MY CELL BLEEPS. It’s 1:34 in the morning. A text. From Brady.
Hey there U. All good here. Stay cool.
About freakin’ time, I think. And then I think, Stay cool?
I walk out of Robbie’s bedroom into the empty hallway and press my speed-dial.
“Stay COOL?” I say when Brady picks up.
I can’t believe he picked up. He hasn’t picked up since he left for the U.
“Stay COOL? That’s all you’ve got to say?”
“Vicks! I didn’t think you’d be up. I didn’t want to bother you.”
“I’m up,” I say. “I’m stayin’ cool.”
“Okay, you got me. That was lame.”
“Forget it. What’s new?” I say to Brady, thinking, Don’t cry. Don’t complain. Don’t become a flowery needy girl on him, or he’ll leave.
“Oh, God.” He sighs.
“Oh, God, what?”
“It’s just—it’s different hearing your voice live, on the other end of the phone. Vicks, I miss you so much right now.”
Then why haven’t you called me? I want to scream. But instead I say, “How come you’re up so late?”
“I went to a party, but it sucked.”
“Oh.” What party? I want to know. Who with? “I have practice at 6 A.M. too,” says Brady. “I’m going to be whupped.”
What party? I want to know. With cheerleaders?
“Coach runs us really hard,” Brady is saying. “And classes started on Wednesday, so I’ve gotta study too.”
Why do you have to be secretive? What freaking party?
“The only morning we get off is Sunday,” he continues. “But the twice-daily workouts do make a difference. You can feel it.”
Fine.
“Maybe you should go to sleep then,” I snap, interrupting. “If you’ve got such important things to do.”
“What? No, I want to talk to you.”
So why did you just text me, then? Why did I have to call you? I want to shout. But I rein myself in and say, “Wonderful. So what would you like to talk about?”
“Nothing. Just talk. Aren’t we talking?”
“You’re telling me about early-morning football practice. If you call that talking.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Sure, if you think so,” I say. “Why don’t you tell me about your classes, next? How are they going for you? Do you like your teachers?”
“Vicks, you sound weird.”
“No I don’t,” I say, knowing full well that I do, only I can’t make it stop. “Aren’t you going to tell me about your classes? How’s freshman comp?”
Brady sighs. “Um. I got my in-class essay back with red pen all over it this morning. And I have a quiz already on Monday.”
“How fascinating. What’s your quiz on?”
“Um. Intro to Anthropology. Categories of early humans.”
“Whoop de do.”
“What?”
“Nothing. I’m dying to talk about anthropology.”
“I didn’t say I wanted to talk about anthropology.”
“Oh? I thought you did.” Don’t complain. Don’t cry.
“Vicks, are you drunk?” Brady asks. “Where are you?”
I can’t tell him I’m halfway to Miami, ’cause I can’t tell for sure if he’s going to be happy to see me. Can’t bear to hear him say, “Oh, baby, that’s sweet that you’re driving down, but I’ve got football practice twice a day and I’m really busy, and we talked about you coming down to see the game Thanksgiving weekend, so maybe you shouldn’t go to all that trouble.” So I say, “It’s Friday night, Brady. I’m not gonna sit home.”
“You sound kinda drunk.”
“So? I’m at a party with Jesse and some guys we met.”
“What guys?” Brady asks. “And with Jesse? Really? She hates drinking parties.”
“Well, I’m changing her mind,” I say, ignoring his first question. I can be secretive too.
“Oh.”
“It’s kind of a bad time to talk, actually,” I say. Thinking, he doesn’t deserve to get hold of me after midnight anymore. I’m not his puppy; I’m not leaping up and down every time he knocks on my door. If he’s not thinking about me enough to even text me back until now, I’m not going to—
“Can I call you later?” I say.
“Aw, come on, Vicks.”
“We can talk about football and anthropology some more next week.”
“Baby, I know something is wrong. Tell me.”
I cannot tell him, I miss you, I’m lost without you, I’m lonely, you’re off meeting other girls, I’m jealous, I need you to call me, I can’t stand being apart if you don’t call me. Because if I say any of that, I’m just going to push him away—and if Brady doesn’t want me, then I’m not going to know who I am. I already don’t know who I am with him gone, with my brothers gone too, and me just rattling around in that big empty house with only my parents, and…
Three beers and a shot is obviously too much if I’m getting all emotional like this. Reminder to self: Two is your limit. Retain some dignity.
“What do you mean?” I ask Brady. “Nothing’s wrong. I just don’t have time to talk right now. Heart you! Bye!”
“Vicks—wait!”
“Yeah?”
“What guys did you meet? Who’s driving you home?”
Oh, like he’s not meeting girls every second there at college. “Just some guys. I think a couple of them are lifeguards,” I lie. Because lifeguards are always hot.
