But I was having some margaritas and just getting sort of high, and Marnie was regaling me with that story again, the one about her brother's professor and how him and two female students had gone off to Fenwick together and then got caught in the worst way, the very worst way possible.
And I saw what Owen was doing.
I saw that he had already cast a spell. Some kind of spell. Just like a witch.
Over Jimmy.
I saw Jimmy put his hand in Owen's hair, and I saw how they laughed, and I know it must seem irrational and paranoid, but the first thing I thought was:
That bastard is trying to steal my boyfriend.
You can imagine how I felt. I mean, I thought it was ludicrous. It wasn't like Skippy Marshall and that Donovan character from Harrow—they were both homosexual, and we all had known it since they got into the drama club and developed the perfect butts in the workout room doing squats.
This was different. I thought it was absolutely ludicrous. But I grew livid as I watched them. Absolutely livid. Really, from the corner of my eye.
I was working on my third or fourth margarita, and Missy kept talking and Alec kept eyeing my breasts like he always did, and I had my little circle, but they knew something was up, too. They knew that Jimmy was not fawning on me, and I didn't really enjoy that. Frankly. I suppose if I had not been drinking, I wouldn't have caused a scene. But I kept my eye on the two of them, and I saw the touches.
Yes, that's right. Queerish little touches. Not the kind that boys do. Not normally.
Owen touched Jimmy's elbow, and Jimmy looked at Owen's hand. And they laughed, and whenever one of them could, he took his fist and gently patted the other on the chest.
Like old chums, yes, maybe. Certainly that's what I'd like to believe, but in fact, I saw Jimmy show him more genuine attention, not that needy attention he shows me, but the kind of attention every girl wants but never gets from a boy.
That adoration kind of attention.
And Owen was milking it. I know he was.
I asked Marnie later on. She said I was imagining things, that Jimmy had been bedding girls since eighth grade, that it was just that boy thing. That's what she said, “That prep school boy thing where they get together and they touch each other and they tell dirty jokes and they check each other out. It's because they both want you. They need to check out the competition."
But I don't know. I stood there, feeling embarrassed and humiliated, and at my party.
At my own party.
Finally I couldn't stand it.
Jimmy leaned forward and whispered something to him. It was like slow motion. I can remember it now like it's still in front of my face.
I saw his lips move as he whispered, and I saw Owen lean into him, and Jimmy's hand was on Owen's shoulder, and maybe I was hallucinating or maybe I saw what I saw, but I think Jimmy McTeague placed the barest whisper of a kiss on Owen's ear, at my party, with me watching, with me having to bear witness to it.
God, it's so gothic. It's so…Fire Island.
It really hit me hard. I began crying, without knowing I was doing it, weeping, just standing there, and Alec took my hand and said, “Aw, princess, what's up?”
I shook myself free of that crowd, and I walked right over to those two horrible boys, that horrible Jimmy McTeague and I whispered, “If you embarrass me here, I will destroy you.”
And then, of course, I had to go back to my party. I had to. I had an obligation to my friends. I was not going to let the boy who had been sleeping with me for nearly two months humiliate me in front of my friends.
It wasn't until the next morning that I opened the gift that Owen had given me, and that's pretty much why I freaked out, with my usual panache.
I didn't want to see Owen again.
Ever.
But I knew that Jimmy would still be mine, no matter what we both went through to be together.
After all, remember these things: The happiest of people don't necessarily have the best of everything; they just make the most of everything that comes along their way. When I think of all I've had to deal with, particularly with Jimmy, these sentimental thoughts bring me comfort. Even if they're off some greeting card somewhere.
Oh yeah, what Owen gave me for my birthday.
It was a gun. A crap-ass gun at that. It was tiny. It had some pearly kind of handle, and the safety looked like it had rusted out, and I couldn't get the little clippy thingy off if I tried.
I thought it was a joke at first, but I guess not. It looks like something that you'd buy from some little old lady in Brooklyn, some little old lady with a thousand cats and one of those old fox furs who chainsmokes and lives in a studio she's had since the 1950s. Still, it was a gun, and I have to admit, it was the creepiest thing he could've given me.
He scares me a little. I mean, what kind of psycho gift is that?
Chapter Five
After the Party
1
Jimmy grabbed Owen's elbow, laughing, the smell of beer and tequila mixed in the air.
Owen giggled, too, and said, “Let's go to the jetty. It's beautiful there. You can see the north star.”
“You know the north star?”
“Yeah. I know all the stars. I'm an islander. I know the dippers and Scorpio, too.”
“You're a Mooncalf,” Jimmy said, his grin big and goofy and not the controlled jock he'd once seemed. “God I wish I knew the stars like you. I want to just—just—look at the stars and know which ones they are, and where the earth is in relation to them.”
The party spun around them, and Owen had a vague sense that Jenna's eyes floated around his every move.
She'll understand, he thought.
