The Brittanys

by Brittany Ackerman

  “Vodka. You?”

  “SoCo. It’s all I drink.”

  “Never had it.”

  “Wanna try it? I bet you’ll like it. It’s strong, smooth. Good shit.”

  “Sure. What do you mix it with?”

  “Nothin’.”

  He pours us two cups of Southern Comfort from a big bottle that’s halfway killed. I smell it, and it reminds me of the hydrogen peroxide I used to clean my infected ear piercing. We “cheers” our cups, and he shoots down the whole thing in one gulp. I take one sip and almost die.

  “Come on, girl. It’s not so bad!”

  “I’ll stick to vodka cranberry.”

  “Ha! Lame ass.”

  “I’m not lame. I just don’t like SoCo. It’s gross.”

  “You’re just uptight. It ain’t gross.”

  “Why do you talk like that?”

  “Like what?”

  “Country or something. Like Tom Sawyer.”

  “I guess you little Boca girls aren’t used to a real man.”

  “I’m not a little Boca girl.”

  “Yes, ya are. Where do you live?”

  “Where do you live?”

  “I’m from Mississippi, but I bet you were born ’n’ raised at the Town Center Mall. Prolly conceived right there in the Bloomies parking lot.”

  “You’re such an asshole.”

  “Nah. I’m just being honest. You’re the one puttin’ on ten pounds of makeup, prolly got a push-up bra on, foolin’ everyone here when you’re just a little Boca girl.”

  “You’re a dumb hick!”

  “Aw, like I ain’t heard that before.”

  “Why are you being mean to me? I didn’t do anything.”

  “You offend my liquor, you offend me.”

  “That’s so stupid. I’m allowed to have my own opinion. I’m not just going to like what you like, or pretend to like what you like, so you’ll want to have sex with me or something. I’m not that desperate.”

  “Sure looks like ya are, honey.”

  Charlie walks over to us.

  “Matt, can you chill?” Charlie says, stepping in between Matthew and me.

  “You okay?” he asks me.

  “Yeah. Where’s Kenzie?” I ask.

  “I was going to ask if you knew.”

  “You know where she’s at,” Matthew says.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Charlie asks.

  “Where’s Dave at? He can probably tell ya. Ha-ha!”

  “You’re such a dick, Matt. This is why you’ll never make varsity.”

  “Oh no, my dreams are crushed!”

  “Don’t be a piece of shit, dude. Don’t talk about my girlfriend like that. You can’t even keep a girlfriend, bro.”

  “Piss off, man,” Matthew says as he walks away from us, taking the bottle of SoCo with him. A few months later, Matthew was sent to reform school. Two men came and got him in the middle of the night. They packed his bags for him and had to drag him out of the house. I thought that was the kind of thing that only happened in movies, but the rumor turned out to be true. I imagine it must have been hard for him to take orders, to listen to authority, to become obedient. I started to see there was a fine line between this kind of real danger and the kind of trouble I’d been dabbling in.

  “Sorry about Matt,” Charlie says. “Ever since his ex-girlfriend cheated on him, he’s just been a total dick to all girls.”

  “Thanks for standing up for me,” I say.

  “You don’t deserve that shit.”

  “Thanks. I’m going to look for Kenzie. I kinda want to leave soon.”

  “No! You gotta stay. I promise, not all the dudes are like Matt.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m gonna see if Kenzie’s outside or something. Don’t convince her to leave, please. I don’t get to spend much time with her lately, and I really want to be with her.”

  “Okay. I won’t.” I smile, and Charlie goes out the sliding glass door.

  I walk over to the stairs and slip off my shoes before stepping onto the carpeted steps. As I run up, I hear whispers and shushing. Then Kenzie flies out of one of the rooms and grabs me to turn back around and head downstairs.

  “What happened?” I ask. We retreat to the downstairs bathroom, and she closes and locks the door behind us.

  “You can’t tell anyone,” Kenzie says, putting her hair into a ponytail. She has dark brown hair, almost black, but with tiny, subtle streaks of blond from the sun. She’s so tan, and it makes her brown eyes pop. She looks exotic, which is definitely why all the guys are in love with her. I notice a hickey on her neck.

  “You might want to leave it down,” I suggest, pointing to the spot.

  “Oh, crap! Do you have concealer?”

  “It’d be way too light—sorry.”

  “Let me see if I have some in my purse,” she says as she digs into her black Coach bag. “Well, I guess you can figure out what happened.”