Truth is, I am dying to tell Brady about busting into the museum and celebrating Old Joe and Mel’s beautiful voice and “Al Roker, you are my kin”—which is all the kind of stuff Brady would love. It’s almost like it hasn’t really happened, since I haven’t told him about it. I’ve told him about everything that’s happened to me all year.
But he’s not really asking me what I’ve been doing. He just doesn’t like the idea that I met some other guys and went to a party with them.
“Do you have a ride?” Brady wants to know.
“I think we’re staying over, but yeah. Jesse’s the driver. And you know she never drinks.”
“What? You’re staying over at the party?”
He’s probably right to be worried, now that I think of it. It’s a bit of a dumb situation to have gotten into. But no guy who doesn’t call me for two weeks gets to tell me what to do. “Don’t be so possessive.”
“Vicks, are there people you know there?”
“You sound like one of my brothers.” Why won’t he say he’s sorry? Why doesn’t he explain why he hasn’t called me?
“I just don’t want you doing anything stupid,” he says instead. “You should have Jesse take you home. I want you to be okay.”
Exactly. He just wants me to be okay. He doesn’t want anything to be wrong, ever. Doesn’t want to hear about it, doesn’t want to feel guilty.
I’m not okay. I’m drunk at a strange party and we can’t leave ’cause Mel’s so trashed she can’t even walk and Marco’s nice but some of these guys are obviously skeevy. I want to say, Brady, drive up and get me. Now.
Brady, talk me through this dizzy drunk feeling until morning.
Brady, take care of me.
But he wants me to be okay without any help from him, and he hasn’t called me, and he’s only sent me two stupid texts and he’s talking about football practice instead of about anything real and he’s probably bonking some cheerleader and that’s why he’s being so weird with me and fake and all, Oh, I’m taking anthropology.
I can’t go on like this. It’s too lonely, too terrible to check my phone all the time and never hear from him, too sad to live in that empty house and get off work with no one waiting to pick me up and no one to hold my hand during movies and before I even think it through, I blurt, “I don’t think this long-distance thing is working out.”
“What? It’s only been like a week.”
How can he not know how long it’s been?
“It’s been two weeks,” I correct him.
“Okay, two. It feels like forever, what do I know?” Brady sighs.
“Well, it’s not working out,” I say, trying to sound strong. “Since you can’t even count or make a phone call.”
“Vicks!”
“Let’s just say it’s over,” I tell him. “It’s better that way.”
“How can you say that?” Brady is nearly shouting.
Don’t shout at me, you stupid, weird-acting, football anthropology boy. You’re going to make me cry, and I am not going to cry. “You say it just like this,” I tell him. “It’s over.”
“Vicks, wait!”
“Over,” I repeat and hang up the phone.
It rings not three seconds later—Brady again—but I hit “ignore,” then turn it off and shove it in my bag.
Down in one corner of the backyard Robbie’s folks have an aboveground pool. It’s not big, maybe ten feet across. No one’s in it. People are sitting on the back steps with bottles and the bright dots of cigarettes in their hands. Someone’s lit some citronella candles to keep the mosquitoes away. A girl is sitting on the grass, playing guitar.
I don’t want to talk to anyone, so I walk over to the pool and dip my hand in. Trail my fingers through. Then I climb the rickety ladder and step into the water wearing my shorts and T-shirt. It’s only slightly cool, and a number of bugs have drowned themselves. They float sadly on the surface.
I duck under. Wash the heat of anger and humiliation off my face. Try to get away from my thoughts, but they’re spinning through my head, muddled by the beer.
I was right to dump Brady.
I was right. I was right. Steve, Joe Jr., Jay, Tully, and Penn—they would all say I was right.
My brothers—well, except for Penn, he did worship Liza Siegel and never cheated on her even when Tiffy Gonzaga took off her shirt in front of him—but my brothers showed me again and again that it’s “out of sight, out of mind” with guys. My brothers, as soon as their girls go out of town, they’re flirting with someone else. And probably fooling around, though I don’t know for sure. Yes, fooling around, because Tully started going with that redhead—what was her name, Jewel?—when Katelyn went to summer camp.
Brady’s at the U, which has a competitive cheerleading squad, for God’s sake. He’s a football player on a major college team surrounded by hot and bouncy blond girls. And older women. And girls who’ve traveled somewhere beyond the Waffle House parking lot in Niceville, one trip to Disney World, and Grandma Shelly’s retirement complex in Aventura. Girls who never smell like fryer grease and never fart and probably shave their whole bodies and never do stupid things to their hair.
Brady’s a guy. Of course he’s gonna be fooling around on me. I’m better off without him. Right?
I duck underwater and when I come up, Marco’s standing next to the pool. “There you are,” he says.
“You were looking for me?”
