Such a Good Girl

by Amanda K. Morgan

  Wow. Even other schools know I’m a shut-in goody-goody. Still, I rather like Zayne. He has a wide smile with even teeth. His hair is dark and curly and he’s just tall enough.

  “Don’t I?” I ask Zayne. “Then what am I doing here?”

  Zayne smiles. “Surprising me. That means something.”

  “Enlighten me, Zayne. What does it all mean?”

  “You’re about to be my . . . beer pong partner. Right?”

  “Sure, but there are conditions. Two, to be exact.”

  “Anything.” Zayne grins, anticipating my response.

  I hold up one finger. “Only if you teach me how to play.” I smile at him as I take another drink of my warm beer. What am I getting myself into? I pop up a second finger. “And only if we play against Neta and her partner of choice.”

  Neta slides her arm around Benn with two N’s. “You better be good at beer pong.”

  He finishes his beer. “I’ve never lost . . . tonight.”

  “You haven’t played tonight!” she accuses, and they’re laughing together and he’s looking down at her like she’s everything and she’s looking up at him like . . . well, like he’s a beer pong partner she’s going to have to peel off later.

  Zayne leads us downstairs, to a room near the pool where a Ping-Pong table has been set up with several Solo cups filled halfway with beer. He explains the rules—if the other team gets a Ping-Pong ball in your set of cups, you have to drink. It’s basically a game that would be super lame if beer weren’t involved. I turn to Zayne. “We have a problem,” I whisper.

  “What?” He looks at me, alarmed.

  I grin at him and pull at the neck of his shirt. “I hate beer. So if we lose—”

  “I’m stuck drinking most of it,” he finishes, and laughs. “Some partnership this is!”

  “You chose me!” I accuse. “So this is totally on you.”

  “I don’t regret it yet.”

  Neta winks at me from across the table, and I resist rolling my eyes. It’s like they think I don’t know how to flirt. It’s not like it’s hard. You just have to appeal to the three basic drunken categories for party boys:

  1. Beer

  2. Sports (of some kind)

  3. Sex

  Boom. Flirting. Done.

  It’s not rocket science. It’s not even a challenge. And honestly . . . it’s a little boring. Is this how all parties are? Slightly bitter shots with Ping-Pong balls in skunky beer?

  Is this what Ethan wanted me to throw everything away for? Was this a domino even worth knocking over?

  “Your throw,” Zayne says, handing me a beer-soaked Ping-Pong ball. This is definitely not sanitary. “Make it count, Stone.”

  “Give me space, Zayne.” I move him out of the way with my hip, which he seems to like, and line up my shot. I close one eye, and across the table, Benn and Neta jeer at me. Neta sticks out her tongue, and I laugh, but I don’t lose my focus. This is Riley time. This is Zen and the Art of Beer Pong.

  I toss the Ping-Pong ball.

  It bounces off the first cup and lands in the second.

  “Does that count?” I ask Zayne.

  Zayne grabs my hand and forces a high five on me. “Hell yeah, it counts. Chug it, B team!” he shouts across the table.

  Neta makes a pouty face and pulls the Ping-Pong ball out of the cup. She winks at me, takes a tiny sip, and then hands the rest of the cup to her partner, who downs it, two rivulets of beer leaking out over both of his stubbly cheeks. “Woo!” he says, wiping off his face with the back of his hand. “I feel good!”

  “We get to shoot again!” Zayne says, grabbing another ball. “Go, Stone!”

  I line up again, and this time the ball goes long, hitting Benn in the shirt. “Damn!” I say, but Zayne pats me on the small of my back. His hand lingers for a millisecond.

  “Don’t worry,” he says. “We got ’em the next time. Now we have to distract them.” He shouts across the table, and I join him, feeling stupid. Suddenly, I want to leave.

  But this is a party. This is what I’ve gotten myself into.

  They miss.

  Our go.

  This is what people my age do. Right?

