No one prepares a girl for the moment when she allows someone access to herself. When you’re still a virgin, there’s this aura around you. You’re untouched and unsullied. It’s almost like being superhuman because everyone else has quiet moments in dark places when they become base animals but not you. You are intact. As a girl you’re told to treasure this part of yourself. It defines you. You are good while you’re a virgin. Pure and perfect. But when it’s gone, it’s just gone like that. Maybe you got lucky - no pun intended - and it was something magical and fulfilling but most likely it wasn’t. Most likely it was just like it was for me. Awkward and weird and painful and disappointing and, worst of all, intrusive. While he washes you off of himself, just a place he visited, he’s been inside of you. He will forever have been there and there is no way to remove him. And the first time? Even if he physically didn’t break through that barrier, so to speak, he will always own that part of you. That piece that was yours and was perfect and unbroken is now his. Forever. And you can’t ever forget that or make it not true. While Derek was with me, I enjoyed it on a sensory level, but I felt like I’d been drained of the only thing that made me worthwhile.
“Lily, are you coming down for breakfast?” My dad was in my doorway and I wondered if he could tell. I wondered if he looked at me and saw the shame, if he sensed that I was missing a piece. I felt like I had let him down, that the night before, on my birthday, I had sat at dinner and I was his daughter and I was whole. Now I wasn’t. Whether Derek loved me or not was not even discussed. Someday, if I moved on or if he did, he would always be the person who owned something of mine.
I shook my head. “I am. Sorry. I was just thinking.”
“It’s your birthday. Don’t look so sad, honey.”
I wanted to run to him, but I dug my feet into the carpet. The polyester fibers scratched at my toes, and I pushed down on them until it hurt too badly to ask my dad to hug me.
“I’m okay, Dad. I’ll be down in a minute.”
After he left, I went into the hall and I looked towards Jon’s room. The door was open and the shades were up. I could hear Derek and Jon’s voices from the kitchen, chatting about school, and I stood in the upstairs hallway, crying, because it was my fault and I had wanted it and why couldn’t I be happy? Why couldn’t I be normal?
By the time I made it downstairs, the puffiness was gone around my eyes and I smiled when I saw him at the kitchen table. He got up and made a big gesture of pulling my chair out for me.
“Can I tell them?” he asked loudly as he pushed me into the table.
“Tell us what?” Jon asked.
“Last night, Lily and I talked and… well, Mrs. Drummond, you wouldn’t mind her having a college boyfriend, would you?”
My mom glowed at the idea.
I had pacified her. I had proven I could be good enough and Derek and I could succeed where Jon and Brianna had failed and she would have everything she wanted. It didn’t matter to her that Derek hadn’t asked me a thing, including whether I was ready. It didn’t matter to anyone that my body ached because I’d done things I suddenly wanted to wash off, that I hadn’t planned on doing yet. I told myself that what I had given up for that smile was worth the price. Anything was worth the cost to feel like maybe I hadn’t failed for once. I believed that, because I had to believe it.
17.
There are only two reasons people in town come here, to the hill that looks over the river, and neither has to do with the way that the sun glares off the ruins of the factories that built, and eventually ruined, our town. One reason is to have sex, and Derek and I know the area well. We’ve spent many evenings, and some afternoons, up here, when my parents were at home or Jon was or he just wanted to do something different. It’s not romantic, but it’s secluded because it used to belong to the factories and now only the ghosts of those lives remain.
The other reason people come up here seems inexplicably linked to that history. It’s oddly both a place where couples go to be together – and also to grow apart. Throughout high school, almost everyone broke up with someone here, like there is pressure in the air that you need permanence to exist in such a place and, without it, you realize there is little worth clinging to in your relationship.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said,” Derek starts, “about transferring.”
I turn in the backseat of his car to face him. The weather is still insisting on summer regardless of the calendar and I’m sticky and warm. Derek turned the car off when we arrived and now, in a barely acceptable state of undress, I’m trying to find my underwear and he’s looking out the window at the river.
“Good, I wanted to talk about that,” I say. I find my panties somehow between two soda bottles and an old CD under the passenger seat. It was over before it even started, like requisite physical interaction without meaning. “I mean, I like Bristol. I guess I would love it eventually, but it’s hard to be in two places at once. I feel stuck between home and school.” He doesn’t say in anything in response, but as soon as I say the words, “I think I’d be better off somewhere familiar, with you and Jon,” he says the words I’ve dreaded since he acknowledged me for the first time.
“That’s why I think we should probably take a break,” he says.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s just…” He pauses and cracks the window open more, but the suffocating air isn’t because of the heat. I need to fix this. I can’t screw this up. This is the only thing I’ve been able to keep intact, besides my schoolwork, and I can’t just take tests and write papers for the rest of my life. “Look, Lily, I really enjoy spending time with you, but I like my freedom, too. Some of the rugby guys have been talking about renting a house and I feel like I’m trapped in this relationship with you, like I have to pass everything by you first,” he says.
“I’ve never asked you for anything,” I argue.
“Not exactly, but you need me and it’s a little annoying.”
