by Andrew Cotto
Almost everyone, even the guys on the other team’s bench, hopped to their feet. The burst of excitement yanked some of the front row crowd onto the floor. The referees blew their whistles and brought all the craziness to a halt. Order was restored and Terence was rewarded with a rest on the bench, which he took without his usual towel-over-the-head routine. He looked pretty proud there, checking out the crowd with a cool smile on his face.
Our fans counted down the last seconds of the game and then stormed the court. The team lifted Terence into the air, and he waved a happy finger, bobbing in the sea of students that buoyed him. I would have liked to join in, but Brenda and I had a date in Hackettstown.
We climbed down from the stands and followed on the edge of the festivities toward the exit. In the area before the doors, two men stood, athletic guys in sweatshirts that said “Brown University” over the image of a basketball. Now I knew why Terence had picked up the whole “there’s no I in team” routine. Smart guy, that Terence.
Brenda and I left the gym and crossed campus toward our Valentine’s date. We passed the bridge above the crashing water and took the steps into town. On Main Street, Brenda pulled out car keys and unlocked a little blue car.
“Whose car is this again?” I asked, snapping my seat belt.
Brenda rolled her eyes and started the engine. “Tracy Johnson. I can’t believe you don’t know her. She’s in your math class.”
“Freckles?” I asked.
Brenda shook her head and shifted the car into gear. We climbed the winding road out of town and joined the empty highway. At the first exit, we took the access road into town. Tire wheels crunched the gravel of the parking lot, popping nerves like corn kernels inside me as we approached the Yankee Inn Motor Lodge, long and wooden and white. I waited in the car as Brenda checked in with her credit card, which she carried on her for emergencies. In my book, this qualified as an emergency.
She came back out, held up the key, and motioned with her head for me to follow. It felt like secret agent business, sneaking around like we were. The room was in the wing just off the parking lot, and I stomped my boots on the walkway as she worked the lock. Quickly, once inside, we closed the shades, flung off our jackets, and flopped onto the queen-sized bed.
“I can’t believe we’re doing this!” Brenda shrieked at the ceiling.
“I know,” I said, sitting up to inspect the room. “You think there’s anything on the TV?”
“Stop!” She smacked my leg before rolling off the bed to rifle through the shoulder bag she’d placed on the dresser. Alongside the TV was a tray with plastic cups wrapped in cellophane and a bucket for ice. I wished we’d brought some champagne or something to ease our nerves, because it felt like I was being tickled from the inside by thick fingers.
“What do you think?” she asked after turning around, a silky black thing held over her red sweater.
I (sort of ) faked hyperventilation, breathing in and out like a lunatic.
“So you like it?” she asked.
I nodded furiously.
“I’m going to change then,” she announced, and then bit her lower lip.
I was now sure, by her nerves, that she’d never done this before either. I’d never asked her, because I wanted to know, but I also didn’t. And I definitely didn’t want her to know that I’d never done it, though I was certain, in that moment at the motel, that all that was about to change. I hopped up from the bed and marched back and forth. I shadow boxed in the mirror, punching the air with hooks, jabs, and uppercuts.
What to do? What to do? What to do? Aha!
I kicked off my boots, ripped off my sweater and T-shirt in one swoop, and fell to the carpet as I yanked off my jeans. When the bathroom door cracked, I jumped up and bounced on the bed in nothing but socks and black bikini briefs. What an outfit.
Brenda looked amazing. The camisole reflected the light that slipped through the drapes. The hem lingered at the top of her thighs. Her hair brushed the spaghetti straps and her bare arms looked skinny and beautiful, especially the soft underside exposed as she touched the door frame beside her shoulder. Her smile was shy, but sure.
She lay down beside me. I kissed her dry mouth with my dry mouth. I slipped a hand under the silk and squeezed her soft hip. She smelled of lotion and candy. Brenda was still, except for her breaths, which were low and rapid. I was overwhelmed, pressing myself into her as I ran my hand up and down her legs. I felt pressure and redemption and wonder all at once. I reached for her again, but she grabbed my arm.
