What Kind of Girl

by Alyssa Sheinmel

  Ugh, guys are such pigs.

  Anyway. I don’t throw up, like, every night. And I never throw up during the day—never at school and never in a public restroom, because, gross. I do it in my own house, in the bathroom on the second floor next to my bedroom, and I always clean up afterward: flush the toilet, scrape away any detritus, wash my hands, brush my teeth. I haven’t even lost that much weight since I started doing it. It’s really just so I can go to bed most nights with a relatively flat (that is, empty) stomach. I know they say you don’t sleep well when you’re hungry, but I sleep better that way. When I’m hungry, that ache in my belly makes me believe I can actually feel my body metabolizing what’s left inside. (I never succeed in throwing up every last bit that I’ve eaten.) It feels like it’s hard at work. It feels good.

  Throwing up does not feel good. The other day, I visited an online support group for recovering bulimics—I wasn’t really sure if I was hoping to find advice that would help me stop throwing up, or tips from experts that would make throwing up easier. I felt like a total imposter just browsing through the website. Anyway, some of the girls talked about how much they missed throwing up. Like the actual physical act of it. They talked about it in practically fetishistic—is that a word?—terms: the sensation of their fingers in their mouth, their teeth rubbing the backs of their knuckles, the feeling of satisfaction when the food began to rise up through their bellies, the comforting scent of vomit.

  I thought: You’ve got to be kidding me. You can’t imagine how much I wish I didn’t have to throw up. How much I wish I could just starve myself and be done with it. Or better yet, go back in time and be born one of those girls who can eat whatever she wants without gaining an ounce because it seems to me that one of life’s great injustices is that some girls can eat what they want and still look great naked while the rest of us can’t.

  Isn’t that what every girl—and probably every guy too—wants? I mean, I know we’re not supposed to care, we’re supposed to work out and watch what we eat to be healthy, not to be thin, but come on. That’s another one of those things you have to pretend about, like how you have to pretend you don’t know if you’re pretty, which is a ridiculous thing to have to be modest about, when you think about it, since it’s not like you had anything to do with what you look like; it’s just luck, a trick of genetics, a trick of timing. Girls who’re considered unattractive now might have been the ideal in the nineteenth century, after all.

  Anyway. So I throw up sometimes. Not enough to qualify as a real bulimic. An imposter, like I said.

  I almost missed throwing up tonight because Mom wanted to linger after dinner, talk about what was going on at school. Apparently, all the parents know by now. I sat there quietly—engaging would’ve only prolonged the conversation and with each second that ticked by, more food was getting metabolized, which meant there’d be that much less left for me to vomit.

  I finally ended the conversation by standing up and announcing, “Mike Parker’s just an asshole. He had us all fooled, but there’s no point in trying to make sense of it. Only an asshole would hit his girlfriend.”

  I walked away without adding what I was thinking, which was: No self-respecting girl would stay with a guy who hit her. I don’t care how many times he apologizes or promises not to do it again or tells you he loves you. I may spend thirty minutes (twenty, fifteen, five—it varies) on my knees each night worshipping the porcelain god, so I’m not exactly an expert in self-respect, but even I know that.

  Ten

  The Girlfriend

  One of the few nice things about my parents having had a particularly contentious divorce is that they never want to talk to each other. Instead, they expect me to be the go-between.

  Tell your mother…

  Tell your father…

  Your next visit…

  Your last report card…

  Actually, it isn’t usually a nice thing. But now that there’s something Mom knows that Dad doesn’t know and I’ve decided I want to keep it that way, I’m newly grateful for their mutual animosity.

  If my father knew about Mike, he might ask me why I didn’t go to the police. I can practically hear his voice: It’s not a principal’s job to deal with a criminal act.

  Then again, in the movies, principals are always breaking up fights between kids in the cafeteria, the gymnasium, the parking lot. Cut to the next scene and a couple of boys are on the bench outside the office; one has a bloody nose and the other a black eye. So maybe, it’s exactly the sort of thing principals are used to.

