Good Girls

by Laura Ruby

“What?” he says, because I’m staring.

  “Nothing,” I say. “Look. I’ve got to go.”

  “Come on! We haven’t even had a chance to hang out yet.”

  “That’s because there are too many other kitties around here,” I say.

  “You’re not jealous,” he says.

  I roll my eyes, hard. He has one hand around my upper arm and he squeezes. He’s smiling, and I hate him for just a second. As usual, it passes.

  “Let go,” I tell him.

  “Is something wrong?”

  I sigh. Everything is wrong. Maybe it’s the beer. Note to self: beer.

  “Have I told you how amazing you look tonight?” he says.

  I know when I’m being played, but the compliment cheers me anyway—that’s what kind of dork I am. “Thanks,” I tell him. He leans down to kiss me and I pull away. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  Surprise. “Why not?”

  “Just ’cause, okay?”

  He doesn’t believe me. I don’t believe me. My body is practically squealing with happiness. I’m sure he can hear it.

  He tries to kiss me again and I turn my face. “What’s the matter?” he says, concerned for real now. His hand falls away from my arm.

  “I’ve been meaning to tell you.” I take a deep breath. “I don’t want to do this anymore.”

  “Do what?”

  “What we’re doing.”

  He doesn’t answer. He tips his head and seems genuinely perplexed. It pisses me off.

  “I don’t want to do what we do. I don’t want to…” I look for the right words. “I don’t want to be involved with anyone right now.”

  He frowns—blinking, quiet. “But I thought we were cool,” he says, finally. “I thought we were just hanging out.”

  “Hanging out. Yeah, I love that,” I say. What I don’t say: I love that we’ve hooked up at every party every weekend for the last two and a half months but somehow we’re not involved. I love that we go to the same school but I don’t get much more than a “hey” in the hallways, no matter how many times your tongue has been down my throat.

  Of course, since I don’t actually finish the thought, since I haven’t said anything like it before, he has no clue what I’m talking about. I stand there, watching the expressions march across his face. I can imagine what he’s thinking: Did she just say something about LOVE? Does this mean we can’t hook up? Should I hook up with Pam Markovitz instead? What’s going on???

  I almost feel bad for him. That’s what devils do, they make you feel bad.

  I must be staring again, because Luke’s frown smoothes out. He’s got these perfect lips, full and pink. Pretty girl lips on a boy’s rough, stubbled face. I can’t help it, I think it’s hot. And he’s so close I can smell him. Warm and clean and sort of soapy-spicy. It’s a great smell. It’s a smell that can make you drunk. I wonder if I am. Can almost two beers make you drunk?

  His frown is totally gone now, and mine must be gone, too, because he ignores what I said, reels me in, and kisses me. I feel the press of his chest and the weight of his arm around my waist, all those heavy bones, and I think: Okay, fine. But this is it. After this, no more dumb high school hookups with dumb high school boys, no matter how hot or soapy-smelling they are. I’m done with this. Done.

  Maybe because he can sense it, or because he’s afraid I’ll change my mind, Luke takes his time, lips barely touching, barely brushing mine. The music thumping downstairs plays a heartbeat under my feet as the kiss goes from sweet to serious—slidey and sideways and deep. Like always, a thousand flowers bloom in my gut, my skin tingles everywhere, and my brains sidle toward the door.

  I don’t know how much time goes by before his fingers are crawling under my various shirts and he’s pushing me backwards toward the bed. Another not-so-good idea. On the bed, he could work me up, peel off all the layers till there’s nothing left to cover me and it’s too hard to say no.

  I say, “No.”

  He mumbles something against my collarbone, something beginning with “I—I want, I need, I-I-I.” It makes me so mad. Isn’t it enough that I turn into some sort of panting, slobbering wolf-girl when he’s around? I should let him see all of me? Have all of me? Just because he wants it?

  I plant my feet and steer him around. I put my hands on his shoulders and sit him down on the edge of the mattress.

  “What?” he says.

  “Shut up.”

  I drop down in front of him. I can’t make him listen or understand or care, and I don’t even want to. But I want to do something. Make him feel me. Make him beg me. Make him be the naked one.

  And so, I do.

