Two Parties, One Tux, and a Very Short Film about The Grapes of Wrath

by Steven Goldman

  We are on the couch in her living room. Her parents aren’t home and Danielle says we have about half an hour, which I interpret to mean that we can make out on the couch but we aren’t going to take off our clothes and jump into bed, which is in fact a relief to me. Although I’ve certainly imagined sex, I haven’t imagined that we would actually be having it; I think I’d want to have talked about it first. But since even kissing is new for me, I am more than happy to follow her lead. Bodies, I quickly learn, take a little adjusting to get into kissing position, and none of this comes naturally for me.

  So my hand is on her side, and as she shifts, I realize that there are only a few inches between that location and the bottom of her breasts. There is enough room beneath her shirt for my hand. So do I ask? How would I phrase it? “May I touch your breasts?” Should I call them “breasts” or is that too clinical? What about “May I touch you?” Does the word “may” make me sound too formal?

  Danielle has stopped kissing me and I realize that I must have gotten distracted. I blush. Now that she has my attention again, she moves a little more into my lap, her arms around my neck. She is a little heavier than I imagined she’d be, but I’m not uncomfortable.

  She raises her face toward mine. My left hand is on her back, but my right is sort of in her lap. As I try to replace it on her side I realize that in her new position, my hand is on the side of her left breast. I rest it there tentatively. She doesn’t say anything, so I move my hand a little farther. I wait for a reaction.

  I get one. She sits up straighter and slips her shirt off over her head. I stare at her.

  “Were you thinking you’d have to undo all those little buttons? They’re just for show.”

  I hadn’t actually gotten as far as the buttons, but I smile anyway. She doesn’t make any motion signaling that she wants me to take off the bra, so I place my hand on the embroidered cup, and she leans into me. I’m not sure what I expected, but the material feels almost spongy. The breasts beneath the material are firmer than I imagined. I try to be gentle, not squeezing but sort of massaging. She giggles a little, but doesn’t seem upset. As she leans in to kiss me again, a car goes by.

  “Oh my God, your parents.”

  “We’ll hear the garage door open. I can get my shirt on pretty quickly. Don’t worry.”

  I worry, but not enough to ask her to put her shirt back on.

  CHAPTER 24

  Life Is Different

  Life is different

  I’m a little late for history and Louis has taken my regular seat, but I’m handling it well. From across the room I watch David and Mariel discuss the prom. They are both laughing. Mariel isn’t going to the prom—she’s not interested. She and Libby and a couple of other people are headed up to somebody’s lake house for the weekend. She thinks it’s all a little too silly. Maybe I do too.

  Mariel is making a joke about rented pants that has David in hysterics. I haven’t seen David laugh since I threw an egg roll at him. Even then, he wasn’t laughing like this. Why aren’t we funny anymore?

  Life is different

  “I’m supposed to ask you whether you and I are still taking M.C. and Danielle to the prom.”

  David listens closely to my very carefully worded question.

  “You’re supposed to ask me, but you’re not asking me?”

  “No, I guess I’m actually asking. M.C. wasn’t sure, but I was pretty sure, but maybe I shouldn’t be. Do we have a reservation?”

  “I do, but I’m guessing it isn’t that hard to change it from two to four. You may have to stand the whole meal and eat table scraps.”

  “I’m used to that,” I tell him. He looks up at me, sighs loudly, and breaks the remainder of his sandwich in half.

  “Don’t you have a girlfriend now who can feed you?”

  Life is different

  “I talked to David, and we are double-dating for the prom. He called the restaurant and everything is set. Hello?”

  The person who answered the phone had said she was M.C., but now the line is strangely silent.

  “M.C.?”

  “I’m here.”

  “You asked me to ask David, then call you. I asked David, and now I’m calling you.”

  “I know.”

  “So the answer is yes.”

  “I know. David already told me.”

  M.C. sounds teed off. I’ve heard what she sounds like when she’s angry at her parents, at teachers, at her brothers, at Carrie, and at any number of girls from her class, but I’ve never heard her be angry at me.

