The Dating Game (6 page)

And meanwhile, what had she done? Kissed a few boys. Let Toby Buckholtz feel her up at summer camp. Accidentally saw her older brother, Adam, in the shower once. And that was about it. She was fifteen years old and still a virgin. Probably the last virgin left at Rosewood! Or close to it. It was as if a light went on in her head. Why didn’t she see it before? How could she have let everybody else pass her by this way?

Then there were Lina and Holly. Lina had dated Dmitri Leshko for about two months last fall. Mads knew something had gone on between them, but she wasn’t sure what. Lina could be kind of shy about that stuff. And Holly lost it last summer with that guy in Idaho, Andy. It sounded so beautiful—summer love by a lake, swimming, sailing, sharing ice-cream cones, kissing at sunset, sneaking off together into the woods, snuggling by a campfire…

Why hadn’t something like that ever happened to her? For Mads, last summer was not what she’d call a sex-travaganza. She’d spent most of her time at the pool club, practicing a half-gainer with a twist off the diving board in her pathetic Speedo one-piece. Even eleven-year-old Audrey wore a bikini last summer, but not Mads, oh no.
It might slip off when you’re diving
. The little voice in her head mocked her as it spoke these thoughts. Even her own brain was making fun of her.

Was something wrong with her?

Yes. Something was wrong with her. But that was okay, she’d fix it. Things had to change. And fast.

All her life, Mads had been small and cute. People treated her like a little girl. But now she was fifteen, and people still thought of her as a kid. It wasn’t the same for Holly, or even Lina. They weren’t kids—they were teenagers. Especially Holly. She looked sophisticated, and people believed she was. Why couldn’t Mads pull off the same trick?

Mads was afraid of being left behind. Well, it was time to grow up. She was going to catch up with everybody else if it killed her.

I’m going to get some experience
, she vowed. She knew exactly whom she wanted to get it with. Another image flashed into her mind. Sean. He shook his hair in the sunlight and smiled his gleaming smile at her. Oh yeah.

She reached for her phone and dialed Holly’s cell.

“Hello?” Holly’s sleepy voice croaked.

“It’s me, Mads. Guess what? I’m going to lose my virginity!”

“That’s great, Mads. God, I’ve got to start turning my ringer off at night.”

“And you know who I’m going to lose it with?” Mads said. “Sean Benedetto.”

“Good thinking,” Holly said. “Choose a guy who’s impossible to get. That’s a surefire way to lose your virginity.”

“What? You don’t think I can get him?”

“Well, I didn’t say that—”

“Yes you did. You said he was impossible to get. Well, if that’s true, how come he’s dated six girls since school started this year? Huh? Six! Why shouldn’t I be one of them? My turn’s got to come sooner or later.”

“Well, good luck with that. I’ve got to go back to sleep now.”

Holly was an early-to-bed type, and Mads, a night owl, had no sympathy for her.

“Let’s do something tomorrow,” Mads said. “I want to plan my complete and utter domination over Sean Benedetto.”

But Holly had already hung up.

Holly woke up at eight, the first one up as usual. She padded downstairs in her pajamas and poured herself a cup of coffee. Hooray for automatic coffeemakers. Then she went back to her room, planted her iPod ‘phones in her ears, and switched on the computer. What was happening on the Dating Game? Ten more questionnaires had been submitted since the day before. She combed through them. She was supposed to go over to Mads’ house, but she knew Mads wouldn’t be up for hours.

“Screen name: topgun…Age: 16. Grade: 11. Home Run.… How many times? Over 100. How many different people have you had sex with? I think 37.”

Um, okay, sure. That was believable. Next.

She moved on to a girl’s questionnaire. “Describe your scariest experience: My scariest experience was when my boyfriend and I were fooling around and the condom broke. I finally got my period two weeks later but the whole two weeks I took a pregnancy test every day even though it was too early to tell.”

Wow, Holly thought. She’s only fourteen. That is scary. I didn’t realize anyone in our school had already been through something like that
.

She paged through a few questionnaires that seemed honest—guys and girls who admitted to being virgins, who hadn’t done much more than kiss, if even that. It helped balance out the wild ones, but she had to admit the truth wasn’t as much fun to read.

“Describe your most exciting experience: One time I threw a party but for some reason none of my guy friends showed up. The only people who came were all the cutest girls in school. So we partied by the pool in my backyard and pretty soon all the girls took off their clothes and jumped in…”

It got worse from there. Holly checked the age on the questionnaire.
Thirteen? I don’t think so. Nice try, Hotpants
.

