by Sarah Miller
“You too?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “When I was first here. It lasted about a year.” She smiled. “It’s how I met my husband. Of course, we didn’t have girls quite like Pilar back then. But I was very jealous. It was very hard.”
I knew we’d talk more about this, but now wasn’t the time. I had to get to that spin the bottle game. “I want to get out,” I said. “Why won’t you just tell me how to get out? I’m inside Pilar’s head right now, and she’s thinking about how she’s going to sleep with my boyfriend. I really would rather not be around for that.”
She smiled enigmatically, and I felt a surge of rage build up in me. “Look,” I said. “I don’t have a lot of time. I think if I can kiss Pilar I can get out of her head and back into mine. I think I just have to think what she’s thinking. But I just want to stay out for good. Oh God. Please don’t ask me why.”
The enigmatic smile again. “Why?”
They were getting loud downstairs, and I knew they’d start without me if I didn’t get down there.
“Because I don’t even really care anymore. I like Gid. I love him. But if he likes Pilar, well, fine. She’s actually not even that bad. I don’t want to be best friends with her, and I would much, much rather be me….”
“What did you just say?”
“I said I don’t want to be best friends—”
“No,” Mrs. Gwynne-Vaughan said. “After that.”
“I said I’d rather be me.”
She smiled again, but this time it was warmer, even a little sad. “Remember I was inside someone’s head that I was in love with once too. And you said you wanted to be you, but how about all that time you spend just trying to do whatever you thought would make Gideon like you best? Was that wanting to be you?”
I shook my head. “No. I just wanted to make myself into whatever Gid was going to like. And I realize now I guess he’s going to like what he likes. He likes Pilar, maybe he likes me better, who knows? Just because you’re inside someone’s head doesn’t even mean you know them.”
She smiled. “Did you know we can have one thousand thoughts per minute?”
I nodded. “It’s in your pamphlet. When I read it, I was like, ‘That’s a lot.’ But I didn’t really get it.”
Sergei and Dan appeared at the door, but she held up a finger. “Do you get it now?” she asked.
“I think so,” I said. “I don’t need to know what Gid wants. I don’t need to know what Pilar wants. I just want to know what I want.”
She nodded sagely and beckoned for the boys to come in.
“What are you guys talking about?” Dan asked.
Before I could say anything, Mrs. Gwynne-Vaughan said, “Our periods.”
I arrived just as everyone was arranging themselves in a circle on the floor.
“Gotta mix it up, gotta mix it up,” Cullen said, rubbing his hands together, the drinks warming him up to his role as master of ceremonies. “OK. Madison, you here. Liam, you and Devon next to each other. Pilar, you’re next to Gideon so you can paw each other while you’re playing. OK, Edie, you at a good angle where Devon can reach your tiny boobs, and, Nicholas, you’re making drinks and not playing because you’re gay.”
“Thank God,” Nicholas said. “I know that this is supposed to be sort of ironic that you guys play this, but it is so embarrassing.”
Cullen spun first. He got Edie.
“I don’t know, Edie,” he said. “I think the Old Monster might be a little big for you.”
“Are there any rules about commentary?” Edie asked.
“No, there aren’t,” Cullen said, and slipped a hand around her waist. “Wow. You’re just a little slip of a thing.” He kissed her, then winked at Devon. “Congrats. You can always spot the spinners.”
Edie was next. She got Madison. Madison sighed. They stalked to the center on their knees and gave each other a peck. “I don’t understand how you suddenly entered our social circle,” Madison said as she went back to her place in the circle. “It’s so weird.”
Edie gave me a look like, I always thought these people were freaks, but I had no idea how bad it was.
Madison spun. She got Devon. “I wish we were playing a game where we could just make the person we got go on a diet,” she said.
“I wish we were playing a game where we could tell the chicks we were playing with that they were annoying cunts,” Devon said. “Oh, I guess I am playing that game.”