“Don’t worry, Bren,” I croaked. “I’ve never done this before, either. I swear.”
“It’s not that,” she said, her voice more hollow than breathless.
“What’s the matter then?” I asked.
She pulled back the sheets and hid her body under the covers. “I’m sorry, Danny,” she said, her eyes on the ceiling, the blankets clutched to her neck. “I thought I could do this. I want to do this. But I can’t without talking to you first.”
“I know what it is,” I said ready to restate my dueling-virgins theory.
“No you don’t, Danny,” she turned toward me to say. “You don’t know.”
Her voice was stern, like an adult’s.
“OK then,” I said. “What?”
She sat up and kept the covers pulled tight. She freed a hand to hold my wrist. “I don’t want you to get upset.”
“Why would I get upset?”
“Because it’s about Todd.”
I sank. I sank remembering them together. He had given her piggyback rides. She’d sat on his lap. They’d kissed all the time. They’d had private places. It had gone on for months. I bet he’d been to her house, and had met her mom and dad. He’d probably sneaked out of her brother’s room in the middle of the night like I didn’t have the guts to do. I tasted dirty pennies and got upset.
“Are you kidding me with this guy?” I asked. “What’s he got to do with us? What’s he got to do with anything? And you bring him up now?”
I shimmied off the bed and put on my pants. Brenda wrapped her arms around her legs and rocked. Tears fell from her face like small stones. “Don’t go,” she said through a sheet of tears.
My heart kind of stopped, but I was no longer the guy who thought about other people before thinking about himself. “I get it. You chose the popular guy over me and, what, he broke your heart or something? He dumped you for somebody better? It happens, Bren. I know. Get over it already.”
I didn’t really know what I was saying. I was just saying. I struggled into my T-shirt and sweater and boots and then abandoned Brenda for the cold afternoon. Dark clouds covered the sky and the wind burned my eyes. Without my jacket, I headed for the highway.
It took me two hours to get home. I had to walk on the highway’s shoulder. Cars honked as they whipped by in the wind. Truckers flashed their lights. On the one-lane road to Hamdenville, I had to step into the weeds whenever a car passed. I figured a little blue one would appear, with a sympathetic honk and begs through the open window to please get in. But I was wrong. No one came to pick me up.
Back at school, Terence was on the phone talking to his parents. He sported a Brown Basketball sweatshirt and a great big smile. No one else was around, so I walked to the shack and sat alone in the cold. It smelled of dead wood. On the way back to the dorm, snow began to fall.
Overnight, a foot of powder landed. I sat in the window on Sunday morning, staring at the snow-covered campus. Split in the middle by the shoveled path, it looked like a book without words.
After brunch, some students showed up with trays from the dining hall and used them to sled down the slope of the bowl. Snowballs were chucked, and a battle began between Montgomery and Carlyle. A lot of guys were out there, even the big basketball star, Terence. Snowballs flew back and forth. Our side could have used me and my pitching arm, but I didn’t belong with them.
My mind raced. Thoughts kept coming and coming. I couldn’t relax or think stra
ight. A soup of emotions swirled in my head: anger, regret, sorrow, self-pity, concern. I went over the events again and again and couldn’t decide whether to cry or to break things. Despite everything, I missed Brenda more than I knew was possible, and I had this sense of being so far away, even though I could see the crown of her dorm. My reflection in the glass resembled a ghost. My teeth chattered and my body ached, so I ducked under the covers and didn’t come out until the next morning.
I walked to breakfast in nothing but my thickest sweater on top of my second thickest sweater. My last meal had been Saturday’s lunch, only half of a ham sandwich as I’d looked forward to the loss of my virginity in an afternoon delight. That went well.
