We Can't Be Friends

by Cyndy Etler

  But I don’t say a single one of them. I just half look up, half smile, and half shrug, all at once. And he—he likes it. You can tell. Because he keeps looking at me. In the good way. And then he drops his cigarette and smudges it out with his Top-Sider.

  And he says to me, “I’m Shane.”

  17

  STILL APRIL 1989

  TWO YEARS, ONE MONTH, AND THREE HOURS OUT

  It’s like I’m the Arabian girl in the olden-days movies, with big eyes and a veil over her mouth. What can you do if you can’t speak? You’ve got three choices: smile, look down, or walk away. I do everything but the last one, and Shane steps closer.

  “Do you have a name?”

  I smile instead of answer. I took a vow. This sober dance is Heaven, and I’m not ruining it. But Shane doesn’t mind.

  “Well, okay, shy girl. You don’t like to talk. So how about this: I’ll talk for you.”

  He leans back on a white Ford Fiesta, but his rear pockets are the only thing touching the car. His feet and head and shoulders are all pointing toward me, so his body’s in the shape of the greater-than symbol. He’s >. He pinches his chin with two fingers. Then, he talks.

  “You live in Fairfield,” he says, “in a white house with black shutters and a green lawn. You have two golden retrievers, but they don’t have a doghouse, because they sleep inside, by the fire. How am I doing?”

  I smile at my feet. I can feel him looking at my scalp, right where my eyes would be if I could lift my head to look back at him. He keeps talking for me.

  “Your dad works in the city. He’s a lawyer at a very important Manhattan firm. Your mother…your mother is an equestrian. Or is she a gardener? She gave up her Peace Corps plans when she met your father. It was a sacrifice, but she’s resigned to her fate. She meets your dad in the city every Friday for dinner and a show. She’s a Wellesley girl. He’s a Princeton man.”

  I flick my eyes up for a split second and he’s smiling at me. With his eyes, even. Like oh, my, oh my God, he likes me. He likes the me he’s telling me about. It’s the same feeling as if a butterfly lands on your hand: elation, because it chose you; plus terror, because if you even breathe, the miracle’s over. That’s me right now. Elation/terror. Terration. Elator.

  I don’t breathe. The miracle keeps going.

  “And you,” the miracle says, “you’re a writer. You play field hockey because that’s what Fairfield girls do. Even though you’re three months sober, you still go to the beach keggers to keep your friends happy. But your heart’s not in it. Your heart’s in your journal with your purple ink pen. But Daddy’s not having it. Daddy says you’re going to law school, come hell or high water.”

  If Shane sees my hands, he’ll know how far I am from being on the field hockey team. They’re frigging shaking, my hands are. So I muzzle them with my butt. I lean back on the Mustang behind me, but I keep my feet, head, and shoulders facing him. I’m the lesser-than sign. I’m <.

  “You’re here tonight because your friends are on spring break, so your Saturday night is your own. And you don’t have a curfew, because your parents are in Saint Bart’s, even though it’s your spring break. But you went on strike over the pre-law clash. An hour before the car arrived to take your family to JFK, you took your stand. You pulled out your finished Iowa Writers’ Workshop application, complete with postage. I can hear your words, which is strange, since you won’t let me hear your voice. You said, ‘I’m me, Dad. Not you. I’m a writer, not a lawyer. You can’t make me into what you wish I was!’ And then you—what did you do next?”

  Nobody’s ever said so many words about me. Not in a row, and never ever so nice. It doesn’t matter that the me he’s describing is as fake as a Disney cartoon, because the guy telling the story isn’t a cartoon. He’s real as a Mack truck slamming into your car. Right as you hit exit 19.

  “I know what you did. You picked up the phone and hit speed dial. And you said, ‘Auntie Bronwyn?’ while looking Daddy in the eye. ‘Can I stay with you this week? I don’t feel like going to the islands again with Mummy and Daddy.’ And that’s how you won, and that’s how I won. Because now, tonight, you’re here. With me.”

  He leans forward, this freckled miracle, with his right hand extended toward me. I lean toward him and clap his palm with mine. They make that perfect pop, the one that tells all heaven and earth you’ve got it. You’re cool. I’ve never gotten that pop from a high five before. I’ve maybe never even done a high five before. This not-talking thing, this is the fix for my life.

