We Can't Be Friends

by Cyndy Etler

  Straight is the tough-love drug rehab where I spent sixteen months. It was even harder trying to scrape out love at Straight. To be honest, everything I tried there failed. It took a long, scary time to stop being, like, brutalized every day. Eventually I learned to believe what they told me about myself and to play by every single tiny rule. My reward wasn’t love. It was more like finally being left alone. So I learned playing by the rules may get you something, but it won’t be love.

  When I was in Straight, I got to hear about how other kids tried to get love themselves. They cut school or did vandalism to be part of the cool crowd. They blew pot smoke in their dogs’ faces to make their friends laugh. They put drugs in their butt holes and took buses across the country to help their drug dealer boyfriends. They had sex with grown men to get money to buy drugs for their friends. Everybody did this crazy stuff, and when their parents showed up at Straight, they yelled, “I love you, Mom and Dad!” but their parents never said “I love you” back. This tells me people will do anything, anything, to feel loved. Especially when their parents don’t love them.

  Once I got out of Straight, I tried finding love with different boys. My tricks included going along with whatever they wanted, sending a nice present, being really quiet, and dancing. All of these approaches seemed, for a high, sparkling minute, like they were going to work. In that sparkling minute, I had euphoria like no drug could ever give me. But my high ended when I said I wasn’t ready for sex. Then the boy either quit wanting to be around me or he took sex anyway. I hope the lesson I’m getting from this turns out wrong, but the lesson seems to be boys only want girls for sex. So if a girl wants love, she’s not going to get it from a boy.

  Nowadays I try to get love from God—which sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t. I’m rolling out my new plan, which is to become a cheerleader. Cheerleaders are always surrounded by friends, and they always have a boyfriend. So it seems like this plan might be the winner.

  Cookies need flour, and humans need love. I used to eat and eat and eat cookies thinking they could be a replacement for love. I learned that doesn’t work. I’ve learned a whole lot of other things that don’t work too. I can’t say I know yet what does work to get love, but luckily for me, I have two whole months left of high school to figure it out.

  I think I might really be onto something with this cheerleader idea. I mean, there are two things in life that everybody adores: babies and cheerleaders. If I can get on the squad with Blanca and learn what I’m doing, maybe I can become a college cheerleader! The only thing I’m worried about is, to be a cheerleader, you have to be mean. Like Tiffani Malta. You have to be able to smile on the sidelines when the whole world’s looking at you, then look super-pissed the rest of the time, so everyone knows you’re better than them. Or like Blanca, who’s not mean but walks around chisel faced, never smiling. I don’t think a cheer-face can be like mine, always stupid smiling, even when it’s about to cry. And I don’t know if cheerleaders can be the type of people who give bananas to bums. Isn’t it a prerequisite of cheerleading to be kind of a bitch?

  But maybe not. Because Candy McAllister’s not a bitch. She totally smiles. For example, she smiled at me when she asked to use my eraser. And she spends her study hall with the special-ed kids by choice. And she can’t think she’s better than everyone else, because her hair is all crispy and it’s got dark roots. So maybe you can be a cheerleader if you’re not bitch-perfect.

  Anyway, I can’t be that far off from cheerleader material because Cheerleader Blanca and me are going back to the Haven tomorrow night. She totally wouldn’t be hanging out with me if I wasn’t in her league-ish, right?

  35

  STILL APRIL 1990

  THREE YEARS, ONE MONTH, ONE WEEK, AND ONE DAY OUT

  Blanca was walking around thinking I was out of her league. I swear. She pretty much tells me so on the ride to the Haven.

  She starts out like, “Listen, I’m really sorry about Mack.”

  I don’t even ask why she’s saying sorry. I just go, “Can you believe? God. All the Beacon Falls kids must be so crippled.”

  “But you especially. I mean, wasn’t he like…”

  “Like what? Blanca! You think I had sex with Mack?!”

  “No! No, but wasn’t he like, a brother to you? Wasn’t he the one who got you to quit shooting heroin and get help?”

  “Shooting heroin? Blanca, what? No way! Heroin? God, I barely even smoked a joint! What are you smoking? I never even had a conversation with Mack. His friends were the druggie-druggies. Where did you get that idea?”

