How to Break a Boy

by Laurie Devore

  Adrienne giggles. “And now we know the real Whit, don’t we? Smoking pot, cheating on tests, and dating slutty cheerleaders.” Then she shoves me like it’s all some big joke.

  You could hear a pin drop in the room.

  “Shut up, Adrienne,” Ethan mutters. I glance at Whit to see his fist clenched at his side. He doesn’t take the bait, though. He’s silent.

  “I could tell you stories about O that would make your blood curdle, couldn’t I, sweetie?” She turns to me. “But best friends keep each other’s secrets, even if they’ve been bad, bad girls to their cute little boyfriends.”

  My heart is pounding. I can’t even feel anger through the panic. She could tell Whit anything. Not now, please.

  “Funny how it all happened, huh?” she goes on. “O dumping Ethan for Whit and now Whit in all this trouble. Bad influences, right? Remember, Whit, study time has to come before sexy time.”

  “Hilarious,” Whit finally says.

  “Let’s play a drinking game,” Cason cuts in nervously.

  Sheila shoves a shot glass into Adrienne’s hand. Adrienne holds it up to her mouth, licking her lips and eyeing the room as if it were all one big juicy snack for her. “Never have I ever…” She looks straight at Whit. “Been a low-rent version of my brother.” She laughs.

  Whit’s jaw stiffens. Cason sends Adrienne a hard look before turning to Whit and squeezing his shoulder. “She’s joking. Lighten up.” Whit takes the shot like the good little boy he is. For once, I wish he’d stop.

  I want so badly to say something, but I’m afraid of what her reply might be. I can’t show my hand.

  “Your turn, Ethan.” Adrienne laughs as she speaks, and a thousand unsaid words hang in my throat. She’s having the time of her life.

  “I’m not playing,” he tells her.

  “Why? Because of them?” She gestures at Whit and me.

  Ethan shakes his head. Calm, cool. “Leave it alone.” But his voice is all nervous edges.

  “Oh, come on!” Adrienne claps her hands together, her hair spilling over onto her shoulders. Joy has overtaken her, lighting her up. She finds her joy where she makes other people hurt. “Let’s call it what it is. This whole thing is to make you jealous.”

  The light leaves and the dark shines through.

  Ethan’s eyes meet mine. I’ve known him long enough to know his expression is sorry, but he brought her here. He knew what would happen, and I’m tired of his innocent game. I try again: “Listen, Ade—”

  “I’ll go,” Whit says over me, pouring another shot a little haphazardly. I watch him, clear and bright, everything beyond him just a little hazy, pieces of colors blending together. He and Adrienne lock eyes. “Never have I ever slept with my best friend’s boyfriend and then tried to make her feel like shit about it.”

  Adrienne laughs as she takes a drink, a dark brown Jack Daniel’s tear running down her neck, wet and long. Adrienne turns to me. “You hear your boy, O? You gonna let him talk to me like that? Tell him whose fault it is all this happened.”

  I shove Whit out of the way and get face-to-face with Adrienne. “Don’t talk to her like that, Whit,” I say, directly in front of her.

  “Thank you,” she says, taking her time to enunciate each word.

  “I’m leaving. I need to be alone, okay? Please don’t follow me,” I tell her.

  “Fine,” she says through a fake-saccharine smile.

  I flee the room; Whit is on my heels.

  I sail down a long maroon hallway and take a hard left, finding myself in another immaculately clean hallway. I keep going until I spot a closet door and jerk it open, sliding inside and slamming the door in Whit’s apologetic face.

  No sound comes from the other side of the door for a moment. Outside, I imagine him having one of those fabled silent debates with himself.

  Then the door opens, and I fall into him, mouth first, attempting to knock him over with nothing but the sheer force of my lips on his. As I pull him into the closet, I reach around him to grab the doorknob and slam it shut.

  I tug at his hair as my tongue slides into his mouth, really believing for a moment I can taste him from the inside out. Believing that this thing might be real. I breathe every part of him into me. A mop tips over onto the floor and crashes somewhere far away.