  “What did I do wrong?”

  “Did you tell Louis that I had a great ass?”

  “No,” I say, immediately offended that she would think I’d say that. “I mean, it’s not that I don’t think you … I mean, I … but I didn’t … I would never … not to Louis.”

  “He said that you guys were talking and that you said I had a great ass.”

  “I don’t think I said that.” But maybe I did, sort of. At least I agreed when he said it.

  “I don’t appreciate you going around talking about me like I’m just walking body parts. I thought we were friends.”

  “I do not go around talking about you that way.” I really don’t. Except maybe that once.

  “Then why did he say you did? Why would he make that up?”

  Because he’s a jerk—although that’s not the word he would use. “Here’s what happened, and you have to believe me. Louis gave me a ride home and he was talking about a bunch of stuff and he made a comment about your … ass and what was I supposed to say—no, she has an ugly ass? Should I have slugged him for suggesting you might be attractive? It wasn’t a nice way of saying it, but it is what he meant. Why were you talking to Louis anyway?”

  “I wasn’t trying to talk to him. He was asking me about David and you and then he said that, and, I don’t know, I felt upset because I had this picture in my head of you guys sitting around rating me and how my ass compares with Natalie’s or Danielle’s or somebody’s, and I know guys do that, but you’re my friend, aren’t you?”

  “I thought so.”

  “Me too.” She is thawing. I can hear it in her voice. “Louis is a jerk,” she adds.

  “Yes.”

  “He considers you one of his best friends.”

  Really? I spend a lot of time with Louis, mostly in small groups. Occasionally he, David, and I have gone somewhere together, though I don’t remember ever inviting him directly. If you aren’t required to like your friends, I guess someone looking at our lives could call us friends.

  “How about I promise never to mention your ass again, to him or anyone, no matter how great it is? Are we friends again?”

  “What about my boobs?”

  I promise not to mention those either, then I offer ice cream. She takes a rain check, she’s got to babysit, but her answer, she tells me, is definitely yes. There is a pause. Then she asks me if I think Danielle would mind. I tell her I’m pretty sure that I’m allowed to eat ice cream with friends, even the ones with great asses.

  “You know,” she says seriously, “things felt a lot more simple a few weeks ago.”

  “I know. Trust me, I know.”

  Life is different

  It is a beautiful spring day and Danielle informs me that she wants a picnic dinner. In theory, we were on our way home to work on our homework. Ms. Chimneystack had reminded us yesterday that we still had to do the essays on the syllabus even if Curtis was on leave, and this time there is no way I’m doing anything other than a perfectly normal, boring, five-paragraph essay. But now Danielle wants a picnic, and at this moment that seems much more pressing than passing English. We stop at the 7-Eleven for single-serving pecan pies, the kind in the little tin plates, Pringles, and Dr Peppers. She chooses these items with an intensity that borders on obsession. My suggestion of the barbecue-flavored Pringles is flatly rejected, but I am allowed to add a Heath bar for dessert. We park by the pond at the Granger easement and she p
ulls a blanket from her trunk, which we spread out in a spot without too much goose poop. Danielle takes off her shoes. For a while we do nothing but eat potato chips and enjoy the fading sunshine.

  “It feels like being away,” she says, smiling a real smile. “You okay?”

  It’s her favorite question. Danielle seems to need confirmation that things are going well. Maybe she doesn’t trust her sense of reality. Maybe she just isn’t too trusting.

  “I think so. Do you think so?”

  “Maybe.” She gives a small shrug, like she just thought of something that she wishes she hadn’t. “None of your friends like me, do they?”

  I don’t disagree. How would I answer that?

  “I’m sure they think that I’m using you because I need to make Ryan jealous or I need a date to the prom or I’m just a slut who needs to have a male. Why doesn’t that piss you off? Why is it so hard to believe that I might actually like being around you?”

