Such a Fun Age

by Kiley Reid

  “So anyway,” Alix said. “My senior year, I got my first real boyfriend.”

  Kelley Copeland grew three inches between his sophomore and junior years, and Alex Murphy noticed. At five-ten, Alex felt the number of guys she “could” date were limited, but Kelley would have been an excellent option regardless. He was just so nice and casually funny, and he did this thing where he held the door for people with his arm above their heads. You got to duck down cutely beneath his elbow, and he’d say things like, “I gotchyou,” or “No sweat.” Alex and Kelley both played volleyball at William Massey High, and she managed to sit next to him on a three-hour bus ride to a tournament in Poughkeepsie. At the time, Alex felt very radical and progressive for dating a junior, when she herself was a very mature senior. “I think we only dated for about four months,” she said, but Alix knew exactly how long they dated. It was officially from New Year’s Eve, 1999, to April 12, 2000. “But still, we said ‘I love you’ and I went to all of his games . . . all of that stuff you think means something when you’re eighteen.”

  Rachel widened her eyes and said, “I love you, but I’m waiting for the embarrassment.”

  “Sorry, okay.” Alix sighed and sat back; the bottom of her chair squeaked beneath her. “So I kind of wrote him letters every week . . .”

  Rachel snorted and Jodi said, “Oh, Alix.”

  “I know, I know. Obviously now I’d be like, ‘Hey Al, pump the brakes on the letters,’ but it seemed like a really good idea at the time. Until Kelley decided to show one of my letters, the worst possible one, to the most popular kid in school.” This kid’s name was Robbie Cormier. Everyone knew Robbie, and even though he was a bit of a class clown, teachers enjoyed having him in class because he’d loudly make up raps and rhymes to help himself memorize the material. He was very short but insanely attractive for high school and was crowned king at the prom that Alix never went to.

  Jodi said, “Uh-oh.”

  “Well, come on, now.” Tamra placed her fork on her plate and dusted her hands away from the table. “I’m going to need the original transcription of that letter. Spill, girl.”

  “I sent Kelley a lot of letters . . .” Alix stared up into the patio umbrella and shook her head. She remembered the feeling of using her pinky nails to slide the folded letters through the slats of Kelley’s locker, and the light sound they made inside when they landed. “But this letter,” she said, “was the absolute worst.”

  Rachel gasped. “Was it a sext? A LetHer sext. LetHer send nudes.”

  From across the table, Jodi touched Alix’s hand. “You write beautiful letters for a living, so don’t feel bad.”

  The women leaned forward and waited for Alix to describe the only letter she’d ever regretted sending. “The letter he showed to this kid,” she said, “had my address, driveway code, and a map to my house. I literally made him an invitation including where, when, and to which song I’d like him to take my virginity.” The map included two sets of curly lines representing water; one was labeled Jacuzzi and the other was marked Pool. Alex also drew the massive keyhole-shaped driveway, the basketball court, an arrow to where the fire pit was, and a heart above her bedroom. There was a box at the bottom for him to check Yes or No.

  Tamra said, “Oh lord,” and Rachel said, “Eeeekkk.”

  “I wanted to have sex!” Alix talked with her hands and said this over Jodi saying, “Oh, honey.” “My parents were going to be out of town for the weekend. We could never fool around at his place because he had a bunch of siblings . . . and I just liked him so much and wanted to know it would happen.”

  Tamra poured more wine into Alix’s glass.

  “So Kelley shows this note to Robbie,” Alix continued, “and Robbie, who I’d never talked to in my life, comes up to me and says, ‘I heard your parents will be out of town this weekend. We want to come party at your mansion.’” At the time, Alex could barely register that Robbie was speaking to her. Alex and Kelley weren’t outcasts, but they weren’t exactly high on the social chain. Alex knew this because it happened twice; when people found out that they were dating, they’d go, “Really?” and then, “Yeah, that makes sense.”

