by Maggie Bloom
Tom stops a few feet ahead of me, as always. It must be a guy thing. “Yup,” he says. “A mile out and a mile back, times four.”
I’d like to quit now, since my knees ache like they’ve got screws twisting around inside them and my lower back is on fire with pain. But Tom is almost vibrating with energy. “What’s next?” I ask.
He stares at me for a few seconds (a few silent, intense seconds that somehow tell me he wants me, or loves me, or both) before saying, “We should probably take a break.”
Is my pathetic state that obvious? I wonder. Then again, it’s sweet of him to notice. “Okay,” I agree, only too happy to rest my sore ass (this seat needs a pillow bungeed around it) and my overtaxed lungs.
It’s been a balmy fall this year, but now, two weeks before Christmas break, a chill has begun to set in. Good thing I’m too overheated to take much notice of it.
Tom tells me to leave the Schwinn by his fence, where he tucks the BMX between a riding mower and the pickets (is that what you call the vertical boards of a fence?). He unties the gate, and we waltz past the chicken house for the prefab deck (another feature I don’t recall from my last visit, leading me to conclude that it’s new) and then mosey into the house, him holding all the doors as we go.
This time when we get inside, he springs a surprise on me. “I meant to show you something…” he says vaguely, “…when you came before. But, uh, we never…”
I don’t know the layout of his house well enough to anticipate where he’s leading me (although, since it’s a double-wide trailer, it probably isn’t much different than the compact little ranch where Orv, Denise, and I live). Across from the bathroom he stops and opens a door that I figure is a linen closet.
But it isn’t. “You have a basement?!” I squeal. There are steps behind that door; stairs to the underground.
He grins, and for the first time, I appreciate how bright and welcoming his mouth is. “Uh-huh.”
In my fifteen years, I have never been inside a basement. Most of the houses around here are on slabs, their owners (like Orv, Denise, and me) too poor to invest in such upscale amenities. “That is so cool,” I mutter, more to myself than Tom, who clicks on a number of tap-lights that are randomly stuck to the walls of the stairwell and then starts descending.
“Be careful,” he tells me, the stairs creaking and groaning under my considerable girth. “These things are pretty steep.”
I grip the railing tighter. “No problem.”
When we get to the landing, my mind is blown even further. Not only does Tom have a basement, he has a finished basement (soothing, earth-toned paint, speckled carpeting, a sofa that’s a notch above the one I lounge across every day). And that’s only the half of it. The opposite side of the place has a retro-looking black-and-white tiled floor and two giant game tables: ping-pong and air hockey.
Tom nudges my arm. “You wanna watch some TV? I’ve got Seinfeld on DVD.”
I love sitcoms, especially the old ones, where people had cell phones the size of winter boots. And don’t get me started on Kramer. “Sure,” I say. I sink into the squishy sofa and wait.
Tom rummages around in the entertainment center until he finds the discs, which he fires up on the flat-screen. “Here,” he says, passing me an icy Coke.
I crane my neck curiously. “Oh, a mini-fridge?” I say. “Nice.” Even though I’m a Diet Coke girl, I pop the top and take a few long gulps.
As the perky theme music bings and crackles, Tom eases in next to me on the sofa. When his thigh touches mine, I get a freaky, hot charge, as if I’ve narrowly escaped being struck by lightning. Tom wastes no time saying, “You look pretty today.”
Why is this boy so set on screwing me? If he doesn’t knock it off, he’s going to demolish a perfectly good friendship. I roll my eyes and say, “Right.”
“You shouldn’t do that, you know.”
I wrinkle my brow. “Do what?”
“Be so jerky about compliments. People are just trying to be nice.”
Who are these people? “I’m not really used to compliments,” I say. “Sorry.”
“Yeah, I figured. That explains why…”
I feel like I’m on one of those reality TV shows, where the friends and family of some disturbed soul (a bulimic, or a meth head, or an exercise freak, or a cutter) pop out of a closet to “intervene” in their shitty lives. “Why I let so many trolls screw me, you mean?”
Tom winces. “You’re better than that.”
“How would you know?”