  “They told me your face matched your name. You really do look like a Claire.”

  “What?” I say, pulling my hand away so he won’t feel it shaking.

  “Gotcha!” he says, leaning closer into me and grabbing my hand again. We look right at each other’s eyes, and it feels like falling off a bridge and eating a hot fudge sundae and barfing out your nose, all at once. “I knew I’d get you to talk!”

  He’s right. I talked. I broke my promise to myself. It was just one syllable, but still. A slip is a slip. But what was he—

  “Claire!” He drops my hand and leans back again, laughing. “Call a girl a Claire, and you’re guaranteed a reaction. It’s from Breakfast Club. John Bender said it: ‘Claire is a fat girl’s name.’ Remember now? I’m totally kidding though. You’re not a Claire.”

  But…he said my name went with my face. Who told him what? He thinks I’m someone else? That whole story was some other girl’s? I can’t even find out without talking more, so I’m fucked either way. So much for God’s gifts.

  “What’s your name really?” he asks.

  I have to make this work. This COLLEGE boy, he likes me. He said he’s winning because I’m here! And it’s all because of me not talking. But I can’t be a mute freak when he asks me a question. What did the Arabian girl do in the movies? She danced. She fucking danced and stripped off her veils. Okay, never mind her. I’ll talk, but only a little bit. Like one word at a time. That’s it.

  Ready? Go.

  “Cyndy,” I say.

  “Cyndy, huh? That’s more of a cheerleader name than a field hockey name, but it works. So Cyndy, how’d I do? I’m a writer myself, if you didn’t guess. Fiction. So, do you live in Fairfield?”

  “No.”

  “Okay, Westport?”

  “No.”

  “Here? Southport?”

  “No.”

  “Well, whatever. It doesn’t matter where you live. How about…is your dad a lawyer?”

  “Well, no.” One word answers! Fuck!

  “My dad, neither. But close enough. He’s a politician. And a douche.”

  Perfect. Let him talk about him.

  “Yeah?”

  “Oh, yeah. Total. Know what kind of car he drives? A Porsche. See what kind of car I drive? This.”

  He knocks a knuckle on the Ford Fiesta, which looks like a dream mobile to me. It’s shiny like it’s brand new, for one thing, and it’s gotta be his, not his parents’, because there are stickers in the back windows. I step over to look at them, and guess what I see: dancing bears. Shane’s a frigging Deadhead. He’s also, like, a griffin. A mythical creature. How can he be cute and sober and rich and a Deadhead, and still be psyched to go to a dance on Saturday night? And if he’s all of that, how can he like me?

  “So, thanks for not laughing,” he says.

  “At?”

  “At my car, man. Seriously. You weren’t ripping on me in your head for this piece of shit, were you? It’s my father’s way of beating me. You know what I mean? He’d never lay an actual hand—who does that?—but he’s gotta beat me somehow, for draining his bank account and breathing his oxygen. I get back at him with the stickers.”

  The sticker on our side is one I’ve never seen before. It’s the dancing bears kicking over a hill next to an ocean, surrounded by palm trees and sunbeams.
The sticker on the other side is the classic: the big open skull with the lightning bolt through it.

  “Deadhead?” I ask, but I say it so fast, it barely even counts as a word.

  “God, shut up, wouldya? You talk too much. Yeah, I like the Dead, but more than that, I like knowing that Councilman Gallway gets his boxers in a twist every time I leave the house because his constituents are perturbed by my teddy bear stickers. Sometimes I park in front of Talbots for hours, just to see the old crones coming out make sour faces. The irony is they think my teddy bears mean I’m a drug dealer. But I’m here at a sober dance on Saturday night, while they’re home pounding Glenlivet.”

  I laugh at that. More than one ha. But I guess it’s okay, because Shane laughs too. And then he steps closer, which makes me really happy and really nervous. Nappy. Hervous.

  “So,” he says, from eight inches away from my face. “Did you like my fiction? Was I right about anything?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe? What, your lawn might be green, but you can’t tell because you’re colorblind?”

