Good Girls

by Laura Ruby

  On the tip of my tongue: Okay, who are you, and what have you done with my dad? And: How does anyone know what she wants? But Dad finds my idea that God could be a woman amusing, and I really don’t feel like amusing him. “Okay,” I say, wondering why, all of a sudden, my dad is getting all churchy on me, babbling about what God wants—something he normally doesn’t do except when we talk about the obvious stuff, like, Thou shalt not murder each other or steal one another’s boyfriends/girlfriends or be nasty, greedy jerks who inflict your nasty, greedy jerkiness on other people. He’s even grumbled at Mom’s insistence that we go to church every week—he could open the store a few hours earlier if we didn’t—and doesn’t think it’s funny when she tells him that she needs to repent for all those nice people she’s killed with sewing scissors in her books.

  I want to say, Look, Dad, some of us aren’t doing so well handling the big stuff that God wants, so going to church every three seconds seems pretty minor. As a matter of fact, I think that church is one of those things that seems like a good idea but actually isn’t that great in practice. Like, who would think that getting everyone together to talk and sing about God and goodness and love and Heaven and Jesus wouldn’t be a fun thing? So why isn’t it a fun thing, or even an interesting thing most of the time? Why isn’t it more useful? Why don’t they give practical lessons on how to deal with hot guys without having to wear a freaking chastity belt? Why are you always thinking about something else when you’re there? Like the way the hook on your bra is digging into your back or the fact that the lady in front of you is wearing enough perfume to wipe out vast colonies of insects.

  I don’t know, I’ll have to ask Joelle about temple. Maybe going to temple is different.

  My dad looks in the rearview mirror, frowning deeply. He’s been frowning deeply a lot. I have a name for that frown: it’s the I-don’t-know-you-anymore frown. The you-have-turned-into-someone-I-don’t-understand frown.

  Maybe I have.

  Monday, study period. Chilly drops into the chair next to me, whistling. “Hey, baby. Don’t think I got your name.”

  “Get away from me.”

  “Never heard that name before.”

  “You hear it all the time,” I say.

  “Do any photo shoots lately?”

  I press my lips together and wait for the bell to ring so that he will Shut. Up. Already. Tayari Smith, gorgeous Tayari Smith, gives me a sympathetic look across the table, and in my reptilian brain I remember a story from eighth grade, something about how Tayari did something to or with some boy in the back of the bus on the way home from school and got suspended for it. I suddenly, desperately, want to be her friend. Maybe she can teach me what to do with my new dark hair. Maybe she can show me how to twist it and braid it and curl it into crazy corkscrews, a new do every day. Maybe I’ll learn how to give other girls sympathetic looks over tables in study periods, I’ll see how to get my dignity back.

  “I was thinking,” says Chilly. “You should send that picture in with your college applications. Might be the deciding factor. I know! You could take more photos. I can help.”

  Something about the way he says this makes me think. Did Chilly have a camera at that party? I don’t remember a camera, but what if he did have one? What if he stole a camera and followed me upstairs? What if he snuck up behind us in the bedroom and…

  “Was it you?” I say. My voice sounds like someone else’s, like an echo from a radio.

  “Me? What are you talking about? You can’t even remember who you blew?”

  “Did you take the picture?”

  Chilly smiles. “What do you think?” He lifts his hands and makes like he’s pressing a button.

  I wasn’t mad before, I wasn’t, but that was the old Audrey, not the new, fierce coffee-haired Audrey. I hate Chilly, I hate him, and maybe he hates me, too, maybe he hates me more, but this is someone I went out with, someone I made out with. He was the first guy I let up my shirt. How could he do this to me?

  Before I know it, I’ve leaped out of my chair and smacked him as hard as I can across his face. Someone grabs my arms from behind. Chilly keeps laughing. Mrs. Sayers shouts, “Audrey! What is going on here? What is going on?”

  I’m sent to the office. You can’t have girls hauling off and smacking guys around. No, that is not done. Could set a bad precedent. Could be lousy for morale.

  “Audrey, I’m surprised,” says Mr. Zwieback, the vice principal.

  I look at my feet. Of course you’re surprised, I want to say. You have the name of a cracker they give to babies. “I’m surprised, too,” I tell him.

