Five
THREE WEEKS INTO school, one of the soccer guys announces he’s having a party. The whole girls’ team is invited. We’re all bonded now, apparently. Ever since the scrimmage, it’s been fist bumps and high fives in the hallway. Also a lot of jokes about coed naked mud wrestling. From the amount of innuendo in the air, it’s obvious there will be hookups on Saturday night, even if no one is coming out and saying it.
In French, Jamie wants to know if I’m going to the party. It’s the hundredth time she’s asked, and I have yet to provide a straight answer.
“I might be washing my hair,” I tell her.
Jamie rolls her eyes and nudges Peter Hersh, as if to say, Do you believe this loser?
Peter looks up from his French-English dictionary. “You should go.”
I say nothing, leaving Jamie to poke me in the ribs with her pen. “Hello. Peter wants you to go.”
Peter shakes his head. “I don’t care if she goes.”
“Thanks a lot,” I say.
“Someone else might, though.”
Jamie squeals beside me. She’s a squealer. “Oh my God, Peter, who wants Josie to—”
I reach out my hand to shut her up, but Madame Plouchette beats me to it. “S’il vous plaît,”she says, rapping Jamie’s desk with her ruler. “Conjugez le verbe ‘offusquer’ en passé composé.”
Jamie looks confused. “Pardonnez-moi? ”
“Pare doan ay muhwa?” Madame gives a pitch-perfect imitation of Jamie’s horrendous accent.
Everyone laughs, but Jamie isn’t even fazed. She just stands up, tosses her hair, and proceeds to butcher the verb “to annoy.”
Someone wants me to go to the party.
Someone. Wants me. To go to the party.
The mind boggles.
How is a person supposed to focus on trigonometry?
At the end of soccer practice on Friday, we get the Big Warning from Coach: Just because you have a bye this weekend doesn’t mean you can stay out all night raising Cain, blah, blah, blah.
I guarantee the boys’ team is getting the same lecture. Unlike Wendy Geruntino’s purity pledge, the signing of the EHS Athletic Association’s Drug and Alcohol Policy is not optional. Thou Shalt Not Do Jell-O Shots During the Soccer Season is the point. Zero tolerance.
Coach looks at us through squinty eyes, preparing to lecture some more, but then his mouth twitches at the corner, like he’s remembering that he, too, was a teenager once. “All right, ladies,” he says. “Bring it in. ‘Team,’ on three.”
Friday nights my mom doesn’t have to work. This means two things: movies and junk food. We slide Grandpa Gardner’s old leather wing chairs together, kick up our feet on the mosaic coffee table, and pretend we’re at the Multiplex. Sometimes Liv joins us, but tonight she’s staying home to work on her MyPage. Liv is obsessed with MyPage. She has about five hundred cyber friends, and she’s constantly posting new pictures of herself doing weird things: shaving her legs in the rain, juggling kiwis.
So tonight it’s just me and my mom, and the movie is St. Elmo’s Fire—one of the many cheesy ’80s movies she has in her collection. We love St. Elmo’s. It’s full of bad hair and heartache, of faithless lovers and secret crushes, of sweaty saxophone players rockin’ it out on top of the bar, of cocaine-snorting best friends locking themselves in freezing-cold rooms and having breakdowns, of bitter-sweet endings and fresh beginnings.
There are certain scenes we can quote verbatim. Like the one where Jules and Billy are in the Jeep and she’s trying to talk seriously to him, but all he’s doing is trying to unzip her pants. “You break my heart,” she says. “Then again, you break everyone’s heart.” And the camera pans from the Jeep to the house, where Billy’s wife is standing on the stoop, holding their baby.
I know a lot of my friends wouldn’t be caught dead hanging with their mothers on a Friday night. Some of them, like Schuyler, barely even acknowledge their mom’s existence, except to ask for money. Or else they’re constantly fighting, like Melanie Jaffin and her mother. I was in the car with them once, and they were having this argument about curfew, and Mel called her mom a bitch. Right to her face. “You. Are such. A bitch.”
I can’t imagine doing that. Ever. I can honestly say that my mom is my best friend, and even though she gets on my nerves sometimes, she is still one of the kindest, most decent people I know. I just can’t imagine a situation where I would slam her like that.