  So when she remembered Robbie asking if he could come to her mansion, Alix remembered saying no in a more polite way than she should have. At the time, she was much more disturbed about the idea of him seeing the rest of the letter. Alix marched straight to Kelley, who denied receiving the letter altogether.

  “Why would I show one of your notes to Robbie?” Kelley kept saying. Alex confronted him at his car while wearing knee pads and a ponytail. “I swear I didn’t get that one. But if Robbie wants to come over . . . that would be kind of awesome.”

  “Kelley!” Alex screamed. “That letter was like . . . the most important one!”

  On top of having to explain the contents of the letter, Alex remembered being equally annoyed at Kelley’s fondness of Robbie Cormier and the five other athletes he was always seen with. They were stars on and off the field, loud and funny and cute. They were overly friendly with the high school custodians and they showily high-fived them when they passed in the halls. When any member of this group showed Kelley an ounce of attention, Kelley’s neck went red as he tried to act both interesting and normal. It wasn’t hard to picture Kelley showing Alex’s note to Robbie in passing. Kelley thought he was “awesome” and their lockers were stacked near a frequently used water fountain.

  But Alex wasn’t about to have a party when her plan was to lose her virginity. She didn’t know these people, Claudette would be spending the weekend at the house with Alex and Betheny, and she wasn’t going to college as a virgin. It didn’t take much for Kelley to win her back over. “Hey, maybe you dropped the note or something.” He said this with his forearms on her shoulders. “But it’s fine because you told him no. He’s not just gonna come over. But . . . am I still invited?”

  That weekend, with the Counting Crows playing inside her bedroom, and Claudette and her sister downstairs in the movie room, Alex and Kelley had sex for the first time. It was exactly a week till prom. Alex felt very in love and less like a cliché. When they finished they spooned on her bed and watched reruns of The Real World Seattle.

  It was around 10:30 p.m.—three episodes later—when Robbie Cormier and eight other students showed up. The security cameras later showed Robbie at the front gate, punching in the code to her driveway, which—as if Alex needed any more proof—confirmed that Kelley had in fact shown Robbie her note.

  “You are lying,” Jodi said. “What bad kids!”

  “So suddenly all the coolest kids in school are at my house,” Alix said. “And they’re knocking on our windows and blasting music and demanding that we turn on the hot tub jets. As you can assume, most of them were wasted.”

  “I was bad in high school,” Rachel said, “but I was never that bad.”

  “Sometimes,” Tamra said, “I think about sending the girls to public school? And then I hear things like this and I’m like, no way.”

  Alix disagreed with this sentiment, but she went on and said, “It was a disaster.” She remembered rushing to the window at the sound of a boom box turning on. Robbie was leading group jumps into her pool to the sound of “The Real Slim Shady” while another student pretended to hump an inflatable crocodile. From upstairs in her bedroom, Alex looked from her backyard to Kelley. “What am I supposed to do?”

  Kelley slipped his shirt back over his head. “Alex, wait,” he said. “Maybe . . . I mean . . . your parents are out of town.”

  Alex pushed the curtains back over her window and felt her mouth drop all the way open. Two hours ago, he was telling her he loved her, and asking if they should get a towel. But now Kelley proceeded to walk around her bed to locate his socks and shoes. Alex watched him assess the opportunity being presented to him downstairs: the chance to befriend the most popular athletes in school because he happened t
o be in the right place at the right time. She suddenly felt embarrassed; it was supposed to be their night. She crossed her arms and asked, “Are you kidding me?”

  Betheny didn’t knock. She opened Alex’s door and said, “Alex, what is happening?” Claudette was behind her, a dish towel thrown over her shoulder. With a hand on the wall she said, “Should I call the police?”

  Kelley began to lace up his shoes.

  This was possibly the most authority Alex had ever held, all while her crotch still ached from her first time. It was the sight of her little sister, the wet towel on Claudette’s shoulder, and the expectant energy of Kelley’s silent social climbing that made Alex nod and say, “Yes, call the police.”