“I just wanted to ask you if Mel’s okay.”
“She’s plastered, but Jesse’s in there with her,” I say.
He nods. “I didn’t want to barge into the room.”
“Probably better not to. But thanks for letting us stay.”
“No problem.” He tilts his head at the pool. “Mind if I get in?”
“Knock yourself out.”
He’s changed into blue swim shorts and he pulls his T-shirt over his head. The muscles of his chest ripple. “I always come out here when Robbie’s parties get too crazy,” Marco says as he eases himself into the water.
He’s not big—I probably outweigh him by a few pounds—but his body’s not bad, either. Nice skin. Big eyes like an antelope’s or something. And a good sense of humor. I could tell when he was flirting with Mel in the backseat.
“Robbie and Jesse had words,” he reports. “That’s the other reason I wanted to check in with you.”
“Sorry about that,” I say. “She gets uptight when people drink.”
“No, he was being a jerk. The guy is a maniac sometimes. He doesn’t mean any harm, but he’s always getting girls mad.”
“So why are you friends with him?”
“Known him since fifth grade. He let me stay in his house last summer, when I wasn’t getting along with my stepdad.”
“Huh.” My head is spinning from the beer and the swimming; everything feels floaty.
“Your friend Mel,” says Marco.
“What about her?”
“She with anyone?”
I shake my head. “Not now. I think she’s got a complicated love history, but I don’t know the whole thing.”
“Huh.” He shrugs. “She doesn’t seem like the type.”
“No? How does she seem?”
“Simple,” he says.
“Ha!” I laugh. “If you think that’s a compliment, let me tell you why you’re still single.”
He splashes me. “I meant, simple like honest, not simple minded.”
“Okay.”
“She’s not like the girls at my school, all attitude and putting other people down. She’s funny, once she gets going. It’s easy to talk to her.”
He’s right. “Did you know she’s been on safari?” I say. “Like to real Africa, the continent.”
Marco smiles, wide and open. “I know what Africa is.”
“Oh, do you?” I say, liking his smile.
No guys ever smile at me, they never do. I mean, no guy has smiled at me, really smiled at me, in…
Well, fine, the hot dog guy smiled at me, and that cute guy at the gas station. And also that guy at Waffle House this morning who tried to chat me up while I was on my smoke break.
But Brady is off smiling at some other girl, multiple girls, and I need that smile from Marco to go on flashing at me the way it is right now.
“Yeah, it’s the one shaped like this.” He makes an Africa shape with his hands in the air. “Where all the zebras live.”
“Mel saw a zebra,” I tell him. “With her naked eyes.”
I get the smile again.
He’s into Mel, I can tell by the way he blushes when I say the word naked about her. “Her eyes were naked,” I say. “Not the rest of her.”
“The zebras were naked,” says Marco.
“Oh, yeah, those zebras are total nudists. The giraffes, too. Would you believe it? There they were on the savannah, just lettin’ it all hang out.”
The smile flashes. I am so grateful to think about anything but Brady, I set a little goal for myself to get that Marco smile over and over, like getting lights to blink on a pinball machine. “Zebras are so unbadass,” I continued. “We saw this stuffed alligator in a museum—”
“Old Joe.”
“What? How did you know?”
“Vicks. I met you outside that place.”
Oh, wow. Too much beer. “Okay, Old Joe. So he was naked too, like the zebras, but he was so badass he didn’t look naked, you know what I mean? Like he’s got this hide that’s leather—they make shoes out of alligators—it’s so tough he doesn’t need any protection but his own skin.”
“Uh-huh.”
“But we, people, we kill the gators and make them into shoes and boots and whatever else so we can be protected, you know? Keep our feet safe. Hide our nakedness. We’re a lot closer to zebras than we are to alligators,” I say. “I bet that’s true. Biologically speaking.”
Marco laughs. Jackpot! “Do you always talk this much about nakedness?”
I shake my head. “Only when I’m with naked people.”
“I’m not naked.”
“You look naked,” I tell him.
“You wish,” he says.
And suddenly, it seems clear to me that Marco is Brady is Marco is Brady, because both of them will flirt with other girls when the girl they really want is out of the picture, and both of them will leap on whatever’s nearest that has boobs and a heartbeat, and I was right to break it off with Brady ’cause he’d do just what Marco’s doing, eyeing my chest in my wet T-shirt, only he’d do it to some cheerleader, is probably doing it to some cheerleader right now, and if Marco makes a pass at me, that’ll prove I’m better off without Brady and…
I slip underwater and swim across the pool, surfacing next to Marco. “Maybe I do wish,” I tell him. “You know, I meant it when I said you could search me.”
“What?” he asks.
“Outside the museum. I said you could search me. Like for concealed weapons.”
“I—”
“Shut up.” I press my chest up against him and put my lips on his.