He grabbed Madison and gave her a wet willy.
“You are disgusting,” she said.
“I’m not disgusting,” Devon said. “I am just fat and greedy and, sadly for all who come in contact with me, unbelievably sexy.”
Edie giggled. Devon actually got kind of sweet and blushy. He turned around and, from the top of a table, took a plastic flower and handed it to Edie. Then he took her tiny face in his fat hands and started to kiss her. They kissed and kissed. Then Devon whispered something in her ear and they got up and left.
“Wow,” Madison said. “That was almost romantic.”
“Who is supposed to spin now?” Cullen shouted. “Let’s keep things moving!
“How about Pilar?” Cullen said. “She is kind of the guest of honor, after all.”
Nicholas poked his head in from the other room. “Hey Pilar,” he said. “Could you please explain to me how exactly you got that problem today? I mean, how did you get it that fast?”
Pilar shook her head and smiled. “I don’t know. It just reminded me of—a problem I used to do a lot.”
“It reminded you of a problem you used to do a lot?” Nicholas said. “What the hell does that mean?”
What if Pilar got me?
If we kissed, and I thought the right stuff, I could get out of her head. But it would have to be for a long time. And people didn’t kiss for that long in this game. If she got me, I would have to force the kiss to last longer, and that would be weird. But seriously…whatever. So I would look weird. But I would be out of Pilar’s head. I could deal with people thinking I was weird.
Pilar spun the bottle. I shut my eyes and willed it to come to me, and when I opened them, there it was.
We went to the center of the circle. Everyone was looking at us. Gid put his drink to his mouth and drank furiously. Cullen put his hand on his crotch and said, “Oh yeah.” Madison put an unlit cigarette in her mouth. Pilar and I started kissing. I made it last longer. I felt her pulling away from me, but I kept kissing her. I wouldn’t stop. I wouldn’t let up. I knew her well enough that I could follow the trajectory of her thoughts, and I thought right along with her: Is Molly wasted? What ees she doing? She must be so into Gid that she is, like, trying to turn him on by making out with me, or maybe she’s…Silence.
Silence so complete it felt almost as if I were floating through space. I kissed her just a tiny bit longer, to make sure that this was in fact really happening, that I was really out of her head.
I was.
“Sorry,” I muttered, and pulling away from her, I ran up the stairs, ran through Mrs. Gwynne-Vaughan’s living room, and went to my dorm and lay down on the floor of the closet—Edie had been nice enough to leave a camping pad, a blanket, and a pillow—and fell asleep.
I did like lying there in all that absolute darkness and silence.
My brain was mine.
My thoughts were mine. I was alone. Very alone. It doesn’t get much more alone, I think, than being in a dark closet while your boyfriend is having sex, for the first time, with a very beautiful girl right down the hall.
I closed my eyes, but I didn’t sleep. In a little while there was a knock at the door.
“Edie?” I said.
The door opened. It was Pilar Benitez-Jones, standing in a strip of moonlight, her hair loose, her eyes tired but luminous.
“Can I come in?” she said.
She crowded into the closet with me, and we sat facing each other, hugging our knees.
“I know you would never try to make out
with me like that eef you weren’t totally into Geedeon,” she said.
“I had lots of reasons for making out with you,” I said. “I don’t want to get in the way of you and Gid anymore. I swear.”
“I know that you just put me on ATAT because you thought I was pretty,” Pilar said.
This must have been one of the thoughts I didn’t hear.
I was embarrassed. Pilar said, “Don’t be embarrassed. I knew from the beginning.”
“OK,” I said. “So why’d you do it?”
“Because I wanted Geedeon to think I was smart,” Pilar said. “Smart like you.”
That was hilarious. “I always wanted him to think I was pretty like you.”
I snuggled down under my blanket. I smiled. “I feel like we’re at camp, trading secrets in the dark. If we met under other circumstances, do you think we’d have been friends?”
