“To the best year yet,” Rudy proclaimed.
I was mesmerized by the flecks swimming around in my glass. We tossed the shots back, each of us grimacing.
“That shit’s disgusting,” Caleb wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“We had no idea.” I gagged, the cinnamon taste thick in my mouth. “We thought it’d be festive.”
“Oh, god, get me something to wash it down with.” Rudy reached for a cup of red punch.
I’ve always envied those people who can sense when bad things are coming their way. The ones who, before a car crash, can sense their tires hitting ice the moment it happens. The people who have time to try to reverse the situation, or at least pray it won’t be as bad as they fear. To brace themselves for the impact.
I, myself, have always been one of the unlucky ones who go through life oblivious. There were signs all around me that winter; I should have been able to read them. I should’ve paid more attention! Those are the things for which I admonish myself.
If I’m ever in a car accident, I feel sure I’ll be caught off-guard, still singing off-key to the radio until the very moment my body jolts forward and my car smashes into a guardrail.
At 11:30 the party was in full swing. Rudy and I had refilled the martini glasses over and over until all of Caleb’s vodka was gone. He’d approached us from behind, throwing an arm around each of our shoulders.
“Nice work,” he said, nodding toward the empty bottles.
“The martinis were an awesome idea.” I smiled.
“That was all Haley,” he said, his cheeks pink. He had loosened his bow tie and shed his jacket hours before. It was so warm I was even sweating a bit in my slinky, sleeveless dress.
Rudy was turning to select a fresh drink when Caleb leaned toward me.
“Hey,” he whispered. His breath in my ear sent goose bumps down my arms. “Can I talk to you upstairs real quick?”
I nodded, confused.
He tugged at my elbow, and I followed him. On the stairs I looked back at Rudy. We made eye contact, and she raised a single eyebrow. I shrugged. She sort of smiled, and I continued up the stairs. Just before she was out of eyesight, I thought I saw her toss back her entire martini.
On the second floor, I followed Caleb through a hallway twinkling with little white lights. He pushed one of the doors and led me inside.
I swear, I didn’t yet understand. Even then, I was still singing with the radio.
We were in his bedroom. He didn’t turn the lights on, but I could make out the shapes of his dresser and his bed and the outlines of soccer posters lining the white walls.
“So, this is your room, huh?” I flipped the light on myself and took in the room. His comforter was navy and light blue striped and his bed was made, though sloppily. In the corner a large black desk was full of papers and books, organized into neat and tidy stacks and his open backpack hung from the corner of the chair by one strap.
“This is it,” he said.
“This is where the magic happens,” I wiggled my eyebrows exaggeratedly.
“So much magic.” He laughed.
Above his desk was a shelf with a small collection of trophies, little gold soccer players in various positions atop engraved plaques. I crossed the room to look closer. Pushed to the back was a larger trophy of a shiny plastic bowling pin. I picked it up and held it out toward Caleb, an inquisitive look on my face.
He shrugged and appeared a tiny bit embarrassed. “I used to bowl in a league.”
“Like when you were a little kid?”
“What if I told you it was more like two or three years ago?”
“Who were you in a bowling league with?”
“It was a family league. My parents were big into it. I kind of miss it, but Haley wanted to quit and I didn’t really have time anymore with soccer.”
I set the trophy back down and peered out the window. It was dark, and I could see the glow of all the main floor lights spilling out onto the grass of the backyard. Caleb came up behind me and looked over my shoulder.
“What’re you looking at now?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Just looking.”
I could feel warmth from his body. I turned toward him – we were a few inches apart, just my martini glass between us.
“I like your hair like that.” He reached up and pulled at one of my curls, his fingers grazing my collarbone. I felt little goose bumps rising where he had touched my skin and warmth spread through my torso.
“Thanks,” I smiled and he smiled back, and we stood staring at each other like that for a moment.
He sat on the edge of the bed and gestured that I should sit beside him. I did.
“So,” I said.
“So.” He repeated.
Caleb had left his drink downstairs in the kitchen. I held my martini glass, unsure what to do with it.
“The party turned out pretty cool, huh?”
“For sure. I’m having fun.”
I set my drink on the carpet beside the bed.
“Good,” Caleb leaned toward me. “I’m really glad.”
“But there’s no way I’m helping clean up that confetti in the morning,” I joked. “That’s all you.”
“Yeah, I think I can handle that.”
He leaned in further and kissed me on the mouth.
I pulled back quickly, leaving him bent over me, his hand on my knee.
“What’re you doing,” I said.
“I was trying to kiss you.” He was still smiling, still in the moment before while I had travelled abruptly to a very different moment.
“I thought you liked Rudy.”
At this, he moved away just a little.
“Rudy? No. Not more than a friend. Why would you think that?”
“You went with her to Sadie,” I pressed.
“Because you asked me to.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
He gave me a little smile. He was so cute, so dangerously cute with his hair falling in his face that way. “I thought I’d made it pretty obvious that you’re the one I like.”
“Me.” I was having trouble processing what Caleb was saying. Maybe it was the alcohol, I thought. “You’re interested in me?”
“Yeah. And I thought it seemed like maybe you liked me back, too.”
