“You’re basically making fun of that time I had an eating disorder, and I don’t appreciate it,” Cate says. She’s serious now.
“Hold up. That time you had an eating disorder?” Suki says.
Donnie and I stare at each other with wide-open eyes. Oh, when Suki goes after Cate, it’s bad. We jump up and down, raising our hands in the air.
“It’s onnnnnn!”
But Suki is not having this. “Calm down, people. It is not on.” She pleads with me, then grits her teeth. She turns to Cate. Those two are tight. Like Donnie and I are tight. You don’t go over that line about eating disorders; you keep that shit silent, buried deep—but Suki did. “Cate, you know it is not on.”
Donnie makes fun of Suki, drawing out her words, teasing her. “There is nothing ON about this.”
“It is so clearly off. It’s like, ‘lights out, bitch,’” I say.
Cate’s eyes get big and teary. She lights a cigarette. Deep inhale. Cate with her big burly stance, her gold hoop earrings with her name blazing through them—CATE—it’s all a show. She’s the easiest to tease.
“I’m not laughing,” Cate says. Even though she’s smiling. She knows if she doesn’t laugh, the teasing will never end. Laugh it off, Cate. Just laugh it off.
“Grow up, Heather. Bulimia is so ’87,” I say, and give her the end it signal—one quick hand swipe in front of my neck.
Cate flicks her ashes hard at me and Donnie, which we probably deserve. I twist my head away from the flying embers, and that’s when I see Sean leading Ali into another room.
ALI
“Heyyyyy, Greenleaf,” Sean Nessel says, with a drawl. He might be drunk. “I want to show you something.” He leads me into the kitchen. His hand is softer than I had imagined and moist.
“So what kind of last name is Greenleaf?”
I tell Sean Nessel the whole story about my grandfather coming over from Germany to Ellis Island and how the immigration officer couldn’t pronounce Grunblatt—he had trouble with the “u” inflection. “Greenleaf” is the English translation for Grunblatt. My grandfather really didn’t want to be called Greenleaf because that didn’t seem like a real American last name, but that’s where he ended up.
I completely overtalk it. I can’t shut up. Shut up, Ali. Shut up.
Sean Nessel just stares at me like I’m insane.
“I used to get teased as a kid about my last name too. You know, Nessel. People called me Nestle chocolate. Hershey’s kisses. Nestle chocolate face.”
“Wait, you got teased?”
“Yeah. Doesn’t everyone get teased about something?”
“I can’t see you getting teased about anything,” I say. My heart eyes are about to explode, and I realize I’m not wearing a T-shirt bra, as in the padded kind. My headlights are about to blind Sean Nessel. I cross my arms over my breasts.
He arranges a row of three small vodka bottles on the counter, the kind you get on an airplane. I really don’t need to drink. I finished a beer and am already feeling silly and surly. But he opens the first one, takes a sip, and hands it to me.
“So cute,” I say. “Little bottles. Just tiny things.”
“Drink it.”
“You’re like the Mad Hatter,” I tease. “‘Drink it. This one will make you big.’”
“Isn’t that what you want? To be big?”
“I want to get buzzed.”
STOP.
Did I just say that? I’m being too forward. Too cocky. Anyway, I’m already buzzed. What am I doing?
“Well, I don’t mean buzzed,” I say. But these are never the kinds of declarations you can take back.
“Nah, it’s okay,” he says, laughing. “You’re funny.” But I don’t feel funny. I feel too grown up. My hair is down and long. It’s wild from the fall winds. I shake it around, getting it to hang over one eye. And then I do what any sensible person would do in the presence of a god like Sean Nessel. I take a hearty sip.
My mouth is on fire. I choke in a coughing fit.
“Take another sip. It’ll take the edge off the first one,” he says.
“It burns.”
“It’s supposed to.”
I sip again, and the vodka gushes into my mouth. I glimpse Sammi and Raj still comfy with their beers sitting with some other friends. Finally, my dream is here, but I feel out of control, too hurried, like one of those weird car commercials where the lights are streaking through a dark desert road.