  I press myself against him, moving ever closer, shoving him against the hard metal of the closet shelving, trying to do what I’m good at. Being a slutty cheerleader.

  He’s letting me, I think. Because I am so damn good at this.

  I yank at his button-down shirt with both hands, pulling it loose from his slacks, my fingernails sliding under to rake the skin on his lower abdomen. He tilts his head at just the right angle then, to bring our mouths closer together, as if that were even possible. He likes me right now. He likes me a lot.

  I fumble my dress out of the way and straddle one of his long legs with mine, and I can feel him. His words can lie to me all day long, but his body can’t—he wants this as much as I do. I move my hips, hard, just to check, and grab the back of his head again. This is the moment I love. Right before he grabs me back and we’re panting and he’s trying to bring every part of me closer to him and there’s nothing but damp skin and adrenaline.

  Oh. My. God. This is so good.

  It’s like I always knew. From that moment in the classroom, I knew I had to get something from him. I had to be something to him. I decide to do it then—I reach down and start loosening the buckle of his belt, unbuttoning his pants.

  He pushes me back.

  Panting, he asks, “What”—pant, pant—“are you doing?”

  My mind’s just run a marathon without my body. I glance quickly around the room, taking in the dim outlines of metal shelves and cleaning supplies, the faint Clorox smell. “Doing what feels good.” The words come out easy. Soft. I wrap the collar of his shirt in my fist, clutching it tight to pull him back into me. “Kiss me.”

  Instead, he removes my hand, pulling farther away, and stands there in front of me all disheveled with his belt unbuckled. “No.” It hangs there between us. “I’m not doing this, Olivia.”

  He’s so high and fucking mighty—he was just doing it. I start to turn to leave, and he grabs my arm. “You aren’t even going to ask why?” he says.

  Because I don’t care. I repeat silently: I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care.

  “Fine. I’ll tell you anyway. Because you don’t want to have sex with me.”

  I roll my eyes. “Yes, I did. That’s what I was trying—”

  “You can’t just use sex to forget all your problems. I’m not going to be a part of it.” He runs his hand through his hair, attempting to swoop it back into place.

  “Oh, what? Now you’re going to tell me you won’t have sex with me so you can feel important and noble or something?” I spit the words out. Strands of hair stick out from my braid and my dress is all mussed up. The air is heavy and close, and I can only make out bits and pieces of Whit through the darkness. “I hate you.” I grab something off the shelf behind me and throw it against the floor. It’s a plastic bottle so it doesn’t break, but I can hear the angry echo of liquid sloshing around inside. “You just don’t want to sleep with a slut.”

  And then my fucking voice cracks. Suddenly I’m no longer a danger to be near and his forehead is touching mine and we’re close, as if he’d never put any distance between us in the first place. His Adam’s apple bobs up and down several times before he finally starts speaking. “I want you to be okay, but this—this isn’t,” he says. We’re breathing the same air, skin touching, living in this same moment in time where nothing is ever okay. “And I want—this isn’t what you want.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do,” I say. “You’re not my boyfriend.”

  “I’m your fake one.”

  “You’re drunk. Leave me alone.”

  He sighs, shakes his head sadly, and walks out of the closet.

  I lean back against the door
, and the rest of the world leans on top of me.

  38

  TWO AND A HALF MONTHS AGO

  “I’m sorry,” Ethan whispered next to my ear. I was leaning up against the wooden column of the house’s back porch, the wind rolling up tiny waves on the lake behind the house. My arms pulled tight around me, my head against the cool wood. I looked at him.

  “I don’t want you to be sad,” he explained.

  I studied him a moment before turning back to the water. “I know.”

  “Why don’t you want me to know about Ryan? When we met, he was all you talked about.”

  I shrugged. “I guess that’s why.”

  “Why don’t you talk to me?” he asked, and I heard every desperate edge in his voice. The sharp scribble of words written in the air between us.

  I didn’t say anything, which seemed to prove his point. There was a faint noise in the background, a chorus picking up in volume. “Crickets,” I finally said.

