Those Girls (9 page)

D
rew and his gang were already bowling and drinking 40s out of paper bags when we got there. People liked to hang out at the bowling alley, because it was one of the few places kids could still drink without much hassle.

He hugged Alex first.

Then he said, “Hey, you,” to me. He poked my stomach and kissed me on the cheek. “You look pretty.”

The boys were already on their way to drunk and Alex seamlessly rolled herself right into their game. I wondered what the guys knew about us, about me, if they’d heard things about me and if they knew that Drew and I had kissed. Twice. In public. If guys told each other stuff like that. The second kiss meant that we were dating, right? Or at least that he wanted to date or that we were on our way to dating. It meant that he wanted to kiss me on a relatively regular basis and wasn’t embarrassed to do it in front of other people, right? None of the jocks had ever kissed me in public, not soberly anyway. It felt like a big step to me.

“So,” Drew said, plopping down as I tied my rental shoes, “you gonna be on my team?”

“If you’ll have me,” I replied, hoping he’d get a nice flash of cleave while I took my time stroking and bowing my laces.

“You any good?”

“I’ve been told I know how to handle balls.”

He laughed, but I kicked myself and swore I’d lay off lines like that.

“Drew!” Alex shouted from the red line thingy. “It’s your turn, buttface.”

He popped up, grabbed the ball from her hand, and said, “What the hell is this girly light ball shit? I thought you were an athlete.”

“You think you can handle the heavy one, Rocky? Please. My biceps are bigger than yours.”

He grabbed her arm. “Woman, I could bowl you.”

“She
is
like a bowling ball,” shouted Marc Seidman from the sidelines. “Ya put three fingers in her and throw her in the gutter.”

The group roared with laughter.

Alex swiveled her neck around and stood at the ball dispensary with her hand on her hip, black Led Zeppelin T-shirt dripping off her square shoulders like she was a closet hanger.

“Well, you’re so fat that when you wear a yellow T-shirt, kids line up for school,” she said.

The group roared again. High fives were exchanged. I giggled along, wishing I could be that quick and clever. And that I was getting as much of Drew’s or anyone’s attention as she was.

I took a medium-heavy ball and walked toward the line, looked back at the boys, winked, and told them I’d show them
how it was done. I bent over, slowly, hoping Drew was watching and that my new jeans were doing what I’d bought them to do.

WHEN THE LANES CLOSED
at ten, Alex decided that she was too drunk to drive home. Drew stood between us, hands in his pockets, eyes darting to Sam and then me, to Sam and then back to me.

“I can drive you guys home. I’m fine.”

“V, are you sleeping over?” she asked.

I hadn’t planned on it, but I said sure, figuring that I’d rather us both get out of Drew’s car at the same time than give them time alone to talk about me—I knew there was no way to justify him taking Alex home first, though that would have been ideal. Goddamn Alex for living on his street and making it impossible for him to come up with a slick way to take her home first! Seriously, goddamn. If Alex was a good friend, she would have thought about this in advance and we would have come up with a plan, right? Why hadn’t she thought about this and come up with a plan?

We said good-bye and walked out to the parking lot. Alex hopped in the front seat without even calling shotgun. The two of them bobbed their heads to some song I didn’t recognize but Alex seemed to know the words to. Drew occasionally glanced back at me, over that puffy yellow vest, to ask,
are you okay back there?

I said I was, but I found myself becoming increasingly discouraged. I was always in the backseat, straining to hear, feeling like I missed the day when everyone else learned the words to the song. Whether it was Alex and Mollie or Alex and Drew,
I was always somehow in the backseat, always a beat behind. I was still trying to figure out how I’d orchestrate a kiss good night around the logistics of this car ride. The logistics of this whole night, really. Drew and I had barely talked at all—I felt more like I’d taken a supervised field trip to Drew/Alex-land only to now head back to slut/jock-land with tales of bowling and banter from abroad.

We pulled into Alex’s driveway and sat in his car in front of her house while we all smoked a joint. Even I took a few hits; clearly all that was left in my night was cleaning out Alex’s fridge and passing out, so for that, I could handle getting high.

“Thanks for driving, buddy,” Alex said, and she leaned across the console and kissed him on the cheek.

“No problem, ladies,” he said. Then he looked back over his shoulder at me, grinning his cute, crooked grin. I smiled back, leaned forward, and gave him a long, soft kiss on the cheek, half openmouthed, hoping maybe I could get something started. I caught his eye for a minute and held it there, about an inch away from his face, hoping he would have the balls to kiss me in front of Alex. He stayed there for about four seconds before he pulled back. Alex let out a deep sigh, said, “See you tomorrow!” and jumped out of the car.

I raised my eyebrows and looked at him one more time, trying to imply that he had one more chance.

“Maybe we’ll hang out this weekend?” he said.

