The Queen of Kentucky

by Alecia Whitaker

  Kimi snorts and Sarah shoots her a nasty look before she continues. “However, if you put a gun to my head and made me name five boys, I’d say Jimmy first—’cause we’re totally exclusive no matter what some people might think—and then I’d go with four other seniors: Ben Roth, Joey Beach, Greg Grammer, and… um… oh, Brad Jones.”

  She says all this flippantly, as if it’s no big deal. As if telling four other girls, two of whom she just met this month, that she likes four other guys besides her boyfriend is no big deal. I’m in awe.

  “Okay, now you, Ericka,” she says, turning her gaze my way.

  I gulp, not really feeling the gushy girl bonding I was expecting tonight. I’m fourteen, the same age as these girls, but I’ve never been kissed, so I definitely don’t have a playlist of make-out jams, and I’ve never really had a boyfriend. Of course, that’s the last thing I want to admit. I’m sure the Fabulous Four, as Luke calls them, will find my lack of experience more pitiful than fabulous.

  I shrug. “I don’t really like anybody,” I lie, feeling my cheeks flame red.

  “Oh, come on!” Sarah says, exasperated. “It’s not a big deal, Ericka. Like, okay, if you ask Kimi, she could name at least fifteen off the top of her head! And she’s probably been felt up by half of them already.”

  “Soooo jealous,” Kimi spits under her breath.

  “So just name a few guys, Ericka. It’s easy.” Sarah looks at me and waits. All of them look at me and wait. Finally she blows air through her lips and rolls her eyes. “Ericka, it’s top secret. Like, we’ll pinky swear and all that. Nobody tells who’s on your boys list. Girl code.”

  “Pizza’s here!” Mark calls down the stairway. I jump at the sound of his voice, hoping he hasn’t heard any of this. He couldn’t have come at a better time, though, and judging by how fast Mackenzie springs off the couch, she couldn’t agree more.

  “Coming!” she yells, bounding over to the stairs.

  “Like Mark,” Sarah states simply.

  Mackenzie stops cold and jerks her head over toward us. I avert my gaze. Awkward. All so very awkward.

  “Whatever,” Sarah says, almost challenging Mackenzie. “It’s obvious he’s totally into her, and she’s your friend, right? So who cares?” Her phone beeps and, showing how serious she really is about all this, she shoves it in between the couch cushions without checking her message and keeps her eyes on Mackenzie.

  “Yeah. Who cares?” Mackenzie finally says, looking over at me and shrugging before disappearing up the stairs.

  I watch her go and kind of feel like she cares; but Mark is really nice, really cute, and, apparently, “totally into” me. And as quiet as Sarah usually is, she’s obviously unrelenting about boy talk, so I cave just to get her off my back.

  “Okay,” I say timidly. “Well, then, Mark Watts.”

  “You two were soooo cute couples’ skating earlier,” Laura chimes in, bobbing her head ferociously.

  “Good, who else?” demands our resident boy-talk interrogator, Sarah. Kimi and Laura are both grinning from ear to ear, eager to learn more of my juicy secret desires.

  I take a deep breath. Just four more to go. The name David Wolfenbaker is going off like fireworks in my head, making my heart beat extra fast and causing me to sweat a little. He’s the only guy I really, really like, but if he knew, if anybody were to tell him, I would absolutely die.

  “I don’t know that many guys yet,” I stall.

  “Well, I think you like Wolf,” Kimi says, her eyes sparkling.

  And there it is. Out there. Because although I didn’t confirm it with my mouth, they all oooooh at the same time, which means that burning sensation I feel in my cheeks, ears, and neck has indeed given me away. So I nod, and then I do the only thing I can think to do, which is rush through this torture and save myself. “Okay, so Mark, and Wolf, and his older brother, too, and I guess that guy you said, Joey Beach, or whatever.”

  “And?” Kimi asks.

  I don’t want to blow it with this top five game, but I’m drawing a real blank and feel like I could break out into hives at any second. The only other boy I can really think of is Luke, and I mean, he’s cute, but he’s like my brother. Right?

  “Ericka, just say somebody,” Laura says, getting antsy.

  Right. That’s the other thing about Luke: Laura likes him.

