by Carrie Arcos
It wasn’t that I didn’t know about sex already. Micah and I had been given “the talk” when I was in the seventh grade. Dad started by saying that he knew we already knew about sex and that he didn’t need to get into the particulars, though I hoped he would go into the particulars since I wasn’t too sure what they were. He just wanted to ask us one question.
“Why buy a cow if you can get the milk for free?”
Micah and I looked at each other, then back at Dad.
“You get what I’m saying?”
Micah nodded, and I followed his lead.
“Good. That goes for both of you.”
“If you ever have any questions, you can always come to us,” Mom said. “We just wanted you to know that.”
I wanted to know what cows had to do with sex, but I didn’t say anything. Instead, I asked Micah later, and he told me it had to do with not putting out. I wanted to ask him about what that meant, but didn’t want to show my ignorance. It didn’t take long for me to learn all the coded language for sex. I was an astute listener and observer, and Michelle and I found a very informative site online. By the time I finished the eighth grade, I was up to speed on sexual innuendo and metaphors. Besides, there wasn’t a day of school that passed without hearing some joke or seeing some public display of tongue.
But if I were going to give credit where it’s due, I’d have to go back to the second grade and Greg Chase—the boy who told me that Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy weren’t real. I remember being so upset that I called him a liar in class. I went home and asked my mom if what he’d said was true. She told me that it wasn’t. Santa Claus was real. The Tooth Fairy would come in the middle of the night and leave me money under my pillow in exchange for my teeth. And the Easter Bunny was the one who hid eggs for me to find. I was very relieved.
The next day I went back to class and confronted Greg, this time with the “my mom says” ammunition. Instead of refuting my mom, he changed the subject and told me where babies came from and what the dads did to the moms. I was shocked. My mom had always told us the stork story.
After school, I asked my mom about the babies. She told me that Greg was telling the truth and that she was sorry she had lied to me. She reluctantly told me the truth about Santa and the others.
“Does Micah know about Santa?” I asked.
“No. Do you think you can keep a secret?”
I said I could and suddenly felt very important, that she would ask that of me. I never told Micah. We set out cookies and milk for Santa all the way through junior high, though I think Micah had it all figured out by then.
By the time Keith and I were dating, I was a long way past believing in Santa and had learned that mystery and magic were reserved for very few things, including sex. There was this one night when Keith and I were at his house and his mom wasn’t home. We were upstairs in his room, and I didn’t stop it where I usually did. Keith kind of pulled away and looked at me like, “Are you sure?”
I closed my eyes and kissed him. It was over pretty quickly, and not as big a deal as I had thought it would be, which made me kind of sad. I didn’t want Keith to know, though, so I smiled and acted like I was happy.
Big mistake.
Fast-forward to me dealing with Micah and drugs and rehab and finding out that Keith slept with Marcie, which I called the Marcie Armstrong Incident. Naming it had a way of providing distance. Keith told me he was sorry and promised he wouldn’t do it again. I wanted to believe him, so I did. Another big mistake. After the Charis Incident, I told him it was over. I had some amount of self-respect.
The only person who knew about both Incidents was Michelle. Michelle had sworn to God that she wouldn’t tell, which was huge for her. I suppose God knew already, and I was pretty certain he wouldn’t be telling anyone. Micah and I were barely speaking to each other, so he had no clue. I just wanted it all to go away, to move on.
Turned out that Keith didn’t feel the same. After his “accident” on CJ’s steps, Keith went online, making our breakup instant public knowledge. In his manifesto, Keith spelled out how I came on to him, how I wasn’t a good lay, how I was damaged goods, how he was glad to be rid of me, and how he was now open for business. He said it a bit differently, but that was the gist of it. Even though he lied, there was some truth to what he wrote—we did have sex. But he made it sound as if I slept around. In a million years, even after all the cheating he did, I would never have said those things about him.
Afterward, I felt eyes on me everywhere I went. I might have imagined it, but this was high school; that was how things usually went down. By the end of that first day back at school after the party, I felt sick, violated even. Girls looked at me with both shame and pity. A few even whispered, “I can’t believe Keith did that,” as I passed them between classes. It should have made me feel better, that not everyone would believe him, but it didn’t. There was no use trying to counter Keith’s account because he’d spoken first. Anything I said would just be interpreted as my trying to save face.
I confronted Keith in the parking lot after school, not caring who saw.
“Why?” I asked, walking up to him.
He leaned back against the hood of his car, shirtless. A small butterfly bandage covered what had been an open gash only two days before. He shrugged. “I was pissed.”
“That’s it?” I avoided looking at his familiar naked chest, and tried to find his eyes through the sunglasses he wore.
“You broke my heart. You really did.” He took a breath and pushed himself off the car. “But I’ve got to move on, you know?” He reached into the open side window and took out a T-shirt. “Look, it’ll blow over. If you want, I’ll issue an apology or something.”
“It’ll blow over? It’s out there.” I made a motion with my hands that embraced the sky. “My reputation is online, it’ll never be over.” Once I said the words, I knew them to be true. I would be in college, and everyone here would still think of me as that girl who was easy. It would follow me everywhere. There would be no taking it back.
