Laura Ruby - Good Girls (10 page)

"Well," he says. "Since we couldn't be absolutely positive who was in the photo, we could hardly take action. That wouldn't be fair." Mr. Zwieback clears his throat. "In any case, I'm sure you understand that you can't go around hitting people."

"Yes," I say. My voice is so low I can hardly hear it myself.

"Normally, something like this would be an automatic suspension. Considering the circumstances, however,

125 and the fact that you've never been in trouble before, I'm going to let you off with a detention."

I can't say thank you so I say "Fine."

"I will tell Mr. Chillman to stay far away from you. And I want you to stay away from him, do you under- stand? No talking, no arguing, and absolutely no hit- ting."

"It will be hard to avoid him. He sits next to me in history and in study."

"As of today, he does not. I'll inform your teachers." He meets my eyes. "I don't see the need to call your par- ents, so I won't."

At this, I do say "Thanks."

"Audrey," says Mr. Zwieback, placing his pen care- fully on his desk as if it were made of something very fragile, like plastic explosive. "I understand that some- times young people get a little overwhelmed and do things that they regret later."

"Uh-huh," I say.

"Maybe that's the situation here? Did you want to talk to the school counselor about it?"

The school counselor, Ms. Jones, is having a not-so- secret affair with Mr. Kinsey, the Honors Physics teacher. They'd been spotted coming out of the lab looking dazed and disheveled, as if they'd just performed some compli- cated experiments with combustible materials.

"No, I don't need to talk to the counselor."

126 "It could help," he says. "Maybe we could do some- thing for you."

"I'm okay," I say.

He sighs, sees that he's been beaten. "No more hit- ting?"

My new hair and this whole drama has made me feel as if my world has tilted off its axis. I don't know how Joelle can stand to live like this all the time. "No more hitting," I say.

"Good," he says. "You're a wonderful student, Audrey. I really don't want you to take a bad turn here."

I stand up to go. "Me neither."

127

S "

o much for a disguise," says Ash. "Every-

one's talking about you again."

We're sitting in the cafeteria, waiting for Joelle.

"Yeah, well. . . ," I say. I'm ignoring all the stares

and pointing. Let them point. Let them stare. I

see Cindy Terlizzi and Pam Markovitz huddled at

the corner table, and I wave cheerily at them.

128 "I'm going to call you `slugger' from now on. I'm going to call you `gangsta girl.'" Ash whips out a mirror and reapplies a thick ring of dark blue eyeliner around each eye. "I can't believe it took you this long to hit that stupid Chilly. You should have smacked him, like, two years ago." She tosses her mirror and liner into her backpack.

"I was gearing up for it," I say.

"I hope you broke his face," she says.

"Don't think so, but we can keep our fingers crossed."

"Remember how pissed off he was when you dumped him? Remember how he called you all the time? Followed you around and stuff? God, what a freaking loser."

"Yeah, and I'm the freaking loser that actually went out with him. Ugh." I shivered.

"Did he actually admit he took the picture and sent it around?"

"He didn't deny it."

"Arschloch."

Joelle flies into the cafeteria, flapping her arms like a bird. "Tayari told me what happened!" she says, throw- ing her purse up on the table. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine, Jo," I tell her. "He didn't hit me, I hit him."

"I love it!" she squeals. "If you hadn't done it--"

"You would have shoved your boot down his throat," Ash and me finished for her.

129 "Exactly," Joelle says. She thrusts her hands into my hair. "Audrey, I can't stop telling you how much this rocks! Are you going to get highlights on top? Or bangs? Bangs would look great on you! But you need to wear more eye makeup. Ash, why don't you give her some of your eyeliner?"

"Yes, Master," Ash says. Her eyes dart behind me and I turn to look. Luke and Nardo stand in the door- way of the cafeteria, talking to two junior girls. Luke sees me and his mouth stops moving for a second; I can tell that he's surprised by the hair. It's the first time in a week that he's looked at me with anything other than a total granite face.

"I guess we know now that Luke didn't have any- thing to do with that picture," I say.

