George suddenly becomes much more interesting. “I’ve always wanted to live in New York City,” I say.
“It’s the best place in the world. But Brown is right for me now.” He gives me a hesitant smile. “I needed to explore a different side of myself.”
“What were you like before?”
“Tortured,” George says, and grins. “What about you?”
“Oh, I’m a little tortured too,” I say, thinking of Sebastian. But when we pull up to the theater, I vow to put Sebastian out of my mind. Clusters of college kids, drinking beer and flirting, are seated outside at tiny French tables. As we push through the crowd, George puts his hand on my shoulder and squeezes. I look up at him and smile.
“You’re awfully cute, Carrie Bradshaw,” he says into my ear.
We stay out until closing time, and when we get back in the car, George kisses me. He kisses me again in the driveway of the hotel. It’s a clean and tentative kiss, the kiss of a man who thinks in straight lines. He takes a pen out of the glove compartment. “May I ask for your number?”
“Why?” I ask, giggling.
“So I can call you, dummy.” He tries to kiss me again, but I turn my head.
I’m feeling a little woozy, and the beer hits me full force when I lie down. I ask myself if I would have given George my number if I weren’t so drunk. I probably wouldn’t have let him kiss me either. But surely Sebastian will call now. Guys always call as soon as another man is interested. They’re like dogs: They never notice if you’ve changed your hair, but they can sense when there’s another guy sniffing around their territory.
We’re back in Castlebury by mid-afternoon on Sunday, but my theory proves wrong. Sebastian hasn’t called. Maggie, on the other hand, has. Several times. I’m about to call her when she calls me. “What are you doing? Can you come over?”
“I just got back,” I say, suddenly deflated.
“Something happened. Something big. I can’t explain it on the phone. I have to tell you in person.” Maggie sounds very dire and I wonder if her parents are getting divorced.
Maggie’s mother, Anita, opens the door. Anita looks stressed, but you can tell that a long time ago she was probably pretty. Anita is really, really nice—too nice, in fact. She’s so nice that I always get the feeling the niceness has swallowed up the real Anita, and someday she’s going to do something drastic, like burn down the house.
“Oh, Carrie,” Anita says. “I’m so glad you’re here. Maggie won’t come out of her room and she won’t tell me what’s wrong. Maybe you can get her to come downstairs. I’d be so grateful.”
“I’ll take care of it, Mrs. Stevenson,” I say reassuringly. Hiding in her room is something Maggie’s been doing for as long as I’ve known her. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to talk her out.
Maggie’s room is enormous with floor-to-ceiling windows on three sides and a closet the length of one wall. Nearly everyone in town is familiar with the Stevenson house, because it was designed by a famous contemporary architect and is mostly comprised of glass. The inside of the house is pretty sparse, though, because Maggie’s father can’t abide clutter. I crack open the door to Maggie’s room as Anita stands anxiously to the side. “Magwitch?”
Maggie is lying in her bed, wearing a white cotton nightgown. She rises from beneath the covers like a ghost, albeit a rather churlish one. “Anita!” she scolds. “I told you to leave me alone.” The expression on Anita’s face is startled, guilty, and helpless, which is pretty much her usual demeanor around Maggie. She scurries away as I go in.
“Mags?” I caution. “Are you okay?”
Maggie sits cross-legged on the bed and puts her head in her hands. “I don’t know. I did something terrible.”
“What?”
“I don’t know how to tell you.”
I can tell, however, that I’m going to have to wait for this terrible revelation, so I sit on the padded stool-y thing Maggie uses as a chair. According to her father, it’s a Swedish-designed ergonomically correct sitting contraption that prevents backaches. It’s also sort of bouncy, so I bob up and down a bit. But then I’m suddenly tired of everyone else’s problems.
“Listen, Mags,” I say firmly. “I don’t have much time. I have to pick up Dorrit at the Hamburger Shack.” This is true, sort of. I probably will have to pick her up eventually.
