I stood, narrowing my eyes, rearranging my face into what I hoped was a brave, serious expression.
“Someone has ravaged our ship,” I said, standing at the edge of the forest, wearing one of Sandra’s leather boots as a fake leg. I pointed in the direction of my house, accusing Sandra and her boyfriend. “Call for help!” I shouted. “We have to kill them before they make you dance the hempen jig!” One of our favorite facts about Rachel Wall, besides that she was a girl, was that she confessed to practicing piracy just before she was hanged in Boston.
Susan ran into the clearing, screaming at the top of her lungs, then swooning on the ground.
“Help!” she cried before she fell.
I swooped in and killed the invisible enemies with a stick I used as a sword. Susan followed along.
“Die, scallywags!”
We ran around until we were sweating, our cheeks red.
“We must spend the night looking out,” I told her when we’d finished killing the enemies. “Let’s stay in the crow’s nest.”
We climbed into the fort and lay down on the blanket stowed inside it, pretending this was the very top of the ship. She laid her head on my stomach, and I put my hand in her hair. We were both breathing heavily, sticky with sweat.
“I will keep watch,” I said. I handed her a lime from inside my house, to prevent scurvy. We always carried limes.
Susan took the lime and closed her eyes, and I tangled my fingers in her hair.
“Let’s weigh anchor in the morning,” I whispered. Let’s get out of here, just you and me.
“Aye,” she answered. “Give me another lime.”
Her breathing became deep and steady, and I felt like the leader of the forest. I would stay awake all night, just in case.
* * *
—
Now, at yet another one of Scottie’s parties, Susan was holding a plastic bottle full of vodka and cranberry juice. We sat on the porch swing, waiting for Brad to arrive. Earlier that day, I answered the phone when he called, panicking slightly at the sound of his voice—the voice of my boyfriend. He asked if I’d be at this party, and I knew it was probably in my head, but his tone made me think it was a dare.
“Remember when we used to play pirates?” I asked Susan.
“What made you think of that?” she asked.
I was always remembering things no one else did and reminding them of these things when they didn’t want to be reminded.
“I don’t know,” I said.
The grass of Scottie’s lawn was dim blue in the dark, and the rich, horsey smell of it made me think of playing pirates. It was late fall, though, not summer, and cold. The mosquitoes were long gone, and everything looked smaller than it had that summer when we were eleven.
I took a sip of my beer.
“Sometimes I wish we could still play games,” I said. “I just . . . This isn’t fun.” I was a little drunk.
I saw Brad’s Datsun pulling up, him getting out. His lacrosse letterman jacket had a big cartoonish face of a sailor on the sleeve and his last name embroidered on the breast pocket. We were the Hopuonk Beachcombers.
Beachcombers were people who spent their lives roaming the sand, looking for something of value. Often, they’d been banished from pirate ships. Brad’s letterman jacket and Heather’s cheerleading uniform had the Beachcomber emblem sewed on. Hopuonk’s sailor version was actually nothing like what a real beachcomber was—someone who wasn’t a sailor at all.
“You’re so weird,” Susan said, pulling away from me at the sight of Brad.
I had a brief but fierce urge to pull Susan into the bathroom and tell her right then that I was a lesbian, to exonerate myself no matter what the consequences were, but then Brad was in front of me and I could see frustration in his face.
“Hey,” I said to him, standing. My head barely reached his shoulder, and he leaned down and kissed my hair.
“You look beautiful,” he said, holding me at arm’s length, his hands on my shoulders, trying to look cool in front of everyone—in front of Heather. “It’s nice to see you.”
Even though his words were plain, I felt a little threatened. Because I’d been ignoring him, I’d need to make up for it, and since I wasn’t supposed to lose him, I knew that probably meant sex. Sandra said I had to make sure I didn’t lose him. I thought about what Heather had said outside Emmylou’s—that I wasn’t in love with him—and I hated that she was right.
“Let’s go upstairs,” I said, leaning into him.
As we ascended the stairs, I could feel Susan’s eyes on my back.
Heather watched too. I wondered if she was also in love with Brad, if that was why she was so mean.
I was glad that they saw us, but that feeling went away once the door closed. I hated Scottie’s bedroom immediately and wondered how Heather spent tons of time here. His bed was dirty and he only had one pillow, but he had three bongs. The cowboy wallpaper on the walls was dingy and covered in posters of barely clothed women, and one with the rules of Beirut that said GET YOUR BALLS WET! across the bottom in neon orange.
“Why have you been ignoring me?” Brad said, now that we were alone. The desperation in his voice made me want to slap him. He was the captain of the lacrosse team. Every girl wanted him. Susan wanted him. He was supposed to be confident, to know where to put his hands.
“I’m not ignoring you,” I managed to say.
He was right, though.
“You’re supposed to be my girlfriend,” he said, as if he were reading my mind.
Starting in middle school, my friends would get upset about boys. They cried in bathrooms at dances, they held hands with boys in the hallway, and they wrote their initials next to the initials of whoever they had a crush on, with little hearts around them.
