Guyaholic

by Carolyn Mackler

  It all started with the puck.

  In March of my senior year, I went to a Brockport High School hockey game. I’m not a big sports girl, but I’d been hooking up with Amos Harrington since the past weekend and he played center and kept saying I should come cheer on the team.

  I also went to the game because I didn’t have work or rehearsal that afternoon. And my grandparents’ annoying friends were visiting for the weekend, so I was steering clear of the house as much as possible. But most of all, Amos was my only current prospect. And more than anything, I hated being without a prospect.

  Amos and I had fooled around three times in the past week. Once at a party, once at his house, and once in the auditorium after school. I’d never had a guy last longer than two weeks, and most of them didn’t make it beyond a night. So with Amos’s expiration date rapidly approaching, I needed to milk this for all it was worth or get out and scout new prospects.

  I got to the rink late because my grandparents’ friends cornered me in the kitchen. I had my headphones on, so I was hoping they’d get the hint. But Chuck hugged me, and Gwen, whose eyebrows were plucked into a permanent state of shock, gestured at my jeans and sleeveless red top and said, “You’re leaving the house in that?”

  I considered pretending I couldn’t hear her, but my grandparents were hovering nearby, so I switched off my music. “It’s not that cold out,” I said. “Anyway, I’ll be indoors the whole time.”

  “Won’t you be at the ice rink?” my grandpa asked. “V, you just got over a sore throat, and you really should —”

  “Fine,” I said, gritting my teeth. “I’ll take a sweater.”

  By the time I arrived at the game, the bleachers were jammed. I stood at the top, scanning the stands. Finally, I recognized some kids from Chicago, the play in which I’d just been cast as a lead. They were sitting down in the front row. I stripped off my sweater, stuffed it in my bag, and squeezed through the crowd until I reached Chastity and Trinity Morgenstern. They were identical twins and the biggest partiers I’d ever met, which was ironic given their names and those delicate crosses around their necks. The only way I could tell them apart was that Chastity’s necklace was silver and Trinity’s was gold. Also, at parties Chastity tended to make out in public places while Trinity consumed massive amounts of alcohol and then conked out for the remainder of the night.

  “Hey, V!” Trinity said. “I love your shirt.”

  “Where’d you get those boobs?” Chastity asked.

  “Victoria’s Secret,” I said. “My latest addiction.”

  “Among others,” Trinity said, laughing.

  “You’re one to talk,” I murmured.

  As Chastity cracked up, I scanned the ice for Amos or, more notably, his butt. But before I compose a novel about the hotness of Amos’s hindquarters, I have to interject a quick word about my boobs. I’m the first to admit that I’m not endowed in the mammary department and had recently begun siphoning my Pizza Hut paychecks into expensive padded bras. But guys love cleavage and, well, I love guys.

  The hockey game charged forward. I was partially chatting with the twins, partially watching Amos, and mostly exchanging glances with a guy to my left and a few rows up. As I was maneuvering down the bleachers, I saw him check me out. He was wearing a canary-yellow jacket with a ski-lift tag hanging off the zipper. He had a coating of stubble and he looked older, like he went to college.

  I shook out my hair and looked back at Ski Lift Boy. He was saying something to his buddy, and then he glanced at me with that lusty gaze that guys save for video games, red meat, and cute girls.

  I’m not saying I’m this gorgeous prom queen, but my skin is clear and my nose is okay and my honey-colored hair is long and everyone tells me I have a good body, though it doesn’t help that I’m taller than most human beings, at least the ones in high school. I think the biggest thing going for me, though, is that if there’s an attractive guy in my radius, I can work it hard and generally get him interested.

  Ski Lift Boy raised his eyebrows as if to say, Do I know you? I smiled back, already envisioning how we could meet near the concession stand and exchange numbers and I’d go to his dorm tonight and he’d have a single room so we could —

  “WATCH OUT!”

  I whipped my head around in time to see the hockey puck hurtling toward me, but not in time enough to dodge it.

