Play Me

by Laura Ruby

  “Your mother loves you.”

  My stomach rumbles, and not in a hungry way. “Forget it, Dad. It doesn’t matter.”

  “I think it matters.”

  “Do we have any Pepto-Bismol or Tums or something? I don’t feel so good.”

  He sighs, and I know he knows I’ve been drinking. But all he says is, “I think we have something in the medicine cabinet. Let me go see.”

  While he goes to see, I force myself to get up and to put the wet sheets in the dryer. I flip open the machine to find them bunched up into a big wad, as if the cheater fairies snuck into the house while I wasn’t paying attention and tied them into knots. I yank and yank and finally get them out, but something lacy and twisted lands with a splat on the floor. It’s Sonya’s underwear. It lies there on the floor, wet droplets all around it like a murder victim. Something else I have to bury in the garbage can under the used tissues and old balls of lint.

  I hope she doesn’t want it back. I hope she doesn’t call or write me anymore. I hope she was too drunk to remember what happened.

  I hope she’s the kind of girl who’s cool with it.

  “We should go out,” Lucinda says. “Cheer you up.”

  We’re talking on the phone. It’s weird, because we never talk on the phone. She called me. I wonder if it’s a sign that everything will be different from now on. The thought squeezes the breath from my lungs and I start coughing.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Something caught in my throat. So, where do you want to go?”

  “Where everyone else goes,” she says. “The movies.”

  I think of Miller’s Crossing and feel sick all over again. Right now the last thing I want to do is watch a movie. “How about we do something else? We could go to that miniature golf place.”

  “You hate miniature golf.”

  “I like it fine.”

  “You’ve been hounding me to go to a movie for ages. Come on.”

  “What’s playing?”

  “I’m sure we’ll find something.”

  I’m not so sure. Hollywood churns out monstrosity after monstrosity and hopes that the public doesn’t notice. Mostly, they don’t. “If there’s nothing out, we can just rent a movie.”

  “I want to go out in public for a change.”

  “We play tennis in public.”

  “I just want to see a movie with you. Is that so much to ask?”

  “Okay,” I say. “Let’s see what they have.” I pop online to check the local theater listings. “Oh, look! The Stupid is playing. And Crap on a Stick II.”

  “You’re such a snob. Let’s go see that one about the undercover cop. The one they’re saying will win an Oscar. That’s still out, right?”

  “Do you know what a crock the Oscars are?”

  “Pick me up in fifteen minutes.”

  A half hour later we’re standing in line to buy tickets. Lucinda’s wearing a plain white T-shirt, jeans, and red flip-flops with a ratty messenger bag she sometimes uses as a purse when she feels like carrying one. Nobody ever looked so hot in a T-shirt, jeans, flip-flops, and a ratty messenger bag. I wish she didn’t want to go out tonight because I don’t want anyone else looking at her the way I’m looking at her. I wish she hadn’t gone to meet Joe. I wish she hadn’t blown me off. Then the thing with Sonya never would have happened and I wouldn’t feel like a bottle of soda that someone shook for a joke.

  “How’s the project going?” I say.

  “Good. We got most of it done. We’ll have to meet one more time and then it’s all over.”

  “What’s all over?”

  “The year. High school. I don’t know,” she says. “It’s the last major project before college. Isn’t that freaky?”

  “Not really,” I say.

  “Oh, come on,” she says. “We’re graduating, but I feel like I’ve already left. At least in my head. I just want to get on with the rest of my life already. Do you know what I mean?”

  I don’t have to say anything because she chirps all the way into the theater. I don’t know what’s made her so talkative; she’s usually the strong silent type, at least with me. Maybe studying the Bible causes excessive chattiness. I wonder if it’s guilt.

