“An orgasm,” she said.
“No! Are you kidding? I haven’t even made out with anybody, remember?” I said, a little offended that she forgot this important fact.
“Oh, right. Sorry. You will. It’ll happen soon, I’m sure of it,” she said.
“Have you?” I said.
“Have I ever masturbated? Or ever had an orgasm?”
“Well, both,” I said.
She giggled a little. “I mean, I’ve felt around down there, you know. . . .”
“Well sure, me, too. . . .” I said.
“But I don’t think I’ve ever had an orgasm. I’m not sure,” she said.
“Has Mandy?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I never asked her. I bet she has. She’s already slept with a few guys. She’s pretty experienced. What about Ellie?” Julie said.
“I have no idea. I could never ask her that!” I said, thinking about the impossibility of a sex talk with my sister. “It’s pretty unlikely.”
“Right,” Julie said, a little lost in thought. We paused again, mulling all of this over. “Let’s talk about something else, okay? I am starting to get creeped out.”
“Okay,” I said, thinking. “My mom told me she liked you today when we had lunch at Lord and Taylor. She said you were lovely.”
“Oh. Cool,” Julie said, sounding flattered.
“No it’s not!” I protested. “I mean, what does that mean, ‘lovely’? It’s, like, so pretentious or something.”
“You’re just mad at your mom ’cause she interrupted our phone call. Which totally makes sense; I’d be mad, too. Why don’t you go clean up your stuff and we’ll talk tomorrow?”
“All right,” I said, feeling kind of depressed.
“Talk to you later,” she said. “And congratulations on that good score!”
“Thanks,” I said. I was glad she said that. I stomped into the living room and scooped up my stuff. I could feel my parents look at each other, but no one said a word.
9
This Is What Everyone’s Raving About?
The next Monday in French, Tim Haas told me Josh Heller had strep throat. He had already missed three days of school. So that’s why he wasn’t in class last week. When I heard this, I felt so relieved, but I couldn’t help thinking, Why is Tim Haas telling me? Did Josh Heller tell him to? It was kind of a big deal since Tim and I had never really spoken before.
“He might be back tomorrow,” Tim said.
Two days later, the last day before Christmas vacation, the school was buzzing with excitement. You could just feel it. Kids and teachers noisily passed me in the halls as I made my way to French. I overheard conversations about various New Year’s Eve plans—the rich kids’ ski trips and the guidance counselor, Mr. Silver’s, plans to sleep until the morning of January 2, 1982.
Then all of a sudden, there was Josh Heller walking in step with me up the stairs to the third floor.
“Hello,” Josh said. He was wearing his knapsack on one shoulder and holding a small paper bag.
“Hi,” I said, without a second even to hide my surprise. “You’re back.”
“I’m back.” He grinned his gorgeous grin at me.
“I heard you had strep. I guess you’re better now?” I said. That sounded like such a boring thing to say. Think, Julie, think! Say something smart or funny.
“Yeah, thanks, I feel much better,” Josh said.
“Good,” I said, realizing I sounded too relieved. “It would be such a bummer to be sick during vacation,” came out of my mouth next.
“No kidding,” he said. We got to the French classroom entrance and just stood there awkwardly for a second, with other kids walking around us.
“Well,” Josh said, looking a little self-conscious. He was about to say something else when Madame Craig pushed passed us, saying, “Entrez-vous! Entrez-vous! Vite!” and some other French that I think meant, “Take your seats and hurry up.” Josh and I sat down next to each other. I noticed Julie wasn’t there yet, and it wasn’t like her to be late.
Madame Craig started class by telling us to turn our desks to the person on our right and begin a conversation in French. This meant I was assigned to Josh! Madame Craig went around the room telling everyone the assignment was that we were two old friends who hadn’t seen each other in years. As Josh settled into his desk, putting his school bag and small paper bag under his desk, he said, “Uh . . . should I start?”
“En français!” Madame Craig shouted. “Seulement en français!” “In French,” she was saying.
“Uh, bonjour!” Josh said and we both cracked up. Most of the class was laughing ’cause of course “bonjour” was all anyone could think to say at first.
