Hancock Park (15 page)

E
verything in MUN was going great. I had chosen my committee for the conference at Berkeley as well as the club's cause for the year. I knew Taylor would be a better teammate, but I chose Courtney as my partner. She seemed genuinely pleased. And best of all, we had begun fundraising to build a school for AIDS orphans in Uganda.

At the next club meeting, girls split up into their pairs, with each pair researching Uganda's stance on the topics of its committee. Mine was AIDS in Africa. I was thrilled that all the research I had done regarding the AIDS orphan school could be put to use in my committee sessions. Courtney was sitting in the desk across from mine; we had rearranged the desks into pairs. She was researching AIDS awareness
education and how Uganda felt about it.

When my cell phone vibrated against my leg telling me I had a new text message, I reached discreetly into the pocket of my skirt. Cell phone use wasn't exactly allowed during school hours. The message was from Joey:
I got South Africa!

Joey was so sweet that I couldn't help but smile. He knew that I had Uganda, so he probably assumed we could sign on to some resolutions together.

Stratfield was coming to the conference, too, and everyone wanted to arrange a dinner for our teams, mainly because their team had boys on it. Mr. Elwright and I had convinced everyone to research first, talk about dinner later.

I text messaged Joey back, asking who his partner was. I received an almost immediate response.

Your boyfriend.

My fingers started shaking. Aaron wasn't in MUN. Had he joined just because of me? What was going on?

“What's up?” Courtney asked me.

“Nothing.” I dropped the phone back into my pocket and opened up my three-ring binder. “So, have you found any statistics?”

“Becky,” Mr. E. called from his desk, “do you want to give everyone an update on the school?”

“Um, sure.” I stood up and walked to the front of the room. “Hey,” I called out, and the room went silent apart from the shuffling of papers. All eyes were on me. “So, yesterday, I received a letter back from Namaya Hellen, my new pen pal in Uganda.” I had memorized what she'd said to
me. The words had stuck out, every sentence piercing me. “Both of Namaya's parents died of AIDS, and she is the sole caretaker for her three younger siblings. Namaya is only fourteen, younger than most of us. I told her about how we were raising money to help build a school for her to go to, and this is what she wrote in response: ‘I am so happy you are giving us a school for orphans. Now we can learn and be like the other children.' We are making a difference, child by child.”

Girls started clapping.

“We're so cool,” Courtney said, daring to speak up in the full room.

 

That evening, I plopped down on my new bed in my new bedroom and dialed Aaron. “Hey. So I found out from Joey that you do MUN. Why didn't
you
tell me?” I asked, trying to hide the hurt I was feeling.

“Yeah, I sort of do MUN sometimes. It's not really a big deal, though.”

Not a big deal? “You know how important MUN is to me,” I told him.

“Yeah, but it's just a game.”

I shoved my hand into a pillow. “It's not a game to me.”

“I get it, I get it. Don't get worked up about it.” I heard rustling on the other end of the line. “I have to finish my homework.”

“Oh, okay,” I said.

What I wanted to say was, “What the hell?”

“Y
ou're jumpy,” June told me one Thursday afternoon. I'd been stressing about the MUN conference in Berkeley, which was only a couple weeks away. Plus, living at the Four Seasons was weird. And Dad had been spending more time with Darcy while Mom was spending more time yelling at the insurance company.

“No kidding,” I said, my leg shaking.

I tilted my head up. Her eyes were waiting.

“I have a boyfriend,” I said. I averted my eyes. This was my first time mentioning Aaron to June. I didn't quite understand why I had been so secretive.

“What's his name?”

“Aaron.”

“Where does he go to school?”

“Stratfield.”

“How long have you been going out?”

“About a month.”

June seemed taken aback. “Really? So why do you think you're only telling me now?”

“I don't know.” I think maybe I was afraid that telling June might somehow burst the bubble, destroy what I saw as a near-perfect relationship with Aaron (in spite of his MUN comment).

“How often do you see him?” June asked.

I put my hands underneath my thighs so that I wouldn't rip off my fingernails (one of my more annoying nervous habits). “Every weekend, I guess.”

“You know what I think?”

No, I didn't know. And I wasn't sure that I wanted to.

“I think you have trouble opening up emotionally to people.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“It all has to do with your issue with control.” Which we talked about all the time. “Which is also related to your fear of being vulnerable.”

I crossed my arms over my chest. Talking about feeling vulnerable made me feel vulnerable, naked almost, and I hated it. In telling June about Aaron, I had given up a part of myself, and I wanted it back.

“You feel as though you're the only one who can be counted on to protect you. It's a coping mechanism,
Becky. You close yourself off to people because you don't want to be hurt by them. And, if you don't open yourself up to others, you think that you can maintain control over whatever situation you're in. And, as you and I both know, you have been placed in many situations that you have seemingly no control over.”