  We find seats in the back row of the stadium and sit down to enjoy the 40000000 previews, most of them featuring lame chase scenes among a few semi-cool explosions. Then the movie starts. Out of the corner of my eye, I watch the movie play on Lucinda’s face—darkness, brightness, day and night, the subtle flicker of movement carried out on her gleaming skin. I grab her hand and squeeze it. I think, if she squeezes back, she’s mine. She squeezes back. I feel my lungs and heart and stomach settle back into their respective cavities, my breathing slow and deepen. I made one mistake, but it won’t happen again, because she’s mine, because she loves me.

  After the movie is over, we take the back door out of the theater. It dumps us into an empty parking lot. I don’t see my car and I freak a little until Lucinda reminds me that we parked in the other lot.

  “Boys and their cars,” she says.

  “You’d be upset, too, if you carried around as much stuff as I do. I have a video camera in the trunk. It’s not the expensive one, but still.”

  “So why do you carry around all that stuff in the first place? Why don’t you leave the camera at home?”

  “What if there’s something I need to shoot?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like you.”

  She smiles. “You won’t need to shoot me.”

  “Why not?”

  “You’ll remember me,” she says.

  “Will I?”

  “Yes, you will, Edward Rochester. Oh! I almost forgot.” She lets go of my hand and digs in the ratty bag. She pulls out a paperback. “Here.”

  “What is it?”

  “Jane Eyre. You know, the book with the other Edward Rochester, your namesake.”

  “Ah,” I say.

  “I figured that you might want to read it. It’s one of my favorites.”

  On the cover there’s some painting of a woman in a frilly dress. “It looks like a chick book. An old chick book.”

  “It is an old chick book. But since you like chicks so much, that shouldn’t be a problem.”

  Suddenly my back seizes up, like I’ve been sitting too long. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  She stops walking a second, her foot hanging briefly in the air. It’s long enough to know I overreacted, to know I just gave her a clue. “Come on, Ed,” she says, giving me a sideways glance. “We both know how many girls you’ve been with.”

  “You don’t know how many girls I’ve been with.”

  She closes the flap of the ratty messenger bag. “I can guess at least one of them.”

  “The only important one is you.”

  “What about Gina?”

  “Nothing is going on with Gina,” I say, relieved that I can sound so sure of myself.

  “Okay,” she says. She bites her lip. “What about Sonya?”

  “Sonya?” My eyes feel gritty, like someone just hit me with a face full of sand.

  “Sonya Powell. She’s in gym class with me.”

  “What about her?”

  “Do you know her?”

  “No. I mean, I’ve seen her around school. But I don’t know her.”

  “She called me an ugly dyke who couldn’t hold on to a guy if I tried.”

  Shit. “What? When did she do this?”

  “Last week,” she says.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t think it was a big deal, except that she said a bunch of other stuff this week too. I think I’m all that, I’m just a nasty bitch, blah blah blah. After going to school together for four years, all of a sudden she hates my guts?”

  “You did cream her cousin at tennis.”

  “Her cousin? Who’s her cousin?”

  “Penelope? You know, horse face?”

  “Penelope is Sony
a’s cousin? How do you know that?”

  “She told me.”

  “Really. I thought you didn’t know her.”

  We’re at my car. I let Lucinda in the passenger side door and walk around to the driver’s side. I take my time, trying to think. What the hell am I supposed to do now?

  I get in the car and throw Jane Eyre in the backseat. “That girl is crazy. She has no right to say that kind of stuff to you.” I start the engine. “I’ll talk to her.”

  “You’ll talk to her?”

  “Yeah, I’ll take care of it. Don’t worry about it.”

  Lucinda nods. She pulls the bag from around her shoulders and puts it on her lap. She doesn’t say anything for the longest time. She fidgets, smoothing the straps on the bag, brushing the hair from her face, tugging at her bottom lip. Just the kind of stuff a director would tell actors to do when they’re supposed to be thinking about how to say something horrible so that it doesn’t sound horrible, except that everyone knows it will.

  “Okay,” I say, putting the car back in park. “She has a crush on me. She’s made some comments on my MySpace. That kind of thing. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t think that was a big deal either. I thought she would forget about me and move on.”

  Lucinda nods again. All she says is, “Yeah.”

