Winter 1976
“BAND-AID SLOWED YOU IN HISTORY. I bet you’ll get a grape.”
The note had fallen to the bottom of my locker between my sneakers. It was written in green fountain pen ink on a torn-off piece of lined notebook paper and had been folded several times into a small, thick square. Every time I found one, which was at least once a day, was like discovering a pastel-colored Easter egg or a chocolate bunny wrapped in foil, hidden in the grass. Except these prizes were meant for me alone. The notes were from Min, written in our code. Getting a note from her and writing back felt like having a second, separate friend that no one else knew about. We had most of our classes together, ate lunch together, hung out in front of the school together waiting for her mom to pick her up (except for the afternoons I stayed late for basketball practice), and talked on the phone almost every night. Even so, when I found a note from Min in my locker, I was as thrilled as if it had been a boy who had written me.
“Band-Aid” was our code word for Nick, a boy in our seventh-grade class we both had started to like in the fall. Of all the guys, we mentioned him the most (Nick: cut: Band-Aid). “Slow” meant “watch” (watch: time: slow). A “grape” was a date (fig was too obvious). We had words for kissing, boys, having a crush, all the bases, individual boys and teachers we thought were cute, various body parts, even three different positions of intercourse. It was Min’s idea to include the positions, but we hardly ever used those words.
It was my idea to make up the code. The year before, a kid I never liked anyway had intercepted a note I was passing to Min during geography. It said, “Don’t look now but Mrs. Garibaldi’s cleavage is showing.” For the whole rest of the day, he and his friends kept following me and Min around, calling, “Cleavage!” I could have died. I kept wishing for a huge earthquake so the building would fall down and we wouldn’t have to go to school anymore. I tried pretending I didn’t hear them, which was what Jamie and Claudia did sometimes when I wanted them to play with me. It wasn’t helping to get rid of those boys. Min got so sick of them that she turned around in the hall and shouted, “Shut up, you morons!” They found that really hysterical.
After that, there was no way I was going to get caught saying or writing anything the other kids could tease me for. Especially since Min and I had started to have a lot to say about the guys at school. Min didn’t seem to care who knew what we were talking about. But she got into it, thinking up translations that were easy to remember. We stopped passing notes during classes.
At my locker, I unzipped my plastic pencil case. I slipped Min’s note next to several others beside my collection of colored pens. Then I rummaged in my backpack for my small notepad, ripped out a page, and took out my purple, light green, and pink pens. Alternating colors for each letter, I wrote, “And finally eat dessert? I doubt it. Only in my oasis.” “Dessert” meant a kiss (kiss: chocolate: dessert). “Oasis” stood for fantasy (fantasy: mirage: oasis). At the bottom in orange ink I drew a big smiley face with one raised eyebrow, our version of a lewd expression. Then I folded up the note into a paper airplane, walked down the hall, and squeezed it between the slats of Min’s locker.
It was lunch period. Even with staggered hours, the cafeteria was crowded with yelling kids. The boys usually sat in large groups eating food from each other’s tray, making fun of each other, and looking around to see if anyone was watching. The girls sat two or four together, whispering about makeup and movie stars and pretending not to notice the boys. In the food line, I pushed my tray along the metal bars and filled it with chicken potpie, succotash, milk, and an ice cream sandwich, my favorite dessert. Then I headed toward a table by one of the windows where Min was already eating. She was reading, her book open on the table beside her tray. In the middle of the din in that room she looked totally peaceful, like she was at home by herself and nobody was sitting next to her jostling her elbow. I envied the way she shut out the world, content with the one inside her head or on the page she was reading. My brother Jamie said I was a follower. He said I wanted too much from other people, and I depended on them more than I should. I knew I hoped for a lot, but I didn’t see how that made me too trusting. I thought I was the opposite.
Min had saved the seat across from her with her sweater. “Hi,” I said, putting down my tray. I handed the sweater back and slid into the empty chair. Next to us, some eighth-grade girls complained about a math test they’d just gotten back. Min grinned at me and closed her book.
I moved my fork around in the succotash, dividing the mushy lima beans from the sweet corn. Min pushed her lunch tray away from her. She gathered her long black hair in both hands behind her head like a ponytail and then let it fall. She folded her forearms against the edge of the table. Today she was wearing pearl earrings. I liked the white glow of them against her skin. The summer before, I had asked my mother if I could get my ears pierced. She had told me that I would be deforming myself, that only gypsies and Africans pierced their bodies. She said those holes would be there forever, even if I decided I didn’t want them anymore. I had seen pictures in Life magazine of African women whose ear lobes hung to their shoulders with holes in them you could put your hand through. Did my mother think that was what I meant? I tried again. I told her five girls in my class had had their ears pierced in the last year, and Min had had hers pierced when she was seven. My mother said Min was spoiled. Her parents gave her everything she wanted because she probably would have starved to death in China or whatever country she came from if they hadn’t adopted her. I started to tell my mother that Min wasn’t spoiled, but as soon as I opened my mouth she yelled at me for not listening to her the first time: I could not have pierced ears. I turned away, my throat aching and my eyes watering, and stomped down the hall to my room. I didn’t care anymore about piercing my ears. My mother was mean and unfair. And she didn’t know anything about Min.
I broke the crust of the potpie with my fork and let the steam escape. “Do you know about Diana’s party?” Min asked. I stared at her. She looked gleeful, almost triumphant. I was the one always listening in on conversations, trying to find out about everything that happened at the school. Min hardly ever heard about anything that I didn’t already know. I hadn’t thought she cared.
“What party?” I asked. In the clamor of the cafeteria I had to raise my voice to be heard.
“Diana’s parents are going away for Friday night and leaving her and her older sister alone in the house. So she’s having a party, and the whole class is invited.” I’d been to some birthday parties, but neither of us had ever been asked to the smaller make-out parties that I heard about sometimes in the girls’ bathroom. Mostly they played “Spin the Bottle” and “Two Minutes in the Closet.” If the whole class was invited, then it would be more of a dance, but with no grown-ups around. I hoped there would still be “Spin the Bottle.” Min leaned forward against her crossed forearms like she was trying to hold in her excitement. “I bet Band-Aid will be there.” She lowered her voice. “He likes you, Laura, I can tell.”
Privately, I thought so too. I had felt Nick’s gaze on me earlier that morning in history class, and at other times too. We had even begun to talk to each other, when Min wasn’t around, in the afternoons after basketball practice. He was on the boys’ JV team. So while I was running around one half of the gym learning to dribble and pass and shoot with the girls, Nick was doing the same thing at the other end with the boys. I’d heard he was their best player. Sometimes, afterwards, I’d see him hanging out with a bunch of his friends, usually skateboarding around the almost-empty parking lot beside the gym. We’d started walking home together for the four blocks before I turned off toward my house. After a while I figured out that he was waiting for me. My fantasies about him were starting to come true.
I hadn’t told Min any of this. For one thing, I was afraid of jinxing it. Mostly I didn’t really believe anything would ever happen between Nick and me. He was too cool, too popular, too good-looking to want me to be his girlfriend. Every girl in the class had a crush on him. And I really liked him. But I didn’t know what to say to him. When I was around him I forgot all the advice my mother was always giving Claudia and me about how to get a guy, except “Play hard to get.” I thought he could see how much I wished he would ask me out, and that was sure to scare him away. The problem was, I wanted him to more than like me. I wanted him to love me, heart and soul.
“Do you think so?” I asked, taking a bite of chicken potpie. It was still too hot. I opened my mouth, breathing the hot air out while waving cool air inside. Min handed me my carton of milk, and I drank half of it. “I don’t know,” I said after swallowing. “He seems to like Caroline a lot. He’s always talking to her before homeroom.”
Min thought about this. “That’s true. But wouldn’t it be great if he did like you? God, those blue eyes . . .”
We were silent, remembering his blue eyes. At night in my bed I imagined Nick standing with his arms around me, his blond hair slightly tousled, his beautiful blue eyes brimming with love as he brought his face close to mine to kiss me for the first time. His lips would be gentle and soft. He would tell me how much he cherished me, like the David Cassidy song I listened to on my record player all the time. He would say he wanted to be with me forever. Lying alone in the dark, I could feel the safety of his arms embracing me. I could feel my own heart filling with love and the happiness of being loved. Sometimes I wanted that so much I couldn’t keep from crying. The ache inside made me even lonelier, my tears trickling down onto the sheets as I lay curled on my side clutching my pillow.