He hands me a hard seltzer and tells me to drink it as a chaser. One at a time. Small and easy, he says. So I listen because I am drinking vodka with Sean Nessel. If nothing else happens to me this year, this moment sipping vodka from small airplane bottles will be enough.
His hand is at the back of my head now, and he rustles my hair. “What a cute girl you are, Ali,” he says. “I like the way you look at me in the hall. You have cute hair. I’m so glad you came here tonight. That’s why I’m here, you know?”
My eyes widen and I smile. My hands shake. I’m breathless. My mouth is numb when he slips his tongue inside it. I want to kiss him back, but my head is hot and his tongue is so big in my mouth, all I can do is move my neck. It doesn’t take long for my mouth to feel raw from kissing and for my face to get sweaty. I’m fuzzy, probably need to sit down, but when Sean Nessel asks me to go upstairs, I say yes.
I know what upstairs means. Upstairs means clothes off.
BLYTHE
Cherie is sitting on the couch ledge right behind me. She doesn’t notice me until I poke her.
“Oh, Blythe. Heyyy,” she says.
Cherie used to be one of the most popular girls in school until she became a raging feminist when she was a senior. Just dumped all her friends. Wouldn’t talk to anyone except two girls from the drama club who are here at this party.
“Your girl has disappeared into the smoky den of iniquity,” I say. I’m so happy to torment Cherie.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she says. “What girl?”
“Ali Greenleaf,” I say. “She’s your girl, isn’t she?”
“More like my sister’s girl.”
I shrug. I’m now drinking Jack and Coke, courtesy of Donnie. It burns as it goes down. Donnie locks her arm in mine.
“These boys take what they want, you know that,” Donnie says to Cherie.
Cherie looks away, her face in a worried pinch.
* * *
* * *
I’ve lost track of time. I finish my Jack and Coke. It’s time to go. I kiss Dev and stroke his neck. I want to go back to his house. His mother will make us grilled cheese sandwiches. Because Dev’s mother is one of those mothers who grills you a sandwich at midnight. Dev’s mother makes him her priority. My mother is incapable of functioning the same way. This is what happens when you have a mother with bipolar. You don’t get sandwiches at midnight. You get worry instead.
I shake it from my mind and think about Dev’s mom and how she’ll linger in the kitchen. How I’ll sit on his lap sipping whole milk as she asks us about the party. How she’ll call me sweetheart. That look of his that he’ll give me. Those eyes holding on to me like that. Squeezing me. We’ll go back in his room and get naked in his bed.
“Let’s go,” I say, and nibble on his ear.
“Nessel,” he says. “We have to wait for Nessel.”
2
ALI
Sean Nessel pushes open a bedroom door. His hands fall across my hips as he glides us forward. It’s so easy; I could be on ice skates. We sit down on the floor and kiss more, but soft, not with saliva and spit everywhere. He lays me down, slips his jacket off, rubs my breasts over my shirt, then under my shirt over my bra, and then under my bra.
I want to whisper something, but if I open my mouth, something stupid will spill out like, “I’ve never done this before.” And I want him touching
me. I want to be here, drunk and making out with Sean Nessel, even if I’m not the greatest kisser and even if my breasts aren’t huge, and even if no one has ever, really, gone under my bra before.
Then his hands are inside my jeans, and I let him do that too, because I am so warm and his hands feel so good on the inside of my thighs. We kiss like this for what seems like a while. My body buzzes. I’m for sure drunk.
You want a different take, don’t you? That I’m scared. Or that it doesn’t feel good. But it does. It feels frightening and amazing all at once.
The music from downstairs vibrates through the floor—there’s this song that’s not really slow, but it’s intense and moody. My body rocks along with Sean Nessel’s and I feel him. You know what I’m saying? Feel him. My mind goes to such a crazy place filled with roses and flowers and all the rainbows and feathers I’ve ever decorated his face with in my collage book. I’m turned on. I’ve kissed other boys before, and nothing has ever felt like this.