  With Luke’s low groan in my ears and my eyes shutting out the world, I don’t hear the door open behind us, I don’t see the flash of light.

  The Photograph

  Ash is not a morning person. She is also not a neat person.

  When I get in her car on Monday morning, there are old Styrofoam coffee cups strewn on the floor and one attached to her lips. Sheets of paper, crumpled napkins, and random changes of clothes—fresh and foul—litter the backseat. Sticking to the dashboard is a quarter of a glazed donut, age indeterminate. Me and Ash have been friends since the sixth grade and she’s been driving me to school since the day she got her license, so I’m used to her morning-fog face, her bloodshot eyes, her endless coffee, and the disgusting mess that is her personal universe. It’s not even so disgusting anymore. I grab a handful of napkins and bravely peel the donut off the dashboard and dump it in the ashtray, which is filled with butts from Ash’s on-again, off-again smoking habit.

  I don’t say anything for a few minutes, waiting until Ash has more caffeine in her system. After a while, she grumbles, “What are you so happy about?” She pumps the gas pedal of her old Dodge to keep it from dying out at the stoplight.

  “Who says I’m happy?” I ask her.

  “Because you’re not complaining about the dumb party or the itchy costume or how long it took you to get the makeup off or the fourteen thousand college essays you had to write yesterday,” she says. “That means you’re happy about something.”

  Ash is not happy. Fish Tank, she’d told me on the way home from the party, had some girlfriend who went to the Catholic high school, so didn’t want to hook up with Ash or anyone else. I didn’t tell her about ending it with Luke. For some reason, it had felt like a secret, something that was more special because I was the only one in the world who knew it, or at least the only one in the world who knew I was serious about it. Sunday morning, I sat in church while the pastor—the really boring one—babbled on about some dumb movie he saw and what Jesus might think of it, going on so much and so long that he seemed to be putting himself and the rest of us to sleep. So instead of listening to Pastor Narcolepsy, I told God what happened (yeah, yeah, as if she didn’t know already). Anyway, I said that it was over and that I was okay. I said I felt strong, like I’d broken a spell. I swore that I would concentrate on my work again, that I would be back to myself. I would no longer be operating in a Luke-induced lust haze. I would be myself again.

  But with the harsh Monday-morning light piercing my eyes, with Ash mumbling like an old drunk into her coffee, I decide to go public.

  “I’m not exactly happy,” I say. “But I feel really good. I broke up with Luke on Saturday night.”

  “You did what?”

  “I broke up with Luke.”

  Her mouth hangs open. Then she says, “How can you break up with a guy if you’re not even going out with him?”

  This annoys me. “We’ve been hooking up for the last two and a half months, Ash. We were doing something. And now we’re not.”

  “Right,” says Ash. She jams her coffee cup into the cup holder. “Ten bucks says you’ll change your mind.”

  “I’m not going to change my mind.” I check myself as I say this, wondering if I’m telling the truth. But I am. I feel it. At the party, as Luke was buttoning up his shirt over that b
ody, a body so perfect that it was like a punch to the throat, I’d said, “Well, it’s been fun. ’Bye. Have a nice life,” and walked out of the bedroom without looking back. “I just don’t want it anymore, that’s all,” I say.

  “Can you hear yourself?” she says. “You don’t want Luke DeSalvio. Everybody wants Luke DeSalvio. Hell, if you guys kept hooking up, maybe he’d ask you to the prom.”

  “I’m not going to keep hooking up with some random guy in case the cheerleading squad isn’t available to escort him to the prom.”

  “Bite my head off, why don’t you?” She drums her fingers on the steering wheel. “He’s not exactly random. I thought you liked him. I thought you more than liked him.”

  I sigh. “I do. I did. I can’t figure out if I wanted him or I just wanted, well…,”

  “You dog!”

  “That’s the point. I’m not. I’d like to be able to talk to the person I’m hooking up with.”

  “Talk? To a guy? What for?” She sees my face and laughs. “Kidding, kidding.” She digs around underneath the donut for a still-smokable butt, giving up when she doesn’t find one. “I guess I’m just surprised. I mean, I think it’s totally the right decision. It’s great. It does say something that he went for you, though, as much as I hate to say it.”

  “Thanks a lot,” I say.

