Bleed (2 page)

“Give it up,” Kelly groaned, when forty minutes turned into an hour. “It’s obviously not going to happen today.”

“I’m
going
to call him,” I insisted.

“Uh-huh.” She rolled her eyes. “I need a snack. You hungry?”

I shook my head and watched as she hopped off the bed and bounded downstairs to the kitchen.

The perfect opportunity to finally do it.

I dialed the numbers quickly and pressed the receiver to my ear.

“Hello?” said a boy’s voice—
Sean’s
voice, I was so sure.

I opened my mouth to say something back, but all that came out was a soft choking sound.

“Hel-looo?” the voice repeated.

“Is this Sean?” I asked in practically a whisper.

“Yeah. Who’s this? Danielle?”

Danielle
who?
I almost hung up, only I heard a weird rustling sound on the other end of the line.

“Not Danielle,” Kelly’s voice said through the receiver. She’d obviously picked up the phone extension downstairs.

“Then
who?”
Sean asked.

“It’s Kelly from school.”

My mouth dropped open. The receiver still pressed against my ear, I sprung from the bed and flew down the stairs with the full intent of ripping the phone right out of her meddling little hands. Kelly must have heard me charging, because she ran into the bathroom and locked herself in.

I pounded on the door, but it obviously didn’t bother her any, because she kept right on talking to him Completely horrified, I kept listening.

“So what’s up?” she asked him.

“Not much,” Sean answered.

“Surprised it’s me?”

“A little.”

“Oh, come on,” she continued. “I’ve seen the way you look at me in history class. Don’t deny it.”

“Whatever,” he said.

“I’m just
kidding.
God … can’t you take a joke?”

“What do you want?” he asked, trying to get to the point.

“Are you going to the Sadie Hawkins thing or what?”

“I don’t know.”

“I
don’t know
as in you haven’t been asked yet?”

“I guess so.”

“I guess so
what? You haven’t
been asked?”

“Not yet; isn’t it still a whole month away?”

“Hmm … interesting,” she said, ignoring the question. “So what do you think of Nicole Bouchard?”

“Who?”

“Nicole Bouchard,” she repeated, turning up the volume on her voice.

“I don’t know.”

“Do you think she’s pretty?”

“Kelly!” I hissed, patting on the door, half afraid that he would hear me, more afraid of the damage Kelly could do. “Hang up NOW!” I whisper-shouted.

“What’s going on?” Sean demanded. “Who’s on the other line?”

“No one,” Kelly said, letting out another giggle. “It’s just me.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Are you trying to tell me that you’re hearing voices? They have shrinks for that, you know.”

“Whatever,” Sean said. “I gotta go.”

And with that, he hung up.

“Great!” Kelly shouted. “I totally could have gotten you in!” She whipped the bathroom door open and glared at me like his hanging up was
my
fault.

“I can’t believe you just did that,” I said.

“Are you kidding me? I was trying to do you a favor.”

I shook my head and bit my tongue, barely able to even look at her.

“Like it even matters anyway.” Kelly sighed. “The guy was a total ass. It was like he didn’t even know who you were.”

I shrugged, holding myself back from tearing up.

“You need to forget him, Nickie.”

“I will,” I whispered.

“Good, because it’s not like he’s even worth it. Sean’s so completely average.” With that, she hugged me, telling me how I could do so much better than Sean O’Connell, how she could get me a date with Ferris Beckman if I wanted, how she knew for a fact that he liked me.

Feeling defeated, I agreed. And then a few weeks later, when me and Ferris didn’t work out, Kelly announced that she was going to get Sean
for
me—for real this time.

But instead, she got him for herself. “You’re not mad, are you?” she asked, the new-boyfriend excitement on her face masked only partially by concern. “I mean, you know I’d never do anything to hurt you. It’s just that you said it yourself—you want to forget about him, right?”

For some reason, I nodded. After that she prattled on about how if it bothered me, she’d call it all off, how she had no idea how it even happened, and that our friendship was
way
more important than some stupid boy. “You know I love you,” she said, giving me an extra-tight squeeze.

“I love you, too,” I repeated—only I wished I were saying the words to Sean.

“Nicole,” my mother yells from somewhere downstairs. “I’m going to the hospital. Are you sure you don’t want to volunteer a few hours in the gift shop?”