He starts pulling down my underpants and I am breathing so heavy, and then he stands up and I lie on the floor with my knees touching and my underpants dangling from one leg, and he is trying to kick off his shoes with the heel of his foot and laughing because he can’t get them off. He does this funny dance, or maybe he’s just stumbling. Either way, I’m laughing.
He’s unzipping his pants. Why is he unzipping his pants?
I hear the party going on below us, the song still blaring through the floor.
“Wait,” I say.
But he just sort of moans like this: uh-huh.
“Wait.”
And in three seconds, he’s on top of me. His body feels like deadweight. The rough carpet and his wool soccer jacket scratch across my back and thighs. My hand fights against his shoulder, shoving him away, but he’s not paying attention. My T-shirt is riding up, but I’m naked down below and his penis jabs at my inner thigh and then closer to my vagina.
“Sean, I don’t—”
“Shhh, relax,” he says.
“You have to stop.”
He forces his penis into me, and I feel like I’m ripping open, literally tearing. It hurts so bad, and he’s grunting, shoving himself in. Then there’s a wet, heavy rush between my thighs. He grinds his hips into my bony pelvis, and I push his face away with one hand.
“You’re hurting me,” I say. I cannot believe this is happening. Doesn’t he hear me?
My body is too lazy from the alcohol, and though I fight him off, pressing into his chest, the pain is like this crazy lightning bolt, so I groan out, and he muzzles my mouth with his hand. Pins my shoulder to the ground and grinds himself deeper into me. I pound on his back with my fist.
I can’t move.
I cannot move.
When I scream again, it’s a low holler this time; I only hear my voice inside my head.
As his body bangs into me, a low-level ringing goes off in my head. The ringing carries through my ears, then across to my nose and down my throat.
He gets up and reaches for the light, and I’m crying and my knees are shaking, and the lights are on. Blood covers the inside of my thighs and his jacket.
I’m hysterical, hardly able to catch my breath, and Sean Nessel seethes. “Holy shit, what the hell is this? Your period?”
“No,” I cry, shocked at my own blood. My words buckle. “I didn’t know.” I wipe the snot from my face.
He curses and paces, telling me how he ripped up his dick and now there was blood all over his soccer jacket. “How are we gonna clean all this shit up?” he says. He paces the room with his pants off and with me still crying and his penis has blood on it, and he finally finds a tissue and wipes the blood off.
He throws the bloodied tissue in the garbage and then throws the box of tissues at me and tells me to wipe myself off. So I do. I’m doing everything he says. I can’t even do it myself first. I’ve never been so paralyzed in my life.
“Okay, okay,” he keeps repeating, pacing around the room and putting his pants back on. “I’ll get your friend, so just stay here and stop crying or something. You’re going to be fine.”
I’ve never been this drunk before. But am I though? Am I that drunk at all? Don’t I know exactly what just went on? Wasn’t I right there? He looks at me again as if I’m not the girl he brought upstairs. My mouth is numb. I am dizzy and for certain at least very buzzed, very confused. All I can think is that my father is going to find out. The whole school is going to find out.
I run over to the trash basket where all the bloody tissues are and puke. Vomit rages out of my mouth burning everything.
I wipe the snot and puke off my face with my sweatshirt and turn to him.
“I told you to stop,” I say, and then tears erupt. Miles and miles of tears.
He’s blank, looking confused. He rubs his hands in his hair and paces more. That hair. My first dream about Sean Nessel was me kissing him, stroking him at the back of his head like a sweet puppy.
I flap my arms because I look like a duck when I cry. The room felt big in the dark, but with the lights on, it’s tiny. There are dirty socks on the floor, and I pour what is left of the hard seltzer onto one of the socks and wipe the rest of the blood off my inner thighs and my ankle.
He just stands there, shaking his head.