  “You know what I mean,” she says. “You, Miss Skip-a-Grade, 9.45 GPA, off-to-the-Ivy-League prodigy—”

  “I wish you would stop saying that.”

  “And him with the bazillion varsity letters, the golden tan, and the…”

  “Amazing ass?”

  Ash pulls an I’m-so-shocked face and adopts her British accent. “Such a cheeky girl!”

  “Such a dorky girl,” I say. “Who knows why he was hanging out with me. Maybe I was next on the list.” I reach back and rebundle the hair at the back of my head, thankfully blond again. “I tried the casual hookup thing. It’s not for me. It’s like I was trying to be someone else. Trying to be him.”

  Ash considers this. “I’m not sure that’s such a bad idea. To try to be like guys. Look at them. They just do whatever they want and nobody cares. Why shouldn’t we be like them?”

  I sigh. This is not the Ash I’ve known forever. The Ash I knew used to be totally and completely in love with Jimmy—poet, guitar guy, future rock star. They went out for a year and a half, until he had some sort of schizoid butthead attack and cheated on her with a freshman girl with shiny Barbie hair and enormous Barbie breasts. Since then, it’s all she thinks about. How free guys are. How they go after what they want, how they get it, how happy they are doing it. How hooking up is so much better than having a boyfriend, how it can keep you from getting hurt.

  But I know that’s not true, and I know better than to bring up Jimmy. After Jimmy, Ashley became Ash and Jimmy became a ghost. He might as well be dead, even though his locker is right down the hall from ours. “This particular prodigy doesn’t have time for Luke DeSalvio or any other guy,” I say. “This prodigy has to keep her grades up so that the colleges come knocking with the big bucks.”

  Ash smiles. “My list is up to six now. I’ve got Rutgers, Oberlin, NYU, SUNY, Sarah Lawrence. I’m hoping that they’ll ignore my math grades. And my chemistry grades. And that D I got in cooking freshman year.”

  “I still don’t know how you managed a D in cooking.”

  “Mrs. Hooper had us make mayonnaise. How is that cooking?”

  “You said six colleges.”

  “I’m also applying to Cornell.” She gives me a knowing look. “Bet that’s your safe school.”

  I pull Ash’s cup out of the holder and take a swig of cold, gritty coffee. “Nothing’s safe.”

  First-period study, and Chilly’s on an Audrey hunt. He lopes into the library and gives me a wicked grin. He sits in the seat across from me, his brows waggling, suggestive of God knows what. I ignore him, grab one of my books, and flip it open without really seeing it. Shakespeare. Much Ado About Nothing. Blah blah blah, says Beatrice. Blah blah blah, says Benedick. Your lips are like worms.

  “Nice party?” Chilly says.

  “Fine.” I try to make my voice flatter than a robot’s in the hope that he’ll leave me alone. No such luck.

  “Did you hook up?”

  “You have sex on the brain,” I say.

  “I have sex other places, too.”

  “I don’t think you have sex anywhere, and that’s why you have to live vicariously through the rest of us,” I say.

  “Vicariously,” he says. “V-I-C-A-R-I-O-U-S-L-Y. Is that one of the words in your SAT practice book? I bet you use flash cards.”

  “Is there a reason you always have to sit near me? Isn’t there anyone else you can irritate around here?”

  “You’re my favorite.”

  He props his chin in his hands and bats his nuclear-accident eyes. Chilly would probably be nice to look at if he wasn’t such a jerk, but the jerkiness overwhelms every other thing, the jerkiness is like a great cloud of nerve gas that causes the eyes to roll and the knees to buckle and disgust to claw at the back of the throat. When he first came to our school from Los Angeles in the middle of sophomore year, the girls took notice. Tall, lanky, skin like coffee ice cream, those freaky blue-green eyes, a movie-star strut—what’s not to like? I liked it, I’m embarrassed to admit. Oh, he started out great. Notes and gifts and all this attention that I’d never had from anyone. My mom called him “charming.” But then Chilly started feeling more comfortable. He started opening his big stupid mouth. He took all the same honors classes that I did, but while I did hours of homework and studied every night, he seemed content to do the least amount possible. He almost never had a book with him. At least not one that he was supposed to. He made fun of me for my study habits, my friends, and my work on the sets of the school plays. He said that the only thing worth my time was him. I finally told him that if he wanted a pet, he should go out and get a poodle.