  I sigh. I watch Zayne toss the ball. It makes it into one of their cups, and I cheer and we high-five again, and then I miss and so the ball goes to the other team. This time Zayne tells me I have to drink, and so I down as much as I can from the Solo cup and then hand the beer off to him to finish, feeling a little queasy and strange, like maybe my vision isn’t following quite right when I turn my head and my smile isn’t matching up on my mouth the way it should be.

  The Ping-Pong ball changes hands again.

  How lame would it be if I used hand sanitizer on it? Would that make the beer taste better, or worse? Or would anyone even notice?

  Maybe Kolbie has it right with her college boyfriend. College parties have to be better than this, right? They have to be more fun. More . . . sophisticated. More substantial.

  Maybe there’s talking. Like real talking, not just lame flirting over beer-soaked balls.

  Or maybe it’s just more of the same.

  I feel a hand on my shoulder, and I turn. It’s Kolbie. “How’s it going, Ri? How much beer have you downed?”

  I smile at her. “A cup. Or something.”

  She frowns at me. “Are you buzzing? You don’t seem like you’re buzzing.”

  I think I am, if this counts as buzzing. Beyond the eye thing, I have this strange warmth inside me, and I feel like I’m underwater, but just under the surface, where things are just a touch slower. But I’m just a little drunk, and somehow it’s not the happy, fun place where everyone else seems to be.

  “I’m good,” I tell her, and she slings an arm around my shoulder.

  “I think maybe I should take my friend’s place here,” she tells them. “So she can run to the bathroom. She’ll be right back. Won’t you, Ri?” She puts her hands on my shoulders and looks in my eyes, telling me in friend code to take as much time away from the stupid game as I need.

  I tell her back in friend language that I’m grateful, and turn to Zayne. “Be right back. Don’t screw it up, okay? We have a lot riding on this game.”

  It’s strange how it all comes so easily to me. The words, with no feeling to back them up.

  He fist-bumps me. “We’ve got this in the cup.”

  I smile widely at his lame joke and escape in the general direction of a bathroom. The first two I find are locked, but I finally find a small one, just off the pool, that’s more of a changing room than anything else. I flick on the light, but then after I’ve closed the door, I flick it off and slide down to the floor and savor being alone, just for a second.

  I want to go home. I want to be at home, in my room, on my bed. Alone. These people who are like me on the outside are not my people. It’s not like there’s anything wrong with them. Tonight I know the truth: there is something wrong with me.

  I lean my head back against the door and close my eyes, but someone knocks.

  “Ri? You in there?”

  Kolbie.

  I reach up and turn the lock on the door.

  “What are you doing in here in the dark?” She walks in and flicks on the light. “Are you okay?”

  I try to smile. “Yeah. Sorry. I just needed a minute. These guys—I don’t know.” I flutter my hand.

  Kolbie looks at me. “Yeah. I get it. I feel that way too. I told your boy Zayne to take my turn and came to find you.”

  I sigh, and she sinks down on the floor next to me, and I lean my head on her chest. “These are not my people.”

  “No, they aren’t. But that’s okay.” She pauses, and pretend silence fills the room, but outside, the music from the party pounds, the bass so thick and heavy I can feel it through the floor. “Maybe we shouldn’t be pushing you to be with someone. Or maybe you just need someone older. I’m just . . . I’m sorry if we put too much pressure on you. We didn’t mean anything, you know?”
/>   I nod. “I know.”

  She gets me.

  But then I wonder . . . is she talking about someone in particular?

  Someone we both know?

  No.

  That’s impossible.

  Of course not.

  “Do you want to go home?” she asks.

  I nod. My head is starting to spin in a fuzzy, strange way, and my stomach feels odd and too full. I don’t feel sick, but I am starting to feel a little out of control.

  And what if the cops really did show up?

  All my dominoes would really be knocked down then. That would sure show Ethan for trying to make me an actual teenager.

  “Come on, Ri.” She pushes herself off the floor, then reaches down and grabs my hand to help me up. “I think this is enough party for one night.”

  “You’re a good friend,” I tell her, leaning on her shoulder a little bit. She stumbles, then rights herself, slinging my arm around her waist.

