Much Ado About Something

by Michelle Ray

  “I didn’t say much to Sula, Hope, and Maggie while I was at the game. I think they noticed I was . . . different, but we could spin this, I bet.”

  He smiled and said, “Lead on, devious one.”

  We plotted. And then we kissed. A lot. Time melted away until my mom texted that she’d be home any minute. I clutched my phone and practically shoved Ben to the door.

  Before leaving, Ben stopped and smiled. “Can’t say I’m sorry our friends are such pains in the butt.”

  Every inch of my body ached from wanting him to stay. “You’ve got to go,” I insisted, my voice hushed as if my mom were standing in the entry with us.

  “In a second,” he said, running his lips over mine and lingering a second to smell my skin.

  Legs weak, my heart pounding, I forced myself to say, “You have to go, Ben.”

  He let his lips slip to my neck, which made my whole body burn, and then he backed away. I closed the door and screamed into my palms. What a weird, wonderful day! And I couldn’t wait to turn the tables on the turds who’d made it all possible.

  • • •

  The next day at school, Ben and I were careful not to sit together in any of our morning classes. Before physics, he opened the door for me and I scowled until he let the door go, practically hitting me with it. We hardly spoke in class except to read the directions to the lab. When he messed something up, I asked Dr. Deutsche in a not-so-quiet voice when we would be changing lab partners. Ben scowled and cursed under his breath. We spent lunch in the yearbook office but worked separately. Then in Spanish class, Ben raised his hand to speak and when he got something wrong, I rolled my eyes and answered for him. He whispered, “Why do you have to be such a bitch?” Ms. Scott was not amused, but Ben and I certainly were. I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing, especially when Sula, face full of concern, mouthed, “Oh my God, are you okay?”

  After Spanish, I rushed out of class ahead of Ben and when I got to English, Maggie was waiting outside for me again. I snarled to hide a smile. “Don’t mess with me, Mags. I’m in a mood.”

  “I’ve heard. What’s wrong? Yesterday at the game you and Ben—”

  “Do not even mention our names in the same sentence. I’m sick to death of him. Why do you keep bringing him up?”

  “I—”

  “You know, I show up at the game yesterday to be nice, and afterward, he comes to my house. My house! I had work to do and he just comes over like he was invited which he so was not, and then tried to kiss me. What would make him do that?”

  “Uh . . .” Maggie’s cheeks and freckles were indistinguishable. “Bell’s about to ring.”

  Clay Chen Oh crap.

  Ben

  After Spanish, I walked across campus with Peter. “So I go to her place,” I explained, putting on my best outrage, “and she throws stuff at me. Says she has no idea what I’m doing at her house, but she wants me gone. Seriously, do you think she’s, like, schizophrenic or something? Maybe all that chastity has made her brain to go to mush.”

  “I, uh,” stammered Peter, “thought she came to the game for you?”

  “Yeah, well, like I said, she’s insane.” I nodded at a group of freshman girls that was passing by and whistled lightly under my breath. Nice touch, right? “Let’s go out this weekend and find some girls to hook up with. Because if I wasn’t already convinced that dating is mental, this has put me over the edge.”

  The look on his face was the best revenge ever.

  • • •

  After school, I met up with B in the parking lot like we’d planned. She was beaming, so I knew it had worked. I sat on the hood of my car and B leaned close. “That was the most fun I’ve had in a long time,” she said.

  “I didn’t realize deceit was your thing.”

  She raised her eyebrows and pecked my cheek before spinning around to face the parking lot entrance. I put my arms around her and tucked her head under my chin. The smell of her was almost too much, and what I really wanted to do instead of waiting for the big reveal was to yank her into my car and —

  But we waited.

  When Hope, Clay, Peter, Sula, and Maggie finally wandered out, they found B and me together. They all stopped dead in their tracks.

  “We wanted to thank you for meddling, but also to say don’t do it again,” B announced.

  “We’re going to a movie tonight,” I said. “Alone.”

  They exchanged glances, and shock turned to smiles.

  “Can we post about this?” asked Peter.

