Sloppy Firsts (15 page)

The phone ban has been lifted. But I still can’t tell Hope about any of this. How can I possibly tell her that I helped one of the people she hates most in the world get away with one of the sins she hates most in the world? I can’t afford to lose her friendship over something as insanely stupid as this.

So all I can do is vent here.

Who is this for, anyway? Who are you? Who actually found this notebook and cares enough to read it? You must have little to do. Wait. Are youme twenty-five years from now? Too weird. Stop thinking, Jessica. Stop getting so ahead of yourself. Just stop.

the sixteenth

At 1:42A.M. I heard some cracking noises at my window. I was awake, so it didn’t take me long to react. I opened the window and leaned out to take a look.

"You’re awake!"

It was Scotty with a handful of pebbles.

"I’m always awake. What do you want?"

"I need to talk to you. Can you come out?"

I knew it must be major. Scotty and I hadn’t said more thanHey to each other since he hooked up with Kelsey. Anyway, I had been too distracted by the whole Marcus thing to care.

"Shhhhh …I’ll be right down."

I was already dressed for a middle-of-the-night run, so I met him in the front yard in less than a minute. I made a slashing motion across my throat to silence him before he spoke up and woke my parents.

"Do you do this a lot?" Scotty asked.

"What?"

"Sneak out."

"Why?"

"It was like you were expecting me."

"Oh. No." I explained how I go running at night.

"I never knew that about you," he said.

"How would you know if I never told you?"

We reached the kiddie park and I headed straight for the swings. The swings have always been my favorite. There’s a secret game that I have played on that playground’s swings for as long as I can remember: I swing higher and higher and try to hit the leaves on the oak tree with my feet. It’s impossible—the leaves are about twenty-five feet up. Even now, I still try in the dark. But I didn’t do that with Scotty there. I just sat and swayed.

"So what’s up?"

Scotty sighed. "I broke up with Kelsey."

I tried to look surprised.

"Are you upset?" I asked.

"Not really."

"Then why the nine one one?"

"She’s really p.o.’ed at you and I wanted you to know before school tomorrow."

"Why is she pissed at me? I’ve barely talked to you."

"I know," he said, drawing lines in the dirt with a stick. "I kind of missed talking to you and it caused a problem." He snubbed out the lines with his sneaker. "I thought she deserved to know the truth. That my friendship with you is more important than her."

There was a time when I would’ve thought that was just about the sweetest thing I’d ever heard in my life. But not anymore. Now, Scotty’s words only came off as cinematically sweet. Molly-Ringwald-movie sweet. And while I lovewatching those flicks,living one was all a bit too contrived for me.

"I sound like a total fag, but it’s true," he said.

Scotty was pulling out all the stops to get back in my good graces. How many sixteen-year-old guys would forsake sex for friendship? Now I know that the reality is far less monklike because Scotty is ultimately hoping that this will help him have sex withme . Still, it’s fairly impressive, even if the more accurate question is:How many sixteen-year-old guys would give up today’s booty for a between-the-sheets uncertainty?

Somehow, it just wasn’t enough.

"I feel bad about dissing you right before your sister’s wedding and all."

"Uh-huh."

"And I could still go with you."

"Uh-huh."

"If you still want me to."

That was funny. I never really wanted to go with him in the first place. Everyone else wanted me to. No way was I going to give them all the satisfaction for a second time.

"You know what, Scotty? It’s too late."

"Oh."

Of course, it wasn’t too late at all. My sister could’ve accommodated him, no problem. It was just too late forme .

"Sorry you came out here for no reason," I said.

"Hey," Scotty replied, "no big fucking deal."

the twenty-second

Today was the last day of school. Sophomore no more.

As usual, PHS held its annual awards assembly today. I think it’s supposed to give us incentive to show up. The obvious flaw in this logic is that the Hicks, Hoochies, Wiggaz, Dregs, and miscellaneous PHS bottom-dwellers who would be naturally inclined to skip aren’t going to be tricked into showing up by the promise of engraved plaques that will never be theirs. And those of us getting awards would show up anyway.

