We Can't Be Friends

by Cyndy Etler

  Then the DJ decides he can sneak in some crappy non-dance songs, now that everyone’s off the floor and in a bad mood. He puts on Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar on Me,” which is ick. Something about it feels like bathrooms and stepfathers. But not for Deanna. She’s in her own little world now, dancing with her eyes closed and her arms up over her head, doing hand motions like she’s climbing the rope for the Presidential Fitness Test. So for her, heaven is pantomiming the worst part of gym class. I never said we were alike, though. Just that we’re best friends.

  The DJ makes us like him again by putting on “Da Butt,” which starts with the sound of a cheering, happy crowd. It works like subliminal advertising, because everyone is jammed back on the dance floor, and even though nobody knows exactly how to dance to this song, everybody has a butt they can circle around.

  Before we know it, it’s midnight and Deanna and I have to go, so I’m home by curfew. It kills to leave, but we get another miracle for our exit. The crowd of smokers outside the door clears when Deanna and I step out. It’s like we’re girl Moseses, and they’re the Red Sea. Half of them move to the left, half of them move to the right, and the paved path is cleared in front of us. We strut down it as best we can in our high, high heels. I swear there should be a cameraman around, because we look just like the chicks in an Aerosmith video, tossing our hair and laughing and knowing that we’re the guys’ favorite. And damn. Just, damn.

  23

  SEPTEMBER 1989

  TWO YEARS AND SIX MONTHS OUT

  Remember the first time you saw The Wizard of Oz? Remember how shocked you were when all the color came on in Munchkinland? That’s how my life feels. Everything is good all of a sudden. Even the bad stuff.

  For example, we got new seats yesterday in social studies. I was put behind Doug Bianchi, this total popular kid, who’s short but makes up for it with muscles. Doug turned around to talk to Mia Esposito, who was saying, “Ohh my God, I drank too much this weekend.” And Doug went, “You?! I poured vodka on my Wheaties this morning!” And I didn’t even wig out. I didn’t laugh, of course, but I didn’t wig either. Then, with me sitting right there between him and Mia, Doug kept the conversation going.

  “We know why you get drunk on the weekend, Mia,” he said. “But your secret’s safe with us. Right, Cyndy?”

  I just smiled and looked down at my notebook, because I think I get it, but then again, I don’t. He’s talking about sex, right? Without actually saying it? I don’t know, but he drummed his fingers on my desk before he turned around, which means… Well, it means something.

  I’ve actually been coming to school again. It started because of my sister’s announcement, which made me extra not want to be in that house. Ever since she told my mother what was happening, I’ve had this feeling like there are ghosts—mean, tricky things I can sense, but I can’t see—behind every wall. I’d rather be at school than in an empty, creepy house. And when I came back to class, I realized Masuk isn’t hell anymore. With Prozac and Deanna, it’s actually kind of okay. Plus, it’s my senior year. If I’m gonna get into college and get out of here, I’ve gotta get some decent grades on my transcript.

  The best part about coming back is that we’re writing in Mrs. Skinner’s class. Last night the homework was to go outside and write about whatever you noticed. The only rule was you had to use each of your five senses. I promised myself I wouldn’t talk about stupid fall leaves, so here’s what I came up with instead.

  gone

  the halfway point between here & there,

  now & then,

  is a big high rock on an old man’s lawn.

  it feels like scraped knees.

  it looks like bad weather.

  i can see from up here, like Sacajawea.

  the light in the past. the dark in the future.

  it sounds like the wind.

  it tastes like bit tongue.

  but i’m Sacajawea in reverse.

  i am Aewajacas.

  my past feels dark, but

  my future looks light.

  so i can taste freedom.

  and i can smell fate.

  so i’m going.

  i go.

  i’m gone.

  It’s so frigging nice out today, Mrs. Skinner goes, “Come on. We’re having class outside.” And we sit in a circle on the grass, a Frisbee-throw from where I decided not to kill myself. Before Skinner can say anything, someone goes, “Let’s hear Cyndy’s.”

  Swear

  to

  God.