  Except maybe the principal gets involved because those sorts of incidents happened on the school grounds. That wouldn’t apply here. Mike never hit me at school.

  And in those situations, it’s both kids fighting—I mean, maybe one of them started it and the other reacted—but me, I never fought back. Maybe I should have, but what would the point have been? Mike is nearly a foot taller than I am. He’s an athlete. He can wrap his fingers around my upper arm like a very tight bracelet.

  Plus, in those movie situations, it’s usually two boys. Sometimes it’s girls, but I’ve never seen a movie where it’s a boy versus a girl. Unless the characters had superpowers or something.

  My dad met Mike back when we were just friends, before the divorce, and Mike made enough of an impression that Dad remembered Mike when I said we were together. Not that I was all that excited to tell Dad I had a boyfriend, but he asked me over the phone once a couple months ago when we’d run out of things to talk about (grades, the weather, Mom’s messiness) and there was an awkward silence: “What else is going on with you? Any beaux?” he said, like I was a Southern belle or something, and this was the 1930s, not the twenty-first century.

  My dad isn’t the kind of dad who would show up at Mike’s house with a baseball bat to break his car windows for hurting his daughter. You know, If you ever lay another finger on my daughter, I’ll kill you, that kind of thing. He’d be mad, sure—he’s not a terrible father or anything like that—but he’d probably be confused too. He’d wonder about how much Mike and I seem to love each other, how I light up whenever Mike’s around. (We all went to dinner together when Dad visited last month, and that’s what Dad said: “You light up around him.”)

  He’d ask me—like Mom asked me—how long it had been going on, and if I told him the truth, he’d ask why I waited so long to speak up. Don’t people realize that question is a sort of accusation—why didn’t you speak up sooner? how could you keep quiet?—like it’s my fault for letting things go on as long as they did, go as far as they did.

  Of course, Dad would support my decision to speak up, but he’d probably be sad for me too—not just that I’d been hurt, but that I was losing the boy who (he thought) made me happy. A boy I seemed to love. A boy I did love. Maybe Dad would be the one person who’d understand that was part of why I didn’t say something sooner. Not because I was scared of what Mike might do—but because I wasn’t ready to give Mike up.

  Or maybe he’d think I was sick for wanting to keep a guy who hit me.

  Anyway, Dad would ask why I didn’t go to the police. Dad probably doesn’t know how little the police can do, in circumstances like this. I looked it up last night and all they really do is issue a restraining order, but Mike and I go to the same school, so how could that possibly work, like, mechanically? Anyway, that’s not why I didn’t go to the police. I didn’t go to the police because going to the police seemed so much bigger than going to Principal Scott. Keeping matters within the school felt more manageable, more contained.

  * * *

  When he hit me for the first time, I was startled but not surprised. Until that moment, I hadn’t known it was possible to be startled but not surprised. Startled because being slapped is shocking, in and of itself; unsurprised because at the very moment it happened, I realized I knew it was coming.

  We were in his room—his parents
both worked, and we’d always felt lucky that we could be alone in his house after school each day. (My house was empty in the afternoons too, but Mike never wanted to go to my house.) His parents hadn’t bothered to declare some rule like No Girls in the House Unsupervised because they knew they had no way of enforcing it. Mike’s little brother, Ryan, has after-school activities scheduled every day of the week—Ryan goes to a series of occupational therapists and tutors—so Mike never even had to babysit.

  Mike’s room is on the second floor of his parents’ house. He has an en suite bathroom, which meant a bathroom that was attached to his bedroom. Ryan’s room is on the first floor, which means his bathroom is also the guest bathroom.

  Mike and I were fully dressed, but we hadn’t been a few minutes earlier. The bag I’d filled with ice for his ankle was on the floor. Mike walked across the room normally. I guessed his ankle didn’t hurt anymore, and I was relieved for him. He was getting ready to drive me home.