  I heard the impact as it splintered my forehead. I felt intense pain. I sat still for a second, totally stunned, before wilting backward.

  Someone shrieked, “Oh, my God! She’s been hit!”

  Someone else screamed, “Call 911!”

  Someone else shouted, “Does anyone get cell-phone reception in here?”

  My head landed in a lap. My eyes were closed, and there was blood leaking onto my hair. And the pain. Oh, my God. The pain.

  The person with the lap pressed a sweatshirt against my forehead.

  “I’m sure it looks worse than it is,” he said.

  I wondered how bad it looked.

  “Is she dead?” I heard someone ask.

  “The ambulance is here!” someone else announced.

  “Should they bring in the stretcher, or can she walk out?”

  I recognized the voice. It was that genius who’d just wondered whether I was dead.

  “Real genius,” the guy with the lap muttered.

  If I weren’t dealing with a major head injury, I would have cracked up. But it’s hard to laugh when you’re drenched with blood and possibly dead.

  The guy with the lap kept pressing the sweatshirt to my head.

  I remember smelling basil and garlic.

  I remember thinking it smelled good.

  I got eighteen stitches in my forehead. My grandparents made me wait in the emergency room until they located the best plastic surgeon west of Rochester. As my grandma called around, my grandpa held a leaky bag of ice on my head.

  Once I was stitched together and scanned for internal bleeding, we drove home. I had a massive headache and an even more massive bandage on my forehead. That night my grandpa came into my room every hour and made me tell him how it was March sixth and my name is Vivienne Vail Valentine but everyone calls me V. By the fifth visit, I was so fed up I considered telling him I was Marie Antoinette, but I didn’t feel like being rushed back to the emergency room in the middle of the night. Then again, I wouldn’t have minded another ambulance ride with that hot paramedic who kept calling me Princess.

  I stayed home from school on Monday. That afternoon Amos stopped by. Any other day I would have led him directly upstairs, but my throbbing forehead wasn’t getting me in the mood. Not to mention I was wearing dingy sweats and couldn’t take a shower until the stitches came out. I’d attempted to scrub the blood out of my hair, but I still felt completely gross.

  “How’re you feeling?” Amos asked as we sat on the couch.

  “I guess I’ll be okay.”

  “Are you going to have a scar?”

  “The plastic surgeon said I’ll have a thin line down my forehead. Nothing huge. She thinks it’ll fade over time.”

  “When can you come back to school?”

  “Probably by Wednesday.”

  Neither of us said anything. I was getting the sense that when Amos and I weren’t groping each other, we didn’t have much in common. As Amos listed the injuries he’d sustained from a decade of ice hockey, my forehead hurt worse and worse until finally I told him I’d better go lie down.

  Amos stood up to leave.

  “Oh, hey,” he said, hoisting his athletic bag onto his shoulder. “I brought you something.”

  He reached into the side pocket of his bag and handed me a hockey puck.

  “Are you serious?” I turned it over in my hands. “Is this it?”

/>   “Some kids tossed it onto the ice after you left in the ambulance. I grabbed it for you.”

  “Uh . . . thanks?”

  “Anytime.”

  A few hours later, the doorbell rang. I was stretched on my bed, waiting for a phone call from my mom, Aimee. She was living in San Antonio, Texas, managing a restaurant and shacking up with this guy she called the Cowboy. My grandpa had left her a message the night before and told her about the accident. She’d e-mailed me in the morning and said she’d try me at five, New York time. It was currently six twenty, but I still hadn’t heard from her.

  The doorbell rang again.

  That’s when I remembered that my grandparents, after making me promise I’d take it easy, had gone out to dinner with their friends.

  I twisted my hair into a ponytail and headed downstairs.

  Sam was at the front door.

  No one uses the front door in our house, but he didn’t know that yet. And I didn’t know his name was Sam yet.

  When I opened the door and saw this tall guy with blond hair that flopped over puppy-brown eyes, I said, “Thanks, but I didn’t order pizza. Hold on. You don’t have a pizza. Are you doing a fundraiser?”