“No thanks,” I yell back. “I’ve got some stuff to do.”

It’s eleven thirty. I still have over an hour before I’m supposed to pick up Maria. I decide to go outside, pretend to get the mail or something, peek over and act surprised to see him there. It’s summer, for God’s sake, and I haven’t seen him since the last day of school. He’ll want to say hello to someone from school, especially me, Kelly’s closest friend. We can even talk about Kelly. That’ll be fine. That’ll be perfect. I can go over just to find out how Kelly is. I haven’t spoken to her in two whole weeks, after all. “I saw you out here working,” I practice into the mirror. “By the way, have you heard from Kelly?” I do want to know if she’s having a good time. Maybe Sean has some news.

I watch my lips as I practice what I’ll say. I hate my lips, the top one is
way
fuller than the bottom. I conceal it as best as I can with more Nude Glow, the way the woman at the Clinique counter advised me. I wish I had lips like Kelly’s, stacked up like perfect little peach wedges, lipstick or not.

I’ll just go over and say hello, I tell myself, squirting down my hair with extra spray gel. I repeat the word “hello” in my head as I make my way past the mailbox and across the front lawn.

“Sean!” I shout. I raise my right arm up and dip my hips to the left, the way Kelly once did when she spotted me and Maria coming across the school parking lot.

“Hey,” he says. “What’s up?”

“Not much,” I say. “I didn’t know you worked for the Harrises.”

He nods and runs his fingers through his hair.

“How’s your summer going?”

He glances at the lawn. “It’s going.”

I scour my brain for something to talk about. For all the time I’ve spent imagining this moment, I feel like I should have a dozen things to say. But somehow, I can’t think of one.

“Kelly will be home in a few weeks, I guess,” he says.

“Yeah, Maria and I are getting together later to start planning a surprise welcome-home party. You’ll have to come. To the party, I mean.” I twirl a piece of hair and bring it up to my lip for coverage. “Has she called you lately?”

“A couple days ago. She’s doing good. Likes having her own pool.”

“Is she getting along with her father?”

“I guess so. I don’t know. I only talked to her for five minutes. She had to go.”

“Yeah, she must be pretty busy. I thought we’d be talking more, you know … since she has free nights and weekends on her cell plan. My parents refuse to let me get one, and I know they’d absolutely kill me if I called her in California.” A weird gurgling sound escapes my throat when I say California.
Quite
attractive.

Sean shrugs and looks away. So not interested. I imagine what Kelly would do, how she would handle the situation.

“It’s so hot out here,” I say. “How can you work in this heat?” I grab the front of my shirt and jerk it back and forth from my chest as a fan. I notice Sean peek down at my front, then at the house, then back at my front again.

“I have to. I’m saving up to buy a new car.”

“You are? What kind?”

“Jeep.”

“Sweet,” I say. “Will you take me for a ride sometime?” Yuck—hearing these words trail out my mouth, I decide to come up with some excuse to leave, like having to water the garden.

“Sure,” he says. “Anytime.”

“Really?”

Maybe Kelly had exaggerated their relationship. I’ve caught her blowing stuff like this way out of proportion before. Like the time she said she landed a date with Derik captain-of-the-lacrosse-team LaPointe. I later found out that Kelly’s mom did business with Derik’s parents and, as a thank-you, Derik’s dad
made him
take Kelly to a party.
Some
date.

I point a hip toward Sean and churn my hands on the mower handle, like revving a motorcycle engine. “Looks pretty good.” I make an effort to glance at the lawn, but end up staring at those calves. I can’t believe I am this close to them.

“I’ll say,” he says.

I peek up at him and he’s just … staring at me. Calm down, I tell myself, looking away, practically biting through my bottom lip. Think. What would Kelly do?

“You must be dying out here in this heat,” I say finally. I check my hair to make sure it hasn’t kinkified on me, wishing I had thick and wavy locks like the Pantene girl, or straight, Barbie doll-blond tresses like Kelly.

“It does get pretty hot.”

I pull up on my shirt to expose my tan belly, the way Kelly did once at this college rush party she made us crash, so she could nab a guy from Zeta House—like Zeta House even means anything when you’re a sophomore in high school.

“Get out!” Sean says. “You have a navel ring. Kelly never told me that.”