  She pauses. “Don’t forget all the nights you’ve picked me up off the floor and held my hair and let me sneak into your house when I’m late for my curfew.” She winces. “Actually, do forget them, please.”

  I smile and squeeze her a little. “I’m here for you, Kolbs.” The words are slippery in my mouth.

  She smiles back. “I know you are, Riley.”

  EIGHT

  Bookstore

  There is something about bookstores.

  Something better about bookstores than parties or movies or pictures. There’s something hidden in books; lives and secrets and whispers and little bits of truth you could never guess at, even if you’d known the author her entire life and then read the book and asked her all about it. I think there are little bits of truth in books that are probably never discovered, even by the people who write them.

  And also I like to read.

  Smart girl problems.

  It is Saturday afternoon, and I woke up with a little bit of a headache. I poured myself a glass of filtered water and took two Tylenol before wrapping up in a big, loose henley and a gauzy lavender scarf and twisting my hair into a long golden braid. I walked to my favorite bookstore: a small one in South York Village called Pockets, where people laze around outside with croissants on little tables and drink tea in clay mugs with milk and sugar.

  Inside, the rows are all hunched very closely together, and the shelves are old and splintering under the weight of the books, often stacked two high and three deep. They smell wonderful, like aged glue and ancient paper, and I draw slow breaths as I walk in, savoring the quiet scent that is only noticeable to the type of people who truly love it there.

  This is a place that I could not take Kolbie and Neta and have them understand it quite the way I understand it. It’s not that they don’t like books; they do. They’re both quite intelligent. It’s just that this store is something to me, and I’m something to it, and I’m not entirely excited to share it with my friends, who might not find the peeling wallpaper appealing, or like the fact that the tap in the bathroom only runs cold.

  I walk through the poetry section, and I pull out a secondhand copy of Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame, when I hear the voice. The unmistakable voice.

  “Darling, what do you want?”

  “I don’t know. Do they have magazines here?” She pouts, and I imagine her sticking out her lower lip just slightly.

  “Maybe old ones. I don’t know. Don’t you want a novel or something?”

  I peek away from my Bukowski poems, and there they are: Alex Belrose and his beautiful wife, Jacqueline, on the other end of the row. Mr. Belrose has a lanky arm around his spouse, who is lithe and fair and lovely, like she’s stepped out of the pages of French Vogue after being artfully arranged by a fashion photographer. I heard Alex met her while he was studying abroad in France. She’s American, of course, and so is he, but apparently they had this great, wild love story that sounds, naturally, like something that never actually happened. She’s long-limbed and gorgeous and has a nose like a lost pink button. Her clothes hang on her like wings on a grand sort of bird; they’re jewel-toned and spread out around her like she’s some sort of queen.

  She’s no ordinary woman. At least, that’s what people say.

  I look down at my book of poems, running my finger along the page even though I’ve stopped reading the words some time ago. I tuck myself farther back, wishing I could disappear. I don’t want to talk to Jacqueline. Don’t want to have to be measured next to her. I feel small and lesser and strange, and I wish neither of them were here and this little bookstore were still mine, just mine, and I didn’t have to worry about interlopers, even pretty ones I’ve dreamed about running into.

  I rearrange my scarf so it’s draped around my arms and covering my back and turn away from the storefront so no one can see me, when someone taps on my shoulder.

  “Hello.”

  I turn around so quickly I almost lose my balance. I stumble a little. It’s Mr. Belrose.

  “Oh. Hey.”

  He grins. “I’m sorry. Did I scare you? Am I not allowed to talk to you outside of school hours?”

  I look to the left and the right, like I’m scouting for someone. “Strictly against policy,” I whisper. “I actually didn’t know they let teachers out of the school. I thought they lived there. Had to take showers in the sinks and all that.”

  He nods solemnly. “You know our secrets, then. But they do let us out, for two hours each weekend, to give the appearance of being real people.”

  I snap my fingers. “It almost worked.”

  He chuckles. “Damn it.” Mr. Belrose’s eyes drop to my hands, and he lifts the poetry book from them. “Bukowski, hmm?”

