw the OUIJA Board, she picked it up. As she turned the box over and over again, she smiled broadly.

“I played this once with my cousin in her back yard! It was so much fun! I begged my parents for one but Mom and Dad said it wasn’t a nice board game for the house,” she said. She was clearly excited. She could have the stupid thing if she really wanted it.

“Oh yeah? Krysta gave it to me. We played it about a week ago and it didn’t do anything,” I replied, noticing Angie peering over at the box with interest.

“Let’s play it now,” Emmy clapped her hands with glee. She giggled to herself as she started to open the box. I inwardly sighed. I didn’t want to play another board game. I officially despised them all. They were mind
-numbing. Nevertheless, Emmy hardly came up with ideas when we played anything so Angie and I got on the floor and waited for Emmy to set it up. When all of our hands were in place, we peered at one another expectantly.

“What do we do?” Angie inquired.

“We say hello and ask them who they are,” Emmy announced, nodding in determination down to the board. “So I will ask. Hello. This is Jules, Emmy, and Angie. We want to talk to you. Are you here?”

Emmy asked as she looked at the board with rapt attention.

I sighed and just watched Emmy and Angie. I loved my friends and I didn’t know what I would do without them. They were keeping me together this summer. I had not even noticed that the pointer was moving. Emmy smiled and Angie looked confused. I looked down to see that the pointer was right over “Yes”.

“Hey! Did you guys move your fingers?” I chided, startling them both. The board hadn’t moved a lick when Krysta and I had done it.
Nothing
. Now it was clearly on the word “Yes” and I yelped, a little freaked out. I started to pull my fingers back.

“No, don’t,” Emmy admonished loudly. “Leave them on or they will leave.”
Who would leave? What the hell was going on? My upper body started to shake which made my fingers a little shaky, too. I took a few calming breaths to make them stop moving.

I firmly laid my four fingers back on the pointer, never losing the connection. Thank God I didn’t break the connection or whoever would have left. Wait, did I believe this? I looked around to see if the other girls were as quizzical as I was. Was this thing actually real? Emmy looked amused and Angie was intrigued. I was
scared and hoped I wouldn’t pee my pants.

“Who
... are... you?” Angie asked very slowly, but her voice shook noticeably. A huge bubble of unease rose in my chest and I swallowed really hard. I watched our fingers–looking to see if any of them were moving, even if unintentionally. But we were all still. We were hardly touching the plastic triangle as it flew across the board with disjointed speed. G–R–A–C–E

We all gasped. Angie’s eyes got so wide, she looked like a bug.
A beetle. Emmy didn’t look so amused anymore.

“You are Grace? You were just murdered!” I
screamed at the board like it was going to yell back at me. I started to sweat and I watched the two other girls’ mouths drop open. Either they couldn’t believe that we were supposedly talking to Grace or that I had screamed murder at the board. Either way, no one was saying anything as we waited for a response. The pointer moved to “Yes”, moved away, and went back to “Yes”. Yes, it was Gracie. Yes, she was murdered.

Emmy cleared her throat and it looked like she couldn’t get her mouth to work. “Who
... who killed you?” Emmy asked. We all watched the board with rapture. The pointer didn’t move. Several seconds went by. Just as I was going to ask again, the pointer slowly moved. We watched it as it slowly went through the three letter word. It was going so slow, we were all holding our breaths for it to stop on one letter. When it did, we looked up to each other with horrified expressions.

D
–A–D

The pointer quickly zipped out of our hands and landed on “GOOD BYE”. I couldn’t breathe. Tears were in Emmy’s eyes and Angie was shaking her head in disbelief.

“Her dad killed her?” Emmy asked softly.

I couldn’t believe it. It was a dumb game and one of my friends had just punked
me. Someone punked me and that pissed me off and made me feel a bit of relief. I threw my head back against the wall and exhaled in relief. I would make them play again. I will watch them very carefully.

“It’s not real,” I stated firmly. I picked the board and the pointer up and threw them in the box. I stuck it in my closet on the highest shelf. I turned around to see both girls looking at me like I should know what to do next.

“What?” I asked.

“Shouldn’t we tell someone?” Angie asked. Moments passed in silence.

That’s when I knew. If Angie moved the pointer, she wouldn’t be asking me this. If it was Emmy who moved it, she would be objecting to telling anyone. She was too nice to lie.

“Tell them what? We played the
OUIJA board and it said that Gracie’s dad killed her?” I asked incredulously.

They both shrugged. I shook my head at them. Sometimes, my friends were clueless.

“Tell you what,” I started. “Tomorrow, I will bring it to Angie’s house. We can do it again. We can ask her if there is proof.” I said, as I started flipping through a Seventeen magazine. Pretending that I wasn’t scared was hard, but both girls looked convinced as they made their way out of my room to meet their parents outside.

