Purity (5 page)

I’m already speed-dialing Jonas by the time I reach the top of the stairs.

“Well,” I say when he answers, “I don’t even need to give it more than tonight. He’s a go for Princess Ball badness.”

Jonas groans. “And you seriously think exploiting Ruby’s loophole is a good idea?”

“I have to, Jonas. We’ve only got five weeks and I don’t have any other ideas.”

“I still don’t think your mom intended for you to get laid just to keep your Promise,” Jonas says.

“Yeah, yeah.” Truth is, I’m never going to know what Mom intended with the Promises, just that she wanted me to keep them. “I’m gonna need your help, though,” I tell Jonas.

Jonas makes a few stuttered noises, followed by awkward silence.

“Not like that! I’m not asking you to sleep with me!”

“Of course not!” Jonas says, and I can practically feel his face heating up through the phone. He stumbles over words before spitting out, “I was just surprised that you’re asking me to help you get some. But anyhow,
no
. I’m not helping.”

“Jonas! Come on! I need an insider’s advice on which guys at school to go for. You’re my best friend. Who else is going to help me?

More silence. I hear Jonas’s breathing deepen, like he’s trying to keep himself from shouting or hyperventilating. “So what if it doesn’t work? What if you don’t lose your virginity before the ball?”

“Then… I don’t know. We have to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

We’re silent for a minute. I bite my lip pleadingly, an act that somehow seems to translate over the phone because
Jonas sighs and gives in. “Fine. If you want my help, though, you have to set some rules.”

I hear papers rustling and know he’s making a list. I can’t help but grin.

“Title, title,” he hums to himself. All of Jonas’s lists have to have titles. “Lose Virginity Now.”

“LVN?”

“Better yet, Lo-Vi-N,” he says.

“Oh, good one. LOVIN,” I agree. “So, rules. What are they?”

“For starters, no one with a reputation for having something contagious. Or something noncontagious. Just no one with a reputation for having anything at all except for normal, uninfected plumbing down below.”

“Of course, that’s a given,” I say, leaning back on my pillows as I hear him scribble that down. “And while we’re at it—condoms. Have to use condoms.”

“Yes, yes,” Jonas mutters, and I can picture him nodding in agreement. “What about a ‘no jackasses’ rule?”

I muse over the idea. “I don’t think that’ll work. I’ve only got five weeks. If we throw out the jackasses at Ridgebrook, we’ll be left with, like… the drama club and a few people in marching band.”

“What’s wrong with that? I’ve got loads of friends in the marching band. And I’m in the drama club.”

I ignore him. “So, with those criteria, anyone in particular come to mind?”

“Off the top of my head?”

“Why not?”

“Because you aren’t supposed to pick sexual partners the same way you pick snacks from a vending machine!”

“Will you at least think about it tomorrow at school?”

“Whatever,” Jonas says. “Study for your history final.”

“I am, I am. Can we go get doughnuts before school, though? I need sugar for brainpower.”

“Sure,” Jonas says. “I’ll pick you up at seven.”

“Thanks, Jonas,” I say, and I mean it for a thousand different things, which I think he understands.

When we hang up, I stare at my history book for a few moments. I mean to study—really—but that damned Princess Ball questionnaire stares at me. Lurking, there beneath a bunch of papers on my desk. I grab a pink pen and begin to fill in the first page.

Mom told me once that growing up, she’d been determined to never change her name when she got married. When she met Dad, that changed—his last name is Crewe, like the main character in her favorite book,
A Little Princess
. She said it must have been fate, so she changed her name for his. I stare at the blank where her name goes—usually, I would just put a dash or skip the
Mother’s Name
part of school forms and stuff, because as awful as it is to dash Mom out of existence,
it’s way better than how people look at me when I go through the whole “She had breast cancer and died, so no, she doesn’t have a daytime phone or e-mail address” explanation. People get this sad look and talk to you in high-pitched voices, then about two minutes later go on to something else. The world keeps spinning, I guess. Even my world.

I wish it wouldn’t.

I look down at my hands, clutching the pink pen. Do they look like hers? I can’t quite remember. It’s like every year, she gets more watery in my head, her features a little less defined without the help of a photograph. I wonder what she would think of all this—I mean, she went to the Princess Ball, she wore a white dress just like I’ll have to. But as far as I know, she didn’t have to say vows aloud. Would she understand why I can’t?

Would she be disappointed in me?

I try to picture myself telling her about it, asking her advice. She’d talk some sense into Dad, I bet. I daydream about lying on my parents’ bed, sun streaming in the windows, while she sorts laundry and I ask her what she would do if she were me.

People expect you to miss the big things after someone you love dies. They expect you to think about graduating, falling in love, getting married without your mother there. And I do think about those things. But the things I really miss are smaller, fractions of my life intersected with hers, the moments I didn’t bother remembering because they seemed too unimportant—going to the grocery store, coming down
the stairs in the morning, watching television, folding laundry. Things that happened a thousand times that will never, ever happen again. It’s like a drug that I can’t have, yet am hopelessly addicted to; I want those moments all the time. Some days all I do is imagine them, an endless stream of daydreams.

But even in my daydreams, she can’t respond. Mom is stuck in time—I can never know what she’d say to a problem I’m having in my life now, especially not this one, because everything would be different if she hadn’t died. Daydream Mom just smiles at me, folds a T-shirt, reminds me of the Promises. She doesn’t age—she always looks thirty-two in my dreams, the way she looked just before she got sick. What will happen when I turn thirty-four and my mom is younger than I am? When I’m no longer her little girl?