  “That guy who’s always hanging around with your boyfriend at the lockers,” I say quickly, looking at Sarah. “I mean, he’s not exactly my number one, but he’ll do.”

  The girls all giggle at that, and Kimi pipes up, “Well, he may not be Orlando Bloom, but he’s really quite talented with his tongue… and creative, too.”

  Everyone cracks up, and Sarah hits her with a throw pillow. I feel like I can finally breathe. Mackenzie comes back downstairs and I start to relax a little again. I don’t know why that was so stressful for me, but I guess it’s like this: I already feel out of place around these girls. I mean, Sarah and Mackenzie are super rich. Laura is cute, and Kimi is both cute and experienced. I totally want to fit in, but it’s like I’m three steps behind.

  Mackenzie puts the pizzas on the coffee table, and they smell delicious. I’m famished. I grab a Coke from her fridge while the other girls huddle around the pies. Then I make my way over and snatch a paper plate, which is when I see the selection: mushroom-pepperoni and supreme. And I’m allergic to mushrooms.

  “I’m glad you guys weren’t picky,” Mackenzie says, biting into a slice. “That was the easiest pizza ordering I’ve ever done. All my friends back home were always like, ‘half this, half that, no this, light on that, sauce on the side, etc.’ So high maintenance!”

  The last thing I want is any more attention on me, so I grab a lesser-of-two-evils slice with pepperoni, take a seat at the far end of the couch, and start picking off the mushrooms as stealthily as possible.

  “I’ll go next,” Laura says. “It’s probably kind of obvious, but I really like Luke Foster.”

  She pauses and I realize that she’s looking right at me. I’ve just taken a huge bite and don’t really get what she’s looking at, so I shrug and give her a greasy thumbs-up. She smiles super big, looking totally relieved. “Okay, so my top five goes Luke Foster, Trevor Barker, Wolf, Tommy Parks, and Keith Miles.”

  I can’t believe she paused, all worried like, because of Luke—Luke!—when the real reason I’m about to choke on my pizza is because she likes Wolf, too!

  “So I’m picking five guys I haven’t made out with before based entirely on looks and not because I actually want to go out with them, okay?” Kimi says, glancing over at Sarah as if she’s about to do something wrong. “Jimmy is really cute.” Sarah narrows her eyes, and Kimi rushes on, “But I don’t like him like that; I’m just saying. Then Wolf, Trevor, Mark, and Matt Wright.”

  Wolf?

  “I thought you weren’t dating freshmen,” Sarah says, calling her out. “And you said Wolf’s a pig.”

  “Wolf is a pig,” Kimi says, eyeing Sarah evilly, “but we can’t all date the sleazeball quarterback, and I like to keep my options open.”

  “That ‘sleazeball quarterback’ was your first pick.”

  “Based only on looks.”

  “Whatever.” Sarah seethes and looks at Mackenzie. “Go.”

  The tension is obviously back, and not just between Sarah and Kimi. So far almost everybody has Wolf in their top five. I’m dying.

  Mackenzie takes a deep breath, looks around at all of us nervously, and then screams, “Wolf, Wolf, Wolf, Wolf, Wolf!” hiding her face with a couch pillow and kicking her legs in the air.

  I feel my jaw fall open and my eyes bug out, and I make absolutely no effort to hide the surprise and terror splashed all over my face. My Best Friend Forever likes my True Love Always!

  “Oh, brother, I’m glad these things are secret, or he’d never get his jersey over his big head,” Sarah grumbles.

  Everyone laughs and then Kimi goes into a long tirade about how much better a
thong is versus all other styles of underwear, but I tune her out completely. I don’t know if it was all the birthday cake, the tumbling session right after, or a rogue mushroom from the pizza, but I cover my mouth and run to the bathroom, vomiting a little in my hand before I make it.

  Getting picked up early from Mackenzie’s is the worst. I feel like such a little kid, waiting upstairs at the kitchen counter with Mrs. Watts. The other girls were concerned, but pretty grossed out as well. When I came out of the bathroom, my lips were a little swollen and I smelled like puke. They all said their good-byes downstairs after I called my mom, and I can still hear them laughing and squealing from up here.

  “You sure you don’t want some more Sprite?” Mrs. Watts asks.