What was going on here? Were the kids at her school really having as much sex as they said? Holly knew they weren’t, no matter what Mads thought. But why were they exaggerating about it—on an anonymous survey?

What if I had to answer these questions?
Holly wondered.
What would I say?

I’d tell the truth
, she thought.
Why not? It wasn’t so bad
.

Boys had always liked her, even in kindergarten. But in spite of all the rumors, she’d only had sex with one boy, Andy Rufford. Last summer in Idaho.

She’d gone to a lake in Idaho the summer before with her mother and her cousins, who had a house there. Andy was from Seattle. Holly didn’t give him much thought at first. He was friends with her cousins, and they all hung out together, and sometimes he was funny. Like the time he put Krazy Glue on the lifeguard’s whistle. That was sort of funny.

As the weeks went by, she started to notice that he was cute. Really cute. And he must have noticed her, too, because by August things were heating up between them. Instead of waiting for the rest of the kids, they sneaked out at night to go swimming by themselves. Holly hardly knew how it happened, but soon they were a couple.

They went skinny-dipping. They made out all the time. They moved from second base to third. One night, about a week before the end of the summer, Andy pulled out a condom. He didn’t say anything, just showed it to her with a question mark in his eyes. Her heart caught in her throat. This was it. Was she ready? She didn’t know, but she decided to go for it.

They fumbled around and it hurt. She had a feeling it was his first time, too, because he didn’t seem to know what he was doing. She was so nervous she hardly remembered it, but when it was over she started laughing, and Andy laughed, too. They were like buddies playing a game. That made it less scary.

Later that night she lay in bed alone and thought,
I’m not a virgin anymore
. Was she supposed to feel different somehow? Her heart was beating fast and her face felt hot. But that was about it. She couldn’t remember how she’d expected to feel, but she thought it would be a bigger deal than this.

They did it a couple more times. It didn’t hurt so much now, and afterward Holly didn’t lay awake counting her heartbeats anymore. But there wasn’t anything that great about it. Maybe it was because she wasn’t deeply in love with Andy. She just liked him a lot. Or maybe they needed more practice to get good at it.

When summer was over, Holly couldn’t wait to get home and tell Mads and Lina. But when she tried to explain, she suddenly felt shy. They wanted to know every detail, but she was afraid they wouldn’t understand. They seemed to hear the story through a haze of romance. Especially Mads. To her, this was a classic summer love story, and the fact that Holly’s first time having sex was awkward, uncomfortable, and not particularly romantic never registered.

Holly scanned the questionnaires again, the answers veering wildly between realistic and raunchy. There had to be somebody datable. She tried to read between the lines. Would a boy called “sexgod” be good for Lina or Mads? Could “zarg” be that cute guy in biology class?

Then she came to “paco.” Under “What kind of person are you looking for?” paco wrote, “Madison Markowitz. Period.”

Whoa! Who was this guy? Mads had to see this. It was almost noon. Mads should be up by now. Holly couldn’t wait to show her paco’s questionnaire.

“Good morning, lovey.” Holly’s mother, Eugenia, sat at the kitchen table in silk pajamas and a robe, drinking coffee while Barbara, the maid, cleared up last night’s wine glasses. Eugenia was fine-boned and dark-haired with a raspy smoker’s voice, even though she’d quit smoking five years earlier. “Feel like driving up to Petaluma with your sister and me this afternoon? A friend of Piper’s has an art show up there. Or something. Maybe it’s a performance thing? Whatever.”

“No thanks. Busy.” Holly fished her car keys out of her bag. “I’m going to Mads’ house.”

“Be careful on the road,” her mother said. “You’re still a beginning driver, honey.”

Holly had turned sixteen on January 5 and immediately got her driver’s license. Her parents gave her a new yellow VW Beetle for her birthday. She loved the car, but sometimes she thought Mads and Lina loved it even more. Lina’s birthday wasn’t until July 21, and Mads’ was even later, August 27. Mads gave Holly driving gloves for her birthday and a map showing the route from Holly’s house to hers, even though Holly knew the way cold. Holly was going to be designated chauffeur for a few months. She didn’t mind; she already loved driving. And it was way better than depending on her parents or Piper to drive her around, or worse, Mads’ older brother Adam, who was 19 and away at college anyway. He had to be the most cautious teenage driver on Earth. Holly’s grandma could beat him in a drag race with a blindfold on.