  “Let’s hear Cyndy’s.”

  Sometimes, someone says you don’t have to pay for the donuts. Sometimes, someone says they want to hear your writing. And that niceness, that one tiny niceness, it makes up for everything else.

  So I read it. My poem with “Aewajacas,” which I don’t even know how to say. Everyone’s quiet. They listen. And they clap. They clap. “You’re a writer,” Jack says. So it doesn’t even matter that on the way back inside, Wendi Rosini puts on her sneeze face and ignores my question about where she gets her hair done. Because I’m a writer. What else matters?

  Being a writer is what’s gonna get me outta here and into Smith College. But I shouldn’t even need extra ammunition. Like I said, Smith is automatically letting me in, because it’s destiny. And because I’m the daughter of their famous dead professor Alvin Etler. My mother told me Smith is so proud of him, they had this three-dimensional plaque made of his face, and put it front and center in their music building. So they’ll jump at the chance to have his kid come to their school. I mean, they have to. Right?

  Yeah, so…we’re going. To Smith. Me and my mother. Which is weird. I have to sit in a car with her for three hours each way and talk to her about… About what? The last long car ride I had with my mother was when she tricked me into going to Straight. Maybe we can talk about that.

  Of course, once we get to campus, my mother’s gonna be all sickly sad and sensitive about her Alvin Etler and her lost innocence and, just, gag me. No, wait—do over. She’ll be all maudlin and treacly. If I want to impress Smith College, I’ve got to start using my SAT words.

  • • •

  It’s Saturday night and we’re at Club 12. I’m having one of those Wizard of Oz color moments, because this boy chose me. Out of all the females at Club 12—including Deanna!—he chose me. I sit down during a slow jam, and this kid sits next to me and goes, “Hi.” But he’s cute. We kind of yell in each other’s ears for a little bit—“I like your shoes” kind of stuff—before he goes, “I can’t really hear you, and I really can’t dance. Want to take a walk?”

  Do I? I’ve been waiting my whole life.

  Now we’re sitting at the top of this slope, where the road curves around into the parking lot. Cars are coming into Club 12, their headlights sliding over the slope, but the drivers don’t see us, because nobody thinks to look up. We’re hiding in plain sight. We’re in our own little heaven.

  We’re talking, but not a lot.

  “Yeah, shit’s not so good at my place, y’know?” the cute boy says.

  “Yeah,” I say back.

  “My old man, he wants things a certain way.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. And I get it. I mean, it’s his house, and he works all day getting his hands dirty to pay the bills, and what right do I have? I don’t.”

  “Yeah.”

  “But when he comes home after the bar, he likes to pick a fight, you know?”

  “Yeah,” I say. Me and my SAT vocab. But he must not mind, because he just picked up my hand. Now we’re in extra-heaven.

  “And since my ma died, it’s like he’s gotten extra-picky.”

  “Yeah.” Is this kid, like, the guy version of me?

  “So that’s why I come here. I want to be around people who don’t spend their nights drinking, you know?
”

  “Wait—you’re not program?”

  “Nah. I mean, I know all about it, because my pop used to go to meetings all the time. I wish he still was. He quit, but…I don’t know. I just feel good around sober people.”

  Fuck! He’s still cute, but now he seems scary. Because he tricked me. He’s not sober? But he’s at a sober dance! I came out here with him, and he’s not sober?!

  “You’re not sober?”

  “Right now? Right now, I am one hundred percent sober. But in general? AA-wise? Not exactly.”

  “Wait, I thought—”

  “Here’s the deal. I don’t party because I don’t want to party. But I can. I can have some beers and a good time and be done with it, if I want. I’m not an addict, is what I’m saying. Believe it or not, there are people who can choose to have a little and then choose to stop.”

  This…this is crazy. He’s talking in some Martian language. I don’t even know what to say to this craziness. So instead, I lift my hand away from his and wrap my arms around my knees. This way, I’ve got my heart sheltered from this cute, dangerous, not-sober boy.