I thought about the divorce, about Sara Elder overmedicating me, about Darcy in her too-short skirts, and about Doheny Park filling with water. I thought about the time when I was in third grade and Grandma called me fat, and how I had spent the next few months refusing to eat anything with a calorie count over one hundred. And about when I was ten and Dad's dad had died and Mom was out of town, and Dad got frighteningly drunk and I tried to take care of him and make dinner for Jack. How I forgot to go to the bathroom until late in the afternoon the next day, when Mom came home, because I was so concerned with keeping everything, and everyone, together.

“What do you mean?” I asked, nervous.

“You must see it. As a way of dealing with situations, you detach yourself and keep the real you bottled up inside, somewhere you hope it will be safe.”

I couldn't think of any good response because on some level, I knew that it was true. I wanted to tell Aaron I loved him, but I was scared. I was scared of attaching emotion to situations; I spoke about them, wrote about them, lived through them in a clinical fashion, as if I
were a reporter covering a story. Except in this case, it was the story of my life.

And I couldn't stay on the ceiling forever, acting as a bird's-eye-view observer of my own story. Someday—someday soon, maybe—I'd have to turn off the
MUTE
button and unplug the TiVo. It would be time to start living inside myself.

“You understand what I'm saying, don't you?” June said. It was less a question than a statement.

“Yeah,” I told her. “I think I do. But what am I supposed to do about it?”

“Try to think more simply some of the time. Concentrate on being in the moment and focusing on what's going on around you, and try to let that be enough. Look for good things and think about what things make you feel good.” I thought about my Bright Side Lists. I had never done very well with those.

Concentrate on being in the moment. Okay, I could try.

T
he Doheny Park apartment was going to take months to fix, but hotel life, despite the many amenities, was becoming stifling. So Mom had started looking at houses to rent. Before we moved out, though, I was going to have a party.

My mom was proud of my psychological state of well-being and wanted me to celebrate, so she said I could throw a party. And what venue could possibly be better than the Beverly Hills Four Seasons?

I was struck by the weirdness of the whole situation. I was being congratulated for not being mentally unstable. For most people, mental stability isn't something that warrants congratulations.

On Wednesday night, I went out to dinner with Alissa,
Kim, Courtney, and Aaron to plan my party. I'd told them it was one of the perks of Divorce Guilt, not a celebration of my sanity. It was a school night, but Alissa's dad's friend had just opened a brand-new Greek fusion restaurant in West L.A., and as Alissa explained, we simply had to check it out. The owner had informed his waitstaff and maître d' that we—a group of very important young people—were coming, and that we ought to be properly taken care of.

“It needs to be small. Not a party even, really. A kickback would be fine,” I explained to everyone at the table. “Maybe even just us?”

Courtney whispered something to Alissa, who subsequently lit up and said, “How about this Friday? Come on, Becky!”

I sat next to Aaron in the booth. Beneath the table, he was holding my hand. This Friday? Aaron and I had been planning on doing a movie night at Aaron's house, in his family's new screening room. I raised my eyebrows. I wanted to have the party, but I didn't want Aaron to think I was blowing off our date. He squeezed my hand a little tighter and whispered into my ear, “As long as I'm with you, whatever we do will be cool. We can always do the movie next weekend.”

I beamed a little. I was so lucky—I had a boyfriend who cared about me.

 

“I don't know what I should wear!” I lamented to Courtney as we lay in the Room, scanning celebrity magazines.

“Wear to what?” Taylor plopped down beside me.

“Um.” If I didn't tell Taylor about the party, she was sure to find out about it afterward and be mad at me. But if I invited her, it would be really awkward, wouldn't it? The Trinity weren't big fans of hers, and vice versa. And the Trinity were my best friends, not Taylor.

“I'm having this thing at my house, um, hotel, on Friday, if you want to come.” I had to mention it. I would feel guilty if I didn't. After all, her parents hadn't only split up—her father had come out of the closet as well! I gave a glance to Courtney to see how she would react. She stayed silent, staring intently at the fashion don'ts of the past week.

Taylor nodded. “Okay, sure. Where is it?”

“The Four Seasons. At eight o'clockish. You can sleep over if you want.”

Now I felt better about the situation. I was being charitable and nice to Taylor, who didn't have that many friends except for those weird drama kids.

“See you then.”

 

It was Friday, and Alissa, Kim, Courtney, and I were tearing apart my closet and their suitcases full of designer couture, searching for something appropriate to wear.

“Here, wear this!” Kim suggested, pushing a short, sequined black dress toward me. “My mom brought it home from some Oscar party gift bag last year.”

I nodded. Every time one of the Trinity brought up her
mother, I was reminded of the conversation I had overheard at the beginning of the year. It had to be one of them who had joined MUN because her mother had told her to. And who had gotten a boob job. I hadn't ever spent much time with the Trinity before this year—and hadn't been examining their breast sizes—so I really had no idea who it was.