  “Yes,” I say. “He’s my favorite poet.”

  “He’s a bit dark for my sunshiny-est student,” Mr. Belrose says.

  “Perhaps there’s more to me than meets the eye,” I say, then immediately hate myself. Did I really just say that? To a teacher? Am I stupid?

  “That,” Mr. Belrose says, “I’m not surprised about. But I’ve never been much of a poetry fan, unless it’s classic and French. I prefer a good novel in your cheap American tongue.” He smiles, and runs his fingers over the spines of the books on the shelves fondly. “I come here on the weekends often. I’ve found a lot of my favorites in this very store.”

  “Really?” I fold my arms over my chest.

  He glances back at me. “You don’t have to sound so surprised. Take, for example, Stephen King.” He plucks a copy of The Shining off the shelf. “I love a good horror novel as much as the next person.” He slides it back with reverence. “Or maybe Hemingway. I love a sharply written book, you know? The Old Man and the Sea is my absolute favorite. But you . . . you’re different. I can tell. Dark stuff. Stuff that you can’t find in the high school library. Beyond a typical horror.”

  “There’s other stuff too,” I protest. “I love Jane Austen as much as the next girl. And I love romance novels. And I enjoy Shakespeare.” I turn a corner and flick a copy of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare with my index finger and thumb, completely mis-shelved. “I love young-adult novels and picture books and anything I can read with chocolate-chip cookies and mint tea.” I run my hands over the spines, just like he did, my fingers picking up particles of dust.

  “Ah.” He clasps his hands behind his back.

  “Ah?” I ask. “What does ‘Ah,’ mean, then?”

  “Can I make a suggestion?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  I feel dangerous, flirting with him with Jacqueline so close by. I am warm suddenly, so I take my scarf off and tuck it hastily in my bag.

  “Always.” He just looks at me, no trace of a smile around his lips, his green eyes intense.

  “Darling? Where are you?”

  The lilt of the voice is unmistakable.

  Unwillingly, my heart sinks a little.

  Mr. Belrose turns. “Right here, Jackie.” He whips back to me, and he presses a book into my han
ds urgently, and I realize I don’t know if he’s had it this whole time or if he’s just pulled it from a shelf. “Read this,” he says. “It’ll do you good. And tell me what you think. Tell me what it makes you feel.”

  I find myself drawing the book in to my stomach and holding it tightly. Mr. Belrose walks toward the end of the aisle and waves at his wife. She comes toward him, a stack of magazines, which look like People and Us Weekly and OK!, balanced on her arm.

  “Are you ready? I’m so bored.” Her voice is a high-pitched whine, and I hate her a little then, for being bored in my perfect little bookstore and ruining everything.

  “Sure,” Mr. Belrose says. “Do you want all of those?”

  “I’m bored,” she insists again by way of answer. She thrusts the magazines at him, and he takes them under his arm.

  “Okay.” Mr. Belrose turns to me and lifts his hand. “Good-bye, Riley. I’ll see you in class. Enjoy your books, okay?”

  I wave at him, feeling a pang somewhere between my stomach and chest.

  It isn’t until I’ve paid the man at the cash register and I’m back at my house that I realize that somewhere along the way I’ve lost my pretty scarf.

  It must have fallen out of my bag.

  NINE

  Untruths

  School buses are genuinely the worst. I don’t know what it is, but there’s something about being underage that makes the bus designers say, Okay, let’s literally forgo every creature comfort in a traditional vehicle and just go with the absolute bare minimum. Like, let’s just slap gray vinyl seats (no seat belts needed) into a metal shell and put a bunch of children on it and call it good. And if the engine sounds like it might explode at any possible moment, that’s fine, it’s not like the cargo is important in any way.

  Meanwhile other buses have plush seats and air-conditioning, heat that works without making the engine whine, and televisions.

  “I always get my best sleep on a school bus,” Neta says, yawning and leaning her head on my shoulder. “I love these seats. It’s like BO has permanently worked its way into the material. It’s so soothing.” She takes a deep breath and coughs.