Andrew was one of those people who pronounced it “a-sap” instead of saying each individual letter. I don’t know why, but that had always kind of irked me.
Nathan didn’t even glance up from his guitar catalog, making me wonder whether he was going to call her back or not. Certainly he didn’t seem in any rush, but maybe he was just playing hard to get. Do guys play hard to get?
Andrew’s hand on my back guided me into his room, but I was still agonizing over Nathan and Sydney’s supposedly budding relationship. If Sydney and Nathan hooked up, did that mean she was going to be over at the apartment all the time? Was I going to have to hear sex noises? Were she and Nathan going to do it before Andrew and I did?
I was starting to feel a little sick.
“So,” Andrew said. He sat at his desk, flipping open a textbook as though he’d much rather read about man’s eternal struggle than talk with his girlfriend. “What’s up?”
It took me a few moments to remember why I had come in the first place. “I guess you’ve already heard about the contest.”
Andrew got that wrinkle in the middle of his forehead that he gets when he’s trying to remember something. “I don’t think so,” he said. “Did you tell me about it?”
Maybe everyone didn’t know about it. “No, I didn’t…I just thought maybe you would have read about it or something.”
Andrew shook his head. “You know how busy I am, Leigh,” he said. “Did you win?”
“Kind of,” I said. “I got second place.”
He smiled, reaching out to cup my knee. “Well, that’s still good.”
“Yeah,” I said lamely. “Anyway, I’m leaving tomorrow for this awards ceremony in San Francisco. I just wanted to let you know.”
“Oh, okay.” Then his eyebrows rose, as though hitting upon an idea. “Do you want me to come with you?”
The idea was so sweet I felt immediately guilty for not having thought of it myself. I just hadn’t predicted that Andrew would want to come.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe if—”
“Because, you know, I’ve been thinking,” he said, taking my hand in his. “I know things that night didn’t go the way either one of us planned.”
You can say that again.
“But I know I can make it right,” he continued. “I even went out and bought a box of condoms—ribbed. That’s what the guy at the store said girls would like.”
That should have excited me, or aroused me, or something. But the word ribbed coming out of Andrew’s mouth, along with the knowledge that he had actually consulted with some slimy convenience store clerk on what girls (plural!) would like, just made me feel…sleazy. I jerked my hand back in an unconscious gesture of repulsion.
“It’s not about the condoms,” I said, my voice dropping on the last word in mortification. “It was never about that, not really.”
“Then what, Leigh?” Andrew threw up his hands in disgust. “I just don’t get you. We talk about having sex and we agreed we were ready six months ago, and then you get all touchy about the condom thing. Then I get the condoms and you tell me it’s something else. So what is it?”
Maybe I was building this up too much. People lost their virginity all the time, just fooling around on a golf course like in this one romance novel I read, or having one drunken night with someone random. Maybe if I just did it the one time, I would realize how stupid I was being and be able to let go of these inhibitions. The very thought put a metallic taste in my mouth.
“Let me ask you a question,” I said quietly. “Why now?”
“What?”
Patiently, I repeated myself. “Why now? Like you said, we’ve been going out a long time. And you never really showed much interest in getting me into bed—in fact, I started to wonder if you wanted me at all.”
I didn’t realize how true it was until I said it. Most of the last year had been spent wondering what was wrong with me that, after a date, Andrew seemed satisfied with a ten-minute make-out session before dropping me off at my house. It’s not like I wanted to do him on his heated seats, but shouldn’t he want something more?
Now suddenly it was like sex had reached DEFCON 5, and we had to act immediately or fear total nuclear meltdown. It made no sense.
“Of course I wanted you, Leigh,” Andrew sighed. “I still want you. I just want to be able to have sex with my girlfriend without you turning into a psycho every time it comes up.”
He still hadn’t answered my question, but I didn’t really care anymore. Suddenly I felt like if I didn’t get out of that room I would choke. I could feel how neurotic I was being, but I couldn’t stop it. And I just couldn’t watch him turn into more of a jerk.