“Everyone knows people break up and get mad and say things they don’t mean. God, Rach. You’re so serious all the time.”
“All that matters is perception.” It’s why my parents didn’t see Micah for who he was becoming, and why I didn’t see Keith for who he was.
A guy called to Keith from the gym building a few feet away.
“It was your idea to break up. But whatever, we can still be friends, all right?” He smiled his smile that won me in the first place.
“No, we’re not friends. I don’t think we ever were. Friends don’t screw each other over.” I turned and walked away.
I waited until Micah had come home from rehab to tell my parents that Keith wouldn’t be around anymore, that we had broken up. Mom said it was such a shame. Dad asked if I shouldn’t think about trying to get back together with him. I probably should have told them everything, but they didn’t seem to have enough emotional energy to deal with anything more. I wanted to be mad at them, but I couldn’t. From their perspective Keith was gold, compared to Micah.
After telling them, I walked down the hall toward Micah’s room, which stood at the top of the stairs. His face poked out of the small wedge between the door and the frame as I passed. He looked at me.
“What?” I said with a bit of a bite.
“He’s an asshole,” he said, then closed the door.
Takes one to know one, I thought.
Chapter Nine
We didn’t have much time left on the parking meter, so Tyler thought we should get off the beach and walk up the opposite side of the street that we had come down. The wall of the boardwalk was busier now. Some people had the tourist look to them, with cameras at their waists. We avoided them and went directly to the ones who mattered.
We showed Micah’s picture to two boys, both with long, beautiful blond hair.
“What’d he do?” the younger one asked me. His foot rested on
his board, scraping it back and forth on the concrete.
“Nothing, we’re just looking for him,” I said.
“People usually do something to have someone come after them,” he said boldly, and stared at me.
“We’re not ‘after him.’ We just want to make sure he’s okay. Look, do you know him or not?” My hands held my hips, and I tried giving them my most serious look.
“He’s probably running from her,” the other kid said, and they both laughed.
Before I could say something clever, they jumped on their boards and skated away. Their hair flew behind them as their wheels ground hard on the asphalt.
“Keep moving,” Tyler said.
“They didn’t have to be jerks about it.”
“Whatever. They’re just in junior high.”
“Were you such a brat in junior high?”
“I don’t know.” Tyler smiled like he knew something. “You tell me.”
I couldn’t remember much of him from back then. “It’s not like I hung out with Micah’s friends.”
“Yeah, you were kind of the bratty little sister.”
“We’re in the same grade. What, you’re like a couple of months older?”
“Four.”
“We’re practically the same age.” I was impressed, however, that he knew my birthday was in September. Only a few more weeks and I’d be seventeen.
“I’m still older,” he said.
We entered a few of the stores: a used music shop, a surf place, a restaurant. No one had seen Micah, or if they had, they weren’t saying anything.
At Galactic Comics, Tyler wanted to look around a little bit. The store smelled musty and felt claustrophobic, with tons of comics and gifts jammed inside. I picked up a Wonder Woman doll. Tyler grabbed Wolverine and karate-chopped her arm.
“Hey!” I made Wonder Woman take a swing, but she missed. “In real life, she’d totally kick Wolverine’s butt!”
Tyler looked at me skeptically.
“Yeah, she’d lure him in with her hotness and that lasso thing.”
“The lasso of truth?” His raised his left eyebrow at me.
“Whatever. She looks cooler. I love her red boots.” I always wanted a pair of tall boots, but didn’t have enough leg.
“But these yellow and black tights,” he said, referring to Wolverine’s clothes. “They’re classic.” He left me for another section.
I picked up a book with orange and black dots on the cover, and felt the smooth paper. I had a secret. Most of the time I chose books based on their covers. I knew I wasn’t supposed to. Our librarian at school gave us the same spiel every year when our English class visited the library to learn the code of conduct and see all that the library had to offer. It was boring, but we looked forward to going because it meant a free period.
The librarian would tell us, “Now, you can’t judge a book by its cover,” and then she’d laugh. Our teacher, it didn’t matter who, would always chuckle along with her, like it was some kind of lame insider teacher/librarian joke. I supposed it was true. Sometimes the cover didn’t have anything to do with what was inside the book. But I didn’t care. A cover helped set the mood.
My selection process was as follows: find a book with a cool cover, open it, read the first sentence. If I liked the first sentence, I’d flip to the middle and read a paragraph. If I liked that, I’d read the last sentence of the book. That’s what usually sold me. I liked knowing where a story was going. And I loved happy endings. If the ending seemed overly sad and depressing, I passed.
Action heroes and women with very large breasts dominated the comics on the shelves. I recognized many of the popular superheroes. A whole section was reserved for Manga. This guy in one of my classes was obsessed with Manga. He had a new one practically every week. I couldn’t really get into them because each one felt the same.
I looked at the cover of the book Tyler had in his hand. The character’s face was drawn in charcoal and in shadow except for the whites of his eyes, drawing me in instantly.
“You read a lot of these?” I asked Tyler.
“Some. It’s hard to keep up with so many coming out.”
I pulled out a bright yellow one I recognized.