“Get one for me!” a girl’s voice nearby called out, startling me. I swallowed, my throat raw. Min had closed her eyes. I couldn’t look at her dreamy face. I knew I should tell her Nick and I walked partway home together, but I was scared she would feel left out. And that would mess up everything. I wanted to keep the little piece of him I already had.
I studied the other kids eating their lunches. I went from one to the next, trying to imagine their surprise seeing me in the school halls holding hands with Nick. The pleasure of it made me smile.
Then I saw Nick’s face. He was looking right at me. In the middle of the cafeteria, surrounded by all the other girls, he was watching me with his electric blue gaze. When our eyes met he smiled, a big, open grin. I couldn’t believe how cute he was. I wished I was sitting with him, his arm around me, his lips against my hair like a couple in a movie. I immediately looked away. My heart was going a million miles a minute.
I glanced at Min. She was still in her fantasy world, her eyes shut, her mouth partly open. I could still feel how the side of his body would press against mine because we were sitting so close. I shivered, getting goosebumps. Under the table I ground the sole of my shoe into the top of Min’s sneaker. She opened her eyes, surprised.
“I’m going to ask my mom if I can spend Friday night at your house. I’m not going to even mention the party.”
“Okay.” Min drank some of my milk from the carton.
“Let’s go,” I said. I started to stack our plates, sliding my tray under hers. I wanted to look at Nick again. “I can barely think in here.”
“You haven’t eaten your ice cream sandwich.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“What’s wrong?” she asked, reaching for it.
“Come on,” I answered, pushing back my chair. I knew Nick was still watching me. I had to get out of that room as fast as possible. I carried our trays over to the kitchen and shoved them through the window opening. I headed toward the exit, the whole time trying not to turn my head in his direction. Min was waiting for me in the hall.
She had tied her sweater around her waist and stuck her book inside it, like a sword. She tore the paper wrapping from the top half of the ice cream sandwich.
I stared at her, panicking. “You’re not allowed to take food out of the cafeteria.”
“Band-Aid slowed you leaving,” she said casually, as if reporting something as uninteresting as the weather. Then she closed her teeth over the chocolate wafer and the creamy, cold vanilla filling. My mouth watered. My stomach was still too jittery to eat.
Besides the code, there was another secret side to my friendship with Min. It had started about six weeks before, when Min was staying overnight at my house. We were talking, as usual, about boys. We lay on our sides, watching each other across the space between the beds. Her face was silvery from the street light outside the window. We had just discovered we both had a crush on our art teacher, Mr. Ketchum. We called him Ketchup. All the kids did. Min immediately came up with the code name “after-dinner mint” (ketchup: condiment: after-dinner mint).
“You know what it is?” Min asked. “That makes him sexy?”
I had no idea. Mr. Ketchum was almost bald, and he was old, probably in his forties. There was nothing at all cute about him.
Min said, “It’s his bulge.”
“Ewww!” I yelped, then remembered my parents downstairs and clapped my hand over my mouth. The last time Min and I had made too much noise, because we couldn’t stop laughing, my father had stormed up the stairs and into the room to remind us that they had guests over and would we pipe down and go to sleep. After he left, Min, furious, said in a not-very-quiet voice that we could hear them laughing downstairs just as easily and wasn’t she a guest too?
“His bulge,” Min repeated, drawing it out to tease me, so that the word itself grew and strained at the seams. Now I was giggling (quietly), trying to picture Mr. Ketchum with his round, shiny head, his short legs, and the bulge in his jeans. Min was right. It was definitely there, like it was inviting us to touch, even push against it. I didn’t think about what was actually inside his pants. I didn’t want to ruin the shivery feeling I was having. I liked the hint of what lay underneath his denim jeans without having to worry about the gross and nauseating object itself.
“It’s very . . . prominent, isn’t it?” I asked, and we both burst into giggles.
Min pulled her pillow from beneath her head and hugged it. “Sometimes,” Min confided, “I watch to see if it moves.”
“What, like a mouse trying to get out?” This set us off again. I covered my mouth with both hands, trying to keep quiet.
“No, no,” Min answered, catching her breath. “Like a hopping frog.”
“Ribbit,” I croaked in my deepest voice, which sounded more like a hiccup and sent us off into another round of giggles.
Then Min sat up and pushed down her covers. Her sudden movement spooked me. She got up from her bed. I thought she had to go to the bathroom, but she stood above me in her long nightgown. “Move over,” she whispered. I did, and she got into my bed with me, pulling the blankets up to our necks. I was still giddy, no longer laughing but feeling tingly. Now her face was in shadow. Our knees bumped together, and I could feel Min’s foot touching mine. It was nice having her right next to me, not halfway across the room.
She asked, “What would you do if Ketchup wanted you to touch him there?” Her voice was low and hypnotizing. I felt her hand touching the thick cotton of my nightgown over my pubic area, where I had started to sprout a lot of curly hair. Min’s favorite game that we played at sleepovers was asking these questions, but she had never cuddled up like this before. We just asked and answered from our separate beds. What would you do if Johnnie put his arm around you? Would you let Nick French you? Would you let Matthew feel you up? We had to tell the truth. Mostly I said I wouldn’t, and Min said she would. I wondered if she would in real life. I wanted to have a boyfriend and I wanted to kiss him, but that was different from letting a boy do whatever he wanted without knowing how much he liked me. Min’s hand moved gently, stroking downward over my slight mound of flesh, like she was petting the animal she had discovered there. I liked the simple, soothing motion. I wanted her to do it over my whole body.
“I’d touch him. But only through his clothes, not naked.”
She was silent, still stroking. Maybe she’d forgotten she was doing it.
“What about you?” I asked.
“Naked,” she said, her voice drowsy. I realized my eyes were closed. She said, “I’d want to feel his skin. I’d want to find out how that froggy jumps.”
I smiled at the image in my head, which at the moment didn’t seem that gross, just silly. If I ever got to go out with a boy, some day he might ask me to touch the front of his pants. I tried to imagine Nick with Mr. Ketchum’s bulge. I would do it if we were going steady.
I reached down and brought Min’s hand away from my nightgown. I was starting to feel again that I wanted more than I could ever hope for. To have a boyfriend. To be held all night. To be adored. Someday, to get married and have a family of my own.
I asked, “Would you put your arm around me?” I kept my eyes shut tight.
“’Course, Laura-lee.” I felt her breath on my face. Taking her hand from mine, she put it around my back, inching closer. I wondered if she thought we were still playing the game. But her body was warm, and I felt better. We fell asleep that way.
The next time Min spent the night, a week later, she climbed into my bed right away. This time I put my arm around her too. We smiled at each other, and I saw that she was already so comfortable, she was half-asleep.
My mother had taken us to a movie that afternoon. At the end, the man and the woman finally confessed they loved each other and made out for a long time. We could see how they opened their mouths wide, practically biting each other. Once the man’s tongue darted out like an eel between the lips of the woman. I could barely watch with my mother sitting next to me, but I couldn’t look away either. This was how grownups kissed. I was afraid I wouldn’t know how. I wanted to be good at it when a boy French kissed me.
Min must have felt the same way, because after we’d gone over that make-out scene for a while, she said, “We could try it.”
“What?” I asked, my heart beating fast and hard, like I’d been out on the basketball court.
“Kissing,” she said. When I didn’t say anything, she went on, “So we’ll know what to do.”
I could feel every place where Min and I were touching like there were bugs crawling there. But if I moved away, Min would know I was scared and she wouldn’t offer again. I kept myself very still, not even breathing. “Okay,” I said.