Someday, she'll understand.
“She's a bitch,” Jimmy whispered, as if reading his thoughts. “She and her friends and half these people here. All these quote unquote friends of mine, of ours, who are they? Damn it, who are they? And Jenna. Christ. Jenna.”
“No, she's cool,” Owen said. “Let's go down to the jetty.”
“God yeah, show me the stars,” Jimmy said, and he kept saying it over and over again as they stumbled their way down the path along the bluffs, and every now and then Owen stopped and let Jimmy take his hand.
Jimmy's hand was warm, and above them, the sounds of the party spun, and the smell of pine and sea mingled.
The moon cut a path for them all the way to the jetty.
By the time they got there, Jimmy had already grabbed Owen hard and pulled him close to him until their chests pressed together, their thighs met, and he pressed his lips to Owen's mouth.
2
Voices in the dark:
“It's all right, I know you. I know what we both want.”
“Shut up. Just shut up.”
“Come here. Come here. Let me help you. It's all right. It feels good.”
“No, not like this. No.”
“I've been so lonely.”
“Oh.”
“Wanting this.”
“Oh.”
“Since the first time I saw you.”
“Oh.”
“Does this feel good?”
“Ah.”
“Will you let me take you?”
“Oh.”
“Ask me.”
“Oh.”
“Ask me.”
“Owen, take me? Owen? Take me.”
3
Owen takes control.
I had found my way to Jenna. It wasn't much different than kissing a girl, and once I allowed Jimmy to feel as if he had seduced me, that I was the unwilling partner, it was easy to hold his attention.
He told me to close my eyes and pretend he was a girl, to just let him do things to me, to just keep the image of a beautiful girl in my mind while he did things.
Jenna was the only face I saw.
I knew that once I had Jimmy McTeague of the Ivy League in my arms, once I had pressed myself into him, owned him, dominated him, that Jenna would be mine.
And no, I'm not gay.
I got no thrill from what I did to Jimmy McTeague, how I made him feel tenderness and acceptance and release that night.
It felt less like sex to me than stabbing someone over and over while they curl around you.
How I caressed him as no one ever had, to the point that he wept against my chest. It was purely because I thought of Jenna. My love for her.
Love is purity.
My next decision, as I lay there with that puppy whispering his soul into my ear, was just how I was going to murder him.
Part Two: The Last of Summer
Chapter Six
Jimmy McTeague Keeps a Diary
1
Dear Diary as they say:
1. Need to train better. Work on backswing, damn it. Wake up an hour earlier every morning. Run two miles. Then practice. Then row.
2. July was a waste. Feeling like I'm getting lazy. More strength training. Check out the sucky gym in town.
3. Jenna's a bitch. She thinks she knows. She doesn't know. She'll never really know.
4. Need to get back with Jenna. Need to figure this out.
5. I can't resist him. It's awful what we're doing. But I know I can stop. I know if I just stick with the program I can stop. I think he's evil.
6. What we did was wrong. I know that. What Jenna and I can build is right.
7. Call the Padre and Madre for more money.
8. Become a better person. Quit all the lying. Lying is bad. There's no reason. If you feel the way you feel, let it all out. Don't keep holding it in. Doesn't matter what dad thinks. Doesn't matter if you know what you need from life. You can let it out. Other people do. Other people need those things, too.
9. Maybe it's not real. Maybe it's just sex. Maybe I shouldn't let it happen. But now all I think about is him.
10. Jenna and Mooncalf.
11. Mooncalf.
12. He told me something really smart. Just shows that you don't need all these prep schools and universities to be smart. He said, “Love is purity.” It is so true. It's something I couldn't say out loud. But it's so true. But there's more to life than love. You can't survive on love. You can't have the important things in life just because of love. No one pays for three houses and European vacations and clothes from Italy and Rolls Royces with love.
2
My name's Jimmy McTeague. It's safe to assume you know that because you are me sitting here reading my diary. Since after all no one else is going to read this if I can help it.
It's also probably safe to assume that you'll burn these pages someday to make sure no one else reads them. But for now, writing it down seems right. My favorite movie is probably still the Little Mermaid which I saw when I was nine years old and I still watch it on DVD once a year at least. Why? Because it was about sacrifice for what you wanted. I've always sort of believed in that. My dad doesn't understand why I watch a cartoon to inspire me. Sometimes I watch it before a match because it gets me going. I don't see why being smart and grown up has anything to do with abandoning the things you believed in when you were a kid.
I've wanted to keep a diary since I was about nine, about the same time as I saw that movie, but I didn't start til I was 12, and then I threw it all out, so after another brief attempt at sixteen, I've decided now that I'm about to enter Harvard, it's time for me to keep one. I'm not only about tennis, anyway. I get tired of that dumb jock image. My SATs were through the roof. I get good grades and am totally wrapped up in Medieval History, which I figure I might pursue even after I graduate. If I graduate. If I make it through. If all the bad things that I've found out about don't happen in the meantime and it all ends.
