by Nina Beck
Each of them answers the test with the exact same answers (you’d think they’d at least try to make it look like they weren’t cheating)…but I guess it would’ve been fine if they had all gotten 100’s. A miracle, yes, but they would’ve gotten away with it—if they had been taking the English FINAL and not the English midterm that Andy Brince stole from the drawer.
Andy Brince is an idiot.
They all had to make up the test, but nobody got expelled, not even Andy Brince. It’s hard to expel an entire team without their parents (or the alumni) complaining. Go, Cougars!
HOW TO SEDUCE A DUMB JOCK
Hi, boys,” I say as I walk up to the group.
The other guys say hey, but I smile directly at Timothy and he looks a little flustered.
RULE I: MAKE EYE CONTACT EARLY AND OFTEN.
“Do you boys mind if I steal Tim here for a minute? I have something I want to talk to him about.” The guys shrug and one guy does that weird eyebrow waggle at him, like he’s implying something—but when I look at him, he drops the look and waits for me to yell at him. Instead I just smile. Timothy falls in behind me and I look over and see Marley staring at him and me, walking out of the room together. If she was smart, she’d get over here right now and cut us off.
But Marley’s an idiot.
I pull Timothy into the hallway, toward the bathroom and probably the bedrooms. He seems really uncomfortable so I look over my shoulder and smile at him. He looks confused. Probably because I’ve never said more than a word to him.
We’re standing farther down in the hall, a spot where we’re out of the direct line of vision of the rest of the party, but anyone could still come down the hall and see us together (and run and tell Marley). The walls are a strange green color and are covered with family photos that show Amanda Something and the Something Dog at various stages of childhood. Amanda Something used to be a really cute kid. Too bad she’s a bitch now.
“So, eh…(add, like, five minutes of stuttering in here)…I hear, like, you’re um, not, like, going on the, um, like, trip.” Tim smiles at the end of his sentence like he just peed for the first time in the big boy’s toilet and for a second I wonder if I should set him up with Marley and that would be punishment enough.
RULE 2: MAKE HIM FEEL SMART AND IMPORTANT. EVEN IF HE’S NOT. ESPECIALLY IF HE’S NOT.
“Yeah, it’s a bummer,” I say, standing close to him. “But when your parents want to drag you to Scotland, what are you going to do?”
He nods. “Yeah, that sucks.”
“Anyway, I’m really disappointed because I wanted us to get to know each other better.”
“What? Really? What?”
He looks charmingly confused and so I smile. I don’t want to crush him. I just want to kiss him. Marley and I have this unspoken rule that if one of us kisses a guy, the other will consider him tainted by all the evil in the world and not touch him with a ten-foot pole. She kissed Marc Jennings in the sixth grade and when I had to kiss him during Spin the Bottle a few weeks later, I thought I was going to vomit.
I pull Tim into a small library off the hallway, closing the door behind us. I couldn’t do this in front of all those small, staring Amanda Somethings. Her little Something Dog was giving me the willies.
“You know I think you’re really cute, right?”
RULE 3: WHEN ALL ELSE FAILS, BE OBVIOUS.
He nods enthusiastically for a second, then stops.
“Um…” he says.
RULE 4: REALLY, REALLY OBVIOUS.
“Look, I’m kinda nervous, you know. I don’t know if you find me attractive at all…” I pause.
“Actually, I think you’re really cute.” He shoots me a shy smile. I hate being called cute.
“Really?” I gush.
“Yeah, I mean, I always thought so,” he says, warming to his chosen subject. “I like big girls.” He coughs once and looks up at me from behind his too-long lashes. Wait, correction. He was looking down my top.
I say: “Um…”
Because that’s all I could think of…I like big girls? I’m not sure if that was a compliment or if I should be offended. This isn’t in the rule book.
