500 Words or Less
Page 8
I turned around and screamed
“What the fuck, Jordan?
Why did you make me do it?”
“I didn’t fucking make you do
anything.”
Jordan sat up.
He rifled around under the covers.
He threw a bra, underwear, a T-shirt
that wasn’t even mine
at me.
He slid out of bed and picked up a pair of boxers
off the floor,
then walked,
disheveled,
into the adjacent bathroom.
He shut the door.
The lock clicked in place.
I fished around the floor,
for the rest of my clothes,
and haphazardly tugged on
a T-shirt and jeans
and jammed my feet
into a pair of laced-up sneakers.
I opened Jordan’s bedroom door
and left it wide open.
Downstairs,
in the kitchen,
half-empty Solo cups
of whiskey and Coke
littered the countertops.
On the table,
lay an unfinished game
of beer pong.
Outside,
stragglers smoked
cigarettes and weed.
I slipped out the front door
unnoticed.
My ride
I dialed Kitty’s number.
I knew she’d be home.
She had parents who were
responsible—
who cared where she was
at one in the morning.
My dad, stepmother, and stepbrother
were in China for two weeks,
and my mom—
who knows?
There was no one holding me accountable
for my actions
at this hour.
She answered on the fourth ring.
“Nic?”
“Can you pick me up?”
Kitty could have told me
to walk the three miles home
like we’ve done before.
“Uh, sure,” she said groggily.
“I’ve got to put on some clothes.
Find my car keys.
Tell my parents.”
The air was warm and sticky.
It felt better
than being tangled under the sheets
with Jordan.
“Your parents?”
“I can’t just drive off with the car
in the middle of the night.
They’ll understand.
We want you to be safe.”
They all cared,
and it almost felt
like too much.
“Is everything okay?” Kitty asked.
I wanted to say no.
“My ride left,” I said.
Left.
“Ben?”
I didn’t answer.
“Tell me where you are.”
I looked at the street sign.
I’m on the corner of forever,
I didn’t say.
I said something else,
then hung up.
The sky began to rumble.
It lit up, briefly,
before going black again.
In Meydenbauer
thunderstorms were rare.
I couldn’t remember that last time I’d seen one.
I was probably too young
or too scared.
I sat on someone’s manicured front lawn,
waiting for Kitty,
waiting for the summer storm to roll through.
I knew that Ben knew.
It didn’t really matter how.
He just did,
and he drove away,
tires screeching around a corner.
The next afternoon
I found myself
back upstairs
in his room.
I found Jordan shirtless
in his bed, holding
a controller for his Xbox, shooting
at humans, orcs, and elves.
“Are we supposed to be together?”
Jordan barely glanced over from the screen,
but when he did,
I caught a glimpse in his eyes.
Something flickered like a faulty bulb,
and then it was gone.
In its place
a vacant expression.
“I doubt it,”
Jordan said.
Last night, here in his room,
strings of sadness had knotted us together.
We didn’t solve anything.
We didn’t untangle
our tangled parts,
but the closeness,
the knots tied together
felt like
something.
“Why are you here?”
Jordan asked.
Whatever it was in the haze of last night—
a heart poured over with alcohol,
emotions that betrayed me—
was nowhere to be found.
“You’re his best friend.”
“You’re his girlfriend.”
“That’s not how best friends
are supposed to act.”
Jordan snorted and shook his head.
He said nothing for a moment.
“Nothing is ever supposed to happen.
Things just happen,”
he said.
“Was that all it was to you?”
“You tell me.”
“You’re infuriating.”
“You’re a bitch.”
I wasn’t going to be
the one who stood there
being shot at
like I was an orc on the screen.
“Good luck with your game!”
I shouted.
“And same to you,”
Jordan replied.
High school love
Was not supposed to end
the way mine did.
It was supposed to end
with the looming prospect of
college—
when separate schools,
quite possibly on separate coasts,
and the element of
time
could not possibly keep
two high school lovers
together.
Breaking up with Ben was supposed to occur
the summer before college, not
the summer before senior year.
Yet five months later, I still felt him
so rawly.
Ben’s arms wrapped around my waist
like they belonged there,
like they hung there,
like the way sleeves belonged on a jacket.
Why I write #2
If I was to be branded,
as the girl who cheated
on her charismatic and lovable
boyfriend
with his best friend,
then I had to
become the person who
could at least make everyone pause
and for a moment
be someone
other than
that girl.
She cheated on her boyfriend,
but she’s really fucking smart.
She cheated on her boyfriend,
but she got into Princeton.
She cheated on her boyfriend,
but she wrote my college essay
and now I’m going to
Duke.
We were all unbreakable
Audrey Pugh leaned against her locker,
angular hips protruding
like corners on a coffee table.
“I miss Ben,” she said, pouting,
to Jilly, who snapped her gum
and wore her cheer skirt
in the off-season.
I missed him too,
so damn much.
�
��Ben was like the nicest guy
in our class. The nicest, Jilly.”
Jilly’s head bobbled.
I didn’t know whether
to slow down or speed up.
To act totally oblivious,
or confrontational.
But then the choice was made for me.
“Nic,” Audrey called out,
“I need your help.”
I didn’t understand why on earth
Audrey Pugh
would utter the word “help”
and my name
in the same sentence.
It was like she totally forgot
that time freshman year
when she told my mom
I was bulimic.
I wasn’t. I’m not.
“I’m not a doctor yet, Audrey.
So it would be unethical of me
to diagnose
that rash on your ass.”
Jilly’s jaw dropped. Her gum nearly fell out.
Audrey’s mouth tightened for a millisecond,
then relaxed like I had said
nothing at all.
Audrey was like this perfectly
unbreakable
twig,
the rubbery kind
that bows and bends
but never snaps.