  I don’t know what that means, but I’m afraid if I ask, she’ll tell me. I’m starting to sweat, so I open my window. Outside, other couples are getting into their cars, talking and laughing. I don’t know why I was such an ass about going to the movies. Lucinda wanted to go. What was the big deal? I want to slam my head against the steering wheel.

  She says, “Remember Camp Arrowhead?”

  “Camp? Sure.”

  “The director called the other day. They need a sports coordinator for the summer. I’d be teaching tennis, softball, volleyball, golf.”

  “You play golf?”

  “Yeah, I play golf.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “There are a lot of things you don’t know.” She takes a deep breath. “Anyway, the job’s full-time. Five days a week for eight weeks. I’ll be staying at the campgrounds with the other counselors.”

  More stuff that I don’t understand. “Okay.”

  “What I’m saying is that I’m not going to have a lot of time this summer.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m not going to have any time, really. The weekends I’ll want to see my family. Or they’ll want to see me. The last summer before college and all that.”

  She has to shut up now; I have to shut her up. “Lucinda, I’m really sorry about the Joe thing. I am, I was jealous of him. But I know you wouldn’t…you wouldn’t do that to me. I was just being stupid.”

  “Eddy—”

  “I promise I won’t say a word about him again. You need to do your project, then you do your project. You do whatever you have to do. He’s a great guy. Maybe we should invite him out sometime. Double-date or something. Maybe Sonya will like him.” I try to laugh, but everything hurts: my back, my head, my skin.

  “Eddy, we’re really different people,” she says.

  “That’s what makes this so great,” I say. “That’s what makes me love you.”

  “Eddy.” Her eyes squinch up around her nose. “You don’t mean that.”

  “Of course I mean it. I’ve never…” It’s my turn to run my hand through my hair. My hair follicles ache. “I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it.”

  “I’m so sorry, Eddy. I thought…Oh, I don’t know what I thought.” She clicks and unclicks her seat belt. “I just…I like you, Eddy, I really, really like you. You’re funny and smart and I can totally see why every girl falls all over you. But I can’t be serious with someone right now.” She pauses, and in the pause I almost hate her. “And I don’t think you can either.”

  “That’s bullshit,” I say.

  She shifts in the seat so that she’s looking directly at me. “Is it? How many times did Sonya write you? I bet you didn’t tell her to stop, did you? I bet you strung her along a little bit. You like the attention too much.”

  “Stop it. She didn’t mean anything.”

  She laughs, a hard, angry laugh, throwing up her hands. “Listen to yourself! She didn’t mean anything! You’re like a character in a movie. The husband who gets caught banging the baby-sitter. That’s what those characters always say, She didn’t mean anything to me. So why are you saying it, Eddy? What happened with Sonya?”

  “What about you?” I say. “What about those notes you got in your bag?”

  “Notes? What notes?” Her eyes widen. “You mean the ones in my tennis bag? Those were from my mom, Eddy. She’s been leaving little notes for me in my lunch bags and in my stuff for years. Her way of making sure that I know I’m always being watched.”

  “Oh. Well, what about those other guys?”

  “What other guys?”

  “The ones in the pictures! In your room! That older guy, he had his arm around you!”

  She shakes her head like she thinks I’m out of my mind. “Look, we both know that—”

  “I don’t know,” I shout. “I don’t know!”

  “You do. This isn’t going to work. I’m too focused on my future.”

  “I’m focused on my future!”

  “You’re dreamy about your future. You’re in some big romantic la la land where all the children are famous,” she says.

  “So? A lot of people want to be famous.”

  “Yeah, but they don’t expect to be famous tomorrow! They know it takes some time.”

  “You mean Joe knows it takes time.”

  “Fine, Joe does. And a lot of other people. You do, too. Or you would, if you thought about it for a second.”

  I feel like crawling the walls. I feel like reaching my hands down into my own body, ripping out my guts, and handing them to her. “I want to be famous for you.”

  “Stop it, Eddy.”

