by Lauren Saft
I thought it was a valid statement. He did go to public school.
“I’ve met the kid twice. I don’t know. I’m just saying: that’s not normal. Guys don’t turn down opportunities to have sex. Ever. Trust me, I know.”
“Ugh.” She groaned. “This is so stupid. I’m going to be a virgin forever.”
“No, you won’t,” I said. Though, part of me wanted her to stay a virgin forever. Wanted her to stay pure and objective and nonthreatening, and to keep cheering from the bench, because once she was in the game, she’d officially no longer be on my side, but playing for herself. I needed to hold on to someone I could trust. Once she was out there, flirting—and, like, really flirting, not like Alex flirting, but flirting like she actually had an end game. Once she was really pulling from the same artillery Veronica and I’ve had at our disposals, it’d be over. Officially. It’d be every woman for herself.
“What happened at the ’Zu, after you guys left?”
A sharp chill ran down the back of my throat, but I swallowed it, as I’d gotten used to doing.
“Nothing,” I said. “Same shit, new year.”
“I can’t believe Veronica ditched Drew on New Year’s,” she said.
“I know. What a social-climbing whore.”
My eyes drifted back to the magazine. #35: GET CREATIVE. BE SOMEONE ELSE FOR A NIGHT.
SAM PICKED ME UP at Alex’s after basketball. He pulled into her driveway and honked the horn. I gave Alex a hug and told her to hang in there, that a month would go by, and in no time, she’d be back out there on the streets, at the parties, angsting away, wishing she were still grounded so she had an excuse to wallow in her room, with her notebooks and magazines and CD collection, where I knew she was secretly the happiest. She laughed and said that I was right, that she was actually relieved to have an excuse to hide out. I understood that impulse; I found myself a little jealous.
When I got into Sam’s car, he told me he wanted a burrito. The last thing I wanted was a fucking burrito. I asked him if we could get something healthier, maybe go to a real restaurant, but he said he’d been craving a burrito all day and that was what he wanted. I swallowed again. I was starving, so I wondered if I’d be able to just eat a few bites of a burrito and then throw it away. Probably not. I’d just get chips and salsa. Take a bite of his burrito. That’s what I’d do. A burrito would ruin my whole week—it was sad, but it was true. I wasn’t going to let Sam get me fat and hate me again.
“So how’s Alex?” he asked, and then put his hand on my knee.
Things were better. As much as I cringed to think about why, I did feel closer to Sam. We’d shared this thing, had been through something together, had an inside joke of sorts. Even if Veronica had shared it, too. We’d have to do other things without her now so that this could just be one of our many things. Maybe I’d dress up as a sexy nurse or schoolgirl or tie him up—then we’d just be this couple that had weird, kinky, fun sex. The threesome would be just one more kinky thing we did together.
“She’s okay,” I said, putting my hand on his. “Annoyed that she’s grounded, embarrassed because she asked Fernando to have sex with her and he said no.”
“No way!” he exclaimed. “What a fag!”
“He said he didn’t want their first time to be the same night she’d made out with someone else.”
Sam took his hand off my knee, wiped his nose, and put it back.
“What a homo,” he said. “Well, if Alex wants to be our next guest star, I’m more than happy to add her V card to my collection.”
I laughed. And tried to mean it. I was also going to try to be less sensitive this year. Laugh things off, stop getting so mad about everything and being so miserable all the time.
“Seriously,” he said. “I’d bang Alex. She’s gotten pretty cute. I’m diggin’ this whole band-chick thing she’s got going now.”
I brushed my hand through his hair, rubbed the back of his neck, and took a deep breath.
“No more guest stars,” I said lovingly. “That was a one-time deal.”
I looked sincerely into his face, hoping he could tell that I was serious. That this meant something to me, that I didn’t want to fight about this or make gross jokes—that I was trying to have an honest moment with him and tell him how I felt.
“Aww, really?” he said.
“Really.”