“Bonjour,” I said back. “Comment . . .”—I had to think—“Vas-tu? Um . . . Il ya longtemps, non?” “How goes it with you?” I was saying. “It’s been a long time, right?” At least that’s what I was trying to say.
“Oui,” Josh said, smiling, and I was psyched he understood me. “Uh, très, très longtemps. Cinq ans?” he added carefully. “Peut-être?” “Yes, it’s been a very long time, five years maybe?” he was saying.
“Oui, oui,” I giggled. Saying “wee wee” sounded so funny. “Vous . . . uh, tu . . .” I always mixed up the formal “you” and the informal “you,” and I was searching for the verb “to live.” “Tu habites à Paris, non?” I asked him if he lived in Paris now, thinking I probably said it wrong. I was just making stuff up.
“En fait,” Josh responded slowly. “Je ne . . . vais . . . pas à Paris. Je habite à New York.” I thought he was trying to say that he never went to Paris and lives in New York.
“Vraiment?” I said, impressing myself that I remembered the word for “really.”
“Vraiment,” Josh repeated. Then he reached under his chair and pulled out the small paper bag. He looked around a little like he was trying to hide what he was doing.
“Alors, voilà! Café pour toi!” he said, seeming proud of himself. “Well, here it is! Coffee for you!”
“Wow,” I said. “Uh . . . comment dit-on, ‘cool’?” “Comment dit-on” meant “How do you say?” It was, like, the first thing we learned. “Merci!” I continued, feeling kind of stunned. “Vous êtes . . . très . . . gentile.” “You are so nice,” I said, wishing I knew how to say, “That is so nice.” “You are so nice” sounded really stupid.
“De rien,” he said, which means, “It’s nothing.” Then we both looked at each other and cracked up again, realizing that most of the other students were spending a lot of time laughing, too. None of us spoke French very well. Then I could tell Josh was trying to tell me to hide the coffee under my chair, but he just pointed and said, “Ici, ici!” meaning “Here, here!”
“Oh, right,” I said in English. “I mean, oui.” I put the coffee under my seat. I could feel it was still hot.
Then Madame Craig saved us all by clapping her hands to get our attention and telling us to turn our desks back to their original positions.
“Hey,” Josh said, in English, as the class made a lot of noise with their desks. “Are you going to Kahti Fearon’s party tonight?”
“Yeah. I am,” I said.
“Great,” Josh said, smiling again. “Me, too.” Then I caught him sort of scanning my face. He looked at my hair and my earrings. I happened to be wearing the chandelier ones.
“Cool earrings,” he said.
“Alors! Alors!” shouted Madame Craig, then she said something else about our conversations and the homework.
The bell rang, and Josh said, “See you later.” As soon as he was out of sight, I had the urge to scream. I was dying to scream, but I couldn’t; I had to rush to my next class. I barely had a minute to take in all that had just happened between Josh and me. And where the hell was Julie?
At the beginning of acting class everyone was talking, so Mrs. Zeig shouted over the noise. “Hello, hello! Let us begin! Find your rehearsal spots! Get with your scene partners! If your partne
r is absent, please see me.” Everyone took their spots in some corner or area of the basement while I thought to myself, How will I ever be able to concentrate when I can’t stop thinking about Josh? Am I gonna see him at Kahti’s party tonight? Josh and I just kind of flirted in another language! Julie was absent, it turned out, because I saw her scene partner, Liliana, go up to Mrs. Zeig. How would I last the whole day without talking to Julie?
My scene partner, Max, was dragging an army duffel bag toward our spot. We had been bringing in props from home and leaving them in our lockers. He took out a blanket that we threw over two chairs to make a bed, some old books for the night table, a plastic vase, some clothes, and a pair of old-fashioned lace-up shoes that I hadn’t seen before.
“Wow, those are cool,” I said, picking up one of the shoes—actually, it was more like a boot.
“Yeah,” Max said in his slow stoner voice. “Aren’t they? They were my great uncle’s.”
“Are you gonna wear them? Do they fit you? Or are they just a prop?” I said.
