Been There, Done That (22 page)

“He’s older,” Jeremy said, pressing my hand. “He’s the adult, and it was up to him to keep things at a proper distance. He got to you at an especially vulnerable time. You were probably looking for a father figure.”

“What makes you think that?” I asked blankly.

He shrugged. “It’s pretty common after a divorce.”

I nodded. “Oh, right! The divorce. It was hard on me.” Then the tears started again. My emotions were real, even if my story was manufactured. “I thought he loved me,” I sobbed.

“This teacher—is he married?” Jeremy asked.

I barked a bitter laugh through my tears. “No way. He’s got a total fear of commitment.”

Unlike Tim, Jeremy had no qualms about sitting next to me on the bed. He put his arm around me and smoothed his cheek against my hair. All along, I’d seen him as this really nice, spectacular-looking kid, albeit the most mature of all the kids who surrounded me. Now I wasn’t thinking about his age. I was thinking about how rotten it was for me to be telling him all these lies. And about how good he smelled.

I rested my head on his chest for a moment and then stood up. “I think I need some time alone. But thank you. Really.”

He stood up slowly and looked down with the most gentle expression I’d ever seen on a man. He nodded once and ran an index finger along my wet cheek.

Once he was gone, I curled up on my bed. All that crying had worn me out.

The next day, the red sheets were posted all over campus. “GET RED HOT WITH THE RED HOTS! TONIGHT! 7:00! MCCALL AUDITORIUM! BE THERE!!!!!” They lacked subtlety, I thought.

But then again, what did I think—that the entire college would be atwitter because some pretty girls in little black dresses would be singing torch songs?

“You going to the Red Hots concert?” I asked Amber.

“And miss
Celebrity Fear Factor
?” she snorted. “I think not.”

Katherine said she hoped she would never be that desperate for entertainment. “Not that I, like, think singing’s dorky or anything. I’m sure your group’s, you know, totally fab. And your next concert? You gotta tell me about it way ahead of time and then keep reminding me, like, every day because I am
so
not organized.”

Only Jeremy showed something approaching interest: “I’ll go with you, if you want.” I told him I was meeting my singing group friends there, but that it would be nice to have him along.

I’m not sure what I expected—standing room only, perhaps, or at least a pack of people sitting at least figuratively and possibly literally on the edge of their seats. Like I said, when I was in college, singing groups were a big, big deal. Obviously, membership in the Alternative Prom Queens did not convey instant coolness status, but I just assumed the Red Hots had the kind of celebrity aura that we lacked.

The Red Hots drew a bigger crowd than the Prom Queens, but not by much; I counted fifty-one attendees before the lights went down. Troy was there, as were a fair number of other guys who didn’t look like they typically went in for this kind of thing. Still, they looked more like boyfriends than johns or pimps. Then again, what did a john or pimp look like, exactly? Did I really expect some hairy guy laden with twenty pounds of gold chains to cruise around Mercer?

I felt emotionally flooded by one of my habitual flashes of self-doubt. Face it: I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. Someone—practically anyone—could do a better job than I. Jennifer could investigate circles around me. I already knew her education articles would be better than anything I had managed to crank out. She’d sent me some e-mails outlining her ideas: a profile of an inner city child currently being bused to the suburbs; a story about a parochial school that opened its facilities to a class of autistic kids; a comparison between two kids from the same working-class high school, one of whom was now a Harvard freshman, the other a Costco clerk. I could practically see the finished articles, provocative and informative, all the pieces fitting together and building to some insightful epiphany in the final paragraph. She said she’d send me the finished product today, but I hadn’t checked my e-mail yet. Too busy, I told myself, but really, I wasn’t feeling strong enough to be shown up by a maroon-haired chick with a butterfly tattoo.

In the auditorium, Jeremy caused a stir. The other girls in my group stared at him and blushed. Then they looked at me with newfound awe. “This is Jeremy,” I said, and they nodded and said, “Yes. Hi.” He was one of those campus hunks that girls like Vanessa, Penny and Shelby—and myself, when I was their age—always assume they can only admire from afar.

I sat next to Vanessa. She leaned over and whispered, “I can’t believe you know Jeremy.”

I shrugged. “He’s my R.A.,” I murmured.

She leaned back, checked my face and squinted. Then she put her mouth next to my ear again. “Are you and Jeremy a thing? Or is he here to see Brynn?”