“But Walt will be there!” she cries out.
“So?” Walt’s parents insist that Walt have an after-school job to make money for college, but the only job Walt’s ever had is working at the Hamburger Shack for four dollars an hour. And it’s only part-time, so it’s hard to see how Walt will be able to save enough money for even one semester.
“That means you’ll see him,” Maggie gasps.
“And?”
“Are you going to tell him you saw me?”
This is becoming more and more irritating. “I don’t know. Should I tell him I saw you?”
“No!” she exclaims. “I’ve been avoiding him all weekend. I told him I was going to see my sister in Philadelphia.”
“Why?”
“Don’t you get it?” She sighs dramatically. “Peter.”
“Peter?” I repeat, slightly appalled.
“I had sex with him.”
“What?” My legs are all tangled up in the Swedish sitting device and I bounce so hard the whole thing falls over, taking me with it.
“Shhhhh!” Maggie says.
“I don’t get it,” I say, trying to detach myself from the stool. “You had sex with Peter?”
“I had intercourse with him.”
And another one bites the dust.
“When?” I ask, once I manage to get off the floor.
“Last night. In the woods behind my house.” She nods. “You remember? The night we painted the barn? He was all over me. Then he called yesterday morning and said he had to see me. He said he’d secretly been in love with me for, like, three years but was afraid to talk to me because he thought I was so gorgeous I wouldn’t talk to him. Then we went for a walk, and we immediately started making out.”
“And then what? You just did it? Right in the woods?”
“Don’t act so surprised.” Maggie sounds slightly hurt and superior at the same time. “Just because you haven’t done it.”
“How do you know I haven’t?”
“Have you?”
“Not yet.”
“Well then.”
“So you just did it. On top of the leaves? What about sticks? You could have gotten a stick stuck in your butt.”
“Believe me, when you’re doing it, you don’t notice things like sticks.”
“Is that so?” I have to admit, I’m immensely curious. “What did it feel like?”
“It was amazing.” She sighs. “I don’t know exactly how to describe it, but it was the best feeling I’ve ever had. It’s the kind of thing that once you do it, all you want is to do it again and again. And”—she pauses for effect—“I think I had an orgasm.”
My mouth hangs open. “That’s incredible.”
“I know. Peter says girls almost never have orgasms their first time. He said I must be highly sexed.”
“Has Peter done it before?” If he has, I’m going to shoot myself.
“Apparently,” Maggie says smugly.
For a minute, neither one of us speaks. Maggie picks dreamily at a thread on her bedspread while I look out the window, wondering how I got so left behind. Suddenly, the world seems divided into two kinds of people—those who have done it and those who haven’t.
“Well,” I say finally. “Does this mean you and Peter are dating?”
“I don’t know,” she whispers. “I think I’m in love with him.”
“But what about Walt? I thought you were in love with Walt.”
“No.” She shakes her head. “I thought I was in love with Walt two years ago. But lately, he’s been more like a friend.”
“I see.”
“We used to
go to third base. But then Walt never wanted to go any further. And it made me think. Maybe Walt didn’t really love me after all. We were together for two years. You’d think a guy would want to do it after two years.”
I want to point out that maybe he’s saving himself, but the truth is, it is pretty strange. “So you were willing and he wasn’t?” I ask just to clarify.
“I wanted to do it on my birthday, and he wouldn’t.”
“Weird,” I say. “Definitely weird.”
“And that really tells you something.”
Not necessarily. But I don’t have the energy to contradict her.
All of a sudden, even though I know this isn’t really about me, I feel a thundering sense of loss. Maggie and Walt and I were a unit. For the past couple of years, we went everywhere together. We’d sneak into the country club at night and steal golf carts, and cooling off a six-pack of beer in a stream, we’d talk and talk and talk about everything from quarks to who Jen P was dating. What’s going to happen to the three of us now? Because somehow I can’t imagine Peter taking Walt’s place in our corny adventures.
