Those Girls (7 page)

He looked at me with bloodshot eyes, smiled, and threw his big arms around me again, kissing my head, which spun and ached as it rested on his beating chest.

“Why do you have to be such an asshole?” As the words came out, I felt myself soften in his arms.

“Cutie, we were all joking around, and you were just drunk and freaked out. It was nothing.” He kissed my forehead. “Okay?”

“Okay,” I said, not sure if I meant it, but not sure how to justify my sustained anger, either. “I’m sorry I lost it,” I said. “I should really eat dinner on Fridays.”

He kissed me softly. “All good. We’re fine. Normally, you’re cute when you’re drunk.” His hands sailed toward my ass, and I figured out where this visit was headed.

“Did you see my parents when you got here?”

“No.” He coughed. “They were pulling out as I pulled up. I figured you were at brunch with the girls and I’d just wait for you down here.”

“Look at you.” I always got a little flutter when I felt like Sam paid attention to things, knew me in an intimate way or thought about me in a moment that I wasn’t directly in front of him.

“Who knows you, babe?”

Wrapped in each other’s arms, we stood, kissed, and nuzzled at my basement doorstep. I’d forgotten why I was supposed to be mad. He slid open the glass doors, took my hand, and led me to the black leather couch, and we just stood there by the sofa, glaring into each other’s bloodshot eyes.

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing,” I replied.

He kissed me again, unzipped my sweatshirt, and pushed me down on the couch. He poked and squeezed harder and with more violence than usual, like he missed me and needed me, like he wanted to devour me. He smelled gamy, was sticky, and, for a minute, I thought he might still be drunk. His kisses were wet and hard, but I surrendered and breathed in the comfort of his contact.

I was dry, not ready, but he stuck it in anyway. It hurt, but I needed it, wanted it. He held my wrists behind my head and grunted hot and wet in my ear. My chin pounded against his thick shoulder. He could never tell the difference between moans of pleasure and moans of pain.

When it was over, we both just lay there on my couch, naked, panting, feeling like ourselves again.

W
hen Alex wore her glasses, it meant that she was hungover or sick. But I hadn’t heard news that she had reason to be either, so I was pretty surprised to see her wearing them that day in homeroom. She sat cross-legged at the desk under the map of the world—her cheek resting on her knuckles, skewing her already-crooked tortoiseshell glasses even more.

“Glasses today?” I asked.

“Yeah, couldn’t deal this morning,” she said. I wasn’t exactly sure what that meant.

It had been about a month since my party, and I hadn’t heard from Drew. Normally, this wouldn’t alarm or surprise me, but being that there were so many wild cards in this particular poker game, I worried about who maybe knew what, why, and what they were doing about it. I didn’t panic, though. I pretended that the whole Sam thing never happened. If I never told anyone, it may as well have never happened, right? The small pits of guilt and satisfaction in my stomach would eventually go away, and if it ever came out, I’d deny it to the death. It was his word against mine, but I had faith that it would
never come to that—when a week had passed and Mollie still hadn’t shown up on my doorstep with an automatic weapon, I assumed all was clear skies, bunnies, and rainbows.

So to solidify my new path to wholesomeness and respectability, I’d decided I was going to get proactive about the Drew situation. Not to mention that Alex had been so MIA with this whole band thing, I figured dating Drew would be a good excuse for us to hang out more.

“So, have you talked to Drew?” I asked, trying to snap her out of her daze.

“I talk to Drew every day.”

“Well, has he ever mentioned anything about my party and our make-out sesh or anything?”

“He just wondered where you disappeared to after he mustered up more nutsack than he’s had in his life to kiss you.”

I sucked my cheeks. “I puked,” I said.

“I figured.” She bit the chipping purple polish off her thumbnail and spit it toward the front of the classroom.

“I was thinking he might call me or something.”

“I think he was thinking the same. You’re the one who ditched him to be groped by the lacrosse team, remember?”

Did she know something? Was that a dig? If I don’t acknowledge it, it never happened.

“So you think I should call him? Is it too late?”

“Yeah, call him,” she said, eyes closed behind her smudged, crooked glasses, words jumbled by the fist still at her cheek. “Why not?”

“And say what?”

“I don’t know! Whatever you want! He likes you, not me, remember?”

