by Laura Steven
The music is very loud and most people are very drunk, and I’m very dizzy like I’ve spun around in circles for eleven days, so eventually I just relax and let myself enjoy it. Surprisingly Carson is not as good a kisser as Vaughan – too much Dorito-flavored saliva for my personal taste, although I am sure others are into that particular sensation – but he’s kinda cute in the way he keeps pulling away and smiling bashfully before diving in for another round of tongue hockey. Don’t worry, he won’t read this review of his snogging technique. Like I say, I’ve password-protected my blog now. [Which should have really been my first move upon its creation, but you live and learn.]
I’m in a slight quandary.
Part of me – the biggest part – wants to get it on with Carson. He’s cute and funny and, well, I want to, which should not be too hard for you to grasp.
Then there’s the annoying, niggling part of me that worries what people will think of me if I do. If the school population discovers I banged two dudes in one night, the girls will call me a bitch and a slut, and the guys will high five and call me easy while flinging their own feces at each other.
Anyway, due to that abnormally high sex drive I mentioned earlier, I’m soon following him upstairs to Baxter’s parents’ room, where we proceed to have a lovely time. Ten out of ten would recommend having sex with Carson Manning. You can do it at least three times in one commercial break, and I sometimes think brevity is an underrated quality in coitus. I’d rather have short and sweet than cross over into slightly-boring-and-chafey territory.
[I know you’re probably reading this thinking, Oh my god, what an unbelievable whore! even though you generally consider yourself to be fairly progressive, but don’t worry. Later in the book I plan to address your problematic concerns about my promiscuity in a personal essay titled “Old White Men Love It When You Slut-shame”.]
Monday 19 September
5.47 a.m.
I know! Look at that time stamp! While I am generally of the opinion that one should not rise before the sun unless one has been roused by a swarm of locusts, I can’t sleep. Not only because I find out whether I’ve made it to the next round of the screenplay competition this week – have already refreshed emails six thousand times this morning, despite the fact it’s still 1 a.m. on the West Coast – but also because even more shit went down last night, and my metaphorical tail is well and truly between my legs. I did a Really Bad Thing. I’m too ashamed to even tell Betty, which gives you some indication of its magnitude.
After I finish typing out the full recap of the party yesterday afternoon, Ajita texts our group chat and invites Danny and me over for a full debrief and twelve tons of extra-jalapeño nachos. This makes me slightly nervous because I’m not sure how much Danny already knows about my sexploits at this point. By slightly nervous, I mean a herd of rhinos are stampeding my guts. But like the brave soul I am I abandon my physics homework and head over on my rusty deathtrap of a bicycle.
Five treacherous miles later I arrive at Ajita’s, and Prajesh greets me at the door with a berry and spinach smoothie. Because he’s one of those student athlete types he’s always talking about The Daily Grind, and also lecturing me about the fact I’m probably vitamin deficient in basically everything. [Do not fear, I did not have sex with him, for he is thirteen and even I draw a line somewhere.]
“Hey, Praj,” I say as warmly and big-sisterly as I can. “How you doing?”
He zips up his hoodie. “Yeah, I’m cool. You?”
I want to ask him how school’s going, but at the same time I don’t want him to feel crappy about the fact we’ve been discussing his lack of friends behind his back. So instead I say, “All fine and dandy. I hear you’ve been hanging out with Danny. Playing video games and such.”
He nods. “Yeah. He’s a cool guy.”
There’s a weird silence I’ve never really experienced with Praj before. He’s definitely going through an awkward adolescent phase. His voice broke over the summer, and he still looks uncomfortable with the way it sounds.
I take a sip of the smoothie to be polite, and even though it looks like sludge it tastes pretty good. I thank him for looking out for my arteries and wave him off as he heads to practice.
Heading down to the basement I spot Danny’s sneakers by the door, and the nerve-rhinos start mating in my large intestine. Logically I know I don’t owe him a damn thing, but guilt’s a funny and unpredictable beast.