  She doesn’t say anything for like a whole minute. Then she goes, “So you weren’t shooting smack?”

  “Oh my God, no! I was terrified to even toke a joint!”

  “Then how come everybody’s saying you’re like, this serious badass? Fuck. Never mind.”

  I try to see her face, but it’s too dark. I can only see her outline. She’s in the shape of a balloon that got its air leaked out.

  Blanca doesn’t care that I go right to my corner by the speaker instead of sitting with her. That’s okay, though. I like this corner. It feels like the safest little space in a safe big space. But after a couple songs, I’m distracted. It’s glow boy. It’s Seth. He’s standing there talking to Blanca again, but he’s looking right at me.

  His smile pulls me over, and he says hi, and I say hi, and Blanca might still be sitting here, but I stop seeing her. He holds up a hand—which is weird, because didn’t we just say hi?—and he taps on his bracelet. Which is red, not turquoise. Which means he’s allowed to buy alcohol.

  He leans toward me, lighting me up with the glow, and goes, “My friend got me this! Want a beer?”

  He asks me that like I’m normal. Like I’m Wendi or Mia or any other untainted, unbroken girl who could say, “Yeah!” He has no idea that I live in a sobriety cage, that I’m only allowed out on a leash with a choke collar.

  If I could say, “Yeah!” I’d be that free girl, that fun girl, that girl everybody loves. Because that’s the secret door to popularity: alcohol. Seriously. Who are the loser girls nobody wants to talk to? Me, plus the science geeks who don’t even have to Just Say No, because they’re never in a social situation. And who are the chicks everyone wants to sit with at lunch? The cheerleaders, like Blanca, who are at every keg party. And the stoners, like Joanna. Even Deanna, the one other sober kid, who’s fine with her boyfriend having booze right out on the table. I may be human and need to be loved, but I never will be if I keep being the anti-alcohol freakazoid.

  A little throat clear snaps me out of my manipulative druggie thoughts. It’s Blanca, who’s been sitting between Seth and me the whole time. She looks at me like, Dude, really? and she’s right. What the fuck am I thinking?

  “No, I’m good. Thanks,” I say to Seth, and look back at Blanca to make sure we’re cool. She gives a tiny nod, but still. Her usual not-smile looks like an actual frown all of a sudden.

  “How ’bout a Coke?” Seth asks, as if that’s a normal question. As if perfect, unsmiling Blanca isn’t sitting right in front of him. As if he really, for some reason, wants to do something nice for me.

  “Okay, yeah,” I say without even thinking to say, Diet. Without wondering how I’ll get home tonight, since Blanca stood up and walked out. Without trying to figure out how this is even happening to me. The glow feels so good, it erases all my thoughts.

  I stand in a trance until Seth comes back from the bar. He’s carrying two big red plastic cups: one with un-diet Coke for me and one with frigging beer, for him. I better pray to God to keep me from freaking out. I have un-diet Coke and alcohol in my face, by my own choice. But I don’t actually need to pray, because somehow I feel all right. Like, confident, even. It makes no sense, but I feel 100 percent okay.

  We keep pulling our chairs closer and closer to try to hear each other, and finally Seth goes, “Do you wa
nt to go outside?” I nod, and he picks up my cup for me and steps back to let me go first.

  Outside there’s a different kind of music: crickets singing, leaves clicking, breeze shushing. Since there’s no I-95 next door like at Club 12, it’s a nature soundtrack. Plus Seth. Plus me.

  When he’s talking, I feel this pull. I want to put my hands on his skin. I don’t do it, but I want to. And what the fuck?

  I tell him I live in Monroe with my mother and little sister. I tell him I want to be a cheerleader, and I really want to be a writer. I tell him I don’t know where I’m going for college and that that’s kind of scary. I don’t tell him about my mother’s ex-husband or about Straight. I let him think I’m normal.

  He tells me he lives in Newtown. He tells me he works at Macy’s. He tells me he got promoted to the whites department, so now he sells satin sheets. He says, “Don’t laugh. I know it’s cheesy.”