  He pulls his knees up the same way I have mine, and we sit and watch the cars and trucks rip past on 95. Sometimes a car slows and gets off at exit 19, and my heart jumps a little for them.

  “We should get some spray paint and graffiti the exit 19 sign,” I say.

  “What?” he says, laughing.

  “‘Welcome to Narnia,’ it should say. Exit 19. Club 12. It’s Narnia, you know? A magical place for desperate searchers.”

  “You’re magical,” he says. To me. Cyndy Etler.

  He unwraps an arm from his knees, and he tilts up my chin with his fingertips. He looks at me. Smiling.

  “How’s your life?” he asks.

  “Better,” I say.

  “Than what?”

  “Than ever.”

  “That’s cool.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I could like you,” he says.

  “Why?” I say back.

  “Why? Because you just said ‘why.’ Because you’re a good listener. Because you want to graffiti a highway sign. Because you’re beautiful.”

  He thinks I’m someone else. Someone not me. That keeps happening, ever since I turned skinny: people think I’m some happy, simple girl. How do I learn how to be that girl?

  The cute boy leans over, pressing his knees and thighs against my knees and thighs. And he kisses me. Just once. On the mouth. It’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.

  “I guess I could like you too,” I say.

  He laughs. “Didn’t you say you had a curfew?” He stands, then holds out a hand to help me up. “C’mon, let’s find your friend and get you home.”

  I break Deanna’s eardrums on the ride back to Monroe. “Steven. His name is Steven Ross. He’s from Bridgeport. I love Bridgeport! He took my number, Dee. He’s so sweet! Do you think he’ll call me? Tomorrow? We gotta go back next weekend! Wait, am I going to Northampton next weekend? Will I be at Smith? Okay, two weeks from now. We gotta! Promise? Oh my God is he cute!”

  Deanna always waits for me to get inside my house before she leaves. So the Oldsmobile is thrumming behind me as I look in the big kitchen window at the clock: 12:40. I’m ten minutes late. Crap.

  I’m so excited about cute-but-not-sober Steven Ross, I can barely get my key in the lock. I finally manage to schlunk unlock the door, but something’s wrong. The door is blocked. I can move it a couple millimeters. That’s it.

  Through the window, in the light from the stove, I can see the kitchen table. My mother’s got her Honey Bunches of Oats waiting for her next to a spoon and a cereal bowl. She set them up ten minutes ago, at 12:30. At my curfew. She set them up, then bolted the door with the slide lock, locking me out.

  I stand on the doorstep a second, thinking about boxers. I bet this is how they feel right before they fall over. This is the feeling of a knockout punch.

  Deanna’s messing with the radio when I reopen the passenger-side door.

  “You wanna stay over tonight?” she goes.

  I sob, instead of nod.

  “Come on. My mom found fucking Sweet’N Low ice cream!”

  She wheels the Oldsmobile and floors it down the driveway. Her tires throw rocks back at the big front kitchen window.

  24

  STILL SEPTEMBER 1989

  TWO YEARS, SIX MONTHS, AND ONE WEEK OUT

  My mother and I, we’re good at pretending shit never happened. We go the whole ride to Northampton with nobody bringing up her locking me out of the house. Instead, she spends the trip talking about her diet, her aerobics teaching, and how Smith will definitely want me because I’m a “legacy.” Which doesn’t mean I’m a famous person who’s done important things; it means I’m the kid of someone who graduated from Smith. Namely, her.

  Smith is okay looking, I guess. Lots of brick and ivy with a swirly, black metal gate out front, as if Count Dracula lives there. It’s the campus version of that lady who goes, “Oh, this old rag?” when you compliment her dress.

  First thing after we park, we go to Sage Hall, which is Smith’s music building. We walk in the front door, and there it is: the side view of my father’s head and shoulders, made out of bronze. My mother says it’s not a plaque, it’s a “bust.” Which sounds pretty embarrassing, if you ask me.

  My mother keeps herself in check. She doesn’t make a big scene about how she’s Alvin Etler’s widow. Maybe it’s because we’re running late for my interview, which is held upstairs in the admissions building, in one of those chilly rooms with dark-green carpet and windows that seem like they’ve never been opened. It smells like books and the 1950s.

