by Blake Nelson
My mother told me never to say “bitch” in front of her again. I said I was sorry. Then we all sat there in silence. My poor parents. They didn’t know I wasn’t a virgin anymore or that I could smoke or anything really about my life. They looked so old and pathetic sitting there worrying about Butt Rock, I just felt sorry for them. And the truth was, they were too old to have a teenage daughter. They were already old when they had James and then they had a baby who died and I was an accident and all of this was just extra grief they hadn’t planned on and didn’t deserve.
So our meeting was over. Dad turned on the news and Mom went back in the kitchen and I went into James’s room to look through his books because I needed Sister Carrie for English class. But then I found James’s old Hillside yearbook and I looked at all the people from 1985 and the girls with their New Wave outfits and the boys with no sideburns and their hair sticking up. And I tried to guess which girls were virgins by looking at their faces but I couldn’t really tell. And then I dug through some other stuff and I found a Penthouse magazine and I started looking at it and reading the letters in the front and they were totally about sex. I mean like every detail. So I immediately called Darcy and tried to read them to her but she was getting all weird and not wanting to talk. And it was like she thought I was making fun of her being a virgin but I wasn’t at all, I just wanted to read her the stories but she acted offended and then we hung up.
13
The next day Cybil wore a button-down shirt and preppie shorts and was obviously trying her hardest to avoid any more trouble. At lunch I went with her and Richard and Rebecca Farnhurst to Taco Time. And it was weird because Darcy didn’t want to come and Cybil wasn’t eating and Richard looked perturbed and Rebecca Farnhurst wouldn’t shut up. Rebecca had seen Color Green at Outer Limits last summer and now she was the big expert on the downtown music scene. I ignored her and asked Cybil what happened at home. Cybil said Mrs. Katz called her mom and made this big deal out of it and her mom was pretty pissed. And she gave Cybil this talk about how you had to choose which things in life to take a stand against and that high school dress codes probably weren’t the thing and French class wasn’t either and that you had to save yourself for the real battles. And everybody knew that Cybil’s mom was a big feminist and protested in the sixties and just by the way Cybil said it, it sounded pretty profound and Richard nodded and even Rebecca shut up for a second.
Back at school I noticed Darcy was talking to Wendy Simpson, who had also worked at Sunset Mall over the summer and always hung around with Gary Tisdale, who was the first openly gay person in our class. And I noticed they were both wearing Image stuff, which was supposedly so chic and downtown but was really just suburban. I mean, I liked Image stuff too but I wouldn’t wear all Image from head to toe and I especially wouldn’t wear those little caps like Wendy did because to me it was too cute and too obviously fashion magazine-ish, especially with lipstick to match. Not that I didn’t like Wendy. She seemed okay and she had gone out with a cute freshman boy when she was a sophomore so people knew who she was. And when I saw Darcy by Wendy’s locker I thought I’d go talk to them but as I was walking up Wendy looked at me over Darcy’s shoulder, just the briefest glance and her eyes wouldn’t acknowledge me at all, they looked right through me like I didn’t even exist. And I was so stunned I hesitated and changed direction and pretended like I was going to the drinking fountain. And then Wendy slammed her locker shut and they hurried off down the hall really fast like they were afraid I would follow them.
And then the next day Cybil came running up to me in the hall and she was so excited. She and Richard were playing at Outer Limits on October 9 with Color Green, Pax, and a band called Bender from San Francisco. It was going to be their first show as Sins of Our Fathers and she was so excited and hanging on my arm and bouncing around. And I asked her if she knew what night October 9 was and she said Friday and I said yes but did she know what was happening that night and she didn’t. Which showed how disconnected she was from Hillside because that was the night of Homecoming.