“I’m not trying to be an asshole,” he says, shaking his head, “but somebody has to…”
“I don’t think so.”
“What if somebody wanted to ask you out?”
I shimmy to the edge of the sofa, preparing for a speedy getaway. “What if?”
“You’re not very approachable.”
Gee, really? “That’s the point.”
“I like you,” he says bluntly.
Every muscle in my body freezes. I think I might like him too. I can’t afford to like him. “Oh.”
“Do you want to go out?”
Just like that? He’s proposing a boyfriend/girlfriend situation?
Just.
Like.
That.
Suddenly I want to puke. “Um…” My leg starts doing this jumpy, twitchy move that’s totally out of control.
“It’s no big deal,” he says.
To him, maybe. I’d figured I’d breeze through the rest of high school getting screwed every couple of days, sucking down Milky Ways (already a shattered dream), and avoiding all possible scenarios that would expose my heart.
I shrug. “I didn’t think… I mean, don’t you want…?”
He squeezes up next to me, pushes his face to within inches of mine. “I want to know if you’ll go out with me,” he murmurs. And then he kisses me, for the second time.
With all the screwing I’ve done, you’d think a simple kiss—the soft, wet meeting of lips and tongues—would be inconsequential. Pedestrian. Mundane. Instead, it’s monumental. Erotic. So exhilarating I have no choice but to reciprocate. “Yes,” I agree between breaths and (is this really happening?) more kissing.
Tom moves his hands over my hips, and I cringe. A smidgen more upward motion and he’ll be wallowing in blubber. I coax one of his hands toward my boob and the other toward the crease of my thigh, territories that have got their fair share of mileage.
But he resists. “Not yet,” he says, pulling his hands and lips away. “There’s plenty of time.”
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Tom Cantwell likes me. A lot, apparently. And not just for a screw.
Dear God, what have I done?
* * *
I’ve spent years ignoring bullies, a skill I’ve honed to a prickly point. But every now and then, a vicious verbal barb or a purposeful kick to the back of my ankle (accompanied by a rash of giggles and an insincere “sorry”) cracks its way through my hard candy-shell.
Today is one of those days.
I whip around in the hall following a blatant shove of my shoulder, by what felt like a feminine hand. “What the…?”
It is a girl. Sort of. A quasi-butch chick, androgynously named Dana. Her hair is gelled and spiky, but she sports a pink headband with a poufy fake flower pushed off to one side. Her face reminds me of Abraham Lincoln.
“Problem?” she says in a menacing tone. I stare at her, debating whether a confrontation is worth the trouble. She crosses her arms over her flat chest and takes a cowboy stance, creating a human median that divides the flow of students on their way to their third-period classes. “Huh?” she demands.
A face peeks over Dana’s shoulder. It’s one of her best buds, Melissa (a.k.a. Brent Flynn’s girlfriend).
“Keep your hands to yourself,” I say flatly.
Dana cracks her knuckles, as if we’re in our own little version of West Side Story. I can’t help laughing. “Something funny?” she says.
; I face forward again, take a step. “Comical, actually.”
“We know what you’re doing,” Melissa’s quivery squeak of a voice says from Dana’s side, “and you better stop.”
This is the closest anyone has ever come to outing me. Like I said, the rumors about my sexual “openness” have been floating around for a while, and they’ve been roundly dismissed (by the girls at school, at least). The boys, of course, know better. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” As soon as I say the words, I realize I should’ve kept my big yap shut.
I start to walk away, but Dana grabs my backpack and stops me. “You want to be left alone?” she asks. I’m sure she’s being rhetorical. “Then close your legs and stay away from other people’s boyfriends.”
“Yeah,” says Melissa.
I shake my head, not to disagree with them (I wasn’t planning on screwing anyone other than Tom, if he even wants to), but because no matter what I utter next, it’ll be wrong. “Whatever you say.”
Dana gives me another little shove. “That’s right.”
And then the bell rings.
* * *
The Pill is 99.9% effective, or so I’ve been telling myself every morning for the past eight days, since my period went MIA.