A few days before that, Nick had smiled at me for the first time ever when I came out the back door of the school still sweaty from practice. He had such a cute smile, I grinned back not even thinking about it. I was in seventh heaven. I couldn’t wait to get home and call Min. He was with a couple of his teammates on the lawn, sprawled out on his side. It was a rare warm January day, and we were all still in our t-shirts and gym shorts. He took a puff from a cigarette. I thought only the bad kids who hated school smoked. At first it bothered me. Then I decided it was kind of cool. As I walked across the parking lot toward the road, he flicked his cigarette butt on the sidewalk, stood up, gave a little wave to his teammates, and bounded up to me. His friends made teasing noises, calling his name with a little lilt. It turned out he lived nearby too, so we walked together for a few blocks. We didn’t say much. I was too nervous, and he seemed moody. At home afterwards I kept remembering his bangs hanging over his eyes and the awkward way he’d leaned on his elbow on the lawn. He wasn’t really any cooler or more mature than the other boys. My heart kept filling up thinking of him. Somehow I never did get around to telling Min. Nothing had really happened. I didn’t know if he liked me or anything.
Next to Min in the dark, I felt disoriented. I had kept that walk with Nick a secret from her, something I never thought I’d do. Now I felt strange for liking the idea of kissing her when it was Nick I fantasized about. I closed my eyes. I wanted to know what it was like. It might be years before I’d ever get to kiss a boy. I opened my eyes. “What do we do?” I asked her.
“Just kiss me, dummy.” Her voice was mean and affectionate at the same time.
I thought of something. “Maybe it’s different with girls than with boys. Maybe this won’t really help—”
I saw her shadowed face move closer on the pillow and felt her mouth land on mine, a little off-center. Her lips were soft and open slightly. Mine were tense and partly open because she’d caught me in mid-sentence. We pressed our mouths together while I held my breath, hoping she wasn’t going to want to try French kissing. Then I remembered the movie. I had to learn to kiss like that. Nick was probably an expert.
I pulled away, our lips peeling apart.
“Maybe we should move our mouths around more,” I said. Min nodded, silent. I wanted to crack a joke. Min and I were never this quiet together.
On our second try we were like two fish opening and closing our mouths against each other, but at the wrong time. Min started laughing, her lips still attached to mine. I imagined Nick laughing at how I kissed.
I pulled away again. “It’s not funny,” I said. “Do you want to kiss like that when it’s the real thing?”
Min wiggled her other arm, the one on the side she was lying on, underneath my neck, clasping both hands behind me. She snuggled closer to me, so that our chests and more of our legs touched. I could smell her breath, minty from toothpaste. I could feel the hard buds of her nipples on her flat chest even through both our nightgowns. My own breasts had grown in the last year to the size of tomatoes. Now they were pressed against Min, molded to her shape. I wondered what it would be like to be pressed against her without our nightgowns on. I rolled quickly onto my back. She kept her arms around me.
“Okay, let’s be serious,” Min said in a mock-stern voice.
I realized she was answering my question, that only a few seconds had passed since I’d asked it. She pushed up on one elbow and leaned down and kissed me again, closing her eyes and parting her lips. Her hair fell against my cheek. It was weird how naturally she did it this time, pressing her mouth softly against mine, peeling her lips away, then bringing them down again in a slightly different place. She was kissing me like she meant it, the way Nick did in my fantasies. I almost wanted to stop. We were girls. We were just friends, not boyfriend and girlfriend. Then she sighed, a blissful sound. I opened my eyes.
She stopped kissing me, but she stayed above me, her hair falling around her face. Her eyes were too dark for me to see clearly. I wonder what she could see in mine.
“Okay?” she asked in a normal voice. Then I figured it out. She’d been pretending. Her confidence, her sighing were part of our practicing. When I nodded, she brought her head down again. I tried to relax and keep my jaw slack. I felt the tip of her tongue against my lips. I felt my mouth open and her wet tongue inside and my tongue moving to meet it. Her tongue was pleasantly warm. Lazily, we slipped and slid over and around each other. It was like playing, teasing each other, laughing. It was its own kind of code. I was happy that Min and I were trying it. Now we shared another secret nobody else knew about.
After a while she sighed again. This time I ignored it. I was concentrating on the nice feeling of our tongues together, wondering if we were doing it right. In the movie they had been more frantic. Then Min’s hand, the one that wasn’t under me, moved along my shoulder and onto the front of my nightgown, over my breast. I froze. We were only going to kiss, nothing else. I was afraid she wasn’t pretending anymore. Maybe she did mean it. Maybe she was a sex maniac.
“What are you doing?” I asked, pushing her away, hard.
She lay next to me, her breathing rough. She didn’t speak. I thought she might be about to cry. Immediately I felt terrible for hurting her feelings. I knew she wasn’t a pervert. She was just curious, like me.
I wanted back the comfort of her arms around me. I turned on my side and put my arm across her stomach. She was pretending to be asleep, her eyes closed and her breathing deep. But after a while she turned on her side too and put her arm around me. I snuggled in closer.
Since then we’d practiced kissing almost every week, when one of us spent the night at the other’s house. We didn’t mention her touching my breast, and she never did it again. In the same bed, we’d talk, then kiss, then fall asleep, our arms around each other. I thought maybe now I might be ready to move on to boys.
The afternoon of the day Min told me about Diana’s party, I stayed late as usual for basketball. It was after five and getting dark by the time our coach let us out of there. I called goodbye as my teammates climbed into their mothers’ cars. I was hoping to see Nick on my walk home, but it was still lightly raining and nobody was hanging out around the school. It had been raining a lot for February. I hadn’t run into him there for over a week. I breathed in the wet, tarry smell of the road, feeling sorry for myself.
When I had walked a couple of blocks, I heard a rolling noise and looked back, hoping it was Nick on his skateboard. It was. I was thrilled. He rumbled past me, pushing off the road with his sneaker a few times, then wheeled around and stopped right in front of me, blocking my way.
“Fancy meeting you here,” he said. Even though the dusk made everything gray, his eyes were a greenish-blue.
“Yeah,” I said, feeling shy standing so close to him. I watched as he flipped the skateboard up on its end with his high-top and caught its edge. He was good.
We started walking. “How was practice?” he asked.
I made a face. “Not that great. Debra kept running into me, like tackling me, and knocking the ball out of my hands, but when I hit her in the face with my elbow by accident, I was taken out of the game.”
“That sucks. Well, if it’ll make you feel any better, last week I fell right on my butt jumping for a rebound. Hurt like hell.”
“You?”
He nodded, smiling. I liked him for being able to admit he’d messed up, knowing I would now have a picture in my head of him landing clumsily under the hoop.
“Do you like basketball?” I asked.
“Sure. I’m good at it. Why?”
“I don’t know if I’m very good. But I want to be.” I tried to think out what I was trying to say. “When I have the ball, it’s like I’ve got the world in my hands. The worst thing is for somebody to take it away from me. But the best thing is when I know what to do and I can do it. No, it’s when I can do it without even thinking about it. That’s heaven. I’ve never told anybody that,” I added, afraid I had been talking too much.
“You’re intense,” he said. His head was tilted away from me. I didn’t know if intense was good or bad.
After a while, he asked, “Are you going to Diana’s party?”
I stared down at the pavement in front of my feet, my heart pounding. I knew he was invited to a lot of “Spin the Bottle” parties. If we played “Spin the Bottle,” would I let Nick French kiss me in front of everybody else? I wanted to be able to kiss him without even thinking about it. I could feel my face heating up.
“I don’t know.” It was true, but I sounded like a dope. My answer was the kind of thing my mom would approve of, what she called “being coy.”
He said, “Well, I am, and I hope you’ll go too.”
“This is my street,” I said, starting off to the left away from him. “Bye.”
He flashed me a little wave, but he looked baffled. The whole rest of the way home I cursed myself out for not telling him I would be there.
When Min and I walked into my house after school the next afternoon, my mother was in the kitchen on the phone. As we kicked off our shoes in the front hall, I could hear her voice rising and falling, though not the words. I thought it was a positive sign. Talking on the phone with her friends usually put her in a good mood. Min and I left our bookbags on the floor and quietly went into the kitchen. I was starving for something sweet.
My mother was sitting on a stool at the breakfast bar, hunched over, one hand rubbing her forehead. She’d had her monthly perm that day. Her light-brown hair was tightly curled around her head and touched up with blonde highlights. She didn’t seem to hear us until after we were in the room. Then, startled, she turned around and frowned at us. With one hand still holding the receiver to her ear, she picked up the phone, stood up, and took it into the laundry room, kicking the door closed behind her.
