What Happens Next (29 page)

“… from the song…”

“… the girl with kaleidoscope eyes.”

27

Making out is
our new favorite hobby. It is seriously underrated as a form of contraception. If teenage couples practiced making out with the care and dedication that Corey and I do, with the keen attention to detail that it so richly deserves, then there would be no teen pregnancy problem in the world today.

Summer’s almost over, and I ask him if he is getting bored with it. If he is going to eventually dump me for a skank like Starsha Lexington or someone with more skills if I don’t let him get a peek or a feel of something soon. He rolls his eyes and says, “No, Sid. This is good. I can live on this for a while.”

What I want to know, though, is how did I get so lucky? In January, I thought this was going to be the worst year of my life. I seriously never thought that I would be able to come this far physically with someone. I thought I was damaged goods forever.

I’m hoping that I’ll be ready for a little more soon. It’s just, the idea of Corey seeing me naked or even partially naked scares me. Not because he wouldn’t be great about it and gentle and all that. I know he would. But still, it scares me badly. I don’t know why. I worry sometimes that I’ll never be able to let someone see me naked or let someone touch me all over.

Maybe I
am
damaged goods forever.

God.

I hope not.

I am the happiest I have ever been in my entire life. So why do I still keep up with the running and the not eating and the Urge thing? Sometimes, I think I should go talk to someone. A professional someone who knows about these things. As many times as I’ve googled bulimia and anorexia, I’ve never quite found what I’m looking for. It always talks about these perfectionist girls, obsessive-compulsive girls, or athletes and models who have all these killer expectations of themselves. I’m not like that. My room is a mess half the time, and the reason I get good grades has a lot to do with natural ability and the fact that Lakewood is just a regular school. You can get a good education there, I’m not saying it’s a bad school, I’m just saying that it’s a really regular school. I don’t think I stress about grades and perfection like some girls do. Usually I’m not grossed out by food until after I’ve eaten it. When it’s sitting there on the plate, I want to dive in face-first. I’ve actually started dreaming about food, about all-you-can-eat buffets and twenty-four-hour drive-throughs. I even dreamt about an ice-cream cone that jumped into my hand and started talking. I guess it’s better than dreaming about other things—much, much worse things.

I guess I know deep down why I do it. It’s because of the ski trip. I never did these things to myself before the ski trip, so A plus B equals C, right? I do it because I like the way it makes me feel. When I run, it gives me this high, like a drug or something. And when I puke, it gets rid of all the nervousness that builds up inside me when I eat. When all that stuff is sitting in my stomach, churning around, the pressure builds and builds until I can’t stand it anymore, so I get rid of it. It’s like this release valve letting loose all the pent-up anxiety.

But…

I think, though…

I think that I also do it because… well…. I seriously can’t stand the thought of having that weight on me, especially in the two places that it just
loves
to hang out—my boobs and ass. I don’t want those big, double-D boobs and that bubble butt anymore. When I was at my normal weight, all “Xena-licious” or “Marilyn Juicy,” as Paige liked to say, my boobs and butt were like two big blinking signs that screamed,
Grab here! Squeeze there!
So, no, I don’t want that. I want to look like a normal-sized girl. I want to blend in so guys don’t see me. So men don’t see me. And Corey doesn’t count. He’s not a regular guy, he’s not men—he’s Corey.

So I know a lot about what’s going on here. Trust me, I’ve analyzed myself to death. I guess what I don’t know, though, is how to stop it. These feelings, the anxiety, the running, the starving, the bingeing, the puking—I’ve tried to stop it all, but I can’t.

I don’t know how.

I don’t know the answer to that question at all.

28

My Super Hot Boyfriend
Corey Livingston is lying on my bed playing Liam’s PSP, and I’m trying to knock off this godforsaken book of poems before school starts Monday. Truly, it is a literary torture.

“I can’t stand it anymore. This book sucks,” I groan.

He grabs it from me and looks at it.

“Oof.”

He hands it back and continues playing his video game.

I think about his being dyslexic.

“Do you have trouble reading?” I ask.

He presses away at game buttons.

“Not really, not anymore. I used to be really awful at it. I would break out into a sweat if I had to read out loud in class. My mom finally went to the school with a note from my pediatrician that said I didn’t have to read in class anymore—shit, fucker killed me again!—um, the note said it was harming me emotionally. Teacher was pissed. She was this old-school Hun who thought she could scream the stupid out of you or something. Bitch flunked me.”

“Man. That’s harsh. But you can read out loud now?”

“Unfortunately.”

“Read to me.”

“Read what? That book of cheesy poems?” He rolls his eyes, pressing buttons on the PSP.

“Nah, I was just kidding, play your game.”

I roll back onto my back and try to finish the worst poetry ever put on paper. He stops pressing buttons. He snaps the PSP off and grabs the book. He looks at me through the corner of his eye, smiling devilishly, and starts reading.

“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”

Oh, God. He’s doing the fake Professor Shakespeare thing.

“Okay, stop,” I say, and I try to grab the book, but he pushes me away with one big hand and holds the book out farther from me.

“Thou art more lovely and more temperate…”

“Stop. Really, you sound like an idiot.” I laugh, trying to grab the book.

“You asked for it—you’re gettin’ it!” he says, laughing, and goes on even louder, “… Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May!”