Pavlov’s dog
“I need you to write my college essay,”
Audrey said.
She thrust a wad of cash
in my face.
“I hear you do that sort of thing.”
I could have said no.
I wasn’t sure
I could write anything nice
or meaningful about Audrey Pugh.
Yet I snatched the cash
from her fingers
like I was conditioned to,
like Pavlov’s dog,
and began counting the bills.
Audrey’s mouth formed a small,
knowing smile.
“Oh, Nic.
It’s just a wad of twenties.
Your family has money, right?
Or did your mother
take all of it
before she left?”
She laughed before shutting her locker
and trotting away
with Jilly.
There was nothing Audrey
could say
about my mother
that I haven’t
heard before.
Rumors grew
lackluster
over time,
but they still
gnawed on
parts inside me.
Yet, in spite of all the terrible things
Audrey and I
have mutually said
to and about
each other,
I still wanted
to write
her essay.
Maybe it was
the way she existed
as a unit.
The way none of us
were ever quite sure
if either twin
were truly
different
from the other.
The way she shielded
her innermost feelings
and thoughts,
her own identity
so none of us
could see.
If I could write an essay
for Audrey,
then maybe
there was something
worth writing
about all of us.
There were papers
Papers covered
every inch of my room.
They insulated me
from thinking,
from feeling
too much.
Vignettes of Marco
and Miranda
and Laurel
and Austin,
lives that demanded
attention.
I was exhausted by
their words.
But of course,
I couldn’t stop.
By December
The days felt fleeting.
Everything that you wanted to last longer—
lunch periods,
weekends,
the amount of time we were given on an exam—
passed quickly.
Everything you wanted to fly by—
homework,
lectures,
winter itself—
only dragged slower.
Jordan tore a page
Out of his notebook
and flicked the crumpled paper
at me as we sat
across from each other
at a table in the crowded library,
cramming for upcoming exams.
I flicked the paper back.
“What do you want,
Jordan?”
He leaned back in his chair.
“That’s the million-dollar
question.
Thanks for asking.
“My dad bought me a new Rover,”
he said.
“Good for you.”
I went back to studying.
“Is that supposed to mean
love?”
Jordan mused.
His elbows leaned
on the table, his chin
resting in his hand.
“I don’t know,”
I muttered.
Jordan continued to ramble
like I wasn’t even there.
“Do you notice that no one ever asks
what you want?
Like I didn’t ask for this Rover.
“Maybe I wanted an Audi.
Or maybe I just want
my dad to, like,
ask me about something
other than my GPA
and whether or not I finished
that Princeton application.
“Would have saved him $80K.”
I stopped writing and put down my pen.
Our friendship may have ended
at his party last summer,
but there were invisible threads
of something
that I could still feel
tangling us
together.
“Maybe I would like to know
if my dad knows anything about me
other than my class rank,”
Jordan grumbled, opening up his textbook.
I returned to working
on the practice test
for AP Bio,
when Jordan said,
“When someone doesn’t have an interest
in you,
you stop having an interest
in yourself.”
I looked up at him.
“I get it.”
“I know you do, Nic,”
Jordan whispered.
“Also, your answer to question seven
is wrong.”
Early decision
We checked our phones obsessively.
Not for a text,
or a like,
or a friend request,
or a photo,
but for an e-mail,
with a .edu address,
preferably from an Ivy.
Suitors
A week before Christmas,
I found five guys
gathered around my desk
at the start of AP Bio.
They leaned over Jordan’s shoulder,
saying things like,
“Shit, man” and
“That’s so sick.”
“Oh my.
Five strapping young suitors
have come a-calling,”
I said.
“What will I tell my mother?”
They glanced over at me,
then back at Jordan,
and then back at me.
“That’s not why
you’re here?”
I feigned a dramatic sigh
and stepped over
their backpacks.
“Move,” I said,
and the five of them
scurried away.
Jordan swiveled around in his seat,
facing me.
His left arm was wrapped
in a hard cast
up to the elbow.
He swung it around in the air
like a giant mallet.
“Nicky, did you include
‘Killer of fun’
and ‘Where the party goes to die’
in your list of extracurricular activities
on your college application?
Because you sure excel at them.”
I smirked back.
“What the hell did you do to your arm, Jordan?”
“Nicky, that is an excellent question.
I thought you’d never ask.”
He whipped out his phone and
cued up a video.
I mostly saw Ben,
or at least the outline of Ben,
on the screen from the vantage point
of a helmet-mounted camera.
They were in the mountains,
in the snow.
Ben, bundled up in a North Face jacket
zipped up to his nose.
Goggles and a helmet
covered the rest of his face.
But I could tell it was him.
I knew that nose.
The nose that
snuggled against mine.
The nose that
I would kiss ever so lightly
when saying good-bye.
My heart paused for a moment,
and then I felt a stab of anger.
Jordan was still friends
with Ben.
Still close enough
that Ben could drive into the mountains
and spend a whole day
with someone who slept
with his girlfriend.
There were girls
who I was never even friends with
who won’t talk to me
because I cheated on Ben.
Yet Jordan
still gets to
live his normal life
as if nothing ever happened?
The double standard
was infuriating.
Jordan was
infuriating.
Roadkill
In the video, Ben took off first,
on his skis,
down what looked to be
a steep mountainside.
Jordan pointed the camera downhill.
You could see Ben
flying off a man-made jump
vaulted into the air,
crossing what now appeared to be
a mountain highway.
Ben sailed across it and landed
miraculously
on the other side of the road,
in the snow.
I turned to Jordan. “Are you guys idiots?”
Jordan nodded his head vigorously,
grinning.
You could hear Ben hollering
and Jordan saying something like,
“All right, watch this.”