* * *
* * *
Downstairs. Faces flash in weird disco lights, and I have no idea where Sammi is. I barrel my way through to the front door. It feels like it takes hours to get there and more people cram into the hall.
My shoulder burns. I can’t see the door. I just want to see the door before I cry. Before I can’t make it out of here without puking, or screaming, or falling to my knees.
Hopefully, when Sean Nessel goes to clean his jacket, all evidence of me will come off. Hopefully, when school comes on Monday, Sean Nessel won’t even look at me. I hope he can just smile and keep walking.
3
BLYTHE
I wrap my finger around Suki’s pinkie and lead her to the bathroom, which is near the stairs. I can’t believe we have to wait for Nessel. For Sean. Mr. Perfect, who is somewhere seducing a junior he’ll never talk to again. I need something that’ll stop me from falling asleep, and Suki has a fresh bottle of Ritalin prescribed from her doctor. We crush it on the sink and snort it. It goes up quick, and I get a jolt. Just the right amount of energy that’ll help me drive these guys home. Just a tiny bump. But I’m shaky. She’s shaky. We see it in each other. More sips of beer to mellow out the high. That’s all.
“Where’s Sean?” Suki says.
“He’s upstairs with some junior.”
“Oh, that,” she says. Her eyes glaze over. Jaw clenches.
“Yeah, that.”
Suki’s been down the Sean road. She looks tiny every time I tell her Sean is with some girl, which is often. I might just lie to her next time because it feels cruel.
It’s been at least six months since they were together. One day she was about to have his babies—that’s what a guy like Sean will do to you. And it lasted for a week, the two of them. Then I find out he’s having sex with Jen Tucker in her car and going down Blake Sawyer’s pants behind the gym. I never said she was my girlfriend, Sean said when I asked him.
Her hands shake on the sink counter. “Sukes, your hands. They’re shaking,” I say.
She points down at mine. My hands are shaking too.
Something is off tonight. Something isn’t right.
* * *
* * *
Out of the bathroom, Ali practically runs me over. Her face is manic and teary. Eyes popping out of her skull. Racing nowhere. Her head spinning back and forth looking for an exit. I’m standing right there in front of her, and she doesn’t even notice me.
So I just say anything, just because I want to know. I want to see her eyes.
“Leavi
ng so soon?” I say.
She turns to me, and her eyes widen even more with desperation. Her face looks broken, vacant.
Jesus, what did he do to her?
Across the room I see Sean talking to Dev. He’s shaking his head, telling him something. Something’s wrong. Something happened.
Ali’s face is melting almost.
And then she lets out this excruciating cry. Like someone’s dead.
“What’s wrong with you?” I say. “Calm down.”
But something happened. She’s rambling, babbling, not making any sense.
And in a way, it reminds me of me.
Stupid girl. Stupid, stupid girl! Playing with the big boys. This is what it looks like. When you’re small and unnecessary. I know this feeling. I know it well.
I make my way over to Dev, pushing bodies aside.
“Nessel just told me something about blood being on his jacket,” Dev whispers. “I’m like, ‘bro, what the hell are you talking about?’ He’s not bleeding anywhere.”
“He was with that girl Ali upstairs,” I say.
Dev stares at me funny. He can’t put it together.
“Do I need to explain it to you, Dev? Really?” I say, snap-ping. So much Nessel love. So much empathy for everyone. I love Dev for this and it’s what also drives me insane. “He went upstairs with her. Suki and I saw him.”
“So you and Suki are keeping tabs on Nessel? That’s kind of creepy, no?”
“It’s not like that, Dev—” I look to the front door to see where Ali went, but she’s gone.
“We have to get him out of here,” Dev says.
* * *
* * *
Sean, Dev, and I walk out; Sean’s head is down and he doesn’t say a word until we get in the car.
“Can you drive, B? Can you drive? You’re the only one who can drive, B. All we have left is you,” Sean says.
Something Happened to Ali Greenleaf Page 2