Laura Ruby - Good Girls (8 page)

A t my high school, the DeSalvio boys are

legend. First there was Jeff, four years ahead of

Luke. Tallest of the three, Jeff had wheat-blond

hair, midnight-blue eyes, and a butt you could

bounce quarters off of. Girls--and, rumor has it,

more than one teacher--practically threw them-

selves at him when he walked down the hall. But

100 Jeff was the nice one, the committed one. He dated a pretty but not gorgeous girl named Anna Pritchard for the last three years of high school, and on into college. We all figure they'll be married and procreating a month after they get their degrees, propagating the luscious DeSalvio genes to torment future generations of women.

After Jeff came Eric, otherwise known as Eric the Red because of his looks-like-it-came-from-a-box-but- didn't red hair and his wild Viking habits. Eric went through girls like Kleenex but was so smooth about it that no one seemed to mind too much (or they were so busy fighting each other that they forgot to get mad at him). Eric was thrown off the football team after he was caught on the field after dark with one of the cheer- leaders. He claimed he was helping her practice some dance moves, but since none of the cheerleading routines required that the cheerleaders go bottomless, no one was buying it.

And then there was Luke. Even though we'd spent years speculating, no one really seemed to know him. He was just as popular as his brothers, but you couldn't pin him down--he wasn't exactly straight-edge like Jeff and he wasn't exactly wild like Eric. Rumors flew about who he'd been with at which party, but he rarely hooked up with anyone for long and he never offered up any details himself. People whispered: He's way hot, but he's a huge player, he spent two hours locked in a walk-in closet

101 with Barbara Morganstein and then the next day asked Georgia Herman to the spring dance, he's really nice once you get to know him, but he doesn't care about anyone but himself, avoid him like the plague but do anything to get his attention. Come here, go away, come back, wait!

After Ash's end-of-the-summer-party and my first marathon make-out session with Luke, I understood the confusion. I was the confusion. I walked around as if I'd been hit in the head with a falling piano. My speech was garbled as a drunk's, I tripped over my own feet, I ran over our garbage cans during a driving lesson. My mother became terrified that I had a vision problem or perhaps some kind of spectacular, inoperable brain tumor after she watched me walk smack into a closed door. For the third time. (I ended up at a specialist's.)

I couldn't think of anything else but Luke. The way he smelled. The way he kissed. The way his hands felt combing through my hair. My skin alternately tingled and flamed, and my bottom lip swelled up to twice the size because I couldn't stop nibbling on it.

I was insane.

Ash was like, "Verdammt. You're acting like you've never been with a guy!" I had, but not in the same way. Not even close. Before Luke, it was all so technical. Did you kiss? Did you French? For how long? Did he try anything else? Did you let him? Would you let him go

102 further? Even when I was in the middle of kissing some- one, even when I liked that person or thought I did, my brain was always chattering, chattering, chattering: I hope my breath's okay God why is he flicking his tongue so fast it's making me dizzy what time is it I hope it's not after eleven because my dad will kill me if I don't get home by eleven is he trying to get up my shirt already why didn't I wear my nice bra why did I have to wear the stretched-out old cotton one it makes me look all droopy like an old lady maybe Mom will take me to get some new bras and underwear too maybe this weekend but I can't go this weekend because I have to write my "Scarlet Letter" paper and I have a math test on Tuesday and I don't think I even want him up my shirt it tickles he's an idiot he can't work the clasp and I want to laugh and what if he tries to get in my pants I have my period oh God YUCK!!

Kissing Luke, I'd felt the opposite, my brain going all hushed and quiet, murmuring things like oh and wow and hmmmm. Ash got worried. She told me about his rep, she told me not to get too crazy, she told me that just because there was one hookup didn't mean there would be another one.

The second time came just a week after the first. Pool party at Christina Webster's. Christina worked with Ash on the school literary magazine, where they selected the best nobody-understands-me-I-am-lost-in-the-darkness-

103 so-must-wear-chains-and-way-too-much-eye-makeup poems from the dozens upon dozens that were submit- ted every year. Christina was not particularly lost, not particularly dark, and didn't wear nearly enough black eyeshadow for Ash's tastes, but she did have a large in- ground pool in her backyard and parents who weren't all that interested in her, so Christina found herself with a lot of new friends every summer.