  I remember all that, but I can’t remember what I said, what he said, right before it happened. Did I ask about his ankle? Had we been arguing? Had I made him angry? I think there was a college basketball game on. Of course I rooted for Mike’s favorite team.

  I can’t remember any of the details someone else would think was important: What happened? Why did he get so upset?

  I hated that I couldn’t remember. Maybe I could have stopped it from happening again, if only I’d remembered what made him do it.

  It was a slap. It made my cheek burn, but it wasn’t hard enough to leave a mark. (I wonder now: Did he do that on purpose? A slap is enough to shock you, even when it’s not very hard. Did he think: How can I make an impact without leaving a bruise?)

  I shook my head, not because I was trying to say no to Mike, but because I was saying no to what had happened: This couldn’t happen to me, not with Mike, the perfect boy, the best boyfriend.

  Should I have hit him back? It didn’t occur to me to hit him back. Maybe if I hadn’t been an only child—if I’d had a big sister or little brother that I’d grown up wrestling with—maybe then, my instinct would’ve been to fight back. Maybe that’s what Mike used to do with Ryan—maybe that’s what made him hit me, some muscle memory left over from horseplay with his little brother. But a slap isn’t like wrestling and hair-pulling.

  In my head, I narrated what happened next as though it were happening to someone else.

  She started to cry.

  He apologized before the first tear had time to fall as far as her chin.

  He apologized but he didn’t beg.

  In movies and books, sometimes the man gets on his knees, pleads for forgiveness, promises it will never happen again—Mike didn’t do that. Maybe if I’d been angrier—but I hadn’t felt angry. All I felt at that moment was that I wanted to go home. And Mike was my ride home.

  I could’ve called my best friend to come and get me, but then I’d have had to explain why Mike couldn’t drive me, come up with some cover story: Mike has to study, Mike’s parents don’t want him driving at this hour (it wasn’t even dinnertime yet). Nothing seemed like a good enough explanation. And a weak explanation would just invite more questions.

  It never occurred to me to tell the truth. It would ruin Mike’s reputation when it had only been a fluke, an accident, a mistake. Not that he said it was a fluke, an accident, a mistake. But what else could it be?

  And, I knew that if I asked someone else for a ride home, I’d have to wait—first for that person to respond to my text, and then for that person to drive from wherever she was to Mike’s house. There was no telling how long all that would take.

  I remember wishing I had my own car, thinking how my mom said we couldn’t afford it, but Dad had hinted he might give me one after graduation, and then wondering how Dad could afford it when Mom couldn’t, and then wondering why I was thinking about any of that at all. Anyway, it wouldn’t have mattered if I did have a car, because I wouldn’t have driven myself to Mike’s house. Ever since we had gotten together, Mike had driven me to school every morning in his gray hybrid SUV, he had driven me to his house after school was over or after track practice ended, and he had driven me home in time for dinner, before his parents got home.

  She swallowed the lump in her throat and wiped away her tears.

  She asked him to take her home.

  He walked down the stairs two at a time. His steps were so heavy that the railing shook.

  She followed behind slowly.

  The stairs in Mike’s house were carpeted with a plush, creamy rug. Mike’s parents asked guests to take off their shoes before going upstairs, a request I always tried to remember even though Mike almost never did. I had to stop at the front door to put my shoes on. There was still a wreath on the front door, because Mike’s mother hadn’t taken down their Christmas decorations yet. I’d spent Christmas Day with Mike’s family, and Mike gave me my first-ever Christmas present—a soft, warm scarf that I wound around my neck before stepping outside. My parents had always run out of presents by the fourth or fifth night of Hanukkah, and since the divorce, my mom didn’t even bother lighting the candles.

  The holidays with Mike’s family were different: the scent of pine filled the house, and Mike’s mother cooked a ham (I ate some to be polite; it was the first time I’d ever tasted pork), and he and his dad and Ryan tossed a football in the backyard. I felt like I was a guest star in an old black-and-white sitcom.

