Except when I turn the pages and dwell on each name and nickname, it’s more than a science. It’s a whole system. My system, the one I invented, complete with a rating that I assigned. Each guy gets a page, even though each page only has one line. Numbers have always made more sense to me than people, so narrowing each guy down to a decimal, a rating, made it something logical.
Tommy Hudson—Maybe I should feel guilty, but I think I really helped.
The Biter—6. Point redacted for leaving a mark.
The Nervous Giggler—5. Couldn’t get past creepy laugh.
The Screamer—4.5. The half point is for size only.
The Watcher—8. Very observant.
The Crier—7. Point redacted for waterworks.
The Preacher—6. Point redacted for talking about God, which killed the mood.
The Dirty Talker—8. Point added for impressive vocabulary.
The Acrobat—7.5. Half point added for serious flexibility.
And lastly, the Gamer. I poise my pen beside his nickname and tap it against the page. I should give him a mediocre rating, maybe redact a point for his sloppy technique. But instead I don’t rate him at all.
I start making neat point-form notes like the ones I take during chemistry. This guy’s actually sweet. He’ll be handsome someday. Loves his girlfriend. I wonder if they’ll still be together ten years from now. Or fifty. My own urgency to get it on paper takes me by surprise. I don’t know why the Gamer escaped the rating system and got cheesy feedback, like something out of the diary of a teenage girl much different than me. I glare at the lines I just wrote and cross them out. Then I take my pen and cross out the Watcher’s rating with heavy black strokes. He doesn’t deserve it. I write something else over it. Asshole. Then I release my death grip on the pen and toss it against the wall, where it leaves a dot on the paint. Seems like it should leave a stronger mark.
I roll over on my back and clutch the book against my chest; then I chuck it onto the carpet. It’s too heavy to rest on me, too full of history. Not all of it is bad. Some of the memories make me smile. Some of them make me mad. But more dangerously, some of them make me wonder what my life would be like as a girlfriend, what it would be like to have a regular relationship, with all its ups and downs and awkward moments.
I switch out my lamp and stare at the ceiling in the dark, taking a series of shaky breaths. I know that it’s better this way, being the one in control. The one in control calls the shots, and the one in control sets the pace.
Most important of all, the one in control doesn’t get hurt.
5
I always like to do some research into the person I’m about to sleep with. It’s more for my benefit than theirs, so I can see what kind of a person each guy is. Who he is to his friends, who he is to his girlfriend. So I take the time before Trevor Johnston comes over to read up about him, starting with the yearbook and culminating with his Facebook page. He appears in the team photos for both basketball and field hockey, which makes me a bit wary—Angela’s boyfriend, Charlie, is on the soccer team, and I know that jocks talk. But I also know that Charlie isn’t like most guys. He doesn’t have many friends and mostly just hangs out with Angela. Even so, I make a mental note to impress upon Trevor just how important the secrecy of this operation really is.
If the yearbook tells the story of Trevor’s life in sports, his Facebook page tells me he likes to party. In most of his photos, he has a beer in hand and a sloppy smile on his face. Some boys are hard to read, but Trevor isn’t one of them.
I have the same ritual before I see any guy. Living up to years worth of pent-up sexual frustration is a lot of pressure, and I want to play my part well. I always shower, shave, and moisturize—vanilla for the guys I think are looking for a good girl and the more exotic frangipani for the ones who might want to get freaky. After a semester of doing this, I’m pretty good at figuring out what a boy is looking for. Jocks like that sexed-up girl next door, sometimes a flexible cheerleader type with a crop top and pigtails. Preppies are even easier to please. Give them kneesocks and not much else and they’re good to go. The brainiacs are the wild cards. Sometimes I break out the leather for them, and sometimes I go the simplest route—nothing at all.
Normally, before a guy is coming over, I put the finishing touches on my bedroom. I make sure the sheets are clean and lightly scented with lavender, the lighting is dim, and there are at least two candles burning. This is important, as I tell the guys, because it sets the mood. “No girl is going to want to sleep with you on top of your smelly gym shorts, underneath the Playboy posters taped to your ceiling,” I remember saying to the Acrobat when he commented on the décor.