I’d tried having boyfriends—I even agreed to go out with Scottie in eighth grade, then avoided him until finally dumping him at a school dance. I just couldn’t muster up the same emotions as my friends. It was around that time I knew something was wrong with me.
“Aren’t you?” said Brad. “Still my girlfriend?”
His voice sounded like a child asking to sleep in his mother’s bed after a nightmare.
“Yes,” I said, trying to be kind. “I’m still your girlfriend. I’m sorry I didn’t call you back. I’m not sure how to do this girlfriend thing.”
He took my agreement as permission. He reached for me and kissed me, very gently. Still, his stubble scratched my chin, and it hurt.
Then he stepped out of his pants and put his hands on my thighs. I watched his every move, trying to learn from him, to learn what it was that Susan loved.
I thought of eleven-year-old Susan’s sleeping face as he pushed his body against me. That face was so far away.
Before I knew it, he’d tugged his boxers off, and there it was: his penis, which looked like a floppy joystick. He reached for the button on my jeans. I was still fully clothed.
I slid out of my jeans and pulled my sweater over my head, tossing it on the floor. He pressed his body against mine.
Brad was breathing heavily now, and he slid his hand under the elastic band of my underpants. No penetration had occurred when, suddenly, he froze, his face white, and I felt moistness on my thigh.
Oh my God. Gross. Gross!
“Oh . . . okay,” I said. I knew that I wasn’t supposed to reassure him. It would make both of us feel worse.
I needed a shower. I wanted to take about seventeen showers, and put on the cleanest pajamas in my bureau.
At least this meant I wouldn’t have to do it with him.
“I . . . Sorry,” he mumbled. And then he was pulling his boxers back on, followed by his pants.
“I’ll call you more from now on,” I said miserably, but he was already halfway out the door.
I felt a wave of nausea so hug
e that I leaned back on the bed without even getting dressed. Everything was spinning.
“Susan!” I shouted. I doubted she could hear me over the music downstairs, but I shouted her name again and again, and finally she appeared in the doorway.
Susan came over and sat on the edge of the bed, leaning over me. Her black hair spilled onto my chest. She placed a palm on my forehead, but there was still resentment in her expression.
“Did you guys do it?” she asked.
“I don’t feel good,” I said.
“What do you need?” she said absently.
My nausea passed. I blinked.
“A lime,” I said.
The Note
I left Scottie’s party with six rolls of stolen toilet paper in my bag, then drove to Corvis’s house.
I saw that only her car was in the driveway—her parents’ old Subaru Outback, recognizable because of the bumper stickers Corvis had plastered all over the back. Leaving my bag in the car, gathering the rolls of toilet paper in my arms, I walked to the front door and rang the bell with my elbow.
When Corvis opened the door, she looked surprised to see me, but not that surprised.
“Hi,” I said.
She raised an eyebrow. Her jeans were ripped, and she wore a faded T-shirt that said FREE PALESTINE, which made me feel stupid, because I didn’t know anything about Palestine or why it wasn’t already free.
“What are you doing here?” Tucked under her arm was a book by someone named Virginia Woolf. I liked that name—it sounded like the name of a famous dead female pilot or an incredibly sexy double-jointed circus performer.
“Listen,” I said. “I was here the night everyone egged your house. I mean, I showed up first—I don’t even know why—but I was still here when everyone messed up your house, and I didn’t stop them, and I’d really like it if you’d get me back.”
She shifted her weight from one leg to the other and leaned against the door frame. Her socks had little tacos on them.
Sandra’s face popped into my mind—her languid, distant who-cares face. I looked at Corvis desperately. Punish me, I thought. Please punish me.
“I’m sorry for everything I did in seventh grade,” I said, “and everything I didn’t do since then. I’m an asshole. Look, I even brought supplies.”
I held out a roll of toilet paper, persistent, and she said, “Stop.”
“No, I’m serious,” I said. “Mummy me.”
* * *
—
At middle school dances, I cried in the bathroom sometimes, just like the other girls, but for different reasons.
Once, at the beginning of seventh grade, I was dancing with Mike O’Malley, and his touch made me feel sick, so I ran away, leaving him on the dance floor.
Corvis found me in the bathroom.
“I didn’t mean to,” I said, crying. “I didn’t mean to leave him there.”
She pulled some toilet paper from one of the rolls and brushed the tears from my cheeks.
“I know,” she said.
She looked at me a little too long. Lately, I’d started to see similarities between Corvis and me. We both loved Drew Barrymore and Madonna just a bit too much. Susan and Heather loved them, too, but then their posters switched to shirtless boys from Abercrombie magazine ads, while Corvis and I both kept Drew Barrymore and Madonna on our bedroom walls.
“I don’t want to dance with them either,” she admitted.
I stopped crying. The toilet paper she’d given me was moist now and wadded in my fist.
The bathroom was gross. Girls drew their names and hearts all over the mirror with lipstick, and no one washed it off. There were carvings of penises in the metal of the stalls, tampon wrappers on the floor, unidentifiable stains everywhere. In the middle of the room, there was a drain, stopped up by hair.
Why was it that our only place to hide had to be so disgusting?
“What’s wrong with me?” I said.