“Why?”
“Why would I think you like me?” His chest seemed to deflate and he leaned away from me.
“No, why would you like me? I mean, over Rudy?”
He blew a stream of air out through the corner of his mouth. “I don’t know, Jillian, maybe because you’re gorgeous? You’re funny. You’re a lot of fun to be around.”
“But Rudy’s all of those things. More all of those things.”
“Are you serious?” He studied me for a moment with furrowed eyebrows. “Are you really that insecure?”
Sitting on his unmade bed with my long legs sticking out of my short, glittery dress, I wouldn’t have considered myself insecure; no, I wouldn’t have used that word. It was just that Rudy was the most beautiful girl I could imagine. She was perfect, with her shiny deep brown hair and her light green eyes, her perfect hourglass figure and her skin perpetually the color of a sunkissed tan. Her lips formed a perfect pink heart and even her imperfections served only to enhance her beauty. How was I supposed to compare to that?
I couldn’t, I thought. I paled beside her. I sunk below her.
A slimy feeling slid down into my stomach.
“I’m not being insecure. I’m being realistic.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “But I’m not nothing, you know. I’m not just a tool for you to use to make her jealous.”
The look he gave me – the perfect blend of desperation and sympathy, predaciousness and protectiveness – permeated my body, holding my vital organs captive, and I wondered for just a second if I was wrong about everything, about the balance between Rudy and I, about the person I imagined myself to be and the interior world where I lived. But th
e thought was too big – I shoved it away as quickly as it had come.
“I’m not trying to use you. If I wanted to date Rudy, I would have dated her. She doesn’t have anything to do with this. This is about you and me.”
Below us, I could hear the low rumble of the party continuing in our absence. Looking at his face – his distraught, confused face – I had the perverse urge to laugh. The whole situation was absurd. I stood, and leaned against his desk, needing to put physical distance between us.
“I can’t date you. Rudy liked you.”
“It was just one dance, Jill. You don’t think she can let that go?”
I didn’t like the tone of his voice. I wanted to go back downstairs.
“I don’t think she’d hold a grudge,” I said quietly.
“Then why don’t we just try this?” He took a step toward me, looking straight into my eyes. “You do feel the same way, right? That’s what it’s seemed like over the past few months.”
I did like him. I got butterflies in my stomach, especially if I thought about his smile. That’s why I had to break eye contact.
“No,” I answered.
I heard the countdown start, a unified chant muffled by the floor beneath my feet. I started to walk away, and Caleb caught my wrist.
“Jill, don’t leave yet.” He wasn’t mean when he said it, but still I yanked my arm away from him. I stepped back, and felt my foot knock into the forgotten martini glass, felt the liquid dripping over my shoe and soaking into the carpet.
“Just let me go. Please.”
I walked out at the eruption of midnight.
My insides were churning, propelling me down the staircase into the chaotic celebration. Everyone was shrieking, and the air was dense with glinting shards of confetti. Somebody opened a bottle of champagne and the cork whizzed past my ear. Foam splattered the floor.
I found Rudy in the foyer, her arms wrapped around some guy’s neck, her mouth pressed against his. She pulled away when I touched her arm. For a split second I saw something weird in her eyes, but it was gone before I could understand it.
“Happy New Year,” she squealed, planting a wet kiss where Caleb had kissed me minutes before, right on the center of my lips.
11
Junior Spring
When track season arrived that spring, I was ready. I’d been running all winter through the dirty sludge left over after snowfalls. Even when we were smoking, I was waking up early the following morning to run. My lungs were resilient.
Still, when Rudy and I pulled into the sports parking lot the morning of the first meet of the year, my stomach was swimming. I bounced one hip against the side of Rudy’s car while she pulled her windbreaker over her head.
“They should really consider buying new warm-ups.” She sniffed one navy sleeve. “These smell like cheese. And old people home.”
I tried to laugh for her, but my nerves were constricting my vocal cords.
“Hey.” She elbowed my ribs as we headed toward the track. “Chill out. You’re going to do great.”
Nervous wasn’t in Rudy’s vocabulary.
It was just a small meet – we were dueling another private school from across the city – but Coach Kline said they’d be good. They had three senior girl hurdlers. I’d hit the 100m hurdles hard at practice the week before, but I still didn’t feel ready.
The energy at a track meet was one of my favorite parts of the sport. It was so different than the relaxed feel before we competed in cross-country. As we passed through the gates to the track, Rudy and I could see the other team running warm up laps, their matching red pants slicking together to make a swooshing sound. To one side of the track, the coaching assistants were assembling the metal pole vault and high jumps standards, and Coach Sampson, the sprinting coach, was calling out stretches to a group of our teammates who lay with their legs spread in the grass. There was a decent crowd shivering in the bleachers. It smelled like popcorn, wafting from the concession stand.
“Crap, I’d better get over there,” Rudy started toward the group with Coach Sampson. Thomas Hart, one of the guys on the sprint relay teams, waved to her.
“Good luck,” I said to the back of her head.
“I’ll try to come find you before you run.” She turned back toward me and was jogged backwards while she spoke. “If not, kick ass, okay?” She mouthed the middle of that sentence.