  He stared at the doorbell as if he were surprised he’d actually pushed it and it had actually rung and I’d actually appeared.

  “Are you selling those coupon booklets?” I asked.

  He was squinting, even though the sun had long since abandoned western New York.

  “Don’t tell me you’re a Jehovah’s Witness,” I said.

  He scuffed his sneakers against the bricks.

  “Or maybe you’re registering voters? I don’t turn eighteen until September, so you’ll have to check back then. Except I might be away at college, but I doubt I’ll get in anywhere, so we can meet here in the fall if you want.”

  He continued studying the doorbell. I knew I was coming on strong, but I have a serious thing for puppy eyes. Plus, this guy was taller than me and built without being steroidal, lanky without being a beanpole.

  “Final guess,” I said, glancing at the checkered gift bag in his hand. “You’ve come to ask me out.”

  I detected a hint of a grin. Great lips, by the way.

  “That’s it, isn’t it?” I asked. “You have a thing for girls with greasy hair and bandages taped across their foreheads.”

  Now I got a full smile. Dimples, too.

  “Do you have a name?” I asked.

  “Sam,” he said. “Sam Almond.”

  Sam Almond. Did he have the world’s best name or what?

  “I’m V,” I said.

  “I know.”

  My heart jumped. “You know?”

  “You go to my school. We’re both seniors.” Sam paused before adding, “And you fell onto me at the hockey game yesterday.”

  “Oh, my God!” I clapped my palm over my mouth. After I was hit by the puck, I didn’t open my eyes until that hot paramedic hoisted my stretcher into the ambulance.

  “You’re the guy with the lap?” I asked.

  Sam nodded.

  “Do you find it bizarre that you’ve had intimate contact with my brain matter?”

  “No big deal.” Sam shrugged. “I was happy to help.”

  “So I was right . . . you like bandages and stuff.”

  “Don’t forget the greasy hair.”

  When Sam smiled again, I felt a churning in my stomach, like I was watching characters kiss at the end of a movie. Even though you know they’ll probably break up five minutes later, in that moment everything is bliss.

  “Oh,” Sam said. “I brought you something.”

  “Please tell me you’re not giving me the bloody sweatshirt.”

  “What?”

  Before I could explain about Amos and the hockey puck, he reached into the checkered bag and handed me a loaf of bread with dollops of green squished across the top. It was encased in Saran Wrap, but I could distinctly smell basil and garlic.

  “It’s pesto focaccia,” Sam said. “Homemade.”

  “I love bread,” I said.

  “I love to bake,” Sam said.

  I tipped my head curiously. He smiled. I opened the door wider and gestured him inside.

  I graduate from high school on a rainy Monday in late June. The ceremony is being held at the college rink, site of my notorious collision with the puck, except the ice is gone and the walls are decorated with CONGRADULATIONS! signs, courtesy of the Spirit Club.

  I know I should be ecstatic, given the fact that before I moved to Brockport I’d attended seventeen different schools in nearly as many states and was such a slacker I had little chance of receiving a diploma, much less a cash award for my theater contributions, which I’m going to be getting as soon as the principal stops blabbering about how we’re all carrying torches into the future and gets on with the ceremony.

  But I’m so anxious, I’m not relishing in any of the accomplishment stuff. Basically, I’m obsessing about whether my mom will arrive in time to see me walk across the stage. My insides are clenched. I can barely breathe. And I’m on the verge of chewing off my nails, even though I got a manicure yesterday before heading to the mall to spend the remainder of my cash on a black dress and strappy sandals.

  I haven’t seen my mom since January of my junior year, when she sent me to live with my grandparents. In the ensuing eighteen months, she’s promised to visit three different times, twice for opening nights of plays and once for my birthday. But something has always come up and she’s canceled at the last minute, leaving me miserable, depressed, and continually surprised, as if somehow I thought that this time things would be different.

