Shutout (9 page)

“Well,” I said, glancing at the time on my phone, “maybe we should head over and change and stuff.”

Shakina nodded, then said, “Hey, thanks.”

“For what?”

“Just for being the other new kid in yoga class with me.”

“Oh! Well, it's not like I'm doing you a favor or something. I'm way more excited about yoga class than what's happening afterward. I have to go to some heinous party so Lena can make out with some boy.”

“Can't she do that on her own?”

“Well, you know how it is. I guess I'm supposed to . . . I have no idea what I'm supposed to do, actually. I just know I don't want to do it. But I'm a horrible friend if I don't do it.”

“Or else she's a horrible friend for making you do something you don't want to do.”

Hmm. I hadn't really thought about that possibility. I tucked that away because I didn't really like the way thinking about it made me feel. It also kind of bugged me to hear somebody else telling me about my best friend.

“Anyway,” Shakina continued, “should we go get our stretch on?”

“And our sweat. Don't forget the sweat.”

“How could I? The other night when I came home was officially the first night my mom made me do my own laundry.”

“Oh my God, really?”

“No, not really. It would have been, though, if my dad hadn't intervened. He was like, ‘You can't punish her for doing something to help herself!' and my mom was like, ‘You want to smell this bag?' ”

We laughed. “So did he?”

“Oh no. The man loves me, but he's not crazy.”

We walked over to the yoga studio, and when we got there, Rosalind was working the desk. She greeted us with “Namaste, bitches!” and we got a good laugh out of that. This time the class was a little easier despite the pizza sitting like a rock in my stomach, and even though I was really stressed about the party, I was, once again, able to forget the stress and everything else about an hour into the class and just be a sweaty contorted body that was breathing.

As I showered and changed into my party clothes, I couldn't help thinking that this had been a perfect Saturday night. I wished I could go with Shakina and get some ice cream or maybe just go home and watch a cheesy horror movie with my dad or read a book. Yeah, I'm a nerd.

And yet there I was getting my nerdy self into an outfit I thought would look good without looking like I cared whether I looked good and putting on makeup and all this junk, and I felt ridiculous. I walked out of the studio, and Rosalind was still at the desk.

“Big date?” she asked, looking at me in my clown makeup and ridiculous, ill-fitting clothes.

I shook my head. “I have to go to some party because my friend wants to go. I'd rather go home.”

Rosalind smiled. “See, that's why I have Kim make me work on Saturday nights. It gets me out of a lot of crap I don't want to do.”

“Yeah, well, maybe I should go put in some job applications.”

“I'm telling you, it's a great strategy—you always have somebody else to blame. I have friends who think Kim is like some stepmother from a fairy tale when she's really like the nicest person on earth. I just blame her for making me work whenever I don't want to go out, which is usually.”

“I'm definitely going to give it some thought,” I said.

In fact, it was all I could think about as I got on the trolley and rode four stops to where I was meeting Lena. The whole way I was trying to sink into the seat because I was convinced somebody was going to see me and call my folks immediately and say, “She's not at Lena's!”

But nobody on the trolley seemed to pay much attention to me, and I hoped that we were whizzing past the people on the street too fast for anyone to know for sure it was me. Even though Charlesborough is right next to Boston, it can
be a really small town sometimes, and you just never know who is going to see you and say something.

When I got off the trolley, Lena was standing there wearing a spaghetti strap tank top and what I would have said were her little sister's jeans if she had a little sister.

“How did you get out of the house looking like that?” I asked.

“I didn't,” she said. She opened her purse and showed me the perfectly normal shirt she'd worn over the tank top when she left the house.

I felt kind of nauseous, and not just because Lena looked fantastic and I looked like a dork trying to look good, but also because I was still carrying a gym bag. I must have thought my other clothes would vaporize or something.

The whole thing made me uncomfortable, and yes, okay, I was jealous.

When we got to the party, it was clear that Lena was as nervous as I was. The music was loud, and there was a gross, sour smell in the air. As we wandered around, I felt weird and out of place. Still, it was kind of exciting. So this was a big high school party, the kind of thing that everybody there had probably lied to their parents about going to. I might feel weird and out of place, but it did feel like I'd joined the Real Teenager Club in some way.