“Maybe this weekend will be good for us,” I said. “We’ll both take time away and reassess everything. I’ll try to work out whatever’s preventing me from taking this step. And while I’m doing that, you figure out why it’s so important that we do this now, after a year of waiting.”
I moved to kiss Andrew, before deciding that it might be awkward, given the situation, and so I turned away at the last minute and ended up kind of slobbering on his chin. Clearly, this was less awkward.
Closing Andrew’s door behind me, I stepped back out into the common room. Nathan was on the phone. I was about to excuse myself quietly when I heard him say, “Sure, I’ll be there.”
Was it just me, or did he glance at me and slightly angle his body away when he said that? You’d think he was on the phone with the Rosenbergs, the way he was murmuring into the mouthpiece.
“It’s no problem at all,” he said. This time he definitely gave me a look that could be considered “squirrelly,” to quote Ami. Apparently there’s a guy in her touch art class who gives her that look whenever she starts talking about how her painting reflects her vaginal space. After the first time, she kept it up just as kind of an experiment, and so now her professor wants her to join FMLA (the Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance, or, as Ami called it after one meeting, Fem-La-Di-Dah) and perform in The Vagina Monologues.
“Meet you at eight, then,” Nathan continued. By this point, I was openly staring. “All right. Bye, Sydney.”
He hung up the phone, and I just gaped at him. Sydney? Sydney? I hadn’t expected him to actually return her call. I knew I wouldn’t have. He was going to hang out with Sydney?
Wait. Were they going out?
Nathan cleared his throat. “It’s, uh—” he started to say.
Just then Andrew’s door flew open, and I turned. Andrew was standing in the doorway, blinking at both of us.
“What’s up?” he asked Nathan. Then, to me: “You’re still here?”
“I was just leaving,” I said. At that point, you couldn’t have paid me to stick around.
ADAPTATION: The process by which people learn new information, composed of two complementary processes. In assimilation, people interpret new information with their existing schemas. In accommodation, they modify schemas to incorporate new information that doesn’t fit.
HOW Linda at Simms Middle School found out about the contest, I have no idea. But at the mentoring meeting before I left for San Francisco, she seemed totally determined to make me into some kind of heroine for college-bound youth.
“Our very own Leigh won second place in a statewide contest,” she announced, beaming. It was as if the session when I’d practically forced the girls into having premarital sex (according to her) had never happened. Linda was all psyched to make me an example. “Why don’t you tell everyone how you did it, Leigh?”
“Uh…” Even though I’d stood up in front of everyone two weeks earlier, somehow this seemed way worse. “Hard work, mostly.”
From the back of the room, I heard a snort, and I just knew it was Ellen. I’d recognize that nasal disdain anywhere.
Then again, maybe a little shameless self-promotion never hurt anyone. “Mostly, it was sheer perseverance. Even if people doubt you, or call you a liar, remember that you can achieve anythin
g you want. Well, almost anything. You know, if there wasn’t some stupid girl who wrote some cookie-cutter piece-of-crap essay about Heart of Darkness.”
And there it was: the widened eyes and pinched lips, as Linda remembered that I was not to be trusted with public speaking. “Okay,” she said, placing her hands on my shoulders and practically forcing me to sit back down. “That’s right; you can do anything you set your hearts on. Including being a mother, but let’s wait another ten years or so before you set your hearts on that.”
If subtle segues were a martial art, Linda would be a black belt.
“Still,” Linda continued, “a couple of weeks ago, it seemed like you all had a lot of questions about raising a child, and started to see just a sliver of the responsibility that a baby represents. So I thought, to give you a better idea…” Linda reached behind her, into a large cardboard box. “Babies!”
For a second my heart stopped, as I imagined a box filled with actual human babies. Oh my God, I thought, she went to some unsuspecting, underdeveloped country and pretended to be a celebrity so she could bring home a box of their children.