Now it was my turn to be surprised. “Who?” I mouthed.

“Ex-girlfriend,” she whispered, her breath warm in my hair. “One of the Red Hots.”

I turned to Jeremy. He smiled at me. I smiled back, but my mouth felt tight. Was I jealous? Or worried? I felt oddly deceived, like he should have told me about his former squeeze, although, really, it was none of my business.

The lights dimmed, and several spotlights swooped and played along the darkened stage. Very, very hokey—and it got worse. “Ladies and gentleman,” a deep voice intoned. “Put your hands together and welcome the Red Hots!”

There were whoops and whistles and polite clapping as a bunch of girls in high heels clicked across the stage to form a line.

They kicked off the set with “Mr. Sandman,” then, unbelievably, moved on to “You’re Mean to Me.” Aha! I thought. No wonder Tiffany didn’t get to be an Alternative Prom Queen. Her audition song—that is, my would-be audition song—was a standard Red Hots number. For a brief moment, I felt the fates were on my side. After all, if Tiffany hadn’t come to the audition and stolen my song, I never would have made it into the group. Then I remembered that, really, I had no reason to be in the singing group, aside from chasing a few adolescent fantasies of fame and coolness.

The girls on stage were uniformly attractive and fairly interchangeable: mostly blond hair parted in the middle, falling halfway down the back; black eyeliner, red lipstick—and, of course, the trademark little black dresses with heels. (A few girls wore panty hose with open-toed sandals, I noticed, mentally tsk-tsking.) One girl stood out as the prettiest. She had natural waves cascading through unnaturally blond hair and bee-stung lips that, were she ten years older, I’d assume were collagen-enhanced. Her nose was pert and just avoided showing too much nostril. Her eyes were huge and should have been blue but appeared to be brown. Oh, well: nothing that contacts couldn’t fix. Were Hugh Hefner here, she’d be his hands-down number one pick, but I held out hope for Jeremy. Surely his taste wasn’t so, well, obvious. I glanced at Jeremy, tried to see if he was watching anyone in particular. Then I looked back at the girls, only to see Miss October sending me some serious hate vibes.

I leaned over to Jeremy’s ear. “Who’s the blond?” As if that narrowed things down.

“Just somebody I used to . . . date.”

 
 
“Was it serious?” I asked on our walk back to the dorm.

“What?” He tried to look confused.

“You and Loni Anderson.”

“Huh?” Now he was genuinely confused. I had to watch myself on the references.

“I mean you and, um, Pamela Anderson. The blond chick. Brynn.”

“How do you know her name?”

“I read it in
Us
magazine.” He cocked an eyebrow at me, looking a little too pleased. I rolled my eyes. “Vanessa told me. I didn’t ask her. She just told me. So—how long did you go out?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Six months, a year.”

“Which was it?”

“Two years and three months.”

“Oh!” I felt an odd pang. “So it
was
serious.”

He ran a hand over his face. “It was fun at times, exhausting most of the time. We were eighteen. It wasn’t serious.”

“What, you can’t be serious if you’re only eighteen? There are some states where you can get married at fourteen. Maybe even twelve. Anyway, if things between you and Brynn lasted that long, you must’ve turned nineteen and twenty at some point.”

“I didn’t mean to put down eighteen-year-olds.” I looked at him quizzically. He continued, “You’re different. Like you’ve got an old soul or something.”

I’d momentarily forgotten that I was supposed to be eighteen. “Or something. So what happened? With you and Brynn.”

“You’re jealous.”

“I’m nosy.”

He exhaled. “We went in different directions. She got into some stuff. I just—it wasn’t for me.” He looked me straight in the eye. “She wasn’t who I thought she was.”

I looked at my hands, picked at a cuticle. “I guess that could be a real shock.”

 
 
Katherine and Amelia, laden with brown bags, got back to the dorm just as Jeremy and I did. After Jeremy left us in the hall, Katherine raised her eyebrows and smirked. “What?” I snapped.

“Nothing. We’re having a PMS binge if you want to join us.”

“Great,” I said. “I’m PMSing, too.”

I took the smaller, sloshing brown bag from her while she pulled out her key. I peaked inside. There were two bottles of wine, both of which appeared colorful. An oversized package of cheese puffs bulged out of Amelia’s bag.

