“Dairy Queen.”
“Good choice.” Ing and I smile across the table. “Do you pay?”
“How much?” he asks, a little exasperated.
“Well,” Ing says. “Let’s say we have burgers, fries, and two thick shakes. So let’s say fifteen bucks.”
He shakes his head. “Nope.”
I lean across the table and whisper in his ear. “That’s not very romantic, my little man.”
“Okay, the playground,” he says. “Girls like swings.”
“While Inggy’s on the swings what will you do?”
“Ride my board on the dock.”
“But then it’s not a date,” I say. “You have to do it together, see.”
He dunks a cookie in his milk and pops the whole thing in his mouth and chews slowly. “I’m not going on the swings,” he says finally. “You want a ride on the back of my scooter?”
“That sounds romantic,” she says. “I’ll have the wind in my hair. Then afterwards will you buy me a Dilly Bar?”
He looks up at her pretty face and blushes. “Okay,” he says.
“I’m going to have to marry you,” Inggy tells him.
“I’m eight,” he tells her in that totally serious kid way.
“I’m forced to wait.”
He tests out the point of his pencil. “Let’s think of all the words we can for butt.”
“Let’s,” Ing says. “Tush, ass, derriere.”
“Booty and patootie and behind,” I add.
Mossy scribbles away. “Don’t forget can,” he says. “And bum. That’s what they say in England. Bum.”
“You’re very worldly, my man,” I tell him.
“Maid service,” Mom says, coming in with a clean load of laundry. She dumps towels, sheets, and underwear in a pile on the couch. “You do the next load,” she tells me.
“Yup.”
“You have great undies, Angel,” Inggy says, eyeing the heap. “I like that silver pair.”
“Oh, that’s mine.” Mom plucks the thong from the pile and gives it a twirl before stuffing it half in her jeans pocket.
“Oh, a thong.” Inggy leans over and covers Mossy’s ears. “I hate the string up my crack.”
“You get used to it,” Mom says.
“I don’t know,” I say, “either it works for you or it doesn’t.” I personally love thongs and have always been surprised about Ing’s thong issue, but there you go. I’m sure Cork’s given her a hard time, because like any horndog he loves them. Come on, Ing, he’d say. For me. Nope, she’d say. I want to see the little triangle riding up your tailbone when you bend over in your jeans. Sorry, she’d say.
Sometimes, just sometimes, I find myself wondering about them really going at it. I know that sounds kind of pervy, me wondering about my friends in bed. And it’s not like I want a ringside seat or anything. I sure don’t. But here’s what’s kind of weird and interesting when you think about it. That that part of you—the naked, horny you—is tucked away, hidden. I mean, the only people who know what you’re like in the sack are the people you’ve been with. It’s this whole other life and with each guy a new secret. I love that.
“Earth to Angel,” Mom says.
“What?”
“You didn’t tell me all the places Inggy’s applying.”
“I can’t keep track of them all.”
“Good luck, honey,” Mom tells her.
“Thanks.” Inggy ducks her head shyly. “Cornell might be my first choice, but I don’t know.”
“Inggy has choices,” I say, slinging an arm around her. We smirk at each other.
“If you cracked open a book now and then you’d have choices too,” she says.
Mom sighs. “I was the same way.… Hey, how about real estate, Angel?”
“Real estate!”
“You take some courses, get a license, sell houses.”
“Who said I want to sell houses!”
“So don’t sell houses.” Mom shrugs. “I’m just saying.”
“You’ll figure it out,” Inggy says, but she doesn’t look so sure. Which sorta pisses me off. I’m seventeen. Do I need to decide my life this second?
“Ma, what’s another word for butt?” Mossy asks.
“Fanny. As in get your fanny in the House and find Oscar. He escaped.”
“No, he didn’t. He’s right here.” Mossy reaches into his sweatshirt pocket and holds up the little mouse with his twitching nose and whiskers.
Inggy shrieks.
“Mossy and Oscar are a package deal,” I tell her.
“Then I will find a place in my heart for Oscar.”
“He’s very small for a mouse.” Mossy cups him in his palm.