“No, I’m gonna wear them. They’re a little small, but you know, ‘The clothes make you feel,’” he said, and laughed a breathy laugh.
We were learning from this book called An Actor Prepares by Stanislavski—he was this Russian guy who developed a method of acting—that specific clothes or shoes that make up your costume could make you feel like a different person, like older or younger or fatter or whatever. Kind of like if you start chewing gum, you feel like a character who chews gum. It was a totally cool acting trick. One time for an improv, I had to be an old lady, and I put about ten marbles in each of my Keds sneakers and it made me walk really slow and uneasy like an old person. Not to mention, it actually killed my feet.
Mrs. Zeig came over to us and wanted to know where my rehearsal skirt was. I had left it in my locker, having temporarily lost my mind after I drank Josh’s coffee practically in one swallow on the way to class. It was the last rehearsal before Christmas vacation, so I didn’t think it really mattered.
“Go and get it, Julie! You are a professional actress, and you must always be prepared for every rehearsal! The skirt will affect how you feel!” Mrs. Zeig said. She didn’t sound mad, just, like, teachery. Max sort of laughed under his breath. I went and got the skirt, then pulled it on over my leotard and tights. Mrs. Zeig watched us do some of our scene, and it went pretty well, even though I could barely get the picture of Josh’s smile out of my head.
For homework over Christmas break she loaded us up with six chapters of reading from An Actor Prepares.
When the bell rang for lunch, I ran to the phone booth in the basement to try to beat the line. Luckily, I got there first. I sat down inside and closed the door.
“Ugh, I had the worst cramps,” Julie said from home, where she had been lying around all morning. “It was unbelievable. I’m sorry I wasn’t there this morning.”
“It’s okay,” I said, keeping my eye on the kids passing by the phone booth, “but you’ll never believe what happened in French this morning!” I told her about my conversation with Josh and the coffee.
Julie screamed. “Oh my God! Josh-fucking-Heller bought you coffee? You’re kidding me!”
“Shhhhh! Oh my God, my ear! He was so sweet, oh my God, Julie. He asked me if I was going to Kahti’s party—we’re still going, right?”
“Of course! We wouldn’t miss it! Rick DiBiassi’ll be there—who cares about a few little cramps? You’re coming over after school, right?”
“Yeah. Well, I have to go home first and get my stuff. And Julie, guess what else?” I said, unable to contain my big fat stupid smile.
“What?”
“He said my earrings were cool.”
“Get outta town!”
After school, I raced home and rushed through folding and putting away the laundry. Mom did the laundry so I never put in more than one or two “new” articles of clothing at a time. Not that Mom noticed, but I was being careful. I took a shower and packed up my gray silk skirt from Macy’s with the mother-of-pearl buttons that I’d saved to wear for Kahti’s party. I had planned to dress and do my makeup at Julie’s, so in my bag I added black fishnets, a red sweater, a pair of low black boots, my LeSportsac makeup bag, and my toothbrush, since I was staying over. Julie always loaned me one of her nightshirts to sleep in, so I didn’t have to bring one.
I found my dad reading the paper in the big green chair in my parents’ bedroom. Dad got home from teaching early, and Mom was still out.
“Okay, bye, Dad!” I said.
“Uh . . .” Dad said, looking over his paper. “Where ya headed?”
“To Julie’s. I’m staying over there tonight. Mom knows.”
“Well, all right,” he said hesitatingly, like he was gonna say something else. I waited, feeling annoyed and antsy.
“What, Dad?” I said finally.
“You girls got big plans tonight?” he said.
“We’re going to a Christmas party. This girl at school is having a party.”
“Oh, okay. Will her parents be there?”
“Of course,” I lied, rolling my eyes, like duh.
“All right, pussy cat. Well, have a good time! We’ll see you tomorrow, then!”
“Yeah, see you tomorrow!” I said, and I was out the door, down the elevator, across the seven blocks to Julie’s, up to apartment 3A, ringing the bell.
Julie answered the door in a bra, tights, and black suede miniskirt. Her hair was piled up on her head, and one eye was made up with eyeliner and mascara. We kissed on the cheek hello.