  “Whoa whoa whoa.” Kelley stood up. “Alex, come on.”

  Betheny followed Claudette downstairs and Alex reached for her sweatshirt off the bed. “This isn’t cool,” she told him.

  “Alex, wait wait wait.” Kelley followed her downstairs, and Alex swore she saw him carefully look for windows, just in case anyone from outside could see him, so he would be prepared to duck. “This doesn’t have to be a big deal. Robbie’s cool. Just let them hang out.”

  “You don’t even know them!” By this she meant, They don’t know you for a reason.

  Kelley, understanding the implication, replied, “I know them way better than you.”

  Someone outside yelled to turn up the music. Alex walked into the kitchen, where Claudette was hanging up the phone. “They’re on their way,” she said. Alex said, “Good.” Kelley said, “Really, Alex?” He grabbed his backpack from the kitchen table and walked out the side door.

  It wasn’t like Alex would have pressed charges; she just wanted them to leave. Her parents would have been furious with her if they found out she’d had a party; they’d probably ground her for the weekend of prom. And the driveway was definitely long enough for the group to see the warning lights and flee. But when the police arrived, not everyone made it out of the backyard in time. After screams of, “Oh shit!” and “Five oh, five oh!” Robbie’s friends hopped a fence and ran across the hills to safety. Robbie, however, had been in the middle of climbing a ladder that leaned against the Murphy house when the police were approaching. His plan had been to jump from the balcony into the pool. The police arrived and pointed their flashlights at him, and Alex heard one of them say, “Come down from there, son.” On top of trespassing, Robbie Cormier was taken in drunk off PBRs and with a tiny bag of cocaine in a zipped cargo pants pocket. The combination of a popular black student athlete arrested on property that had plantation columns standing out front did not pan out well for Alex Murphy.

  “It was like, ‘Oh, the Murphy girl has this huge house and she doesn’t even want to share it? What a bitch,’” Alix explained. “And any time my sister and I would dare venture outside, we’d be tormented. ‘There’s Princess Murphy.’ ‘Watch out, rich girl Murphy will have you arrested.’ ‘Robbie got his scholarship taken away ’cause you got him arrested, so good job.’” This wasn’t the worst of it. That summer, Alex and her sister were referred to in public and private as new money trash. When she picked up her sister from an IHOP parking lot, a classmate asked if she was going swimming in the plantation pool. And once, Robbie Cormier bumped into her at a Jamba Juice. He greeted her with, “Good mornin’, Massa Murphy.”

  “People would bow down and open doors for me like I was royalty,” Alix said. “Everyone knew. And that is what capped off my senior year.”

  Somehow, even worse, that night at the Murphy house accomplished everything Kelley had evidently hoped it would. Alex learned that Kelley had left her house only to run into Robbie’s fleeing friends on the street. He drove them to the precinct, where they waited all night until Robbie was released. Kelley was the one to drive Robbie home.

  Kelley broke up with Alex on the following Monday, just after first period and five days before prom. It happened in between his homeroom door and the frequently used water fountain, which was used by three different students during his speech. He began the conversation by saying, “Hey, don’t be mad . . . but I think I’m gonna go to prom with Robbie’s cousin Sasha.” Alex hadn’t been sure how they’d make up—he hadn’t returned her phone calls all weekend—but she hadn’t seen this coming. Yes, things got extremely messed up that night, and maybe she’d made a mistake, but hadn’t they just had sex? It seemed as if Kelley was saying another girl’s name to make it appear as if he were choosing another girl, when he was clearly leaving Alex for Robbie. Alex had no idea what her classmates had in store for her (spitting on her car, calling her a Nazi), but Kelley’s way of ending their relationship, by informing her of his updated prom plans, stung in the way only a first heartbreak can. Alex felt similarly to when she’d learned that her grandfather died, confusing sadness and the instinct to clarify, Wait . . . you mean, we’re not gonna hang out anymore?