Timothy is the product of too much upper-class inbreeding. When too many dumb rich kids drink too much with other dumb rich kids, go yachting, and kiss one another on the cheeks (or better yet, on the air by their cheeks), this is the sort of child they produce. If nothing else, I’m against a class system for this very reason.
But I am still standing there in shocked silence.
He stands up and put his hands on my shoulders. I am in the perfect position to knee him in the groin. Instead I let him kiss me.
RULE 5: PRETEND TO BE INTO IT.
I might have flubbed this one. Here is the transcript of my brain while I let Marley’s crush kiss me:
He was just drinking Heineken. Who drinks Heineken? I can’t breathe when he covers my mouth that way. I wonder if I tilt my head if I could breathe better. This is annoying. Someone should tell him to control his saliva glands when he kisses. Ew, I think I just swallowed his spit. Ew. I wonder what Marley will say when—
And then he presses against me and his hands begin kneading my bazongas, hard, and I freak out.
“Um, yeah,” I say, backing away from him, pulling his hands out from under my shirt. Slippery little sucker. He is smiling. I am wiping my mouth with my fingertips (I want to wipe it on my shirt, spit a little, get some mouthwash…).
“Well, this is…was…um, great. I’ll talk to you later,” I say, trying to think quickly.
He just sits there and smiles in a skeevy way and my stomach flips over.
“Um. Yeah,” I say, and I turn around and run from the room.
When I get back out to the party, Marley is gone.
I walk outside. I need some cool air. I feel gross. Really gross. I wonder what Marley thinks. I wonder what Timothy is thinking. It almost doesn’t matter because all I can picture is that smile that makes me want to scratch his face off. I’m going to go home and boil my bra. No, I’ll throw it in the fireplace. Which doesn’t make any sense. I wanted him to kiss me. I wanted to kiss him. Or, at the very least, I wanted Marley to think that we kissed. Why do I feel so gross?
I get outside Amanda Whatever’s brownstone and D’s standing there with some guy in a leather bomber jacket—dude, it’s spring—smoking a cigarette. He sees my face and nods at the other guy, cutting him off midsentence. The other guy, some kid I don’t know, looks perplexed and then looks over at me and just nods and goes back inside. Sometimes I forget that guys have their own non-word-based communication like girls do. Girls are just better at it.
When the guy is gone, D just shakes his head at me.
“I’m not sure if I love you for being completely devoid of all sense of morality or if I should be appalled by your behavior.”
I almost burst into tears, the second time in one night. I must be PMSing. Instead I flash him a grin, twirl around, and curtsy deeply so I can blink back my tears without him seeing.
“I’m sure it wouldn’t matter either way,” I snap, before walking to the curb to look up and down the street for a cab. It’s warm; a lot of people are out tonight.
We’re somewhere in the Village and I’m surprised we even came this far downtown for a party, but I must admit that Amanda Something has a pretty nice place, for the neighborhood. There is a pretty little café on the corner that has a few people standing outside of it, smoking, kissing, laughing. Cars are parked on the side of the street, and on the other side of the street a couple is strolling really slowly toward some destination that they obviously don’t want to reach.
“Everything OK?” D asks.
I feel him staring at the back of my head and for a minute I want to tell him everything. How I hate Marley. How I really hate Timothy. And how he’s the only one who cares about me and how I love him and that…
“Yeah, of course,” I say. “Want to share a cab?”
I se
nd messages with my eyes, asking him to come with me. Or, at the very least, to ask me what is wrong. One more time and I’ll confess everything.
“I don’t think so,” he says. “Marley is still inside.”
“So?”
“Well,” he says as I turn around to face him. “She might be needing some…” He smiles, shrugs. I think I just stopped breathing. Again.
“And I’m the one devoid of all sense of morality?”
He smiles at me behind a brush of long black bangs that falls over his eyes. Women are always falling for that smile. The problem with D is that he looks at you like you’re different. Like you’re worth smiling with, like you’re the first and last person he’ll ever want to smile at.