  Because I’m not a Ryan. I’m Mitchell Wells—pretty shy, a little nerdy, not a bad guy, but hardly someone people are waiting in line for. I don’t cause swoons. Maybe I’m not so trusting either.

  “Are we friends?” she asks.

  “I think so.”

  “Because if we aren’t friends, then it doesn’t mean anything.”

  “I’d like to be friends,” I tell her, wondering what she means by the word.

  “Me too,” she says, looking down at the grass. Her voice becomes very quiet, as if she’s telling the grass a secret that she isn’t so sure she wants me to hear. “You know, at the party, at Josh’s party the other night when you gave Nicole a ride home, it was such a shitty night, and I was just so totally—I don’t know, I felt completely alone. I was ready to leave Nicole there, and maybe I should have, but I was still hoping maybe I had one friend. And then I walked into the living room and saw you and I touched your arm and you were the first person to look me in the eyes all night. And when you looked away, it wasn’t because you were thinking something horrible about me. You were really cute. Shy. But there is something about your eyes. I felt like I could trust you.”

  I watch her stretch out her bare feet and she snuggles down next to me, which almost knocks me over, but I regain my balance and slide my arm around her and she curls up with her head on my shoulder and her legs across mine. Propped against the hillside, we watch the sunset, and for a moment I have a glimpse of the bubble that usually surrounds me—the space that almost no one enters. Seventeen-year-old guys don’t get touched a lot. Parents hug. There are high fives and handshakes. People bump into you by accident. But Danielle doesn’t see the bubble. She reaches in and touches my face with her fingertips. She leans her head on my shoulder. She touches me like she needs reassurance that I’m solid, that I’m really there.

  Later, when we finally leave the park and are standing kissing by her car, she slides her hand down my back and under the curve of my butt. It isn’t a grope, but it isn’t a pat. I have had my hands on her backside already, but I’ve never had someone touch me that way. Her mouth tastes like chocolate and toffee. She tells me she wants to be friends, first and foremost. She doesn’t know anyone who listens to her like I do. She needs me. She isn’t sure what she would have done without me. It’s all confusing, she says, she’s only dated one other person her whole life—someone she’ll admit she still is “messed up” over and she’s not sure where this is going and she doesn’t want to get hurt and she doesn’t want to hurt me and we talked on that blanket for two hours and yet nothing she said makes any sense to me because I can feel the pulse in her neck when I kiss it and I can feel her chest against mine and all I want to do is be with her.

  CHAPTER 25

  Words I Thought Were English

  A vocabulary of Danielle

  Lunch is almost over. David is at an away game and I am avoiding everyone else I know, so I eat quietly on the wall outside the auditorium. As a lunch spot it isn’t wonderful—there’s a great view of the parking lot—but it has the advantage of not being a place where anyone else ever goes. I have less than a week until my appearance before the Judicial Board. I should be preparing some kind of defense. Instead, I’m sitting here trying to relearn the English language.

  Yesterday, Danielle and I agreed to meet and “study” together in the library. Even though she said it in what sounded like a seductive voice, I’m guessing that she means we’re really going to be busy memorizing the periodic table for our chemistry test. Still, it is something.

  Danielle says we have to “take it slow.” I’d like a timer. Do I call her every night? Every other night?

  Danielle tells me she’s just being “cautious.” She has to protect herself from getting hurt again. It is so hard to imagine how I could hurt her, short of forgetting what I was doing and biting her tongue. She doesn’t seem vulnerable around me. I hear her say it, but no matter how I try, I cannot see myself as a heartbreaker. She keeps telling me she’s a “mess,” but she’s the most put-together mess I’ve ever seen. She really likes me, she says, but she’s not ready to jump into something “serious.” So we aren’t serious. What does a not-serious relationship mean? Are we just friends who kiss? Is “serious” a code word for sex?