  “No, I—I’m a writer, maybe. I like to write.” Too many words!

  “Oh-ho! Nice!” he says, and claps his hands. God, is he cute. And maybe—maybe I didn’t say too many words. “We’ve got a writer, folks! Beautiful. Another word person. Well then. You’ll like this.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like Auntie Bronwyn. How wordy are you? Do you know what Bronwyn means?”

  “Ummm…no?”

  “I picked it just for you. It’s a Welsh name. It means ‘white, fair breast.’”

  That safety feeling I had, because we’re at Club 12? Gone. I try to look down at my feet, but my boobs, in their wet, white tank top, are in the way. I hug my arms over them and don’t say anything. For once, I can’t think of anything to say.

  18

  MAY 1989

  TWO YEARS AND TWO MONTHS OUT

  I have a boyfriend! And it’s Shane! I don’t even know who I am anymore, swear to God. You know how when people temporarily die, they hover over their hospital bed and watch as their body gets operated on? That’s how I feel right now. The real Cyndy Etler—the loser, the Straightling—is up above watching this skinny, quiet girl who’s using my name and wearing my hair.

  My sponsor makes me feel like the real me, though, when I call to tell her about Shane. She takes the flare right out of my fireworks, cutting me off with, “I don’t think you’re ready.” She uses the doomsday tone, the farthest left key on the piano. I let her reel off all the reasons that my three and a half years of sobriety aren’t enough to qualify me as “ready to date.” Then, when she stops talking, I say, “Okay, Suzanne. Gotta go,” and hang up.

  It’s a kind of ballsy move because I never don’t say “you’re right” when someone disagrees with me. I always roll with what other people say. The one time I didn’t? My mother’s husband beat me up, and my mother just watched, so I ran away. Which got me locked up in Straight for sixteen months. Yeah, bad idea, Cyndy making her own decisions. Bad idea. But maybe this new, quiet, skinny Cyndy is gonna mix it up. Maybe she’ll be the badass that original Cyndy can’t muster the balls for.

  Masuk High School, though. Masuk is new-Cyndy Kryptonite. As soon as I enter that school, I’m the loser version of myself. It doesn’t matter that I’ve got on Guess jeans, or that four different sober guys have talked to me, or that the last time I got on my mother’s scale, it said frigging 117. Doesn’t matter. The Masuk kids know the original me, and they’re not changing their minds. I’m like a double agent: teen loser by day, teen hottie by night.

  The only exceptions are Jack and Whitney. They break that rule and see the new me. Like the other day. The band teacher was out, and Mr. Littberger said we could mess around with the boom box and play whatever we wanted. So Jack—who plays the drums, by the way, did I tell you that? He’s so frigging cool—puts in this tape and yells, “Everybody? Assume the position! Let’s do the Time Warp again!” And like, nine-tenths of the kids in band get up and they—well, they dance. And sing. And like, hump the air in front of them. It’s insane. And awesome. But I have no idea what it is.

  In English class, I pass Jack a note that says, “What was that? (~in band~)” and he writes back and says, with a zillion squiggles and exclamation points all around it, “The Time Warp! It will be time again at 12 midnight on Saturday. Meet us!” and he puts an address for a movie theater in Milford. You better believe that note is pinned to my corkboard, so I see it every day.

  So I have not one, but two killer options for tonight. Like I said, who am I? But there’s really no question when one of the options is to go to your rich boyfriend’s house when his parents aren’t home.

  Shane lives in a town called Weston, which I never knew existed. It’s so rich and green and isolated, it doesn’t get named on highway signs. I drive around twisty roads with no streetlights for an hour before I find his house.

  Shane meets me in his driveway in bare feet. For some reason, that feels like a bad sign. We go through the garage—“Where the Porsche lives, when it’s home”—and into a room with a fireplace, a TV, an armchair, and a sofa. And we stop. He plops down in the armchair and picks up the TV remote and I stand there, feeling slapped. This is my first date with my rich boyfriend? Standing next to his armchair like a scullery maid?