  “Do it and I’ll kill you,” B answered. My girl’s got some spirit! “Or we’ll just make sure none of you are in the yearbook.” She took my hand, and I kissed it then opened the door for her.

  As I drove off with B, feeling really pleased with myself, I caught sight of Bryce scowling at us all. That guy’s constant lurking gave me the creeps.

  * * *

  “What motivation did you have to do what you did?” asks Mr. Robertson.

  “Motivation?” asks John, his thin face looking longer when he lifts his chin in defiance. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “The other students indicated that you had it in for them.”

  Members of the panel nod in agreement.

  “First of all, just because you’re paranoid, it doesn’t mean someone’s out to get you. Second, I didn’t act alone. If I had, I would be the only one up for expulsion, now wouldn’t I? Sir.”

  7

  Sula Blom I love a good Secret.

  Beatriz

  Ben and I were getting along great. Hope and Clay were happy. Maggie was spending less time with Bryce. Sula was leading the tennis team to glory. All seemed right in the world. Except for the fact that my friends and I hardly hung out anymore. So Sula, Maggie, Hope and I decided to put all our other commitments aside and go shopping.

  At the mall, Hope stopped in front of Desdemona’s Secret and asked, “Will you guys come in with me?”

  The pink lace curtains, pink carpeting, pink striped wallpaper, and strong floral perfume oozing out of the door disgusted me. “Uh . . .” was the best I could come up with.

  Hope pleaded, “I want to get something nice now that I have a boyfriend.”

  My head snapped around. “You and Clay aren’t — I mean, you’re kinda young and Tío will kill you.”

  Hope laughed. “You worry too much, B. I like this stuff. It makes me feel special just knowing I have it on.”

  I didn’t follow the logic.

  Hope and Sula started walking inside. Maggie grabbed me by the sleeve and said, “Come on. It’ll be fun.”

  Fun? Right.

  Unfortunately, we moved straight past the racks of sweats and flannel nightgowns — items that would have made me quite happy — and into a section full of black lace and ribbons. I wasn’t sure where to look, and I felt myself blushing.

  “God, what’s that?” I asked, pointing at some suspiciously small bit of fabric. Hope opened her mouth, but I cut her off. “No, don’t tell me. But how do you know?”

  “B,” Hope began, and I swear her smile was actually patronizing, “my friends back home were pretty wild.” Then the smile vanished, and she said quickly, “I didn’t do all the things they did, but they told me a lot.”

  My eyes darted around the store. “So much for the Women’s Movement. Why do girls need to wear all this crap, but all boys have to do is show up?”

  Sula slapped my arm. “Cuz it’s pretty. Don’t you want to feel pretty?”

  I just shrugged. And I did want to be attractive and everything. But God! It just seemed like a lot of money and a lot of trouble. Especially since I planned on keeping it all covered anyway. Okay, maybe not all, but still. I ran my hand over a lacy contraption that looked more like a torture device than an undergarment, and when I figured out what it was, my hand sprang back like I’d been shocked.

  Just as I was about to beg for at least one of them to leave with me, Sula held up a corset. “Ben would totally like thi
s.”

  “Jesus, Sula, put that back!” I shouted. I looked over my shoulder to see if anyone from school was around, but I only spotted the saleswoman, whose painted-on eyebrows were lifted in high disapproval. I lowered my voice. “Ben doesn’t need encouragement.”

  “Wouldn’t you like to surprise him by being a little sexy?” Sula grinned, her teeth gleaming against her perfect dark skin.

  I looked around the store again. My goal with Ben had been to be less uptight. “I guess.” My voice trailed off.

  To hide my blush, I studied a table of items I recognized. The bras were simple and elegant, not trashy. “Maybe something from here,” I thought. Red was out of the question and black seemed too much. But the light gray was nice. Really nice. I wouldn’t feel silly in it and Ben might get a kick out of seeing me in something less utilitarian than what I normally wore. Plain white cotton was no guy’s fantasy. Even I knew that.

  “B,” Sula pressed, “How’s everything with Ben?”

  “It’s fine.”

  “Fine? Fine. That’s fine. Don’t tell me.” Sula flipped her braids hair over her shoulder and flounced to a set of clear drawers with stacks of neon lace tucked inside.