  “Can you tell me why you decided to hit Mr. Chillman in study period?”

  Well, gee, uh, I wanted to wait until lunch, but I was all booked up. “I don’t know. He made me mad.”

  “Does this have anything to do with a certain picture that’s been making the rounds?”

  “What?” I say. Mr. Zwieback’s seen the picture? Mr. Zwieback? Mr. Zwieback has a basset-hound face and long sideburns—no, not the cool kind. He wears plaid—also not the cool kind. Mr. Zwieback grew up somewhere in the South and occasionally says “y’all.” It’s impossible that he’s seen the picture. Impossible.

  A red flush creeps up Mr. Zweiback’s neck. “Several copies were found on the computers in the library, though we had trouble identifying the, uh, subjects. But your father did call me to discuss the picture,” he says. “He told me that it’s been sent from student to student. He was quite upset.”

  I close my eyes and hope for death.

  Mr. Zwieback clears his throat. “I understand that something like that could make you angry. I would be angry. Now, if you’re sure that Mr. Chillman was, uh, involved in the situation somehow, I can talk to him. I can make sure he’s punished for it.”

  Of course I want to punish him. I want him drawn and quartered. I want him burned at the stake. But if I make a bigger deal of this, then everyone will be reminded all over again. I don’t want any more copies of that picture pasted to my locker or in my e-mail box or on my phone. I want it over. “Chilly likes harassing me. He’s been doing it forever. I got sick of it.”

  “I don’t want to embarrass you, but I promised your father I would keep an eye out for any trouble. If someone at this school has victimized you or forced you—”

  A lightning strike would be perfect right about now. A massive mudslide. A stampede of zebras. “Nobody forced me to do anything, Mr. Zwieback.”

  Mr. Zwieback frowns, as if he has no idea what to make of this. Of course I was victimized, of course I was forced. Nice girls are forced, honors students are forced. If I wasn’t forced…

  He taps a pen methodically on the top of his desk, tap, tap, tap. “Several of the teachers and administrators were in favor of taking action against you.”

  I’m so surprised that my eyeballs almost pop from my face. “What? What do you mean?”

  “I’m not saying I agree with them, but some people feel that our top students should set a better example.”

  I can’t speak. I should set a better example, but not Luke. No, that boy’s obviously doing just dandy as he is. It’s those girls that you have to watch. Girls are tricky. I see Mr. Zwieback eyeing my hair and I wonder what he thinks of the dye job, if he thinks that I tried to change the inside by changing the outside, the way that other kids do. But my inside had already changed, had gone odd and dark somehow. All I did was match it. I stare at Mr. Zwieback until he looks down at his desk.

  “Well,” he says. “Since we couldn’t be absolutely positive who was in the photo, we could hardly take action. That wouldn’t be fair.” Mr. Zwieback clears his throat. “In any case, I’m sure you understand that you can’t go around hitting people.”

  “Yes,” I say. My voice is so low I can hardly hear it myself.

  “Normally, something like this would be an automatic suspension. Considering the circumstances, however, and the fact that you’ve never been in trouble before, I’m going to
let you off with a detention.”

  I can’t say thank you so I say “Fine.”

  “I will tell Mr. Chillman to stay far away from you. And I want you to stay away from him, do you understand? No talking, no arguing, and absolutely no hitting.”

  “It will be hard to avoid him. He sits next to me in history and in study.”

  “As of today, he does not. I’ll inform your teachers.” He meets my eyes. “I don’t see the need to call your parents, so I won’t.”

  At this, I do say “Thanks.”

  “Audrey,” says Mr. Zwieback, placing his pen carefully on his desk as if it were made of something very fragile, like plastic explosive. “I understand that sometimes young people get a little overwhelmed and do things that they regret later.”

  “Uh-huh,” I say.

  “Maybe that’s the situation here? Did you want to talk to the school counselor about it?”

  The school counselor, Ms. Jones, is having a not-so-secret affair with Mr. Kinsey, the Honors Physics teacher. They’d been spotted coming out of the lab looking dazed and disheveled, as if they’d just performed some complicated experiments with combustible materials.

  “No, I don’t need to talk to the counselor.”

  “It could help,” he says. “Maybe we could do something for you.”