  “Sometimes I think I want to be you,” I say. I’m breathing hard as if I’d been running. I don’t know where this stuff is coming from, it’s just coming.

  “That’s insane,” she says. Her head is pressed to the passenger side window. It’s like she wants to get away.

  “You’re perfect.”

  “Stop! Will you stop quoting lines from movies? Will you say something real, please?”

  “But you are perfect.”

  “If you keep saying that, I’m going to throw up all over your car.” She sounds so annoyed, so disdainful, so freaked out.

  “Don’t do this,” I say.

  She reaches out, pulls back, reaches out again. She touches my wrist, lightly, so lightly. “Eddy. I’m sorry. It’s already done.”

  Lost in America

  I drop Lucinda off. She tries to be nice to me, tries to kiss me good-bye, but I can’t take it. I tell her to go. To get out. I call her a bitch. She is a bitch.

  I’m going to drive home, but I don’t want to drive home. I have no idea what I’ll do when I get there. I don’t have the MTV thing, I don’t have Lucinda, I don’t even have stupid, big-headed Joe anymore. He’ll be the famous one. I’ll be left here with Rory, watching the same movies, making the same top-five lists, listening to Tippi Hedren repeat the same lines: I’m just a wild animal you’ve caught. I have to get to San Francisco. I’m queer for liars.

  I go over the conversation in my head. How did Lucinda know about Sonya? Did Sonya tell her? But when? If it took a month for me to get Lucinda’s number, it’s not as if she’d give it out to random people in gym class. No, someone else had to tell her.

  I make a U-turn, flipping off the idiot behind me, who lays on his horn. I punch the gas pedal, flying down side streets, yanking on the wheel so hard the tires squeal at every turn. I reach the development of McMansions and pull into the driveway of the largest one. I jump out of the car and march up to the back door. The door’s half window, so I can see inside, but the huge kitchen seems to be empty. I pound on the
door with my fist. When no one comes, I pound on it even harder.

  Gina’s face appears in the window. I almost don’t recognize her because she’s not wearing her Cirque Du Soleil makeup. She frowns and opens the door. “Are you trying to kick the door down, you idiot? My parents are trying to sleep.”

  “You told her.”

  “Huh?”

  “You told Lucinda that Sonya was flirting with me that day.”

  “Rochester, I have no clue what you’re talking about.”

  “That day you threw the bottle at my head! The bike joust! You must have told Lucinda something. You must have put it in her head. She never would have guessed.”

  Gina crosses her arms. “Are you on drugs? What would I tell Lucinda? And why would I tell Lucinda anything? I think I’ve talked to her all of five times in four years.”

  “’Cause you’re obsessed with me.”

  “Somebody needs a nap,” she says. The quote from Dogma. It makes me crazy.

  I clench my fists and kick one of the rocks that edges the flower beds as hard as I can. It hurts like hell. When I swear, I bellow as loud as I can so that the whole world will hear it.

  Gina shoves me backward and closes the door behind her. “Will you shut up! Someone is going to call the cops.”

  “So, let them,” I say. I turn to walk back to the car, but I think I’ve broken my big toe. It feels like someone tried to saw it off with a spoon.

  “You’re such a moron,” she says, grabbing my arm and steering me toward the picnic table next to the outdoor grill. “Sit!”

  “I don’t want to—”

  “I don’t care what you want,” she says.

  I slump onto the picnic bench.

  “Wait here,” she says. She disappears into the house. I look up at the sky. It’s one of those really dark nights with only a sliver of moon to show for itself, like the rim of light you see under a closed bedroom door.

  Gina comes back outside with a plastic bag of ice and a pack of cigarettes. She tosses the ice to me. She pulls a cigarette from the pack and lights it. “Go ahead,” she says. “Take off your shoe.”

  “I don’t want to,” I say.

  “You don’t want to, you don’t want to,” she mimics. “You sound like a five-year-old.” She sits next to me, bends down, and yanks at my laces with her free hand. She gets the shoe off with no help from me and plunks the ice on my foot.