Minutes later, Mom and I waved to the cars. I apologized for my outburst as she put her arm around my shoulder.

“Mom, does anyone think that Grace’s father is the one who killed her?” I tried to act cool about it but she eyed me with little bit of suspicion.

“I don’t think so,” she said slowly and wearily.

I nodded my head and went back to my bedroom. I didn’t sleep at all that night. I knew who had murdered Grace and there was nothing I could do about it.

The next day, I fumbled with the
OUIJA board box before I gave up, by stuffing just the board and the pointer into my backpack. Mom had called for me to go for the third time and I rolled my eyes at her impatience. She didn’t know that important things were being prepared and I, too, couldn’t wait to get with my friends and try to talk to Grace again.

The three of us begged our parents off and headed into Angie’s room. The Offspring and Goo
Goo Doll posters adorned her walls. Angie was also an amazing artist and had several of her canvases leaning up on every wall, with open and dried up oil tubes littering her floor. The smell of her room sometimes made Emmy sick but for me, it was relaxing to be among creativity. I hadn’t found my real hobby yet. I liked to sing along with male lead bands because my voice was low enough. That, however, was the extent of my musical talent.

I took the board and pointer out of the backpack and tossed it on the bed.

“We are not doing that where I sleep at night,” Angie scolded me. I nodded in understanding while Emmy gracefully took the board and with great care, as if she was going to break it, placed it on the floor like she had done the previous day.

We quickly sat down, placed our fingers at the same spots, and look at each other. Without asking a word, the pointer moved to yes, move away and then went back to yes.

“She is here,” Angie whispered. “What do we ask?”

The pointer moved and we watched as it moved from D to A to D. It did this twice before I realized that she would probably leave again.

“What am I going to be when I get older?” I asked in a hurry. “Oh, this is Jules.”

The pointer didn’t move for a while as I thought about an early death. Would I get older? Was it like Krysta? Because last I had heard, Kent was fighting with her over the phone. A lifetime they would not last. Finally it moved. Slowly it moved to S. It sat there for several seconds. What was I going to be
when I grew up? A singer? A songwriter? A salesman? A sales clerk? Oh god, I was going to be pathetic.

The pointer moved quickly to L. I couldn’t come up with anything before it moved to U. Then rapidly, it shot over to T. The pointer gained momentum and repeated the word.

S–L–U–T.

S
–L–U–T.

I looked at my friends in confusion.

“What’s a slut?” Emmy whispered. We both shrugged our shoulders and then Emmy asked the same question. I didn’t see what the pointer answered but she looked just as dumbfounded as I did. I blanked out, trying to figure out what a slut was. When Angie asked, I was about to jump up and run to a dictionary but I couldn’t let go before we were done. Emmy and I both stared off at something in the room as Angie got her answer. I looked down to see the last two letters were Z-Y. Angie gasped and withdrew her hands from the pointer. Without her fingers, however, the pointer made its way to GOOD BYE.

We all started talking at once about how the board was a fake and one of us was moving it. When I asked them why it moved on its own
without our hands the previous morning, I was met with silence.

Angie got up and with shaking hands, put the board and the pointer back into the backpack. Emmy cleared her throat.

“Let’s go play hopscotch,” she said numbly. We all nodded. As we made it out of the house, Angie’s mom came up and clearly she had been crying. She hugged Angie so hard and then continued to hug both Emmy and I, as well.

“Mom, what is it? Why are you crying?” Angie asked.

“Oh honey. They got him. Grace’s killer. They found evidence and he was arrested this morning. You are all safe now. It is so sad for her family but such a relief to us parents,” she said grimly. Her head fell back as she wiped the mascara from under her eyes.

“Who?
Who killed her?” Emmy shakily asked.

“It was her father, dear. He
is a very, very sick man. But that isn’t your problem so you don’t need to worry about it one bit. Here, let me get you some candy money and you can walk down to the corner store,” she said as she scurried out of the room and gave us each a five dollar bill. We all looked at it perplexed.

“Is it too little? I can get more,” she said, sounding panicked. “You girls have been holed up for three weeks now. Maybe I should get more.”

“No.” We all said it in unison and Angie’s mom nodded slowly. We filed out the front door and started walking on the sidewalk in a line. We didn’t say anything all the way to the store. We all knew who had killed Grace. But the shock that the board was right was what made us realize that we probably couldn’t escape who we would be as we grew up.

FOUR

I was anxious to get home that night. I immediately went to Kent’s room and banged on his door. He was playing his electric guitar and the amp was so loud, I could hardly hear my knock. Krysta opened the door, sucking on a lollipop, and smiled. “Did you hear? That asshole dad killed his own daughter. What a freak,” she said.

