New Girl (19 page)

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“STOP ACTING LIKE YOU DON'T WANT TO TALK
to me.” Becca was sitting on the step in front of the boathouse, smoking a cigarette when Johnny walked up. She’d slipped him a note and told him to meet her here.

Johnny sighed and looked at her. “You know I do.”

“Then why have you barely talked to me since Halloween?”

“You know
why.
”

“Yes, but you shouldn’t be so stupid. You should talk to me again.” She stood and moved a little closer to him. “I’ve missed you.”

I need him to say it back,
she thought.
Please say you’ve missed me, too....

He looked at her for a moment before saying it. “I have, too. I’ve missed you, too.”

He looked her in the eyes, and she thought she’d fall apart. She had worked so hard to stay away from him, and to wait for him to come to her. But the whole time she had, she knew she was doing the right thing. Johnny didn’t seem to have any trouble not talking to her. And that was exactly
why
she couldn’t give in first.

But now she couldn’t help it. Not after what she’d just found out.

“Good,” she said. “I have some good news.”

“What?”

“Didn’t you say you were going to have to stay at Manderley over the Thanksgiving break? Your parents are doing something, right?”

“Yeah, jeez, how did you remember that?”

She shrugged. “Well, I’m staying, too. And Max is going home.”

Becca watched his eyes for a response. He looked back at her, and let out a deep breath. “That’s…not good.”

She raised an eyebrow. “No?”

There was the flicker of a smile on his face. “Becca, we can’t…”

“Look, I don’t want to hear it. Just…if you want to…then meet me here at nine on the Friday he leaves.”

She tried to look cool and collected, and then walked away without looking back.

The Friday finally came. She said goodbye to Max. And she sat, tapping her foot for the last hour before she was supposed to meet Johnny. What if he didn’t show? She tried to think of other things, but she couldn’t. Finally it was ten minutes to nine. She was out the door.

This was no time to arrive fashionably late, much as she might want to.

The trek down to the boathouse was a tense one. She tried to sing the lyrics to a song in her head, to keep her mind off her fears, but it did nothing.

Down the steps. Across the sand. Open the door. Pull on the light. No one there.

Her stomach fell, and she walked to the couch. She couldn’t believe it. No one had ever rejected her. Ever. This was why she’d chosen Max. Because he could just hook up with her and act enough like a couple. He didn’t have to put his arm around her or kiss her in front of everyone. She just had to tell all the girls that he was in love with her and pretend that there was something behind the scenes besides sex. She could look beloved, and have the guy everyone wanted, because he was so passive that he didn’t care who he had. She was hot enough. She knew that was all it was.

But Johnny could resist her, where she could not resist him. And that was killing her.

The door swung open. Her heart leaped. It was Johnny. She wanted to smile from ear to ear, but she couldn’t. That wasn’t like her.

He closed the door behind him and turned off the light. She couldn’t see him, but she could feel the cast of moonlight on her. He walked right to her and kissed her. They fell backward onto the couch, and he pulled off his shirt before pulling off hers.

“I thought you weren’t going to come,” she whispered.

“I couldn’t stay away.”

“I don’t understand why you can’t just say you’re sorry.”

“Okay, I’m sorry.”

“Like you mean it.”

Johnny laughed and glared at her. “I’m so sorry. I’ll never call you by your full name again.”

“Good.”

Becca and Johnny were lying in his bed. His roommate had gone home for Thanksgiving, and Becca had snuck in an hour ago. There was hardly anyone on the hall.

She flipped over and propped herself up on her elbows. “Tell me something, Johnny.”

“Tell you what?”

“Something. Anything. Tell me something no one knows.”

He raised his eyebrows. “I don’t really have any secrets.”

She gave him a look.

“Fine,” he said, thinking. “I’ve always wanted to join the Marines.”

“Why?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve got two cousins in the Marines and they love it. I mean, it’s a good thing to do, and it’s gotta be such a thrill.”

“No…you can’t do that. You’ll die!”

“Hopefully not. Max always talks about it, too.”

“Don’t talk about Max.”

They were silent for a few seconds. They both knew that what they were doing was wrong. But for this one weekend, they were playing pretend.

“Why don’t you just become a doctor or something? Save lives but don’t risk your own.”

“I don’t know. It’s just something I’ve always thought about doing. If I were to do it, it would be the most independent choice I’ll have ever made. My parents want me to do the typical follow-in-your-dad’s-footsteps thing, and I don’t.”

“I don’t accept.” She draped herself over his stomach. “You’ll have to just become a rich doctor and I’ll stay at home with my Pomeranians. I’ll leave the house, sure, but only to go to happy hour.”