I usually rack up the plaques. Last year, for example, all the individual subject awards were divided evenly between me and Len Levy—four each. But this year I only got the sophomore English award and the French I award. It’s not fair for me to get the latter since I’m a year older than everyone else in the class. Pepe was robbed.

As much as I don’t give a crap about these things, I was shocked to be shut out of the rest of the awards. I was beat out by lesser brains. Plus, for the first time ever, Len Levy nudged me out of the top GPA award with 99.02. Apparently, my less-than-stellar performance on my finals (all taken during the Marcus brouhaha) dropped my GPA down to 97.98. That’s a two-point drop in less than a marking period. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but it is.

I’m slipping.

Hy wasn’t at our school long enough to earn any awards. But she came up to me in the auditorium and congratulated me as I gathered up mine. I thanked her, wondering if she still thought I was as smart as the girls at her private school.

Then she opened her mouth like she was about to say something else, but changed her mind. This was weird, because Hy usually says what’s on her mind.

"What?" I asked.

"Girl," she said. "Don’t take anything I do personally."

What a bizarre thing to say out of nowhere like that. I really wanted to say something snotty to put Hy in her place and vent some pent-up resentment. But I was so drained by the Marcus thing that I didn’t really give a damn.

"Ain’t no thing, Hy," I said, using her own words against her. "Ain’t no thing."

When I got home, I dumped my unimpressive awards into the corner with the rest of them. They’re such a given, my parents don’t even ask to see them anymore, let alone ooh and ahh over them.

Then I fell asleep for five minutes. Long enough to have a dream about an origami mouth trying to swallow me up.

the twenty-fifth

THE BIG DAY.

Bethany is no longer Miss Bethany Shannon Darling. She’s Mrs. Grant Doczylkowski, which is about as bad a new name as you can get.

My primary duty forthe big day was to fluff Bethany’s train and hold her cathedral-length veil so it didn’t drag all over the floor. My secondary duty was to tell her how beautiful she looked. Which, of course, she did. But it got annoying having to reassure her.

"How does my makeup look? Not too much, is it? I don’t want to scare Grant when I walk down the aisle."

"It looks beautiful."

"How does my dress look? It isn’t too tight, is it? I don’t want to look like a whale when I walk down the aisle."

"It looks beautiful."

"How does my hair look? It’s not too poufy, is it? I don’t want to scream Jersey when I walk down the aisle."

"Your bangs are a bit mallratty."

"WHAT?!"

"I’m kidding. I swear. It looks beautiful."

Ad nauseum.

The universe gets so ga-ga about weddings that I expected sentimentality to sneak up on me and make me a mushy mess. But it didn’t. Bethany’s and G-Money’s vows left me unmoved.

Here’s what I remember about the ceremony: I sat with my arms folded tightly across my chest, trying to keep warm in the overenthusiastically air-conditioned church. The setting sun through the stained-glass windows turned my yellow ("Maize!") dress into a muted tie-dye. My strapless bra was cutting off my circulation, and I couldn’t help but think it would have a long-term breast-stunting effect.

The real action was at the reception.

As the Maid of Dubious Honor, I automatically got paired up with the Best Man all day. We walked down the aisle together. We posed for pictures together. We made our entrance into the reception hall together.

The bad news:G-Money’s best man, Tad, is thirty years old and resembles a bloated manatee after a beer bender.

The better news:Tad introduced me to his nineteen-year-old brother, Cal. Cal is one tasty morsel in a clean-cut, Abercrombie-ish kind of way.

The best news:Cal is a computer genius who pissed off his parents by dropping out of MIT this year to be a whiz-kid consultant for an up-and-coming software company.

The supa-dupa stupendous news:When Cal shook my hand he said, "I told my bro I had to meet the girl who made that butt-ugly dress look so damn good."