Holly turned a corner and the car climbed Mads’ winding, hilly street. Holly felt happy every time she saw the Markowitzes’ house. It was built in the seventies and looked like a giant treehouse. Every room seemed to have multiple levels, so that it was hard to tell how many floors the house had. Her mother, M. C., short for Mary Claire, waved to Holly from the organic vegetable garden. She was on her knees, digging, in jeans, a flannel shirt, and red cat’s-eye glasses, her frizzy blond hair tied in a red bandanna. She looked like a blond Lucille Ball, just waiting for some hilarious catastrophe to happen.

Mads’ parents were warmer than Holly’s, and not as slick. Mads thought they were embarrassingly uncool. Her father, Russell, was a good-natured labor lawyer, easily embarrassed and so mild-mannered his children jokingly called him “the Dark Overlord.” M.C. met him when she escaped her straight-laced parents’ Minnesota farm to go to college at UC Berkeley. She changed careers a lot. She’d been a yoga teacher, an astrological nutrionist, and the owner of a feminist bookstore. Now she worked as a pet psychiatrist, specializing in troubled dogs. Business was booming, Carlton Bay was a pet-shrink kind of town.

Holly climbed the steep, zigzagging stone steps to the front door. Mads’ eleven-year-old sister, Audrey, opened it. She was dressed exactly like a Bratz doll in a midriff-baring t-shirt and low-riding pink sweatpants, her strawberry blond hair scooped high in a side ponytail. Holly didn’t know how two down-to-earth people like Russell and M.C. could have such a materialistic supertrendoid for a child.

“Fatison is in her room,” Audrey announced, using her favorite nickname for her sister.

When she stepped into Mads’ room, Holly was greeted with the rare sight of Mads in glasses. She usually wore contacts. Mads was sitting at her computer, still in her pajamas, reading the questionnaires.

“I’m the biggest loser in school!” Mads wailed. “Have you read these things? Everybody’s so experienced! Even the ninth-graders. How did I miss out on this?”

Holly pulled up a chair and sat beside Mads. “You think all these kids are telling the truth? Do you really think three boys in our school have dated
Playboy
centerfolds?”

“I guess that is a little far-fetched,” Mads said. “But why would they lie? It’s anonymous. Even though I think I can figure out who some of them are by their answers.”

“Maybe that’s why,” Holly said. “Is Lina coming over?”

“Sylvia took her into the city for shopping and lunch.” Mads said. Sylvia was Lina’s mother. She was a doctor—an allergist—very smart, elegant, and a little chilly. Lina was intimidated by her. She felt closer to her dad, Kenneth, a tall, handsome banker.

“She’ll probably come back with another fancy bag to dump in her closet,” Holly said. Lina’s mother was always buying Lina designer clothes, trying to dress her up.

“It’s good that she’s not here,” Mads said. “Now is the perfect time to match her up with somebody. We’ve got to get her mind off Dan. She’s starting to go all Romeo and Juliet on us. And they both die in the end, you know.”

“I’m sure this isn’t fatal, but I know what you mean,” Holly said. “It doesn’t make sense. It’s almost like he’s brainwashed her or something. Except Dan’s too goody-goody to do that.”

Holly scanned through the questionnaires and stopped on a junior named “hot-t.” “What do you think of this guy for Lina?” she asked Mads.

Mads read it over. “He doesn’t sound offensive, at least. But check out this guy.” She showed Holly a form by another junior, “striker.”

Striker’s interests were “soccer, soccer, soccer.”

“Striker” was probably a reference to a position on the soccer field.

“I think I know who this is,” Holly said. “Jake Soros!”

“Really? Yeah, that kind of makes sense.”

Jake Soros, a junior, captain and star of the soccer team. He lived and breathed soccer. Holly suddenly realized that she’d had a crush on him for a long time.

“I want that one for myself,” Holly said.

Mads grinned. “Okay. You take striker and we’ll sic hot-t on Lina. Cross your fingers that she likes him.”

“Now we have to find someone for you,” Holly said. “Mads, look at this.” She reached around Mads and pulled up paco’s form. “You’re going to have a stroke.” Paco’s questionnaire appeared on the screen. “He’s totally crazy about you.”