I almost get it from him. He jumps off the bed, and I go after him.

“And summer’s lease hath all too short a date!”

He is pushing me away with one hand on my forehead, but I still get my hands on a page. It tears and we both stop and stare at it, at the corner piece of ripped paper in my fingers. Then we look back at each other. He decides he doesn’t care and jumps to the other side of the room and keeps going.

“Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines!”

I keep chasing and fighting with him, laughing my butt off. He sounds so funny. He pins me down on the bed with his knees over my arms and keeps reading, with the book in one hand and tickling me with the other hand. I scream laughing.

He stops mid-sentence at one point, lands on the word
growest
and looks at me, pinned underneath him, catching my breath.

“I think this is turning me on,” he says, a bit surprised.

“Shut up!” I say, laughing, my eyes watering. I’m shaking all over.

“No, seriously, what else is in here?” He flips to the table of contents and tickles me some more. I’m laughing so hard I’m afraid I’ll pee myself; I can’t even make a laugh noise, which is rare for me—it’s just this wheezing.

“Okay, here’s one with a little more testosterone in it,” he says.

He starts reading “The Spider and the Fly.” I haven’t gotten to that one yet; it’s near the end.

“ ‘Will you walk into my parlor?’ said the Spider to the Fly. ‘ ’Tis the prettiest little parlor that ever you did spy.’ ”

I stop laughing. My heart seizes up. That word. That word. Where have I heard that word? The blood drains out of me.

Walk into my parlor…

“Get up,” I say to Corey, but he’s still going, he doesn’t hear me. I can hear my dog start barking in Liam’s room.

“ ‘The way into my parlor is up a winding stair, and I’ve many curious things to show when you are there…’ ”

“Get off… meeee,” I say.

I’m losing my breath, I can’t breathe. Ronan is barking like mad.

“ ‘Oh no, no,’ said the little Fly, ‘to ask me is in vain, for who goes up your winding stair can ne’er come down again!’ ”

Corey looks down at me and sees the tears streaming down my face. He can tell they are not laughter tears and I’m doing this weird convulsing thing.

He jumps off of me, panic in his eyes.

“Oh, god, I’m sorry, did I hurt you? I was just joking around. Are you okay?”

I roll off the bed and onto the floor.

“I’m… I’m….”

I scrabble upright and run out of my bedroom and into the bathroom, bent over and holding my stomach. I shut and lock the door in Corey’s face. He’s knocking and twisting the knob and calling my name. Ronan is butting up against Liam’s door trying to get out, barking and barking. I’m on my knees in the bathroom trying to get the air back into my lungs.

Walk into my parlor… my parlor… my parlor…

I haven’t really thought about him as a person in a long time. The guy, I mean. I just think of the act mostly. But now I’m thinking of him as a person, as a fellow human being. And how he really wasn’t. Human, I mean. He couldn’t be. How could he be human and be so calculating… so…
evil
?

I can hear Corey through the door saying that if I don’t open up or speak, he’s going to force the door open.

“I’m fine,” I croak, “just give me a second.”

There’s a hissing in my ears but I think he has said the number ten. Ten seconds, he’s saying. He’s giving me ten seconds; he’s counting, “
One, two, three…”

Oh, god. What am I going to tell Corey when I come out of here?

I hurry up off the floor and turn on the water. I splash my face.

“I’m okay. I’m okay. Just a second,” I say, wiping my face.

I throw open the door.

“It was a period cramp, I’m fine now,” I say.

I walk calmly past him to Liam’s door; I open it and try to quiet Ronan down, hoping it will take the focus off of me.

We’re back on my bed. Corey is sitting with his back against the headboard and his legs stretched out straight, looking like he could cry. I’m sitting across his legs, trying to convince him that he didn’t do anything wrong. Ronan is lying on my floor, snoring; it took a while to calm him down, but he’s okay now.

“It was a cramp. Really,” I say to Corey. I am trying to get him to look at me. He won’t.

“I’m two hundred twenty pounds, Sid. I hurt you and you’re lying so I won’t feel bad.”

His big hands are on my waist and his fingers are feeling my protruding hip bones; he is wrapping his fingers and thumbs around me, looking at his hands and thinking about my wasp of a waist, I know it.

“I’m not. I’m not lying. It was PMS.”

He looks at me suspiciously before looking back down, shaking his head.

“Corey. Please.”

He finally looks at me again.

“I would never hurt you on purpose, you know that, right?” he says.

I reach up and hold his face. I look into his big, sorry brown eyes.

“I know. And you didn’t hurt me.”

He tries to turn his face away. I pull it back. I make him look at me.

“Okay?”

He sighs and nods okay. I put my head into the crook of his neck while he hugs and strokes my back and hair. I can feel him feeling my frame, my spine, so I get up.

“Let’s go make popcorn and watch sitcom reruns,” I say, taking his hand.

The rest of the night, it’s like I’m trying too hard to pretend it didn’t happen. The more I try to be casual and light, the more I look like I’m trying. I try to make him laugh while we watch TV on the couch, and he goes along with it the best he can, but I can see he’s lost in thought the whole time. I see the way he looks at me when he thinks I’m not paying attention. So I turn my back to him and nestle in, spoon into his stomach and chest, stretch out my legs on the couch and get myself into a position where he can’t see my face.