“Nothing’s wrong with you,” said Corvis, just as Susan and Heather burst in.
“What’s wrong with you?” Heather demanded, her hands on her hips. She was wearing flared jeans and a tiny shirt. “Why did you leave Mike there like that?”
“He’s really embarrassed,” said Susan. She wore a baby-doll dress with a white cotton T-shirt underneath, her black hair braided.
Corvis stepped in front of me. “Taylor is really embarrassed too.”
“I’m fine,” I said. “Mike just smells like cheese puffs.”
Corvis shot me a look. Heather and Susan started laughing, and from that point on, Mike O’Malley was known as Cheese Puff Boy.
The following Monday at school was when Corvis passed me the note.
We were sitting in study hall—Corvis had already been put in accelerated, so this was our only period together other than lunch.
Brad was there too. His math book was open on the desk in front of him—a desk too small to hold him already. His legs stretched out in all directions, the laces on his Pumas untied. He looked at the book like it was written in Chinese.
PJ elbowed me—I’d been staring at Brad, wondering what it would be like to have such long legs—and handed me the note.
I unwrapped it—it was folded into an origami fortune-teller, a disguise—and it read, Do you think about girls the way Susan thinks about Brad?—C
Underneath, she’d drawn three boxes, for me to check one: Yes, No, or Maybe.
I felt my cheeks burning.
I knew the answer, but I shoved the note into my pocket.
I made eye contact with Corvis for a millisecond, then looked away.
What I did afterward was unforgivable, yet I felt I had no choice. Notes were supposed to be sacred. I was about to break the girl code.
* * *
—
“I don’t really see the point,” Corvis said now, wrapping me in toilet paper. I spun around, to make it easier for her, and lifted my arms so she could reach my armpits.
“The point is that I deserve to be punished,” I said.
“Yeah, but you seem to be enjoying this,” said Corvis. She stood back, frowning and assessing her work.
We stood on the faded Turkish rug in her bedroom, our feet surrounded by books, pencils, and glassblown pipes filled with charred remnants of weed. The names on the spines of Corvis’s books were unrecognizable to me, but enticing: Maya Angelou, Simone de Beauvoir, bell hooks, which wasn’t capitalized for some reason. I liked all of their names better than mine.
“Maybe we need to add eggs to this equation,” I said.
“What are you trying to do?” she asked. “What do you want?”
I looked at her face, noticed that her skin was blotchy in certain places and pale in others, and had a passing thought that Heather would suggest a toner to clear it up. Corvis’s pale, almost nonexistent eyebrows needed plucking. Loose, wild hairs escaped her ponytail.
“I don’t know,” I said. “That’s the problem.”
She sighed.
“I’m just really sorry,” I said, “and it won’t be any good if I don’t go out in public like this. Let’s go to the grocery store and buy some eggs, and you can crack them over my head.”
I moved toward the doorway, but she grabbed my arm and looked at me, hard.
“My car, then?” I asked. “Do you want to throw them at my car instead?”
“Taylor,” she said, exasperated. “You’re being pathetic.”
I sighed.
“I keep meaning to be a different person,” I said.
“Come into the kitchen,” she said. “I’ll make us hot chocolate, but don’t tell anyone about this. Kristen would make so much fun of me if she knew we were hanging out.”
The Lacrosse Helmet
As soon as I told Sandra that Brad was officially my boyfriend, she took
me to get birth control.
The gynecologist was cool enough not to let on that she’d seen me before, and I left with a plastic case full of little circles, one for each day. I would take them every morning at seven o’clock, just before I left for school.
If I was going to have sex with Brad, at least I wouldn’t get pregnant.
I still couldn’t really understand sex, or how people just had it. I mean, obviously I knew what it was, because Sandra told me in kindergarten. What I couldn’t understand was how people could bring themselves to just be naked in front of another person like that, and then let someone go inside them.
The word had was weird, even, because it’s like people were saying that sex was something you could own, like a lawn mower or a toaster oven.
Anyway, when Brad went down on me in his Datsun—not even bringing the herpes into it, but just the act itself—it made me feel like he was disgusting. He was disgusting for wanting to do that to me, and I was disgusting for letting him. I couldn’t even watch—I just moaned after what felt like forever, and he stopped. Then I was supposed to pretend it was the greatest thing in the world. Like, Oh my God, I’m so grateful.
Heather had sex all the time—lots of times with people she barely knew. I could tell she usually felt bad afterward, but it also gave her this sort of power that you could see—like she had discovered a lost island.
Heather was the one that Brad lost his virginity to—in the cabin of Scottie’s father’s sailboat, while it was tied up to the dock at Humming Rock. Susan had sex too. Some of the people they’d had it with overlapped, since Hopuonk was such a small town.
Even Corvis had sex, at her summer camp in Maine. It was all girls, and Corvis had sex with more than two of them. I overheard her talking to Kristen about it once in the locker room. She also had sex with at least one girl at Lilith Fair—that weird feminist music festival—last summer, right after the Indigo Girls played. Unlike Heather, she didn’t appear to feel bad about it. She just did it.
We Were Promised Spotlights Page 5