"But he's still acting like it's your fault, like you did something to him," says Joelle. "Ignoring you and what- ever. Where does he get off? Oh!" she says, when she realizes the pun. There's no escaping all the sex puns-- they're everywhere.

"Forget about him, Audrey," Ash says quietly. "It's not worth getting upset about. I think he's already moved on."

I nod and pick at my fingernails. Joelle pats my elbow and shoots Luke a glare that could shatter glass.

"Look at him," says Joelle. "He was in that picture, too, but he gets to stand there, all proud of himself.

130 Probably thinks the whole world is lining up to blow him."

I rub my temples. "They pretty much are, aren't they?"

"It's a good thing that's all you did," Joelle says. "Think about how much worse it could be."

They don't know how much worse it is. They don't know because I never told them. I wanted to pretend it didn't happen. I wanted to delete it like a text message. But there's Luke--walking, talking, being--and it hurts me. We weren't going out, so why does it hurt me? It feels like this earache I had once. I didn't even know I was sick until the pain got so bad I hoped my eardrum would burst already, just to make it stop.

I want to burst now. "I wish it were all I did," I say.

"What?" Ash and Joelle say at once. "What do you mean?"

When I don't answer, Ash says, "You didn't!"

"Wait," says Joelle, "When? At my party?"

"No," I say. "Before that."

"Details!" shrieks Joelle. "I need details!"

But Ash looks ashen. "Before that?" she says.

"Yeah," I say. "I didn't tell you because, well, I don't know why I didn't tell you. I couldn't."

"Why?"

"I just said, I don't know."

"No," Ash says. "Why did you do it?"

131 "What do you mean, why?" I say. "Why does any- one?"

"But you were just hooking up!"

Her dark eyes are blazing and I'm confused. "Isn't that what hooking up is?"

"You idiot," she says. "I knew it. You're totally in love with him, aren't you?"

"No," I say. "I mean, I don't think so. I don't know," I shake my head. "I'm not sure."

"So you're not sure if you love him, but you screwed him anyway?" She keeps her voice low, but she may as well be screaming at me. Her face is stiff and furious.

"Hey, Ash, lighten up," Joelle says.

"You were hooking up just as much as I was," I say. "More."

"I wasn't screwing them all," she says. "What were you thinking?"

"So she got carried away," Joelle says. "Whatever. It happens. Chill out."

I feel tears pressing behind my eyes. I don't under- stand what's going on, why Ash is so mad at me. There's something she's not telling me. "You were with Jimmy," I say.

"I loved Jimmy." She spits the word loved. "We were going out for more than a year. It's different."

"Oh," I say. It's all I can say. I look down at the table. In the surface, someone has carved a heart with an

132 arrow through it, but the initials inside the heart have worn away.

Ash sighs, and her voice loses its awful jagged edges. "I worry about you. I don't want you to end up like that bitch Cherry. Or like them." She jerks her head at the back table, where Cindy Terlizzi and Pam Markovitz are splitting an enormous plate of cheese fries, dropping the fries into their mouths and licking their fingers.

"It sounds like you think I'm already like them," I say.

"No, I don't. But you have to be careful."

"I was trying."

"You need to try harder."

"Thanks for the advice," I say sarcastically. "How do you know what they're like, anyway?"

Ash folds her arms across her chest. "Now what are you talking about?"

"Pam. Cindy. How do we know who they've really been with, who they loved or didn't love? How do you know that Pam Markovitz didn't think she loved Jay Epstein when she gave him head at the movies?"

"That's stretching it," Joelle says.

"Maybe, maybe not." I look at Ash. "You're always saying that we should be like guys, act like guys. Does anyone ask them if they love every person they have sex with? Does anyone even care?"

"Okay," says Joelle. "I think we need to talk about

133 something else now. Like maybe the Hamlet auditions tomorrow."

"Forget it," I say. It's bad enough that the entire school believes I'm some kind of whore, but Ash? Ash? Who's known me since forever? Who came over after my first kiss with Albert Mendez because it was so dis- gusting and I couldn't stop crying and had convinced myself I must be a lesbian? Who called Chilly's mom and told her that her son was stalking me and that he needed therapy? Ash?

It's too much.