I saluted, and she returned the gesture before jogging off.
In a small strip of grass beside the chute, I sat down, shoved ear buds into my ears and tuned out while I thrust one leg out to the side and bent over my thigh, feeling the stretch down my hamstring.
I was a quarter of the way through my pump-up playlist when I was startled by someone tapping me on the shoulder. I jerked, yanking the wire from one of my ears. It was Coach Kline.
“Hey, Jill. How you feeling?” He had crouched down to my level and spoke to me from behind mirrored aviator sunglasses.
“I’m alright. A little nervous, I guess.”
“Don’t be. You worked hard in practice the past couple weeks. I know you’ve got this.”
I responded with a closed-mouth smile. Pep talks only made me feel more anxious, but I didn’t have the heart to share that with him.
“Just remember, don’t change up your steps. Do it just the way we do in practice and you’ll be good to go.” He clapped me on the shoulder and the wires of my ear buds knocked against his arm. “You’ve got this, girl. This is your season, I just know it.”
When he was gone, scurrying off after someone called for him on his walkie-talkie, I stood and jogged two warm up laps around the crowded track, my legs and arms tingly.
At the first call for the 100-meter hurdles, I was in the chute, the first girl to arrive. Luke Bruggeman, another Ogden hurdler, stood beside me with his under-armored arms crossed over his chest.
“You nervous?”
He rolled his head in a circle, his hair flopping over his forehead, then grabbed at one foot from behind, stretching his quadricep.
“Yeah,” I said quietly. I was sizing up my competition, the leggy redhead in particular. She wasn’t any taller than me, but her body was two-thirds legs, as impossible as that sounds. I gawked, swallowing the lump in my throat.
“I just don’t want to wipe out. I don’t even care how I do, as long as I don’t eat shit.” Luke was bouncing up and down on his toes now, flexing and relaxing his calves. His anxious energy made me want to shake him by the shoulders until he stopped moving.
“Yeah.”
When the gun went off for the boys’ race, my stomach churned like an ice cream mixer. They ushered us into the blocks while they adjusted the hurdles. I was in the second lane, sandwiched between the redhead and a shorter black girl. My hands were clammy and cold as I placed my feet in the blocks and positioned my fingers in front of me on the track, the chunky rubber surface pressing into the soft skin of my palms. At the shot of the starting gun, I was out of the blocks and sprinting toward the hurdles. It was a great start.
Coaches always tell you not to look behind you during a race. Just worry about yourself, they say; don’t slow yourself down by trying to check up on your opponents. That’s easier said than done though. After the sixth hurdle, I glanced slightly to my right but I couldn’t see any of the other girls in my periphery.
I finished in sixteen seconds, a full second before the girl in second-place (the leggy red-head finished last; who would have guessed?). I only clipped one of the hurdles. Walking back down the side of the track after the race, my face was flushed.
“Nice race, Jillian.”
I turned. It was Caleb Rowling, standing with his friends on the sidelines in jeans and an Ogden sweatshirt, holding a cup of hot chocolate.
“Thanks,” I said sincerely.
He gave me a half smile and looked the other direction before I had to say anything more. I accepted two more congratulatory exclamations, one from a girl from the cross-country team and one fr
om my sophomore English teacher, who was manning the concession stand beside the track, when Rudy came running toward me on the sidewalk, her toes lifted so that her spikes didn’t scrape the concrete.
“Jill!” She collided against me, wrapping me in a quick hug. “Look at you, turbo. You won by miles.”
“Not miles,” I grinned.
“Metaphorical miles.”
The intercom cackled overhead. My organs had settled seconds after the race, and the smell of the concession stand was making my stomach growl.
“I’m supposed to go practice hand-offs with the 4X2 team. I put my stuff over in the shed though. Thomas is watching it for me,” Rudy said. During home meets, our team congregated in the old storage shed at the end of the track, laying down blankets and pillows on the cement floor and lounging in our warm-ups while we watched our teammates run. “See you after my race!”
“Good luck!”
I won my second race, the 300-meter hurdles, later that afternoon. When Coach Kline found me at the finish line, he grabbed me in an awkward one-armed hug.
“That’s my girl,” he grinned. “It’s your season; what’d I tell you?”
You would think that by April of my junior year of high school, I’d have some idea where I was going to college. Ogden allowed all juniors three excused college visits over the course of the year, but I only took one day to drive to MU with Rudy, where we spent most of the day meandering around the enormous campus observing what the girls were wearing and watching for cute guys before we left to go get frozen custard and drive home.
You could see evidence of the building enthusiasm in the bright new sweatshirts I’d see my classmates wearing: UC Berkeley, NYU, Truman University, Missouri State. I didn’t catch their excitement, but, really, I shouldn’t have been so surprised that Rudy was thinking about her future.
“Guess what?”
“Huh?”
We were sprawled out on the couch in my basement and I was enthralled with the movie on the TV screen.
“I said, guess what,” Rudy repeated.
“What?”
She reached for a handful of popcorn from the bowl that sat between our feet, then picked a single kernel from her hand and put it in her mouth.
Golden Page 20