“I thought you weren’t going to do anything,” she says.
“I didn’t want to, but it’s my birthday. And I know the day’s already passed, but I think I should celebrate the big one-five, you know?”
“Who else is coming?” she asks, and I hear one of her dogs barking in the background.
“I’m only inviting you and Tomassi.”
“Is Jensen on your shit list?”
“I just want to keep it small.”
“Don’t get me wrong—I’m glad she’s not invited, I can’t stand the bitch. But she’s, like, your best friend.”
“She’s not not invited. I just want a calm night. No drama.”
“Gotcha. So what else is new?”
“Not much.” I don’t tell Rosenberg about Stephen. I’m not close enough to anyone right now to divulge that kind of information. I want to tell Rosenberg that I am mad at Jensen, that it did hurt my feelings when she not only forgot my birthday, but told me it was downright stupid. I want to tell her, tell someone, everything that happened, but if I say it out loud, then it’ll be true; Jensen will be a bad friend.
Rosenberg tells me about this kid Milo Vance, who lives in her neighborhood. He’s a sophomore, but his brother Mitchell is in our grade. There’s a whole clan of them, descending in age, but Milo is for sure the most popular. They talked at lunch one day or something, and now they’re friends. Rosenberg has no fear, which is why I really like having her as a friend. She’ll talk to any guy, no matter what her hair or makeup looks like, no matter what stupid outfit she’s wearing, and they seem to like her. She’s great at befriending the older crowd and gets invited to a lot of parties she’s not allowed to go to. Her parents are definitely the strictest of all of the parents in our group. But somehow they let her drive their golf cart around the neighborhood, and, unbeknownst to them, she rides over to flirt with boys in various houses.
“They want us to come over one night,” Rosenberg says.
“For what?”
“Like, to hang out.”
It’s amazing to me how much Rosenberg has changed. When I first knew her, in middle school, she had this thing where every time a new member of our group went over to her house, they had to jump in the pool with their clothes on to prove their friendship to her. I remember hearing about this and not believing it or understanding it, but when my day finally came and my parents drove me over to Rosenberg’s house for our first sleepover, she took me out to the pool on her house tour. First I saw her bedroom, the closed door to her older sister’s bedroom, her movie room, the kitchen with the marble island that looked exactly like my family’s kitchen, her parents’ master bedroom, her garage with a second fridge stocked with juice and Gatorade, a backup generator for hurricanes, her parents’ black Range Rover, her two dogs, three cats, and one bird, and then, finally, her backyard.
The pool was not heated and had a few straggling leaves in it from the last rain. It was designed with two circles that flowered out from one larger circle, almost like Mickey Mouse’s famous ears. I remember I had straightened my hair that day and really didn’t want to submerge it to appease Rosenberg. But as we stood there at the edge of the pool, she made me raise my right hand and solemnly swear that I would always be her best friend, forever and ever, no matter what. She had a towel ready and waiting on a lounge chair for me after my plunge. She stood with her arms crossed, smiling, in her glasses that had a blue tint in the lens, making her look a lot younger than she was. And I jumped, because that’s what you do when you want to be someone’s friend, someone like Rosenberg.
“Okay,” I say now. “I’m in.”
“I’m more interested in Mitchell than Milo. Is that weird?”
“Cradle robbing?”
“Oh my gosh, Mitchell is so cute. He looks eighteen.”
“Yeah, but he’s fourteen?”
“About to be fifteen.”
“But we’re fifteen now. God, fourteen sounds so young.”
“I know, right? Like a baby. But, seriously, he’s turning fifteen in, like, two months. He’s about to age any minute now!”
“I feel like anything younger than fifteen is just weird.”
“You’ve been fifteen for a week.”
“I’ve grown up a lot this week, though.”