  He snorted. Behind me, he scooted closer, leaned down, and rested his chin on my shoulder. “Crickets,” he repeated, and the word reverberated into my shoulder, down my back. “I love you.”

  I shifted my head from leaning into the wood to leaning into the side of his face. Slowly, I turned my entire body until we were kissing and it wasn’t just kissing. It was like an argument with our mouths but so much better. It hurt in the best way.

  “Promise,” I demanded between kisses. “Promise you won’t hurt me.”

  “Yes,” he said, kissing me and kissing me and meaning it, I knew.

  “You won’t change.” I pushed him into the back wall of the house, his skull knocking against the siding.

  “No,” he swore, wincing into my mouth.

  “Please.” I was almost crying.

  He stopped, looked right at me, a fire blazing behind his eyes. “I promise you, Olivia.”

  I kissed him again. Never did notice the phone ringing.

  39

  I’m at the Rough House, like usual. One slice of supreme pizza larger than my head on a bright orange plate. Identical plate across from me.

  Claire leans against the table into her palms. “You know why she’s not here, don’t you?” She taps her fingernails against the table. “What’s going on?” she says.

  I take a pepper off my pizza and a little cheese hangs off it. It burns my mouth when I bite. “She doesn’t like Whit, I guess.” I swirl my finger around the top of my paper cup. “She’s always jealous of the guys I date.”

  Claire steals a glance at the bar. Ellie isn’t there. “Adrienne is jealous of anything that isn’t her. In elementary school, she was jealous when the teacher told us the earth revolved around the sun instead of her. She was jealous when she heard that she needed oxygen to live.” Claire’s eyes flit to the door to be sure Adrienne really isn’t coming. “She said she didn’t need anything. I’m sure she heard it from her mom.” It did sound like something Mrs. Maynard would say. She’d press her overripe lips together and arch her perfect eyebrows, look at you with those too-dark eyes like Adrienne’s, and tell you she didn’t need oxygen or anything else.

  Which is bullshit, given that she needs Mr. Maynard’s money like a fish needs water.

  “Why don’t you do the things we do?” I ask Claire. My pizza is already getting cold. Her face is all inquisitive, scrunched up and cute.

  “What things?”

  “You know,” I tell her, because she does. She sees us every day, plotting, acting. Playing the evil queens of our kingdom, keeping the villagers down. “We like it. We like being the most feared girls at Buckley High.”

  Claire shifts uncomfortably. “Why are you saying this? What happened last night, really?”

  “I don’t think anyone will ever actually be able to love me. I thought Ethan might, but maybe I have this inherent badness inside of me. You aren’t like that. You’re a good person.”

  Claire is quiet for a moment, staring at the table. “I’m kind of tired of your shit, actually,” she tells it, her voice quiet.

  I am speechless. Claire is the sympathetic one in this game we play. She’s the one who grabs us from the edge when we go too far.

  She just pushed me over.

  “I am exactly like you and Adrienne. If I wasn’t, why would everyone at school keep trying to hurt me? Why would I be your best friend? Why would I be so in love with Ellie?” she asks me, the words falling a little bit desperately. “I love people who treat other people like shit, so now I’m getting a taste of it, aren’t I? Nothing less than I deserve.”

  “Claire—”

  “You know Maggie Rogers? She used to play basketball and she transferred schools last year?” she asks me.

  I nod.

  “I kissed her in ninth grade. Like, I just did it because I wanted to, and I’ve always gotten whatever I want, right? And I made her promise not to tell anyone.” She jiggles her foot nervously, even though we’re the only ones here, looking like she either wants to burst wide open or shrivel up on the spot. It never even occurred to me there had been other girls she’d wanted to be with besides Ellie. And I realize in that moment that I never completely understood who Claire was: I thought Claire just liked Ellie in particular because she was so cool and smart and beautiful. I’ve been so ignorant of my own best friend.