  “I never meant for Robbie to get in trouble,” she said to Kelley. She tried to say more before her voice began to crack. She managed to get out, “I just . . . wanted them to leave.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “Can we talk about this after school?” she asked. She knew she couldn’t erase Robbie’s record, but maybe she could think of something to say by then.

  “I just . . .” Kelley sighed. “I think it would be best . . . if we went our separate ways? And that those paths never again . . . connected.”

  Tamra leaned into the table. “He said what?”

  “That was the line he used, I swear to God,” Alix said.

  Jodi was sincere when she asked, “Was he a little bit off?”

  Rachel rolled her eyes. “Sounds like you’re better off.”

  Alix took a long pull of her wine and threw another slice of pizza on her plate. Tamra said, “Ooh, Alix, I’d have to kill that boy.”

  “I didn’t think you could beat me,” Jodi told her, “but you absolutely did.”

  Alix sat in front of Jodi, Rachel, and Tamra, trying not to be at 100 Bordeaux Lane, Allentown, Pennsylvania, 18102. She could still hear Robbie and his friends outside her back window, hooting and running away from police. Alex’s sister had cried on the floor (“At least you get to graduate. I have to stay here and live with everyone knowing!”) while Alex watched Robbie get handcuffed in her backyard. Claudette stared out the window next to her, whispering, “Devils,” to herself and to them.

  The last time she’d seen Kelley Copeland was at a Sunoco gas station the day before graduation. When he got out of his car, Alex theatrically removed the nozzle and sealed up the gas door, even though her tank wasn’t even half full. “Alex, come on,” he said. Alex saw that he was wearing Fila flip-flops and white tube socks, exactly like Robbie wore after his games. “I broke up with you,” he said. “But that’s it. And I’m sorry, but . . . you know? That’s all I did.”

  By this point, Kelley was a key member of Robbie Cormier’s clique, and Alex had been officially exiled from all high school activities. While Kelley sat at an elite lunch table and began dating a light-skinned black girl with braids, Alex ate her lunch alone in an empty art room, and she left last period five minutes early so she could get to her car without being harassed. Alex had been dreaming of a moment like this, where Kelley paid attention to her once again and they could try to talk it out. But she read his shitty concession as a move of self-fulfilling pity, and she couldn’t keep her cool.

  “That’s all you did to me? No one forced you to go and share a private fucking letter! This was just as much your fault as it was mine, but I’m the one getting punished for it. I had to protect my sister and Claudette. What was I supposed to do?”

  Kelley seemed genuinely confused as he said, “You had to protect your sister from Robbie?” Alex got into her car and drove off. She’d wasted six dollars of prepaid gas, which despite everything that had happened with her family still seemed like a large amount of money.<
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  “I was supposed to go to Penn State,” Alix said. “But I’d gotten into NYU and I begged my parents to let me attend. I took out loans to go, which”—Alix held up a finger—“my parents refused to pay for with their millions of dollars because they said it was stupid to pay that much for college when I could go in-state. But I was like, ‘Nope, I’m going.’ And I just waitressed all summer and moved.” When Alix thought of her eighteen-year-old self, and feeling as though she were signing her life away by taking out tens of thousands of dollars in student debt, she wished she could go back in time. She’d tell herself that it would be okay, that she’d meet the best guy at a bar at the age of twenty-five, that he’d have a huge heart and a surprisingly large penis, and that before they got married Peter would pay off all her loans as if they were his, and as if it were nothing. He wouldn’t judge her for the lack of grief she felt when her parents passed away, two months apart. He’d understand that for her, it felt more like relief.

  “Well, technically,” Rachel said, “we would have never met you if you hadn’t become a Pennsylvania pariah.”

  Alix exhaled and whistled as if she’d barely caught her flight after running to the gate. “Pennsylvania is fine. But I will never go back to Allentown again.”