“I guess I have to break up with Walt,” Maggie says. “But I don’t know how. I mean, what am I supposed to say?”
“You could try telling him the truth.”
“Carrie?” she asks in a wheedling tone. “I was wondering if maybe you could—”
“What? Break up with him? You want me to break up with Walt for you?”
“Just kind of prepare him,” Maggie says.
Maggie and Peter? I can’t think of two people who belong together less. Maggie is so flighty and emotional. And Peter is so serious. But maybe their personalities cancel each other out.
I pull into the parking lot of the Hamburger Shack, turn off the car, and think, Poor Walt.
The Hamburger Shack is one of the few restaurants in town, known for its hamburgers topped with grilled onions and peppers. That’s pretty much considered the height of cuisine around here. People in Castlebury are mad for grilled onions and peppers, and while I do love the smell, Walt, who has to man the onion and pepper grill, says the stench makes him sick. It gets into his skin and even when he’s sleeping, all he dreams about are onions and peppers.
I spot Walt behind the counter by the grill. The only other customers are three teenage girls with hair dyed in multiple hues of pink, blue, and green. I nearly walk past them when suddenly I realize that one of these punks is my sister.
Dorrit is eating an onion ring as if everything is perfectly normal. “Hi, Carrie,” she says. Not even a “Do you like my hair?” She picks up her milk shake and drains the glass with a loud slurp.
“Dad’s going to kill you,” I say. Dorrit shrugs. I look at her friends, who are equally apathetic. “Get out to the car. I’ll deal with you in a minute.”
“I’m not done with my onion rings,” she says with equanimity. I hate the way my sister won’t listen to authority, especially my authority.
“Get in the car,” I insist, and walk away.
“Where are you going?”
“I have to talk to Walt.”
Walt’s wearing a stained apron and there’s sweat on his hairline. “I hate this job,” he says, lighting up a cigarette in the parking lot.
“But the hamburgers are good.”
“When I get out of here, I never want to see another hamburger in my life.”
“Walt,” I say. “Maggie—”
He cuts me off. “She didn’t go to her sister’s in Philadelphia.”
“How do you know?”
“Number one, how many times does she visit her sister? Once a year? And number two, I know Maggie well enough to know when she’s lying.”
I wonder if he knows about Peter, as well. “What are you going to do?”
“Nothing, I guess. I’ll wait for her to break up with me and that’ll be it.”
“Maybe you should break up with her.”
“Too much effort.” Walt tosses his cigarette into the bushes. “Why should I bother when the result will be the same either way?”
Walt, I think, is sometimes a bit passive.
“But maybe if you did it first—”
“And save Maggie from feeling guilty? I don’t think so.”
My sister walks by with her new Day-Glo hair. “You’d better not let Dad catch you smoking,” she says.
“Listen, kid. First of all, I wasn’t smoking. And secondly, you’ve got bigger things to worry about than cigarettes. Like your hair.”
As Dorrit gets into the car, Walt shakes his head. “My little brother’s just like her. The younger generation—they’ve got no respect.”
CHAPTER NINE
The Artful Dodger
When Dorrit and I get home, my poor father takes one look at Dorrit’s hair and nearly passes out. Then he goes into her room to have a talk with her. That’s the worst, when my father comes into your room for a talk. He tries to make you feel better, but it never quite works that way. He usually goes into some long story about something that happened to him when he was a kid, or else makes references to nature, and sure enough, that’s what he does with Dorrit.
Dorrit’s door is closed, but our house is a hundred and fifty years old, so you can hear every word of any conversation if you stand outside the door. Which is exactly what Missy and I do.
“Now, Dorrit,” my dad says. “I suspect your actions concerning your, ah, hair are indirectly related to overpopulation, which is something that is increasingly becoming a problem on our planet. Which was not meant to sustain these vast clusters of people in limited spaces…and tends to result in these mutilations of the human body—piercings, dyeing the hair, tattoos…It’s human instinct to want to stand out, and it manifests itself in more and more extreme measures. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“No.”