Girls settled in behind desks, and Mr. Boardman called attendance. He reminded me of poultry, the way his clammy pink skin sweat, reddened, and pimpled under the neon lights. He seemed like the kind of guy whose dark apartment was covered in afghans and cat hair and reeked of chicken fat. I said
here
when my name was called, then stared out the window and scripted our phone convo.

WEDNESDAY SEEMED LIKE A
good day to call Drew. Midweek, not too pushy, yet also not an afterthought. I waited until nine o’clock. Actually, I waited until 9:04 so it didn’t look like I was just waiting until nine o’clock.

“Hello?”

I hadn’t really expected him to pick up. I had to stop repeating the voice mail I’d been practicing and switch to actual casual conversation. I’d never really
talked
to a boy on the phone before, about anything other than when they were coming over anyway. I’d exchanged logistical information over the phone with my voice, but I’d never actually, like, sat and chatted for no reason with a boy. I didn’t totally see the point—wasn’t gossip what girls were for?

“Hey!” I dialed back my enthusiasm. If this was going to be a whole, actual conversation, I needed to pace myself. “It’s Veronica.”

“Hey… what’s going on?”

I realized I had nothing to say.

“Nothing really.” Seriously, I had nothing. “Just chillin’.”

“Yeah, me too. Was about to watch a movie, actually.”

In the past, I would have taken this to mean
come over and hook up.

“Oh, yeah?” I stalled. “What movie?”

“
True Romance
.”

“Seriously?”

I wasn’t sure if he was coming on to me or not. Was he watching a romantic comedy? Was this the way non-jocks got non-sluts? With movies called things like
Terms of Endearment
and
True Romance
? It was cute that he didn’t immediately jump to the conclusion that I was a
Fast and the Furious
type of girl. Even though I kind of was.

“It’s only the greatest movie of all time.”

“I’ve never seen it. Is it, like, famous?”

He laughed. I probably should have lied and said that I’d seen it so that he’d think I was cultured and smart like Alex. I shouldn’t have let on right away that I hadn’t seen most movies most people had. I wasn’t sure why. I wasn’t sure where I’d been when everyone else was watching
The Wizard of Oz
and
Home Alone
and
The Breakfast Club
, but somehow I got to be sixteen and just had to pretend I knew what people were talking about when they said things like, “You can’t handle the truth!”

“Famous.” I could hear him scratching his scalp through the receiver. “I don’t know what makes a movie famous. It’s just… it’s really good.”

Another awkward pause.

“I like good movies.”

“Good,” he said through a muffled laugh. “It’s good to like good things. Better than liking bad things.”

At this point, the old Veronica would have said something like,
but sometimes it’s good to be bad
, but I refrained. That was old jock-screwing, tit-flashing drunkie Veronica. New Veronica, who dated smart, sensitive, literate, good-movie-liking, good-SAT-scoring guys like Drew, didn’t revert to sexual banter for lack of witty, insightful things to say, right? So I went with the truth.

“Well, honestly,” I said, “I don’t know much about movies, let alone good movies.”

“Well, it would be my pleasure to introduce you to some good movies. And we’ll start with
True Romance
.”

“Sounds like a plan,” I said, fighting a smile.

He paused again, then said, “I’m going to go watch it. But do you want to hang out this weekend? Start your cinematic education with a Tarantino tutorial?”

He was actually asking me out on a Wednesday for the weekend? He genuinely wasn’t going to ask me to come over right then to “watch”
True Romance
. This really was something different it seemed.

“I’d like that. Call me.”

“I will,” he said. Then he inhaled deeply. I could hear the faint buzz of his TV hissing through the phone. “Take it easy, Veronica,” he said. Then he hung up.

My room, my house, was silent. I swiveled in my creaky green desk chair and looked at all the dolls and stuffed animals placed on the wicker bookshelf, where they’d been collecting
dust, untouched, for, like, ten years. Pictures of me, Alex, and Mollie were tacked all over my lavender walls. Us dolled up in too much makeup and braces blaring at middle-school dances and jumping around on the beach in not-well-filled-out bikinis at my old shore house. Me, Mollie, and Sam with cigarettes in our hands some night outside of Rizzuto’s house. Me and Alex and Liz Masterson at my fourteenth birthday party. I’d always liked her; I strained to remember why we didn’t talk to her anymore. I looked up at the fading stick-on stars on my ceiling and thought of how they were there every night, but I thought to notice them only once in a while.

