Antisocial

by Jillian Blake

  Worst of all: when I do dare to look up from my phone, the first thing that catches my eye is Palmer. Vanessa is touching his arm and laughing wildly at something he’s saying, which is absurd because Palmer is many things—very tall, sweet, sometimes even more vulnerable than I am—but he isn’t all that…funny.

  Palmer’s also not as traditionally beautiful as Vanessa—he has big, deep-blue eyes and a rangy, midwestern build, just like his dad—but he and Vanessa are two members of the same tribe, probably both descended from Norse gods. And it looks like they’re finally coming together. Their faces are close now, words moving back and forth between them fast and intensely, and Vanessa’s got her hand on Palmer’s arm.

  I can’t look away. It’s not like I want to get back together with him. My friends are what matter now. So why can’t I look away?

  Maybe because I still don’t get what happened.

  This much I know: at the beginning of November, Palmer twisted his knee during a practice and tore a small part of his ACL. I rushed over to his house that night, of course, and I did my homework at his bedside every day after school for almost a month. Unfortunately, Palmer’s knee wasn’t healing as quickly as everyone hoped, and he got a little depressed. As soon it became clear that serious rehab was in order and that even serious rehab might not do the job, I could feel Palmer pulling away from me.

  But I thought it was just a hiccup. I thought we’d get through it.

  Unfortunately, I’d already abandoned my friends, and I had no one to talk to. No Rad or Nikki who could help me see the signs.

  By Christmas, Palmer and I were over.

  I barely ate for a week; I spooned with my pillow and cried in the dark. I thought that Palmer and I had had something special, that he needed me. I’d considered telling him we should just finally have sex, to get closer to him again. It’s a dumb reason to decide to lose your virginity to someone, but that’s what went through my puppy-love head.

  Without my friends to set me straight, I was a complete and utter disaster. Overthinking led me into an emotional black hole.

  When I finally talked to my mom, she cried with me. And in that weirdly comforting and absurd mother-daughter moment, something unexpected happened: I saw my thing with Palmer for what it was—a thing. A senior fling. What do they call it on those British costume dramas my mom watches? A dalliance. That’s all. Palmer isn’t my soul mate. He was my senior crush. I could get over it. And my mom—God bless her—definitely shouldn’t be crying about my senior crush.

  Vanessa cackles again at something Palmer’s just said.

  Move along, Anna. Stop staring. Everyone at this party knows exactly what you’re thinking right now, and they’re laughing at you. Mocking you. They all think you overstepped. That you dated up and you were lucky to get even a short ride on the popular bus. That you’re hideous. That even your friends are too good for you.

  I’m about to lose it when suddenly I remember: these are negative thoughts. And I know what I need to do. When I take a Dr. Bechdel–approved deep breath and look around, I see—there’s no evidence of any of what I’m feeling. No one is looking at me. No one is laughing at me. As Dr. Bechdel would say, What’s the reality, Anna?

  The reality is that no one is mocking me. They’re just ignoring me.

  I walk over to the keg and pour myself a foamy beer. I’m six months post-Zoloft and haven’t had a Xanax in more than eight weeks. I need something to loosen me up if I’m planning on staying. The Bud Light doesn’t go down easy, but it goes down. Next, please! The beginning of my second cup goes down easier. Soon I’m starting to understand why people drink, melting comfortably into the wall behind the keg.

  Vanessa stands and takes Palmer’s hand. Before I can get in another gulp, they’re walking off together. I track them with my eyes to the foot of the stairs. I know exactly what they’re headed up to do. Everyone does. Maybe Nikki hit the nail on the head and it’s good that Palmer and I only got to almost.

  Maybe.

  I’d made out with a couple of other guys before Palmer. But Palmer was my first real boyfriend, and physical stuff was so much easier with him than it had ever been with anyone else. Maybe too easy. The closer we got to having sex, the more I fell for him.

  Just before his injury, Palmer and I were alone in his room. His parents were out, and we were on his bed, not lying down but not quite sitting up either. Frank Ocean album playing. Candles lit. One blew out when I took off Palmer’s button-down. (I was a little hasty. What? He looked so good without a shirt on.)