This part of the diary is about my summer. Jenna and I were having a great year together, although I wasn't always there for her, I suppose, because of the matches I had in England and out in California, and then she spent Spring Break in Aruba, so that last week in May was really our first full week together, which is why I took the Karenina out of the yacht club and we sailed lazily up and down the coast for a few days. I was so pissed off at Dad over a lot of things. First and foremost was the talk he gave me, about how I needed to uphold the family and how I needed to look at life differently, not as a kid but as someone who had responsibilities and wanted to live a certain way with certain kinds of people.
I didn't forget about Chip, but I guess that's one of those things I have to put aside. My dad says so anyway.
Chip was really aggressive anyway, and the time we spent together wasn't really very meaningful because the whole time I kept thinking to myself: where will this go? Two guys can't marry. I'll lose everything.
And Chip was all about loins, anyway.
I shouldn't even write about it here. What if someone finds out? I'm not really gay anyway, I just get in these situations. I suppose I fall in love with people.
Chip turned out bad anyway. All that mess about fighting and arguing and him claiming I broke his arm when I didn't break it and if he fell it was his fault anyway for standing in my way and not letting me pass. He did that sort of blackmail thing too, but I showed him that I wasn't going to put up with that kind of shit.
I fell for Jenna pretty hard.
I mean, who wouldn't?
She's gorgeous and full of life and her brain is just amazing.
And the money. To pretend it's not there is like not noticing her bra size.
All the guys seem to want her, and I really had to fight off that bulldog from Choate with the Ferrari, but it wasn't too hard to dazzle her on the courts. She's a big fan of tennis, which helps, and that night we went for a walk back in the city really turned things around for me.
I mean, we were walking down Fifth Avenue, and she was talking about what she wanted from life, all the wonderful things, to see the world and experience the best of everything, and how her trust fund was huge and she intended to always have the life her parents had, and my mind was turning a hundred little things around. I was walking with her under cloudy skies, and I was thinking about how this was right.
Being with Chip was wrong because it was based on that one thing, that physical thing, and I thought, all right, I know where this will go with Jenna. We'll marry, we'll have children, we'll build something really solid.
She has all this family land and properties and I'm really good at handling investments, so we'll be perfect together. And she wants kids really badly. So badly that she told me she wasn't even all that interested in college, and she wanted to just get out from under her parents and be on her own and make her own life.
She has millions from her grandmother, and it's earning more millions every year, she said, so why should she have to go through college? She wanted to do some magazine work, one of those Conde Nast magazines, and her family has huge pull in that area, and she was smart enough.
It hardly bears comparison with a night spent on a dirty mattress in the back of some studio apartment in Chelsea with Chip, who fell on hard times after prep school.
That sleaziness he had, like an air, like marijuana smoke in the back of a bus—that's what his place was like. He was slumming, he was degrading himself. His parents had cut him off, and he was willing to live like that. Hardly any furniture, a job that barely paid him per month what a reasonable man can live on. And still, he was willing to live like that for the sake of the feeling in his organ.
I am never going to let that happen to me. I am never going to let people know how I am on the inside if I can help it. I got so mad at Chip I guess I ended up roughing him up a little, but he kept trying to ruin things, and I just won't let anyone do that. My dad is ruining things as it is, and pretty soon other people are going to know how he's ruining things, and I do not intend to be in that spot with him.
I remember clasping Jenna's hand, and listening to her optimistically go on about the life she intended for herself. So I
knew that if I just kept my eyes on her, it would all go in the right direction. When we made love for the first time, it even felt right. She was overheated on the inside, it was like lava or something, it felt so natural.
I thought it would all turn out all right up until I met Mooncalf. I tried to fight it, too. I looked at him and tried. I tried not to look at his body. So well developed. The way he spoke, almost sullenly.
I didn't want him then, but I knew he had it in him to take me over. And I suppose he has.
There's even a dangerousness to him I enjoy. I find myself looking over Jenna's shoulder, when we're at the beach, or bicycling, hoping he's there, just out of reach.
And then, the party. It was like waking up for the first time. It was like knowing that I'd been telling myself lies for years. That I'd been foolish and wrong. Now, all I think about is Mooncalf and I wish we were in a different world, not one of secrets and half-truths, but one where we could just be together. I know he feels the same.
I'm sleeping pretty much on the boat now. I can't stay with Jenna.
Not in her room.
And her dad gives me those looks, which aren't pleasant, either. Jenna's been cold. Can't blame her.
I know somehow it will all turn out okay. I know it will because I know life is not meant to be bad, and it's not meant to be confusing, and if we can all just get through this summer, it'll somehow work out because life is supposed to work out.
Coming of Age: Three Novellas (Dark Suspense, Gothic Thriller, Supernatural Horror) Page 6