The Other Girl: A Midvale Academy Novel (14 page)

“OK,” Edie said. “Go down to Pilar’s room. Sneak in through the fire escape. Then walk out of the door backwards.”

“What?” I said. “That is so incredibly stupid.”

Edie gave me a look like, do you have a better idea? “Maybe her mind will be, like, attracted to her space and will fall out of your head.”

It was worth a try. And I knew Pilar wasn’t there. We ran
down the hall and out to the fire escape. I leaned out over it, and pushed the window open. “Stand on my hands,” Edie said. “I won’t let you fall.”

I dangled three stories above Midvale and hoisted myself in the window.

Pilar’s room, obviously, was not a new experience for me. But it was one thing to see it through her eyes and another to see it through mine. She took it for granted, I guess, so even though the details were the same—the wallpaper, the sconces, the rich scent of expensive creams—through my eyes it had a more magical sheen. It was like a nice hotel room to her, but to me, it was miraculous. If I had seen this room before I was in her head, I would have been so jealous of her. But now, knowing Pilar as I did, hearing her fight that conversation with her mother out of her head while she did sit-up after sit-up, I understood that Pilar surrounded herself with perfection because she didn’t feel right inside.

I walked backward out of the door, but I all I could hear, still, was Pilar’s mantra.
First my stomach, then my mind
.

“It didn’t work,” I said.

“Hmm,” Edie said. “I didn’t really expect it to.” Her eyes lit up again. “I have an idea. How about…OK. This is stupid too.”

“Whatever,” I said. I figured at least if I did one more thing, Edie was going to be moved to confide in me about Devon.

“Go back into her room.” She smiled to let me know she knew this was annoying. “And get some of her shit. Shit she won’t miss, but like, shit that evokes her.”

From Pilar’s room, I gathered a discarded Q-tip caked with blue eye shadow, a 2009
Vogue
with Jennifer Aniston on the cover, a label from an empty container of fat-free dulce de leche yogurt and an English paper from last year, marked C plus.

“Check it out,” Edie said, as it all went up in flames in our trash can. The fire had blown back a piece of the English paper, and Edie read from the teacher’s comments: “You have so much potential, Pilar. It’s disappointing that you don’t try harder.” I recognized Mrs. Gwynne-Vaughan’s handwriting, and then the blue flame traveled across it, turning it to black and then ash.

“Did that work?”

I listened to my head. Pilar was getting a text message. “Not only did it
not
work,” I reported. “Gid’s coming to Pilar’s room tonight. At least they’re not going to sleep together,” I said. “I mean, not that I really care. It’s just weird, you know.”

“You know, you wouldn’t have to be in love with Gideon to not want him to have sex with Pilar,” Edie said. “It’s OK.”

“I know,” I said. “I mean. Right. Yeah, I mean, it’s just…”

“Annoying,” Edie said. Then she frowned. “I don’t want to burst your bubble, but how do you know they’re not going to have sex?”

I explained Pilar’s policy on sex and the flat stomach.

“Wow,” Edie said. “I always thought Pilar thought she was so perfect.”

“Don’t feel too sorry for her,” I said. “She’s just tortured because she thinks she’s so close to being perfect.”

Edie laughed. “Right. But still. She’s tortured. That’s really what’s important. Isn’t it?”

I shrugged. I wanted to say, what’s important is that she never, ever sleeps with Gid. But I just said, “I guess so.”

And then Edie said, “I like Devon. Love him. Ever since I was little.”

Her hands were shaking.

We sat down on our beds, facing each other.

“When Mrs. Gwynne-Vaughan told me we were going to
be on ATAT, or probably, I decided that I wanted to…to see if I could get him. But now…well. He’s always hitting on me, and he…I think he just wants to have sex with me, and I’m not up for that.” Edie buried her face in her hands. “He’s such a pig,” she said. “I mean, I know he is! But I…just have such a crush on him. It’s awful. It’s all I think about.” She dropped her hands. “There’s not much more to say. I am sure I could have sex with him, but then I would just feel bad.”

I didn’t know what to say. Edie was right. Devon was amusing, but he was gross.

We got ready for bed. We brushed our teeth side by side in the bathroom. We peed in adjoining stalls. We went back to the room and took off our jeans and slipped our bras out from under our shirts and slept in our underwear and the tank tops we were wearing under our sweaters.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t get you out of Pilar’s head.”