It’s a lie. He smiles at me like that now, and he’s my best friend—nothing more—and he’s about to go in and make out with Marley Diggons, and give her the same smile, when he should know that it’s going to kill me to think of them together.
But it’s not like I can say that. I have absolutely no place to say who he can and cannot make out with. I’m his best friend. I’m the only girl he spends any time with, I’m different—he says. But he’s not interested in me that way. If I start making demands, well, I might just lose my best friend too.
“Go get her, tiger,” I say, giving him a nudge back toward the front door. “Just remember what happened with Benji.” I give him a pointed look at his crotch and he pretends to cringe and cover his privates, limping back toward the door.
“Will I talk to you before I go?”
“Most definitely. When are you leaving?”
“Tomorrow morning, ten A.M.”
“Most definitely not. Couldn’t they pack you off at a decent hour?”
He walks over to me and gives me a kiss and a hug. I feel it to my bones but I push away first. He quirks his head at me and then laughs. He’s used to me pushing him away. He thinks I’m prickly, that I don’t like people touching me. But the truth is I want him. He smells good. I feel like if I don’t push away first, I won’t be able to push away at all. I’d hold on too long, and especially tonight, it just feels different. I don’t want to ruin it. I push away.
I’m still wondering what it would be like to kiss D.
“Go. I’m sure Marley’s crying in her martini by now.”
“What kind of gentleman would I be if I didn’t save a fair maiden from a watered-down martini?”
I hate Marley Diggons.
“Good night, darling. Have fun in upstate New York.”
I shush him and get into the cab. I hate Marley Diggons with every essence of my being. I hope her birth control mixes badly with her antidepressants. I hope her hairdresser has a seizure while she’s doing her six-week trim and cuts a chunk off the back of her head. I hope her roots grow out abnormally fast. I hope she gets nail fungus…
I turn and watch Michael standing half in and half out of the door, waving down the street at me. I wave back.
I hope…that she has already left or is hooking up with someone else.
I.M. CONVERSATION, FOUR A.M. I SHOULD BE SLEEPING. I’m WAITING UP FOR D.
RILEDUP:…and then I just left.
THEBIGUN17: Just like that? You didn’t say anything to him?
RILEDUP: He should’ve known.
THEBIGUN17: Yeah, cause guys are natural mind readers. We always know when chicks are freaking about something, that’s why we’re such good communicators. You should give this guy a break and tell him how you feel.
RILEDUP: You’re like a mind reader.
THEBIGUN17: No, I’m not.
RILEDUP: Yeah, you always know the right thing to say to me. And we’ve never even met. It’s like, I can really be honest with you in a way I can’t be with anyone else.
THEBIGUN17: That’s just because we’ve never met.
RILEDUP: I don’t know, I think we’d be just as good friends in person. I mean, we’ve been talking for almost four months now and I feel like you know more about me than some of my best friends.
THEBIGUN17: Well, maybe one day we’ll test that theory out.
RILEDUP: Oh! D’s calling. I GG. THX for listening to me whine!
THEBIGUN17: No prob. Later.
THE EPISODE WHERE I MAKE OUT WITH D (NOT TO RUIN THE ENDING OR ANYTHING)
I text D around four and he calls me back.
“So did you rescue the fair maiden from a watered-down martini?”
“Didn’t find her,” he says and for a second I feel somewhat elated.
“Wow, so you went home alone for once?”
He just laughs. “I didn’t say that, I just said I didn’t go home with Marley.”
“You’re such a slut.”
“Proudly so,” he slurs into the phone. I smile.
“Are you drunk?”
“Proudly so.”
I laugh into the phone. “Coming over?” I ask. D is already waiting downstairs by the time I get there. Of course, it had taken me twenty minutes just to make my way downstairs. I had to brush my teeth, do my hair, pull on my ass-jeans (the ones that make my ass look awesome), brush on just enough makeup to make it look like I didn’t have any makeup but was still, you know, in color. Add a few spritzes of body spray. Flip my hair upside down, give it a good shake and then flip it right side up again, and walk down the front steps, where he sits smoking a cigarette.