At our mail-cluttered kitchen table, I gobble the same apple-cinnamon oatmeal I’ve eaten for breakfast every morning this week and rack my brain over birth control pills (did I miss any this month, as I’ve been known to do?) and sexual “partners” (who are the possible daddies, should this screw-up in my cycle turn out to be more than a fluke?).
“Are you okay?” Denise asks with a note of serious concern. “You don’t look so good.” She dumps a couple of big scoops of coffee into the coffeemaker and starts it brewing, even though she’s just come off the night shift and is about to go to bed.
Great. Even Denise can tell there’s something wrong with me. “It’s kind of hot in here, don’t you think?” I say instead of answering.
“You got a fever?”
Maybe it’s morning sickness. “Nah,” I say, shoving my chair away from the table. With Denise being only a few years older than me, you’d think I’d be able to talk to her about this sort of stuff. And sometimes I do, but only hypothetically.
“Want me to stay up for a while?” she offers. “We could finish the last of our Christmas shopping at Derby’s.”
Derby’s is a local discount chain that scoffs up expired, salvaged, and overstocked goods and peddles them to customers on less-than-no-frills budgets. It’s my—and Denise’s—favorite store. “Maybe,” I say, picturing racks of baby clothes that have been rescued from a flood and, consequently, look like they’ve already been spit up on.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Denise asks again, studying me as I wobble to the cast iron sink and lean against the faux marble counter.
The reason I can’t tell Denise about missing my period is that it would upset her too much. Not because she’d necessarily be mad if I turned up pregnant, but because she can’t have children of her own. She has a medical condition (don’t ask me which one, because I can never remember the name), and a doctor told her she has less than a one percent chance of conceiving, even without birth control. “I’ve only got twenty-five bucks,” I say, steering the conversation back to the subject of shopping. “Think that’ll be enough?”
Denise smiles. “Yesterday was payday,” she tells me unnecessarily. We all know each other’s business in this house. “I had five hours of overtime last week, so don’t you worry about it.”
I wish I could trade Marie for Denise. “Cool,” I say. I give her the broadest smile I can muster. “Let’s go.”
chapter 7
TOM HAS invited me over for Christmas Eve dinner and a Secret Santa gift exchange. I’m playing Kris Kringle to the dog, Hush Puppy, a mouthy Pomeranian that makes my phone conversations with Tom as obnoxiously loud as a heavy metal concert.
Denise drops me in front of the double-wide trailer and toots the horn of the Royale as she pulls away. Before I can get within striking distance of the door, though, Tom appears on the porch wearing an attractive charcoal-gray dress shirt, a pair of borderline trendy jeans, and an unmistakable excited-to-see-me smile. Now that I’m his girlfriend (and I’ve quit the extracurricular screwing cold turkey), he seems nothing short of enamored. “Hey,” he says, taking my hand and guiding me up the steps.
This whole boyfriend/girlfriend thing has me feeling like I’ve plunged headfirst into a fairytale. “Hi,” I say, a sudden case of jitters wiggling around in my stomach.
The first thing that hits me when we get inside is the smoke. Say what you will about Orv and Denise, but cigarettes are one evil they’ve kept soundly at bay. “I’ll take your coat,” Tom says, an arm outstretched for me to drape it over.
I slip my windbreaker off and let him have it. “What about this?” I ask, holding up the chunk of rawhide I’ve brought for Hush Puppy, the shiny snowflake paper I’ve wrapped it in coming undone at the edges. I scan the living room and notice that I don’t recognize a soul.
“We’ve got a gift table,” Tom says, pointing the way to an elaborately festooned octagonal stand in the corner.
I squeeze sideways toward the drop spot, rubbing knees with an elderly lady tethered to an oxygen tank, a worried look pressed into her brow as a cloud of smoke drifts by. “Excuse me,” I say. Most of the time my size isn’t much of an issue, but in tight spaces, I immediately start wishing I was Heidi Klum.
I arrange Hush Puppy’s present atop the small pile, and Tom runs my jacket to some mysterious holding area. When he returns, the compact bundle of fur (otherwise known as the dog) is hot on the trail of his black-and-gray Vans. “Come on,” he says, gesturing toward the kitchen. “Everyone’s out here.”