Stephen Fraber calls shortly after my phone call with Rosenberg ends. He sounds nervous but manages to ask if I want to get dropped off at his house on Friday night and see a movie with him. His mom will take us, and she won’t stay, he promises. She’ll simply drop us off at the movie theater and pick us up when it’s over. My mom agrees to this as well, and it’s settled. The main issue is figuring out what to wear and how to style my hair without the help of any of the girls. My mom wants me to wear a skirt, which is ridiculous since we’re going to the movies, where we’ll be sitting the whole time and it’ll be uncomfortable, but she says for a date that’s what you wear. I guess it is a date—my first date, since no parents will be present—and it’s a real outing, not like hanging out at someone’s house and playing truth or dare.
I keep my date a secret all week, and when Friday rolls around I start to panic. I try to convince my mom to let me wear jeans, but she insists that the skirt looks better.
“Jeans look sloppy. You want to look nice. And can you part your hair on the side? Maybe curl it? It looks so good curled.”
“It takes forever to curl!”
“Then blow it out and fluff it up. I hate when it’s stick-straight like that.”
“I like it like this.”
“It looks so good fluffed up, though.”
“Mom! I don’t want to be fluffy. I want to be pretty.”
“You’re beautiful either way. I just like it fluffed up.”
“Oh my God.”
I settle on a white skirt from Abercrombie & Fitch that I got a year ago and never wear and a navy-blue tank top with lace on the chest. I wear a denim jacket and Converse sneakers. It’s way too cold to be wearing what I’m wearing, but I want to look good. I wear a push-up bra and I feel like it works. I hope Stephen tries to kiss me tonight, maybe even more. Maybe we’ll go back to his house after, and his little brothers will be sleeping, and his parents will let us have time alone in his room, and we can do stuff. I get more excited and nervous. My mom tries to take a picture of me, but I don’t let her.
On the drive to Stephen’s house in Coral Springs, I think about the girl in the snogging book. What is it that makes someone “boy crazy”? Is it bad that I want a boy to like me, maybe even fall in love with me, want to spend time with me and get to know me for who I really am? Do I even know who I really am? The girl in the book is smart, like me, and she’s pretty, besides the fact that she over-tweezed her eyebrows because someone called her hairy and had to wait for them to grow back. In seventh grade, Spencer Wyatt told me I had sideburns, so I went home that night and shaved the sides of my face. It looked horrible and obvious, but I wanted to get rid of the baby hairs in front of my ears. The next day, he asked if I’d shaved my face, and I turned red but told him he was wrong and that I absolutely did not have sideburns. He said I was weird and walked away. They’re still growing back funky. But I can relate to the girl in the book: Sometimes I do stupid, impulsive, slightly harmful things to myself because of what other people think. In the book, the girl’s mom is her best friend, and sometimes I feel that way, too, that my mom is my only real friend. She’s always been there for me, and although she has to take care of me and make sure I don’t die until I’m eighteen, she really loves me, deeply, because I’m her daughter.
I always wanted to be like my mom when I was little. I clung to her leg as she vacuumed the house, lay in bed with her and watched her soap operas, sat in the front basket of her shopping cart on grocery runs. I loved everything about her: her hair, her eyes, the way she smelled like cotton and lavende
r, the skin on her arms, how it was soft yet her muscles were strong from carrying me. I wanted to be just like her. Now, looking over at her as she drives, mouthing the words to the song on the radio but not singing loud enough for me to hear, I wonder when my desire to be like her transformed, changed so that I’d rather be more like Kenzie or Rosenberg or even Katherine Bennington. They’re so confident and beautiful, and sometimes I feel nothing like that; I’m a little ball of worry and fear and anxiety dressed in all the wrong clothes, my hair never fully straight, underdeveloped, a virgin, never tried drugs, barely a woman.
“If you’re going to sing, can you sing louder, or just not sing at all?” I say, annoyed.
“I’m not singing.”
“Yes, you are.”
“If I want to sing, I’ll sing. I don’t need your permission.”
“I know what you’re doing. I can hear you!”
“Do you want me to just go home? I don’t have to drive you all the way out to Coral Springs. I have other things to do.”
“Like what? Watch American Idol? Clean? Help Brad with some school project?”
She stops short at a red light and turns the music all the way down. I realize I’ve just opened up Pandora’s box, and I’m not even sure why. All the negative thoughts come rushing to me as I sit in the passenger seat, halfway to Stephen’s house for my first date: You’re flat. You’re ugly. You’re not as pretty as Kenzie or confident like Rosenberg. You’re not popular. Your outfit sucks. Your hair is stupid….