  Sitting across from my interviewer, a lady with a little gray bun, I use Straight’s number one rule as my crutch: honesty. I explain how I’m a druggie and always will be, but thanks to my mother and God and Straight, Inc., I’m almost four years sober. I tell her my grades aren’t that great because I was wicked depressed, but I’m doing much better now. I tell her my father taught here, and my mother went here, and I really, really want to be a writer. She doesn’t necessarily smile, but I think I did okay. She gives me one piece of advice: do well on the SATs.

  Afterward, my mother drives me around campus and tells me about her time at Smith. It’s pretty amazing because I’ve never heard her talk about my father without being all weepy. She goes by this cute house and tells me she got to live there when she was a junior and a senior. She said the apartment had a kitchen and a door to outside and everything.

  “How old were you then?” I go.

  “Oh, it was my senior year when I met your father, so I would’ve been…twenty and twenty-one years old.”

  “You hooked up with him when you were twenty?”

  “‘Hooked up’? I don’t know what that means. We met at the start of my senior year. I took his Advanced Theory of Music class and fell in love with his teaching. I asked him to be my thesis advisor, and I fell in love with him. He was…brilliant. You can’t imagine. He was funny and attentive and witty, and…everybody loved him. His classes were the first to fill up. Standing room only. And he chose me.”

  “So you were how old when you guys got together? Eighteen?”

  “I was a twenty-one-year-old graduating senior, and I was very much in love.”

  “So you were twenty-one, and he was…seventy?” I’m trying not to think my father was kind of grody. I’m trying not to think my mother was kind of desperate.

  “Cynthia Drew Etler. We can stop this discussion right now.”

  “Sorry. It just seems kind of… I’m sorry. But how old was he when you guys got married?”

  “He was an esteemed professor and composer, beloved by the Smith community.”

  “And he was born in like 1910, so he would’ve been…”

&
nbsp; “He was not born in 1910. He was fifty-three years old when we married, but the age difference didn’t matter a bit, because we were so in love. Nothing else matters when two people are in love.”

  I guess I see her point, maybe. But still. He was fifty-three. She was twenty-one. That would be like me marrying a forty-nine-year-old. And ewww.

  The conversation comes to a halt when my mother parks the car by these little stores. She never takes me shopping, unless it’s for mark-down groceries or thrift-store school clothes. But today we’re going in some overpriced trinket shops?

  “Your father would come here to buy me cards and little gifts,” my mother says. She’s smiling like she’s talking to his ghost.

  “He really loved you,” I say.

  “He really did,” she says back.

  Those are the nicest words we’ve said to each other in my life.

  Inside the store, she goes her way and I go mine. And good thing, because I find the perfect gift: a little red cardboard box in the shape of a heart, with these pink and white candies that are filled with chocolate. I have to use half my monthly food allowance, but it’s worth it, ’cause like my mother said: when you’re in love, nothing else matters.

  “Do you want a box for this?” the cashier asks, tilting my heart to study how cute it is.

  “Yes!” I say back. “That’s perfect! Then I can wrap it and send it through the mail.”

  “Someone will be happy when they open it. Who’s the lucky someone?”

  “A boy,” I say, and look back to make sure my mother’s not eavesdropping. “A boy named Steven Ross.”

  25

  OCTOBER 1989

  TWO YEARS AND SEVEN MONTHS OUT

  I am the last person to have not had sex. I’m the Last Virgin Standing.

  I tried to meet Jack and Whitney on Saturday night, right? Friday was sub day in band again, and Jack yelled to everyone, “Rocky Horror! Saturday midnight! Milford Cinema! Be there!” On Saturday, Deanna mysteriously “couldn’t come out,” and my mother mysteriously let me take the car, so I went to Milford Cinema. I got my ticket and stood there on the sidewalk like a super-ultra-megaloser, but nobody from school showed up. Still, I had already paid. So at 11:59 I slunk into the farthest back row and had the seams of my life ripped open.