But then she pulled out a baby doll, and my heartbeat returned to normal. At least, until I got a good look at its face. Now I knew what Chucky would’ve looked like as an infant.
“There are only five of them, so you girls are going to have to take turns,” Linda said. “But these dolls will help you realize how much work real babies are. Just like real babies, these dolls cry, eat, and wet themselves. When they cry, you’ll need to soothe them. And if you’re too rough with them, they’ll be harder to soothe.”
Okay. I think I had one of these dolls when I was a kid—a little more darling and a little less Damien, maybe, but still.
“Now, don’t be too rough,” Linda said, handing the first baby to Kathy, “because these dolls cost five hundred dollars each.”
Five hundred dollars? My Wets-Herself Wanda had cost, like, two dollars at a garage sale. For that kind of money, we could’ve bought a year’s supply of birth control for each girl. Or, at the very least, we could’ve bribed them to keep their pants on.
I watched Linda pass another baby to Rebekah, and I half expected Rebekah to sneer at the whole exercise. But instead, she cradled the little robotic demon child in her arms, turning to a friend to say, “I’ll name him Tyrone. After his daddy.”
Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse. I rolled my eyes and glanced across the room to see Ellen doing the same thing. It was fleeting, but for a second we were actually on identical wavelengths.
“All right,” Linda said once all the babies had been assigned. “There are five babies. I’d like to form five groups around these babies, so if you don’t have one, please find a girl who does and join her group. Try to spread out evenly.”
This time, I actively chose Rebekah, plopping down on the floor right next to her. She was rocking the baby, a beatific smile on her face. I saw where the baby got his demonic DNA from.
“Whatever happened to bags of sugar?” I asked no one in particular. “Or eggs?”
“Try the grocery store,” Ellen said, forming a little circle with Rebekah and me. Molly, who had just come to join us, giggled.
“No, I meant—” I started, and then shook my head. “Never mind.”
Linda outlined the main rules of having the babies: A) don’t be rough (again, she mentioned the money, and again, I thought that I wouldn’t trust a middle schooler with my troll collection, much less a five-hundred-dollar baby); B) although the school has said they’ll allow the girls to bring the babies to class, if there’s any disruption, the babies are to be given to the guidance counselor and picked up at the end of the day (bet the counselor will love that); and C) don’t leave the baby unattended, and don’t entrust the baby to anyone else’s care (except school officials, obviously).
Which is totally artificial, if you think about it. I mean, even young single mothers can hire babysitters, can’t they? Whatever. There was so much else wrong with this scenario I guess it was a question of picking your battles.
Apparently, we were just supposed to sit in a circle and talk about babies, without any misguided direction or blatantly inappropriate guidance. It was a total free-for-all. I cleared my throat, trying to think of a way to maybe broach the subject of body image in adolescents (is there a delicate way to ask about compensatory behaviors like taking laxatives, or is that one of those things you have to warm up to?), but Ellen cut in.
“So, Leigh,” she said with a smirk. “Second place, huh?”
I shrugged. “Politics,” I said. “Sometimes gymnasts have their gold medals stripped, even when everyone knows it’s all the Romanian team doctor’s fault.”
“What?”
“Forget about it,” I said. “So, Molly, how’s school been?”
“Okay,” she said. “What’s a Romanian?”
Rebekah glanced up from her robo-baby, and for a second I thought her attention had actually been grabbed by the mention of Romania. Because that’s the icebreaker I’ve been waiting for—Eastern European gymnastics powers. Yeah, right. “Weren’t you gonna do it with your boyfriend or somethin’? What happened with that?”
Ellen arched an eyebrow at me. I’ve always been jealous of people who can do that. “Wow,” she said. “Sounds like you’ve been doing some great mentoring. Way to go, Leigh.”
Molly’s head swung between the two of us like she was watching a tennis match. “Do what?” she asked. “What are you guys talking about?”