“What was that about?” Min asked. From the way she said it, I could tell she was insulted.
I shrugged. Jamie said our mother was crazy. He said he’d seen pills in her bathroom cabinet to prove it. The two of them could never get along anymore. He had just turned eighteen, and he was always reminding her he was legally an adult. He liked to stay out late with his greasy-haired friends. He wouldn’t even call if he wasn’t home by his old curfew. I didn’t see what was so thrilling about driving around all night, which was what he told me they did when I asked. Personally, I wasn’t sure why our mother was the way she was. But I felt sort of glad when I heard them yelling at each other. At least then I knew it wasn’t just me she hated.
I opened the refrigerator door and handed Min a Dutch Apple yogurt and got a Cherry one for myself. She pulled two spoons out of the silverware drawer. We sat at the bar, twisting our feet between the rungs of the stools, and pried the cardboard disk from inside the lid to add to our collections. I had every kind except Prune Whip, which made me sick just thinking of it. Now I was working on collecting extras. Kids traded them at school. I told Min about my father’s stack of beer coasters that he’d collected before he met my mother, when he was in college and then in the army and traveling a lot. He had a story to go along with every coaster. Claudia and Jamie and I used to shuffle through them, smelling their faintly malty odor and picking the ones with the maidens and lions to make up our own stories about.
There was a noise from behind the laundry room door like something heavy being dropped on the cement floor. “Why should I believe you anymore?” I heard my mother yell. I hated the hysterical whine of her voice, like a record being played too fast. Min and I stopped eating our yogurt and listened, not moving, our eyes on each other. Who was she talking to? A friend of hers? My brother? The whole house was silent, waiting for something to happen. “Fine, then, if that’s what you want to do.” I heard the receiver slam down in its cradle. Then it sounded like she was pounding on the top of the dryer with her fists. The sound made me flinch.
Min said, “Hey,” and reached out to touch my arm. I couldn’t look at her. If I did, I’d start to cry.
“Sorry,” I said. I stirred my yogurt. I had been hungry a few minutes ago.
“Don’t apologize,” Min answered, and from the way she said it I knew she meant not just for my jumpiness but for my mother too. My face felt like it was slowly burning up. I wished I could burn up, all of me, into nothing but ashes. It didn’t matter that Min had seen my mother like this before. Right then I despised my mother. I hated Min a little bit too. Her mother would never embarrass her. The laundry room door opened.
“That was your father,” my mother said, walking back across the kitchen with the phone, kicking the slack cord in front of her. “He won’t be home for dinner tonight.” The phone as she dropped it on the counter top gave out a muted ring.
“Again?” I asked. It seemed like at least once a week now my father had to stay late at the college where he taught. Sometimes it was because he needed the quiet to grade papers, sometimes it was to hear a speaker on campus or go to a faculty meeting. I asked, “Why couldn’t he grade papers here? We can all be quiet. I have homework.”
My mother stared at me for a second, then opened the breadbox and ate the last two donuts. Min and I looked at each other, and she puffed out her cheeks. I didn’t think my mom’s weight was funny. Still chewing, my mother went to the refrigerator and pulled out broccoli and a mound of hamburger wrapped in plastic. She got a bag of French fries out of the freezer. “Are you staying for dinner, Min?” she asked, not very nicely. “I guess there’s enough food now with only four of us. It shouldn’t go to waste.”
“Uh, no, I can’t,” Min answered. “My parents expect me home tonight.” She scraped around the bottom of her yogurt container, gathering the last spoonful. At her house her father and mother never fought, at least not in front of me. Min said she heard them sometimes, late at night when she was in bed. She said her mother could get really quiet and not even answer when Min or her father said something to her. I thought Catherine was nice. I had never heard of a mom who wanted her daughter’s friends to call her by her first name. She would sit down and listen when I went to her with my problems at school or when my own mother was being really mean. I liked Min’s father mostly because he made me laugh. And he loved Min so much that it hurt to watch them sometimes, kidding around. He was always giving her a hug or resting his hand on her shoulder. I wished he’d do that with me. When my father gave me pocket money, he might touch the top of my head, fluffing my hair like I was a little kid.
“Mom, can I make the hamburger patties?” I asked. I liked shaping them into a ball, then smushing them flat. She was pulling the cutting board down from its rack and clearing counter space near the stove.
“Don’t eat the raw meat, you’ll get sick. Here’s salt and pepper. Shall we put in an onion?”
“Yeah.”
She took one out of the wire basket hanging near the window. Her anger seemed to be leaking away. I got up and walked past Min, around the breakfast bar to the sink. Over the splash of running water, I said, “Mom, I’ve got something to ask you.”
Behind me, my mother asked, “What’s that?” Slowly, I lathered my hands with soap, washing each finger carefully.
“Well, Diana Sykes, in my class?” It wasn’t what I had expected to say. There was no response, just the rhythmic thunk of her knife against the cutting board. “Well, she’s having a party this weekend, and I was wondering if I could go.” I had lost my nerve. Why couldn’t I learn to lie to my mother?
“Who else will be there?”
“The whole class is invited.”
“Will there be boys?”
I turned around, my hands dripping wet, and reached for the dish-towel on the counter. “Of course, Mom, it’s the whole class.” Because my mother had her back to Min and me, I made a face, crossing my eyes. Min smiled.
My mother put down her knife and turned to me, one hand on her hip. “Is this one of those kissing parties? Everyone groping each other in the dark?”
I stared at her. I couldn’t think of anything to say. How did she know? It was like she had read my thoughts. Then I stammered, “I don’t know. I’ve never been to one before.”
“No.”
“What?”
“I said no. You can’t go.” She turned back to hacking up the onion.
“But Mom—” I began.
“It’s just a party,” Min interrupted, sounding really earnest, like she went to these parties all the time. “Just a bunch of kids getting together, drinking soda and eating chips and talking to each other. Maybe there’ll be some dancing.”
My mother turned on her. “Listen, young lady, I know what happens at these parties. Don’t you dare tell me any different. You two want to run off and fool around with those boys the first chance you get. And those boys will take advantage of you. I’ve told Laura that a million times. My answer is no.”
All my mother’s anger had rushed up to her face, turning it beet red. Every time she got mad I was afraid she was going to have a heart attack or something. I unwrapped the plastic and dug my hands into the hamburger meat. Then I had the awful thought that she had read our notes to each other and somehow decoded them. How else could she have found out what would be happening at the party? How else could she know how much I wanted to be kissed? I would die if my mother found out everything that Min and I talked about. I frantically tried to remember where I had hidden those tightly folded pieces of paper in my room. From now on, I would have to throw them away as soon as I’d read them.
Behind me, Min said, “You never let Laura do anything.” I froze, my hands greasy from holding blobs of hamburger. She didn’t know what a mistake she was making, talking back. If I kept very still, maybe it would be like I wasn’t there at all.
“Min, you’ve overstayed your welcome.” My mother’s voice was a high whine again. I wished Min would go home too. Her being there hadn’t helped anything.
“It’s normal to go to parties.” Min had raised her voice. “We know those boys from school. You’re just too old to remember.”
“Min,” my mother said in a suddenly low, threatening tone. She turned around, her knife still in her hand.
“Okay, I’m leaving.” Hearing Min scrape back her chair, I still couldn’t turn around. The front door closed. I wondered if Min would ever come to my house again. I’d never heard her sound scared before.
My mother turned to me. “Are you going to make the hamburgers, Laura?”
I convinced my mother to let me stay overnight at Min’s house on Friday night, telling her the party was Saturday, so we got to go anyway. We spent over an hour getting ready. I couldn’t decide whether to wear my cream-colored shirt with the V-neck and long sleeves or my purple t-shirt with the cartoon of an old-fashioned telephone on the front. I was afraid I would spill on the lighter one, but I always wore the purple one.
“No, wear the first one,” Min said as I stood on the edge of the bathtub and leaned to the left to see myself in the mirror over the sink. I pulled the telephone shirt over my head for the second time, wishing I had asked Claudia before she went out if I could borrow one of hers. “It’s older, more sophisticated,” Min added. “And it looks nice with those pants.”