And this is the position I’m in—stretched across my bed, tucking in the corners of my duvet—when Kim strolls into my room, with the unmistakable smell of perfume and cigarettes clinging to her. Eau de Kim. The situation would be less awkward if I were wearing something other than a men’s button-down shirt with lace panties and kneesocks, but Kim doesn’t even blink.
“I didn’t know you were home,” I say, smoothing my duvet and sitting on it. Kim unfortunately plops down as well.
“I thought we could have girls’ night,” she says, putting “girls’ night” in air quotes. Kim’s air quotes look more like claws, courtesy of her crimson nail polish and ridiculously long acrylic nails.
I clench my jaw and ball my duvet in both hands. Kim never initiates mother-daughter time. Mostly I think she forgets we even share a house.
“I can’t,” I say. “I’m having company.”
“Oh. Of course,” Kim says. “I love what you’ve done with the place. Very romantic.” I can’t tell if she’s being sincere or sarcastic. “Is this a new boyfriend of yours?”
“He’s somebody’s boyfriend, but not mine,” I say brightly. I regret saying it almost immediately, but Kim’s terrible timing and half-assed attempts to ingratiate herself into my life piss me off. Maybe if she discovers that I’m promiscuous, she will start to worry about me.
Kim narrows her eyes and smooths my hair back. The gesture almost brings me to tears. It’s the one maternal gesture I remember from when I was a little kid, when Kim would brush my hair and put it in French braids for me. That was before she told me French braids were babyish and I should start looking more like a woman. I think I was ten years old.
“I think you should change your lipstick,” she says slowly. “That red isn’t doing you any favors. Here, try this.” She rummages in her purse and presses a tube of lipstick in my hand, then pats my bare thigh before leaving the room.
“Thanks,” I say numbly, but she isn’t around to hear it. I roll the lipstick around in my hand and look at the ceiling, counting back from ten. This tactic, focusing on numbers, always makes me feel less like crying.
I change my lipstick when I hear Trevor ring the doorbell. I hate that I even care about Kim’s opinion, but she gives one so rarely that I take it anyway. And she’s right. Kim’s lipstick is soft pink and Trevor sure seems to like it.
“God, you’re hot,” he says when I shut my bedroom door behind us and unbutton my shirt. Due to his jock status, I took Trevor for the type with a naughty schoolgirl fantasy and little in the way of imagination.
“Don’t tell her she’s hot,” I tell him for what feels like the millionth time as I yank his jeans down. “Girls don’t like to hear that. It makes them feel like objects. Tell her she’s beautiful.”
“You’re beautiful,” he says. “You have pretty hair. And soft skin.” As if to prove his point, he starts groping at my stomach and chest like he’s lost in the dark and trying to feel his way out by grabbing a wall.
“Even better, don’t say anything,” I say. I turn my iPod on, where I have the usual sex sound track ready. Except today, I turn the volume up much higher than I have to, just to piss Kim off.
“That’s loud,” Trevor says. “Can’t we talk, too?”
“Not during sex,” I say before biting his earlobe. “
Never have the room completely silent. You don’t want to force Laura to hear your weird grunting noises, do you?”
Trevor almost looks like he’s about to cry. Usually I would be sympathetic and try to beef up his confidence, the one thing every virgin lacks. But tonight I’m full of aggression and short on patience. So after I show Trevor how to put a condom on properly, I get on top of him and do my best to moan even louder than the music. Trevor joins in with a chorus of “oh, baby” and “this is awesome!” I will him to last long enough to get me off, long enough to offer me some kind of release. But I don’t get one.
“I’m sorry,” he says when we’re finished. I’m not listening to him. I’m listening for a telltale knock at the door, anything to let me know that Kim is at least a bit concerned that a boy she has never seen before is over having sex with her daughter.