Sometimes Ajita is not a good person to have in the room during a time of tension. She’s a master of manipulation and orchestrates the most wonderfully uncomfortable situations and conversations, which is quite entertaining when you’re not on the receiving end of her shrewd witchcraft, but not so much when you are a mere pawn in her game of distress chess.
She’s curled up in the armchair like a smug python, leaving Danny and me to sit up close and personal on the two-seater sofa. The beanbag has conveniently been tidied away. I bet she paid Prajesh ten bucks to take it to his room and fart on it, thus rendering it useless for the purpose of this debrief. All I’m saying is if she ends up with pink eye I will not offer her even the slightest bit of sympathy.
My first clue that Danny knows ALL THE THINGS is that he doesn’t look up when I “accidentally” trip down the last three stairs. Ajita snorts like a wild boar. Danny sits rigidly. I flump into the seat next to him.
“What’s up, guys?” I ask, cheerier than Mrs Cheery during National Cheeriness Week, helping myself to a handful of nachos from the table. They’ve barely touched them, which is another sign that it’s not just my imagination – there is definitely An Atmosphere.
Ajita eyeballs me, and without the handy indicators of physical violence, I’m struggling to translate. Probably: tread carefully, he’s pissed. Which makes me pissed, to be honest, as he does not have ownership of my vagina by any stretch of the imagination, and really what right does he have to make me feel like shit for acting on said vagina’s natural urges?
So I throw him a trademark Izzy O’Neill curveball. “How was Michelle Obama Junior?” I ask, grinning and nudging him in an old-buddy-old-pal kind of manner.
I feel like this is a strong tactic, focusing the attention on his behavior rather than my own, until he mutters, “How were Vaughan and Carson and the rest of the basketball team?”
As I flinch, Ajita says, “I’ll be upstairs,” which surprises me because usually she thrives on this quite rare level of severe awkwardness. Even more upsettingly, she takes the nachos with her, and I feel their absence deep in my soul.
The door at the top of the stairs bangs shut behind her, and I hate myself, I really do, but I start smirking. I don’t know what it is. Sometimes I think our bodies are hardwired to respond to extreme tension with uncontrollable laughter. It’s that thing where your teacher tells you to stop giggling and it just makes you giggle even more and then you get sent out of the room to calm down, and you think you’ve managed it, but then as soon as you come back in you collapse into another fit of hysteria. Yeah, that.
“It’s not funny, Izzy,” Danny snaps.
The TV flashes silently in the corner, illuminating the purple velvet on the pool table. There’s an abandoned game still set up from before I arrived.
“Why isn’t it?” I ask, sincerely wanting to know the answer.
“Do you really want to spread that kind of reputation for yourself ?” His voice is colder than the North Pole pre-climate change.
Suddenly I’m not laughing. Deciding to keep at the deflection tactics I’ve employed so efficiently thus far, I retort, “What’s it to you?”
“I care about you, Izzy. I don’t like seeing you make a fool of yourself.” He’s fidgeting with his man jewelry – a leather-strapped watch from some vintage shop downtown, a shark-tooth surfer bracelet that doesn’t suit him in the slightest, and a festival wristband from the summer, which all the ink has rubbed off so it’s basically just a bit of fraying plastic.
“I had a good time, Danny. I don
’t see how that makes me a fool. Would you judge one of the guys for sleeping with two girls in one night?”
Now he looks up at me, aghast. “You slept with them both? I thought you just kissed Vaughan! Jesus, Izzy. What’s wrong with you?”
I’m getting mad, but am trying desperately to swallow it so I don’t drive a wedge even further between us. “Nothing is fucking wrong with me.” Okay, so I didn’t mean to curse.
“They’re both just using you.” He looks so sad, and guilt starts building inside me, even though I know it’s illogical and futile to regret anything. Actually, I know I don’t regret anything. I just don’t want to hurt him even more than I already have.
I soften my voice. “So? I’m using them too, Danny. It’s not like I’m gonna marry either of them. I’m young. I’m allowed to have fun.”