  He switches the channel from Nickelodeon to MTV, which is playing that White Lion song “When the Children Cry.” The black-and-white video jumps from a guy with big hair and tights spinning on a stage to an empty swing set at night, which is international code for Something Really Bad Happened. I can’t just stand there, so I sit on the edge of a sofa cushion and try to look fascinated with the video.

  Shane makes a sound like he’s trying to clear a hairball. “This shit!” he says, shaking the remote at the TV. “Are you a metal singer or a soothsayer? I won’t even start on the mantyhose with cowboy boots.” Then he looks at me. “Why do chicks dig these faggots?”

  I stick with my plan of very few words. “Well, ‘faggots’? I don’t think—”

  “Never mind,” he says. He points the remote and clicks it, hard, to VH1.

  It’s another black-and-white vid, but this one’s Paula Abdul. “Straight Up.” She gives the whole room a blood transfusion. The night feels suddenly happy and, just, possible. I know how fucking stupid this is, but I almost feel like dancing.

  Before I can stop myself I go, “I love this song! Turn it up!”

  Shane gives himself whiplash turning to look at me. “You what? That’s it. Get out,” he says, jumping up and beelining to the door to the garage. Really. He does this in his bare feet, holey jeans, and untucked Polo shirt. He’s lord and master of his domain, looking at me like I’m the dog shit that made him leave his shoes outside.

  Like all dog shit, I can’t move. I’m hot with shame but frozen in place. How could I be so stupid as to think I could be my real self in a Weston house? And what do I do now? Is he serious? Am I supposed to leave?

  “Ahhh! Just joshin’,” he says, and strides over to sit next to me on the sofa. “Your face! You should’ve seen your face! It went through every color in the Crayola box.”

  He clicks back to Nickelodeon, which is playing You Can’t Do That on Television. The girl with the hair like mine goes, “I don’t know,” and gets slimed. The cool, thick sludge that gets dumped on her is like her own personal gift from God. Now nobody can see what her face is doing or what color she’s turning.

  Shane picks up my hand from my lap and curls his fingers through mine. So, okay. Maybe I’m okay. Maybe he still likes me.

  He turns his face toward me and tilts it like a listening dog. Like we just shared a Hallmark moment. “You know I was kidding, right? You just gotta understand: I hate Paula Abdul. Every dude hates Paula Abdul. Remember that.”

  Then he leans in and kisses me. I f
uck you not. He kisses me. Me, the pile of dog shit. Getting kissed. By a rich Weston politician’s son. And just like that, I’m in again.

  The kiss is no Turkish Delight. It’s more like the porridge those Narnia kids ate for breakfast. But maybe that’s because of where the kiss is happening. Maybe leaning on a car under the stars with I-95 rushing past makes for a better kiss. Maybe kissing in a brown living room in a house you didn’t get a tour of makes for a dog-shit kind of kiss.

  But things can happen fast in houses. Especially when the mom and dad aren’t home.

  I wait till he stops kissing me to ask, “Who’s here?”

  He smiles like I told him a secret and says, “Just my brother. But he’s down in the basement rec room playing Nintendo.”

  I think, Just your brother?

  I say, “You have a rec room?”

  “Yeah. It’s lame. I’d show you around if we were at the Hampton’s house. It’s way nicer. This house? There’s nothing worth seeing.”

  If I were being the real me I’d say, “What’re you talking about, nothing to see? You have a house with a mom and a dad and a brother and cable TV. And Nintendo and your own car and probably even Softsoap and Pop-Tarts and a dishwasher that works.”

  Instead I say, “Oh.”

  He leans in like he’s gonna kiss me again, but all I can think is, what’s gonna happen next, with nobody home but his brother? So I lean back and say, “Do you have a bathroom?”

  “No,” he says. “Sorry. You’re gonna have to use the spit can out back. Duh, do we have a bathroom? Come on.”

  He stands and pulls me up with a tug, then swoops his arm out to square-dance-swing me around the sofa and into a doorway. Which is the kind of thing Grant would do. Which is the kind of boyfriend-y stuff I’ve always dreamed of.

  But wait. This is my boyfriend. He asked me out, officially, on the phone Wednesday night. I have to let him kiss me. That’s what girlfriends do.