When the movie is over, we polish off a bag of salt-and-vinegar chips, and we talk. We talk about Jonathan, who came back into the store last week and, as I’d predicted, asked my mom out for tomorrow night. We talk about school and soccer and Matt Rigby and mud and cappuccinos and books and celebrity gossip and the genocide in Darfur and everything under the sun.
That’s how it is with us.
After work the next day, I go to Liv’s house. I always go to Liv’s on Saturdays because it’s my mom’s busiest day at the store. In the morning she has story hour with the little kids; afternoon is book-of-the-week club; Saturday night is the poetry slam. Whenever I have a soccer game, my mom will get one of her assistant managers to cover for her, but today I don’t.
“You smell weird,” Liv says. We’re sitting on the parquet floor of her orange bedroom, painting our toenails.
“Thanks a lot,” I say, leaning back against one of Liv’s many vintage beanbag chairs. She finds them at tag sales. The more hideous the color, the better.
“Well, you do,” she says. “You smell burnt.”
“I know. It’s the cappuccinos. Bob’s obsessed with this café opening. He made me practice making espresso drinks all morning. They get into my pores.”
“It’ll wash off in the shower,” she says. “You are planning to take a shower . . .”
I give her arm a little shove.
“Good. Because this is going to be a big night, I can feel it. We’re going to dress you up. Dodd will do your hair. You’ll be like Cinderella! Riggs will take one look at you and—”
“What are you talking about?” I shove her again, harder.
“What? I saw you two at the scrimmage. Everyone did. It’s so obvious, Josie.”
“Well . . . OK, but that doesn’t mean . . . I mean, Peter Hersh could have been talking about someone else wanting me to come tonight. I don’t know, that little sophomore winger who’s always saying hi to me in the hall. What’s his name—Garth? Garrett?”
“Please.” Liv laughs. She hands me a bottle of top coat.
“Thanks.”
We sit in silence for a minute, finishing our toes. Then I say it. “What if he’s an asshole?”
Liv shrugs. “What if he’s the love of your life?”
“He cheated. On Missy.”
“They had an agreement.”
“Well,” I say. “Maybe.”
Liv unweaves the strip of toilet paper from between her toes, holds it to her upper lip. “Hey, who am I? . . . ‘Pee and flee, ladies. Pee and flee.’ ”
I sigh. “Mr. Charney.” Mr. Charney, the hall monitor with the bushy mustache, who likes to stand outside the girls’ bathroom between class periods, holding a stopwatch. “Could we focus on me? Please?”
“Yes.” Liv uses the toilet paper to wipe a smudge of polish off my big toe. “Now you’re perfect.”
Suddenly, I have a stroke of genius. “Why don’t we go to the movies tonight? There’s that new Drew Barrymore playing at—”
“No.”
“But you love Drew Barrymore.” Fact. There’s a poster of Drew Barrymore next to Liv’s mirror. Liv blots her lipstick on it. She thinks Drew has great lips.
“Absolutely not,” Liv says.
“But—”
“Josie,” she says firmly. “We are going to the party, and you are going to face your fears.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’re scared of getting hurt, and that’s holding you back from doing what you really want to do.”
“No, it’s not!” (Yes, it is.)
“You can’t change what you won’t admit.”
“OK, Dr. Steve.”
“Mock if you must,” Liv says, “but Dr. Steve happens to be a very wise person. He’s changed a lot of lives for the better.”
“I’m sure he has.”
“Josie.” Liv sighs. “You may not want to hear this, but I’m your best friend, and that means brutal truth, right?”
I nod.
“OK. . . . Matt Rigby is not your dad.”
“I know that!”
“Do you?”
“Well . . . obviously.”
“So stop assuming that every guy in your life is going to do what he did! It’s not fair to anyone, least of all you!”
“Wow.”
“Sorry. I just had to get that off my chest.”
Well.
“OK?” Liv’s hand is on my arm, soft and sorrowful. “I just don’t want you to sabotage this Riggs thing, you know? . . . Jose?”
“Fine,” I say. “Point made.”
We stare down at our toes, which are blood red. Sexy or grisly? It’s hard to tell.
