“What?” Not what I was expecting. He wanted me to beg him to stay with me, to plead my case as to why I should remain his girlfriend?
“I, um, I have to go. I’ll call you back.” I hung up the phone quickly. His question had startled me. What was I doing, allowing myself to be treated like this? Was it all for the sake of popularity? All so that I could call three coke-snorting, binge-drinking girls my friends? This couldn’t possibly be worth it.
“What’s going on?” Courtney asked me, as I shoved my feet into my flats and headed for the door.
“Nothing,” I said, fighting back tears. I didn’t want to have this conversation in front of her. I didn’t want to seem weak.
Closing the door behind me, I dialed Aaron’s number. “I’m not going to list the reasons why you should stay with me, or go on and on about how important you are to me. Because you know what? I don’t need you, Aaron Winters. And if you can’t make the decision whether or not to break up with me, then I will. We’re over,” I said, all in one breath. I realized that my hands were shaking as I waited for Aaron’s response.
“Okay. Um, so, I guess that’s it.”
“Yeah.” There was an awkward silence, and then, I added, “I have to go.” I hung up the phone.
“What happened?” Courtney asked when I reentered the room.
“Aaron and I just broke up.” I leaned against the door. Saying it out loud made it real, and it hurt.
Eyes wide, she said, “So, are you going to change your Facebook relationship status?”
I almost laughed. I figured that would be better than crying. Instead I just nodded, reached for my laptop, and clicked the button to edit my profile. Within one minute, I went from IN A RELATIONSHIP to SINGLE. And every one of the couple hundred people I was “friends” with on Facebook would soon know it.
Breaking Up Is Hard to Do
A few minutes after I broke up with Aaron on the phone, there was a knock at my hotel room door. Warily, I opened it. Joey stood before me wearing his button-down shirt and boxers.
“Sorry,” he said, catching me looking at his bare legs. “I forgot to put on pants, but I wanted to tell you right away, before you heard from someone else or…” He trailed off, the adrenaline draining from his voice.
“What?” I said, scanning his face. “What’s going on?”
“It’s Aaron,” he said, his voice now quiet. I realized that he might have been in the room for Aaron’s half of the breakup conversation. That made me feel embarrassed, and worse, vulnerable. At the mention of Aaron’s name, my heart rate picked up. “He just posted this note on Facebook. About you and your relationship with him. I tried to convince him not to do it, it’s just disrespectful and obnoxious and totally immature!” Joey stamped his bare foot against the carpeted floor, indignant. He nodded toward Courtney’s laptop, which lay open on my bed. “You should probably see it for yourself.”
I didn’t know what the note said, but I could guess that it wasn’t full of nice memories and compliments. “Thanks,” I said to Joey, “for standing up to Aaron. You didn’t have to. I mean, I wouldn’t want you to deal with shit as a result of this.”
Joey shrugged. “So maybe I’ll be less popular at school for a week or so. What does that matter, really? When it comes down to it, you just have to do what you think is right.”
I wondered how it was possible that Joey could really not care about popularity. I hated having to buy into the vanity and superficiality of the social ladder, but I did it anyway. And why did I do it, again?
I logged onto Facebook and began to look for the note. Here’s the great thing about Facebook: It’s very easy to stay up-to-date with what your Facebook “friends” are doing. Here’s the not-so-great thing about Facebook: It’s very easy to stay up-to-date with what your Facebook “friends” are doing. Right on Aaron’s profile page, the same page that would appear for every one of Aaron’s six hundred friends, was the first paragraph of his note. My adrenaline pumping, I clicked on it.
Aaron had written two full pages detailing our relationship and our breakup. At the beginning, he pronounced that our relationship had been mostly physical—that there really wasn’t that much emotion in it. He didn’t love me, he said; he wasn’t even that attracted to me. At the bottom, he had included a photo of the two of us. I was smiling at the camera, and he was smiling at me, his arms wrapped around my waist.