Anyway, me and Ash and Joelle showed up around three o'clock. Joelle immediately peeled down to her dental-floss bikini and demanded that we help her put on her sunscreen. (No real tans for Joelle; she claimed that they ruined the skin.) Two girls lotioning up an almost-naked, soon-to-be movie star is enough of a show for any high school guy; we were instantly surrounded by about eighteen dripping-wet boys in long board shorts, demanding to know if we wanted anything--cof- fee? tea? or me? Ha!! Joelle batted her eyelashes and Ash rolled her eyes while I scanned the party for Luke. I was desperate to see him again, thought I might just hyper- ventilate and die if I didn't. And then there he was, climbing out of the deep end, and I thought I might hyperventilate and die anyway. His shorts were a neon shade of orange that somehow perfectly set off the golden tan (I guess he didn't think that tans ruined the skin) and the sun-bleached hair. The body, that not-too- big, not-too-small body, was fatless and sculpted, the

104 most delicious-looking abs in the known universe rip- pling from his nearly hairless chest down into the waist- band of his bathing suit. Luke reached up and slicked his wet hair from his face. I nearly toppled out of my chair when I saw that the delicate undersides of his arms were a shade paler than the rest of him.

I felt a sharp elbow in the ribs. "Stop staring," Ash hissed. "You look like some kind of maniac stalker."

"She is a maniac stalker," Joelle said. "You missed a spot on my shoulder blade. I can feel it."

"Then you can just do it yourself," Ash said, throw- ing the bottle of sunscreen on the ground next to the deck chair. "This scene is straight out of a porn flick."

"Did somebody say `porn flick'?" one of the eighteen guys said.

"Yeah," said Ash. "It's playing at the shallow end. Why don't you dive for it?"

"And what do you know about porn flicks, young lady?" said Joelle. She lifted her hand and waved at Luke, who waved back.

"Don't wave," I said, under my breath.

"Why not?" Joelle whispered. "Don't you want him to come here?"

"Don't talk so loud," I said.

Joelle wasn't listening; she was waggling her fingers at Luke, motioning him over. "Audrey, hurry up and take off your shirt so he can see your bikini."

105 "Joelle!"

Another of the eighteen: "Yeah, take off your shirt, Audrey."

"My God," said Ash, who was wearing a beater and cutoff jeans that she would swim in.

"What?" said Joelle. "He shouldn't see her bikini? What's wrong with her bikini? I helped her pick it out."

"I'm not sure I want anyone to see my bikini," I said.

The eighteen: "We want to see it!"

"Will you losers get the hell away from us?" Ash snapped. When Ash snapped, people usually obeyed. There were a few grumbles, but the eighteen drifted away.

I didn't have time to take off my shirt even if I'd wanted to; by the time the eighteen cleared off, Luke was standing at the end of my lounge chair.

Joelle put a palm over her eyes and squinted up at him. "Hi, Luke, what's up?" she said brightly, as if they'd been dear friends since birth.

"Hey, Joelle, not much," he said. He nodded at Ash. "Any new piercings?"

Ash smiled. "Not today."

"I think Nardo's around here somewhere, in case you're interested."

Ash shrugged; Nardo had been calling and texting her since Joelle's party, but she was ignoring him. She said that it was because he was too straight-edge, she

106 said she preferred her boys in a bit of guyliner, she said she didn't need a boyfriend, but I thought it was because she was afraid to be hurt. She got pissed when I'd said so, so I wasn't planning on going there again.

Luke smiled at me, but didn't say anything. He sat down on the end of my chair so that I had to bend my knees a little to make room. "So, Joelle," he said, "how's business? Any new TV shows?"

Joelle wrinkled her pert little nose. "No. Not that I haven't been auditioning every thirteen seconds. My agent has a lead on a commercial spot, some perfume or whatever, so maybe something will happen with that. I'd rather not do commercials, you know, but work is work. Everything counts."

"I guess you have to sacrifice for your art," said Luke.

Joelle clutched at her chest. "That's so true!"

Without looking at me, Luke reached out and put his hand around my ankle. His thumb gently rubbed the knob of bone that stuck out. My breath caught in my throat.