“Hello there, Oscar,” Mom says. “I had you pegged for an escape artist.”
“He does look a little sneaky,” Inggy says, running a finger down Oscar’s quivering back.
“Knock, knock,” a voice says.
“Look who it is. Hello, handsome,” Mom says.
“Hey, Mrs. Rossi,” Joey says.
I go to the screen and he motions me outside. I hear Inggy whisper, “Maybe somebody’s getting interested.”
“No practice?” I ask, joining him in the yard.
He shakes his head. “Early one this morning.” He hasn’t shaved and his hair is long and flipping up on the ends, and he’s wearing an unzipped sweatshirt and a T-shirt that says EAT BACON above a sizzling strip.
“Thought I’d say hi,” he says, lowering his eyes and then looking back at me. His eyes are dark and soft. Oh, how I like Joey Sardone.
“It’s about time.”
“So what are you up to?”
“The usual.” I smooth out the stones with my flip-flop. “Nothing so interesting.”
“Yeah, right.” He smiles. “In third period I look up from my Spanish quiz and there you are walking along the ledge.”
“Oh, that.”
So I tell him. I was sitting on the radiator in humanities and leaning out the window and fiddling with my bracelet when I accidentally dropped it on the outside ledge. My dad gave it to me when I was little and I eventually grew into it. It’s silver and threaded with small sapphires. Very delicate, pretty, not exactly my taste, but it was a gift from him. So I got a pass to the girls’ room, climbed out on the second-story ledge, and walked past the Spanish classes to humanities, where I rescued my bracelet. Pickett, my teacher, who must be eighty, opened the window wide and when I tried to tell her I was fine she reached for me with her age-spotted hands and hauled me in, then sent me straight to the office, where I stayed all afternoon. You really have to think about the logic of that, me missing all my afternoon classes.
“I swung by the office after school,” Joey says, “but it didn’t look like you had detention.”
“Nah, Costello”—that’s our principal—“was having a root canal, and it was just the office ladies. Myrtle had to visit her mom at the nursing home and Tammy was headed for the super saver at Grand Union. To buy creamed corn. I kid you not. Creamed corn, whatever that is.”
“Sounds like something in a can.”
“Totally.”
“So you’re off the hook?”
“Yeah. Costello just said, ‘Really, Angel,’ and gave me the evil eye. I pointed out that the ledge is like two or three feet wide at least and I could practically do a cartwheel on it, to which Myrtle said I need to have my head examined.” I shrug.
“Troublemaker.” He taps my flip-flop with his sneaker and smiles. “Kinda makes me miss you.”
“I kinda miss you.”
Mom comes out with the empty laundry basket, the thong pushing out of her pocket. “How’s every little thing, Joey Sardone?”
“Pretty darn good,” he says, happily enough.
“Glad to hear it.” We all smile.
We watch her walk into the House, the laundry basket bouncing off her hip. “She misses you too. Obviously,” I say. “You like Carmella?”
“Yeah, I like Carmella,” he snaps
.
“Okay, you like Carmella.”
“I should go.” He touches my shoulder and walks.
“It’s weird not to hang out with you,” I say, following behind and crunching over the stones. “Seeing you all the time at school …”
“We say hey.”
I shove him.
“I have a girlfriend,” he says, turning back and zipping his sweatshirt.
“So? You have a girlfriend. Fine.”
“You don’t follow any of the rules, do you?”
I lean against the side of the house and wonder for a sec if he knows. But no, he doesn’t know about me and Cork. “Gluteus maximus,” I barely hear Inggy say, and Mossy goes, “I think I’ve heard of that.”
“Do you ever think the rules are bullshit?” I ask.
Joey leans next to me against the house. I think he’s going to kiss me, and my heart starts to make a little racket, but he doesn’t, of course.
“I loved you, Angel.”
“Really?” I look up at his shy face, bright under the cool eaves of the house.
“Uh-huh.”
“How did you know?” I ask.
“What do you mean how did I know?”
I touch him. “I mean, what did you love about me?”
“I can’t dissect it.”