“Good evening,” she said in a funny Dracula voice.
“Hi, cutter. How are your cramps?” I said.
“All gone!” she said.
“What a miracle, just in time!” I said.
We got dressed in our party outfits, and Julie said my skirt looked amazing with the black fishnets. I had to admit, my legs looked pretty good in them.
Finally, after three different combinations of rubber bangles, suede boots, tops, jackets, and scarves, Julie’s outfit was complete. We put on our winter coats and checked our bags and pockets for the essentials. “Wallet, keys, cigarettes, lipstick,” Julie said.
“Let’s go!” we said in unison, and headed for the subway up to Riverdale, where Kahti lived.
It turned out practically the whole freshman drama department was invited to the party, which was pretty annoying, because Julie and I thought we’d been singled out. But I got about eight compliments on my new skirt, just in, like, the first hour we were there, which made me feel good. When anybody asked how much it cost I said, “Oh, I don’t remember, I think it was on sale!” Kahti’s parents were out of town and she lived in a penthouse apartment. You could just feel everyone’s readiness to party, now that school was out for three weeks.
I noticed Josh Heller right when we got there, and although he waved to me and Julie from the corner of the living room, he didn’t come over to talk to me. I was too scared to go over to his group of juniors—Rick DiBiassi, Tim Haas, and Charlie Myerson.
After we’d been at the party about an hour and mingled a lot, I still hadn’t talked to Josh, and I felt like he didn’t even care that I was there. I had started to bum out, then Julie said that David Wine had pot, so we went into Kahti’s bedroom with him and Reggie Ramirez and got high! I was pretty excited ’cause I hadn’t tried it that much. The couple of times I had smoked pot, it totally made me laugh my head off. I rationalized that if I did have an encounter with Josh, I’d do much better if I was stoned.
Then Julie and I got the munchies so we stood at the food table eating M&M Christmas cookies and Doritos for what seemed like a whole hour. As we stood there munching, I watched Josh talking to this pretty blonde girl in his class, Leah Reemer. I couldn’t tell if they were acting like friends or more than friends. I was feeling jealous and obsessed with staring at them but trying not to. They seemed to be laughing a lot. Julie said it was just the pot making me paranoid. “Don’t let y
our imagination get carried away,” she said.
Then Julie decided our mission was to find someone for me to make out with, if only just for getting it over with and for the practice. It was true. I mean, I was closing in on fifteen and I wasn’t getting any younger. Julie was so much more experienced than me; I could never catch up.
“When you do get the opportunity to kiss Josh,” Julie reasoned as she licked the orange Dorito crumbs from her fingers, “you don’t want him to think you’ve never kissed anyone before, right?” This was such a good point.
So I totally started flirting with David Wine, which I didn’t expect; it must have been the pot. Suddenly I was laughing at everything he said, and I grabbed his arm a couple of times like I was gonna fall over from laughing. Julie gave me a look like, Perfect! David could be your make-out guy!
Fortunately, David was totally flirting with me, too, like telling me he liked my skirt and stuff. Suddenly I just blurted out, “I think you’re probably the funniest guy in our class.”
“Really?” David said, looking flattered. “You’re pretty funny, too, you know, and not a lot of girls are funny. I mean, don’t take that the wrong way, I mean, I think a lot of girls don’t think it’s cool to be funny.”
“Totally,” I said. “I know exactly what you mean.”
When he said he’d go get us some punch, I grabbed Julie—I had to talk fast ’cause I was so nervous.
“If it happens, how will I know what to do?” I asked her.
“You’ll know,” she said. “Just do whatever he does.”
“What if he leans in to kiss me and his mouth doesn’t open?”
“It’ll open, don’t worry.”
“How will I know what to do with my tongue?”
“Just do whatever he does with his—I promise you, you’ll know. You’ll see how easy it is.” Even though it was fun to flirt with David and I was starting to loosen up, I kept half an eye on the party crowd to see where Josh was.
So David and I were standing there drinking our raspberry-flavored punch that somebody had totally spiked, because I tasted it and felt this strong twinge between my eyes, and he turned to me and said, “Wanna go out on the terrace?”
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