Laura Ruby - Good Girls (6 page)

"No," I said.

"You don't? I thought you were some kind of genius."

"Do you know any of the names?"

"Let me see," he said, pointing up at the sky. "Okay. Right there. That's the South Star."

71 "You mean the North Star?"

"No, I mean the South Star. And that's the Big Dogpile. And that's the Little Dipshit."

It was dumb, but I laughed anyway. As I laughed, he grabbed one of my hands, twining his fingers in mine. He raised himself up on one elbow to look at me. I could almost feel the muscles in my eyes working to make my pupils bigger, so that I could take him all in.

His fingers tightened. "You're a good card player."

Out popped "I'm good at a lot of things."

"And that's good to know." Suddenly he was kissing me. He was soft and slow at first, nibbling and search- ing to the point where I wanted to grab him by the ears and make him kiss me like he meant it, already. And then he did, all hungry, as if the inside of my mouth and the whole of my tongue were made of strawberries or ice cream or something equally sweet and delicious. My head swam and I was grateful that I was already lying down. If I'd been standing, I'd have swooned like a char- acter from a Victorian novel.

After a while, he pulled away and touched my lips with his fingers. "What are you smiling at?"

"I'm smiling?" I said.

"You're smiling."

The late-August-evening magic-fairy nice dust made it easy to be honest. "I like kissing with the Little Dipshit shining down on us. Twinkle, twinkle."

72 He laughed, a short bark of surprise. "You're sort of a weird girl, aren't you?"

"So?"

"So," he said. He gathered a handful of my hair and brought it to his nose. "Princess hair," he murmured. "Smells like honey." He combed through it with his fin- gers, twirling and twisting the strands. Then he pressed his lips to my ear. "You like the whole kissing thing, huh?"

I dared to slide my hand up the underside of his arm, to feel that soft skin. "Yes."

"What's that saying that actors have when they rehearse a scene? Something about doing it again with emotion, or whatever?"

I thought a minute. "`Once more, with feeling'?"

"That's it," he said. In one smooth motion he was on top of me, settling in like a puzzle piece. He kissed me again with so much feeling it would have brought a dead girl back to life.

73

I t's Wednesday after school at the Drama

Club. I am trying to keep my mind blank by

repeating the word "black" over and over again

in my head. It doesn't work. People are surprised

to see me sitting in the auditorium like it was any

other day. I get some smirks from some of the

freshmen and sophomores who don't really

74 know me, but my friends say things like "Um!" "Oh!" "Hey!" or "Hi!" "Umohheyhi": Native American for "How the hell can you show your face in public????"

To me, the auditorium isn't public, it's like home. A huge, echoey home with squeaky old seats that are about as comfortable as lava rock and a moth-eaten blue velvet curtain pulled back to expose the naked, strangely sad- looking stage. There's a small stack of papers sitting right at the edge. People point to the stack of papers and whis- per to one another, but no one moves to take a peek.

Joelle sits in the seat next to me. Her eyes are red from crying. For me. "Dirtbags," she whispers.

"Who?" I say.

"The dirtbags who took that picture," she says. "Of my friend. At my party. If I ever find out who did it, I. Will. Kill. Them. I will personally shove my purple boot down their throats." She extends one of her long legs and displays the purple suede boot, which has a four- inch spike heel a drag queen would envy. If it were any- one else talking, anyone else crying, I would think it's an act. But this is Joelle. She means everything she says. At least at the moment she says it.

A geeky little freshman with carroty hair glances back at us. "What are you looking at?" Joelle snaps. She pokes me in the arm. "I wonder which of these skinny children are here to try out for the play? I'm sure we're doing Antigone. Ms. Godwin does Antigone every four

75 years. I don't have to tell you that the part belongs to me. No one here can do a better Antigone, I don't care what color their hair is!"

"You're right about that," I say. I'm not here for the tryouts, I just want to know what play we're doing so that I can think about the set. I've worked on every set since I was thirteen years old and too shy to audition for a part. Sometimes I have a big job, and sometimes it's a small one. Today I'm hoping for an opera set in medieval Venice so that I'm forced to figure out how to build a bunch of working canals, so that I don't have a single brain cell free to think about anything else. Not one synapse firing off a teeny tiny replica of a blow job over and over again. Not one stray neuron pulsing about Luke DeSalvio and how he's a hero and I'm a whore.

Joelle reaches into her bag and pulls out a list. "Here are some more names I came up with." Joelle's last name is Lipshitz, which, she says, is unacceptable for a human being, let alone an actress. She's been trying to come up with something glam and different, something she will adopt when she gets out of high school and runs off to New York City to become famous (or when her dad drives her to and from the city to become famous).

I look at the paper. She's written:

Joelle Paris

Joelle Roma

Joelle Asia

76 Joelle Nepal

Joelle Geneva

Joelle St. Petersburg

Joelle Quebec

"What do you think?" she says.

"I'm sensing a theme," I tell her.

"Any favorites?"