“Oh.”
I don’t know what to say, because I should have seen this coming, I suppose. Instead of saying anything, though, I stare out my own window. The closest factory’s windows have all been shattered and plants hopelessly try to grow through the damage. It’s more depressing than if there was nothing there but ruin. Watching the life try to continue after everyone else has moved on just makes me think it’s all futile. When we outlive our purpose, we should disappear. No one needs a reminder that they’ve failed.
“It’s not a break up. Not really. We can still see each other when you want and I’ll come up the weekend after your birthday so we can do something. I still care about you,” he says, but the words feel rehearsed.
“The weekend after my birthday?”
“I have a match the weekend of and we’re going to stay in a hotel for that weekend, so I’d rather spend the whole weekend with you the week after. Maybe we can go somewhere romantic,” he says and methodically rests a hand on my knee. It’s still uncovered, because I haven’t found my pants yet. Why does it always seem like the moments when you’re most vulnerable are the ones when you are missing something as obvious as pants?
“You just had sex with me,” I whisper, but even at this volume, the comment feels too loud.
“Oh, Jesus, Lily. Really? Don’t act like you’re somehow pure and innocent. So we had sex. It was good. But we were never getting married. You can have sex with someone and still need a break.”
“No, Derek, I can’t. I can’t do that, because I’ve never done that. I’ve never been with anyone else,” I remind him.
“I don’t have time for this shit,” he says, sighing. “Things are crazy right now. I haven’t seen you in a while and I have exams coming up and I can’t spend all my energy on whatever issues you’re making up in your head.” He stops speaking, and it’s painful. There’s something he isn’t saying, and I don’t know if I want to hear it.
“What happened?” I ask, preparing myself for the worst.
“Nothing happened. Why is it always about you? I just have papers and exams coming up and things have gotten away from me. I’m so worried I’m gonna fail all my classes. I’ve been screwing around so much with sports and-”
“You’re failing school?” It comes out judgmental, which I don’t mean to happen, but it kind of annoys me. Derek’s always been a mediocre student. He only passed his first year of college with my help, and now he’s letting school slip and he’s making that my problem. He’s leaving me with nothing because he can’t do it himself.
“I’m starting to wonder what I ever saw in you,” he snaps. “For someone who has no clue and who needs me to pick up all her pieces, you certainly act like a bitch.”
“Yeah, I wonder, too,” I say. We have nothing in common. What kind of person chooses rugby over school? It’s not even a real sport.
He reaches behind me and finds my pants tossed by the rear car window. I don’t say a word and finagle myself into them and then go sit in the passenger seat. I just want to go home.
When Derek gets into the driver side, he pauses and looks at me and I want to remember. I want to see the boy I thought I loved, but in his eyes, there’s nothing but this guy. I wonder if he was ever anything but this guy and I feel sick. He leans down to kiss me and I turn my head, trying not cry.
“Whatever, Lily. What the hell do you know, anyway?”
“Nothing. I think it’s really, really clear that I know absolutely nothing,” I say and we drive back to my house in silence. Everything that I left behind is floating off into the past like uncontrollable wisps of memory and I’m reaching out with nothing to hold onto. I guess this is the whole point of college and growing up and life in general, but I hate it. I hate that everyone always has the answers when you don’t need them, but once you reach a point where you’re surrounded by nothing but questions, you’re standing alone in the middle of people who don’t have a clue.
18.
When Derek returned to school after my birthday, we didn’t talk about Jodie. She was a fleeting idea at dinner and then she was gone. I didn’t know if they had fought, if she’d already known about me, or if he made up another reason, but when I asked if we were dating, he said yes and I didn’t want to dig deeper. So when her name came up in the spring, it felt ominous.
“Jodie and I were up all night trying to figure this out,” he said. “I am never going to pass this class.”
It was American History I – Revolution to Civil War, and I didn’t understand what was so hard about it for him. We all had to take almost two years of the same content in high school. I wasn’t even sure how he had gotten into college if he’d been this bad of a student. But when he said her name, I forgot all about Crispus Attucks. With apologies that his death was secondary to Derek and Jodie, I took a deep breath and asked the question I had been afraid to ask for nearly six months.
“You and Jodie still hang out?”
“Yeah. Don’t worry about it, Lily. I’m with you. She knows that and it’s fine.”
“You were up all night? At the library?” I asked.
“You aren’t serious right now, are you? I’m going to fail and you’re worried about there being a girl in my room? The whole world isn’t like high school, you know. Don’t be that girl.”
So I wasn’t that girl. I helped him learn about the Boston Massacre and he talked and I listened and I was good. I did the things he wanted from me, and that made me happy because I had always wanted Derek and love was about sacrifice and it was about trust and it was all the things I’d been told. But when I told Abby about the conversation and my fears and doubts over lunch the following week, it scared me when she voiced things I didn’t know how to put words to by myself.