“Just because you’re nervous doesn’t mean you have to take it out on me,” my mom says. “If you don’t want to go tonight, we can turn around. And if your attitude doesn’t change, we will turn around, and you won’t go out for a month.”
“I’m not nervous! You’re just being annoying.”
“How am I being annoying?”
“By half singing.”
“You need to calm down.” My mom laughs. She knows I’m being ridiculous, and even I know I’m being ridiculous at this point. I turn and look out the window. We pass into Coral Springs, where all the shopping plazas look the same. Beige buildings, signs with green block letters, doctors’ and lawyers’ offices, bakeries, coffee shops, banks, fast-fix repair stores, all the same string of stores, over and over again. It’s greener here in Coral Springs, more swamp life and chances of alligator sightings, more humidity for some reason, too. I question my choice of straightening my hair. Maybe I should have fluffed it up.
We pull up to Stephen’s house in a neighborhood where all the houses are two stories and painted various shades of beige: maple, caramel, brown, eggshell, cream, taupe. Stephen’s house is caramel-colored. His mom’s Jeep is in the driveway. I’ve seen him get picked up in it before, at school. He has two younger brothers, one in middle school and one in elementary, so he’s always the last in his family to be picked up. I’m so glad I won’t ever know what that’s like, because I’m the baby in my family and I always will be.
My mom insists on waiting in the car until someone answers the front door.
“I love you. Call me if you need me to come get you earlier, and if not, I’ll be here at ten o’clock.”
“I thought you said eleven?”
“Ten.”
“We’ll see.”
“Don’t give Stephen this attitude. Men don’t like women with attitudes.”
I roll my eyes at her and get out of the car. On the walk to the front door, I step on the grass and immediately feel bad, like I should have walked around and used the driveway. I wonder if anyone will notice. Stephen’s mom opens the door before I can even knock.
“Hi, sweetie. You look so pretty.” She smiles.
“Thank you.”
“Stephen’s just upstairs. Stephen Ellis Fraber!” she yells.
Stephen runs down the stairs with his littlest brother, Grayson, chasing after him. His middle brother, Derek, runs out from the kitchen and grabs Grayson, slings him over his shoulder, and walks back into the kitchen area. Stephen slows down, relieved, and walks over to me. He’s wearing a striped polo shirt that’s not our uniform shirt and a pair of jeans with sneakers. I knew I should have worn jeans. His hair is gently spiked and he looks cute, cuter than he does at school. I’m excited that we might kiss tonight. It would be a good thing if that happened.
Stephen gives me an awkward hug and we head into his living room. There’s an L-shaped couch with lots of pillows and blankets, and we sit. His mom brings out a plate of cheese and crackers and two glasses of lemonade.
“Mom, we talked about this,” Stephen says, slapping his hand on his face and covering his eyes.
“Oh, I know, but I just want to make sure your guest isn’t hungry or thirsty.”
“I’m fine. Thank you.”
“So polite! You picked a sweet girl, Stevie.”
“Mom, please leave.”
“Okay, honey, but we have to leave the house at six forty-five for the movies.”
“Got it. Bye.”
Stephen’s mom exits the room, and Stephen takes his hand away from his face. He’s so cute I can’t stand it.
“That was hell,” he says.
I laugh. “She’s just being a mom. My mom was way worse, I assure you.”
“What was your mom doing?”
“She was, like, half singing in the car on the way over here.”
“Ha! My mom made me try on every shirt in my closet. And she wanted me to wear slacks, but I told her it’s just the movies. I was wearing them until five minutes ago.”
There’s awkward silence for a few minutes. I hear his brothers playing. One of them makes the other cry. I assume it’s Derek making Grayson cry. His mom yells, and the two spout back muttered apologies. It quiets again.
“What movie are we seeing?” I ask.
“Oh, right. Well. I didn’t know if you liked scary movies, so the one where the guy’s trapped in a bathroom and has to cut off his own leg—that was out. But I wasn’t sure, so I got tickets for Win a Date with Tad Hamilton!”