I looked down at my white bra, my stocky torso, the flare at the hem of my green cotton pants, and my pale feet. My hair fell forward over my face, and I flicked it behind my ears, impatient. I didn’t like my body. For so long I had waited to be grown up, old enough to make decisions for myself. Now that I was almost a teenager, practically an adult, even my own body wasn’t mine anymore. I’d started getting my period two months before, but after the excitement of the first time, all it boiled down to was stained underwear and having to wear a bulky pad between my legs for five whole days. Min handed me the cream shirt. I put it on and looked down again, then in the mirror. I felt fat and lumpy. I would never get used to having breasts.
“Yeah, you look great,” Min said, and she meant it. If she thought so, maybe Nick would too. She pulled me down from the bathtub by my arm. “Come on, we’re already late.”
“Wait, I want to put on eye makeup.”
“Oh God.” She made a face. “Okay.” She sat down sideways on the closed toilet lid, pulled her knees up to her chest, and leaned back against the wall. “Tell me when you’re ready to go,” she said, closing her eyes.
Min had decided what she was going to wear days before. She had on blue jeans, a black sleeveless shirt, and her blue Adidas. She looked like she was part of a rock and roll band. I tried to remember if there were any bands with women in them. I didn’t think so. Her black hair fell straight down either side of her face to her waist. Her lips gleamed with lipgloss, but otherwise she wasn’t wearing any makeup. I’d asked if she wanted to use some of mine, but she’d said no, she didn’t see why she should get all gooped up just to see the same old bozos she’d been in classes with all week. I thought that was the point. It was a chance for us to be somebody different, even if it was only for a night.
I had already curled my hair earlier. I leaned close to the mirror and brushed dark brown mascara onto my upper lashes, then the lower ones. I got some on my cheek and had to wipe it off with cold cream. I tried to pick the little clumps off, getting brown streaks on my fingers. With a little spongy wand I put on green eyeshadow. I stood back and examined my reflection. Would Nick like it? I glanced over at Min, wanting to ask her. She was watching me and smiling like she approved. I smiled too and looked away. I was blushing.
It had started to rain while we were eating dinner. Min’s mom offered to drop us off. In the car I was too jittery to say much. Catherine asked Min to call her by ten so she could pick us up. I sat in the back seat, chewing on the ends of my hair and wishing I had brought a sweater. Outside the rain-spotted windows, redwoods loomed on either side of the narrow road. Diana lived a ways out of town, in the foothills of Mount Tam. I could smell wood smoke from some of the houses we passed. Out there, a lot of them were homemade, not much more than cabins hammered together, with rooms added on and VW Bugs in the dirt driveways.
We knew we were close when we heard the rock and roll. Catherine drove slowly up the winding driveway covered with pine needles. The house looked small from the outside, hidden beneath the trees, its brown-stained wood making it seem part of the hillside. “What’s that music?” I asked Min. It made me want to dance.
“‘Brown Sugar.’ The Rolling Stones.”
“Oh.” The records I listened to were more folk music: Joni Mitchell, Harry Chapin, Bread. I liked the love songs best. Catherine pulled over into a ditch and turned to Min in the passenger seat, letting the engine idle.
“Have fun,” she said as she and Min hugged. I was already turning the door handle when she said, “Here, Laura, give me a hug too.” I slid back over and we grabbed each other, the front seat between us. Not only was she letting Min go to this party, she was driving her to it. I wished she was my mother. She squeezed my shoulder. “You look very nice,” she said. Min and I scrambled out of the car.
We ran to the front door, trying not to get rained on. “Are you nervous?” I asked Min before we went in.
“Maybe.”
We grinned at each other.
“You go first,” she said.
In the living room, all the furniture had been pushed against the walls. The only light was from the hall. Nobody was in the middle of the large, darkened room dancing to the cranked-up music. About twenty kids sat around the edges, on the couches and chairs, drinking soda and not talking much. Some of them were smoking cigarettes. I looked carefully, but none of them was Nick. Some I didn’t know at all from the other section of the class. I realized that all the girls were sitting on one side and all the boys were sitting on the other. Suddenly I was depressed. Maybe nothing was going to happen after all.
While Min threw her sweatshirt into the coat closet, I asked Joey where the drinks were. He was talking to Ron and just pointed his thumb behind him like he was hitching. In the kitchen, Diana stood with her best friend Melissa near a big picnic chest on the floor filled with ice and sodas. Diana was tall and had beautiful, long chestnut hair. I knew her somewhat from having had classes together over the past three years. She was nice for a girl who was so popular.
“Hi,” she said when she saw me, “want some?” She held up her ginger ale. I’d seen some of the girls with pink cans of Tab. I couldn’t decide which I wanted.
“Where is everybody?” Min asked, bending down and grabbing a Tab.
“Their parents wouldn’t let them come,” Melissa said. “Like, why would they ask their parents?”
“Well, maybe they couldn’t get a ride otherwise,” I said.
Melissa rolled her eyes. I decided on ginger ale. I didn’t know why Melissa didn’t like me. I started to move away.
“What do you have to spike it with?” Min asked.
“Now that you mention it . . .” Diana said. I could see she admired Min a little more. I felt stupid. I hadn’t even guessed there might be liquor at this party. “Vodka,” Diana answered. “Are you game?”
“Sure.”
Min followed Diana into a back room. Melissa and I ignored each other. I realized that most of the kids there were the ones who got in trouble at school. Maybe we shouldn’t have come. I doubted Min would like the vodka. I’d tasted my father’s gin and tonic the summer before. It was medicinal and bitter, and when I made a face, everybody laughed.
When Min got back we wandered into the living room. I kept looking around for Nick, scared that I might see him and scared that he wouldn’t come. There was space on one of the couches, and we squeezed in and sat there, sipping from our cans. The music had changed to “Dream Weaver.” I knew the words from listening to the radio and sang along. Still nobody got up to dance, though now there was a couple sitting on the floor in the corner making out. In the dimness I couldn’t tell who they were.
Min leaned over. “I wonder if Band-Aid’s going to show up,” she yelled over the music.
I almost said, “He told me he would,” but stopped myself in time. It was weird not telling her everything. But I couldn’t. Even if Nick arrived, he might not talk to me.
“Yeah, I wonder,” I yelled back.
I was glad Min was there with me. Sitting around in somebody’s unlit living room wasn’t what I had expected. I thought there would be dancing, people talking to each other, maybe card games or something so we could all get to know each other better. I would have liked a birthday party, with its chocolate cake and unwrapping of presents, more than this.
“Let’s look around,” I said. “There’s nothing happening here.”
We went upstairs. The light was on in one of the bedrooms at the top. Eight kids were sitting on the floor in a circle. A girl and a boy were crawling past each other, changing places. Diana held a Coke bottle in her lap. Min grinned at me. I started to get nervous.
As soon as we came in, they all stopped talking and gaped at us like they’d been caught by their parents stealing money. One of the boys said, “No way, I’m not playing with them!” Karen, sitting next to him, slapped his knee lightly, giggling. Her laughter hurt even more than what he’d said.
Diana looked down at the Coke bottle, then leaned forward and placed it on its side in the middle of the circle. “Sorry,” she said, looking like she really was, “we’ve got the same number of girls and boys. We can’t add two more girls.”
“Come on,” I muttered to Min, plucking at the back of her shirt. I started to leave the room.
“Can we watch?” Min asked them.
All I wanted to do was get out of there. But I turned back. Now instead of staring up at us, they were all looking at each other or picking at their sneaker laces. A few of the girls shrugged.
“I guess so,” Diana said. There were a couple of nods.
“This isn’t a spectator sport,” the same boy protested.
“What difference does it make?” Min asked. “You’re all going to be watching each other.”
“Let’s start,” Karen said, impatient.
“Close the door,” another boy said. I pushed it shut behind me, which cut the volume of the music. I could feel the bass through the floor under my feet.
We sat above them on the canopy bed. Min lay on her stomach with her head in her hands, like she was watching TV in her living room. Her hair fell all around her, landing like a flouncy skirt. The only way I could tell her feelings had been hurt too was because she was extra calm and focused on the game, like she didn’t notice she had been left out. I wished for the millionth time I could be more like her. I couldn’t get comfortable. Finally I sat back against the pillows, holding one of them against my chest. Outside the window, the rain had stopped.