In every room there were little knots of people standing around talking with beers in their hands. Some people were tapping their feet and stuff, but nobody was actually dancing. Not that Lena and I would have danced even if other people were dancing, but still.

It wasn't exactly like parties in the movies. In the movies, every room is packed with people, and the actors only know the other five actors who are starring in the movie. Here, there was lots of space to walk, and I recognized almost everybody from school. It was strange to see kids I saw in study hall with their heads buried in books laughing hysterically and spilling beer out of red plastic cups.

When we got to the back porch where the keg was, we finally saw somebody we knew well enough to talk to. Sort of. Courtney was holding a beer in her hand and looking kind of heavy-lidded.

“Hey,” she said, “it's Lena and Alison!”

“Amanda,” I corrected.

“Have a drink,” she slurred as she poured beer into a cup.

I shook my head. “Designated driver.”

Courtney stopped pouring and gave me a serious look. “That is so important. Oh my God, you are such a good friend. Designated driver. That is awesome. You are awesome. Hey!” she yelled over to a boy on the other side of the deck. “Jared! You got anything special for the designated drivers?”

Jared, whose party it was, yelled back, “Hell yeah!” He disappeared into the kitchen and came out a minute later with a paper plate holding a brownie with chocolate icing on it and handed it to me. “Here you go,” he intoned. “You have sacrificed your own fun so that your friend can get home safely. You are a special friend, and you deserve a special treat.”

“Uh, thanks,” I said, taking the brownie. It wasn't like getting drunk was my idea of fun anyway, but I wasn't about to refuse chocolate.

“Zaleski!” Jared yelled. “You owe this fine young lady a sober ride home! You're designated driver next time!”

“You got it,” Lena said, and we looked at each other and laughed. It apparently hadn't occurred to any of these people that we were still two years away from being able to drive.

“So what about you, Lena?” Courtney asked.

“Yeah, okay,” Lena said, extending her hand to take the cup of beer from Courtney.

“Are you nuts?” I whisper-yelled at her. “You'll get suspended from the team!”

Lena frowned at me. “Manda, half the football team is here drinking. Look at Courtney. Do you think anybody takes that thing seriously?”

I couldn't argue with her because she was right. I mean, there was always the small chance that you could end up getting suspended from the team, but everybody said that only happened to people whose own parents ratted them out so they could get an extra punishment. I suppose I could have pointed out that she'd signed the thing, and even if nobody was going to hold her to it, her integrity was on the line, but that would have made me sound way more like Dad than I was comfortable with.

And I couldn't offer my real argument, at least not in front of other people: this isn't us, Lena. You have a built-in excuse not to dive into this scary thing, and you ought to take it. This isn't who we are. But I guess it was. Or, at least, it was who she was.

Pretty soon Lena was clutching my arm going, “OhmyGodohmyGodhe'shereohmyGodwhatamIgonnado?”

“Um, I don't know. Go talk to him?”

“Okay, but you have to come with me.” So Lena and I walked over to where Duncan was standing with some other less cute, but still pretty cute, and tall, boy. If this was what second choice looked like, maybe it wouldn't be so bad having a popular best friend.

“Hey,” Lena chirped at Duncan. It was all I could do not to roll my eyes.

“Zaleski,” Duncan said. “'Sup.”

“Not much. You remember my friend Amanda?”

“'Sup,” he said. The whole opening-his-mouth thing was definitely detracting from Duncan's cuteness.

I looked at the other boy, and he looked at me. We both knew we were extra baggage here. “Hi,” I offered in a tone I hoped was friendly, yet casual, and extended a hand to him, “I'm Amanda.”

“'Sup,” he said, shaking my hand. I guess he was in the Witness Protection Program or something because he didn't give me his name.

“Zaleski,” Duncan said, “you wanna take a walk or something?”

“Yeah!” Lena practically screamed, and my eyes wanted very badly to roll, but I kept them in check, which is good because Lena shot me the “oh my God, I'm going to kiss him!” look.