“You think he’s cheating?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I mean, he’s right, I guess. It’s just so high school of me to ask. So there was a girl. And so they dated before-”
“You mean they used to fuck. Don’t play innocent. He fucks girls and he throws them away and you refuse to see anything but some guy you liked when you were fourteen. He’s an asshole and he probably is fucking her. But he likes the idea of owning you, so he keeps you distant from it,” she said.
“But he loves me. He wouldn’t do that. He loves me. And he’s right. I’m his girlfriend. I need to act like it and stop worrying,” I argued.
“Is that what you’re majoring in? Girlfriendship? I didn’t know that was a thing.”
“It’s not like you’re single. You’re never single,” I reminded her.
“So? I like the guys I date, but they’re not who I am, Lily. When are you going to be Lily, and not Mrs. Drummond’s daughter or Jon’s sister or Derek’s girlfriend or my friend? Who is Lily? Do you even know?”
I’d been picking at my lunch, but the conversation was too big for the cafeteria and it was too bright and too loud and I needed to talk about something normal. I needed life to be as easy to make sense of as things in packets and books and on the classroom walls. I felt like I was preparing for this obscene pop quiz and I had nightmares of showing up with only a giant green marker and I couldn’t fill in the bubbles – not the right way – and I was going to fail. This quiz was my life and I was failing and that’s too much to think about when someone is sitting next to you making a bong out of a Hawaiian Punch can and your tuna salad sandwich is soggy and the plastic circle seat of the table under your ass feels like it’s going to spin off into space any minute.
“I have to go,” I said and I nearly fell from the seat, my balance off kilter.
Abby said something, and it sounded meaningful, but the cafeteria was so loud. I couldn’t make sense of anything except that she was right and I didn’t have an answer for why I didn’t do a thing about it. Nothing scared me more than not knowing the answer.
19.
The rest of the weekend is unbearable. My mother glares at me as if she knows, but I didn’t mention anything about Derek. Let her think she’ll live her golden dream of us populating the world with perfect babies. I don’t have the stomach or mind for telling her otherwise. But she glares and my dad tries to smooth it over, but he’s lost so much of himself, too, in the last few years and the whole weekend is this incredibly odd distant reality. In a few weeks essentially, I can’t make sense of anything. School felt alien but expectedly so, but home was supposed to remain the same. Consistent. Normal. And now I’m in this spiral where I can’t remember when I am.
My mother angrily passes me a bowl of salad during lunch before we all head back to school and I almost feel like I should be asking about the school play again, because all of my memories and flaws are flooding the now with their insistent pleas that I find myself. I didn’t even know I was lost until suddenly I was.
“I’m not hungry,” I say and I pass the salad on to my father and Jon talks about some class he’s taking that he probably doesn’t even attend and I hate him. I hate my brother for the first time in almost nineteen years.
“Is there a girl in the picture?” my mom asks him.
“I’m keeping my options open,” he replies. You’re keeping their legs open, I want to retort, but it makes me feel bad about myself. It feels judgmental and petty, like it’s their fault and I certainly don’t want to fill my mom’s head with this idea that any girl Jon brings home might be a slut. Because even if she is, it’s not like she’s being a slut all by her damn self, that’s for sure.
By the time Derek shows up, I’m not prepared for the charade. He kisses me while I’m sitting at the table, brushing his lips over the top of my head and resting his hands on my shoulders. While he chats with my mom, the touch radiates in my blood. All of the intimacy, all of the memories are mocking shards of mistakes inside my body. He’s been inside my body so many times and it doesn’t matter. It was supposed to be special and I was supposed to be special, but special’s a lie we tell girls to make them feel better about having to be broken just to grow up.
“Are you guys ready to
head back?” he asks.
“We’re still eating,” I point out, although I haven’t touched my food.
“I have practice,” he says.
“Well, maybe the world doesn’t revolve around you.”
“Lily,” my mom says, before turning to Derek to apologize. “She’s been moody all weekend. I’m sure it’s her hormones from all that weight she’s gained.”
“Don’t worry about it, Mrs. Drummond. I’m used to it. Besides, girls don’t care about sports, so I’m sure she doesn’t understand.” I ran track for four years, but I’ve given up on explaining to Derek that running is a sport. I don’t bring it up now, either.
“Fine. Let’s go,” I say, getting up and grabbing my bag. “Wouldn’t want you to be late.”
Jon, oblivious, gets into the backseat as he’s done for the last year when it was the three of us and I’m left debating between sitting next to him and letting Derek act like our driver or sitting next to Derek and pretending it doesn’t hurt to see how easy it all is for him. It’s still a toss-up when he wraps his arms around my waist and kisses my ear.
“I told you it was only a break. I just need to get things in order. Don’t go forgetting all about me. I still care and I still want to see you,” he says. “I’m going to make big plans for the weekend after your birthday. That’s less than a month away. You’ll see – it will be better this way.”
“It will be better to put everything on hold while you decide if I’m good enough?” I ask, turning to face him.
“College is hard. I’m doing this for you,” he says.
“No.” I push him away, angry at the condescension in his voice. He might be older, but it’s been a year. One. Fucking. Year. It’s not like he’s the world’s leading expert on college life transitions.
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