Homecoming was a big deal at Hillside. Obviously. Every year we played Camden, which was our big rival because they were the next suburb over. Freshman year I went with Darcy and afterward there was this huge traffic jam in the parking lot and everyone was screaming and honking and standing on top of cars. And I remembered how shocking it was and how the senior boys were like men with whiskers and deep voices and the senior girls were these beautiful sex goddesses in their tight jeans and sweaters. And then sophomore Homecoming was the beginning of my friendship with Cybil. She was still in her jock phase and playing soccer and no one really knew her except that she was friends with Marjorie, who smoked cigarettes. That year, after the game, we saw Cybil and Marjorie and it was the usual traffic jam and everyone was going to Julie Cavanaugh’s. Marjorie went with Betsy Warren but Cybil didn’t want to because Betsy was drunk. So Cybil rode with us and I sat in back with her and she started talking to me in this super direct way. Like talking about Marjorie and how damaged she was and if she would ever heal. And the weird thing was, she assumed I would understand and she asked me what I thought and I was like, How would I know? But I could tell she wasn’t just putting Marjorie down, she was telling the truth. And I remembered looking over at her in the dark car, the girls in the front singing to the radio, the boys in the other cars hanging out the windows and Cybil was so quiet and watching everyone and smiling at me and then she told me she loved my name, “Andrea Marr;” and how she wished she wasn’t Cybil.
And it was so weird because at that time Cybil gave me the creeps a little bit. Like I liked her but I didn’t want to get too close because she seemed too weird and why was she friends with Marjorie? And also I didn’t like the way she would talk about people, just saying exactly what she thought and naturally you wondered what she would say about you. But now, a year later, it was the reverse. Now I liked her and she was the one who kept me at a distance. And it was so weird because I always thought I would go to all the Homecomings because it was the one big event that everyone went to all four years. And now Cybil’s band was playing and of course I would go to Outer Limits but it sort of stung me somehow, like something was slowly going wrong with my life and I couldn’t stop it. Like maybe Mrs. Katz was right, maybe I was going astray and getting in with the wrong people.
Then Rebecca Farnhurst called me. She wanted to go see Sins of Our Fathers and I asked her why she wasn’t going to Homecoming and she said it was stupid and she was getting into culture now like reading and seeing bands, and football was so violent and immature and did she think we’d miss any parties? I didn’t know. But she didn’t care about Homecoming parties anyway because they were just a bunch of drunken idiots, and Outer Limits was so much more interesting because there were people from every high school and older people and cute boys and everyone was creative and she loved the bands and how everybody supported each other and had I ever seen Color Green? She knew I hadn’t. So she explained how Color Green was her ideal of what boys should be because they weren’t macho but they also weren’t acting gay, not that she didn’t like gay guys but she didn’t like how everyone was acting gay now just to be cool. I was like, “Everyone is acting gay?” But she meant guys downtown because of course Hillside was so stupid and sexist unlike the guys in Color Green, who were really powerful in their music and not oppressing women and against pollution and censorship. And then she said how she was totally behind Cybil’s right to free speech about Butt Rock, and how Mrs. Renault used to hassle her when she took French and what language was I taking? Spanish. And that Luke of Color Green was probably the coolest boy she had ever seen and had I met any of them? I had met Todd Sparrow. Oh I did? Well he was definitely extremely cool too and he was smarter than Luke and they met in California and had I heard that story? I hadn’t. So she told it to me and a couple other stories in case I hadn’t heard them and the end of the conversation was that she wanted me to come to Outer Limits with her, s
he’d pick me up. And it was weird how she said it, like she didn’t hint or ask me how I was getting there or any of the normal ways you would suggest it. And it sort of bugged me and I said no, I was going with Darcy and she said, “Darcy’s not going.” I said, “How do you know?” She said, “I just do. She’s friends with Wendy Simpson now and Wendy would never go to Outer Limits.” And I said, “Oh, really?” And then she was suddenly quiet, like she felt sorry for me and that just made me more mad and I told her I wasn’t sure how I was getting there and I hung up.