  “I’m okay,” I say.

  He sighs, sees that he’s been beaten. “No more hitting?”

  My new hair and this whole drama has made me feel as if my world has tilted off its axis. I don’t know how Joelle can stand to live like this all the time. “No more hitting,” I say.

  “Good,” he says. “You’re a wonderful student, Audrey. I really don’t want you to take a bad turn here.”

  I stand up to go. “Me neither.”

  Pay Up

  “So much for a disguise,” says Ash. “Every one’s talking about you again.”

  We’re sitting in the cafeteria, waiting for Joelle. “Yeah, well…,” I say. I’m ignoring all the stares and pointing. Let them point. Let them stare. I see Cindy Terlizzi and Pam Markovitz huddled at the corner table, and I wave cheerily at them.

  “I’m going to call you ‘slugger’ from now on. I’m going to call you ‘gangsta girl.’” Ash whips out a mirror and reapplies a thick ring of dark blue eyeliner around each eye. “I can’t believe it took you this long to hit that stupid Chilly. You should have smacked him, like, two years ago.” She tosses her mirror and liner into her backpack.

  “I was gearing up for it,” I say.

  “I hope you broke his face,” she says.

  “Don’t think so, but we can keep our fingers crossed.”

  “Remember how pissed off he was when you dumped him? Remember how he called you all the time? Followed you around and stuff? God, what a freaking loser.”

  “Yeah, and I’m the freaking loser that actually went out with him. Ugh.” I shivered.

  “Did he actually admit he took the picture and sent it around?”

  “He didn’t deny it.”

  “Arschloch.”

  Joelle flies into the cafeteria, flapping her arms like a bird. “Tayari told me what happened!” she says, throwing her purse up on the table. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine, Jo,” I tell her. “He didn’t hit me, I hit him.”

  “I love it!” she squeals. “If you hadn’t done it—”

  “You would have shoved your boot down his throat,” Ash and me finished for her.

  “Exactly,” Joelle says. She thrusts her hands into my hair. “Audrey, I can’t stop telling you how much this rocks! Are you going to get highlights on top? Or bangs? Bangs would look great on you! But you need to wear more eye makeup. Ash, why don’t you give her some of your eyeliner?”

  “Yes, Master,” Ash says. Her eyes dart behind me and I turn to look. Luke and Nardo stand in the doorway of the cafeteria, talking to two junior girls. Luke sees me and his mouth stops moving for a second; I can tell that he’s surprised by the hair. It’s the first time in a week that he’s looked at me with anything other than a total granite face.

  “I guess we know now that Luke didn’t have anything to do with that picture,” I say.

  “But he’s still acting like it’s your fault, like you did something to him,” says Joelle. “Ignoring you and whatever. Where does he get off? Oh!” she says, when she realizes the pun. There’s no escaping all the sex puns—they’re everywhere.

  “Forget about him, Audrey,” Ash says quietly. “It’s not worth getting upset about. I think he’s already moved on.”

  I nod and pick at my fingernails. Joelle pats my elbow and shoots Luke a glare that could shatter glass.

  “Look at him,” says Joelle. “He was in that picture, too, but he gets to stand there, all proud of himself. Probably thinks the whole world is lining up to blow him.”

  I rub my temples. “They pretty much are, aren’t they?”

  “It’s a good thing that’s all you did,” Joelle says. “Think about how much worse it could be.”

  They don’t know how much worse it is. They don’t know because I never told them. I wanted to pretend it didn’t happen. I wanted to delete it like a text message. But there’s Luke—walking, talking, being—and it hurts me. We weren’t going out, so why does it hurt me? It feels like this earache I had once. I didn’t even know I was sick until the pain got so bad I hoped my eardrum would burst already, just to make it stop.

  I want to burst now. “I wish it were all I did,” I say.

  “What?” Ash and Joelle say at once. “What do you mean?”

  When I don’t answer, Ash says, “You didn’t!”

  “Wait,” says Joelle, “When? At my party?”

  “No,” I say. “Before that.”

  “Details!” shrieks Joelle. “I need details!”

  But Ash looks ashen. “Before that?” she says.

  “Yeah,” I say. “I didn’t tell you because, well, I don’t know why I didn’t tell you. I couldn’t.”