"You guys think I'm such a slut, then I guess I should be sitting with the sluts, shouldn't I? I wouldn't want you to get a reputation."

I grab my backpack, throw it up on my shoulder, and march over to the corner table. Cindy and Pam gape as I toss my pack to the floor, slip into one of the seats next to them, and pull a gooey fry from the greasy plate. "Mind if I sit here?" I say to them before popping the fry into my mouth.

Cindy and Pam exchange looks.

"What?" I say.

Holding a pencil like a cigarette between her fingers, Pam considers me.

"What?" I say again.

"What, nothing," Pam says. She flicks her eyes at the plate and shrugs. "Your share's $1.25. Pay up."

134

Salad Servers

I have not talked to Ash in four days. Joelle

is trying to help, but she's all distracted by the

Hamlet auditions and subsequent rehearsals. She

shouldn't have worried. She's the only one in the

whole school who could handle this backwards,

too-cool-for-school girl Hamlet: "To be or not to

be--so not the question." A guy named Joe, a

135 tall, sort-of-hot junior we've never met before, is cast as O, the male version of Ophelia. When they have to read together and Joelle shouts "Get thee to a monastery!" right up in his face, O/Joe looks more than a bit fright- ened, and more than a bit turned on.

Ms. Godwin makes me chief set designer, no shock to me or anyone else. She doesn't want any Venetian canals or medieval throne rooms, but she does want some sort of elaborate contemporary sets that we'll have to put on dollies. I thought that it might cheer me up, but it doesn't. I don't have any urge to start drawing up plans, and I don't feel like issuing any orders to my crew. All my usual set-design minions--geeky, pimpled boys, usu- ally in the lower grades, who have weird geeky crushes on me (worse now that there's that stupid picture float- ing around)--are disappointed. They want to know why I dyed my hair, they want to know why I don't under- stand that blondes have more fun or are at least more fun to look at, they want to know if I plan on cutting my hair off, and they threaten to quit if I do. Minions don't like change.

I don't like change, either. My dad usually helps me with my drawings, usually takes me to pick up materi- als. I don't even want to ask him. He's so weird around me now, like a feral cat or something, all jumpy and ready to spit. He works even more, if that's possible, and when he's not working at the store, he's working at

136 home, doing paperwork or housework or stupid projects that keep him from having to see me. When I find him building a bookcase in the basement, I offer to tack it for him--that is, dust it with a tack cloth before he applies the finish. Gruffly, he says, "No, no, I'm fine. Don't want you to get all dirty." I've gone from being his hon- orary son--the fill-in for Henry, the real boy that should have lived to stand by his dad's side--to this funky GIRL who does icky GIRL things that men--okay, fathers-- can't deal with. And I can't deal with it, either.

"When is Dad going to start treating me like a person again?" I ask my mom on the way to the dreaded gyne- cologist's appointment. I ask because I want to know, and also because I want to distract myself from the Ash disaster and from the stupid appointment. My stomach is hiding in my esophagus, and all of my other organs have switched places. I hate doctors, every kind of doc- tor. I hate their white coats and weird smiles and rubber gloves and sticks and needles and blank faces. I decide that if I ever have to give birth, I'm going to squat in a field like my ancestors did.

"You have to give Dad a little more time, Audrey," my mom says. "He wasn't prepared for this."

"He must have assumed that I would have a boyfriend at some point in my life."

"Yes," says my mom, with a glance at me, "but no one assumed that you would be photographed in a

137 compromising position with said boyfriend when you were only sixteen years old."

"I'll be seventeen soon."

"And," she continues, "no one assumed that the compromising photograph would be spread around cell phones and on the Internet." She's breathing sharply through her nose, so I can tell she's annoyed and upset with me for being all ha-ha about it. "At least you can't see your face. It seems like this photograph won't haunt you forever."

"That doesn't seem to make Dad feel any better."

"To tell you the truth, it doesn't make me feel much better, either, and I'm not sure if you should feel better. What's going on with you today?"

"Nothing," I say. "I just don't want to think about it the rest of my life. I don't think that's such a bad thing." This is not the way I really feel about it, but I'm trying. I change the subject. "How's the new book coming?"