S
ix weeks after the make-out that shook the nation, nothing else earth-shattering had really happened on the Drew and Veronica front. They’d each reported that they’d talked on the phone a few times and I saw them wave to each other through the fence at tennis practice, but they hadn’t hung out one-on-one (thanks to a series of successful interferences run by yours truly) and hadn’t made out again since the party. Thank god. I relished the possibility that this whole thing was really possibly going to blow over after all.

I found myself looking forward to band practice. Waking up excited on days that I knew we were going to play in the afternoon, skipping tennis so that we could start earlier and play for longer. And I really liked the guys. And I thought, it seemed, they really liked me, which for some reason made me feel more genuinely satisfied than anyone else ever liking me in the past had. Because they were different from anyone else who’d ever liked me in the past. They came from a different world, knew different things, had a different set of standards and values and ideas of what was cool and what was funny than anyone I’d grown up around. I had to shift my parameters around them,
and at the same time, because it was understood that we were inherently different, could just be myself and be different from them, and they accepted, respected, and enjoyed me for whatever brand of different I was. They made me feel like maybe I was going to be okay out there, outside of the incestuous circle of Crawford and Harwin and girls with blond ponytails and boys with roman numerals after their names. And they loved music like I did. And they knew how to talk about it and roll around in it, analyze it, and create it in ways I’d never even considered to be an option.

“So, guys,” Ned said as he tuned his guitar. “We got our first gig. We got accepted to Halloween Battle of the Bands.”

I looked at Fernando and Pete, ready for them to laugh and say, “Dude, we’re not ready!” But instead, Fernando said, “Awesome, man.”

Pete just nodded.

Everyone went to Battle of the Bands. Everyone. All my friends would be there. I hadn’t really thought about what playing in front of them was going to be like. I was so happy here in my little music bubble with Ned and Pete and Fernando. I wanted to live here, among people who understood, who were supportive, who weren’t just looking for an excuse to mock me or for confirmation that I was a talentless wannabe.

“We’re not ready,” I said. I started to sweat.

“Sure we are,” said Ned, completely unfazed. “But we should probably decide on a set list now. What do you think? Do you guys wanna do ‘If You Knew’?”

He was so matter-of-fact. So unshaken. Wasn’t there anyone he was trying to impress? Anyone he was worried about exposing himself to?

“I don’t really know that one yet,” I said, my heart still fluttering, head caving in.

“I’ll teach it to you,” Fernando said. And he came over to my keyboard and stood next to me. He placed his hands on the keyboard and hit A–A–C–G. Then he did it again and said, “A, A, C, G,” as he played. I’d never really stood this close to him before. Never realized how much taller than me he was. He smelled like Irish Spring.

I repeated after him, “A, A, C, G.”

He put his hands on my hips and shuffled me over. He nudged me with his elbow and said, “You try.”

I did.

He said, “You got it. It’s a really simple four-chord progression. You do way fancier stuff than this in your sleep, dude. The words are easy, too.”

“Words? Oh, I don’t need to bother with that,” I said. “Right?”

“We’re a band. We all learn the words,” Ned said.

I nodded, bit the inside of my cheek, and looked down at the keys, chords, and patterns running together, the song already playing in my head, my hands already twitching, itching to play it out and connect the dots.

Fernando nudged me with his elbow again and cocked his head, shaking out his brown curls. “You’ll be fine,” he said.
Then he winked and put his hand on the small of my back before he turned to his drums.

THE ANNUAL BATTLE OF
the Bands had become a Halloween tradition. It was held in a dingy old club on Franklin Avenue that was owned by the father of a Crawford boy in Sam’s class (Billy Todman; his band was playing right after ours—his band also won every year). Mr. Todman didn’t shut down the club for the event, but he made us wear
UNDER 21
wristbands, which people like Mollie and Sam found “degrading.”
Why pay ten dollars to go somewhere we can’t drink when we have places to go where it’s encouraged?
Four other bands from schools around town were playing. I threw up every morning the entire week before. If I were Mollie, I would have run around telling everyone I was pregnant.

But everyone said they’d come this year and root for me. Even Mollie promised she’d ditch the annual Dress as Your Favorite Slutty Animal lacrosse party and come, even if it meant ditching Sam. I’d believe it when I saw it. We’d been sounding pretty good in practice, and the boys were determined to make me sing at the show. Screwing around in practice was one thing, but I was not prepared to take lead vocals onstage. In front of people. In front of my friends.

