Where It Began

by Ann Redisch Stampler

  She stands there gazing at me, looking guilty as all hell, which is a new look for inhabitants of Cute World.

  “Are you feeling okay?” she says. “Are you still in pain? Do you need anything for it? Maybe I could help you.”

  Even the thought of Andie Bennett skipping across campus with an adorably wrapped little bottle of Vicodin does not make this conversation any more bearable. I am in the just-say-something-and-get-this-over-with mode. In the I-don’t-want-this-to-be-reality, I-want-to-slip-into-the-alternate-reality-in-which-I-turn-around-and-drive-the-Beemer-back-to-the-party-and-slip-back-inside-and-go-to-the-beach-house-with-Billy-after-he-tells-his-mother-he’s-spending-the-night-cramming-for-AP European-with-Andy-and-I-tell-my-parents-basically-nothing-and-everything-stays-exactly-the-same mode.

  I am nevertheless not entirely un-curious as to where she is going with this.

  “So how is it your fault?”

  “Gabby!” she says, widening her eyes, as if of course I know, in a sort of “duh” move. “I was supposed to be the designated driver.” She looks down at her hands, which she is kind of wringing in front of herself, as if she could gain comfort from her manicure. “I’m not trying to make an excuse. But Jordie was making those really good margaritas. I mean, who drinks margaritas? But you were drinking them and they looked really good and I guess I kind of started drinking them too.”

  This is all just so incredibly stupid and lame, and I am already so completely wigged out, I just don’t know what to say.

  I mean, it’s not as if I’m the world’s biggest fan of drunk driving, and if you’d ever sat in the backseat while John careened up the hill from Sunset toward Mulholland, straddling the middle line all the way up Roscomare and scraping the bottom of the Benz over the speed bumps, you’d completely believe me. Because: I don’t have a death wish or the delusional belief that cute drunk boys with car keys who say they can handle it can handle it.

  And this, boys and girls, is why God invented taxis and Andy Kaplan’s pool house.

  All right, it’s true that occasionally, in a spurt of conscientious zeal, we’d come up with a designated driver, but the only person who ever actually abstained when she was supposed to drive was Andie, which became completely irrelevant when Andy got his Porsche because Andie couldn’t turn it on or shift the gears, which put the possibility of Andie driving the Porsche in the basket with ha-ha-forget-it and impossible.

  And, anyway, if you’ve ever wondered why there are no cabs in L.A. late at night, it’s because they’re all ferrying the rich drunk kids from the Three B’s to coed overnights at the houses of whoever’s parents are the most clueless or on location in Cambodia. Or occasionally the sharing caring slobbery kind of parents who think it’s a testament to their grooviness that their kid and her slightly impaired friends are passed out at home and not in some low-class gutter in the Toy District after a rave.

  Andy Kaplan’s father is the first kind, which is better; once we ended up in Sasha Aronson’s rec room and her father wanted to rap, leading Billy to conclude that maybe consuming a truck-load of hash in the ’60s really could rot your brain. Andy’s father, on the other hand, leaves us completely alone out in the pool house, presumably so he and the fifth Mrs. Kaplan can play naked freeze tag all over the hacienda without being interrupted by pesky teens padding down the hall in search of a toilet to throw up in. He is so grateful that we are out cold in the pool house, he sends the housekeeper with trays of brunch-like goodies at noon the next day.

  The point of which being that Andie screwing up when she was supposed to be the designated driver of a car that Billy would never let her drive in the first place was kind of irrelevant.

  “Right.”

  I am incredibly tempted to say something really nasty to her.

  At that particular moment, it is hard to see a downside to being as nasty as I feel like being, as nasty as I’ve felt like being all day, and even more so after Billy’s hand slipped onto Aliza Benitez’s butt and into her pocket while I was innocently staring at the back of his head from behind a pillar.

  What was Andie going to do if I just broke down and went for it, drum me out of Cute World?

  Get me on the Slutmuffins’ blacklist?

  “I don’t blame you if you’re mad at me,” she says, scratching her right calf with the toe of her left Chanel ballet slipper, proving the utility of really expensive shoes in times of trouble.

  “For godsake, Andie,” I say, wanting to be mean but the cute little foot in the cute little shoe is just getting to me and realizing that it isn’t her cute little butt I want to kick. “It’s not like you could have done anything about it. I wasn’t exactly looking for a designated driver at the time. It’s not like you did anything to me.”

  Andie says, “It’s not?” She bites her lower lip and sniffles. “You are so nice. I never even realized how nice you are. You’re like . . .” (Try to imagine Andie struggling with deep thought.) “Joan of Arc or something. What you’re doing is totally amazing.”

  No, what I’m doing is trying to live through the day so I can come back for more tomorrow. This is probably more stupid than amazing. Or amazingly stupid.

  Andie is yammering on and on, goo-goo eyed. She thought she was loyal but I’m the most loyal person ever. I’m like a golden retriever, like her golden retriever Duchess who died but she was really a good dog, like a guy in the army who throws himself on a—what do you call it?—hand grenade for you.

  This girl is so sweet and so without brains, it’s pathetic.