I steal a final glance around the living room, noting that the old folks have been relegated to second-class citizenship. Then again, some of them look so frail they probably don’t mind. I follow Tom, waving and smiling to his great-aunts and grandparents as we go.
Unlike the living room, the kitchen is crammed with people. Smoking, laughing, drinking people. And music, food, and…kids. That’s what strikes me as strange: so many little ones jumping and running and crashing about.
My life with Orv and Denise (and Gramp, while he was alive), has left some holes in my experience of family. If I have any extended relations on Duncan’s side, I don’t know about them. Orv is Marie’s nephew, and Gramp was her father. I’m pretty much a loner.
I press myself into a spot between the dishwasher and the refrigerator, just to get out of the fray. “Want something to eat?” Tom says, as if he’s sensing my growing claustrophobia. “We’ve got Swedish meatballs, macaroni and cheese…” He gives the island a one-eyed squint. “…and potato salad, I think.”
“Sure,” I say. “A small plate is fine.” I didn’t get this big by being particular about what I eat, a quality that will serve me well should there ever be a disaster that disrupts the food supply. Sardines? Beets? Pickled eggs? No problem.
While Tom loads a couple of Styrofoam plates with buffet fare, I dodge the eager hands and arms of thirsty partiers, a number of three-liter bottles of soda pop stashed on the counter behind me. During a break in the action, I swivel around and pour a cup of ginger ale for me and an orange soda for Tom.
“My dad says ‘hi,’ ” Tom tells me when he shows back up with our dinner. “Wilma’s, uh…”
Drunk? I feel like saying, because it’s the God’s honest truth. I’ve only seen someone so intoxicated in the movies (and in an anti-drunk driving video the middle school showed us during an eighth-grade assembly, but I’m pretty sure that guy was an actor too). “Can we go somewhere?” I ask. Fat people get overheated quickly, especially around so many other bodies.
A few steps from the kitchen is the glorious basement door, which Tom motions toward with his head. Our hands are full—mine with the pop and his with the food—so he drags his forearm over the knob to twis
t it open, then elbows the door ajar. A girl of about ten, with ringlet curls and a crimson velvet dress, gives us the hairy eyeball as we slip downstairs.
Tom sets the plates on a coffee table and takes the drinks from me, so I can sink into the sofa without making a sloshy mess. “How come we’re the only ones down here?” I ask, surprised at the basement’s tranquility given the cacophony above.
He chuckles, passes me a plate of food. “My cousin, Annabelle… She broke one of Wilma’s favorite Hummels last year. It was a rare one too. Cost her like two-hundred bucks. She was pissed.”
“So…?”
“Well, now the kids are banned. No more ‘horsing around’ in the basement,” he tells me with a mischievous grin.
I want to horse around with him right now. “That’s too bad,” I say, trying my hand at a little suggestive flirting.
We nibble through the meatballs and mac ‘n cheese, me trying my darndest to come off as ladylike despite our lack of simple accoutrements like napkins. “This is good,” I say about the pasta, which dissolves on my tongue like a gooey fondue. “Is it homemade?”
He nods. “Yup. My uncle’s new wife owns a catering company.” He has a step-aunt? It seems like the men in his family are unlucky in love.
I try to eat slower, just so I don’t finish before him, but it’s no use; my jaw muscles are too well-trained. I leave the empty plate behind on the coffee table and get up to wander.
And Tom watches me. “There’s some cool stuff back there you can check out, if you want,” he tells me as I approach an orderly tower of mismatched furniture and caved-in cardboard boxes (leftovers from when Wilma ditched her apartment and took up residence here?).
I tug at the flap of a box that looks like it’s about to disintegrate, and, sure enough, one whole side of the thing comes apart in my hands. “Shoot,” I say, pressing my jellyroll forward to stop an avalanche of stuff that’s headed my way.
Tom hops up from the sofa, drops his plate on top of the mini-fridge and speeds to my aid. “I got it,” he says, squeezing against me from behind and wrapping his arms around my sides, steadying the box in place.