Amber walked by wearing tight jeans and a baby doll shirt. How did someone that thin find tight-fitting clothes? Do jeans come in negative sizes?

“Hey, Amber, we’re bingeing,” Katherine said. “You in?”

“You don’t actually have to eat anything,” Amelia clarified.

“Thanks, but I’m going out,” she said, flipping open a shiny new cell phone. Oh, man. Now I was the only girl around without one of those things. Okay, Tiffany didn’t have a cell phone, either, but she didn’t need it as much as I did. Besides, she said she was getting one for Christmas. I’d have to talk to Tim about it.

Katherine and Amelia’s room possessed just the college panache that mine lacked. Their beds were covered in Indian-print bedspreads and piled with pillows. Near the bead-covered window, a steamer trunk surrounded by still more pillows provided a sitting area. Instead of posters, old album covers adorned their purple walls. It was nothing short of groovy.

Katherine retrieved a pink light bulb from her desk and screwed it into her desk lamp. Then she turned off the overhead lights and lit two chunky candles. “Wanna see my belly button?” she asked. She pulled up her spandex T-shirt, which already revealed about an inch of skin, and displayed her navel, newly adorned with a gold ring.

“Ouch!” I said. “Didn’t that hurt?”

“No pain, no gain,” Amelia said. “I talked her into it.”

“I’ve always wanted one,” Katherine said, looking fondly at her tummy. “It’s so sexy.”

“You didn’t go to the Human Canvas, did you?” I asked. “That place looks scary.”

“That was half the fun,” Amelia said. “Thor—he’s the owner—has tattoos everywhere, even on his face. He barely looks human.”

“So what’s going on with you and Jeremy?” Katherine asked after I’d gotten all the details of her adventures in body jewelry.

“Nothing!” I said, perhaps a bit too emphatically. “We’re just friends.”

“Mm hmm.” She pulled out the two bottles of wine and twisted off the top. “Zinfandel or peach?” she asked.

“Zinfandel,” I said, while Amelia requested peach. “He just wanted to see his old girlfriend sing tonight,” I explained, “and I wanted to see the Red Hots.”

Katherine pulled an ice tray out of her minifridge, cracked it and dropped large cubes into three lined-up wineglasses. “She pretty?”

“No, Jeremy goes in for ugly girls. Of course she’s pretty. In a slutty sort of way.” I felt disloyal to Jeremy for saying that (although it was true), but I wanted to avert any rumors about us. Katherine handed me my glass. I took a long, sweet swallow. “It’s been over for a while, though, so the coast is clear for you.”

“Me!” Katherine looked shocked—shocked!

“Well?” I said.

“Oh, I gave up on him long ago. He’s just not my type.”

I cackled. “What is your type?”

“A guy who goes for me when I throw myself at him. Jeremy’s a lost cause.” She kicked off her clogs and settled herself on a heap of pillows. “Now, Mike—he’s looking good. Nice butt, ya know. Not the sharpest crayon in the box, but he’s cute. Give me a month, and I’ll have him worshipping at my feet—not to mention doing my laundry.”

Amelia was laying out a feast on the trunk. In addition to the cheese puffs, there was canned cheese, butter crackers, chocolate kisses, Ring Dings and Twinkies. “No,” Katherine said, “
I’m
not the one who’s hot for Jeremy . . .”

Amelia’s delicate face turned red. “This is so embarrassing,” she muttered.

I gasped. “But you’re gay!”

Amelia stared at her hands. “I’m having a crisis,” she whimpered. Her pierced tongue gave her a slight lisp: “I’m having a crithith.”

“So you’re coming out of the closet?” I asked. “Or, wait—going back into the closet?”

“There is no closet!” Katherine exclaimed. “There was never a closet! She’s never even had sex!”

“With a man or a woman?”

“With anyone! She’s a big V!” Katherine made the victory sign on her forehead, although it was clear that she didn’t consider virginity to be anyone’s victory.

“I don’t think you have to have sex to know your sexual orientation,” I said. Katherine raised her eyebrows. I plowed ahead to avert any discussion of my own sexual history, which I hadn’t quite worked out yet. Also, I hoped the myth of my own homosexuality had never made it past Jeremy. He wasn’t a gossip, but living in such close quarters, things can get around. “Sex is the least of it. It’s more an issue of magnetism. Who do you like to look at? Who would you like to kiss?”