  “The next day, she asked me what it meant.” Claire’s face goes from totally heartbroken to expressionless as she says it. “I told her it meant she was a dyke. I hate that word. I hate that word. And of course it wasn’t that. It wasn’t that at all. It’s that she wasn’t good enough for me. She wasn’t cool like you or Adrienne, and it’s not like I’m in love with you or Adrienne, but what would you have thought? Not if I was with a girl. But if I was with Maggie. I couldn’t be with someone like her. I’m Claire Barber, you know? I’m the best cheerleader on the team.” She has this look of disgust on her face, at herself.

  “Yeah, that was wrong, but that doesn’t make you a bad person.”

  “Well, then all of your shit doesn’t make you a bad person, either. You’re not inherently bad. If you were inherently bad, you wouldn’t even know that what you were doing was wrong. You wouldn’t want to make it better.”

  “Then I’d be like Adrienne,” I say, without realizing the words are out in the open.

  Claire’s eyes are wide. “I’m going to pretend you didn’t just say that.” Like speaking against Adrienne is a crime against humanity.

  “Why not?” I ask her. Why do we continue doing this to ourselves?

  “Adrienne is your best friend,” Claire replies, whispering despite the fact no one else is in the restaurant. “And whatever else Adrienne is, you know she loves us like nobody else.”

  “She has a bad way of showing it sometimes,” I say.

  “So do you,” Claire replies. I think back to the texts. Back to everything else. I don’t know how to defend myself.

  “I’m sorry,” I say then.

  “I know.”

  The bell over the front door chimes, and Claire jumps up. Whit’s flip-flops make sticky sounds against the Rough House floor as he enters. His eyes travel around the room and land on me. So I stuff a piece of pizza in my mouth, only realizing a second later that he can’t talk to me from over there.

  “I’ll talk to you later,” Claire whispers to me, and then kind of disappears. Whit slowly approaches the table, and I chew like a dumbass, hoping I’m not blushing from the memory of last night’s tongue assault. I swallow cold cheese. “Hey.”

  He looks more embarrassed than I feel, so I guess that’s good. I get the feeling he wants to ask to sit, so I say it first.

  “Sit.”

  He does.

  “It’s like Buckley High mythology that you guys are here every Sunday. So it’s true,” he tells me.

  I rest my head on my hands. “In the flesh.” I am cool. I am in control. I scoop tomato sauce onto my finger and suck on it. “Adrienne didn’t show, though.” I glance up at him. “Were you looki
ng for me?”

  He shrugs like he doesn’t know what he was doing. “Sort of.”

  “Sort of?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wanting to pick up where we left off?” I point behind the bar. “This place has a really nice broom closet that I think is ripe for a christening.”

  He pretty much dies on the spot.

  I laugh. “I’m kidding.” Even though my insides feel totally jellylike and I am still mostly mortified beyond belief because Whit DuRant of all people didn’t want me. Still.

  I study him. “Are you really as much of a church boy as you seem like you are? It isn’t all a big act? Isn’t that what you people do?”

  His eyebrows arch up into his bangs. “You people?”

  I toss my hair, putting my shoulders back, and try to imitate his haughty posture. “‘I’m Whit DuRant and I’m a fantastic golfer and I’m a super good guy who never thinks about sex or watches porn on my mom’s computer. I’m your parents’ dream come true.’” My hair falls back. “Is that for real?”

  “No. I mean”—he glances around—“I don’t watch porn on my mom’s computer.”

  I cross my legs. That’s not what I was asking.

  “Look, I came to apologize, not to get cross-examined, all right?” he says.

  “Apologize?” My interest is piqued. “For what?”

  “Last night,” he says. “I shouldn’t have—” He blows out a breath and rubs his swooshy bangs nervously to the side and, oh my God, he really is this guy. “Well, you were right. I shouldn’t try to tell you what to do or how you feel. That sucks.”

  I shake my head. “You were right,” I tell him, and I hear something like relief in my own voice. I guess I’m just glad I don’t have to make up another excuse or tell another joke about it. “I was upset about Ethan and Adrienne, and you were there, and—”

  “Don’t worry about it,” he says.

  “Sometimes it’s just nice when someone’s there.” I lean into my hands, thinking of all the things I should apologize for. This probably doesn’t even make the top ten. “I’m sorry that spending time with me has Adrienne after you. It’s not fair.”