I pulled the dress on. It hugged my curves tightly; self-consciously, I walked to the mirror. From behind me, Alissa said, “Wow, Becky. You look totally hot.”

I examined myself. I wondered if I even dared to have the thought—but, I did look good. I, brainy Becky Miller, looked hot. And, even better, the coolest girl in the grade was acknowledging it.

After we were all dressed, we teetered to the elevator and down to the lobby. Aaron arrived soon after, and we threw multicolored streamers over one area of the cocktail lounge adjacent to the hotel lobby. I had called the woman at the concierge's desk and arranged the logistics of the evening. It would be very small, I promised, and we wouldn't cause a disturbance. The woman was a big fan of my mother and, after asking me what it was like to live with such a style guru, she said yes.

There weren't that many of us that night. My mom suggested that I invite Joey, but I had said no. He was a good person to have an intellectual conversation with, but I wasn't sure that he and my new friends would mesh well. I often found that I had to stop myself from injecting
political anecdotes or literary references into my conversations with them. It wasn't “cool” to discuss academic issues outside of classes, I had learned. Besides, I hadn't been talking with Joey very much recently. Between the Trinity, Aaron, June, and my parents, I was pretty much talked out.

I wasn't that close with Taylor anymore either, but nonetheless, she came to the Four Seasons that night, trailed by her father. She wore an elegant long purple dress with a satin bodice and a petticoat underneath, which made the skirt very voluminous. I felt uncomfortable for her. Her dress would have fit better in the eighteenth century than at a cocktail lounge. When she entered the room, Alissa nudged me. “You invited her?” she said.

I shrugged. “Yeah. I guess I felt sort of bad for her.”

“That was nice of you,” Alissa said, but I could tell she didn't really mean it. “She doesn't really have any friends.”

I knew that wasn't true, that what Alissa meant was that Taylor's friends weren't worth talking to…or about.

Taylor came to sit down on a couch next to Aaron and me. Aaron put his hand forward to introduce himself to Taylor and then, smiling, said, “Interesting dress. Is it Renaissance reenactment month?”

I chuckled, but stopped myself when I saw Taylor's face.

“Thanks!” Taylor said. “My father designed it. He's got better fashion sense than most guys.” She was smiling, and Aaron didn't immediately catch the veiled insult in her words. But Aaron hadn't meant his comment as an
insult—he was just making a joke. Why did Taylor have to take things so personally?

Taylor's dad, clad in electric orange jeans and a retro blazer, explained that he wanted to get pictures of Taylor, out and about and wearing his new creation, and then he'd “skedaddle” (his exact word). Taylor posed dramatically for a few shots, and then her dad passed the camera to me and asked if I would take a picture of the two of them. I stood up from the couch so that I could capture the entire dress. “Gorgeous. Thank you, doll,” her dad said, and then he said good-bye to Taylor and left.

“Doll?” Aaron snickered into my ear. I shushed him. I understood why he was upset, though. Taylor had made fun of him, bruised his ego. And, as I was discovering, although Aaron's ego was large, it was also very fragile. I thought that was endearing.

Not long after Mr. Tremaine had gone, Courtney's stepmother, Marisa, showed up to drop off Courtney's sleepover bag, which Courtney had forgotten at home. This parent-free evening sure involved a lot of parents.

“Becky, hello, darling,” Marisa said, leaning in to give me a kiss on each cheek. “I loved meeting your mother and her friends at that meeting the other day. They're all so
fascinating.
”

Courtney shot me a look. Her pale, freckled cheeks had begun to turn pink.

Marisa deposited Courtney's duffel bag on a couch and then reached into her oversized pink purse. She pulled out
a bottle of Absolut Raspberry vodka and placed it in my hands. “I didn't know if you guys had anything yummy, so I brought a treat,” she said, winking at me. “Okay, Courtney, I'm going to head out now. Have fun with your friends tonight!” She turned around and walked across the lobby, her heels clicking with each step.

In order to avoid the awkwardness of the situation, I got drunk. I wasn't the only one to drink—everyone, except for Taylor, took turns taking swigs from the bottle of Absolut and traveling over to the bar to “order” martinis. I found that all it took was a wink and a little cleavage, and the bartender wouldn't card.

 

I woke up the next morning feeling fuzzy. I was in my twin bed wearing pajama pants but no shirt. Aaron was pressed against my back. I stood up, suddenly wide awake, despite a headache shooting through my skull. Courtney was passed out on the twin bed next to mine, which meant that Alissa and Kim were probably on the pullout bed next door. Jack had stayed at Dad's. Who knows where Taylor was. Conscious of my seminakedness, I covered my chest with one hand and reached down to grope along the floor with the other, looking for my shirt.

What had happened?