  Because, truth be told, I am the hand grenade and not the person who throws herself on it. Because if Billy comes near me, his probation will blow up, the shrapnel will rip through his life, and he’ll be in Juvie Hell.

  I’m not back at Winston School to grow and change like some sort of life-embracing, leafy vegetation turning toward Ponytail’s imaginary sun. It’s a total fraud.

  I’m back because I want everything to stay the same.

  My everything being Billy.

  Me and Billy.

  Because even though I get it, I understand, I’m not brainless, still, my heart does not understand. My body does not understand in the least. Skin, eyelids, fingertips. I want him to play with my hair and the hell with Princeton. Would Romeo give up Juliet for a really good shot at the Ivies? I don’t care if Billy blowing in my ear is some form of felony. I want it and it seems to me as if, if I just hang in there and he sees me and my ear is right there in his face, then he’ll want it too. He did at the castle, so why not at Winston, every day, just like before?

  Because I am the grenade is why.

  Because if I get too close to him, I’ll mess him up.

  I am the grenade and I just have to roll away down the hill and stay away and somehow get by not talking to him or brushing arms with him or holding hands or sitting with him for three more weeks of junior year.

  XLVII

  BY THE TIME THE BUS DROPS ME OFF ON ESTRADA, I am feeling too much like a person who just crashed a car to drag my backpack home.

  It makes you wonder if maybe I wasn’t emotionally ready to go to Winston, not that I thought anybody ever was, and Ponytail Doc, big surprise, missed the boat on my actual condition. Or maybe, like Billy says, my parents really are paying all these happy helpers to do what I say I want them to do without regard to whether it makes sense, such as sending me back to Winston so I can watch Billy paw my favorite Slutmuffin whenever I look up.

  Dragging myself and all the books and the notebooks and the Xeroxed readers I need to make up all the work I missed up the hill to home feels like doing some pointless task on a chain gang in a really boring but disturbing movie just before the jailbreak, dragging giant rocks around for no apparent reason with a sadistic sheriff waving his rifle at me to make me keep trudging uphill. And I’m thinking, What is the point of this? What am I even doing there?

  And then I get home, into the quiet house, empty except for John, barely there behind the closed doo
r of the den, into my room, and onto the laptop, and there he is, there is his screen name on my screen, and that is the point.

  pologuy: u looked hot today

  So what were you doing with your hand in Aliza Benitez’s pocket? I so cannot come out and ask him, but what was that? All right, it proves to all the world that he isn’t still with me, but it’s not as if his probation officer is creeping around Winston School with a hidden camera, analyzing the footage to make sure that Billy gets not being with me right.

  gabs123: forbidden fruit. want some?

  pologuy: duh. only look what happened to adam

  gabs123: if adam had ur lawyer, he’d still b running around paradise and eve would still b naked eating apple sauce.

  pologuy: ur lawyer is fine. ag says. just don’t say anything that anyone could use against u. don’t talk to anyone. thought u were going to do ur garbo i vant to be alone don’t talk to me thing today but u were miss popular with the freaks. is this wise miss fruit?

  gabs123: strange day. i’m the new patron saint of freaks.

  And what were you doing with your hand in Aliza Benitez’s pocket? I am so waiting for an opening on this one. And so trying to get myself to back off and not say anything and not care.

  pologuy: u r irresistible to one and all

  Okay, sort of an opening.

  gabs123: tell that to benitez. i totally understand what ur doing with her and all, but it still somewhat sucks.

  pologuy: that must be why they call them slutmuffins. i miss YOU G

  Okay, totally worth bringing it up.

  gabs123: me too. while u dine with benitez.

  pologuy: noticed u dining with baby huey and the stick girls. u got ur own thing going on

  gabs123: give me a break! and andie wants to be my little pal. pretty weird.

  pologuy: she KNOWS she’s not supposed to bother u. brainless twit. i’ll take care of it. no worries

  Brainless twit? Poor Andie. Drama in Cute World.

  gabs123: no biggie.

  pologuy: i’ll take care of it

  gabs123: shit 5:00. gotta go.

  pologuy: ?

  gabs123: westwood. ponytail. again.

  pologuy: have fun. b sure to cross fingers behind back while curling up on couch. wouldn’t mind joining u on couch

  gabs123: she doesn’t have a couch. it’s a chair.

  pologuy: even better. easier to cross fingers behind chair. just remember not to tell her anything

  gabs123: there’s nothing to tell.

  XLVIII

  THIS TIME PONYTAIL IS WEARING A SKY-BLUE pantsuit with a giant white lace ruffle at her neck. I feel kind of sorry for her, watching her wardrobe deteriorate. It’s a little hard to take anyone all that seriously in an outfit like that, no matter how expensive the designer buttons are, and you can only hope she isn’t planning to wear it when she tells the DA that I’m cured.

  She doesn’t have any more cookies, either, so I offer to split my Dottie’s Sweeties cupcake and she says sure. You have to figure that at least she isn’t worried I’m some squirrelly person who might poison her strangely dressed shrink.

  “First day back,” she says.

  “Yup.”

  “Everything okay in the art room? Hands functional?”

  “Yup.”