“What I mean,” he continues, “is that you must do all you can to resist these unwarranted instincts. The successful human being is able to conquer his unwanted and unwise desires. Am I making myself clear?”
“Sure, Dad,” Dorrit says sarcastically.
“In any event, I still love you,” my father says, which is the way he ends all his talks. And then he usually cries. And then you feel so horrible, you vow never to upset him again.
This time, however, the crying bit is interrupted by the ringing of the phone. Please, let it be Sebastian, I pray, while Missy grabs it. She puts her hand slyly over the receiver. “Carrie? It’s for you. It’s a guy.”
“Thanks,” I say coolly. I take the phone into my room and close the door.
It has to be him. Who else could it be?
“Hello?” I ask casually.
“Carrie?”
“Yes?”
“It’s George.”
“George,” I say, trying to keep the disappointment out of my voice.
“You got home okay?”
“Sure.”
“Well, I had a great time on Saturday night. And I was wondering if you’d like to get together again.”
I don’t know. But he’s asked too politely to refuse. And I don’t want to hurt his feelings. “Okay.”
“There’s a nice country inn between here and Castlebury. I thought maybe we could go next Saturday.”
“Sounds great.”
“I’ll pick you up around seven. We’ll have dinner at eight and I can get you home by eleven.”
We hang up and I go into the bathroom to examine my face. I have a sudden desire to radically alter my appearance. Maybe I should dye my hair pink and blue like Dorrit’s. Or turn it into a pixie cut. Or bleach it white blond. I pick up a lip pencil and begin outlining my lips. I fill in the middle with red lipstick and turn the corners of my mouth down. I draw two black tears on my cheeks and step back to check the results.
Not bad.
I take my sad-clown face into Dorrit’s room. Now she’s on the phone. I can tell by her side of the conversation that she’s comparing notes with one of her friends. Sh
e bangs down the receiver when she spots me.
“Well?” I ask.
“Well what?”
“What do you think about my makeup? I was thinking of wearing it to school.”
“Is that supposed to be some kind of comment about my hair?”
“How would you feel if I showed up at school tomorrow looking like this?”
“I wouldn’t care.”
“Bet you would.”
“Why are you being so mean?” Dorrit shouts.
“How am I being mean?” But she’s right. I am being mean. I’m in a mean, foul mood.
And it’s all because of Sebastian. Sometimes I think all the trouble in the world is caused by men. If there were no men, women would always be happy.
“C’mon, Dorrit. I was only kidding.”
Dorrit puts her hands on top of her head. “Does it really look that bad?” she whispers.
My sad-clown face no longer feels like a joke.
When my mother first got sick, Dorrit would ask me what was going to happen. I’d put on a smiley face because I read somewhere that if you smile, even if you’re feeling bad, the action of the muscles will trick your brain into thinking you’re happy. “Whatever happens, we’re all going to be fine,” I’d tell Dorrit.
“Promise?”
“Of course, Dorrit. You’ll see.”
“Someone’s here,” Missy calls out now. Dorrit and I look at each other, our little tiff forgotten.
We clatter down the stairs. There, in the kitchen, is Sebastian. He looks from my sad-clown face to Dorrit’s pink and blue hair. And slowly, he shakes his head.
“If you’re going to be around Bradshaws, you have to be prepared. There could be craziness. Anything might happen.”
“No kidding,” Sebastian says. He’s wearing a black leather jacket, the same one he was wearing at Tommy Brewster’s party and on the night we painted the barn—the night we first kissed.
“Do you always wear that jacket?” I ask as Sebastian downshifts on the curve leading to the highway.
“Don’t you like it? I got it when I lived in Rome.”
The Carrie Diaries Page 7