His words stung me. I had trusted him. I had trusted that he wouldn’t hurt me. And now, here he was telling several hundred people—many of them people I knew—that he hadn’t really liked me that much after all. I felt cheap, and I felt used. Drawing back from the computer screen, I remembered that Courtney and Joey were still in the room. I wasn’t going to cry. Not in front of them, at least. Joey and Courtney were standing together, talking. “That was a good speech you made today,” Joey said to Courtney.
“Thanks,” Courtney said, looking away, searching for a way out of the conversation.
Joey could tell that Courtney wasn’t interested in talking with him, and he shifted uncomfortably. “I’m sorry, Becky,” he said to me.
“No, it’s fine,” I said. “I’m fine.”
But I wasn’t. I wasn’t fine at all.
The rest of the conference was a blur. I didn’t get much sleep. I was on autopilot, deflecting attacks from Aaron (he’d passed a note that read, Blonde Uganda is a bitch. Don’t sponsor her resolution. Resist!), trying to ignore the fact that the Trinity were more concerned with my popularity status than my dignity (Alissa had told me to not stand up to Aaron because he was a popular guy and it wouldn’t be good to make him my enemy), and trying to kick some MUN ass.
In my final speech, I stressed the importance of diplomacy. I wish I could’ve delivered the speech directly to Aaron, but he turned away every time I looked in his general direction.
“Fellow delegates,” I said in conclusion, “we are brought here today as diplomats. We must represent the ideals of our countries, but more important than that, we must work together. A diplomat is tactful and handles situations so that there is little or no ill will. If we don’t all work together, then nothing can be accomplished. In the international community, the voice of one holds little strength compared to the voices of many. Let us join together as the voices of many. Let us be the voices that make a difference. Thank you.”
There was silence for a moment, and then applause erupted. My face flushed, I stepped down from the podium.
Sitting in a large auditorium at the closing ceremonies, I was nervous. Nervous, first and foremost, that Aaron would win. He sat two rows in front of me, and, as the winners from each committee were announced, I watched the back of his head. Finally, the secretary general of the conference took the podium to announce the winner of the gavel—the highest award. The gavel went to only one delegate.
The secretary general announced: “Becky Miller.”
I shook with adrenaline as I edged my way out of the row I was sitting in and walked up the aisle. As I passed Aaron’s row, I shot him a triumphant look.
But that triumph didn’t last long.
Friends Like These (Part Two)
Sunday night I was back at the Four Seasons when I received an instant message from Courtney. I just thought I should let you know, she began, that I’m going out with Aaron.
What the hell? I wrote.
I’ve liked him for a while now, and, well, this weekend, things just sort of fell into place.
Fell into place? Meaning that I broke up with Aaron, so now she could go out with him?
Okay? Courtney added.
Furious, I dug through my backpack for my journal. Pausing to uncap a pen, I began a new Shit List.
Not okay. I was not okay. This was not okay. Friends were supposed to come before boys. And this wasn’t just any boy, this was the boy that I broke up with yesterday and who had since proceeded to launch an attack against me. I started the list by writing Best friend (former?) going out with ex-boyfriend.
It hurt even more that Aaron—who was my first…everything—had presumably also given Courtney her first kiss.
Fabulous. I couldn’t wait for school on Monday.
I wanted it to die down, to go away. I wanted Aaron to apologize for trying to sabotage me at the conference, and I wanted Courtney to break up with Aaron. I wanted Aaron to admit that he was only going out with Courtney because he thought it would get to me, and that he didn’t really like her.
On Monday, seeing as I hadn’t slept all night anyway, I started getting ready for school half an hour early. Sure, I had been through a thunderstorm and everyone knew about it, but that was all the more reason to take extra steps to look fabulous. Besides, Aaron had moved on to Courtney, and with her long red waves and acne-free face, I had a lot to live up to.
After biology, I made my way to the Room, where I found Alissa, Kim, and Courtney huddled around a laptop. I weaved my way through the room, over to them. As I walked, everyone was silent. Or maybe I was just imagining that. “How’s it going?” I said to Alissa and Kim. I faced away from Courtney.