“A classic,” Tyler said.
I shrugged. “I didn’t get it.”
“You read it?” Tyler sounded impressed.
“No. Saw the movie.”
“Movies never do books justice.”
I thought the same thing. Even with those Harry Potter movies. The cast was great and the special effects were good, but the books were always better.
“I didn’t understand why the blue guy always had to be naked.” I blushed a little. Tyler laughed. “Just because he’s a mass of energy or whatever doesn’t mean he can’t cover it up sometimes.”
I picked out another one because it depicted this beautiful woman with long dark hair blowing in the wind. I opened it to a random page and blushed again at the first image. Even in comics, people had sex.
“What’s that?” Tyler asked.
“Nothing.” I closed the book quickly. “When’d you get into comic books, or graphic novels or whatever they’re called?”
“My dad. He’s got this huge collection from when he was a kid.” He put the book back and grabbed another one before revealing, “I’ve kind of got something in the works.”
“Really?” I had no idea Tyler wrote comics. It made me wonder what else I didn’t know about him.
“Nothing definitive. Just some storyboarding. Kind of an ancient-future thing.”
“Like science fiction?”
“Sort of. More like Knights of the Round Table meets Blade Runner.”
“So, something like this?” I picked up a Dark Tower book.
“Not really, but that series is awesome.”
I flipped through some pages.
“Can I help you two find something?” the clerk called to us from where he sat in the front by the cash register.
“Just looking,” Tyler said.
“What about this one?” I picked out another one I sort of recognized.
“Buffy the Vampire Slayer?” He laughed.
“Hey, don’t knock Buffy. She’s cool.” Last year I was home sick from school, and I watched a couple of seasons online. Buffy and her hilarious Scooby gang helped me get through the flu. I loved how she didn’t have it all together, but she still destroyed the Big Bad and saved the world, every time.
“Not really my style.”
“What is your style?” I put Buffy back on the shelf.
“I’ll show you sometime.”
His promise lingered between us a moment before we left the store.
* * *
Next, we stopped at a beach clothing shop.
“Where’s the bathroom?” Tyler asked the girl at the front counter.
The clerk pointed to the back of the store and Tyler followed his direction.
I approached the counter. It was getting both easier and harder to ask if anyone had seen Micah, easier because I had done it already, harder because each time someone shook his head, the discouragement stirred up more disappointment in my stomach.
“I was wondering if you’ve seen someone.” I gave her the picture of my brother.
She looked at it briefly. “No.” She returned the photo and continued reading her Vogue.
“Thank you.” I put the photo back in my pocket.
Tyler returned from the bathroom with his Mao cap pulled low. He smiled encouragingly in my direction and I shook my head.
“My turn,” I said, and headed to the bathroom.
The fluorescent lighting revealed more than I wanted to see in the mirror. My eyes looked tired. I let my brown hair down, tussled it a bit, and applied some lip gloss. I forced a smile. Better, though I didn’t know why I cared. There was no one I needed to impress. Since it was beginning to warm up, I took off my hoodie and stuffed it into my bag. I turned to see the back of me in the mirror and decide
d I was more than acceptable. I looked cute.
* * *
“Let’s try the hostel and then head over to the car,” Tyler said when we were on the sidewalk again.
“Where’s the hostel?”
He pointed up the street to a dirty white-and-blue building with a small wraparound porch. A college-aged girl with brown pigtails sat outside in a long flowered dress and white peasant shirt. She was totally engrossed in whatever she was reading. Her legs dangled off the side of the porch railing. I kind of wished I could be doing the same thing.
On the front steps, a young man sat writing in a red notebook.
“Hey, man,” Tyler said.
“Hey,” he said, not looking up from his drawing.
“Want to know if you’ve seen someone.” I held out the picture.
“No,” he said, after looking at Micah, “but I just got here yesterday.” He had some kind of accent, like he was from Europe or something. “You could try checking inside, but I don’t know how much help they’ll be. Most people keep to themselves.”
The man at the front desk told us he hadn’t seen Micah.
“The OB International Hostel isn’t for street kids,” he said. “You have to have a passport to stay here.”
“Micah’s not a street kid,” I said. “He’s—”
The guy didn’t let me finish. “A runaway? You may have better luck with one of the homeless shelters in the area.” He wrote down a couple of places and phone numbers on a yellow sticky sheet and handed it to me.
The girl reading outside didn’t know Micah either. I was beginning to feel as if the trip had been pointless. The odds of finding Micah were, well, I didn’t know. But if I were a betting person, I wouldn’t even wager it. There were more people walking around than when we had first arrived, but I already knew that asking any of them would get us nowhere.
“You hungry?” Tyler asked me.
“I could eat,” I said.
“It’s been almost two hours. Let’s move your car and get lunch.”
* * *
We started toward the car and practically stumbled upon two men sitting on a blanket on the sidewalk. The older of the two had long gray hair tied back in a ponytail, and bony arms hanging out of a tank top that looked a couple of sizes too big for him. His companion was the opposite: heavy with clothes that didn’t cover the skin peeking out of his shirt. These guys were authentic. In one morning I had become an expert in human profiling.