  And yet this time, things are different. Aimee and I have been talking on the phone a lot recently, less parent to child and more person to person. She’s even said some stuff about how since she was only nineteen when she had me and barely knew my father, she’s obviously screwed up a lot, and while she can’t change the past, she’s hoping to make it up to me in the future. In fact, the other night on the phone, Aimee said, “I want to know what your life is like these days. My time in Brockport will be all about you.”

  I even told Sam that Aimee is coming, and that’s big for me because I generally don’t talk about my mom with anyone other than blood relatives.

  Yes, crazy but true, Sam Almond is still in the picture. After he appeared at my front door with the focaccia, we started hanging out. And then we started hooking up. And then, once we hit that two-week mark, when I usually decide a guy is too clingy or a sloppy kisser or has an unforgivably pointy nose, Sam and I continued hooking up.

  It’s been over three months, and I still don’t know what to call us. We exist in this blurry zone that’s more than friends with benefits and less than going out. It’s a definite source of tension because Sam wants us to be boyfriend and girlfriend, complete with prom and promises and pictures in each other’s lockers. The problem is he doesn’t understand what it was like to grow up with a mother who acquired a different “serious” guy every few months. He has no idea what it was like to wake up on a random Sunday morning and encounter a man pouring coffee in our kitchen, scratching his crotch, and then reaching out his hand to introduce himself as “your mom’s new boyfriend.” Naturally, whenever I hear the B-word, I want to get in my car, hit the gas, and never glance in the rearview mirror.

  But I haven’t ditched so far. I’m not sure why, except Sam’s eyes do me in. Not to mention that he’s really into cycling, so he has legs that could launch a thousand orgasms. And he’s really nice and mellow, so nice and mellow in fact that mostly I feel undeserving of him. Which is another reason to flee. But then there are those homemade baked goods he’s always tucking in my locker. And did I mention Sam is seriously smart? He’s going to Berkeley in the fall and majoring in history and minoring in political science. And did I mention his abs? It’s good Sam wears a shirt in public because if he didn’t, I’d probably get arrested for public displays of fondling.

 
“In conclusion,” the principal says, “I want every person in the graduating class to carry a torch out into the world and start a fire.”

  A few of the seniors chuckle. Someone throws a beach ball in the air.

  The principal clears his throat. “Not arson, of course. Metaphorical fires. I want you all to go out into the world and start metaphorical fires.”

  Another beach ball pops into the air.

  “Without further ado —” The principal mops his forehead with a handkerchief. “Will the A’s and B’s please line up to receive your diplomas?”

  I shift in my seat. I can see Sam heading toward the center aisle. His hair is exploding from the perimeter of his cap like unkempt shrubbery. As he turns and waves at me, my stomach does a happy little somersault.

  But then I scan the bleachers and feel awful all over again. My grandparents are sitting midway up, the empty spot they’ve saved for Aimee gaping like a lost tooth. My grandpa has his phone pressed hard against his ear. I begin gnawing at my French tips.

  This is not the way it was supposed to be. Aimee was supposed to arrive yesterday afternoon on a four-twenty flight. I’d just gotten home from the mall and was eating leftover buffalo wings before leaving to pick her up at the airport when my phone rang. As I glanced at the incoming number, I got a sinking feeling inside.

  “Hey,” Aimee said. “Something’s come up.”

  She went on to explain how she was still in San Antonio because the Cowboy had been in the emergency room all day and they thought it was appendicitis, but now they’re saying it’s a kidney stone, and she missed her flight and didn’t have a chance to call until just now.

  “I’m flying standby first thing tomorrow morning,” Aimee added. “There’s a layover in Houston, but I should land in Rochester by twelve forty-five. I’ll rent a car at the airport and come straight to graduation.”

  “Rebecca Aiello . . .” the principal is saying. “Nicholas Allcott . . . Sam Almond.”

  When I hear Sam’s name, I clap loudly and shout, “Wooo-hooo!”

  Sam must have heard me because as soon as he’s shaken hands with the superintendent, he finds me in the audience, smiles, and raises his diploma in the air.