“Cool. I wanted to see that. I mean, I want to see that. Good choice.”
“Thanks! I mean, I’m glad you like it. Well, I’m glad you will like it. I heard it’s really good. I mean, if we even watch it, ya know?”
I give him an uneasy smile and realize I should have done something sexy and flirtatious like grab his leg or wink, but I’m not savvy enough for that.
“No pressure, though. Whatever you’re comfortable with. I was just hoping to get a kiss,” Stephen says, and lightly puts his hand on my bare knee, which I realize I didn’t do a great job shaving, so it’s probably prickly.
“Let’s just see what happens,” I say, which is the best I can come up with on such short notice. I didn’t know he would be so forward. I get scared, but I also know that he’s okay not doing anything, which is good to know in case I chicken out. I want to do stuff; I’m just not sure how I feel about planning it out like that and knowing he does have some kind of expectation. I wish I could call Rosenberg, but no one knows I’m here. I kind of wish I was at home with Jensen, playing Mario Party in our sweatpants, eating popcorn and drinking a Capri Sun, but we hate each other right now. I look around the living room for a sign of comfort, something to take my mind off where I am and what I’m doing. I spot a family photo of Stephen with his parents and brothers. They’re all wearing overalls and standing in front of a blue marbled backdrop. It’s strange, but it comforts me that his family is normal, because they take photos at Sears. My family doesn’t do this sort of thing, and that’s how I know I’m unique. Stephen is normal, I say in my head a few times before returning my gaze to him.
“Don’t look at that picture,” he says.
“It’s…cute,” I offer.
“No, it’s embarrassing. I was, like, twelve there. Grayson was just a baby.”
“Your brothers are so cute.”
“Everything is cute to you!”
“No.”
“What am I, then?” he asks, and stares with one eyebrow up.
“You’re hot,” I say, uncertain of myself, of the statement, of what it even means to call someone “hot.” I do find him attractive, but I don’t know him that well, aside from the fact we had a science class together in sixth grade. During an experiment that involved a glass jar of water, I dropped the jar and it broke into pieces. Stephen proceeded to laugh and call me “butterfingers.” But my teacher, Mrs. Silverstein, assured me that he was only making fun of me because he liked me, which in turn mortified Stephen and caused him to stop.
“You’re, like, the hottest girl that’s ever talked to me,” Stephen says. It makes me happy, and uncomfortable, when he says this. I’ve never considered myself “hot” or “sexy” or anything like that. People usually call me cute because I’m short, but I’ve never been called “hot” before. He looks so excited, and I don’t understand how he’s so confident and able to say the things he’s thinking. It seems like he doesn’t even question himself before he speaks, either. I’m baffled.
Stephen’s mom takes us to a shopping plaza where there’s a movie theater and a restaurant right next door. She gives Stephen cash for dinner and says she’ll be back after the movie to pick us up. Once her car pulls away I feel afraid about what’s to come. What if I decide I don’t want to do anything and he isn’t okay with it and he makes a move anyway and it’s weird? I’m stuck with Stephen now for the next couple hours, and I’ll just have to see how it goes.
I’m not hungry, but he wants to eat at the restaurant. I don’t tell him I’m not hungry, though. In fact, when he asks if I’m hungry, I say yes. I had dinner before I left my house, but I order chicken fingers and fries anyway. We sit at a table that has a swinging bench and sways back and forth if you want it to. Stephen uses his foot to rock our table, but he stops when the food comes. He orders chicken fingers and fries, too, and we eat the same meal. I only eat two out of the four chicken fingers and have to dip them in honey mustard to get them down. I drink a Coke and he dips his chicken in ranch and drinks a Dr Pepper. I’ve never had Dr Pepper before in my life. It’s just not a drink anyone in my family drinks. We’re a Pepsi family, but I actually prefer Coke. My parents let me have soda whenever I want. Stephen asks me not to tell his mom that we had pop—which is weird, that he calls it that. I’m not sure I can kiss someone who calls soda “pop.” It’s soda.
The Brittanys Page 11