  He’s never forgiven me for it.

  Today he’s got some Japanese comic book that you read backwards. Not that he’s opened it yet, because he’s too intent on pissing me off. Sometimes he sat near Kimberly Wong and made her so nervous that she would forget which math problem she was on. And sometimes it was Renee Ostrom, sure to be voted most likely to become a starving artist, who would whip out a piece of paper and draw a quick sketch of Chilly with arrows sticking through his head, or a knife in his heart, or his face shattered in Picasso-like pieces.

  Chilly spends about five minutes trying to provoke me when the bell rings. I’m glad that we’re not allowed to talk in Mrs. Sayers’s study period, and the room is silent except for the scratchy whisper of pages turning. We all hear Cindy Terlizzi’s phone when it starts to vibrate. In unison, everyone says, “Phone!”

  “Miss Terlizzi,” says Mrs. Sayers, who is shelving books in her persnickety way. The edge of every book touches the front of the shelf. “You know that phone is supposed to be turned off when you arrive at school.”

  “Whatever,” says Cindy Terlizzi. When Mrs. Sayers gives her a look, she says, “I know.”

  “Well then, turn it off,” Mrs. Sayers snaps. She picks up the end of her long scarf and flings it around her neck, waiting for satisfaction.

  Cindy digs around in her purse for the phone and flips it open with a flick of her wrist. She presses a few buttons and the phone chirps like a sick bird. We all know she’s probably getting a text message and is counting on the fact that Mrs. Sayers’s own phones are of the rotary or perhaps even the tin can variety.

  “Off!” says Mrs. Sayers.

  “That’s what I’m doing,” Cindy says, tsk-tsking, like Mrs. Sayers is just old and grumpy and wrinkled and can’t understand modern communication devices. She glances back at the phone in her palm as if she can’t quite believe the message she’s reading and slaps her hand over her mouth. Then she looks up. Finds me. Smiles.

  She’s too busy smiling to pay attention to Mrs. Sayers, who, I
have to say, is ferret-fast when she wants to be. She swoops down on Cindy, scarf flying like an aviator’s, and snatches the phone. “What a clever little gadget,” she says.

  “Hey!” says Cindy. “Give that back!”

  Mrs. Sayers peers down, one eyebrow rucked up. She starts punching random buttons and the phone whirrs. “Very nice,” she says, passing it back to Cindy.

  Cindy scowls. “You erased it!”

  Mrs. Sayers says, “Oh, my! Did I? I’m so very sorry. I hope it wasn’t important.”

  Behind Mrs. Sayers’s back, Cindy sticks out her tongue but says nothing. Mrs. Sayers glances my way and I know that whatever was on Cindy’s phone was about me—probably about the party, about Pam, about Luke. Well, they could have him. They could all get in line.

  Of course, Chilly doesn’t miss any of it. He’s turning from Cindy to Mrs. Sayers to me, me to Mrs. Sayers to Cindy. He opens his mouth to say something icky and nuclear and obnoxious, but I cut him off: “Speak and you die.”

  Chilly gives me his signature “Who, me?” look and opens his mouth again when Mrs. Sayers says, “Yes, Mr. Chillman, please do spare us all. I can’t promise you death, but I can promise detention, which I’ve been told is a bit like dying very, very slowly.”

  Everybody goes back to not reading, not studying, and not thinking, except for me and a couple of other geeks who think grades are important. At first I can’t concentrate, but as the minutes tick by I settle into it, settle into me again: the me who thinks about grade point averages and college applications and various possible futures. I consult my assignment notebook and measure how many days till the final draft of my Much Ado About Nothing paper is due, worry about my history test, calculate how many hours I’ll have to study for the next calculus exam. It’s soothing, the measurements and the calculations and even the worry. Luke is still there, of course, in the back of my head, doing some sort of jock dance of the veils, but I know that he’ll fade eventually, taking all his hot boy voodoo into the past.

  Finally the bell rings and I’m free of Chilly the Soul Chiller and Cindy Terlizzi, Demon Queen of Text Messaging. As I’m running to my next class, Pete Flanagan, one of football players, blocks my path.