"Fine," she says. Another sideways glance. "I've just introduced a new character, a delinquent teenage girl who drives everyone crazy. She chokes on an oatmeal- raisin muffin and has to be given the Heimlich."

"Great."

The doctor's office looks like all doctor's offices: that is, it's got the white walls, the bad art, and the People magazines everywhere. I have to spend forever filling out endless medical history forms with questions

138 about whether my great-great-great-great-great-great- grandmother ever had a stroke, or maybe a hangnail. Finally some nurse comes to get me. After I get weighed and blood-pressured, I have to get naked, put on this little paper cape that ties in the front and a teeny paper blankie over my lap, and sit shivering in a freezing office. Who thinks this stuff up?

There's a knock on the door, and the doctor marches in. He's followed by the nurse who took my blood pres- sure, a grumpy woman who looks like a giant potato with legs.

"Hello, Audrey. I'm Dr. Warren," he says. "You already met Nurse Thrane."

"Hi," I say. He shakes my hand and I check him out. Dark, balding dad type. I decide that this is better than a blond, not-balding hot type, at least when it comes to gynecologists.

He pulls up a black stool and sits. "So it looks like we're going to do a general exam today."

"Great!" I say, weirdly. "I mean, fine."

"Looks like your blood pressure is good. Any trouble with headaches?"

I shrug. "Not really. If I haven't had enough sleep or if I have a cold or whatever, sometimes my head hurts a little."

"Have you ever had a migraine? A severe headache?"

"No. Never."

139 "Any relatives with migraines?"

"I don't think so."

"Problems with menstrual pain? Cramps? Back- aches?"

"No."

He scribbles something in a file folder.

"Any problems with your breasts?"

Like what? Having them sneak out at night? "No."

"Are you sexually active, Audrey?"

Sigh. "I was."

He doesn't look up from the chart. "And when was that?"

"About a month ago."

"This is intercourse? About a month ago?"

"Yes," I say.

"Birth control?"

"I . . . he . . . we used a condom."

"Have you ever been pregnant, or are you concerned that you're pregnant now?"

To quote Ash: Jesus! "No," I say.

"When was your last period?"

"Uh . . ." I mentally count the days. "Two weeks ago?"

"And how many sexual partners have you had?"

Oh, thousands. "One."

"Okay." He stands and goes to the sink to wash his hands. While he's lathering up, he says, "I'm going to

140 check your breasts first." He dries his hands and then slaps them together, rubbing them, I suppose, to warm them up. Then he slips underneath the paper thingy I'm wearing with his scratchy fingers, and presses all around my boobs--quite possibly the strangest medical thing that's ever been done to me. The nurse watches, yawning.

"Everything's the way it's supposed to be," he says. He pulls two rubber gloves out of a box on the counter and puts them on. They're exactly the same brand of glove, I see, that I bought at the beauty supply store. This seems all wrong to me.

"Now I want you to lie back on the table and put your feet in these stirrups."

Put my feet up in what? Are you freaking kidding me? I do what he says, though, focusing hard on the ceil- ing. It's one of those white cork ceilings with all the crazy pockmarks. "Audrey, I need you to open your knees."

"Sorry," I say. I'm blushing, but the nurse still looks bored as she hands the doctor what looks like a huge plastic salad server shaped like a duck's bill.

"This is a speculum, Audrey," he says. "I'm going to insert this and get a better look at your cervix, okay? You might feel a bit of pressure." I feel something pok- ing at me. "Audrey, try and relax."

YOU RELAX!!! I take a deep breath. The salad server forces its way in. It doesn't hurt, exactly, but it's

141 weird and I hate it. "Ow," I say.

"Are you okay?" he says.

No. "I guess."

"You're doing great, Audrey." He looks around inside me for a while. "I'm going to take a swab of your vaginal secretions."

Ew. "What for?" I say.

"Just to make sure there's no infection. It's routine."

Infection. Right. How nice.

He pokes around some more. "Everything is looking healthy, Audrey. I'm going to remove the speculum now. Then I'm going to insert two fingers to check your ovaries and fallopian tubes, all right?"