It seemed like they’d all played before. There was no hesitation, once the bottle stopped spinning. The boy or girl would lean forward on hands and knees and kiss the person of the opposite sex closest to the bottle’s open neck. The kiss was either fast or slow. Sometimes the others commented, rating the kiss. There were no tongues involved that I could see. A couple of times a boy looked down the shirt of the girl leaning toward him. I held my pillow closer against me.
Min, lying on the bed in front of me, watched everything carefully like she was studying for a class. Under her black shirt, her torso moved up and down as she breathed. Once, I noticed the muscles of her behind clenching and then relaxing.
I was getting restless. Unlike Min, I couldn’t pay attention. Too much was going on inside me. Something in my chest kept pulling tighter, like it was tied up with string.
Leaning forward, I whispered to Min, “I’m bored, I’m going downstairs.” She turned her head toward me. I thought she looked worried, but she turned back to the game before I could be sure. I quietly edged off the bed and left the room, closing the door behind me.
On the landing I was alone for the first time since I’d entered the house. Down the stairs I saw kids moving across the hall between the living room and the kitchen, laughing, drinking from their soda cans. A boy crossed to the living room with his arm around a girl’s shoulders. The music had changed. There was a slow song playing, another one I didn’t know. It sounded like the Rolling Stones again. A girl needed to be free, and the singer was saying goodbye. I stood at the top of the stairs with my arms wrapped around myself and swayed slowly. The song made me sad. I didn’t want to be free if it meant being lonely. I was afraid I would be dancing by myself at the top of the stairs forever.
I had to go to the bathroom. I turned around and began looking, trying a couple of locked doors before I found it around the corner. I turned on the light and turned the lock in the doorknob. After I was done, I washed my hands, looking in the mirror. In the harsh light, my face looked blotchy. My mascara had smeared under my right eye. I turned on the hot water and splashed my face, trying to scrub off the makeup. The eyeshadow went, but the mascara smeared worse, making me look like a raccoon. Panicked, I looked inside the medicine cabinet. Luckily there was a jar of Ponds cold cream. I swabbed some out with a crumpled-up wad of toilet paper, scoured around my eyes, then washed it all off. I felt so dumb. I had worn that makeup because of Nick, and he wasn’t even there.
The fast music was back on when I opened the bathroom door. I went out and stood on the landing again, trying to decide where to go. I didn’t really want to go downstairs just to watch everybody dancing when I had nobody to dance with, but I didn’t feel like watching more of Spin the Bottle either. Suddenly I felt hands grabbing my sides, hard, tickling me. I yelped, pushing them away and turning around.
It was Nick, grinning. “Hey, where’ve you been?” he asked, standing back. He was wearing a mock turtleneck with wide green and yellow stripes. His hair was falling in his eyes as usual and his thick eyelashes and pinkened cheeks made him look young and really adorable. His eyes were darker than usual, a royal blue. Three of his friends and Caroline and her friend Stacy came out of the room behind him and stampeded past us down the stairs.
“Where’ve you been?” I asked, then realized I sounded like my mother when Jamie came home late. I was so relieved to see Nick, I wanted to put my arms around him and burst into tears. I couldn’t stop grinning.
“Looking for you,” he answered. I knew it wasn’t true, but I was flattered anyway. “You look very pretty tonight. Do you want to dance?”
I nodded. We went downstairs and into the dark living room. Now the cleared floor was full of kids moving to the music. Nick pushed ahead of me into the crowd and found us a little space near one corner of the room. He turned around and grinned at me, then started to dance. It was another song I didn’t know, but I didn’t care. Dancing was a way to lose myself, like I was hurling myself away. At school dances I was usually asked to dance by the nerdiest guys, if I was asked at all. When I didn’t turn them down, I held myself back dancing because I didn’t want them to follow me around. Dancing with Nick, I threw myself into the music, trying to become it.
I watched Nick out of the corner of my eye. His dancing was jerky and uncoordinated. He kept taking the same steps back and forth. Looking around the room, I compared him to the other guys. There was only one who knew how to dance. I wondered why that was true when all the girls were good at it.
I looked up at Nick’s face. He had been watching me too. He leaned closer. “You’re a great dancer,” he yelled into my ear.
I was glad it was dark in the room. My face was heating up. “Thank you,” I yelled back, pleased. We danced some more, through another song, and I tried not to feel self-conscious. I wanted to let the music take me wherever it was going.
When the second song ended, Nick wiped his forehead with his shirtsleeve. “It’s really hot in here. Do you want to go outside and get some air?”
Suddenly I got scared. Outside we’d be alone. He’d probably want to go off into the woods. I didn’t want anything to happen that I couldn’t control. I smiled. “Let’s keep dancing for now,” I said.
We danced another fast dance, and then Diana changed the record and announced to the room that this would be the last song and then everybody could help her clean up. There was a chorus of groans, particularly from the boys. Nick and I exchanged smiles and stood together, waiting for the music to start again. He stuffed his hands in his pockets, then pulled them out, hooking his thumbs in his belt loops. I kept my arms folded across my chest. I looked around the room. One couple near us was just standing there kissing. It was Caroline and a guy named Alex. Min had had a crush on him in the beginning of the year. I’d have to remember to tell her when I saw her.
The first single notes of “Stairway to Heaven” came on. I almost swooned. I had always wanted to dance to that song. Every time it came on the radio or was played at a school dance, it sent shivers through me. I hoped Nick wouldn’t decide he had to get a drink right then. I looked at him. I didn’t care that my face showed so obviously what I wanted.
He was saying something to a friend of his sitting on the arm of one of the couches, using little hand gestures I didn’t recognize. They grinned at each other, and then he turned toward me and, without asking, without even really looking at me, brought his arms up around me. I put my hands on his back. His shirt was damp. We were almost the same height. He smelled of cigarettes and something sweet that reminded me of my father’s aftershave. He started to sway, and I followed him, our feet barely moving as we turned in a slow circle. We were sticking to each other from perspiration. I let the side of my head rest against his and closed my eyes, smiling. I could hardly believe I was finally in his arms.
After a while his hand slowly moved across my back, gripping me tighter. Nick was holding me, he really liked me. I had never been so happy. I gripped him tighter too, trying to keep my sweaty hands from slipping off his shirt. When his hand kept going I realized he was trying to feel the side of my breast. A cold shock went through me. Even my brain felt paralyzed. He couldn’t reach and gave up. Then he inched one hand down my back and under my shirt, so that his palm was on the skin of my waist. His warm hand against my back felt comforting, but then it started to travel up toward my bra. This wasn’t going the way I’d imagined. Maybe my mother was right about boys. I felt like he was trying to get away with something without my knowing.
Trying to be casual, I brought my arm from his back and pulled away to scratch my nose, making him take his hand off me and wait. I tucked my shirt in, then moved close to him again. He said into my ear, “You feel so good.” I liked hearing that, but it made me nervous.
All I wanted was for this slow dance to go on forever. I wanted to stay in our little circle, swaying from one foot to the other, the bounds of the universe as wide as the reach of our arms. I had dreamed for so long of this moment, of being held tightly in the arms of a boy I could almost say I loved, a boy who wanted to be with me and not with somebody else.
The tempo of the song started to speed up, but we didn’t. He kept one hand on my waist, where I could feel the grip of each finger and his thumb. As the music got more frenzied, I seemed to go into a trance. I wondered when I could start calling Nick my boyfriend. Did I have to wait until after he kissed me? I wondered when he would give me his ring or his chain necklace. He moved his head, then I felt cool air against my neck. It tickled. The breeze stopped, then it started again. I opened my eyes. Nick was blowing against my neck like an air conditioner.
I pulled my head back, loosening my hold a little, hoping he would stop. He said, “Took you long enough,” and then he kissed me. His lips mashed into mine so hard it hurt. He pulled back, licked his lips, and then came at me again. This time his tongue pushed against my mouth. I kept my teeth clenched. He got my lips open and his tongue slid around the surface of my teeth. I suddenly was aware that his hand had found its way up the back of my shirt. My bare back was exposed to the whole room. All around me the guitars were thrashing away, the music building up and up in a frenzy of instruments.