I thread the silver loop, pierced into my navel, with my pinkie finger and smile with pressed lips, the way I did in my sophomore class portrait, when everyone told me I looked so sweet. I got the navel ring with Kelly. She dared me, saying I was way too pure to actually go through with it. “I bet there’s a lot Kelly hasn’t told you about me.”

“Oh, yeah? Like what?”

I stare at him a few seconds, considering the situation and what I should do. Maybe I’m doing Kelly a favor. Maybe she wants to break things off with him. Maybe if she really cared anything about him, she wouldn’t have left him for a whole summer, wouldn’t have run three thousand miles away from him.

“For example,” I say, not able to hide my lip in the smile, “did she tell you I have an inground swimming pool?”

He shakes his head and wipes the sweat from his forehead with a dry patch of T-shirt. Lifting his shirt up this way, I’m able to see the tiny golden hairs that make a woven stripe right below his navel.

“Well I do,” I say. “It’s in the shape of a giant curly S.” I tug the strap of my bathing suit out from my shirt and allow it to snap back into place.
Ouch!
“That’s where I’m going right now.” I pick his water bottle up from the stairs and place its coolness on my cheeks, forehead, and also at my neck, the way they do it in sexy cola commercials. Then I take a sip. “Feel like taking a dunk?”

I almost catch a glimpse of a quivering lip, but he bites it just in time. “I really need to finish up my work,” he says. “Maybe another time.”

“Sure.” I hand him back the water bottle, and the squeeze of my grip causes water to shoot out of the straw.
So
smooth. “Sorry,” I say.

“Don’t worry about it.” He wipes the squirt from his face. “Just water.”

“I guess I’ll see you around.” As I walk away I can feel the heat of his stare press against the back of my thighs, the tanned small of my back where my shorts meet my top, and my hips as they sway from side to side, catwalk style. Before taking a turn into my backyard, I stop to glance back at him, just to check if he’s still there, watching.

He is.

I walk around the edge of the pool and dip a foot in to test the temperature. The water sparkles up at me, the surface flashing like tiny white Christmas lights. I peel the sweat-dampened clothes from my bubble gum-pink tankini bathing suit, the top of which is supposed to help create the illusion of bigger boobs. I toss the clothes to the side and imagine Sean’s expression as they fall to his feet.

But when I look back, I’m alone.

I position myself on the diving board and aim my body toward the center like a dart. Not too much splash—the right amount—a sound that would make any neighbor jealous. I swim underwater toward the deep end, telling myself that by the time I reach the end, Sean will be there, waiting for me.

He isn’t.

I paddle around on the raft for almost an hour, allowing my arms and the back of my neck to crisp and redden from the sun. Staring down at my reflection wavering back and forth in the water, I can make out my frizzy hair (wet or not), my pudgy upper lip, and through it all I can see the maze of dirt at the bottom of the pool from my filthy bare feet. I’ll have to vacuum before my mother gets home and sees.

I rest my head on the raft, and my bangs block the sun from my eyes. I feel stupid and embarrassed. Who am I to invite Sean O’Connell to join me in the pool? I’m not anybody. Not Kelly with her good looks. Not Maria with her nerves of steel.

I remember this one time when Maria, Kelly, and I went to a party in the next town over. Maria had been playing eye-tag with this cute college boy all night. Pissed that he hadn’t actually approached her by eleven o’clock, she stormed her way over to him and said all of three words: “Top or bottom?” I don’t remember what his answer was. All I remember is the sight of his clunker Camaro bopping up and down in the supermarket parking lot across the street.

Not that I would ever want to be like Maria in that way. Sometimes I think if it weren’t for Kelly, Maria and I probably wouldn’t even be friends. It’s just … it would be nice to have her I-don’t-care-what-anyone-else-thinks attitude for at least one full day—to be able to take and do whatever it is I want, and not have to worry about the consequences.

I take a deep breath and paddle over to the ladder, wondering if Sean will tell Kelly that I invited him over. I decide I should go back inside, put on some dry clothes, and go pick up Maria, so we can start planning for Kelly’s welcome-home. I should even e-mail Kelly later, tell her I really do miss her, and can’t wait until she gets back. I’ll send along that picture of us playing double-deck War so she can keep it by her bed.