Beyond Clueless (6 page)

Basically, I needed a fairy godmother. Meanwhile, Xiang had no problem racking up armfuls of adorable, cheap clothes, often things that
I spotted first
but for whatever reason weren’t right for me. On her, they were a perfect fit.

Bitch.

Seriously, though, hanging out with her was surprisingly easy. It turns out that I’m not missing the capable-of-being-friends-with-girls gene, and even though I had expected to be sad not shopping with Jimmy—like, would I be comparing Xiang to him the whole time?—it wasn’t like that at all. Xiang was different. Not better, not worse, just different.

At one point, when we emerged from H&M, we stumbled over Xiang’s oversize shopping bags . . . and directly into a little old lady. She gasped and staggered back as the two of us dropped the bags and steadied each other. Amazingly, we had narrowly escaped a full-on sprawl-fest on the floor.

“Sorry, so sorry!” said a deep male voice. I turned to see the source.

Tall? Check. Dark? Check. Handsome? Check
plus
.

“Sorry, she can’t see very well,” he said, gently grabbing ahold of the old lady by the arm and guiding her away. “Nanna, are you all right?”

“No, it was totally our fault—” I started to say, but he had already walked away with the woman, swallowed by the crowd.

Xiang wrinkled her nose in disgust. “Can you smell that? That lady was
rank
. She had totally pissed herself.”

“Yeah, gross,” I said. “But how cute was the guy?”

“He was?” Xiang rose up on tiptoe and craned her neck, trying to catch a glimpse of him. “I didn’t notice.”

I giggled. “You are
so
smitten, it’s ridiculous. There is only one boy in your little world, and his name rhymes with . . .” Ah! Shoot, what does it rhyme with? “. . . blarker.”

“You’re such a dork,” she said, shaking her head and smiling. “Blarker? Really? You could have said ‘darker.’ ‘Starker.’ Or ‘marker’! Or even ‘barker’; it’s way better than
blarker
.”

Boy, she was pretty good at rhyming on demand! She should be a rapper or something.

Wait a minute . . .

“You are so busted!” I said, pointing an accusing finger at her. “You’ve been writing
love poems
about him!” Ha!

Xiang flushed crimson. “What? I have no idea what you’re talking about.” She lifted up her bags and started hurrying away. “So, what stores haven’t we done yet?”

L
ater that day, after dropping Xiang off at her house (and barely surviving a dozen of Dad’s “jokes” about avoiding Judgment Day), I was beat. Totally and completely drained.

Sadly enough, I had only managed to come away from our shopping run with two pairs of socks. True, they
were
cute—one pair had tiny grasshoppers right above the heel. No one would ever see them, probably, but
I
would know that my little Jiminy Crickets were with me. (OK, I
know
that was a fashion step in the exact wrong direction, but some habits die hard.)

But whatever! Even though I was a shopping failure, the trip was a social success. Xiang was cool. Unpredictable at times, and sometimes scary, but cool. When we gave up on finding any more clothes, she ducked into a bathroom to scrub her face back to normal, and I wasn’t even that bothered when she smoked a cigarette as we waited for my dad. (I mean, I made her smoke behind a bush in case my dad showed up early, but still.)

Anyhoo . . . with Xiang back home with her parents, and me figuring that Mr. James Caradonna was out with his new Gay Friends, and my otherwise not having a life, I resigned
myself to the fact that my Saturday night would be a sad smorgasbord of Lifetime movies and lame sketch-comedy shows.

Oh, well. I supposed life could be worse. I threw on my dad’s old Walk for the Cure sweatshirt from 2010 and my pink-and-gray-plaid pajama bottoms and plopped myself down on the couch in the living room. I hid a contraband bag of Twizzlers under the blanket, and fifteen minutes into my attempt to figure out some Venezuelan soap opera on channel 661, the doorbell rang.

“Mo-omm! The door!” I yelled.

(What? Her office is closer to the door. Whatever.)

I heard her keyboard stop clattering, and shuffling footsteps, and the next thing I knew, somebody physically launched himself over the back of the couch and onto Yours Truly.