"You forgot Joelle Boise. Or Joelle Long Island."

She whips the paper from my hand. "You are totally too traumatized to take me seriously right now. I swear I'm going to kill whoever did this to you. I'm going to shove this boot down their throats."

"You already said that."

"Then I'm going to run them over with my car."

"You mean your dad's car."

The carroty redhead in front of us risks another glance, and Joelle shrieks, "You, too, if you don't stop staring at my friend! She is not a zoo exhibit!"

Of course, everyone turns around and stares at me as if I were a zoo exhibit. Joelle tells them all to STOP STARING!! JUST STOP!! Just then the side door swings open and Ms. Godwin marches into the auditorium. Ms. Godwin is aptly named, tall as a goddess, with a low oboe voice that sounds as if she's talking through a tube of wrapping paper. She is wearing what she always wears, a long, flowing top and skirt and sharp-heeled character shoes that snap when she walks.

77 "What I would like," she says as she moves to stand in front of the stage, "is for you to stop shrieking, Ms. Lipshitz. They can hear you in Sri Lanka."

Everyone settles down--including Joelle--and waits for Ms. Godwin to tell us which play we'll be doing, and thus what our lives will be like for the next two months. But first we have to get through her customary "wel- come" speech. I mouth the words with her:

"Hello. I am Victoria Godwin, Ms. Godwin to you. Ms., not Miss, not Mrs., Godwin. For those of you who are new to the school or perhaps new to this program, I am the drama teacher. Which means that I am the queen of this auditorium. What I say goes. You don't have a vote and you don't have influence. When I select some- one for a part, it is that person's part. If I select you for the set design team, then the set design team is where you belong. Begging me will not change any of my deci- sions, nor will flattery, tantrums, gifts, or flowers. You will attend every rehearsal you need to attend. You will perform every task you need to perform. I will not police you, I will not scream at you, I will not call your parents, I will not ask for hall passes, I will not demand proof of your citizenship. Why? Because I don't care. However, if you show up for a rehearsal and you don't know your lines, you're out. If you're on the crew and you don't pull your weight, you're out. If it is your job to place props during rehearsals and we find you behind the

78 curtains making out with your boyfriend instead, then you're out."

Someone giggles, and Ms. Godwin stares stonily. "Have I said something funny?"

The giggles stop.

"Now, I realize that some of you may be expecting your typical high school drama, but I want to do some- thing different this season."

Next to me, Joelle inhales sharply.

"I have a friend, a playwright, who has graciously allowed me to license a wonderful, humorous piece of work based on Shakespeare's Hamlet."

"Great," murmurs Joelle. "Ophelia. She's such a wimp. I hate playing wimps."

"The play is called I Am Hamlet, and it turns Shakespeare on his angst-y little head. In this play, Hamlet is a woman. Of course, the weight of the play will fall on Hamlet's shoulders. I'm going to need a very strong actress to carry this." Ms. Godwin's eyes briefly flick toward Joelle. I don't have to turn my head to feel Joelle's grin. "But do not despair. There are a number of juicy roles for both men and women in this production, and I will need all of you." Ms. Godwin whirls around and taps the pile of stapled packets stacked neatly on the edge of the stage. "This packet contains a summary of the play and a description of each role and key scenes. Auditions will take place next Tuesday, promptly at

79 three thirty p.m. No excuses. No sob stories. No whin- ing." She smiles tightly, gathers her fluttery, feathery, flowy clothes around her, and proceeds right up the aisle past us, shoes clicking clicking clicking till she reaches the very back of the house. After the door slams behind her, everyone crowds the stage, grabbing for a packet.

Joelle comes back with two: one for her and one for me. "Hamlet!" she says. "This is so cool!"

"Yeah," I say. "As long as she's doesn't want me to do some minimalist thing. Like the stage is set with one coffee table and a telephone or whatever."

"Who cares?" she says, flipping through the pages of the packet and scanning the lines. "You never minded before."

"I need something to build. Venetian canals. Castles. Throne rooms. The Vatican. I need to be distracted, Joelle."

"Bastards," Joelle murmurs, and squeezes my arm, but her heart's not in it. Her heart's with Hamlet, brood- ing somewhere in Denmark. She turns a page in Ms. Godwin's packet. "To be or not to be," she says, her voice soft. "That is the question."

I sigh. "One of them, anyway."

After Drama Club I start to walk home, but I'm stricken with the thought that my mom might be waiting to talk to me about sex and how beautiful

80 it is with the right people. She's bound to have a speech ready by now. Maybe even some websites she wants me to visit, the name of a gynecologist she's made an appointment with, or a few "intriguing" books--Sex in the City: Maintaining Your Selfhood in a Corrupt Culture; Things My Mother Never Told Me; Sugar and Spice: Teenage Girls Talk about Life, Love, and Sex.

My mom. My dad. Books by PhD's. Doctors with gloved fingers and neutral expressions and why-don't- you-tell-me-about-it's.