  “No, ma’am,” I respond, holding washcloth-wrapped ice to my swollen lips.

  “Careful with all those manners,” Mark says, coming in for a glass of milk. “You’re going to get me in trouble around here.”

  Mrs. Watts chuckles and wrings my shirt dry in the kitchen sink. She was really great with the whole “vomit-gate” episode, giving me an old cheer shirt of Mackenzie’s and rinsing out my own.

  “I’m going to throw this in the dryer until your mother comes,” she says and disappears around the corner. How can she be so jolly about cleaning up my puke?

  Mark stays put by the fridge, nervously tapping on his glass and looking out the window over the kitchen sink. I stay perched on a tall kitchen stool, searching for something to say, looking at the breakfast nook windows over his shoulder. It’s pitch dark outside and the lights are bright in here, so we’re both basically just looking at our own reflections.

  “You going home?” he finally asks.

  “Yeah,” I say, my heavy sigh and drooped shoulders speaking volumes.

  “That sucks,” he says.

  I nod in agreement. It does suck. Finally getting invited to a cool slumber party, where the most popular girls in our class want to help me with my cheers and talk to me about boys, is awesome. Getting sick in my hand in front of those very same girls and calling my momma in the middle of the night is anti-awesome.

  “You want a tour before you go?” he asks, finally looking at me.

  I sit up straight and meet his gaze. “I’d love one,” I say, standing up and moving around to his side of the counter, keeping my Angelina-times-ten lips as covered as possible.

  “Just try not to throw up on anything, okay?” he teases.

  I punch him in the arm and giggle.

  He leads me from the kitchen to the breakfast nook and toward their spacious den/movie room, where Dr. Watts is watching the Discovery Channel in surround sound. We wind through the ground floor and I feel like I’m a princess inside a gorgeous castle. If I lived here, I wouldn’t take any of it for granted. Mark indicates that I should go up the stairs first, which makes me keenly aware of my butt placement in relation to his eye line. We walk down a long hallway, lined with guest room and bathroom doors. He shows me Mackenzie’s room, which is massive, with a huge canopy bed and cheerleading trophies on wraparound shelves. Her dresser is covered with pictures of her old friends from Minnesota, and she actually has a walk-in closet… with enough clothes to fill it. His parents’ room is off-limits but has beautiful French doors.

  At the door of his own bedroom, he touches the knob and leans in close to me. Like me, he has tiny freckles on his nose. I hold my breath and hope to God that I don’t smell like barf.

  “I’m not supposed to have girls up here,” he says, blushing and looking confused as to whether or not he’s breaking a rule. I blush, too.

  But the doorbell rings and saves him from any possible punishment.

  And I want to kill my mother.

  CHAPTER

  SEVENTEEN

  Okay, Red Alert: Operation Restore BFFness.

  It’s after lunch and I can’t wait any longer to call Mackenzie. This morning would’ve been too early, and maybe would’ve made me seem a little desperate. And it’s all I could think about during Mass, then over lunch at KFC, and then throughout a lovely family trip to the grocery store. I would have called on the way home from church, but I’m the last teenager on the planet without a cell phone.

  I don’t know what spontaneous acts of sleepover vomit do to new friendships, but it can’t be good. I press the living room phone tightly to my ear and nervously wind the cord around and around my finger while it rings.

  “Hello?”

  It’s Mackenzie.

  “I’m so embarrassed!” I cry.

  “Ericka, don’t be!” she says. “I hate that you got sick, but don’t be embarrassed.”

  Relief washes over me and I realize that the circulation in my first finger is being cut off. I unwind the cord and flop down on the couch.

  “I don’t know,” I respond, still depressed over the whole thing. “I was so excited to spend your birthday with you, and we were having so much fun….”

  “Yeah, it was a good birthday.” She sighs contentedly.

  Too contentedly? In the pause of looking for something to say, curiosity gets the best of me.

  “So, what’d you guys do after I left, anyway?” I ask in a casual tone, but dying to know what I missed.