We dressed as a mariachi band. I begged to wear a vest and sombrero like everybody else, but the boys insisted I go in a more Catalan/flamenco direction. I hate myself in dresses. I feel like a drag queen in them, but it was Halloween and the Cunning Runts’ balls-out, full commitment to the cause
seemed like it was going to be hilarious when we came up with the idea, so I said okay.

We stewed in a back office, hearts pounding, legs twitching, foreheads sweating, my hair slicked back in a bun, a rose behind my ear, a fake mole penciled on my cheek, and a dark premonition that my dress would split onstage.

“Alex, this is what we practice for!” Ned said. “Please stop looking like you’re about to puke.”

I couldn’t even muster a polite laugh. My heart beat in my eyes.

I sat on a swivel chair in the stale old office that smelled like a taxi. Fernando knelt in front of me. He reached out both hands and held my shoulders. “Alex,” he said, peering deeply into my bloodless face, “you are beautiful and talented and going to rock shit out there, man.”

He rubbed his warm hands up and down my goose-bumped arms.

Our flirtation had continued, sort of. At least that’s what I thought it was, but I wasn’t sure, because I had zero experience in this area. I’d thought maybe boys had liked me in the past, but it never ended up materializing into anything. Things always took a turn, and they ended up with someone else and just being my “best friend,” so I’d learned to be careful not to delude myself and accidentally think I was pretty or talented or special in any way, because I couldn’t risk being humiliated and disappointed when it turned out that wasn’t true. And even if he was flirting with me, I wasn’t going to do anything about it. Even though I’d never had an actual relationship, I’d seen
enough to know that this was the fun part: the imagining, the flirting, the possibilities. It was all downhill into boredom and jealousy and paranoia after that. Right now, he thought I was cool and interesting and fun. If he really got to know me, he’d see that I was actually not that cute and not that interesting and just a dumb insecure girl like everyone else. Or he’d become another Drew and learn to love me, but not like that. It wasn’t worth it. It was better like this. Plus, sometimes boys just like to flirt, it doesn’t mean they actually, physically, want to do and/or plan on doing anything about it. I resigned myself to stay focused on the music, assuming it was nothing.

“Please don’t make me sing,” I said, almost in tears. “I’m fine on the piano in the back. Please, just don’t make me sing. Ned should sing.”

“Is that really what you want?” Fernando asked. I felt guilty for thinking how right he looked in a sombrero.

“Fuck that,” said Ned.

“What band has a chick and doesn’t put her in the front?” said Pete.

“You’re Gwen Stefani,” Ned said. “You’re Stevie Nicks, Grace Slick, Lauryn Hill, the chick from Garbage.”

“Can’t I be D’arcy Wretzky?” I pleaded. “Let it be. Please.”

Fernando looked at me, and the tears welled again. He put his hand on my trembling face, turned, and said, “Dude, look at her. Give her a fucking break, man.”

I looked at Ned and Pete, tears still mounting, heart still racing. I now not only feared I was going to be mocked and ridiculed by my friends and the audience, but also that I was
about to gravely disappoint my bandmates, the only people who might even possibly still sort of respect me.

“Really, Holbrook?” Ned asked. “You’re really that scared?”

“I’m not scared!” I shouted, tears now fully falling down my cheeks. “I’m just not good enough.”

The twins threw their sombreros on the ground and rolled their eyes.

“Please don’t cry,” Fernando said, wiping a rogue tear from my cheek. “It’s cool. Ned will lead tonight.”

I was so embarrassed. I couldn’t believe I cried in front of them; god, I was pathetic. No wonder no one ever wanted to date me.

Ned hugged me and said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you cry. Please don’t cry. I’ll sing tonight; you just do backup, okay? Just please, please do not cry.”

I sniffled, nodded, and let him hug my limp body, totally humiliated that I had actually just let this happen. I never cried, let alone in front of boys. I was mortified but also entirely relieved that the pressure of singing, alone, in front of everyone, was off.

I reapplied my makeup and surrendered to the steady ratio of the rise of my heart rate to the building volume level of the crowd outside. Fernando twirled his drumsticks in his fingers, and the twins tuned their guitars. I needed a prop to fiddle with.