I wolfed down three breakfasts in the dining hall, then stopped by the mail room before the start of first class. I exchanged the yellow card in my box for a brown grocery bag stuffed to the gills. I carried the paper sack outside and opened it under the Arch. Inside were both of my jackets and a few other things Brenda had borrowed. I put on my leather and opened the envelope on top of the clothes, figuring it would be Brenda’s first attempt at making things right. Another good call by me.
Dear Danny,
How could you leave me like that? Haven’t we been together long enough for you just to hear me out? Are you that shallow? Insecure? That much of a JERK? It wasn’t about me getting over Todd. It was about me getting over what he did to me.
Last summer he invited me to his house, but when I got there no one was home but him. He said his mother really wanted to meet me and that she had to go away for the night, last minute, and would be back in the morning. I didn’t even know his parents were divorced. I should have left. It felt creepy, but he told me how much it would mean to him for me to meet his mom, so I stayed. We drank a little, then started fooling around and he kept saying gross things and grabbing me everywhere, but I kept telling him “no.” I just didn’t feel like we were ready, and I didn’t feel comfortable at all. And I don’t remember anything else. Something happened, but I don’t know what.
In the morning I couldn’t figure anything out. I was dressed and everything, lying in his mother’s bed, but my clothes felt different. I felt different. Todd said I passed out on him and he had carried me upstairs, but I wasn’t that tired and had only drank a little. He was acting weird and secretive and had this creepy look on his face, so I just went home and pretended like everything was normal. But it wasn’t.
I knew something happened, but I didn’t know what. That was the worst part, not knowing. What had he done to me? I knew it wasn’t my fault, but I didn’t know what to do because it was, like, date rape, I guess, kind of. MAYBE? And that’s so hard to prove, especially when you don’t remember anything, and especially when the other person is everybody’s Mr. Wonderful and I was totally there, alone in his house, drinking and fooling around and everything. I felt so stupid and so alone.
I called him a few times and he didn’t call me back, so I sent him a letter saying if he came back to school, I would tell everyone that he did something to me that he shouldn’t have. I would tell everyone that he put a drug in my drink or did something and that he was a criminal. I guess he believed me.
I was a complete wreck before coming back to school, and more so once I got here, even after I found out for sure that Todd wasn’t coming back. Then I realized I just needed to be near home and planned to leave and would have left had it not been for us. I needed to be with you, Danny. I was scared and lonely and thought you were the kind of person who could make me feel better.
For awhile, I did feel better, a lot better. I fell in love with you and started to feel better about everything. I started to think about going away to college again, but that would have been a mistake since I still feel so afraid sometimes, like now.
Todd took something from me, and I want it back. I thought that you could help me, especially after hearing about what happened to you at home with your head and everything. I was wrong.
I hope you realize how wrong you were. How could you leave me there in that room when I needed you so much? You could have put your arms around me and helped me feel better, told me everything was going to be OK, but you didn’t. You wouldn’t even listen to me. You ran. You jerk!
Do not try to talk to me. We are not together anymore, or even friends.
I realized this is something I have to work out by myself or with people capable of caring. I suggest you do the same since you clearly have things of your own to work out.
I feel sorry for you, Danny. I feel sorry for all of us.
Brenda
Her words landed like a cinder block to the stomach. I dropped the bag onto the slushy ground, doubled over, and dumped my lumberjack breakfast into the snow.
“Ewwww!” a group of girls cried as they hurried past. I grabbed the shopping bag, hopped the snowbank alongside the meadow, and booked it through the knee-deep powder, my heart beating down to my soggy shoes. I’d never felt such panic before.
As I ran, the wet bottom of the bag began to give, and my things started dropping out, one by one, as I destroyed the beauty of the previously-untouched meadow.
I leaped up the stairs of the women’s dorm, slid across the deck, then burst through the heavy door with a shredded brown bag dangling from my hand. “Get Brenda, please,” I begged through heavy breath. The few people in the foyer looked at me like I was crazy. They were right. “Brenda!” I called to the 2nd floor landing. “Brenda!”