Nick pulled away. “What’s wrong?” He asked it like he was concerned. There was something about the way his hair hung down over his forehead that made my heart melt. I remembered that this was the same Nick I walked home with, sharing basketball stories.
I said, “Slow down. You’re going too fast.”
He looked hurt, and I cursed myself for telling him outright. My mother said it was all a game. You had to coax a boy into doing what you wanted, while he tried the same thing with you. We were still moving, not in circles anymore, just back and forth. He said, “I’m sorry. I guess that’s just my way.”
He pulled his hand from under my shirt and wrapped his arms around me again. He really did care about me. I put my cheek against his. Then the music stopped. I held my breath. These were the last few seconds I would have him with me like this, while the singer, a cappella, sang the last line of the song.
There was silence in the room. For that moment I was perfectly happy. Then somebody turned on the overhead lights. I blinked, surprised that the walls were covered with a shiny silver wallpaper. Nick and I pulled apart from each other. In the bright light, it was hard to look him in the eye for some reason. As the other kids started talking and moving around, Nick said, “Can I walk you home?”
I remembered suddenly how I had gotten there. On the dance floor, I had completely forgotten about Min. I said, “Well, I’m staying at Min’s house tonight,” for the first time wishing it wasn’t true. Then I felt guilty. I was a terrible friend.
“That’s okay. I’ll walk you both home.”
“Her mother was going to pick us up. Let me check with her.” I was excited now. I didn’t want to say goodnight to him. “I’ll be right back,” I promised.
“I’ll be here.” He grinned at me, then turned to Caroline and Alex next to us. They were still kissing. “Hey, knock it off, you two,” he said, rapping Alex on the arm with his knuckles. “The party’s over.”
I didn’t have any idea what time it was. I started toward the hall to find Min upstairs and saw her a few yards away from where Nick and I had been dancing, near the door. She was leaning with one shoulder against the wall, her arms crossed, holding a ginger ale can in one hand. She looked bored and faintly amused and cool, more like somebody in a rock and roll band than ever, even if she was a girl. Seeing her made my skin feel prickly, like I had developed a sudden rash. I hadn’t expected to see her there. She was watching everybody funnel back into their all-boy and all-girl groups as they left the room. I wondered if Min had come downstairs in time to see. I had slow-danced with Nick! I wondered what the whole class would be saying on Monday, and if I would be one of the people they talked about. I wanted them to be envious of me for once.
I touched Min on the shoulder. She turned her head, then pushed herself from the wall and flipped her hair behind her shoulder.
“Hi,” she said. She was smiling, but not in her usual way when she was happy to see me.
“Min, about getting to your house—”
“I called my mother,” she said. “She said we can walk back if we want.”
“That’s what I wanted to ask you. Nick wants to walk us home.”
“I doubt it’s us he wants to walk with,” she said. She brought her can to her lips and finished what was inside, shaking the last drops out. I realized she’d seen me dancing with Nick after all. I thought she’d be happy for me. I would have been if she had danced with somebody. But not with Nick, I realized. He was different. I wondered how long I had been thinking of him as mine.
“How long have you been down here?” I asked her.
“A while.”
I was thinking of the last song and my universe inside Nick’s arms. “Did you see—”
“Yeah.” She dropped the can on the floor and crushed it with her sneaker. I picked it up and threw it at the wastebasket in the corner, sinking it.
Then I remembered how Nick had pushed my shirt up my back and mashed his mouth against mine. For a minute or two I had forgotten. It hadn’t all been perfect. I tried to imagine what we had looked like from where Min was standing. Instead I remembered how nice it felt when Min and I practiced. If we hadn’t done that, would I have liked Nick’s kissing more? Maybe something was wrong with me now. Maybe I had messed myself up somehow by kissing a girl.
We were silent. Then she said, “Mom’s waiting for us at home. I don’t want her to start worrying.”
Outside, the ground was damp and the tall trees dripped water down on our heads. There was an almost-full moon high in the black sky. As we started down the winding road, Nick tried to whistle the opening bars of “Stairway to Heaven.” I laughed. On the other side of me, Min pulled her sweatshirt over her head. She was walking unsteadily. I wondered how much of that vodka she had had. She kicked at the water in a puddle. “I’m siiinging in the rain, just siiii—”
“Shhhh,” I said, afraid she would wake up the neighbors.
“It’s not raining,” Nick said at the same time. Min threw him a look like he was an idiot.
I shivered. “You cold?” Nick asked. He was wearing a varsity jacket. He put his arm around me, hugging me close to his side. I remembered Min’s voice from the other bed in my room, all those times we had played our question game. “Would you let Nick put his arm around you? What would you do if he kissed you? If he tried to French kiss you?” They weren’t what ifs anymore, they were real. I had never really believed Nick would ever put his arm around me. Now he had. We had already kissed. It was happening so fast.
“Warmer now?” he asked.
“Yes.” I grinned up at him. I thought about putting my arm around his waist. Then I did it. We were a couple now, there was no doubt about it.
The three of us walked downhill for a while, turning onto wider roads as we got closer to town. Nick and Min talked about our history teacher and how easy the homework was. I thought it was hard, but I didn’t say anything. An occasional car drove past, its headlights sweeping over us. The moon stayed ahead of us. Walking between my best friend and my new boyfriend, I had the amazing feeling that everything fit into its own place. I looked up at the glowing moon. We were only specks on a tiny planet in the middle of a whirling galaxy, but we were where we were supposed to be.
Nick pulled a pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket. “Sorry,” he said to me, removing his arm.
“Can I have one?” Min asked, leaning her head forward to look at him. I almost said, “You don’t smoke,” but didn’t, not in front of Nick. We stopped on the sidewalk. Nick held out the pack and Min pulled a cigarette out. Nick lit his with a Bic lighter, then offered the flame to Min, holding it beneath the cigarette in her mouth. The tip glowed red in the dark. He dropped his hand, pocketing the lighter. She took the cigarette from her mouth, holding it between her first two fingers like it was natural to her, blew out smoke, and said, “Thanks.” He nodded. I was amazed. Min seemed to be an old hand. Maybe she was and maybe she wasn’t. Knowing Min, she could be smoking for the first time and pull it off so that nobody would ever know.
We continued walking. The two of them puffed away on either side of me. I tried not to cough. Nick slipped his hand in mine. It was warm and slightly damp.
“I really didn’t know if you’d show up tonight,” Nick said to me. “You were so shy the last time we talked after practice.”
Inside I seized up. I had meant to tell Min about my walks with Nick when we got to her house.
Min said, “Laura shy? Ha!” I looked at her, surprised. She blew smoke into the air and tapped ash from the tip of her cigarette. She didn’t look at me.
“Well, she may not be around you,” Nick said, “but she hardly opens her mouth when she’s around me.”
“Oh, she opens her mouth around me,” Min said.
I pinched her waist. There was hardly anything to grab hold of. She looked at me quickly, smiling. It wasn’t funny. What if Nick figured out what she was talking about?
They went back to the subject of school, disagreeing about the character of Stella in the book we were reading in English class, Great Expectations. I was bored. They seemed to have a lot in common. I began to be afraid that Nick would start to like Min more than me. It was a strange, vicious fear I’d never felt before. Up to now, I had been winning our competition for Nick.
We reached her house and stopped on the sidewalk. Nick threw his cigarette out into the street sideways. Min’s parents had left the outside light on. There was another light on upstairs. We stood in a little cluster. Nick was still holding my hand.
“Hey, Min,” he said, sort of embarrassed, “get lost.”
She stared at him, then turned and went into the house without saying goodbye. As soon as the door closed, I said, “What did you say that for?”
“I wasn’t going to kiss you goodnight in front of her.”
“Oh.” Still, it seemed like he could have found a nicer way to tell her. He led me toward the brown-shingled siding of the house under the eave where it was darkest, then took my other hand. We stood face to face. I was still worrying about Min and him having so much in common.
“Nick, how come you decided you liked me? What if it was Min walking home after basketball, would you have started waiting for her?”
He made a face. “Min? No way. Not in a million years.”
I was stung. “Why not? I think she’s really pretty.”