He laughed. “Not Pomeranians. German shepherds. Labs. Something else. None of those yappy little cotton balls.”

“We’ll just have to see.” She smiled, and then looked very seriously at him. “Like, what if something happened to me? What if I died tragically or was kidnapped or something?”

“What about it?”

“Well, I mean would you cry? Would you weep uncontrollably and go insane with missing me?”

“Yes, I’d probably never take a happy breath again.”

“Good.”

“What about you?”

“Don’t be stupid, Johnny.” She gave him a devilish smile. “Now kiss me.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

A FEW WEEKS PASSED. MAX AND I MET ALMOST
every night. No one had seen us. No one knew but us. We hadn’t said aloud that we were keeping it to ourselves, but that’s what we were doing. We never spoke about Becca. But we were the only ones.

The rumor had circled around to my ears that Becca was pregnant. That she was off being pregnant and waiting to give birth. Everyone seemed to assume that if she was doing this, she was giving up the baby for adoption.

“Do you really believe that’s where she is?” I asked Blake, as we sat in the dining hall one evening, when someone had already brought it up again. For once, there was decent food—Wisconsin Cheddar Beer Soup. I was on my third bowl.

She took a sip from her Sprite and shrugged. “I don’t know. Dana seems to know more than she lets on. That’s all I know.”

“Maybe that’s what she knows.” My chest hardened as I envisioned her coming back and presenting a child to Max.

“Well…let’s see. If it
is
that…then she would have to have gotten pregnant like…April or May. And then she’d be having the baby in like…January or February. Right?” She counted off the months on her fingers.

“So you think that’s something she’d do? Just not contact anyone here?”

“I would have thought she’d talk to
someone.
But I don’t know. She was hard to figure out. And who knows, maybe she
has
contacted someone but told them not to tell anyone. They’d probably listen to her.”

I nodded.

“It’s just really weird. It’s like…how can she possibly be alive? But then…how can she be dead?”

“No one really seems to think that, though, do they? That she’s dead?”

“I don’t think anyone knows what to think. She’s so unpredictable that she could be doing anything. She could come back at any moment. But then, the cops have pretty much given up.”

She looked over my shoulder, and for a moment I thought I was going to turn and see Her. But it was Max.

He nodded a hello to Blake, and then looked at me.

“I know you’re eating, but I’d like to talk to you, if you want to come sit with me. I know it’s rude.”

“Yeah, that’s fine. We can go now.”

I stood up with my tray, and said goodbye to Blake. She gave me a questioning look that I had to ignore.

I followed him, my heart pounding the whole way, to a table. His jacket was slung over the back of the chair he sat in. I sat, too.

“I just want to talk to you, I guess.” He looked at me with hardened eyes. “How are you doing? I mean really, is everything okay?”

“Sure, everything is fine, why?”

“Don’t lie to me. You can tell me if anything is up.”

“Everything is good.”

He took a deep breath. “I know this is probably a really stupid…” He shifted his weight. “You’re not hooking up with Johnny Parker, are you?”

It was so unexpected that I laughed. “
What?
No, of course not, why?”

He looked a little relieved. “People are just saying that. Dana…I guess Dana noticed you leaving your room a lot. And you went to the ball with him.”

I scoffed. “For like ten seconds.”

“Yeah, sorry about that.”

“It’s fine.”

He was silent for a few seconds, and then said, “How’s Dana acting? I mean, she treating you okay?”

I laughed before I could stop myself. “I mean, she sent me to the wolves of Halloween in a dress made of raw meat, and since then has barely spoken to me, but yeah, she’s treating me fine.”

“She been okay since then?”

“I guess…she just kind of ignores me.”

Dana had been pretty silent since Halloween. She hadn’t told me I was a terrible excuse for a human being or insisted I was a waste of space or anything, so that was…nice, I guess.

“You have to tell me if she starts acting weird. You have to.”

“Okay, I will.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

That Friday, Blake convinced me to go down to the boathouse with everyone again.

“It’ll be fun! I
promise.
I’ll punch Dana right in the face if she freaks again. Plus, almost everyone fun is staying here instead of going home for Thanksgiving.” She shrugged. “Senior year. I guess people don’t want to miss out.”

She promised to walk down with me, so she’d meet me outside my door at eleven. At ten-fifty, I was putting on my makeup and trying to slow my thudding heartbeat. Dana’s bed was empty still; she must be at the boathouse. Max would be there. I couldn’t kiss him or show anyone what we were, but I still wanted to look good. I did what I could, and then met Blake in the hall.

“You ready to go have fun?” she asked, smiling.

“Of course,” I responded automatically. I took a step, but she grabbed my wrist.