Alissa closed the laptop. “We’re fine,” she said. “And you?”
“I’m good. Everything’s fine.” Could she see me sweating? Was it in my mind, or did Alissa seem more hostile than usual? There was silence as we stood staring at each other. Finally, I said, “Well, I guess I should go to class. See you later?”
“Bye.”
I didn’t actually have class—it was my free period. But I couldn’t stay in the Room. As I walked out, I caught Taylor’s eye. She had been sitting on the opposite side of the room, toward the door. Had she seen the whole thing? She quickly looked away.
That day, I spent my break, lunch, and free periods in the library, reading a plastic-covered copy of The Bell Jar. Sylvia Plath was the marker that let me know I was sinking into depression. When I was depressed, I liked to read about others who were more depressed than me. It made me feel less alone, but it also didn’t help my emotional well-being. In the seventh grade, we had to create a poetry anthology on a subject of our choice. I chose depression. I included Sylvia Plath poems, mostly, but I also wrote a few of my own. One was about paralyzing anxiety, another about feeling suffocated by darkness. I maintained the position that my poetry was fictional; I was trying to take on the persona of someone—not me—who was depressed.
Now, I felt both darkness and anxiety taking hold of me. I hadn’t changed my pharmaceutical cocktail, but in my mind things were growing bleaker.
Taylor was the only other person in English class when I arrived later that day. I set my books down on the table and walked over to her. “I’m really sorry about what happened on Facebook,” I said. “I should have said something, I know. I knew Aaron was wrong, but I guess I was just so excited about having a boyfriend, and I was afraid of screwing it up.”
“So you wait until now—now, when you’ve got nothing else to lose—to say something. That’s very sweet of you.” Her voice dripped with sarcasm. “Don’t think I didn’t see it. I knew I was second banana to those whores. And I knew you didn’t like them to see you hanging out with me because you were afraid it would reflect badly on you. So don’t think that now, when you’ve got no friends left, you can come crawling back to me and I’ll accept you.”
After school, desperate for a friend, I called Amanda. We hadn’t talked on the phone since Halloween. She didn’t even know much about Aaron. We had instant messaged back and forth, but usually, Amanda was so busy telling me about all the parties and openings she was attending that she forgot to ask about my life and how I was doing. This afternoon, I told her about the breakup situation. Her advice to me? “Just drop it. If you want to stay friends with them, you have to suck it up. You shouldn’t be mad about Courtney going out with him; you should consider yourself lucky that you managed to land them as friends and that someone as pretty and popular as Courtney would go out with your ex-boyfriend.”
“What?” I said. “Are you joking?”
She wasn’t. And then she got off the phone as quickly as possible with an excuse about her dad needing her to run lines with him in the other room.
Now, when I was explaining the weekend to my mom, I added Amanda to the list of people who were currently making my life difficult.
“That’s awful about Amanda,” Mom said when I finally broke down and told her about what had been happening. “But that Taylor situation—that’s really tough. You apologized, which is all you can do. Now you’ll just have to see if, with time and effort, you can build back that relationship. Taylor seems like a sweet girl, and God knows you could use more of those in your life right now.”
Pam Michaels was on her way up, so I excused myself to my room. I didn’t want to see anyone right then. I opened up one of the bags I had packed at my dad’s house—it was always an elaborate production each week, packing up and hoping that I remembered everything I needed, like Prozac, for instance—but I couldn’t find my biology textbook. I looked through my backpack and then in the drawers of my desk, but the book wasn’t there. I had a test the next day. I didn’t usually do the nightly worksheets for bio, but I found that if I just read over the chapter the night before the test, I could get an A. It was pretty easy to remember what I’d read; I could even visualize the pages and what information had been on which particular page. But if I didn’t have the textbook, I would have no way of knowing what I had to know.