Kent looked up and gave her a weird look and then smiled at me. “I guess this means you are off house arrest now, huh Jules?”

“Yeah.
I guess. Hey Kent? Can I talk to you a minute?” I asked and looked at Krysta. “Privately?”

Krysta bounced out of the room, claiming she needed to touch up her makeup and Kent rolled his eyes. I shut the door and sat on his bed, closest to the chair that he sat in when he played. “You sound good,” I said.

“Thanks, Jules. I doubt that is what you want to talk to me about though. If it is a boy, I will... ” he started, cracking his knuckled.

I shook my head. “No. No. No boy. Kent
... What does the word... slut mean?” I asked him cautiously and watched for his expression. It grew dark and he stood up quickly.

“Did someone call you that?” he yelled.

“No. I mean, yes. But no. It was just a game,” I said, trying to calm him down. It wasn’t working. He was pacing back and forth.

“Just
tell
me what it means,” I pleaded.

“You don’t want to know, Jules. It’s a mean, mean word.” He snapped.

“I need to know,” I said quietly.

He let out a loud exhale and sat down on the bed next to me. He looked at me and then back down at the ground. “A slut is someone who has sex with a lot of people.”

“Sex?” I asked. “Like intercourse? What they talked about in maturation classes?”

He nodded, looking completely uncomfortable. I closed my mouth on the subject, blinking over and over. I had both embarrassed him and me. Why would I grow up to be a slut? That doesn’t make money or provide for my family. Did it mean something else? Kent started to talk again but I couldn’t hear him. All I could see was the pointer moving to the words over and over again. I was lost in the visual, lost to the word, lost to all the questions I had that probably would never get answered.

“Cool. Well... thanks Kent,” I said awkwardly.

“Jules,” he said.

“Yeah?” I answered, turning around from my door.

“Make sure you love the guys that you have
... umm” he coughed and I nodded.

“Like you love Krysta?” I countered. I didn’t wait for his response. I ran out of his room so fast that I almost slammed into Krysta who was obviously eavesdropping. She gave me a sad look like she was
going to say something. I shook my head, bee lined it for my bedroom and slammed the door.

I knew in that moment that nothing would ever be the same between Kent and me again. We had officially stepped over the brother/sister boundary line. Of course, I would never ever discuss the word slut with my mom. She didn’t know that I was going to be one. Or was I?

That night in bed, I fell asleep repeating the word “slut” over and over in my head. I tried to sing a song. I tried to think of
any
other word. God help me, it just kept popping back into my head, like a bug was implanted into my ear. I squeezed my head. I screamed into my pillow. I shoved my head into my stuffed animals at the wall side of my bed. I did everything I could do to detach my brain from my head.

The next morning I cancel
ed on Emmy and Angie and stayed locked up in my room. I didn’t feel like seeing anyone. Would they know? Would they be able to see that I was losing my mind? The canceling continued the following day when Emmy called. The next day? Angie.

It was my thirteenth birthday that
hot August day. I had asked Emmy and Angie over for cake and ice cream but both of them said they couldn’t. No excuses. They just couldn’t. I was confused and lonely. Mom had made the obligatory call to my favorite bakery two towns over and reserved a Boston Crème Pie Cake for that night. Other than that, it was just me and the house. All day. All alone. Happy 13th birthday to me.

It was the middle of the afternoon when I heard a knocking at the door. I lifted up on my tippy toes to peek through the
view hole and there was Jason #2 with a wrapped gift in his hand. I immediately opened the door with a wide smile.

“Hey Jay,” I welcomed him excitedly.

He smiled at me and handed over the small present.

“Do you want to come in? Kent isn’t home yet but you can wait for him,” I offered
the idea, as I looked down at the gift. It poorly wrapped, but it was such an unexpected surprise. It felt like it was probably a tee shirt that was bunched together to not waste too much birthday wrapping paper. Either way, someone was thinking about me that day.

“I know he is at work. I just swung by and he wanted me to tell you that it is going to be later than usual. He feels really bad about it, Jules, so he said maybe he would take you to Dairy Queen after he gets home,” he said solemnly.

Jason was sixteen and going into the eleventh grade. Grade cut offs put us at a four year scholastic difference, but out of all three Jasons, he was the one I got along with the best. I was old for my grade and he was young for his. Kent and he were super good at sports, and since he lived right around the corner, their age difference didn’t matter to either of them.

“Oh, well. I guess that is as good as it is going to get today,” I shrugged, still holding the package, and looking off into space.

Jason stepped way too close in my personal space and my heart kicked up in speed, as I realized he was coming in to kiss me. Shocked, I didn’t move my lips like I had with Frank. I didn’t let him feel my tongue with his. I just stood there, like a statue, not understanding why he was kissing me.