He didn’t say anything, just looked out at the road. Both his hands were on the wheel now. He seemed disappointed. And I wondered if just me was ever going to be enough. What I had to do to make that so.
“But we can do other stuff…,” I said.
His eyes perked up a little. “Yeah,” he said. “Like what?”
“I could dress up for you,” I said. “I’ll be anything you want.…”
He looked over at me with that familiar devilish spark and rubbed his crotch a little.
“How about some road head?” he said.
“Right now?”
He took my hand and put it in his lap.
“You’re all sweaty and gross from practice!” I said, pulling back my hand.
“You said you’d be whatever I wanted, babe. Be a chick who’s into shit like that, who takes care of her man after a tough practice.”
He yanked my ponytail and nibbled my ear a little, which he knew I liked. We were at a stoplight, so he leaned over and kissed me, had this please behind that devilish sparkle in those glass-blue eyes.
I unbuckled my seat belt, put my hands back in his lap, and took a deep breath. I gagged a little at first, but I tried to breathe through my mouth and be a chick who was into this sort of thing. The smell was ripe—sharp and pungent, like hot garbage, and my eyes watered. It was almost unbearable. I told myself to stop, that I didn’t have to do this, that if he loved me, he wouldn’t care if I did this or not. But I didn’t stop. I sucked it up and kept going, kept thinking that maybe after something like this, he’d realize that no one else would do shit like this for him, and he’d hold on to me, appreciate me, love me.
VERONICA COLLINS
Alex’s grounding was lifted on Valentine’s Day, which, as it turned out, was a Friday. They decorated the cafeteria in red and pink with streamers, and all the girls were bustling around with carnations and little packets of those chalk-tasting candies that say weird stuff on them, like Be Mine, which always sounded a little too I’m gonna lock you up in a basement for my taste. The seniors ran an exchange where you could send a carnation with a note to Crawford and vice versa. They delivered them throughout the day. By lunch, none of us had gotten one yet.
“So, Lex,” I said. “How will we celebrate your return to the social world?”
“Isn’t it Valentine’s Day?” Mollie snapped. “Don’t you have something to do with your boyfriend?”
I gulped a little, because no, I didn’t have anything to do with my boyfriend. He hadn’t mentioned Valentine’s Day at all. In fact, he hadn’t mentioned much of anything at all lately. At first, I figured that it was the sex, and the fact that we weren’t having it. I assumed that was the distance between us, the thing that wasn’t connecting. The reason I didn’t feel like how I always thought being in a couple would feel. We had that great night with his family, and I thought we were really on our way, but there was still this sense I always got around him that I wasn’t quite sure what he was thinking. I saw Mollie and Sam and other couples around school, and they just appeared in sync and like they were subconsciously connected or something. I’d been waiting to feel that with Drew, and I figured the sex would be the binding agent that we were missing. But not so. It didn’t change anything, except put another thing that we never talked about up in the air. We kept hanging out, and even kept having sex, like everything was normal and fine, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t. But he never said anything to make me think it was something specific (like an illicit act at an after-party on New Year’s), so I kept rolling with it, hoping it would iron itself out.
After New Year’s, he was allegedly ver
y busy with the lit magazine and SAT stuff and had been working on some new short stories. But he was the romantic type, right? All writerly and thoughtful and sensitive, he read long books about epic love stories and cried when we watched Legends of the Fall. I hoped maybe he’d planned some big Valentine’s Day surprise, but I knew better than to expect anything. He was still a guy after all.
“The Runts are playing the Greencliff High dance tonight,” Alex said. “I figured neither of you would want to waste your Valentine’s Day with your boyfriend hanging out with a bunch of public school kids.”
“Shit,” Mollie said. “Sam and I would totally come see you, but I think he made some fucking fancy reservation somewhere.” She chewed her thumbnail and stared into her empty yogurt container.