“Yeah, call me.”

And I scooted out the passenger side and slammed the door.

Alex fiddled with her keys before letting us in.

“You hungry?” Alex asked.

“Always,” I replied.

Alex’s house was warm and smelled like laundry and spicy food. Mail, mugs, and reading glasses were always strewn over the kitchen table, like people actually lived there. Sweaters hung on the backs of chairs; sneakers and slippers were thrown by doorways and under coffee tables. Her mom sold antiques, so there were all sorts of interesting, old-looking things everywhere. Weird things like red wagons, tapestries, and copper pigs. Things my mom would call crap. My house was like a museum. The rooms were all too well lit and too big, and nobody had been in most of them in years.

“Tonight was fun,” she said, basking in the glow of her refrigerator light.

“Totally.”

My phone beeped, and I reached into my purse to see who was calling. Maybe it was Austin, leaving the ’Zu and looking for a booty call. Or maybe even Sam…

It was a text from Drew:
I wish I’d gotten to kiss you again tonight.

A smile spread across my face.
Phew
, I thought, though if he wanted to kiss me, why hadn’t he when I gave him the chance?

I texted back:
Me 2 :(

He immediately replied:
I will kiss you again soon. I promise. Good night, Veronica.

“What are you smiling about?” asked Alex, pulling some leftover spaghetti out of the microwave.

“Nothing,” I said. “Booty text.”

A
lex had been pretty closemouthed about the Drew/Veronica thing. V and I had bio lab together, so I took the opportunity to get her side of it—to see if maybe she had some idea of what a self-involved cunt she could be.

“So,” I said over Bunsen burners, “what’s going on with you and Drew?”

She looked at me, her cow eyes peering out from under the plastic lab goggles. “I don’t know,” she said, still focused on the beaker. “We talk on the phone sometimes and had fun bowling the other night. It’s all been pretty PG. We’ve only kissed, like, twice.”

She hovered over our lab station. The sleeves of her white coat were rolled up, exposing her tan, bony wrists stacked with Tiffany charm bracelets and a Cartier watch. Veronica and her fucking charm bracelets. It always cracked me up that someone so lewd could be so obsessed with something so precious. But she’s worn them, and has just continued to stack them farther up her bony little arm, since I’ve known her. She used to let me borrow them, back when we used to go to all the ’Zu parties together and I’d stay at her house to avoid curfew.

“Do you like him?” I asked.

“What’s not to like?” she said.

“Do you think Alex is weird about it?”

“I thought she might be, but she’s been cool. She was the one who told me he liked me in the first place, right?”

She was?

“Well,” I said, taking the forceps from her limp fingers and rearranging our test tubes, “if you actually want to date Drew, my advice is to take it slow.”

She rolled her eyes. “Trust me, we are,” she said.

It was ironic, me giving Veronica sex advice. I used to look at her as my sex guru. When I first decided to sleep with Sam, I asked her about everything—condoms, positions, underwear, pacing. I figured people keep wanting to have sex with her, so she must be pretty good at it.

That was actually how we even really became friends. She was always Alex’s annoying friend who I tolerated because her parents were never home, and, well, you don’t have a girl who looks like that running around and not keep her on your side. But when Sam and I started sleeping together, I’d run right to her, not to Alex, with everything. I’d asked if it was normal that it was over so quickly, that it hurt sometimes, that he really liked doing it from behind, that we stopped making out beforehand after a while. I couldn’t talk to Alex about that stuff; she’d just get awkward and think I was bragging or that Sam was a weirdo and hate him even more than she already did. But Veronica could make a joke and funny story out of anything—it was one of her greatest and most annoying qualities. Whatever
strange, embarrassing, scary debacle happened during sex, nothing was a big deal, everything was normal, and happened to everyone all the time. I used to sleep at her house every Friday night after ’Zu parties. She even used to let Sam come over, and we would have sex in one of her guest rooms. Until everything came out about her parents, and my mom found out that there were never any adults in that house and stopped allowing me to stay over there.

“Remember what a big deal it was when I first slept with Sam?” I asked her as I scribbled down the lab notes. “We’d been together, officially, for, like, months. Unlike the rest of the dipshits you hook up with, Drew is potentially interested in being your actual boyfriend.”

God, what would Veronica be like with an actual boyfriend? Would she be able to accept adoration and attention from only one guy for an extended period of time? Would she be able to handle it when the adoration and attention stopped and she’d have to come up with legitimate things to talk about? Or would her head spontaneously combust if the entire world wasn’t gawking at her at all moments? I admit, I was somewhat curious to watch her crash and burn.

“We’ve literally just made out,” she said. She perched on her stool, admiring her nails, having apparently given up entirely on even pretending she’d help with the lab.