I’ll have to grab onto something, someone, just like before, because I know it’ll feel like the world is collapsing all over again. I wonder if I’ll reach out for God again, only to be completely unable to grab hold.

Maybe. But probably not. I think I’m done reaching out for him.

It’s not that I didn’t
want
to find God after Mom died. It’s not even that I don’t believe in him—in fact I believe in him now even more than I did when I was little. When your world is all about your beautiful mom and funny dad and birthdays and pony rides and laughter, the God Sunday school teaches you about seems like another pretty story they just haven’t made a Disney movie of yet. But when your mom
dies slowly, painfully, while you pray and beg and give just like you’re told, your entire world shifts. God is more real than ever—because he’s hurt you. And you’re forever left wondering why, when you reached out, God didn’t
let you
grab on.

I wish he would. It’d be so much easier to blame him that way—so much easier to handle than the thick disappointment in God that I can never really shake. The Promises, however, let me grab on every time. I did everything God ever asked of me and Mom still died—so maybe if I do everything Mom asked… well,
some
good will come of it, surely. I won’t be losing my virginity for nothing.

I shake my head and turn back to the questionnaire, eager to push away the gnawing ache in my chest. I’ve gotten good at casting pain aside. I move on to the next question without writing in Mom’s name.

Well, Jonas, sort of, but I don’t know that I’d say he’s a man in my life, exactly. Still, he keeps the Life List, he’s my best friend. It doesn’t get much more “guiding” than that. I write his name in.

Um… quality time? What is quality time, anyway? Does it count as quality if we just sit together over dinner and try to avoid too much discussion?

I wonder what Dad would say about the LOVIN plan. Not that I’ll talk to him about it, of course, but sometimes I daydream about Dad the same way I daydream about Mom—only I think about the dad I would have if he
weren’t
torn apart by grief. I pretend he’s the kind of dad who goes to the school plays I’d be in if I hadn’t quit theater, who helps me make lame science projects, who glares at boys who want to take me to prom and teaches me how to drive on the weekends.

I wonder if he sometimes pretends I’m a different kind of daughter.

I scribble in
one hour
and push the paper aside.

The doughnuts don’t help me with my history final. By the time I make it out of the two-hour test (which is cruel and unusual punishment, if you ask me), my brain is fried. We have a half hour before final number two of the day; luckily I’ve never had a big problem with English. I skip reviewing the study packet and sit down beside Jonas in the lunchroom.

“Okay,” I say, anxious to get the French Revolution off my mind. “This is our chance. Who is LOVIN plan material?”

“This is still the worst idea I’ve ever heard,” Jonas mumbles, and pretends to read his history study guide.

“Come on,” I plead. “I don’t want to choose people without your opinion, Jonas. You know them as guys. You’ve got insight. You’ve got secret knowledge!”

“The only thing I’ve got is a serious headache from all this. Come on, can’t it wait till after finals?”

“Nope. I’ve only got five weeks, remember?”

Jonas sighs and sets down his packet, then helps me scan the lunchroom. I’m looking with anticipation; Jonas is looking nauseated.

“Maybe we should take this table by table,” I say when I realize that looking at the entire school at once is a little intimidating. Anna Clemens sits down beside Jonas and glances around to see what we’re staring at.

“What’s going on with you two?” she asks.

I quickly give Jonas a small shake of the head; I don’t want anyone else knowing about my LOVIN plan. I may be going through with this, but it doesn’t mean I’ve lost sight of how crazy it is. Jonas sighs and doesn’t answer Anna, who turns her questioning gaze to me.

“I was asking Jonas,” I begin, realizing just how helpful a girl like Anna could be, “if he thought any guy in school is particularly sexy.”

“You asked Jonas that?” Anna asks as Jonas’s face turns beet red. “And you were looking, Jonas?”

“Something like that,” Jonas says with a scowl.

“He was just helping me out,” I say.

Anna shrugs it off and scans the room. “I don’t know about sexy, really. Why?”

“I was just trying to figure out how many of them have actually
had
sex, you know?”

“Oh! Well, hell, Shelby, I can tell you that,” Anna says, face lighting up. If Anna doesn’t know about a hookup, it simply didn’t happen. And if that hookup involves the marching band she knows if it happened, the size of all body parts involved, a time frame, and underwear colors.

“Let’s see, the entire football table, pretty much, though I don’t know if I’d ever call one of them sexy. But then, I’m
not into jocks,” Anna says with a shrug. “The theater table—Jason and Mike play for the other team, but the rest are straight. I think they’ve all gotten to the last levels, but only Mark and Nick are on the high-score list. I’d also say most of the horn line has played the game, and the majority of the drum line has gone hot and heavy with a girl or two—usually from the woodwind section. People always figure it’s the color guard, but seriously, it’s the woodwinds you’ve got to look out for.”

“Good to know,” I say, almost sincerely as I analyze the maze of metaphors. Jonas seems to have zoned out, focusing intensely on loose threads at the bottom of his T-shirt.

“Anyway, it’s kind of random. Sometimes it’s the guys you’d never expect, truth be told,” Anna says, looking at Jonas and me with a shrug.

“Right…” I eye the drama table carefully. The king of the drama department is Ben Simmons. He’s the sort of guy who is incredibly popular despite not being a jock, but there’s nothing quite like playing Romeo to win the heart of every high school girl (and maybe a few young teachers). We were friends in middle school when we were both in drama club; I dropped out when I realized my lack of acting skills would always relegate me to celebrated roles like “Cowboy #6” or “Eager Fan.”