  “Why?”

  “I just said, I don’t know.”

  “No,” Ash says. “Why did you do it?”

  “What do you mean, why?” I say. “Why does anyone?”

  “But you were just hooking up!”

  Her dark eyes are blazing and I’m confused. “Isn’t that what hooking up is?”

  “You idiot,” she says. “I knew it. You’re totally in love with him, aren’t you?”

  “No,” I say. “I mean, I don’t think so. I don’t know,” I shake my head. “I’m not sure.”

  “So you’re not sure if you love him, but you screwed him anyway?” She keeps her voice low, but she may as well be screaming at me. Her face is stiff and furious.

  “Hey, Ash, lighten up,” Joelle says.

  “You were hooking up just as much as I was,” I say. “More.”

  “I wasn’t screwing them all,” she says. “What were you thinking?”

  “So she got carried away,” Joelle says. “Whatever. It happens. Chill out.”

  I feel tears pressing behind my eyes. I don’t understand what’s going on, why Ash is so mad at me. There’s something she’s not telling me. “You were with Jimmy,” I say.

  “I loved Jimmy.” She spits the word loved. “We were going out for more than a year. It’s different.”

  “Oh,” I say. It’s all I can say. I look down at the table. In the surface, someone has carved a heart with an arrow through it, but the initials inside the heart have worn away.

  Ash sighs, and her voice loses its awful jagged edges. “I worry about you. I don’t want you to end up like that bitch Cherry. Or like them.” She jerks her head at the back table, where Cindy Terlizzi and Pam Markovitz are splitting an enormous plate of cheese fries, dropping the fries into their mouths and licking their fingers.

  “It sounds like you think I’m already like them,” I say.

  “No, I don’t. But you have to be careful.”

  “I was trying.”

  “Y
ou need to try harder.”

  “Thanks for the advice,” I say sarcastically. “How do you know what they’re like, anyway?”

  Ash folds her arms across her chest. “Now what are you talking about?”

  “Pam. Cindy. How do we know who they’ve really been with, who they loved or didn’t love? How do you know that Pam Markovitz didn’t think she loved Jay Epstein when she gave him head at the movies?”

  “That’s stretching it,” Joelle says.

  “Maybe, maybe not.” I look at Ash. “You’re always saying that we should be like guys, act like guys. Does anyone ask them if they love every person they have sex with? Does anyone even care?”

  “Okay,” says Joelle. “I think we need to talk about something else now. Like maybe the Hamlet auditions tomorrow.”

  “Forget it,” I say. It’s bad enough that the entire school believes I’m some kind of whore, but Ash? Ash? Who’s known me since forever? Who came over after my first kiss with Albert Mendez because it was so disgusting and I couldn’t stop crying and had convinced myself I must be a lesbian? Who called Chilly’s mom and told her that her son was stalking me and that he needed therapy? Ash?

  It’s too much.

  “You guys think I’m such a slut, then I guess I should be sitting with the sluts, shouldn’t I? I wouldn’t want you to get a reputation.”

  I grab my backpack, throw it up on my shoulder, and march over to the corner table. Cindy and Pam gape as I toss my pack to the floor, slip into one of the seats next to them, and pull a gooey fry from the greasy plate. “Mind if I sit here?” I say to them before popping the fry into my mouth.

  Cindy and Pam exchange looks.

  “What?” I say.

  Holding a pencil like a cigarette between her fingers, Pam considers me.

  “What?” I say again.

  “What, nothing,” Pam says. She flicks her eyes at the plate and shrugs. “Your share’s $1.25. Pay up.”

  Duck-Billed Salad Servers

  I have not talked to Ash in four days. Joelle is trying to help, but she’s all distracted by the Hamlet auditions and subsequent rehearsals. She shouldn’t have worried. She’s the only one in the whole school who could handle this backwards, too-cool-for-school girl Hamlet: “To be or not to be—so not the question.” A guy named Joe, a tall, sort-of-hot junior we’ve never met before, is cast as O, the male version of Ophelia. When they have to read together and Joelle shouts “Get thee to a monastery!” right up in his face, O/Joe looks more than a bit frightened, and more than a bit turned on.