“Hey,” he says, giving me a glance. He holds out his cigarette to me, which I shake off.
“Why are you up?” I ask.
“Why are you up?” he asks back.
“Just thinking about stuff,” I say.
He nods and flicks some ashes onto the ground. He has his elbows on his knees and is looking out at the street and the occasional car that drives past. “You know you’re my best friend, right?”
I sigh. I don’t want to get into the whole affirmation-of-friendship thing. I want to shake him and scream, I can love you better than any other person on the face of the planet, even when you’re being an egocentric jerk!
“Why are you sighing?” he asks, turning to look at me. He looks seriously upset.
“You’re really drunk,” I say. “I don’t want to do the relationship-analysis thing tonight.”
“Like we do it all the time.”
“We do,” I say. “I mean, maybe not together, but I do a lot of relationship analysis.”
He looks at me, curious for a moment, and then takes another drag off of his cigarette.
“Is that so?” he finally asks.
“Yes.” I take the cigarette from him, which is, like, all ash by now and flick it onto the sidewalk. He takes out another and lights it.
“What is it that you analyze?” he asks.
“Why you don’t like me.”
“Huh?”
Holy shit, did I just say that aloud?
“Of course I like you, you’re my best friend,” he says, and pushes me slightly with the side of his body. I don’t rock over and then rock back into him, like I usually do. This is like Eskimo kisses for friends. This is the “are we cool?” motion. I sit straight and don’t sway.
“You know I’m mostly, sort of in love with you,” I say softly.
He doesn’t say anything for a minute, he sighs, he coughs, he looks around, hoping for a bomb to fall from the sky in order to keep him from having to answer this question.
“Yeah,” he says, finally.
“And you don’t love me.”
“You’re wrong,” he says. “I love you.”
I laugh, because even though I know what he’s saying—it’s a rejection—it doesn’t matter tonight. Which is weird, and tomorrow I’m sure he’ll still remember all of this despite my hope that it’ll all disappear in a drunken, smoky haze.
“Riley, look at me,” he says, and I turn to face him. “I do love you. I mean, who was the only person I could talk to about the stuff with my parents? Who do I spend all my time with? Who do I go see at four A.M. when I can’t sleep? I love you—I just don’t lov
e you that way.”
“I get it.” But I don’t. I mean, he’s never even kissed me…how can he be sure that he doesn’t want me if he hasn’t even tried? We obviously get along really well. We obviously love each other as friends—doesn’t it just make sense that if all that is there, that we should try this other thing too?
“Maybe…”
“Forget it, D, this is silly,” I say, and I can feel myself starting to get all emotional again. I feel like it’s all just happening at once, and it’s late and I feel like the darkness is a shield and I can say anything and I’m not embarrassed. I think back to how much alcohol I consumed earlier. Not enough. “Do you ever think about kissing me?”
“Yes,” he says. His eyes stay out on the road. My eyes are bugging out. YES? He says yes and doesn’t feel the need to follow up? Pardonnez-moi? Maybe if I wait him out, he’ll say something.
He finishes his cigarette and tosses it into the street.
“Well, good night. Have a great trip,” he says, standing up and wiping his hands on the sides of his jeans.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I say.
“What?” he says, a bemused expression on his face.
“You can’t say something like that and then just leave.”
“I can’t?” he says, smiling.
“No, you can’t,” I say. I feel like we’re having a moment here. This is the moment that I’ve been building up to; this is the moment in every eighties teen movie where we’d kiss, then he’d fall madly in love with me and stand on my stoop with a boom box over his head blasting my favorite song that expressed perfectly exactly how he felt about me, which, of course, would be him being as in love with me as I was with him. That’s why, of course, I flubbed it. “Kiss me before it’s too late.”