Pops and Dodd drive us to the party. Pops is the disciplinarian in the family—the layer-down of laws—and Dodd is the worrier. Between the two of them, all the parental bases are covered.
“Where exactly are this boy’s parents?” Pops asks, almost reprimandingly.
“Who knows?” Liv says. “Aruba? Detroit?” We are side by side in the backseat—Liv in a lime-green flapper dress and cowboy boots, me in jeans and a silver tank top. This is as far as I would go in the outfit department, despite Liv’s best efforts.
“Will there be alcohol?” Pops asks.
“Well, it’s a party, so . . . yeah.”
“I’m not sure I like the sound of this,” Dodd murmurs.
“I do,” Wyatt pipes in from the other side of Liv. “Why don’t you send me along as a bodyguard? Keep these fair maidens safe.”
“One beer each,” Pops continues, ignoring Wyatt. “No liquor. And absolutely no drugs. Is that understood? Not even pot, because pot is where it all begins.”
“Smoke grass,” Wyatt quips, “and Pops will kick your ass.”
Pops isn’t amused. “Wy,” he says, “you are not helping. . . . Liv?”
“Aye-aye, Captain,” Liv says.
“Josie?”
“Got it,” I say.
I know Pops is trying to be a responsible parent, but when he was younger and living in New York City, he was a huge partier. It wasn’t until he met Dodd that he stopped going to raves every weekend. Liv and I got the whole story one night when I was sleeping over. Pops and Dodd aren’t like other parents. They’ll discuss anything—drugs, sex, relationship stuff. No topic is off-limits. Liv and Wyatt can ask whatever they want, and they know they’ll get a straight answer.
“You both have your cell phones?” Dodd asks now.
“Yes,” we say.
“If anything happens, call. Call any time.”
Pops pulls up to the house at the same time about fifteen guys are piling out of the SUV in front of us.
Dodd makes a strangled noise in the back of his throat. “Please, please don’t get in a car with anyone who’s been drinking. . . .”
We assure him that we won’t and slide out the door before the condom lecture can begin.
“Hey, kids!” Wyatt calls out the window as we’re running up the driveway. “We’ll be back at eleven thirty! Sharp!”
At the door, Liv reaches out and squeezes my hand, which is already sweating. When I look at her, she smiles. “Your hair looks great.”
“You think?” Dodd did some loose-curl thing with hot rollers. It feels weird—like I’m wearing someone else’s head.
“Yeah,” she says. Then, “Ready?”
“No.”
Liv laughs and rings the doorbell.
The Makeup Mafia is already on the dance floor. They wave us over, and Liv starts right in with her signature move: the Flight Attendant. To the beat of the music she stows luggage, points out emergency exits, distributes imaginary drinks.
Some guy in a Viking helmet walks around with a stack of cups and a pitcher of green liquid.
“The punch is wicked strong,” Schuyler informs us.
From somewhere in the back of the house I can hear the chants. “Chug, chug, chug, chug!” Then, cheers.
Jamie offers me a sip from her cup.
“No, thanks,” I say.
“You’re so good, Josie.” She says “good” like it’s a bad thing.
Whatever.
I start dancing. I don’t love to dance in public, but the lights are dim and the floor is packed, and it’s Madonna’s Immaculate Collection playing—which, come on, how can you not dance to Madonna? At one point we’re all voguing away and I spot a clump of varsity jackets across the room. It’s like they called one another beforehand: “OK, guys, we’re wearing our letterman jackets, right? With jeans? And—”
Oh, God.
Matt Rigby is looking at me.
I see that he’s indulged in the hair products tonight. Sweet.
His eyes are locked on mine, and I am still voguing. I know I must look like a moron, since my hands are busy forming geometric shapes in the air around my head, but I would look even more moronic if I stopped. So I keep right on going. On principle.
I can see a little smile tugging at the corner of Matt Rigby’s mouth, and I can feel myself start to smile back, and this time I don’t even try to stop it from happening. Because maybe Liv is right. Maybe what I need to do is loosen up and let fate take its course. Maybe this seven-month “thing” between us really is meant to—
Well. Just shoot me now.
There she is: the redheaded cheerleader. Hanging on to Matt’s arm like she owns him, whispering in his ear.