  Unfortunately, Hope wouldn’t let me off the hook, either. “What’s the fun of your having someone if you never share the details?”

  I crushed the gray bra I had picked up in my palm. “It’s my business. You don’t tell me about you and Clay.”

  Hope’s face was angelic. “There’s nothing to tell. He’s a gentleman and I’m not doing anything I wouldn’t want to have to tell Father Fiore.”

  I tossed the bra on a glass table and started to walk out. Father Fiore. Screen between us or not, having to tell that priest about future sins with Ben might make me leave the church completely. No way could I do what I had started to think I might do and then face the man who’d known me since before my First Communion.

  “There’s a story here,” Hope said, grabbing me and pulling me back into the recesses of the store. To my dismay, Sula and Maggie followed. “Spill.”

  “I . . .” I looked helplessly from Hope to Sula to Maggie and back again. “My feelings for Ben are different than they once were. They’re more . . . I want — Forget it.”

  “B, you can tell us,” said Hope, her eyes twinkling.

  “No. It’s between me and Ben, okay?”

  Hope nodded. I thought I was off the hook, but then she walked across the room, picked up the bra I had been holding, along with a pair of matching panties, came back, and threw them to me. “Go try those on. I’ll be in the next dressing room if you need CPR.”

  I started to protest, but Sula and Maggie shoved me into the tiny black lacquered room. I practically shut the door in Sula’s face, thinking that she, or one of my other oh-so-helpful-friends, would try to follow me in. Not an unprecedented move. We’d shared dressing rooms in the past, just not in this kind of store. No way I was facing this with company.

  I slipped on the lingerie and looked in the mirror. The cotton “Day of the Week” underpants I’d bought as a joke stuck out under the lace, but I could tell the nice ones fit. They looked good, even. I sank down onto the hot pink velvet cushion in the corner and stared at myself. Was this who I had become? The girl who bought this stuff? The girl who wanted her boyfriend to see it? The girl who thought about what she wanted him to do to her while wearing them? When did this happen?

  “How does it look?” called out Hope.

  I jumped to my feet. “Uh . . . good I guess.”

  “Oh my God, Ben is going to die!” Sula said from the other side of the door.

  My legs went a little weak and I reached for my shirt. “I don’t know if I’m getting these, though,” I called out feebly.

  Sula said, “Yes, you are.”

  A few minutes later, I emerged with underpants balled up in one hand and the bra cups and straps crushed as small as possible in the other, wishing I could put on some sort of invisibility cloak.

  Sula looked at my hands and grimaced. “No need to hide them. They’re gorgeous, and so are you, and Ben will love them.”

  “God,” I muttered, my cheeks on fire. “Shut up, would you, Sula?”

  “Why are you upset?”

  “I . . .” I sank down onto a pink velvet chair. “I want to want this, but I get so nervous.”

  “Let’s talk about sex-positivity,” Sula exclaimed.

  “Not that again,” I groaned.

  “Really, B,” she said, coming closer, replacing her smile with soothing concern. “You don’t have to be ready for sex, but there is nothing — nothing! — to be ashamed of in wanting to touch or be touched. There is nothing wrong with not wanting to either. Ben can wait, and if he can’t, he can go find someone else. Again.” Her mouth twitched with what I can only assume was a recollection of our past troubles. “But B,” she said quietly, “he really likes you, and this” — she peeled my hands open to reveal the pretty fabric — “is about you and what’s happening in your head.”

  “My mom and dad,” I began, but didn’t finish the statement. Just picturing their faces made me want me to leave the store even more.

  “B, it’s not 1990 or whenever your parents were in high school. And I get that they’re important to you, but they’ve made you feel bad about something that’s really normal.”

  The words ‘sin’ and ‘fornication and ‘temptation’ rattled around in my head, and though I didn’t think my parents actually said those words themselves, they’d also never spoken to me about sex as anything but something I should avoid, and of boys as beings I should mistrust.

  Sula continued gently, “Desire isn’t new to humanity. Touching people isn’t wrong. Wanting to be with someone is not shameful.” Her hand rested on mine and I felt comforted. And stupid.