I turn around and walk instead to the strip mall down the road from the school. There's not much there: a card store, an ice cream store, an electronics store, a beauty supply store, and one of those places that sells Christmas trees and ornaments in the winter and lawn furniture and Frisbees in the summer. We used to come here a lot in sixth grade to hang out at the Carvel ice cream store and make fun of the names on the cakes, which sounded vaguely porn-ish to us easily amused pre- teens. The Hug Me the Bear cake. The Fudgie the Whale cake. And our favorite, Cookie Puss, which was some unidentifiable mystery alien creature with an ice cream cone for a nose. Cookie Puss! Cookie Puss! we'd growl over and over again, until the ice cream guy chased us out of the store.

I'm not in the mood for ice cream. Instead, I decide to

81 wander up and down the aisles of the Christmas place, poking at the fake trees and the lighted candy canes. They have an entire section devoted to Nativity scenes of all sizes and shapes, and I go there to check them out. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph in plastic; Jesus, Mary, and Joseph in wire; Jesus, Mary, and Joseph in wood. I say "hey" to all the Jesuses. Hey, baby. It's what I used to say to my mom's stomach when she was pregnant with Henry. I don't remember it; I read about it in a notebook I found hidden at the back of my mother's closet. She was only pregnant for five months before she lost him. The last entry in the book, the entry my mother wrote a few months after Henry died, said that I kept patting her belly, saying Hey, baby, Hey baby, Hey baby. She wrote that the last time I said it, my father put his face in his hands and cried. She wrote that I never said it again.

I get tired of walking around, so I slump down on a bale of hay in one of the life-sized Nativity scenes. I glance around. Mary seems smug, Joseph seems stunned, and baby Jesus looks like a glowworm in a blanket, but the bale of hay is the perfect place for a girl to hide from her mother, her father, the world. I gather my hair up in a loose bun at the back of my head, yank one of the elastics I always wear around on my wrist and wind it around the knot. Then I dig in my backpack for Much Ado About Nothing and start reading.

"You can't sit here," a voice says.

82 I look up, confused. I must have been sitting for a while, because my butt's asleep. The guy standing over me is maybe fifteen, but I don't recognize him. He's wearing a uniform vest the red of his numerous zits. His name tag says "Walt."

"What's up, Walt?"

Walt is short and skinny, with a very prominent Adam's apple. He also has a serious hair-gel fetish. He's probably the one who set up the Nativity scene that I am ruining with my presence. I'm pretty sure I'm not holy enough to guest-star in any Nativity scenes.

"You can't just sit there," he warbles. "This isn't a library."

"I know that," I say. I wonder if his hair is stiff enough to pop a balloon. "I was just resting my legs."

"Yeah, well. You can't do that, either." He scratches at a pimple on his nose. "You've been back here for forty-five minutes."

"I have not," I say.

"Have too."

I don't feel like getting up. I don't feel like talking to Walt. I don't feel like talking to anyone. "There's no one in the store. What do you care if I sit here or not?"

"I don't care," Walt says. "My boss cares. He told me to tell you to leave. He thinks you're going to steal something."

"Like what?"

83 "How should I know?" he says.

"Think I'm going to smuggle out the baby Jesus over there?"

"Maybe."

"And why does he look like a glowworm, anyway?"

"Like a what?"

"Never mind," I say. I don't know why I'm torturing Zit Boy. It's not his fault that I'm in a pissy mood and that his boss thinks I'm going to make off with the Virgin Mary. I shove my book back into my bag and stand up, my butt tingling painfully. "I'm going."

"Good," he says.

I feel a weird little snap at the back of my neck, and suddenly my hair falls down. I shake my head and pluck the broken elastic off my shoulder. I'm about to fling it to the floor when I see Walt's face. He's smiling.

"What?" I say.

"Nothing," he says. But he's still smiling.

"What?" I say again, louder.

"You're that girl, aren't you?"

"I'm a girl, if that's what you mean," I say, though I know. Of course I know.

"That senior girl. I saw the picture," he says. The smile is now a smirk. There should be some sort of law against smirking. You should have to be at least eighteen to do it. It should require a license. "Everyone at school has seen that picture," he's saying.

84 "I don't know what you're talking about," I say. But he's watching me tug at my hair, and he doesn't believe me.

"Sure," he says.

This kid doesn't even shave yet. He probably has a penis the size of a pencil eraser. "What are you talking about?" I say, practically shouting.

"Nothing," he says. He's starting to enjoy himself. He's bouncing up on his toes to make himself taller.

"That's right, nothing," I say, practically spitting. "You know nothing."

Bounce, bounce, bounce. God should strike him dead. Or at least explode all his zits at once. "You need to look into something for those pimples," I tell him, turning to leave. "I saw a commercial on TV for some stuff that might help."

"Maybe you should be on TV. Or in one of those movies. You'd get paid, anyway," he calls after me. I walk faster, but not fast enough. Just as I make it to the front counter, where some gray-haired man is frowning sternly, I hear Zit Boy call: "Or maybe you like to do it for free?"