“My celestial spinach leaf!”

Oh, heavens. Jimmy.

“Stop it! You’re breaking my ribs!” I screamed, laughing. He let loose with some tickling jabs.

Suddenly I heard, “Oh, I loooove
La Intrusa
!” Derek walked into the living room, with Oliver close behind. All three were decked out in snazzy shirts (Jimmy’s literally sparkled), clearly prepared for some kind of event. Derek was carrying a big backpack and sporting what must be his “going out” hair (meaning, sculpted in gel into a messy spiky pattern that must’ve taken him fifteen minutes of fussing to achieve). Oliver wasn’t wearing his cap this time, and I
was really surprised to see how cute he actually was. He had wavy dark-chocolate-colored hair that girls would kill for and big puppy eyes that were just, I don’t know,
friendly
.

Jimmy turned from the TV, asking, “So, you’ve learned a foreign language and you didn’t tell me?”

Weirdly, I suddenly felt shy, having all these boys barge in to find me in my pj’s snarfing candy on a Saturday evening.

“Oh, naw, I was just flipping through the channels . . . ,” I offered lamely.

Derek shook his head. “No, no, this is great stuff. Watch out for Vittorio—he’s a snake.”

We all looked at him with giant question marks hanging above our heads.

“What? Telenovelas are great!”

Jimmy gave me another squeeze, murmuring, “How cute is he?” He grabbed a Twizzler and started gnawing on the end of it.

“Where’s Kirby?” I asked. The night before, Kirby had totally stuck to his guns about not auditioning, despite all our best attempts to get him to change his mind.

“Oh, he’s having boy troubles. He accidentally sent a message to his Omaha boyfriend that was
supposed
to go to his Cincinnati boyfriend,” said Oliver, rolling his eyes.

Okaaay, I didn’t know how to respond to that. Luckily, I didn’t have to; Jimmy was giving me a once-over, and his disappointed facial expression said it all.

“You are soooo changing out of that . . .
arrangement
of fabric. Pronto.”

“We’re kidnapping you,” said Oliver, extending a hand. “We’re going out, and we’re paintin’ the town red!”

I gave him a doubtful look as I grabbed his hand and let him lift me from the couch. “Ah, I see. We’re going to hop into your
car
and go drink
alcoholic
beverages all night? And how do you propose we do that, exactly?”

The boys just grinned in response.

“O ye of little faith . . . ,” Jimmy muttered as he pushed me out of the room, toward my bedroom. “Now, let’s see. Let’s find you something low-cut and trashy . . .”

A couple of hours later I
was
painting the town red. One brushstroke at a time, that is, at Chippewa Elementary’s playground. Oliver, it turned out, was a photographer for the Weeksburg High school paper, and they were planning a special section on the social lives of kids at the school—you know, sex surveys and articles about attitudes toward alcohol—that kind of thing. Since school policy didn’t let the paper show actual alcohol or PDA, Oliver wanted to illustrate the section with photos of kids (i.e., us) taking expressions for “going out and partying” literally. He had prepared a big plywood sign with the words
THE TOWN
written with outlined letters, and he was taking flash pictures of me and Jimmy filling them in with red poster paint. He had already snapped pics of me walking onto a plank over the sign (“going out on the town”), several of Derek surrounded by overfilled garbage bags (“wasted”), and a few of himself about to be struck by a sledgehammer that I held
over his head (“smashed”). There were still lots of props to go: a box of fishhooks (for “hooking up,” of course), bottles of tomato paste (“getting sauced”), and a black T-shirt that simply read
BLOTTO
across the chest.

School policy did allow showing kids holding hands, though, so we had taken some shots of me leaning against Derek, our fingers intertwined. (Jimmy and I refused to hold hands. We loved each other deeply—but not like
that
!—and we were way too close to make a joke of it.)

Then Oliver insisted on taking some shots of Jimmy and Derek holding hands. “We
have
to include that,” he said, grinning.

“But won’t that look like Derek’s a bit . . . all over the place?” I asked.

To have alternatives, we also took some photos of me holding hands with Oliver.