Trevor goes to put his hand on my breast but settles for my shoulder instead. “I feel like I pissed you off,” he says. “Whatever I said wrong, I didn’t mean to. I told you I had no idea what I was doing.”
I know I should put my shirt back on and help him with the mechanics of the nonsex part, setting the perfect scene. In the past I have helped with everything from location to brand of cologne to style of underwear (never briefs, especially not white ones). I critique restaurant selections and even veto food choices, like the time I had to explain to the Crier why Mexican food was a terrible choice of cuisine for anyone wanting to get laid. But tonight I’m not in the mood for any of that. Laura is just about the furthest thing from my mind.
“Practice makes perfect,” I say, kissing Trevor’s neck gently enough to not leave a mark but hard enough to get him aroused.
I do something I have never done before—let Trevor have a second round. I tell myself it’s purely educational, but when I cling to his neck and wrap my legs tightly around his back, I know deep down that it’s not. It’s as much for me as it is for him.
When we’re finished, he circles my jawline with his thumb and index finger, coming to a point at my chin. It happens too fast for me to realize what he’s doing, and before my mind can formulate a reaction, my body does it for me. That touch, exactly how Luke used to do it, right down to pressing the pad of his thumb into the groove of my chin. I tilt my face into his hands and close my eyes. He pushes my bangs off my forehead.
“You’re pretty,” he whispers. His face is close to mine, so close that his hair falls onto my cheek. I open my eyes quickly. It’s all too familiar, the way he’s touching me and the way his hair is on my face. I can feel his heart pounding against my chest, his heavy beats out of sync with my light, erratic fluttering. And he’s too heavy on top of me, like any minute he could smother my whole body.
“Off,” I say, wiggling out from under him. “Off. I can’t do this.”
He pulls his hands away from my face. I can tell he’s still looking at me, staring at the back of my head.
“I think we already did,” he says quietly.
By the time we put our clothes back on and I show Trevor to the door, I realize Kim isn’t even home. I must not have noticed the garage door opening over the deafening music. She took her purse and her car but left a note on her beloved granite countertop.
Leftovers in the fridge. Just don’t eat too much—boys are hard enough to please. Love, MOM.
MOM in capital letters, with a squiggly line underneath.
I shred the note into a million pieces and spend the rest of the night typing chemistry notes. I only pause to wipe the tears that insist on leaking out the corners of my eyes. It must be the hormones, or whatever endorphins you’re supposed to feel after sex. It has nothing to do whatsoever with my mother not caring how many guys I sleep with.
Before I curl up in the sheets Trevor and I had sex in, I make another entry in my pearly white notebook. Trevor Johnston, number eleven. I give him a nine in loopy lettering, then add commentary. Good looking. Strong. I bet he’s a good boyfriend, the kind that’s fun and can be serious when the time calls for it.
The more I write about Trevor, the worse I feel, but I can’t seem to stop. I’m afraid of what will happen when I stop. The way he touched me. He touched me like only one person has ever touched me before. How can he touch me like that when he barely knows me?
I give him a nickname, even though I almost don’t want to. It’s part of the system, a rite of passage. Every guy needs a nickname, so Trevor is forever immortalized as Round Two.
6
The next morning, I pretend I’m surprised to see Kim home, even though I heard her thump into the house sometime after midnight. As she clatters around in the kitchen, I change into something I know will raise her eyebrows as far up her forehead as they can go. One of my lingerie tops, a black one with lacy trim, tucked into a tiny denim skirt. Instead of my usual Cons, I pull on high heels. I grip the railing as I toddle down the stairs.
“Good morning,” I say, forcing a perky voice. I reach into the cupboard for a coffee mug. Usually I have to stand on my tiptoes to reach, but the heels give me extra leverage.
Kim throws up her hands. “We’re out of coffee. We’re out of coffee and I can’t find anything in this damn kitchen.”
“Maybe you should try grocery shopping,” I tell her, palming my mug and elbowing her out of the way. “Coffee’s back here. With the breakfast food. Where it belongs.” I should know. I’m the one who organized the cupboards in the first place. One trait I share with Kim is that neither of us can live in chaos. Everything has to not only have a place but has to occupy the right place. A place that makes sense.