“I’m just saying, had I flashed my cleavage and put out for Sam right away, I’m not sure we’d be what we are today. If you want a real relationship, you need to work for it. Play the game. Boyfriends don’t just pop out from your Bunsen burner the
second you decide you’re in the mood for one, and boys don’t date girls who put out on the first date. Fact.”

“Thanks, Dr. Phil,” she said. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Fine then, whore. I’m just trying to help.” And I pushed my notes over to her so she could copy them.

“I guess you would know more about relationships than me,” she said in a tone I didn’t appreciate.

“I never really pictured you with a guy like Drew,” I said.

“Trust me, me neither,” she said as she shrugged and begrudgingly copied my answers.

“So why Drew, then? Why now?” I couldn’t figure out her game here, if she was really into Drew or if she was doing this to mess with Alex, to prove a point. I looked at the clock and nudged her to get a move on the lab copying.

“Because he likes me, and keeps calling me and wanting to hang out, and that’s more than I’ve gotten from the ’Zu guys. I figure I should mix it up and hang around someone who actually likes me for a change.” She became distracted from the answer copying and began poking the tip of her pen in the fire from the Bunsen burner.

“What the fuck!” I yelled, snatching the hot, bubbling blue plastic from her grip.

“Sorry!” she yelled back. “I like the way it smells when it burns.”

I
sat on my bed staring at my calculus textbook, unable to think about anything but Drew and Veronica. I thought about what they were doing; if they were talking, kissing, more than kissing; what they were saying; how they were saying it; if they were different around each other than they were around me; if they talked about me; what they thought of me; if they made fun of me, lauded me, pitied me.

It was all downhill after Halloween. They weren’t calling themselves boyfriend and girlfriend or anything (yet), but they went out to meals together, went to the movies. He started driving her home from things—her and not me, like I didn’t still live down the street and it didn’t still make logistical sense that we consider the environment and carpool. He hung out at her house on school nights instead of mine, and when he stopped telling me about what happened there, I knew it was really over. For the first month, I oversaw and edited every text, choreographed every hangout, but by Thanksgiving, preambles like
Veronica told me
and
Drew and I saw
were followed by information that was news.

Drew and I still talked, but not like we used to. We still
went on our smoke ’n’ drives (sometimes) and watched our movies (less), but something was different. Something that left earlier and came later. Something that drove us to say
hey, stranger
when we saw each other, even if it had been only a few days since our last encounter. They’d try to not be awkward around me and invite me to meals and movies, and to play mini golf—and I went to show them how secure I was with myself and how supportive I was of this whole miserable fucking thing. Seeing her all over him, watching him try to be funny for her—it was excruciating, but I grinned and bore it—after all, I had no one to blame but myself. I let this happen. Fuck, I practically made this happen.

I stared at that calc book: the
x
and the
a
and the square root sign and the silly blue graphs in the top left corner of the glossy paper that, as far as I could tell, had nothing to do with either the
x
or the
a
. I saw their faces close to each other’s, heard them whispering, felt them smiling; her all gussied up at the prom in some boob-baring, exorbitantly expensive techno-colored number holding his flowers and slow dancing to sad Beyoncé songs with her face in his neck. I slammed the book shut.

I went downstairs. I opened the refrigerator, but I wasn’t hungry. I turned into the living room and saw the piano.

I sat on the hard bench, felt the cold wood through my jeans and the slick ivory under my fingers. I ran my nails over the keys like it was my pet. I always felt like I had to greet it, say hello, exchange pleasantries, before I played. That came from my dad. When I was little, we’d sit on that bench and he’d tell the piano what he was going to teach me that day, and he’d ask
if it thought I could handle it. I’d laugh to humor him, as I was never the type of child that believed the piano would answer or that Santa fell down chimneys or that wishing on stars or on pennies or at 11:11 made any sort of difference in getting me any closer to anything I wanted.

I flipped around through some of the sheet music we had, but I didn’t feel like playing any of that.
Stevie Wonder: Greatest Hits
,
The Sound of Music
, Beethoven. I started to mess around.

I played a C chord, just because, then E minor—that sounded eerie and soothing and sad and exactly how I was feeling, so I kept going. I let my fingers run around with the major and minor chords until sound filled the room and I wasn’t thinking about it anymore. I got dramatic and started pounding the keys and really just letting it out; it got angry, then sad and soft, then angry again. I pretended there were little mini Drews and Veronicas under the keys and I was beating them, shoving my notes and punches and everything I wished I had the balls to say down their smug little throats. I kept going. I didn’t even know what I was playing. It just felt good to be making something, changing the sounds in my head—to hear music instead of noise. Fuck the noise in my head, I thought, their faces in mine. Fuck it all. I could push them out, fill my head, change the noise.…

Fill it with sound. Fill my head with sound, fill the room with sound, fill it with anything but the noise—drown out the noise, turn off the words, black out the pictures… I got up and found a pen.