I really wanted to know what the fallout of New Year’s had been for them, if it had or hadn’t affected their relationship. Sam had texted me once since New Year’s. He’d said: What are you doing right now? I didn’t respond. I didn’t know how to anymore, so I just didn’t. I erased it and pretended everything was normal. Pretended Drew was my boyfriend, Mollie was my friend, and Sam was her boyfriend. That was how it was after all. I needed to just live in the simplicity of that. Whatever allure hooking up with Sam had for me was squashed that night. The good way in which Sam and me hooking up had felt like a screw-you to Mollie didn’t feel good that night. It just felt evil. Hooking up with Sam, in front of her, knowing that it wasn’t the first time, knowing where to touch him and pull him, and her not knowing that I knew. It felt mean, and not in a satisfying way, but in an I’m a bad person way.
Why did I do it, then? I guess I thought it would be more suspect and out of character for me to say no than it would be for me to go along with it. I guess I somehow thought that maybe the threesome would bring Mollie and me closer together again. Give us, like, an inside joke and something to bond about, or something. I guess that was stupid. I guess there was no way that a threesome with me and Sam would somehow unite us against Sam, even though at the time, in my head, that’s what I saw happening.
“I figured,” Alex said, ripping her napkin into long shreds. “V, I assume you and Drew are doing something, too.”
If Drew was planning a surprise, Alex would probably know about it, right? I took the fact that she was asking what we were doing to mean that we weren’t doing anything. Or maybe she did, and she was playing along.
“Actually, we’re not,” I said. “He hasn’t mentioned a thing. I don’t even think he remembers that it’s Valentine’s Day.”
“He’s been really obsessed with his writing lately,” she said.
I hated it when she did that, told me stuff about Drew that she assumed that she knew and I didn’t. Like she secretly competed with me over who knew him better. She had, like, ten years on me, I get it, but at the end of the night, he was still going home with me and not her, so I wished she’d just let it go sometimes.
“Well, I’m sure he’ll want to come support you, so we’ll totally go,” I said. “It’ll be fun. A public school Valentine’s Day safari adventure!”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Gabby Sherman waddling up to our table with an armful of carnations, flushed and panicked, like she always was. I thought about the time that she farted during the Thanksgiving assembly, and giggled to myself.
“Carnations for you guys!” she said.
She handed one to me and one to Alex. Then another one to Alex.
Mollie just sat there, staring her down, ready to accuse her of some great crime.
We thanked her. She said no problem and that this wasn’t all of them. That there was another batch coming later, and then she scurried off.
My note said: Happy Valentine’s Day, beautiful. xoxo, Drew
Alex scooted her chair back and giggled away to herself.
Mollie peered at her. “Who sent you two, Miss Popular?” she asked.
“One’s from Marc Seidman,” she said through chuckles.
“What’s funny?” I asked.
“Marc Seidman. He wrote, ‘Roses are red, violets are blue, I’m sorry you got grounded and for being an asshole to you and Drew.’ ”
“Is the other one from Drew?” Mollie asked, still with the squinty eyes and bitch face.
Alex looked at me, then back down at the card. She said, “Yeah, just congratulating me on my freedom. Happy Valentine’s Day… yada yada.” Then she said, “Nothing from Sam? What a bastard.”
Mollie looked into the empty yogurt container and crossed her legs. “Please. Sam is hardly the cheesy carnation type.”
“I thought you guys had big fancy plans tonight?” Alex asked.
“We do. Hence why he doesn’t need to spend more money to send me a cheap stupid flower.” She grabbed her bag and the yogurt and stood up. “Lex, save me a seat in English?”
Alex nodded, and Mollie stomped off.
It was just a stupid flower sale. She’d be fine. And not mad at me, because he didn’t send her one. At least he didn’t send me one. Or both of us. Better none of us than both of us…
“So, I’m serious,” I said, rerouting my train of thought. “Drew and I will definitely come see you guys at the dance tonight.”
“Super,” she said.
We took our carnations and headed to class.