“You look nice today,” Kim says, pressing herself against the counter. “Very pretty.”
I turn away to pour coffee grinds into the filter and try to ignore the rush of pride that ripples through me. I know I don’t look nice today. I don’t look pretty. I don’t even look like myself. I have never let the persona I put on in my bedroom cross over into real life before, and I didn’t do it today for any guy. My reflection is distorted in the stainless steel—pink lipstick and dark-rimmed eyes. I look more like Kim than I ever thought possible.
“Well, you look like you need some sleep,” I say, spinning around to face her. I don’t add that she also smells like she needs a shower and some mouthwash.
“Maybe we can go shopping today,” Kim says, cocking her head. “You can help me pick out some new clothes.”
I grit my teeth. This is what I wanted last night. I wanted Kim to act like a mom. But it’s all wrong, the way she does it. She can never get it right. A good mom would take her daughter shopping on a weekend, not at seven in the morning on a school day. A good mom would remember that her daughter has school. A good mom wouldn’t let her daughter leave the house dressed the way I am right now, not in a million years.
“I can’t,” I say, slamming the mug down on the counter with more force than I intended. “I have that thing. School. You know—that place where I go to classes and get straight As.”
“Oh. Duh,” Kim says, slapping her forehead with the heel of her hand. “Well, you can skip it for one day, can’t you? One day won’t hurt.”
I grip the countertop behind me with my fingers. I want to scream, but when my voice comes out, it’s flat and emotionless. Kim can’t get the mom thing right, and I can never show emotion when I feel it. What a fucked-up family unit we are. I wonder who she blames, since I blame her.
“I can’t skip it. In case you forgot, I’m going to MIT next year. I need to actually go to class to get the grades, and I’m not throwing that away so you can buy more clothes you don’t need and shouldn’t be wearing anyway.” I grab my bag off the table and storm out the door with shaking hands.
“Well, have a good day, honey!” Kim calls behind me. I slam the door to the Jeep as hard as I can, but it still barely makes a sound. I don’t look back and I don’t return the wave that I know she’s giving me, her red-talon nails extending to the ceiling. Why can’t she ever get mad? Why can’t she take something person
ally? Why does everything I say bounce off her, like her plastic skin is some freakish form of Teflon?
I’m already in the parking lot at school by the time I realize I’m here way too early. Class doesn’t start for another hour, and prayer group isn’t meeting today. The minutes stretch in front of me on the clock radio. I can’t sit here, not for another second. I’m full of energy that I don’t know what to do with, so I decide to channel it into something productive and go to the science lab. I can sit at my desk and read ahead on our next assignment. Zach will be thrilled that he’ll have even less work to pretend to do.
I’m met with a warm breeze when I step out of the Jeep, and I reach down to tug at the hem of my skirt, willing it to cover more skin. At least I had the good sense to grab a cardigan. I wasn’t actually planning on leaving the house like this. I was going to wait until Kim left and change back into my normal attire. I could go back now, but that would mean running into her again, and she would ask why I’m changing and then she would know I put this outfit on for her. And that’s not a satisfaction I’m about to give her.
The hallways are dark and quiet. The only sound is my heels clacking on the floor. I remember being in grade nine with Angela, when we hated sitting in the cafeteria but she was worried about being caught eating in the hallway. At the first hint of clacking heels, she would shove her food back into her backpack, and I would always laugh because she looked so guilty. Usually it wasn’t even a teacher, just a senior who would give us a weird look.
The door to the science lab is ajar, but the room is mostly dark. I set my bag down and flip on the lights. For some reason I wander behind the desk Mr. Sellers occupies at the front of the room instead of heading to my own desk. I pick up the whiteboard marker he uses and stand beside the board. I clear my throat and begin to speak to nobody.
“Today, we’re going to be talking about electronegativity. It’s more interesting than it sounds. It’s all about attraction. The higher the electronegativity of an atom, the greater its attraction for bonding electrons.”
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