  “Oh my gosh, it was so crazy,” she gushes. “Kimi brought a Ouija board and we turned down all the lights and lit candles and spoke to Sarah’s dead grandfather, which was really sad, but totally incredible. She started crying and we all felt awful. I’ve never talked to a dead person or spirit or whatever. It was so wild. Like, really wild. We kind of got spooked, so we changed gears and asked it all sorts of questions, like who’s going to be the first to have sex and who’s going to ask us to homecoming. But then we realized it was just yes or no questions, so we had to get really specific.” She giggles. “Let’s just say, it’s looking good for me!”

  I gasp.

  “Not about the sex!” she assures me. “About homecoming.” Which actually makes me feel worse, knowing exactly who is on her top five—in all five spots.

  “What else did you do?” I ask, sitting up straight and abandoning my casual facade.

  “Um, we stayed up all night and gave each other mani/pedis and watched movies. It was really fun.” And then, as an afterthought, she says, “But we all really missed you!”

  “Yeah, I missed you guys, too,” I say, meaning it more than I’ve ever meant anything. One mushroom allergy and the next thing I know, the guy I like is spiritually conjured into going to homecoming with my new bestie.

  “See you in twenty,” I say into the phone and hang up. I grab a tote bag and stuff it with my journal, a pen, a bottle of water, and my iPod. “I’ll be at the creek!” I holler down the hall to whoever cares and head outside.

  Feeling sorry for myself after talking to Mackenzie, I called Luke and asked him to meet me at our spot by the creek. It’s not like he’ll know what to think about it all, but he’s a guy and he’ll make me stop overanalyzing everything. He’ll say either, “Yeah, it’s pretty bad. You suck,” or “Ricki Jo, it’s no big deal. Just a little puke.” I’m hoping for the latter.

  I whistle for Bandit and he comes flying around the side of the house as if it were on fire. He’s the kind of dog whose ears flop when he runs and whose mouth is in a sort of constant smile. I don’t really feel like feeling better just yet, but I grin involuntarily at the sight of him and bend down to rub his belly. We get to the creek in about five minutes and I figure I’ve got a little while to pour my aching heart out onto the blank page. If I were the editor of Seventeen, I’d write an article called “How Bad Is Too Bad?” and put real-life stories like mine in it and have friendship experts weigh in. For example, I didn’t steal anything or kiss anyone else’s boyfriend, so it can’t be that bad, right? I start a loose outline for the article in my journal, just for kicks, drawing a sort of chart with pizza vomit being really low and killing a cheerleader being really high.

  “Beat it, Bandit,” I say for the millionth time. He’s fixated on
my journal and keeps trying to bite it. He’s already drooled all over the pages and I can tell he’s not going to let me get very far. I sigh and finally just put it back in my bag. “Someone’s needy today,” I say, rubbing his head so that his ears flop wildly.

  I grab a stick and lie down, pacifying Bandit with a halfhearted game of fetch. I throw and he runs, retrieves, and races back, dropping the stick on my chest.

  And then, halfway to the stick, he stops, perks up, and howls like crazy. I lean up on my elbows and see Luke and Bessie, who trump both the stick and me as Bandit races toward them, Bessie already running in the opposite direction. She’s got a good game of hard to get going on, and Mr. Needy Dog is suddenly all “Ricki Jo who?” (He can call me that—we have history.)

  “So you had fun at Mackenzie’s?” Luke asks, staring down at me.

  “Yeah, but I got sick and had to go home early,” I tell him.

  “You okay?” he asks, concerned.

  I look up at him and nod. “Yeah, nothing to worry about. Just a little mushroom incident.”

  “Ah,” he says, knowing all too well what that entails.

  Luke holds out his hand and hefts me up. We walk, me swatting at the tall grass with a long, skinny stick and pouting. It’s late afternoon and the air is crisp. I smell fall on the breeze, sweeping away the last days of summer. Depressing.

  “So did the Fabulous Four initiate you?” he teases. “Are you the Fab Five now?”

  I stare up at him with narrowed eyes, hand on cocked hip.

  “As a matter of fact,” I say, “I think we are. Mackenzie called me her best friend, so, yeah. Things are good in that department.”

  “So you’re fitting in,” Luke states simply.

  “I think so,” I reply.

  “I mean, I can tell a difference,” he says, looking away.

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  “Well, I don’t know,” he starts, looking down and then up again, anywhere but at me. “Like, for example, your new clothes. It’s like a whole new you. You dress more like those girls now.”