I checked my phone.

From Drew:
Good luck tonight. I’ll be in the front row screaming your name. Can I get some backstage passes?

From Veronica:
Gluck!!! Can’t w8 2 b ur #1 groupie!!!!!!!

From Mollie:
I may be late, but don’t worry. I will be
there, and I will be screaming for my favorite thrash metal pianist!

From Mom:
Sorry I can’t be there tonight, break a leg! Love you. So proud. XOXO.

I wasn’t sure whether knowing I had all this love and support made me feel better or worse. Maybe I shouldn’t have invited everyone to my first show. Maybe I should have given myself a trial run before I made a complete ass of myself in a motherfucking Chiquita Banana costume.

I thought I could faintly hear Veronica’s high-pitched giggle from the office; it was then and only then that the inhuman timbre of her voice had ever soothed me.

“You can do it!” Fernando shook my shoulders.

“We can do it!” I replied, grabbing his wrists.

I listened to the muffled sound of Mr. Todman trying to quiet everyone down outside. I heard Drew’s hoot and signature whistle.

“Please welcome,” Mr. Todman said before clearing his throat, “the Cunning Runts!”

The crowd, the large crowd, filled with faces I’d never seen, screamed and clapped and glowed under the hot lights. The faces I did know melted into a mush of wide-eyed, face-painted animals, witches, sexy policewomen, sexy nurses, and sexy Village People. Veronica, Drew, Mollie, Sam, and four of Sam’s friends who I knew, but who never talked to me, all stood right in front. Screaming, clapping, pointing, waving. I waved back as I made my way across the stage to the keyboard, hoping no one could see up my ridiculous dress.

Mollie was a murdered, blood-covered cheerleader and Sam and the rest of his friends were all vampire football players. Finally, she got to put on that cheerleading uniform: one of her dreams come true. I couldn’t tell what Veronica was. A sexy teacher maybe? Britney Spears? Drew was Jay Gatsby; there was no way Veronica knew that there was any significance to that beyond a Leonardo DiCaprio movie. I wondered if she’d pretended to.

Ned took the mic. “We’re the Cunning Runts,” he said. Whooping, hollering, whistling. My friends went crazy. I could hear all their voices, Drew’s whistle, even Sam’s barking. I almost cried again.

“Please welcome our new keyboardist and lead vocalist, Alexandra Holbrook.” And he picked up my keyboard and moved it from stage left to center stage.

Holy fuck.

“Wish her luck, everyone! It’s her first show!”

Everyone screamed and clapped.

Ned adjusted the mic. I couldn’t just
not
sing. Could I? He’d probably step in if I just didn’t sing.…

“You’ll be fine,” he whispered in my ear. “You’re the singer. You’ll see.”

I looked at Fernando, who smiled and winked at me. I looked at Ned, who was strapping on his guitar and nodding, looking confident that he hadn’t just pushed me into an impromptu crowd surf.

Ned played a few notes, and I swallowed, not sure if sound would come out when I opened my mouth. White lights shone
bright in my eyes and hot on my face. I was sure I was sweating. The crowd dimmed. They just stood there, staring at us, waiting for us to do something stupid. Waiting to laugh.

It was almost time for the lyrics. My fingers hit the keys, and I tried to remember the words. I knew the notes, but could I sing the actual words? Drew looked directly at me, smiled, and gave me a thumbs-up—the cheesiness of the gesture made me smile.

Then he turned to talk to Veronica, and I wondered what he said to her. If they were talking about me, if they had inside jokes or stories or things that I wasn’t a part of, if I was still most of what they had in common. Mollie stood there with her arms crossed, biting her thumbnail, looking nervous. Like she was nervous for me. Like she knew how devastated I would be if I screwed up, and that there was a good chance that I might.

Drew put his arms around Veronica and kissed her. Just like that, right there in the crowd, right there in front of me, in front of everyone! Right before I was supposed to start playing. He stood there behind her, kissing her, holding her, looking at me. Giving me a fucking thumbs-up.

Fuck it.

I closed my eyes, leaned into the mic, opened my mouth, and sound actually came out. Everyone cheered. Drew whistled. I couldn’t even hear myself. I just sang, like I was in the shower or my car. I closed my eyes, banged the keys, and belted out the words. People danced. We—our sound, our instruments, Ned’s and Fernando’s words—actually got people to move.