I feel sick. I haven’t had a single drink, and already I want to throw up.
I turn around to grab Liv, but she’s not on the dance floor. She’s not even in the room.
How does a person just disappear at a party? That’s my question. I’ve searched everywhere, even the bedrooms, which of course are full of random, punch-infused hookups, and, which, come to think of it, I don’t know why I bothered checking. A) Liv never has more than one drink, and B) not in a million years would she deign to hook up with a high-school guy.
But I need to find her, and that means looking everywhere.
I head outside. On the back lawn a bunch of guys are playing soccer in the dark, and they’re killing themselves laughing because they keep falling down.
“Hey,” I call out. “Have you guys seen Liv?”
“Who?” someone calls back.
“Olivia! Weiss-Longo!”
“She’s hot!” another guy yells.
Someone wolf whistles, and I’m about to yell something else, but a hand has just grabbed mine.
I know, even before I turn around. Matt Rigby has the warmest hands.
“Hey,” he says low.
Every hair on my neck stands at attention.
“Did you check your cell?” he asks.
“What?”
“Check your cell. Maybe she texted you.”
“Why would she? . . . Fine.” I try to yank my hand back, but he just holds on tighter. I have to reach into my pocket from the opposite side, which is annoying, but then I flip open my phone and there it is:
J, wnt 4 ride. Wll xplain L8r. B bck 11:29. Hv fn 2nite!!! xo, L
I stand there, staring at the message.
“Everything OK?”
I don’t know if it is, but I nod and slip the phone back in my pocket.
“Hey.” Matt Rigby steers my elbow to turn me around, and I let him.
“Hey what?” I say.
We’re facing each other now, and he’s holding both my hands in his, and they are so warm. Then there’s the smell of him—part beer, part deodorant, part I don’t know what . . . leaves? For a moment, all I want to do is breathe.
“Why are you avoiding me?” he asks.
“I’m not avoiding you.”
“Every time I see you, you run the other way.”
“No I don’t.”
My eyes have adjusted to the dark now, and I can see him smile. “Come on. Admit it.”
“Every time I see you, you’ve got your own personal cheering section.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Wait—Tessa?”
“I don’t know, Matt. Is that her name? I can’t seem to keep track of your girlfriends.”
He laughs, as though I’ve just told the cleverest of jokes.
“I’m glad you think this is funny,” I say.
“Tessa’s not my girlfriend,” he says. “She’s just a friend. For the record.”
“Ah,” I say, nodding. “You guys must have one of those ‘agreements’ you’re so fond of.” I can hear the snottiness of my tone, and I hate it, but I can’t help myself.
Riggs is silent for a moment. Then he says, “I knew it.”
“What?”
He takes a breath. “I knew you thought I was lying that night, about Missy. That I was just saying what I said to hook up with you. But I wasn’t.”
“Uh-huh,” I say. I’m focused on his eyes. I once read that you can tell if someone’s lying by how much they blink, or if they glance to the side, but he’s not doing either. His eyes are locked on mine.
“The thing with Missy and me was . . . complicated.”
“Complicated how?” I say.
“It was like this arranged marriage thing. We’ve known each other forever. Our parents are best friends, and they always wanted us to, you know, get together, and Missy was really into it, but I was never exactly . . .” He hesitates. “Before she left for college I finally told her I was into . . . you know . . . someone else.”
He’s squeezing both my hands, and it takes me a second to realize—he means me! Then I remember where we are, and I have to ask: “How drunk are you?”
He shakes his head. “I’m not.”
“You smell like beer.”
“Half a beer. Just to get my courage up.”
“For what?”
“This,” he says. He leans in and kisses me, soft and slow, and it’s as if our mouths were made just to come together, and now his hands are on my back, pressing me closer, and I can’t believe everything that’s flying through my head in this one moment. New Year’s and porch swings and dreams and mud and fire-works and St. Elmo’s and prom and cheesy song lyrics and . . . and I’m pushing him away . . . why am I pushing him away?
Matt reaches for my arm to pull me back. “What’s wrong?”
I shake my head. “Nothing. Just . . . I can’t do this if you’re going to mess with my head.”
He’s quiet for a second, like he’s searching for the right words. Then he says them: “I’m not. I won’t.”