“But what did it feel like?”
“What a question.” He pulls away. “I just knew. All right?”
I wonder about Carmella, if he loves her, and if it happens to him all the time. Maybe it does for some people. But it must be special, love.
“I do miss you, you know.” He pulls a half-eaten Twix from his pocket and takes a bite and holds out what’s left.
“You eat it,” I say.
He eats the last bite, crumples the wrapper, and sticks it in his pocket. I reach in and take it out. “I’ll toss it for you.”
“Well, I should go,” he says, turning. I jump on his back for old times’ sake. He makes a soft groan but hoists up my legs and carries me alongside the house to the front stoop, where he drops me. I watch him walk along the bay, his hands buried in his pockets.
Inggy’s on the phone with Cork, I can tell. She looks into the middle distance when she talks to him, half bored, half dreamy. I slide into the seat next to Mossy and take his hand. “I’m back.”
“Hi.” He glances up to me. “Look,” he says, showing me the list. Then he says, “Ew, you’re hot.” It’s true, his small hand feels so cool in mine.
“Don’t you think Angel and Joey should give it another go?” Inggy says into the phone. “She is not. Oh, stop.”
I scan Mossy’s list. “You forgot rear end.”
“Of course!” he yells. He scribbles like mad and grabs the list and runs out the back door.
“Bye,” Inggy yells. “Save our wedding date.” Then she says, “Gotta go,” into the phone.
I take the crumpled candy wrapper out of my pocket and smooth it flat. Joey loved me. “What did Cork say I am?”
She laughs and flips her hand.
“What’d he say?”
“He was talking crap.”
My phone blips in my back pocket.
“Ing, around what age do you think you can consider yourself sophisticated?”
“Probably twenty-six,” she says. “Well, I should go study for calc. We’re having potato pancakes. Want to come over?” she says, gathering up her stuff.
“We’re having chicken parm.”
“Well now,” she says, tilting her blond head. “Maybe I’m staying.”
“Totally stay.”
But she slides out of the chair. “Carmella won’t last, you know.”
“But I wouldn’t either. I’d keep ending it. Joey’s good, isn’t he?”
She swings her bag onto her shoulder and lets out a sigh. “It’s noble of you not to diddle him around.”
I get up and bring the glasses to the sink. “Oh, I’m not so noble.”
“You sorta are.”
I toss the wrapper, turn on the water, and squirt the sponge with lemony detergent. “What did Cork call me? You said ‘She is not.’ ”
“It was nothing, I told you,” she says. When I glance over, she’s digging in her bag and I can’t tell if it was nothing or if she doesn’t want to say. Out the window a seagull eats something stringy from the ground. Ing tugs my hair before heading out. “See ya.”
I reach for my phone with a wet hand. Cork’s text says “Later.”
chapter 9
At halftime me and Ing and some of the girls smoke a joint and get the giggles. When the band plays our rally song we spin on the sidelines with our shakers high in the air, and the music swells in my bones and Inggy’s bones and everyone’s bones, as if we’re all connected. Inggy swoops down and hugs me. “My friend,” she says. “No, my friend,” I say.
Now, in the fourth quarter, we’re down by ten, and a light rain is falling. We quit the cheers and some of the girls huddle under umbrellas while Carmella keeps springing over to the bench where Joey sits with a bag of ice on his knee. She plops onto his lap until a coach shoos her away and then she flies back to us only to sprint back once more, as if the electrical current between them is too much to keep her away. Cork leans over the fence, watching Ing, and she prances up and plants one on him.
“Stoner,” he says.
“True,” she says. They kiss over the fence.
The only one with pep is Mimi, who’s wearing her Pop Warner cheerleading uniform. She climbs the fence and waits for me to lift her over. As soon as I do, she springs into action, waving her shakers and shouting to the bleachers, “We’ve got spirit, we’ve got class, come on now, let’s get some sass.” I do a couple of cheers with her until I run out of steam.