NO! NO! NO! "All right."

He stands and sticks his fingers inside me while press- ing down on my stomach from the outside. He looks thoughtfully off into the air as he does this, as if he's composing poetry or writing songs in his head. I think he's a terrible person. Only sick and terrible people would want to do this for a living.

"Okay," he says. He pulls his fingers out and whips off the gloves while Nurse Potato adjusts the stirrups and helps me to sit up again. "Though we'll make sure of it with some tests, everything looks fine to me."

Exhale. "I'm glad," I say.

He plunks down on his trusty black stool. "Now, since you are sexually active, I do want to talk to you

142 about a couple of things. You told me that you used a condom, and that's good. Condoms can do a lot to pro- tect you from a whole host of sexually transmitted dis- eases like chlamydia, gonorrhea, HIV, and genital warts."

"Warts," I say. "I don't like the sound of warts." My hands twist in my lap, crinkling the paper blankie. I know about warts and about a lot of other stuff, mostly from books and the Internet, but also from Mrs. Hurtado, our ninth-grade Sex Ed teacher. Mrs. Hurtado was fearless. She showed us a movie of a live birth that looked so bloody and painful it had every girl surrounding her desk afterward, carefully examin- ing all the methods of birth control she'd brought with her. She would answer any question we had with com- plete seriousness, no matter how dumb, like Isn't birth control the girl's job? or, You can't get pregnant your first time, right?

"Warts are one thing," the doctor is saying. "But there's also some evidence that condoms might offer protection against something called HPV, human papil- lomavirus, that can cause cervical cancer down the road if it's untreated. I want you to keep using condoms, Audrey, whenever you have sex. Nonlubricated con- doms for oral sex, too. And I want you to have regular checkups."

He makes it sound as if I were having sex every other

143 day. I'm not sure I'll ever have sex again. "Okay," I say.

"Now, condoms are fairly effective in deterring preg- nancy, up to ninety-seven percent. But only if they're used correctly. Make sure you read the package yourself; don't leave it up to your partner to figure everything out. And I'd recommend another form of birth control for you to use in conjunction with condoms. You're young and healthy, so I think the birth control pill would be an excellent choice. You can also consider Depo-Provera shots. Ninety-nine point seven percent effective."

Shots? I need shots? "I don't want shots," I say.

He smiles at me, a bland, just-giving-you-the-facts smile. "You don't have to get shots. You don't have to get anything. But I do want you to remember that no single birth control method is one hundred percent effec- tive, okay? Not condoms, not pills, not anything. Only total abstinence works all the time."

Duh. "I know."

"So then you can understand why we think it's a good idea for you to select a birth control method to prevent pregnancy and pair that with condoms to pre- vent STDs."

"Yes," I say.

"The nurse will give you some information to take home, and you can think about it. Are your parents with you?"

"My mom is here."

144 "Then maybe you can discuss it with her to come up with the best option for you."

"Okay," I say. Now I think he's terrible and insane.

"Do you have any questions?"

Yeah, when can I get out of here? "I don't think so," I say.

"If you have any problems or any questions, I want you to call me right away. We'll be happy to help you." He smiles again, this time in a friendly and sort of fatherly way, and he doesn't seem so terrible. "We'll leave you to get dressed now. The nurse will be back in a few minutes to take you to the waiting room. Remember, you can come back or call at any time if you want to discuss birth control options or if anything else comes up. Other than that, I'd like to see you in a year for a checkup."

"Okay," I say.

"Good." He shakes my hand one last time, and then he and Nurse Potato are out the door. I rip off the flimsy outfit and throw on my clothes. My head is spinning with visions of condoms and warts, swabs and shots. When the nurse takes me back to the waiting room and I see my mother sitting there and I hear her murmur "How was it?" I realize something. If every teenager had to have this exam, if guys had to have some giant duck- billed salad server shoved up their butts on a regular basis, if every high schooler had to hear the words

145 WARTS and GENITALS and CANCER in the same freaking conversation while wearing nothing but a cou- ple of napkins, no one would ever have sex again, and that could be the whole point.

146