And then Greg showed up at school one day with his hair dyed green. The only problem was it was so short it didn’t really look like anything. And he was taking showers now and dressing pretty normal and his green hair was like when he shaved his head, it just gave part of a message, it didn’t make a whole statement like when Cybil did things. And I decided it was because he had conflicts in his heart. He didn’t know if he wanted to be grunge or alternative or just be weird or be a clown and I guess he didn’t know what he wanted to say.
And Marjorie was around and seemed a little more visible than last year. Mostly because she was hanging around with Betsy Warren, who did bong hits in her car every morning and who was into punk and heavy metal and wore these really trashy black jeans where you could see her underwear and her butt cheeks. And Betsy had these huge speakers in her car and some days after school there would be stereo wars in the parking lot and she’d put in her punk tapes and blow everyone away. And Marjorie was adjusting her look to be like Betsy and they would drink quarts of Old English 800 at lunch. And it was weird because Betsy could pull it off but when Marjorie got drunk she’d slur her words and stumble around in the halls and everyone said how amazing it was she never got caught.
And Renee Hatfield and Scott Haskell were now the Queen and Prince of the senior party crowd. And Scott Haskell started going out with this sophomore girl named Asia, who was this rich girl from Weston Heights. Asia was really noticeable because she dressed really hippie and had this bizarre accent and she was from New Jersey. Actually, when I first figured out who she was I wondered if I should tell her what a creep Scott was but then I saw her at lunch one day and she had this little entourage of sophomores following her around and she seemed really pretentious and I thought if I tried to say something she might just snub me so I didn’t.
And of course Darcy was still avoiding me and she was friends with Wendy Simpson now and it looked like I was out. They were going downtown to dance at Monte Carlo and apparently that was the new thing and all the Hillside and Camden people were going there now. Especially the Weston Heights crowd. And it made me think that Outer Limits was second-best compared to Monte Carlo and all this time I thought I was so cool and daring to be going there but Monte Carlo was where the truly cool people went and the beautiful people and Outer Limits was more for misfits and so far my junior year was not going well.
And to add to my social problems all these weird guys started getting crushes on me. Bob Zeigler invited me to the Homecoming dance and practically begged me to go. I said I wasn’t going for political reasons since that’s what Rebecca Farnhurst was telling people. John Maruyama kept asking me to movies but I said they gave me a headache which was what Cybil always said. And then weird Earl, who was into philosophy and never washed his hair, started leaving me notes and squishing flowers through the slits in my locker. And the worst part was that even when normal guys talked to me I would never be nice to them. I don’t know why. And the whole thing was so frustrating because it’s like, you’re sixteen and as cute as you’ll ever be and you’re in this school full of boys and it’s really yourself that stops you. It was like Greg dying his hair, I didn’t know what I wanted to do or what kind of people I wanted to be with. And one thing I was already noticing: senior girls were in a terrible position. No one was good enough for them and they had known the senior boys for so long they were sick of them. And there were no older guys. And the younger guys were stupid. And some of them, like Renee Hatfield, seemed so adult and mature they were totally out of place and I realized there were two directions in social life and not only could you go too far down, you could also go too far up.
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14
Homecoming came creeping up. The rally girls were hard at work making signs and blowing up balloons and stretching crepe paper everywhere. And I remembered how freshman year the whole thing had seemed so impressive but now it seemed sad and sort of pathetic. And my freshman year I couldn’t imagine what brilliant sophisticated girls invented these wonderful slogans and this year I saw two cheerleaders at a lunch table, bored, with paint brushes in their hands, staring off into space while GO HILLSIDE dried on a huge sheet of construction paper. And it was weird for me because all week was this big countdown and it was for me too but not for Homecoming. And in a way I was much more nervous about going to Outer Limits than I would have been about the football game. That would have been easy. Outer Limits might be really hard. And that alone made me think I was doing the right thing. At least I was pushing myself.