He sighs, still staring at his ragged festival wristband. Pushes his glasses up his nose. “Wouldn’t you rather sleep with someone who actually cares about you? Who’ll still want to know you the next day? Who likes you for you, not just your body?”
I bite my lip, which is chapped as hell from hangover dehydration. “And who would that someone be, Danny?”
He finally meets my eyes, and the look on his face tells me everything I need to know. Silence floats between us like poison gas.
Breathing is hard. When did breathing become hard? The air is loaded.
Finally, because I am so articulate, I manage to say, “Oh. I’m sorry.”
Then I lean over to give him a hug – I mean, what else do you do when your best friend is sad? – and he hugs me back so tenderly and affectionately that The Atmosphere is amplified tenfold. His heart beats against my shoulder, and he’s so warm, unlike most skinny people. Something tickles my neck, and at first I think it’s his hair, but it’s his soft breath, and then my chest starts pounding too.
What’s going on? Betty convinced me I didn’t want this, but right now my traitorous body is telling me otherwise. But I can’t. I can’t. The dude’s in love with me! I can’t lead him on like this! Stop, Izzy. Stop.
No! Now I seem to have pressed my face into his neck too, and oh man he smells good – not like cologne, but just clean, you know, like he uses really good soap probably stolen from a fancy hotel – and WHAT THE HELL, THIS IS DANNY! DANNY! Remember Danny? He’s seen you cry snotty tears when you broke your wrist playing hopscotch in the schoolyard, and he’s seen you make a complete dick of yourself doing your Kevin Spacey impression, and he’s seen you eat an entire sharing platter by yourself at TGI Friday’s, and . . .
Wait, why did I ever think that was a bad thing? Isn’t it nice that he knows everything and still wants to kiss you? Oh! Now I see what he was getting at. It’s deeper, and it feels nice, like home, and even though somewhere in the back of my mind I know it’s not what I want, that voice is getting quieter and quieter, and so when he pulls away just a few inches and our mouths are almost touching, I don’t move a muscle, and I let his lips brush mine, and I shiver, and then . . .
Then we’re kissing and it’s not awful and everything I thought I knew is blown out of the water.
Cue my mind becoming stuck on an eternal loop of this-is-wrong-no-it’s-right-no-it’s-wrong-but-doesn’t-it-feel-good? I can’t recall ever having thought so much during kissing in my entire life, and I have done a lot of kissing, and also a lot of thinking, just never quite at the same time.
Danny’s not a bad kisser. Better than Carson, worse than Vaughan. Is that a really cruel thing to do? Pitting these dudes against each other in some sort of kissing league table? Ooooh, maybe I could create some kind of anonymous online voting system whereby students give feedback on their best and worst kissing experiences, except the results would only be visible to me so I could make smart future smooching choices and nobody’s feelings would get hurt.
This is totally going to become the new Facebook. Maybe I should just sell the idea to Mark Zuckerberg so I don’t actually have to do any of the work, like coding or design or general administration. He probably has teams to deal with that kind of thing. Or maybe . . .
Christ on a bike, O’Neill. STOP. THINKING.
His hands move down to my waist, then the tops of my thighs, then along the waistband of my jeans, and that’s when it starts to feel a bit wrong. Mainly I think I have cognitive dissonance when it comes to kissing. I honestly believe there are not many people on this planet that I would not kiss. It’s just not a big deal to me. But even I find sex stuff way more intimate and personal, and Danny’s adventuring hands are giving me the willies.
There’s a weird expression on his face. Urgent yet tentative, like he knows I will realize this is a huge mistake at any second, and the primal part of him wants to capitalize on the situation before that happens, while the best friend and good guy part wants to make sure I’m ready.
But it just doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t. Not at all. He’s all sharp angles and translucent skin [I apologize if this is offensive to a) angular people or b) vampires] and it’s uncomfortable and I want it to stop. And as soon as I realize this, the guilt is crushing; I’ve made a mistake, I’ve led him on, and all I can think about is how I’m going to have to let him down.