Paul Parlipiano,who?

"Let’s make our getting-to-know-you banter more challenging," he said.

"Okay."

"We’ll only discuss subjects most commonly known by abbreviations."

Cal was odd. But I liked it. I asked for an example.

"TRL," he said. "MTV democracy at it’s best? Or pitiful battleground for boy bands?"

"WWF," I said. "Harmless white-trash fun? Or the low point in America’s cultural landscape?"

And so we went on to discuss: MP3, PBS, IPO, and YMCA.

"Everything a man can enjoy? Or where you hang out with all the bo—?"

Cal interrupted me as the guitar player strummed the opening riff to Kool and the Gang’s classic, "Celebration." "We’re gonna have a good time tonight," Cal spoke the lyrics, straight-faced and very, very serious.

"Let’s celebrate," I replied, imitating his uptight tone, trying not to smile.

"It’s all right," he said, grabbing my hand and pulling me onto the dance floor.

And at that moment, I really did feel like everything was going to be all right.

Cal didn’t bust the most impressive move, but he had two crucial things that most male dancers don’t have: a) rhythm and b) enthusiasm. So we danced our asses off. "I Will Survive." "Twist and Shout." "Everlasting Love." What I liked most about Cal was that he clearly had an off-the-chart IQ, but he didn’t E=MC2it in my face. He knew how to shut down his brain and have fun. I don’t know what I wanted more: to be with him or tobe him.

Not thirty seconds after we left the dance floor, my dad’s eighty-nine-year-old mother, Gladdie, was hobbling toward us at a pretty impressive clip for someone with two artificial hips. She used her Wedding Walker, specially decorated for the occasion with white ribbons and silk flowers. I didn’t have a chance to warn Cal that she’s a wack-job.

"Jessie, you lookbee-yoo-ti-full ," hollered Gladdie.

I wasn’t sure about bee-yoo-ti-full, but I looked better than usual, which was a start. Despite its hideous cut and color, I didn’t look so bad in my dress once the seamstress built in artificial boobage. And thanks to a professional makeup job (Bethany, the Nuptials Nazi, wanted to guarantee perfect pictures), my skin looked radiant and unblemished as it has never appeared post-puberty. I’d never admit this to my sister, but I even liked how the artificial bun pinned to my head made me look older and more sophisticated.

Then Gladdie turned her attention to Cal. She let loose a long wolf whistle through her teeth. "Whatta hunka man!" she brayed. "When you two gettin’ hitched?"

Cal nearly spit his drink in her face. My face was on fire.

"Gladdie, I’m only sixteen …"

"I was only seventeen when I married your grandfather, bless his soul."

"And we just met," I explained.

"Well, you gotta meet your husband sometime. It might as well be tonight," she roared.

The thing is, I was so swoony over Cal at this point that my heart was telling me that Gladdie might be right. We had a connection, Cal and me. One that would’ve never been made if I had brought Scotty like everyone had wanted me to.

"Whoo-wee! He’s one fine speci-man," hooted Gladdie. "He really knocks my socks off!" Then she hobbled away, but not before grabbing his butt and giving it a good squeeze.

About ten minutes later, when Cal and I had finally stopped laughing, he said, "And I thought I wasn’t going to get lucky tonight," which made us laugh even harder.

Cal and I continued to have corny, Macarena-variety fun throughout the reception. Enough fun that I did something sort of stupid, but it was for a good reason. Cal kept bringing me glasses of champagne, and I conveniently placed them on another table or poured them down the bathroom sink or into the floral centerpiece instead of drinking them. But he thought I drank them all. In fact, I only had two. They made me feel light and giddy, but I pretended to be waaaaaay drunker than I was so I could test out what it was like to kiss him. That way, if our lip-lock was of the daddy longlegs variety—à la Scotty in eighth grade—I could just pretend it had never happened when he called and called and called me all summer long.