I could have left the book at school, but I didn’t think I had brought it that day. I called my dad to see if I had left it at his house. I didn’t usually forget or misplace things; I was always good about keeping track of my possessions. In fact, sometimes I was even too good at it. But ever since this whole Aaron fiasco had erupted, I felt less and less on top of the goings-on in my life.
Finally, Dad picked up. I asked about the textbook. “Becky,” Dad sighed, sounding as if I had caught him at a bad time. The trouble was, with my dad, it was always a bad time. “I don’t even know what your books look like!”
“Of course you don’t!” I stood up, suddenly enraged. “You don’t know anything about my life! God forbid you might actually act like my father and pay attention once in a while!” I hung up and fell face first onto my bed, trying to stifle my tears.
My mom and Pam were in the other room, probably talking about ways to make this hotel room more of a home. I had to get out of this place.
I gathered my wallet, keys, and cell phone, dumped them in a purse, and hurried through the room. Mom called my name. I just told her I’d be back and kept walking, out the door, down the hall, and into the fresh air.
The valet brought me my car, but I had no idea where to go. I couldn’t go to my dad’s—not after I had yelled at him. I didn’t want to deal with that. I couldn’t call the Trinity, I couldn’t call Amanda, and I couldn’t call Taylor. So I just got in the car and drove, and before long, I found myself cruising through the streets of Hancock Park. I drove past my dad’s house and past Amanda’s old house. I drove down Larchmont, but I didn’t get out for a coffee because I was afraid that I would run into someone I knew, and I was afraid that I might burst into tears at any moment.
As I drove past Whitbread, I dialed June Kauffman’s emergency number, half expecting to get her answering service. But she picked up immediately. I was so relieved to have her on the phone that I let out a long sigh. It felt like I’d been holding my breath forever. After I confessed to her that I hadn’t slept in the past three days, she scheduled me for an extra appointment, on Friday.
A few minutes later, Joey called me. “Hey,” he said. “My mom called me and said something about you rushing out of your mom’s place and not telling anyone where you were going. Are you okay?”
I felt tears welling up in my eyes.
I shook my head, even though I knew Joey couldn’t see it. “No,” I said finally. As June had warned me, if I didn’t own up to my emotions, I might be forever trapped inside myself. And I didn’t want that. I started to c
ry, my breath coming in short bursts, my nose sniffling.
“Where are you?”
“I’m in Hancock Park.”
“Come to my house.”
Joey was sitting on the chair swing in his front yard when I arrived. Self-conscious, I got out of the car. I was still in my uniform, but it was all wrinkled, and my eyes were all red. “I’m a mess.”
“No. No, you’re not.”
I sat down next to Joey and collapsed into his arms.
Unaware
June had told me that part of the reason I detached myself was that real life was too uncomfortable, and I suppose she was right. Take social situations, for instance. I couldn’t stand the awkward silences or the grammatical flaws. I was aggravated by the petty discussion topics and the exaggerated dramatics of teenaged girls. I couldn’t believe that I was actually one of them.
I was doing pretty well at keeping myself occupied during school. I got all my homework done during the school day and sat in the Room only when the Trinity weren’t there. It was two weeks away from winter break, and MUN meetings were on a break until second semester.
I ran into Courtney in the bathroom one day. When I walked in, I heard her voice drift over from one of the stalls. “I know!” she said, aggravated. I thought there might be another person in the stall with her, but then I realized that she was only talking on the phone. “But Marisa, I’m doing better in science this year,” Courtney said.
So it was Courtney who had failed science, which meant that it was Courtney who had gotten a boob job. But more than that, it meant that Courtney, the one girl in the Trinity who had seemed most genuine about joining MUN, had really only joined because her stepmother had forced her to. I bet that Aaron didn’t know about the plastic surgery. I wondered what would happen if he found out. Would it be so wrong for me to casually slip that Courtney Gross had gotten her boobs done? After all, she had been spreading rumors that I was a slut, no doubt with the help of Kim and Alissa.
Hancock Park Page 16