“That’s OK,” I said. “It was fun trying.”

“We can keep them from having sex, though,” Edie said. “We can do like in
Mean Girls
. We’ll just send her some delicious food that she likes. I bet she thinks about food a lot.”

“She does.”

“I thought so. Find out what her favorite food is.”

It was quiet for a while, and then Edie said, “Are boys just disappointing?”

I pretended to be asleep. Soon, I actually was.

I woke up to the sound of belt buckle on belt buckle.

Gid had Pilar pressed up against her door. She felt his belt buckle—it really was his belt buckle—against her stomach. She didn’t like the feeling of the fat hanging over her pants.
She thought about how it would be impossible to take off all her clothes until it was gone. “I can’t go to the dining hall anymore because I always can’t help eating los cookies,” she said.

“The cookies?” Gid said.

She shrugged in a cutesy way. “When I like something a lot, I sometimes say that first part in Spanish. Like…things I like are los sunglasses, los high heels, los cookies…”

“OK,” Gid said. “I get it.” He gestured toward the bed. “Can we lie down?”

They got on the bed. It was quiet. Pilar smiled at Gid. “Los cookies are my
enemigos
. Los cookies are my enemies.”

Gid nodded, understanding. “I got that. I have taken four years of Spanish. Of course…that’s about all I can say other than…”

And then he just pounced on her.

They kissed for a long time. Gid was the one in control, his hands pinning her shoulders to the mattress, then just one hand while the other went up her shirt. Pilar oohed and said yes over and over again and kissed him back.
Gid ees a good kisser. He isn’t too fast and he wasn’t too slow. He doesn’t use too much tongue and he didn’t use too little. I wonder eef I should tell him about my stomach, because otherwise…but I can’t tell him that. I think it will be flat soon. I have to download that Mala Rodríguez video so I…oh no…he is trying to go further…. I will just put my hand on his hand and let him know…. Oh my God, is this really over? I got tits, easy. I got tits without even asking. I go for pants and I get hand block. Maybe she’s just scratching her stomach. Let me go in with the other hand. Blocked again. Amazing. Well, amazing in the suck sense of amazing
.

What was amazing—amazing also in the suck sense of amazing—was that I was back inside the mind of Gideon Rayburn.

I looked over at Edie, sleeping peacefully. She’s been so nice about the Pilar stuff. But I just couldn’t tell her about Gid.

He continued to think about Pilar.

I continued to enjoy listening to him despite the fact that he was thinking about her, because I just liked being back with him.

I knew that was probably fucked up. I knew I should probably call Dr. Whitmeyer to seek further advice.

Maybe after I’d had a little time in Gid’s mind.

The next night, after Gid had once again snuck into Pilar’s room and once again made out with her and was denied the ultimate prize, I watched Gideon Rayburn march from Emerson back to Proctor, freshly annoyed at having to explain, again, his presence to his roommates.

What is Pilar’s problem? She acts like she wants me, but then she gives me the hand block. What is that about? I mean, is she just playing hard to get? Or is she genuinely not interested? And then she says, “I wish that I could explain this to you, but I cannot. I am sorry.” Jesus. How long has she been in this fucking country? When the fuck is she going to start using fucking contractions?

I couldn’t believe Gid was actually making me laugh at the same time that I was this bummed out.

He opened the door to 307 Proctor as quietly as he could. He didn’t want to face Cullen and Nicholas and their obnoxious questions about what he was doing back here and how he had fucked it all up and…

“What are you doing back here? How did you fuck that up
again
?”

This was Cullen talking. Both he and Nicholas were not
only wide awake, they were covered in manure and standing in the middle of a circle of blooming pot plants. The closets had been emptied of their contents, which were distributed on the various surfaces in the room, though nowhere as enthusiastically as on Gideon’s bed.

“You guys seriously suck,” Gid said.

Cullen was wearing overalls. He hitched them up and said, “Howdy there, pardner.”

Nicholas dropped to his knees, annoyed and weary. “We’re almost done. And it isn’t as bad as it seems.”

“What’s not as bad as it seems? The mess? The flagrant lawbreaking? Or just the smell of animal feces?” Gid sank down and lay on his back in front of the door, the only available space in the room.

“Now that these doggies are good and covered up with some of this quality fertilizer,” Cullen said, “I reckon they’re gettin’ good and ready to go.”