  We were silent on the ride home. Mike turned on the radio, flipping until he found a song he liked the way he always did. It’s a short drive, but it still gave me plenty of time to think. This was the first time he had hit me, but there’d been things before that—pinches and tugs and squeezes. That was all just playing, right?

  But—then why hadn’t I been surprised by the slap?

  I didn’t kiss him goodbye like I usually did when he dropped me off. I was proud of myself for that. Like I was teaching him a lesson.

  But the next morning, he was waiting in the driveway to take me to school as usual and neither of us mentioned what had happened the day before. Maybe I’d imagined it. Everything was back to normal—Mike held my hand between classes, kissed my neck at the lunch table while everyone watched, ate half my sandwich off my plate. For a while, I managed to convince myself that it had just been a bad dream.

  I know that’s not what I was supposed to do. I was supposed to break up with him. To tell my parents. To at least not get in the car with him the next day. You’re not supposed to love a guy who hit you. But it felt like it had been a dream. What if it had been a dream? You’re not supposed to break up with a guy you love over a bad dream.

  But then it happened again, and I never felt so wide awake.

  Wednesday, April 12

  Eleven

  The Burnout

  I let Hiram kiss me today. I’d like to say it was the first time, but it’s been going on ever since I started knocking on his car window in January, even though I had a boyfriend, which I guess makes me a slut in some people’s opinions.

  Maybe even in my opinion, but I’m not going to think about that now.

  Before that wet winter Thursday, I’d never actually spoken to Hiram. I knew who he was—it seemed like everyone knew who he was, like he’d been a fixture around the school forever even though he’s only one year older than I am and he transferred to North Bay in his sophomore year. He showed up to class (sometimes) and to parties (all the time). He was the school loser, the school burn-out, but he was always around for a good time.

  It was raining that first time, not bright and clear like it is today. Knocking on his window was the sort of thing that would’ve scared me before. It was the sort of thing I would’ve asked my boyfriend to do for me, or at least I would’ve asked him to come with me while I did it. Or maybe it was actually the sort of thing I’d wait for my boyfriend to invite me to do with him. But this w
inter, things that used to scare me had started to seem a lot less frightening than they used to.

  Now, with Hiram’s arms around me on this bright sunny spring day, I know I should be worried that someone might see, someone walking to his or her own car, parked somewhere close by, even though Hiram’s car is in the almost-empty far end of the parking lot. Someone could snap a photo, they could even live stream it for the whole world to see. What would my boyfriend do if he caught us together? Maybe he’d challenge Hiram to a fight, the way boys do sometimes, as though they were in prerevolutionary France and he was defending my honor in a duel.

  But if I was worried about being caught, I wouldn’t have ever gotten into Hiram’s car to begin with. Just being there—here—at all is as scandalous as kissing him.

  What kind of story could I come up with to explain what I’m doing here, kisses or no kisses? It’s wrong to lie, but they’d believe me, if I told a good enough story.

  Or anyway, they would’ve believed me before. With everything else going on, I’m not sure they’d believe me now. Maybe they’d think I was only saying it because of what was happening with Mike. Like that one accusation had started a snowball effect or something.

  In between kisses, it occurs to me that the name Hiram is about as different a name from Mike as you can get.

  Mike Parker.

  Hiram—I almost stop kissing him when I realize that I don’t know Hiram’s last name.

  Hiram is a good kisser. Better than you’d expect him to be. Or anyway, better than I’d expected him to be. Hiram isn’t exactly traditionally handsome—another way he’s different from a golden boy like Mike Parker—but I’ve always found him attractive, maybe because he doesn’t seem to care about being traditionally handsome. He has a goatee—or is it a Vandyke, I can’t remember what the difference is—but somehow it never tickles my chin. It’s soft, silky, a few shades lighter than the almost black hair on top of his head. His lips are thin, but that makes his kisses gentle, tentative. With each kiss, it’s like he’s asking permission. Or maybe he’s just trying to keep me interested by kissing me so that it feels as if I’m saying yes, yes, yes, over and over again.