Hopefulness is written all over his face, and I hate it. Because I can tell this moment has confirmed something for him – just in the exact opposite way it did for me.
That’s why, mid-kiss, I start to cry. It starts as a single whimper, and quickly escalates into pathetic sniffles, shortly followed by wracking sobs. All the good stuff.
He knows why. He knows me too well, so there’s no point in lying to him. He knows what it means, and seeing the moment it registers, seeing the moment his hopes come crashing down, is like being slammed in the chest with the butt of a gun.
“I’m s-sorry,” I stammer.
And then, like the coward I am, I run.
I keep crying as I slam out the front door, and I keep crying as I mount my bike and start pedaling home. The streets are pretty empty, thank God, because I have mascara all over my dried-out face and a stream of snot running from my nose.
Why why why why whyyyyyy –
But I know why. I know exactly why. Such a huge part of me was hoping that I’d kiss him and feel the same way he does. That I’d realize it was right, and that Danny and I should be together, and that I love him too. If it worked out that way, it’d be so much easier than having to tell him no, having to let him down, having to hurt him in a way you never want to hurt your best friend. But instead I’ve made it so much worse. So, so much worse.
6.24 a.m.
I can’t sleep and my alarm is going to go off soon anyway, so I’m rereading texts from last night. There are some from Ajita, some from Danny, and some from both Danny and Ajita in our three-way group chat. I haven’t responded to any.
Ajita’s:
Babe, Danny told me what happened. Can you call me so I know you’re okay and not in a ditch somewhere? I know your crying episodes are invariably followed by half-hearted attempts to drink bleach. I’m worried. Love you xo
I’m getting pissed at you. You know when I’m worried my body temperature escalates, and then I start to sweat, and then I inevitably break out in zits for at least a week. So: fuck you! Love from Ajita’s epidermis xo
(I do love you though. And you are not a bad person. Stalin was a bad person. You are lovely. See you tomorrow. xo)
Danny’s:
I’m sorry, Iz :(
I thought it’s what you wanted. I never would’ve done it if I didn’t.
Please, don’t let this ruin our friendship. You’re too important to me.
Ajita and Danny in the group chat:
*lots of phallic vegetable emojis*
I hate them both, and I love them both. And now I’m crying again.
Maybe if we all put our heads together we can invent a Ctrl+Alt+Z option for horrible life decisions?
9.17 a.m.
After about seven seconds of sleep I go to school
looking like something out of a zombie movie. Throughout history and economics, which I have without Ajita and Danny, my gut twists so severely I think I might actually have developed bowel disease over the last few hours.
In my head I play out a number of detailed scenarios in which Danny a) burns me at the stake in some kind of tribute to Satan, his lord and savior, while Ajita watches on and cackles manically, b) designs some actually rather impressive posters featuring Sim-like versions of us mating on the couch and plasters them all over the school, and c) makes human nachos by covering me in cheese, salsa and sour cream then baking me in the oven like some kind of Mexican Hansel and Gretel.
Judging by these worryingly elaborate hallucinations it’s possible that lack of sleep and severe emotional trauma have rendered me delusional and insane.
I mean, I’ve always been the kind of overthinker who has full-blown confrontations with people entirely in my brain. Sometimes I even imagine myself into a bad mood with a person, even though they’re entirely unaware that we fell out inside my head. This usually occurs in the shower, for lack of anything better to do. So I’m no stranger to having fantasy arguments. But the human nacho thing is a bit far-fetched, even for me.
On the plus side, by the time third period has come around and it’s time to face the music, it’s clear that no matter how terribly it goes, it cannot be as messed up as my daydreams.
Because economics is on the other side of campus, it takes me so long to get to biology that class has already started by the time I flump into the seat behind him.
He doesn’t turn around, but Ajita does, and winks at me to let me know she’s not mad at me for potentially smashing our friendship group into smithereens. To be fair, she does have an impressive cluster of zits forming on her chin, and I make a mental note to buy her some peanut butter cups to apologize to her ravaged epidermis.