  Define “friend”

  Books from the locker, a drink from the water fountain, and I turn the corner to find Amanda. Amanda is standing in the hall. Amanda is standing in the hall by the entrance to the library where I am supposed to be meeting Danielle. By herself. Amanda is short, maybe five-one if her shoes have thick soles, but standing in front of the library she fills the whole hallway. There is no way around her. I’m not sure she’s seen me yet, so I retreat back toward my locker. The library is one side of the square around the lunchroom, so if I do the whole circuit I will approach it from the other side. With luck, she’ll be gone by then. I check my watch. The period hasn’t started yet. Surely she has a class to go to. Cornering me can’t be worth a detention. I cut past the freshman lockers, so I can duck into the bathroom if she follows me. But how do I know if she is following me unless I look back? I put my hand on the bathroom door, which puts me in profile so that my glance back won’t be too obvious. I glance back. No Amanda.

  The bathroom door opens and I nearly fall in. To Ryan. Ryan is standing in the entrance to the bathroom. He doesn’t move to let me enter.

  I have this very clear image from some nature film I saw that had these two male rams facing off in single combat. They stood, muscles taut, daring the other to move first, the mountain air thick with testosterone and sweat. The tension was tremendous, waiting for the violent and inevitable crash of the horns as the mighty animals hurled themselves at each other. That’s not us.

  “Oops,” is my macho response to the situation. I follow with an “Excuse me” and he lets me pass. I have to at least pretend I was planning to go in, why else would my hand be on the door?

  After an appropriate amount of time, I leave the bathroom and finish the circuit to the library. Amanda is gone. I don’t see Danielle yet, so I find a little table off to one side, near the window and …

  “Hi, Mitchell.” Amanda slides into the chair across from me. I want to tell her it is already taken. “I think you’ve been avoiding me,” she says in a soft voice.

  Avoiding, hiding, actively running away from. “No,” I tell her as confidently as I can, given that both of us know I’m lying. She is half smiling, like she’s thinking of something pleasant and far away. It’s a confusing sort of smile. An angry smile.

  “I heard you’re taking Danielle to the prom,” she says with a casual vehemence.

  “Yeah, um … well, we’ve started, sort of … seeing each other.” That’s honest. We might be slow and unserious, but it still counts.

  “I know. I heard.” Meaning, you didn’t tell me yourself.

  “Do you have a free this period?”

  “When were you going to tell me?”

  “Because you are really late for your class.”

&nb
sp; “Were you going to tell me?”

  I don’t know. “Yes,” I tell her. “Yes, I was. Next time we bumped into each other.” Which would have been never if I could have helped it.

  “It would have been nice if I could have heard it directly from you,” she says, losing the smile from her anger.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Thanks, because I think you mean that. Can we talk?”

  I so want to say no.

  “I know that it isn’t going to come out right and I know I don’t have any right to say this, but I consider us friends and I feel like someone has to tell you.”

  Have I contracted some disease? Is there something stuck in my teeth? What is she talking about?

  “Mitchell, I’m worried about you. I know you like Danielle and I’m sure she’s a really great person, but everybody knows she uses people. Don’t you think it’s a little strange that she is suddenly in love with you? What, has she not noticed that you’ve been in her class since first grade? And now, just when no one else will even speak to her after what she did to Ryan, this lightning bolt hits her that you’re the one? You’re cute, Mitchell, but you’re hardly her type. She’s got to be desperate. That sounds harsh, but I just think you should know that’s what people are saying. And if it were me, I’d want someone to tell me if everyone thought I was being used, you know.”

  Amanda stops short and looks up. I can tell from her facial expression who is crossing the library toward us.

  “I’ve got to go—I’m late for class. I’m just trying to be a good friend, Mitchell, really.”

  Really?

  I’m sure Danielle saw Amanda fleeing the library, but all she says when she joins me is, “There you are, buddy.” I feel her hand on the back of my head before she speaks. Danielle likes to touch. My hair, my arm, a hand resting on my shoulder. If I am being used, what am I being used for? Other than a date for the prom, it’s hard to see what Danielle gains from dating me.