The drizzle stops, but the sun stays hidden. Feeling restless, I do a back handspring and muddy my hands. From where I stand I count three guys in the bleachers I slept with, another leaning on the fence. Then I count Joey and move in a half circle and count two more guys on the field and the assistant to the assistant coach, who doesn’t really count ’cause I only gave him a blow job. Then I lose count. I rub on cherry lip gloss, blinking into mist.
I love the moment when the guy is mine, when the spell is cast. Everything else falls away and there’s only me and him. I wonder if there’s a right love and a wrong love. Is getting naked with a cute guy and watching his eyes soften and feeling my heart pound high in my chest—is that a little like the real thing?
After the game, TB’s taking the kids to Olive Garden for an early dinner. I walk Mimi to his car, where Mossy my man sits all patient in the backseat, and think isn’t it funny how when you’re a kid so much of your life is planned for you. You just show up. There he sits, waiting for what’s next.
“Get in,” TB says through the window. “You need some nutrition after all that hopping around.”
“Nah. I have plans. But thanks,” I say.
“You love Olive Garden,” Mimi says, giving me a yank. True, but Mom’s got a date tonight and no doubt TB wants to grill me on the specifics.
“Bring me back a breadstick,” I tell her.
I walk into the school, where Inggy’s in the locker room combing her shiny though staticky hair and putting on lip gloss.
I lie down on the bench. “Want to hang out, Ing?”
“I’m going over Cork’s,” she says, and in a lower voice, “Pot makes me horny.”
“Okay.”
“We’ll give you a ride.”
Cork’s parked in the back of the school lot, where he lies across the hood of his mom’s Camry, and he lazily turns his head to us as we walk up. “What the feck, Ing? I’m waiting forever.”
“Poor baby,” she says, slapping his leg.
I slap his other leg for good measure and head to the backseat.
Sherry whistles and motions Inggy or me or maybe both of us over. “I’ll go see her,” Inggy says, and trots off.
Cork climbs in the front, and here we are, serendipit
ously, together. I poke him. “Come over later. After the party.”
“You know, I’m not at your beck and call.” He looks out the window.
“Yeah, so? You think I’m at yours?”
He turns on the engine, and the car rumbles. “Did I sound like a dick?”
“Pretty much,” I say.
“You think we should stop?”
“No. But I would. I mean, if you want to.”
“I would too if you want to.”
“We’re willing,” I say, as if it means something.
Cork nods but still doesn’t look at me.
“What’s up?” I climb clumsily into the front seat, my skirt riding high on my thighs.
He puts on a pair of dark sunglasses and checks himself in the rearview mirror. “Sometimes I feel like a dickweed. Mostly not, you know, but sometimes.”
“So today you feel like a dickweed?”
“Yeah, Cassonetti, today I feel like a dickweed.”
“Look at me,” I say.
He takes off the glasses and locks eyes with me. I try to read him but I see what I always see: a soft smile and his eyes at a low burn.
He slides his hand under my cheerleading skirt and hooks the crotch of my underwear. We both watch Inggy out the window. She has an arm around Sherry and they’re talking with their faces down. Sherry’s due in a few weeks and her belly is impossibly huge. Fall leaves swirl around their feet. What is it about swirling yellowed leaves that makes me feel sad? Cork slides his finger in and out of me—wet and slow and delicious. I let my eyes close for a second.
Inggy walks back to the car, head down in the wind. Cork pulls out his finger and sticks it in his mouth, giving it a quick suck. I climb into the backseat and smooth down my skirt. Inggy opens the front door and hops in.
Sometimes a little peace and quiet is nice, but I kind of wish somebody was around. Mom’s having her nails done before her date and it’s just too quiet. In the House, I eat out of the fridge—a hunk of cheddar cheese, a handful of baby carrots, some cold mashed potatoes. I call Vic on a whim but it goes right to voice mail, and then I sit at the table all by my lonesome and suck on a cherry ice pop.
In the Corner House, I run water in the tub and wash my hair and soak in the tub. Then, wrapped in towels, I take a nap. When I wake, it’s fully dark and I go back over to the House and eat some Wheat Thins with cream cheese and slices of pepperoni before getting the idea of visiting my dad.
Jersey Angel Page 6