He pulled back and smiled at me innocently.

“Jules. Julia,” he started. “I have noticed that you are growing into a woman now. When Kent told me it was your birthday, well... I found a little something that you might like. You know, since you are older now.”

He nodded his head at the package
, but I was still reeling from the kiss that my big brother’s friend, who was both seriously hot and seriously older than me, had given to me. Maybe it was just a fluke. Yes, my birthday! You know, it was like ‘Hey, let’s give Julia a fifteen second kiss to make her feel like a teenager!’ Okay, it was seventeen seconds because I was counting. And I was counting because it was the only way I could maintain some semblance of sanity. Jason had just kissed me and he had given me a gift. Did he? Did he like-like me? I mentally shrugged that preposterous idea off and looked at the package. I ripped it open to find an adorable outfit. I pulled out a cute pink tank top with small boy shorts that had less material than the tank top. Jason had purchased underwear for me? No, it wasn’t underwear, but certainly I would only wear this to bed. Bed. He had gotten me sleep wear. But, why?

I looked up to him puzzled and that is when I saw it.
He had the look that Frank had at camp when he was just about to kiss me. Jason wanted to kiss me? He wanted... me? I don’t know how it happened, or why he felt that way, but wow. His eyes were blazing hot and only for me.

“Will you
try it on for me, Julia?” he whispered with an eagerness I had never heard from him.

“Um.
I don’t know. I mean I think it is very cute but I guess I didn’t think you thought of me like that.” I tried to stay cool. Inside I was freaking out. Where were my two best friends? I needed them. I didn’t know what to do.

“You are still a virgin
, right? You didn’t lose it to some jackass at camp?” he teased in a really awkward, almost jealous way.

“That is none of your business, Jason.
” No way was I telling my brother’s best friend if I am a virgin or not.

I nodded at the gift in my hands and headed back to my bedroom, slightly mortified and
somewhat wanting him to follow me. When he did follow me into my room, I looked up to him with apprehension.

“Are you ticklish, Jules?” he asked. I shook my head because I knew better than to confess that I was.

“I don’t believe you.” He waved all his fingers in a taunting threat. I moved closer to the wall on my bed, but the water below didn’t help me move far enough.

“Please don’t
tickle me,” I whispered.

On cue, Jason was on top of me, tickling under my arms, on my sides, and soon in between my legs. He slowed as his fingers and started to lightly tickle up my legs towards my core area. I stared at his hands as I tried to calm my breathing from the excruciating pain of just being tickled. His two fingers
clamped over my cotton panties.

“Okay, okay. Stop. I am a virgin, yes. Are you happy now?” I breathed out heavily as his lips came crashing down on mine. I opened my mouth, my arms, and my legs for him. He was super good at kissing and I tried to learn what I
could from this moment. He shuddered and pulled away.

“Will you try on the
outfit, Jules?” Jason asked as he kissed the back of my hand. That simple gesture was so gentle and in that moment, I wanted to be a couple with Jason. Mom and Kent could never know but we would be secretive. He really was so sweet for bringing me a present, although a little weird for me, and spending time with me on my birthday.

I nodded slowly. I started to get up to go to the bathroom when he demanded that I change in front of him. He lay on his back with his hands behind his neck. I made to double check the lock on my door and quickly undressed.

When my shy face looked up to see what kind of reaction he would have, I was taken aback. He was looking at my every private area with rapt attention and I saw the spot near his zipper on his jeans where his penis was growing. Frank’s penis had changed like that a few times and I did touch it once. It was soft, and I liked touching it, but Frank quickly put himself away when we heard people coming down the trails at camp.

I never did make it in
to my outfit that day. Jason took my virginity away and gave me the first orgasm I ever had. I did wear it the next day he showed up for another round of “tickling”, as he continued to call it. Jason was hot and so sweet to me. To some degree, I knew he was taking advantage of me, but I grew to enjoy our time together. I was addicted to sex, to him, and I was always ready for Jason when he called. I got jealous when he dated other girls and I sometimes kept him waiting to make a point that I wasn’t just anybody. The only thing he ever promised me was that there would be a next time.

Nevertheless, we had a secretive affair for two years.
We either met at my house after school and before we expected anyone home or we used a guest bedroom that was on top of his garage when his parents weren’t home. From seventh grade until the night before Jason left for college on the west coast, we learned everything and anything we could about each other’s bodies. He said he would miss me. I told him life wouldn’t be the same. I cried the day he left for college, but not for very long, since I had a date that very night with the sexiest guy in the tenth grade.

By
the end of our senior year, my childhood friends and I never acknowledged one another, Jason was long gone from Kent’s and my life, and the OUIJA board was but a faint memory. It wasn’t until I was twenty nine years old that it came back to haunt me.