Nicholas was spooning fertilizer over the plants as well. “Cullen thinks that if he acts like a farmer, the plants will grow better.”

“It’s creative visualization,” Cullen said.

“Well, you’re mixing your metaphors,” Gid said. “You’re talking like a cowboy, not a farmer.”

Cullen pointed his spade accusingly at Gideon. “And what are you doing here anyway? You should be balls deep in some spicy empanada by now,” Cullen said.

“OK, seriously,” Gid said. “I’m not in the mood for you today. You think the world is a giant vagina, and you don’t even know the difference between a cowboy and a farmer. And I don’t think they have empanadas in Argentina. Latin America is divided into different countries, you know.”

“Latin America,” Cullen said. “That’s a big word.”

Nicholas said, “Why aren’t you nailing Pilar right now?”

“OK,” Cullen said, “Why is ‘nail’ better than the empanada thing?”

Gid just lay there.

“We’re waiting,” Nicholas said.

“OK, the truth is, I am trying to figure it out myself,” Gid said, his voice surprisingly sincere. “I go over there.
She
asks
me
to come over. We start making out. And I get tit right away. And then, when I am GFB, I get the hand block.”

GFB? I wanted to know. I didn’t want to know.

Cullen shook his head sympathetically as he tied up a bag of manure. “The irony of getting tit right away is that the beave sometimes eludes you.”

GFB was Going For Beave.

Nicholas was putting the plants back into the closet. He had a thoughtful expression. “We’re going to get to the bottom of this. Let’s see. She asks you over?”

“Correct.”

“The fooling around starts pretty much right away?” Nicholas asked. “She’s, like, into making out?”

“Yes and yes.”

Nicholas put his fingers to his mouth thoughtfully. “How many seconds do you wait before going up the shirt?”

Gideon considered this. “I would say I made out with her for a good four minutes,” he said.

That’s pretty accurate.

“That’s extremely generous of you,” Cullen said from the back of the closet. “I generally combine going in for the kiss with the boob thing, because I think if a girl wants…”

But his voice was drowned out when Nicholas shut the closet
door and threw himself against it. “Let’s finish this conversation just us adults, shall we? All right. I get it. All is well until you are GFB. What I see here is a clear example of a girl who has some issue—she didn’t shave.”

“She’s lasered,” Cullen yelled.

“Quiet,” Nicholas hissed. “You idiot. We’re in prep school, remember?”

There was a dull thud as Cullen collapsed against the closet floor.

“OK. Well. All right. I am thinking. Hmm. Oh. How long with the boobs before you were GFB?”

“Just a few seconds,” said Gid defensively. But he was thinking, this is where I went wrong. Definitely.

Nicholas shook his head. “A girl like Pilar, a set of knockers like that. She wants you to be, like, ‘Oh your tits are amazing.’ Did you tell her her tits—”

Gid shook his head miserably. He couldn’t believe he’d neglected this step. “No, I didn’t,” he said. “Shit. God, I am such an idiot!”

Nicholas nodded sadly. “You’ll have another shot,” he said. “Don’t worry. And you know what…think of it this way. The more time you wait before you do it with her, well, you put off being bored by fucking her.”

It was such a lovely way to view the world.

It was quiet for a minute while Gid thought about this, and then Cullen shouted, “Maybe she has penis phobia!”

“Jesus, Cullen. You stupid fuck,” Nicholas whispered. “That was so loud. How stupid are you!”

Gideon scrambled up off the floor and sprang into action. “Get the fucking plants in the closet, now! Cockweed is defi
nitely going to wake up. Cullen, I would do anything, anything, to be able to just fucking strangle you right now.”

Cullen blinked at the light as he stumbled out of the closet. “Really? Anything? Would you be willing to have your rectum removed?”

Gideon just shook his head. “I know you got that joke from Mickey,” he said.

Cullen shoved the plants into the closet, muttering, “It’s the only explanation. Penis fucking phobia. And Mickey got that joke from
me
.”

Through the keyhole Gid saw Cockweed, imposing, advancing, in an ugly tartan bathrobe. “Shit. Here he comes!”

“Oh, really?” Nicholas said. “What a surprise, considering someone just screamed ‘penis phobia’ in the dead of night.” Nicholas shoved the last of the plants into the closet and Cullen hustled into bed. Gid hit the light and dove under his own covers, pulling his blanket on top of the pile of clothes.