Joelle's eyes flicked to my ankle, and a perfectly evil grin spread across her face. She reached down and picked up the bottle of sunscreen that Ash had thrown to the ground. "I keep telling Audrey that she has to be more careful with her skin," she said. "Why don't you put some of this on her?" She handed Luke the bottle.

107 Luke looked at me. "Do you want some?"

It seemed like a loaded question.

"Okay," I said.

"Start with her back," said Joelle. "Audrey, take off your shirt so that he can do your shoulders."

"Jesus, Joelle," Ash said, "why do you keep asking Audrey to take off her clothes?"

"What?" said Joelle, her eyes wide and innocent.

To Luke, I said: "Joelle secretly wants to be a director."

"Yeah," said Ash, snorting. "Of adult films."

"I hear there's money in that," Luke said. He held up the bottle of sunscreen and waited for me to take my shirt off. I guessed there was nothing else for me to do except take it off, so I did. Luke touched the strap of my turquoise halter top right where it hit my collarbone. "I like this."

If I looked into his eyes I thought I might sponta- neously combust. "Thanks," I said to the space between his eyebrows.

"I helped her pick it out," said Joelle.

"You have good taste," Luke said.

I swung around to a sitting position and lifted my hair. I noticed that a few of the girls around the pool were watching this operation intently and tried to keep my expression neutral, like, Oh, ho hum, another hot guy lathering me up with sunscreen, yawn. But then Luke's warm hands were on my shoulders and on

108 my neck and skating down my spine, and I was positive that I looked like I had somehow ingested a ball of fire that was slowly expanding in my gut and roaring out- ward to every limb. Despite the August heat and the weird burning in my stomach, my skin exploded into goose bumps.

Joelle chattered on about a disastrous grape-juice commercial she did when she was six as Luke smoothed lotion over my back, shoulders, and arms. "We had no idea that I was allergic to grapes," Joelle said, "until I got sick all over the director."

"That's pretty funny," Luke said to her. "Did they fire you?"

At the word "fire," I shuddered a little. Luke pressed his thumbs into the muscles along my neck until I relaxed.

"Amazingly enough," said Joelle, "they didn't. I did three commercials for them. Go figure. I would have fired me. I mean, puking on the director's shoes? Not the way to get ahead."

Luke's hands slid around my waist and gave my stomach two quick (too-quick) swipes. "They must have liked you a lot," he said to her. To me he said, "Sit back." I dropped my hair and leaned back in the chair so that he could do my legs. He started at my feet and moved upward, bending my leg so that he could get the underside as well as the front. I could barely keep myself

109 from howling out loud. As his palms circled upward toward the hem of the white denim skirt I wore over my bikini bottoms, I wondered where he would stop, or if he would just keep going until he was publicly molesting me and I would be faced with the choice of kicking him or letting him. His fingers slid briefly yet chastely under my skirt to get the tops of my thighs, and then he was done. The finishing touch was the brush of his thumb down the bridge of my nose and across each cheekbone.

He snapped the top of the bottle closed and held it out to me. "There you go," he said.

I took the bottle. "Thanks," I squeaked.

"So do you guys want to swim?" he asked.

"Maybe later," said Joelle. "But you go ahead." We watched as he ran for the diving board, gracefully lop- ing back to the rest of his kind--the young, the proud, the penised.

After Luke was safely back in the pool, I exhaled heavily. "You are an evil, evil, evil chick, Joelle. Evil. E. Vil."

"That's what they tell me."

"I've just been mauled."

Joelle shrieked with laughter loud enough to make the other girls around the pool glare at us. "And you enjoyed every minute."

Ash merely shook her head. "Girl, you have it bad."

"Do you blame her?" Joelle demanded.

110 "I don't have it so bad," I said. I was literally burn- ing up. I stood, unbuttoned my skirt, and dropped it around my feet, happy that the bikini bottoms were boy- cut shorts and not one of Joelle's dental-floss numbers.

"Look what you've done, Joelle. You've turned our sweet little honors student into a stripper. Audrey, you should see your face right now."

I sat down again. "What do you mean?"

"You look like a puddle of melted wax," Ash said. "Oh, never mind. Don't say I didn't warn you."

"Leave her alone," Joelle said. "When was the last time she had a bit of a rubdown?"

"Why didn't you get your own rubdown, if that's what you're into, Ms. Movie Star?" Ash said.