  Next thing I knew, he popped the question: should we do it?

  When Palmer and I got together, I was a virgin as bad as Nikki. Palmer wasn’t a virgin several times over, with several girls over. The difference in our experience bothered me, was always in the back of my mind, and it came to the front at that exact moment. So, to clarify: I wanted to have sex with him. I turned him down only because I was intimidated and scared and overwhelmed and taken off guard. In my fantasies, losing my virginity always happened without words, as if it were the easiest, most natural thing in the world—no blood or pain or awkwardness, no risk of him being disappointed or unsatisfied, of me not measuring up.

  When he understood that I was signaling no, Palmer didn’t get mad. He just kissed the top of my head and held me tighter. No rush, he said casually. But I can’t help wondering: if I’d done what he wanted me to do and what I’d wanted me to do—let me be 100 percent clear about that—and had acted less like a 1950s prude and more like a normal girl born at the tail end of the twentieth century, would he have broken up with me so inexplicably?

  “Yo. I didn’t mean anything in the dining hall.”

  I look up from my beer, and I’m blinded by a gold Cuban chain necklace. It’s draped around Wallace Reid’s thick neck.

  “Sometimes I get turnt and just kinda say stuff I don’t mean,” he says. “I’m not scamming on you. I was just joking.”

  I slowly count down from five, and finally I feel okay enough to say something he deserves. “Okay,” I tell him, starting to edge away. “No harm, only a small foul.” I want out of this conversation pronto.

  Wallace knocks back his own nearly full beer, and somehow his throat seems to pulse only once, like he barely even has to swallow. “Dude, it’s amazing. You and Palmer say the exact same things sometimes. Like, the same exact tone of—” He cuts himself off, realizing. “Sorry. Anna, I told him you two should keep hanging out.”

  “Maybe I’m not turnt enough,” I deadpan.

  “No, that was the problem. You were too cool.”

  This is the first time Wallace has ever said anything particularly nice to me that didn’t seem like a come-on, and it catches me off guard. “What’s that mean?” I ask.

  Something creeps into his eyes that I don’t get. Honestly, I didn’t know he was capable of this kind of sincerity. “Whatever,” Wallace says. “It’s just—Palmer’s got a lot on his mind. It’s not about you.”

  “No. Apparently it’s about Vanessa. I saw them heading upstairs,” I say, emboldened from chugging two beers in a row.

  He shrugs. “Nah. Vanessa just—Palmer doesn’t care what she thinks of him. He’s just, ya know, under a lotta pressure from all sides. Kid’s gotta let it out somewhere.”

  I don’t understand. Pressure from all sides?

  “You,” a shrill voice hisses from a few feet behind us. “You have the balls to show up at my house?”

  Wallace and I turn. I don’t see Palmer anywhere, but Vanessa is standing face to face with Haven, right next to us.

  “Wait, is this not Selena Gomez’s crib?” Haven says. “Shit, wrong party.”

  People start laughing.

  Vanessa throws her gin and tonic in Haven’s face.

  “Oh wow,” Haven says, wiping liquid off his chin. “I didn’t know people did that IRL. Classy.”

  “I should slap you into next week.”

  Haven smiles wide as more people squeeze toward u
s. “It’s @theVanessaeubanks, right? PerfectlyVanessa@gmail? And oh, wait, Vantastic00 on Snapchat, right?”

  What he’s saying is: Prepare to be trolled.

  I love watching Haven be badass, but I do not like standing near a scene. I don’t want to be pulled in, I don’t want to be looked at. I start to back away. Kids are giggling and yelling things, and now practically the whole party is moving toward the action. Everyone is waiting for something nasty and vicious and fun to happen.

  Fight, fight, fight, some say from behind me.

  Before I can get away, I’m surrounded on all sides.