When I told Drew about seeing Alex’s band at the Greencliff dance, he said he was psyched that I was down to go. He was afraid that I’d want to do something dumb and romantic for Valentine’s Day, which was a stupid holiday created by Hallmark to extort money from bored, fat, consumption-obsessed Americans. I told him that it would be fun to be somewhere where no one knew us. But that maybe I’d cook him a fancy meal afterward. He said maybe, that he’d been on a roll with his writing and was anxious to get home and work. Because right, going home and banging away on a dusty laptop definitely sounds better than getting fed and laid by your super-hot girlfriend.…
IF CRAWFORD AND HARWIN were different countries, Greencliff High was a different freakin’ planet. Everything was oversize and cold and made out of linoleum and tile and aluminum—no mahogany, stone, or carpet. The kids looked pretty much the same, just a little rougher around the edges and slightly more racially ambiguous. And the guys looked older than the Crawford boys for some reason. There were a lot of cute ones actually, and I wondered why we hadn’t tapped this public school resource sooner. Seemed to be heavy on the guy to girl ratio, too.
The dance was in their gym, which was dirty and smelly and neither woody and quaint like Harwin’s nor massive and opulent like Crawford’s.
The band was already setting up when we got there, looking all professional, tuning their instruments and whispering official, informed-looking things to one another. Alex looked cute in her little skirt and funky tights, very rock and roll. I found this whole thing to be so funny, that there was, like, this whole side of her, this whole thing that she did and liked and was good at that she never talked about or shared with us, the people who were supposed to be her best friends. In all the years I was friends with Alex, I’d never once heard her play or even talk about the piano. I knew she took lessons, but I always figured it was something her mom made her do, like how Mollie took tennis lessons and I used to take ballet and horseback riding and ice skating. I knew she was into music, like finding songs and bands and stuff that weren’t on the radio, but that wasn’t the same as having, like, an actual drive to play with strangers, like, in front of strangers.
They started playing, and everyone cheered. People in the crowd screamed for Ned and Pete and Fernando, so Drew and I wailed and whistled for Alex as loud as we could. They sounded so much better than they had at Halloween. Totally different, too, more funky and soulful, more Alexy honestly, like it was really her band now, as opposed to her just playing in the boys’ band. Everyone in the crowd stood and listened, and then when the beat picked up danced. Everyone around us (not knowing that we were her friends) was buzzing about the Cunning Runts, and her voice, and how
hot she was, and how much better they were now than they used to be when some other guy was their singer.
Drew gazed at her up there, mesmerized, a smile plastered across his face. He had his arm around me, but he stared at her, and not in the way that guys stare at me. We swayed and bopped back and forth to the music, and I put my head on his shoulder. He kissed my hair and squeezed my ass. I wasn’t sure in that scenario who the lucky one really was. I knew that I had what I wanted, maybe even what Alex wanted—him, a boyfriend, in body. I knew that he was my boyfriend, that he was down here with me, physically holding me, but he was completely entranced by her.
When their set was over, a DJ went on and they joined us in the crowd.
“Congratulations!” I said, and hugged them all. They were all kinda moist and sweaty; it was kinda gross.
“Thanks for coming,” Fernando said.
Alex grinned from ear to ear, clearly pleased with her performance. I told her I couldn’t believe how good she’d gotten, how everyone in the crowd was talking about how hot she was. She just laughed and asked if I liked the new songs. I was embarrassed to tell her that I didn’t know which ones were new and which were old, so I just said that I did.
Drew couldn’t stop hugging her and punching her in the arm and telling her how fucking awesome she did, that he wanted her to record her songs so that he could listen to her in the car.
“Happy Valentine’s Day,” the DJ said into a microphone. “This one’s for the lovers.”
A slow song came on, and, in unison, all the public school kids sucked themselves onto one another and started making out. Before I could say anything, Drew said, “Oh my god, Alex, it’s the song! We have to dance to this song.”
I didn’t recognize the song.
She said, “Ew, I’m all sweaty, you don’t want to dance with me.”
And he said, “Shut up, I don’t care,” and held out his arm.
“Do you mind?” he asked me.
I shook my head and smiled and watched the two of them go off and hug and sway.