Seriously, why is she even here? This mentoring program can only corrupt her. Especially my group, since sex seems to follow me wherever I go. And, yes, I get the irony.
“Anyway,” I said. “I think we should get back on task. Who here wants to have a baby, like, right now?”
“I don’t,” Molly said, wrinkling her nose. “They’re smelly. And loud.”
“So wait,” Ellen said. “Have you and Andrew never done it?”
“Babies are smelly,” I said. “And loud. Good call, Molly.”
“Who’s Andrew?” Molly asked. “And done what?”
Rebekah rolled her eyes. “Have sex, retard. You in kindergarten or somethin’?”
If it meant I could go into labor at this exact moment and not have to participate in one more second of this conversation, I would totally have a baby. Of course, that would mean I would actually have to have sex in the first place.
“I just can’t believe that,” Ellen said. “Haven’t you been dating for, like, a year? My fiancé and I have only been together for six months, and we—”
She broke off, I guess remembering our audience. Or else remembering that it’s no fun to be on the giving end of juicy information.
“Oooh, snap,” Rebekah said. “Even the girl with the stick up her ass is gettin’ some.”
“Excuse me,” Ellen said, “I do not have…that is, I’m not uptight.”
“I don’t even know what that word means,” Molly said. “Does it have something to do with the fact that you dress like my mom? ’Cause if so, then you are uptight.”
“Stay in school, Molly,” Ellen barked.
Okay, this was totally getting out of hand. “Just chill, okay? That goes for everyone. Sex is not a competition, all right? I’m not looking to ‘get’ any. Which might be my whole problem, but you know what? It’s not your business.”
“It’s my business,” Rebekah said. “You the one who made it my business, last week.”
“Oh, yeah?” I tried to do my best eyebrow arching at her, but I’m pretty sure all I did was squint one of my eyes shut. “Then do you care to explain your abortion question?”
Rebekah jutted her chin out. “No,” she said.
“Awesome,” I said drily. “And, Molly?”
“Yeah?”
“A Romanian is someone from Romania,” I said. “It’s a country in Eastern Europe, famous for its gymnastics, Gypsies, and Transylvania.”
“Oh,” she said. �
��Like the devil?”
“That’s Tasmania,” I corrected. “Transylvania is the place where vampires supposedly come from. Also, Rebekah’s demon baby.”
Rebekah glared at me, and at that moment Linda declared the mentoring session at an end. In just a half hour, I’d taught Molly some relatively useless geography, told Ellen to shut up, and insulted Rebekah’s fake child.
And I used to think I wouldn’t be any good at mentoring.
DREAM ANALYSIS: A technique that examines dreams, holding that the defenses are relaxed and the mind is freer to express forbidden wishes and desires during dream states
FIVE minutes into the road trip, I knew it was going to be an excruciating couple of hours. This revelation came, not coincidentally, at the exact same time that Tim whipped out his Cirque du Soleil sound track and popped it in the van’s CD player.
“It’s not a road trip without music!” he trilled, turning up the volume on the tribal drumbeats and what sounded suspiciously like a piccolo.
Ami and I sat in the last backseat, with one extra bench seat between us and Tim, who was driving, and Li, who insisted on sitting up front. Tim asked Ami a bunch of questions, and Ami really played up her time in New York City to show how tough a bodyguard she’d be for me.
Which is a total laugh, considering that A) Ami’s barely over five feet tall, and B) she only spent four days in New York City over the summer, and she mainly spent it shopping and going to see a musical version of some popular ’80s movie.
“I think I’m going to have a breakdown,” Ami said, pressing her fingers in her ears.
“Not if I get to it first,” I said.
We spent most of the trip amusing ourselves by flipping through a Cosmo Ami had brought with her. There was a spirited debate over whether the “confessions” were real or fake—I said they were bogus, but Ami stood by them—and that deteriorated into an analysis of all confessionals in women’s magazines.
I could see Tim eyeing us in the rearview mirror, and so I wasn’t surprised when he reached to turn the music down.
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