“Hold on, let’s go in your room for a second.”

“Why?”

“No reason.”

I opened the door and let her in. She pulled a flask from her handbag and took some of whatever was in it. She held it out to me.

I downed a few sips myself. This is exactly the kind of private school bad-influencing that everyone talks about. I didn’t know if I felt included, or like a sucker. But tonight I wanted to feel a little less…just less. I wanted to see Max. I wanted to see him and not feel the inevitable glares of Susan and whoever else wanted to say horrible things to me. I knew it wasn’t right to gain confidence this way. But as I felt the burn in my throat and under my tongue, I almost felt the nerves fall into submission.

One hour later

Max walked in. It was raining, and his dark hair was clinging to his eyebrows. He looked around the room before locking eyes with me. I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t even get myself to smile and wave geekily like I usually do. I just looked back at him until someone went up to him and diverted his attention. I turned back to Blake, and saw that she was watching me with narrowed eyes.

“What?”

She smiled. “What was
that?
”

“What was what? Nothing. Huh?” I was incapable of lying or playing it cool in these situations. I just turned lobster-red and stuttered like that.

She pulled me closer and said, “Oh, my God, you’re…are you…” She looked around and mouthed,
“With Max?”

“No! Oh, no, that would be so
stupid,
I mean I’m under siege enough as it is. Plus he’s in love with Becca. And she’s… I mean I could never compete with her. Not that I’m trying to. You know what I mean.”

Her mouth hung open in a smile and she didn’t break my gaze as she handed me her drink. “Have some.”

“No, really, I’m—”

She put it up to my mouth and I laughed as I swallowed and then wiped my cheeks.

“First yesterday at dinner, and now that look—are you hooking up with him?” Blake asked, her eyes filled with eagerness.

I tried to say I wasn’t, but I couldn’t stop smiling.

Blake stood up and pulled me to her, squealing. “Oh, my God
,
that’s awesome. I thought he was just going to mope around forever.”

That stung a little. It shouldn’t have, but it did. “Well, I guess not.
Please
don’t tell anyone.”

“Oh, please, I was going to tell
you
not to tell anyone.”

We laughed and then she pulled me over to the couch. She recruited people to play cards, while I waited. I took a sip of my drink and then realized Dana was staring at me. Her already dark eyes seemed darker than ever. She was right where Blake and I had been standing. Had she heard us talking? Would…would she care?

“Okay, Ace is high!” Blake sat down next to me.

Dana couldn’t have heard me. She would have said something. She was always willing to embarrass me.

She must not have heard.

“You know what we haven’t done in the longest time?” Madison, who always got more confident with a few too many drinks in her, was standing on a box and commanding attention from the room. “Seven Minutes in Heaven.”

I laughed, thinking it was a joke, but it wasn’t. Everyone whooped in agreement and seemed excited. At my high school, this had been a very lame thing to play and was found only in Judy Blume books and nineties teen movies. It had always seemed so stupid. But now that I glanced at Max, who was loosened up enough to smile—no easy feat it seemed—the game might not be so dumb.

“There should be a notebook behind you,” Madison said. I realized she was talking to me.

“Where?”

“In the supply closet. Just look on the shelves. Does anyone have a pen?”

I went in and started feeling around the shelves for a notebook. I jumped when my fingers landed on something cold. I thought it was a bug, but upon closer investigation, I saw that it was a silver necklace. I pushed it back on the shelf. I found the spiral notebook, which was covered in dust, and pulled it out.

“Here it is, Madison,” I said, wiping it clean.

“Okay, write your name in it with this pen and then pass it along.” She tossed me a red ink pen.

I opened to the first page, and saw a list of names already there. My eyes immediately went to Becca’s. The names were all in different handwriting, so it was easy to presume she had written her own. It was odd to look at it. She wrote in sort of half-cursive. Also in red ink. I wondered, briefly, if she had used the pen I held now.

I flipped to the next page and wrote my name at the top, before handing it to Ricky, who was next to me.

A few minutes later, the paper was filled with names, and Julia had cut it apart and put the strips into a coffee can.

“I’ll draw, since Cam and I aren’t playing,” Blake said. She took the can and began feeling around for two choice pieces of paper. “First up, Ricky and Susan!” There was a lot of cheering, and then they disappeared into the supply closet. Cam kept time on his watch, and everyone laughed and talked loudly until the seven minutes were up.

Every time she dove her hand into the can of names, I held my breath until neither my name nor Max’s was spoken. After Ricky and Susan came two girls I didn’t know, who agreed to go in together and got a lot of attention for it. After a few more rounds, though, Blake called Max’s name.