  Here are the reasons he’s so not my type:

  1. His hair is spikey. It’s got, like, guy gel in it.

  2. He’s wearing Z. Cavaricci jeans, with the angled pockets. The fucking anti-Levi’s.

  3. I think he’s got cologne on.

  It’s almost kind of embarrassing. If the Deadheads in the smoking pit saw me talking to a guy in Z. Cavaricci, they’d laugh bullet holes right through me. But the glow cancels out all that.

  We talk and talk, and when we get to the Rocky Horror Picture Show—he’s seen it too—he puts his cup down, and he puts my cup down. He puts his palms against mine, which makes the whole circuit board of my brain light up. He presses his hands upward, taking mine with them, and our wrists press together and our arm bones press together and our elbows and upper arms, and we’re face-to-face, and his breath smells like beer. Like beer! And then we’re kissing. I’m kissing fucking beer. It’s like that Starburst commercial where a tidal wave of color knocks everything down and flings it back up in shivering splashes. It’s like that. We’re kissing and smiling at the same time, our arms pressed together over our heads. I’m the highest, happiest normal girl who ever flew, until Seth pulls back and my mind snaps into place: Beer! Beer! I have beer, in my mouth!

  I pull away and grab my cup of un-diet Coke and take one single, sweet sip to clean out my mouth. That was a beer kiss! Was that—was that a slip? Did I just go back to drinking and drugging? And un-dieting? God, am I gonna—

  Glow boy cuts my spin by touching me again. Just my hand. In his hand. I look up from my cup, which I was staring into, and he’s looking at my palm. Not my boobs, not my lips. My palm. Like he thinks it’s interesting. Which makes me smile. Not an about-to-cry smile, a real smile. Then he looks at my eyes, and he’s smiling too, and he’s beautiful with that glow, and I like him. He makes me feel good. And I…I want to touch him. That’s what the glow is lighting up for me: what I want.

  I want to keep kissing him.

  I want to touch more of him.

  I want—I want—I want to have sex with him.

  We kiss again, and fuck beer, and fuck doing what I’m supposed to, and fuck everything I’ve ever been taught about Be a Good Girl and Do What the Man Says. Fuck what Deanna said about sex—that it’s a trade, a transaction, first he makes you feel good, then you gotta give him sex. This is what I want.

  Maybe this is how a girl can fight. Maybe this is how a girl can win—by knowing what she wants, and saying yes to it.

  “My mother’s not home,” I say to Seth. “Want to come over?”

  And he smiles and he glows and he says, “Yes.”

  • • •

  We’re at my house. We’re in my bed. He’s in his boxers—he wears silk boxers—and I’m in my bra and undies. Our shoes and shirts and jeans are in the kitchen, on the stairs, in the hall. A bread crumb trail to my room.

  He’s lying down with his head on my pillow; I’m sitting up and digging through my nightstand junk. He tries to make me lay down with a slow, soft tug on my hair. I laugh on the outside and swoon on the in.

  “Stop! St—I’ve gotta find my matches! I’ve gotta light these candles!”

  He answers by tugging my hair again.

  “Come on!” I say. “Do you have a lighter? All my matchbooks are empty.”

  “Nope. Don’t smoke. Come here.”

  “Noooo! Candles! Romance! You find some good music. I’ll find some matches.”

  I go to my dresser, run my hand through my sock drawer. My fingers find the matchbook at the same time Seth finds a station. It’s that song about Spider-Man we heard a few weeks ago at the Haven.

  “The Cure,” Seth says.

  I turn away from my dresser to look at him. It’s not only his face that glows; it’s his everything. His chest, smooth and tan like a stretch of Sahara, and his arms, which he’s holding out like he wants to hug me. And his legs under those silk boxers. And his feet, which aren’t even gross. Not even a little bit.

  “The song,” he says.

  I turn back to my dresser, pull out the matchbook, and bring it up to my face. Sinclair’s Grocery. The matches from Grant’s store. From Grant’s rich, safe, perfect life. The ones I said I’d never ever use.

  I go back to my bed and sit down, and Seth does hug me. He leans up and puts his arms around my middle and his face against my back. And it’s fireworks and shooting stars and lightning bolts.

  “You’re skin and bones,” he says. “Aren’t you hungry? I need to take you out for ice cream.”