Pilar considered this. “I don’t know,” she said. “That depends on whether you think it’s funny that Devon is such a fat fuck and thinks he’s hot.”
We had to put pillows over our faces.
“I know Geedeon still loves you,” Pilar said when we stopped laughing.
My immediate thought was that she was inside Gid’s head now. “What do you mean?” I said. “What do you mean, you know?”
“I just know,” she said. “Well, and when we were about to have sex, he called me Molly.”
I felt bad for her as only someone who totally understands can. “Maybe it was your name and it just sounded like Molly.”
Pilar smiled, grateful for my feeble attempts to make her feel better. “English may be my second language,” she said, “but Molly and Pilar don’t sound the same.”
It was weird that I really did want to make her feel better. “Look,” I said. “When I was with Gid, he thought about you. Now he’s with you and he thinks about me. It’s not rocket science.”
That’s why I knew I was out of her head for good. Because I really knew I no longer needed to see what made her tick or to feel what it felt like to have Gid look at her. She probably wanted to know what it felt like to have Gid look at me. He was just a person, with eyes—however he looked at us, we just imagined how he was looking.
Gid poked his head in. “Here you are,” he said.
“Are you talking to me, or Pilar?” I said.
Gid seemed to think about this for a second, and then he said, “I’m looking for you, Molly.”
Pilar Benitez-Jones sighed and stood up. “Good enight,” she said.
Now Gideon sat on the floor with me. “Pilar told me to get back together with you. She said that she thinks we’re really in love.”
“What do you think?” I asked.
“I never didn’t love you,” Gid said. “You broke up with me.”
“Because I knew you were into Pilar. You thought about her all the time. Don’t try to tell me that you didn’t.”
“So what?” Gid said. “And I didn’t think about her that much.”
I didn’t want to argue with Gid about how much he thought about Pilar. I was lucky that Pilar had enough of a sixth sense that she knew Gid was thinking about me, so Gid wasn’t wondering how I knew that he had thought about her. Was the problem not really Gid? Was the problem that when you went out with someone, you just wanted their mind all to yourself? Maybe being inside someone’s mind was just a worse version of the general problem of life—we spent so much time trying to figure out what everyone is thinking, and when we find out, we just wish we hadn’t.
Now it seemed like Gid was reading my mind. “Molly, my thinking about you, my thinking about Pilar. That’s going to happen with every guy you ever know, Molly,” he said. “So the question is whether you want it to be me or not.”
I actually smiled. “Is that the only question?”
Gideon shrugged. “Pretty much.”
It wasn’t fair that girls had to live like this. For the rest of my life, whether I was inside someone’s head, whether I was with Gideon or not, it was just going to be this way, whether I liked it or not. Never knowing. Being scared. Wondering if someone really loved you or not, no matter what they said, and even what love meant, if it meant anything at all. I closed my eyes and let myself be sad about this for a minute. Then I opened them and decided, for this instant, to be happy. “Yes,” I said.
“Yes, what?” Gid looked cute and hopeful.
Hopeful is not nothing.
“Let’s go to the chapel. I think we have some unfinished business there.”
Also by Sarah Miller
Inside the Mind of Gideon Rayburn
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE OTHER GIRL. Copyright © 2009 by Sarah Miller. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
Produced by Alloy Entertainment
151 West 26th Street, New York, NY 10001
www.stmartins.com
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Miller, Sarah, 1969–
The other girl: a Midvale Academy novel / Sarah Miller.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: At a fancy New England prep school, Molly tries to break up her ex-boyfriend Gideon’s new relationship with sexy classmate Pilar after Molly finds herself inside the head of Pilar, hearing her innermost thoughts.
ISBN: 978-0-312-33415-4
[1. Exrasensory perception—Fiction. 2. Sex—Fiction. 3. Preparatory schools—Fiction. 4. High schools—Fiction. 5. Schools—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.M6334420t 2009
[Fic]—dc22
2009016676