When Jimmy first insisted I wear something
revealing
, I was like, HELL no. I’m not going to be the only girl-skank in these pictures! But in the end, I figured it would look way worse if we did it halfway, and there’s a lot to be said for being able to laugh at yourself. And, truthfully, we were having a total blast. I was wearing this absurd dress that I got for my Halloween costume last year—Glinda from
Wicked
(more widely known as the good witch from
The Wizard of Oz
). I hoped my strappy silver heels, big hoop earrings, and wide plastic bangles would mix it up enough to make it “a look.” (Oh, and
of course
my legs were clean-shaven—hello!)

But as ridiculous as the outfit was, I did feel kinda hot. I mean, I’m pretty short, so I’ll never be America’s Next Top Model, but I’m also self-aware enough to know that I’m not
hideous
—I like to think of my face as vaguely elfin, with blue eyes, a slightly upturned nose, and a somewhat pointy chin. Maybe it was the poufy hair and makeup, maybe it was the Saturday-night vibe, or maybe it was the admiring stares I got from the boys after I emerged from the bathroom, but I just felt . . . free. And the mojo was
on
(albeit wasted on nice gay boys).

As I added the finishing touches to the
N
in
TOWN
, Oliver walked up behind me and asked, “Hey, Marty, wanna make out?” I turned to see that he was holding refrigerator magnets for the letters
U
,
T
, and
O
in one hand and a metal cookie sheet in the other.

“Anytime, babe,” I replied, grinning.

Then we both realized that Derek and Jimmy really
were
making out, and that kind of sobered us a little.

“Break it up!” I called out to them. “We need a photographer here!”

Jimmy reluctantly detached himself from Derek’s lips and made his way to the camera.

“So,” I said to Oliver, jiggling the letter
T
on the tray, hoping it looked like we were arranging them.

“So,” he replied.

“Do you have your own make-out buddy?” Even in the darkness, I could see Oliver’s face turn crimson. I couldn’t help but giggle—with the camera flashes and his big brown
eyes, he really did look like a deer caught in headlights. “Other than me, that is.”

“Well, I . . . um, I was just in a relationship, actually.”

“Really? With someone at your school?”

He nodded.

“And good riddance, it’s over. Charlie never treated you right!” Derek called out, then muttered, “Jerk.”

Oliver looked a thousand more shades uncomfortable, and I could tell he was wishing for his baseball cap.

“Yeah . . . ,” he said gamely, “I guess. Kirby says that, too.”

“How long were you guys going out?” I asked.

“Two years.”

Wow. That seemed like a long time, considering they must have started going out when they were—what? Twelve? Thirteen? That’s pretty young for straights, let alone gays!

“How ’bout you? Are you seeing anyone?” he asked.

Jimmy snorted.

“Gee, thanks, Jimmy!” I said, tossing the
T
at him.

“Hey, you’d better watch it,” he said, “or you’ll be the one getting sauced, missy!”

“No, actually, it’s about time we
all
got sauced . . . ,” said Derek, opening up his backpack. He lifted out a six-pack of beer. “. . . thanks to my brother.”

There wasn’t enough alcohol there for us to get
actually drunk
, but I was soon buzzing happily. The stars were blazing above, the fireflies lazily echoed our camera flashes, and we were laughing uncontrollably, goofing around.

At some point, it occurred to me that this was a
moment
.
Like, I needed to remember this night. Maybe it was the alcohol, but I started getting philosophical about it—I mean, you hear people say all the time that high school was “the best years of their lives.” That always seemed super-depressing to me—I mean, is it really all downhill afterward?—but maybe there was some small kernel of truth to it. It’s not like I ever saw my parents being this silly with their friends—did they miss being able to do this kind of stuff? Why
didn’t
they ever get this silly anymore? Or did they?

My parents never really talked about their teenage years. Did other people’s parents talk to them about their pasts? I doubted Xiang’s ever did. Or Jimmy’s parents. Maybe it was, like, my parents knew me so well that they thought I should be able to remember their pasts somehow, too, even though that was completely illogical. Huh.