  My forehead starts to sweat. The gulp of beer left in my cup begins to slosh back and forth as my hands tremble. Then comes the feeling I remember too well from junior year, the palpitations—what doctors call it when your heart feels like it’s dancing to the beat of a drummer with no rhythm. Body heat and beer breath and screechy voices get louder and louder as Vanessa and Haven yell at each other. I don’t really hear their words clearly; my eyes swing back and forth without focusing on anything. I try to take in air but can’t. It won’t enter my lungs, stops prematurely. The hysteria builds inside me, and I want to run out. But I can’t move. It’s like my mind is going at light speed and my body—stimulated as it is—won’t go anywhere.

  From the corner of my eye, I see someone pushing his way through the crush of bodies.

  Jethro?

  When did he get here?

  As he reaches me, I say through gritted teeth, “Can you please get me out of here?” He nods and swiftly guides me out a glass door, into the backyard and bracing cold.

  “Focus on your breath,” he says. “Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale.”

  Jethro’s voice is soothing, and the sensations of him standing near me—the smell of him, the warmth that comes off his skin—are so comforting that I take just a little longer to get my breath back than is strictly necessary. He doesn’t seem to mind.

  He helps me over to a stone wall that looks out onto a man-made pond, iced over at the moment. “You’re freezing,” Jethro says, frowning at the bumps that have broken out all over my exposed arms. “Stay here,” he says. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  It takes him closer to three than one, but he returns with two coats, neither of which belongs to us. He throws the smaller one over my shoulders. It’s fur, so thick that when I reach up to touch it, my hand sinks in up to my wrist.

  Jethro laughs as he sits down beside me. “I swiped them from the front hall closet. Vanessa’s mom probably had some endangered species skinned to make it.” Then he holds his arm up: an even bigger fur coat. “Who knew Vanessa’s dad was a Kardashian?”

  For the moment, it feels like everything that happened in the art lab is gone. I hope it’s gone forever.

  Jethro looks around. “Know what would be better than this place?”

  I smile back at him. “Tell me.”

  He lifts a single finger in the air, conjuring something. “Mui Ne Beach. Vietnam. The winds blow hard and steady every afternoon, so people come from all over the world to go kiteboarding. We take lessons, camp on the beach at night, stay until we’re kick-ass, eat pho until we have to undo the first buttons on our jeans.”

  I breathe in and out. “What if we went sandboarding instead? There’s an oasis in the desert in Peru. Huacachina, I think it’s called. They have these dunes that rise above the lake, and you can ride all the way down to the bottom.”

  “Yeah,” he says, the moon flickering in his eyes. “That’s way better. Peru.”

  “Thanks for staying with me out here,” I tell him. “And, J, can we just talk about how awkward our conversation outside the art lab was for a sec…?”

  “Forget it,” Jethro says. “Never happened.”

  I don’t know if he believes that, but right now I couldn’t be happier to hear it.

  “Do you wanna get out of here?” he asks.

  “Are you kidding me? Yes,” I say. “But we can’t. At least I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I just chugged two beers! Now I’m stuck here until the sun comes up or I sober up. Whichever comes first.”

  “Gimme your keys. I’ll drive.”

  “Uh-uh. I don’t want to get drunk driven any more than I want to drunk drive.”

  “I’m the most sober person at this party.”

  “That’s not saying much.”

  “Good point. But I’m totally sober.”

  I point to his beer cup.

  “Been nursing this all night,” Jethro says. “While I was looking for you.”

  “Then what are we still doing here?”

  I’ve always liked being driven more than driving. Nothing like sitting in the passenger seat and staring out the window, especially in a dreamy beer haze. The cold glass on my forehead feels amazing as I watch the streetlights flicker by.

  Jethro’s good behind the wheel—skillful, fast without being reckless. He negotiates tight turns, manipulates the steering wheel with deft little flicks of the wrist. I guess we’re just tooling around, going no place in particular, passing time.

  I feel kind of…great. It’s been a long time since I could honestly say that.