  Why couldn’t I be like other girls? Or maybe I was. Sula’s whole thing about sex-positivism was that we should all accept what we were feeling and thinking. The problem was putting up barriers and hating ourselves for what we wanted or didn’t want to do. She didn’t run around sleeping with everyone, but she had an enviable way of looking at it when she liked someone.

  Though most of me agreed with Sula, I couldn’t stop beating myself up about my timidity. Then I began to beat myself up about beating myself up. Not terribly productive.

  I squeezed Sula’s hand and tried to smile, then turned my attention to Hope. “You getting anything?”

  “Nah. I don’t have that much money and Clay’s not going anywhere near the goods, so what’s the point?”

  I hesitated. “Was this a way to get me to buy these?”

  Full of sincerity, Hope answered, “No. I really came here for myself.” She paused. “But that would have been a good trick.”

  I shook my head. “No, Hope. No more tricks. You promised.”

  “I know. I know,” she said, looping her arm through the crook of my elbow. “Let’s buy those before you change your mind.”

  “Or faint,” teased Sula.

  “I’m not sure that—” I began.

  Maggie interrupted. “B, sometimes you have to take a chance. And if you just get that stuff for yourself, fine. No one says you have to go to the dark side.” She glared at Sula and Hope. “She has to make this decision on her own.”

  Finally a voice of reason. She was right. I could buy them and not use them for their, uh, intended purposes. Or I could. Gah! What did I want? I walked to the cash register, feeling weighed down by two little bits of satin and lace.

  Maggie said, “I think we’d better go for ice cream after this. Something with sprinkles and chocolate. Help B forget her grown-up side for a bit.”

  Sounded good to me.

  What none of us expected when we got to the food court was to see Ben, Clay, and Peter. I almost passed out, and I couldn’t think of how to hide the conspicuous pink Desdemona’s Secret bag I was carrying. The darn thing was made of high quality paper and was, therefore, too thick to crumple. I considered tossi
ng it into the nearest palm tree planter or onto the up escalator, but Sula swooped in and grabbed it before I had to do anything rash. In a move of incredible loyalty, she put the shiny strings over her shoulder and carried it like a fancy handbag.

  “You’re the best,” I whispered, still a little stunned.

  “I know.”

  “Ladies!” said Peter, toasting us with his super-sized cheese covered pretzel. “How’s it hangin’?”

  “Classy, Donato,” scowled Sula.

  He caught sight of the rosy package. “Got a little sum-in’ in there for me, Sula?”

  She sniffed. “In your dreams.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Hey, B, we hangin’ out later?” asked Ben.

  I was pretty distracted, but I managed to nod. He leaned in and kissed me to the sound of Peter retching. Ben kicked at him, saying, “I get it. I gave you a hard time about this stuff, but come on, it’s been months and you’re still . . .” Their voices faded as they walked away.

  Why couldn’t I be as carefree as Ben? Or the rest of the world? Was I the only one struggling to decide what I wanted every second of every day?

  I was light-headed and sat on the edge of the nearest sticky metallic chair. “I’m taking that back to the store,” I said, my eyes fixed on the swirly Desdemona’s Secret logo.

  “No you’re not, B,” said Sula. “Don’t be crazy.”

  “Hard to take the Catholic guilt out of a girl,” Hope said. “Let’s get her home.” Hope pulled me out of the chair and threw an arm around my shoulder. Sula threw hers on top of Hope’s, and Maggie grabbed Sula. It was girly and cute, and it suited me just fine.

  Ben Richardson Thanks for the invites, but it’s going to be a quiet night at home.

  Ben

  B had been jumping like a scared bunny all night. Her parents and Antonio were out, and none of them knew I was coming over. In fact, her parents didn’t even know we were dating. It made me think she was ashamed of me or something. I guess she was. I mean, how do you explain to your parents that you no longer hate the boy who broke your heart? Every time I thought of it like that, I felt kind of sick. Anyway, she kept saying she was going to tell them, but then she’d lose her nerve. Or she’d say they were they were distracted. Or the moon was full. Or whatever. I tried not to bring it up too much.