“How do you know?”
“I know.”
“How?”
“I’ve wanted this since tenth grade. Ever since I saw you do that peer-ed skit in assembly. The one about cigarettes.”
“Yeah, right.” I’m rolling my eyes like I don’t believe him. But I’m kind of tingling, too.
“You were wearing a fuzzy blue sweater. And your hair was all twisty. Kind of like . . .” He reaches out and gathers my hair into a pile on top of my head. “With a pencil sticking out of it.”
“You remember that?”
“Scout’s honor,” he says, holding up three fingers. “Your skit was very convincing. I haven’t smoked since.”
I try to suppress the urge to call him a big dork, but as usual my mouth has other plans. “You’re such a dork,” I say. Then I touch my hand to his arm, to show him I mean it in the best possible way.
“I’m a dork?” he says, smiling. “Me?” He takes a step back, and then, out of nowhere, he starts singing. “Come on, Vogue! Let your body groove to the music! Hey, hey, hey!”
It takes about two seconds for all the guys who were playing soccer to gather around us on the deck, clapping and cheering as Matt Rigby’s hands form geometric shapes in the air around his head. And despite the fact that he’s mocking my dance moves, I have to laugh. Because he looks so ridiculous, and because his eyes haven’t left mine, and because now he’s reaching out his hand for me to join him, and I am actually doing it.
Here we are: voguing side by side in the cool September air, sober, to absolutely no music. I can just see the word “dork-out” hanging in the air above us.
Also the word “us.”
“Get a room!” someone from the peanut gallery yells, and instead of being embarrassed, Matt Rigby pulls me in and kisses me. Right there, in front of everyone. How this is happening is beyond me. I only wish Liv were here to see it.
Eleven thirty-two p.m., the backseat of Dodd’s car. Two things are going on: the parental inquisition and stealth texting.
Pops: “How was the party?”
Us: “Great.”
Me:Whr wr u?
Liv:Lng stry. GR8 guy.
Me:Wht??? Who???
Dodd: “How many fingers am I holding up?”
Us: “Three.”
Dodd: “Good.”
Liv:Finn. He gos 2 UMass. We mt on MyPg.
Me:W8. Whn did ths hppn???
Liv: IDK. 2 wks ago?
Pops: “Any bodily harm?”
Us: “No.”
Dodd:“Any heartbreak?”
Us: “No.”
Liv:Enuf me. U. How ws ur nite?
Me: OMG. Whr 2 bgin? . . .
All the way back to my house, we text so furiously, it’s amazing our phones don’t explode. After we say our good-byes I sprint up my front steps, fully amped, prepared to tell my mom everything. I’m ready for the couch, the popcorn, the whole heart-to-heart, mother-daughter, let-it-all-hang-out thing that happens every time I come home from a party.
Except for this time.
This time is something else entirely.
Try walking into your living room to find your mother tangled up on the couch with some guy she just met, her shirt bunched up around her neck. Try clearing your throat and watching them pop up, grinning like a couple of bobblehead dolls and frantically adjusting their clothes. Try reminding yourself of who is the teenager in this scenario and who is the parent, without actually saying, Oh my GOD, Mother, did you WANT me to see this?!
I know. I was the one who encouraged her. I was the one who said, Put yourself out there, who told her how cute Jonathan was, that I was happy he asked her out. But now, watching the whole thing unfold in my living room, I feel like—OK, this is going to sound completely juvenile, but it’s true—I feel like the cheese in “The Farmer in the Dell.” The cheese stands alone.When Jonathan stands up to introduce himself, what I really want to say is, “I’m not the cheese. You’re the cheese.”
Instead, I make my head nod. Uh-huh, uh-huh. Nice to meet you, too, while my mom stands between us, smiling. She gestures to the couch and says, “Josie, sit. Tell us about the party.”
“Nothing to tell.” It almost hurts to say this, but I do. “My night was totally uneventful.”
Normally my mom would know I’m lying and call me on it.
Not this time.
“Well,” I say. “I’m beat . . . I guess I’ll go up.”
She hugs me when I say this, relieved that I read her mind. When she says to me, “Good night, sweetheart,” it’s actually code: Thanks, sweetheart. For beating it.