Then I heard Renee Hatfield was having a party on Homecoming night and it seemed like a safe thing to talk to Darcy about so the next time I saw her I asked her if she and Wendy were going. But she got this attitude and pretended like she didn’t know. So then I said I was going to Outer Limits anyway and I wasn’t inviting myself. And she was like, “I didn’t say you were.” And then I told her I didn’t care if she was friends with Wendy Simpson but she didn’t have to act so weird about it and avoid me all the time. And then she told me all this crap about how she wasn’t avoiding me, she was just chasing this boy that Wendy knew from Bradley Day School. It was such an obvious He. I said, “You don’t have to pretend about some boy.” And I sounded really snotty all of a sudden and I didn’t mean to. And then she said she wasn’t pretending at all, his name was Peter and at least he wasn’t some redneck boy from Canada who gave girls bullets. And I said, “Well at least Brad likes girls. At least I’m not a vir—” But then I stopped. And we both looked away and I guess we were shocked that we hated each other so much. And then she saw Gary Tisdale and went running after him and I just stood there and it was so awful.
At lunch Rebecca Farnhurst came to my locker. She looked at my face and said, “What’s wrong?” I wouldn’t say and she said we’d go to Taco Time and she’d get Cybil and I said, “No, do not get Cybil.” So the two of us went and I talked about Brad and how I tried to love him but I was too mean in my heart and now he was gone forever. She said, “You talked to Darcy, didn’t you?” I said I had no problem with Darcy and if she wanted to be friends with Wendy that was fine with me. Rebecca said Darcy was stupid. She said Gary Tisdale was pretentious and Wendy hated men unless they were gay or younger than her and how lame that was. And then she said how lame Image was and she told me all the cool stuff girls wore at Outer Limits over the summer, like long T-shirts with boxer shorts underneath or this one girl who wrapped flannel shirts around her head like a turban. And she told me what the Metro Mall girls were wearing and stuff she had seen in British magazines and then she really got going about how in England they had this whole new scene of rave parties and smart drugs and bell-bottoms and girls wearing the ugliest floppiest clothes they could find and it was a whole movement and did I know what they were rebelling against? I didn’t. Girls like Wendy Simpson and that whole super-clean, super-uptight, mall-bitch look with all Image clothes and if one thread was hanging down they had to throw it away. And I had to cheer up then because if I didn’t start talking Rebecca would yak at me for hours.
And then Friday came, the big day, and Cybil and Richard made a rare appearance in the cafeteria and I sat with them while they planned their afternoon. First they had to take the bus to Greg’s stepmom’s house to get his station wagon and then they had to go back to Greg’s and then over to Richard’s to get the drums and then they had to borrow some extension cords and at some point Cybil had to go to Captain Whizzy’s to get a micro
phone because the one at Outer Limits smelled like beer and puke and was full of germs. It sounded pretty complicated and I knew I couldn’t go with them and when Rebecca Farnhurst came over I told her I needed a ride. She was so glad. She wanted to plan our outfits and she told me what dress she was wearing and what coat and what shoes. And she wanted to know what I was going to wear and I said I had a dress with cows on it. And everybody thought that was cool and Richard asked me why I never wore it to school and I just shrugged and Rebecca wanted to know what color the cows were.
Rebecca came to pick me up. She was wearing a cool fifties dress and a raincoat and I had my cow dress and my gray cardigan and my mom said we looked like a couple of grannies. And Rebecca immediately started yakking to my mom about HOP! and how vintage clothes were cheaper and made of better materials and better cut and they were more modest and respectful of a girl’s sexuality. My mom just stared at her. And Rebecca was talking so fast my mom couldn’t answer and she even let me say “around one o’clock” for coming-home time. And then my mom asked Rebecca why we weren’t going to Homecoming and Rebecca launched into this thing about how a person should have different experiences and try to meet all kinds of people and not just do the obvious things all the time and … I grabbed her and pulled her out the door.