I hoped the fakeness of my smile wasn't obvious as they disappeared into the backyard.

“So,” I said to the Mystery Man I was left standing next to.

“Yeah,” he said, and walked away. I wondered what kind of conversations he and Duncan had. Fascinating stuff.

In the movies, something earth-shattering always happens at parties. Something big breaks, or there's a fight, or the cops come. But this wasn't a movie, so I just sat there on the deck watching people come out back, get their beers, occasionally spill some on me and mutter an insincere apology, and leave. Nobody talked to me, and I didn't talk to anybody. I was incredibly bored, and I wished I'd thought to pack a book in my gym bag. I wound up looking at my heart rate monitor watch and seeing how low I could get my resting heart rate to go until finally I had been sitting there for half an hour by myself, and I thought, Well, this is officially the limit of what I'm willing to do tonight. I was tired and bored and I needed to be home. I grabbed my bag and walked into the backyard calling Lena's name. She didn't answer. I finally found her and Duncan with their arms around each other and their tongues down each other's throats. “Um, Lena?”

“Yeah?” she mumbled, untangling herself from Duncan.

“My dad's gonna freak if the Lexus isn't back by eleven,” I said. Well, I figured if I was driving a fictional car, it might as well be a nice one.

“Okay,” Lena said, and sighed. “Call me!” she squeaked at Duncan.

We walked back to the trolley, and Lena was talking and talking the whole time about how awesome Duncan was, but I was too annoyed to listen to her. And I was jealous. Even if Duncan himself was a little bit of a disappointment, I still
wanted to be excited to sneak out and go to a party. I wanted to moon over some guy and have him want to kiss me. I wanted to be a high school girl instead of an overgrown kid.

“Call me tomorrow,” she said as we got off the trolley.

“Will do,” I answered.

“And, Manda?”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you. You are the best friend in the whole world.”

I smiled in spite of myself. “Damn right I am.”

I was hoping Mom, the more perceptive one, would be asleep when I got home, and Dad would be watching a movie. That way I could sneak my lying, beer-soaked self up to my room.

But of course Mom wasn't asleep. She was in her pajamas like three feet from the front door about to head up the stairs when I walked in. Perfect timing.

“Amanda! Is everything okay?” she asked.

“Lena and I had a fight,” I said, and waited for her to answer, “That's not what her mom said, she's been worried sick,” or something.

Instead she just said, “Really?”

This was why I wished it was only Dad I had to deal with. Because not only is Dad less perceptive than Mom, he is also completely transparent. If Dad had said, “Really?” like that, I would have known that he was actually curious about whether Lena and I had had a fight. But when Mom said it, I could just hear in her voice the possibility that she was going to call me on my lies, that this was my chance to either tell the truth and
dig myself out of the hole a tiny bit or else lie some more and seal my doom.

“Yeah,” I said, trying to put on a sad face.

And then I was sure Mom was on the level, which made this so much worse. She gave me a great big hug. “Sweetie,” she said. “I'm so very sorry. You're really having a tough time of it these days. I'm sorry it's so hard. I wish there was something I could do to make it hurt less.”

As much as I complain about being five feet ten inches tall, it turns out that feeling about one inch tall is even worse. Mom was showering me with sympathy and compassion I totally didn't deserve. I felt like I was looking at myself from the outside, this liar soaking up sympathy, and I suddenly remembered what I'd wanted to say to Lena: this isn't us. Well, this wasn't me. The whole lying-to-my-parents thing, the sneaking out to parties, the coming home drenched in beer and hoping that my parents had temporarily lost their senses of smell—none of it was me, and I was going to end it.

“Agh, Mom, stop.” I pulled away. “Don't be nice to me. We didn't have a fight. We just snuck out to a party so Lena could meet some boy.” Saying it out loud made me feel ashamed, but it was also a relief. I had gotten myself out of a lot of worrying about what would happen if they found out. Now I wouldn't have to lie anymore. I would probably end up grounded, but one way or the other I was going to suffer for tonight, so at least I was getting it over with.