  A few minutes later, we enter Old Town Alexandria. The streets are well lit but mostly empty. My favorite diner isn’t far away (and is probably the only place open at this hour), but just as I’m about to suggest a rocky-road shake, I see the Torpedo Factory Art Center coming up on the right, lit up in bright contrast to the long-closed buildings around it.

  “Whoa,” I say. Jethro slows and turns into the parking lot. “It’s open this late?”

  Jethro shrugs. “Not to the public, but has that ever stopped us before?”

  This massive building was once an actual torpedo factory. During World War II, I think. At some point the navy decided to not build bombs so close to our nation’s capital, and it eventually became a home for more than one hundred artists, each with their own individual studio. Make art, not war—kinda great, right?

  “Come on,” Jethro says, unbuckling his seat belt. “Let’s paint this town…I dunno…azure red.”

  “Azure is blue.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  A bubble of happiness fills my chest as we head from the far corner of the parking lot toward the front entrance of the steel-and-glass building.

  “Remember last time we were here?” he asks, almost shyly.

  “Yeah!” I say too loudly, then lower my voice. “It was right after I got back from Silver Pines. You got that early viewing for us. There were only, like, ten other people.”

  “I have my VIP ways,” he says in a mock-fancy voice.

  “No way could I have handled all those crowds after SP. And B. J. Anderson? Her watercolors changed my life. Honestly, J, it made me want to be a better artist myself. I don’t think I’d be applying to RISD if it hadn’t been for that day.”

  Jethro’s grinning. “I had fun too, A.”

  We’ve stumbled into the lingering end of some exhibition’s glamorous opening reception. The show features massive oil paintings, all of which are in the Rothko color-field style. The crowd appears to have mostly thinned out; twenty or so folks stand around a table with plates of hors d’oeuvres and half-empty bottles of wine, more interested in conversation than in looking at the art. In Vanessa’s parents’ fur coats, we fit in surprisingly well, but I notice an older couple looking our way.

  “They’re probably just thrilled that anyone under the age of fifty cares about art,” Jethro mutters to me as he grabs my hand. “Come on, come with me.”

  Jethro confidently leads us out of the lobby, into a long hallway, glancing around casually like he’s the property manager doing some routine inspection. A step behind him, I can’t help but watch each movement he makes, notice the curve of muscle along the backs of his tan arms, the way his jeans fit his narrow waist, how his legs bow out ever so slightly. As we turn a corner and he looks over his shoulder at me, tho
se green eyes catch the overhead lights just right.

  I clap a hand over my mouth to keep from squealing. The lights are dim, but all the individual artists’ studios are still lit, their amazing work on just the other side of large windows: our own private gallery. It’s so beautiful.

  “What if someone sees us?” I whisper as I bounce from one foot to the other.

  “Pretend you’re an art student here if anyone asks,” Jethro tells me. “Give ’em some more of that fancy azure talk.”

  He winks as he says it. He knows that if someone spoke to us or questioned our being here, I’d just blurt an apology and bolt for the door. Jethro would be in charge of any and all unexpected human interaction. But I still love when he pretends, when he makes me feel like I could easily be part of his scheme.

  We peer into each artist’s studio one at a time, taking in all kinds of pieces in various states of progress. A rounded bronze sculpture like a Brancusi glows gold through the glass of one. And behind and above it hangs a geometrically pleasing painting of migratory geese flying in a V.

  “The strokes are so beautiful,” I say, pointing. “Do you see how she just dips the tip of the brush into the oil, then dusts the canvas? Really makes those birds fly.”

  “I knew you’d hate it back here,” Jethro says with a smile. He bumps my shoulder with his, and a flurry of butterflies is released in my stomach.

  We make our way to the second floor. I’m not sure if it’s the dramatic light or the echoes in the stairwell, but I feel like Jethro and I are in a dream. Or a music video. Never in a million years did I think I’d get this back—let alone so soon. We’re on one of our old adventures, a Jethro and Anna Special.

  I feel so lucky for this moment. It’s kind of weird to feel lucky for something while it’s still happening, in the present. When I glance back and he looks up at me, I know Jethro can feel it too. It’s…what’s that SAT word? Palpable.