  I’m winning. I’m a girl, and I know what I want, and I’m saying yes to it. And I’m winning.

  I line the three candles up on my phone/alarm clock/radio. I flip open the Sinclair’s Grocery matches, take one out, and press it to the side of the matchbook. I give it a hard push. I set it on fire.

  The candles glow, and Seth glows, and I glow as I lie back into his silk-skin hug. And I win.

  36

  STILL APRIL 1990

  THREE YEARS, ONE MONTH, ONE WEEK, AND THREE DAYS OUT

  I’m like Tigger bouncing into English on Monday. I’ve been waiting all day to see Blanca, since she missed math first period because of a cheerleading meeting.

  “Oh my God,” I say when I see her. “I have so much to tell you.”

  Which I so do. I need to tell her how sweet, sweet, sweet Seth is—can you still smell his Drakkar Noir on me?!—and how he stayed at my house till he had to go to work Sunday, and how we forgot to blow out the candles, and when I finally woke up, there was all this smoke and a black circle on the ceiling and holy fuck, my phone/alarm clock/radio was on fire! Literally, it was melted in half! And how I’m so fucking lucky it didn’t get to the wiring or whatever and blow up, and how I spent the day trying to scrub the soot off my wall and ceiling, and how Seth called me! He totally called me, and said he was sorry he had to leave!

  I’m so stupid bouncy I don’t even realize she’s not looking at me until she sits down in a seat across the room. I could count every one of her curls because they’re all facing me, every one of them, right there above her back.

  My bouncing goes on pause, and I say, “Blanc?” but she doesn’t hear me because Mrs. Skinner is saying, “Cyndy, I have a note for you from guidance.” She puts it on my desk.

  The note’s on plain paper, not lined. It’s folded in half. I’m opening it as Candy McAllister takes her seat in front of me. I’m reading it as Candy turns around. The note says,

  An admissions counselor from Randolph-Macon Woman’s College would like to speak with you. Please report to guidance on May 7 at 9:00 a.m.

  I’m trying to process what the note means, and what Blanca’s back means, as Candy leans in to me and whispers, “Cyndy, listen. You shouldn’t try out for cheerleading. They’re going to blackball you.”

  Now I know what Blanca’s back is saying. It’s saying I was supposed to be an outlaw. I was supposed to be her outlaw. Now she knows I’m m
ore of an in-law. So now, what’s my point?

  37

  MAY 1990

  THREE YEARS AND TWO MONTHS OUT

  The Randolph-Macon Woman’s College brochures are big, shiny, and colorful. They show brick buildings, lawns crisscrossed with walkways, tulips, and trees. They show girls with friends and books and backpacks. They’re paper Prozac.

  “Studies show that girls participate more in all-female classes,” Pam says.

  Pam is the Randolph-Macon Woman’s College admissions counselor. She has that sharp, blond haircut that points in at the chin, the kind that only ladies like her—with thin necks and good makeup—can pull off.

  “Without the distraction of boys, the pressure of worrying about what boys think, girls gain freedom to pursue their intellectual interests.”

  I’m not so sure I want to be free of boys, but I open the brochure anyway. On the inside page, there’s a picture of a bedroom with a fuzzy rug and a window seat. A girl sits cross-legged on a bed. There’s a book on her lap and a plate of cookies next to her. It looks like a home, like the boarding school I had thought Straight would be, before I got there and saw it was a warehouse. I make a kind of noise.

  “That’s one of our dorm rooms,” Pam says.

  “That’s a dorm?” I say.

  “Absolutely,” Pam says with a plum-lipstick smile. “We believe that, in order for girls to work hard, they need to live soft. Our meals are served on china plates and white linen tablecloths. At Christmas, our dorm moms host tree-trimming-and-caroling-parties. Some of our dorm rooms have their own fireplace.”

  On the next page is a bright-green field. A girl is playing catch with a little kid as a man and lady run up to join the game.

  “What’s this?”

  “Our Adopted Families program. We know that our out-of-town girls get homesick, so we match them up with local families who might have a child away at college themselves, or want to share their time and home with a young scholar. I have a family in mind for you, actually. The mom runs the campus day care. She would love you.”