A few minutes later, Brenda’s roommate came hustling down the stairs to tell me she wasn’t available. I stayed put. Five minutes later, the lady who ran her dorm came down and asked me politely to leave. Then she asked me, not so politely, to leave or she would call security. I didn’t even know we had security.
I dropped the last strand of my tattered bag on their marble floor and walked outside. Sweat poured out of me into the cold air. Steam rose. My jeans dragged from the waist down and my whole body felt numb as I retraced the trail through the meadow, picking up what I’d dropped. I walked the path back to Montgomery, my arms heavy with all the things that I carried. My classmates were on their way to first period. I went to bed.
I stayed in the room for two days, sleeping off my idiot’s flu. Terence brought me sandwiches and juice from the dining hall, and Sammie hooked me up with Early Birds. Mr. Wright visited twice a day to check up on me and confirm my excused absence from class. Puking in public usually gets you a few days, and the fever and chills that shook me didn’t hurt either.
The real sickness came from the feeling I had about Brenda. I had let her down, abandoned her at the moment she needed me most. I was the opposite of her hero. And because of that, I knew. I knew for sure. She was already over me.
Chapter 14
I’d been up and out of bed for a week or so, but was still overwhelmed by sickness. I walked around like a mope, not really speaking to anyone or doing anything beyond what was required. I could feel myself slipping into the hermit mode I’d been in back home, during my second year of high school. I felt like calling Dr. DeFuso or somebody to tell them how bad I felt about everything. It was jealousy, I guess, and stupidity, I’m sure, that made me treat Brenda that way. But it was more than that, too. I’d disappeared. I wasn’t myself anymore. I hadn’t been for awhile. And what made it worse was that I couldn’t imagine what it was like to be anybody else either.
The dining hall at Hamden Academy was a long room with shiny chandeliers. The thick blue carpet matched the wallpaper hung with portraits of former headmasters and etched names of valedictorians. The large windows were framed in dark wood. The L-shaped hall was spaced with thick wooden tables, six chairs per side and one at each end. The seating rotation for the students changed every couple of weeks, while faculty stayed put at the heads.
Every student was required to be at lunch and dinner each weekday, semi-formal at night. Attendance was taken right before announcements, with Sunrises dished out to those who were absent or even late. Behavior
was monitored and specific rules, both formal and informal, were law.
“You kill it, you fill it,” a perky freshman reminded me after I polished off a pitcher of milk.
I hadn’t spoken a word to the others at my table since we’d started up together the previous week. They all went quiet, and their eyes were on me as the noise from the rest of the hall blathered on around us.
“Right,” I acknowledged, and stood to fulfill my duty while the others went on with their meal.
I refilled the plastic pitcher in the room next to the kitchen. On the way back, with my head low, I began to think about the stupidity of my zombie routine. Common sense came creeping into my mind, until the pitcher was jerked straight down and a flood of cold liquid splashed over my crotch and thighs. I was soaked with milk. Chester snickered as he walked away. The cold shock that shivered me was quickly exchanged for hot rage.
I snatched up the empty pitcher and drew back my arm. I narrowed in on the target, just as I had been coached in baseball. I was going to bounce that thing off the back of his head, but before I could fire the pitch, I was stopped by a grip to my wrist.
“Yo,” Terence said. “The hell you doing, man?”
He had a look of real concern on his face. The whole room was quiet. Heads popped up all over. Everybody stared. I dropped the pitcher and walked out of there, right through the looks and the laughter.
My nerves felt like the lit fuse of a firecracker, and as soon as I got outside, the early March evening started in on my soggy patch. It felt cold down there, for sure, but as I walked, the dark, empty campus began to soothe me. I followed the path slowly, breathing and releasing air in long, steady breaths that drifted toward the darkened sky. Silence seemed to ring.