“With those slanty eyes? They give me the creeps.”
I couldn’t believe it. I liked Min’s eyes. “You’re kidding, right?”
“No.” When I just stared at him he tried again. “She’s Oriental, and that’s putting it nicely.”
“So?”
“So I don’t think the races should mix. People should stick with their own kind.”
Now I was getting angry. He was talking about my best friend. I pulled my hands out of his, crossing them over my chest. “Where’d you get that crazy idea?”
“Everybody knows that, Laura. Where’ve you been? On the moon?”
“Yeah, and you’ve been in some other solar system.”
We were silent. None of this was making sense to me. The worst part was I didn’t think I liked Nick very much anymore. “I don’t get it,” I said. “You seemed to like talking to Min tonight.”
“That’s different. I’ll do a lot to spend more time with you. Anyway, why are we talking about her?” He put his arms around my shoulders, pulling me closer. I slid my hands around his waist without even thinking about it. “I had a nice time dancing with you tonight,” he said. “I knew I’d break through your shyness, and I was right. You’re a wild dancer.”
Then he pushed me against the house and kissed me. He didn’t waste any time with his tongue. I hadn’t decided what I wanted to do, but my mouth opened anyway. He pushed his tongue inside, practically down my throat. Instead of gently playing with my tongue the way Min did, he ignored it completely. He kept jabbing at the inside of my mouth. It was like having a large wet fish thrashing around, one that tasted like cigarettes. I tried to pull away, but he only held me more tightly, grasping the back of my head. He had his other arm at my waist, holding me pinned between him and the house. I felt his hand pull at my shirt and slide up my side. He grabbed my breast over my bra, squeezing it like a sponge, then pushed underneath the bra with his fingers. I tried again to break free of him. He made a moaning noise in my mouth and ground his pelvis against me. My jaw was getting sore. I didn’t know what to do. I had gone too far, and now I couldn’t stop it. This boy I hardly knew was all over me, and I had no idea how to get away.
Finally he let me go, staggering back a little. He was breathing hard. “You really are wild,” he said. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Then he hitched up his pants, gave me a little wave, said “See you at school,” and walked away. He emerged from the shadow of the house onto the moonlit sidewalk, walking the way I’d noticed most guys did. He bounced from one foot to the other, like he was happy.
In the dark, I practically tiptoed up the stairs. Now I didn’t know how I should feel. I decided that the next time Nick and I made out, it would be better because we’d be more used to each other. He wouldn’t go so berserk. As I passed Min’s parents’ room, I saw the door was ajar and a light on. I heard Catherine softly call out my name. She was sitting by herself in bed with a book propped up against the quilt over her knees. The covers on Min’s father’s side of the bed were rumpled. She took off her reading glasses as I came into the room.
“Did you lock the front door?” she asked almost in a whisper.
I nodded. She squinted at me, then put her reading glasses on the night table, unfolded her other pair, and put them on. She studied me again.
“How was the party?”
“It was okay.”
She patted the edge of the bed by her legs. I sat down.
“Min seems to think you had a good time.”
I could picture Min sitting in the same spot at the edge of the bed, talking to her mother, knowing I was outside with Nick. Sitting in her place, I realized if Nick had danced with Min, even danced one dance with her instead of asking me, I would have been totally destroyed. But she hadn’t been talking to him for weeks, getting her hopes up. I said, like it might change something, “Well, I danced with Nick. Min has a crush on him too.”
“Oh, Nick of the fabulous blue eyes.”
I nodded. There didn’t seem to be anything more to say.
After a while Catherine asked, “Did something happen that you didn’t like?”
I looked up at her. How did she know that? The kindness in her face made me feel like crying. I could never have had a talk like this with my mother. Catherine’s face was long and plain with a chin that jutted out like a rock at the edge of the waves, solid and dependable. I looked down again. My hair fell forward. I took a few strands and started picking at the ends.
“I don’t know,” I finally admitted. “It’s like I love him and I hate him at the same time. He’s not how I expected him to be.”
“I know what that’s like. Even when you know someone well they can disappoint you.”
Right then, picturing Nick smiling at me made me feel sick. “I wanted him to kiss me, but not like he did.”
“It was yucky?”
I looked up at her again. The expression on her face was so serious that I laughed, just a little. “Yeah. It was yucky.”
She sighed. “Life’s confusing, isn’t it?” She reached forward and took my hair out of my hands, gently tucking it behind my shoulder.
Min’s father came into the room. His high forehead and mustache always reminded me of Sonny from Sonny and Cher. I felt worn out. I got up from the bed.
“Hi, Laura,” he said. He turned to Catherine. “She won’t talk to me.” I knew he meant Min. Then nobody spoke. I couldn’t help feeling like he was blaming me.
“Waffles in the morning, does that sound okay?” Catherine asked.
“I love waffles,” I answered. Min’s father sat down on the bed, kicked off his slippers, and swung his feet under the covers. I hardly ever saw my father in his pajamas, and never in bed. Min’s father turned on his bedside lamp and opened his own book. Catherine looked over at him like she was surprised, then turned off her light. I said goodnight, closing their door behind me.
In Min’s room there was only the light of the moon to see by. Because she had only one bed, when I was over she slept on an air mattress on the floor. (Except when she got into the bed with me.) I stepped around the bundle of her body in the sleeping bag. On top of the blanket, in the middle of the bed, my bookbag was open. Tucked inside my nightgown was a piece of paper folded up into a small square. For a delighted second I thought it could be from Nick, but of course I knew it wasn’t. I unfolded the note and read it in the silvery moonlight. She hadn’t written in our code. The note said, “I don’t want to practice kissing anymore. We’re too old for notes too.”
I missed Min then. Even though she was there in the same room, it was like she’d said goodbye. Now our friendship would become ordinary again. At the same time I was relieved, because what would be the point of making out with her when I had Nick? As I gathered everything together for my trip to the bathroom, I heard Min stir.
“Min?” I whispered. There was no answer. She was asleep. I went to the bathroom next door to brush my teeth.
A sound woke me up in the middle of the night. “Min?” I called softly, sitting up in bed. Her sleeping bag was empty. I pushed off my covers and went out to the bathroom. The door was closed. “Min?” I called, knocking quietly.
She didn’t answer. I opened the door, and at first my eyes teared, blinded by the bright light. Then I saw her kneeling in front of the toilet. The seat was up. Some of her beautiful long hair had fallen forward into the bowl. She started to heave again, holding on to the edges. I knelt down next to her and gathered her hair in my hands, holding it back from her face as she threw up into the toilet. Spit and a yellowish mess slid down her chin. The stink was as strong as ammonia. I tore off some toilet paper with my free hand and wiped her chin clean. She didn’t seem to know I was there as she knelt rocking a little on the bathroom mat, her eyes closed, taking deep breaths.
Then she said, her eyes still closed, “Why did you lie to me, Laura? Why didn’t you tell me you had talked to Nick before tonight?”
“I don’t know,” I said, feeling helpless. What was it I’d thought I could have for myself, mine alone, by not telling her? Right then, Nick was a distant idea, the way he’d been in my fantasies.
“I don’t care if you kiss him or let him feel you up or anything. Just tell me. Don’t lie to me.”
I wondered if that meant telling her why he would never go out with her. “Okay,” I said.
She started to heave again. She gripped the sides of the toilet bowl, getting ready. Still holding her hair, I leaned forward with her. When she was done I wiped her mouth.
“Oh God,” she said. “I don’t think ginger ale and vodka are such a good combination.” She took a deep breath, then another.
“Do you still like him?” I asked her. If she said yes, I wouldn’t tell her about his thrusting tongue in my mouth or the rest of it. I didn’t want to disappoint her.
“He’s an asshole.” She stated it as fact.
I didn’t say anything. I felt attacked, the way I had when Nick had said he didn’t like Min. It had been so great slow dancing with him, when he wasn’t trying anything. I had let myself hope for a little while. Inside me, the part that wanted so much to be touched, to be held, blew out, like a gas flame turned down too low.
“He’s a terrible kisser,” I admitted.
She turned her head toward me. Her eyes were bloodshot. “How would you know?” But there was a tiny smile at the edges of her mouth.
I smiled too. “How would I know?” I asked.