  “Any issues with taking in information?”

  “Too much information.” I shudder a little with the image of Billy with his hand down Aliza’s back pocket.

  “You’re thinking about something specific.”

  All this cat and mouse is wearing me down. I just want to get my cheese back to the hole in the floorboards and not be harassed by someone who could make me do a ropes course if she felt like it.

  The thing is, after you sit in their offices long enough, and you’re already totally stressed out, it wears you down. As militant as you are about spending hour after hour explaining you don’t have a Problem, it seems as if the time would pass a lot faster if you would just roll over and spill.

  I’m sorry, but it does.

  Not to mention how hard it is to balance the risk of making her hate me if I tell her any true thing about me versus the risk of making her hate me if I sit there and refuse to tell her anything at all. It’s hard to know, if I do tell her anything, if she’ll turn around and tell someone else in a chain of revelations that could end up with me in girlie youth jail and Billy in actual prison with underage gangbangers and a permanent record somewhere else.

  “Okay,” I say. “Here’s the thing. If I tell you about something that someone is doing that might be wrong or like even illegal, do you tell other people about it?” I am staring straight at her. I figure that if she outright lies, I will somehow be able to tell.

  “You have some concerns about whether I’ll reveal what you tell me and get someone in trouble.”

  Duh.

  So we play this inane game back and forth with her not coming out and answering the question and me not coming out and telling her anything. Because I sure as hell am not planning to tell her how Billy is perhaps still my boyfriend and perhaps not my boyfriend and perhaps sticking his hands down Aliza Benitez’s pants (which, when you think about it, is probably the only thing he’s doing that could actually benefit him, legally speaking) and get him perhaps sent to out-of-state lockup for violating his probation, where he definitely won’t be my boyfriend, until I get a straight answer.

  And then finally she says, “Oh dear, I haven’t told you if you’re safe confiding this thing you’re wanting to talk about, have I? Which is so difficult with these juvenile court situations when you’re feeling stuck here, isn’t it? But let me try. If the illegal thing this person is doing is also illegal for you, for example if he’s selling you drugs, then I almost certainly have to mention it. But say he robbed a bank all on his own and then he told you about it, then no. Does that help?”

  Talking to your hapless girlfriend online. Robbing a bank. You can’t help but notice the difference.

  So I tell her, just to have something to say and pass the time.

  Then I feel worse.

  “Maybe I’m just not trusting enough. I don’t know. He said I’m the one. He said I look hot, so you’ve got to think he noticed I’m back. But if he noticed I’m back, what was he doing with his hands all over someone else’s butt?”

  “You wanted it to be you,” she says.

  Way to state the obvious. This is so not helping.

  “It sounds as if you have to work to interpret what he does and says, but just talking things out with him is off-limits,” she says.

  As if this were some amazing revelation.

  As if there were a universe of teenage girls out there going: Hey, boyfriend of my dreams, how do you really really REALLY feel about me and are you totally enraptured about being my boyfriend?

  And all these boyfriends going: Hey, insecure whack job of a girl who I’m about to dump, I’m glad you asked because I long to yap about how I feel about you day and night. Why don’t we share our feelings more often, perhaps instead of fooling around, because being interrogated by a clingy cow is more fun than sex on a stick.

  As if.

  “You’ve lost a lot of things very quickly,” she says, as if she thinks rubbing it in is going to help.

  “You think I’ve lost him?”

  “Well, what you’re telling me is that you’ve lost the ability to be with him openly and the possibility of intimacy.”

  “You mean sex?” Which is an interesting point coming from someone who looks to be living in some strange, buttoned-up world in which people don’t care one way or the other.

  Well, it is definitely lost, and I miss it all the time, even more when it looks like Aliza Benitez is getting what I want and I have to sit around and watch her get it.

  The point is: I feel like another person when he touches me, and I miss being her.

  XLIX

  THE SECOND DAY BACK, ANITA AND LISA CORNER me and haul me off to a bench behind
the ninth grade lockers where nobody ever hangs out because it’s 100% visible from the teachers’ office windows and faces the teachers’ parking lot, which, compared to the students’ parking lot that closely resembles a commercial for European Motor Cars of Beverly Hills, is not a pretty sight.

  “Did Billy Nash break up with you?” Lisa says. “We didn’t even look for you at lunch yesterday and then it turned out you weren’t with him. You were eating with Huey.”

  “And the stick girls,” Anita says. “If you can call what they do eating. And I swear if you say no to this, I’ll never mention it again, but you didn’t get this thin by purging, did you? Because I can explain the physiology of it to you, and it could kill you.”

  “So true,” Lisa says. “It’s better to be fat. Not that you were ever fat.”

  “No!” I say. “Ew. And I don’t see how you call this thin when I’ve been eating Dottie’s cupcakes twice a week.”

  “Ew to Billy or ew to an eating disorder?” Lisa says.

  “Bulimia, thank you. Like I would stick my fingers down my throat. Ew.”

  Lisa puts her hands on her hips. “Did Billy Nash break up with you or not?” she says. Acknowledging, of course, that the notion I might break up with Billy Nash isn’t even worth considering.