  “Who were you with?” I ask, and realize she doesn’t have to tell me anything—it’s none of my business. But Charlie is a good guy. He stuck up for me, and I’m curious why she would cheat on him.

  “Me and Alex Abers have this…thing,” she says, blotting dots of concealer on her neck and smoothing them out with her fingers. “We always make out at parties when Charlie is around. Alex says it turns him on. Alex always wins the four-hundred-meter backstroke, and that’s totally Charlie’s event. Charlie gets pissed and teases Alex that at least he has a hot little freshman, aka me. But I hate being objectified like that, so I do it to get back at him, ya know?”

  “But Charlie is a really nice guy.”

  “Aw, do you have a little puppy-love crush on him?”

  “No. But he was really nice to me just now. Matthew Jarvis was being a jerk, and Charlie stood up for me.”

  “That is really nice. I didn’t say Charlie isn’t nice; he’s just…I don’t know….All guys are just…they suck!”

  “I don’t think that’s true.”

  “Well, no offense, but you haven’t had many boyfriends. I have. And I know what guys are like.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Most guys our age just want sex. And if they’re halfway decent, they really do want you, like you as a person, but then they get possessive, like Charlie-boy. Or they just completely ignore you. Remember how upset I was when Theodore ignored me?”

  “You mean Mr. Theo, in the history department?”

  “Yeah. He ignored me ’cause he’s married or whatever. But I came to his room every day for free period and did stretches and let him see my underwear when I was doing backbends. He totally died over me, but he ignored me, because, well, he’s a guy, and that’s what they do sometimes.”

  “So…what are you going to do?” I ask, as Kenzie puts the finishing touches on covering up her hickey.

  “I’m going to break up with him. But I’ll do it after he takes us home, after you go inside. I won’t put you through that.”

  I nod in support and try to fathom what it’d be like to have multiple boys wanting me at one time. I can feel myself getting lost in thought, on the brink of disappearing.

  “And, by the way,” Kenzie says, “can you please stop eating lunch alone in the library? It’s not a good look.”

  We leave the bathroom and go outside to dance. Kenzie takes me by the arm and pulls me to the backyard, which has turned into a sort of dancing area. She swings me around, and her arms graze my body. Mostly only girls are dancing. I can barely even feel the vodka cranberries. My brother once told me something about how your tolerance goes up the more you drink, and I have been doing it more and more, so I guess that’s what’s happening.

  Charlie and Kenzie reunite for a moment, and I stand and watch as they
kiss and hold hands. Alex Abers stumbles outside, tucking in his button-down shirt, and he puts his arm around Charlie’s neck. Matthew Jarvis is sitting in a lounge chair and smoking a cigarette, far away from everyone else, because most kids here think cigarettes are gross. Parties are so pointless. Nothing ever happens, or something big happens but then it just goes back to normal the next day. They don’t mean anything. They don’t change anything. In the course of a life, a party, all the parties, they don’t matter.

  “Let’s keep dancing and burn off all our calories!” Kenzie yells, dragging me back to dance until we get tired, and then we leave. I fall asleep on the car ride home, and I can hear Kenzie quietly telling Charlie she wants a break. He keeps calling her “baby,” and she keeps telling him to grow up. Charles ended up moving to Los Angeles for college and then stuck around. He became a successful lawyer and dates a social-media influencer. The more I think about Kenzie and Charles, the more it makes sense that he wanted to be with someone who had a “perfect” life and was constantly showing off to the world to impress others, for attention, for validation. His posts are always generic and fabricated, punctuated by way too many advertisements. They’re always going on wine safaris and taking trips to Spain. Charles is always posting about how blessed he is, how he’s the luckiest guy on Earth. Maybe, I think drowsily, growing up is something that’s happening to us all the time. Every boy we kiss, every time we get our hearts broken, we grow up, just a little bit.

  * * *

  —

  In the morning, Kenzie’s parents are home. Her dad makes us granola and yogurt and calls it a “power breakfast.” I usually don’t eat breakfast unless it’s Cinnamon Toast Crunch or my mom picks up Dunkin’ Donuts. I definitely don’t eat this healthy, ever, but I really like it. Her dad gets a work call and disappears to his office. Kenzie’s mom comes home from the salon with her hair and nails freshly done. Her hair is dark, almost black, like Kenzie’s, and is blown out and fluffy. Her nails are long and red and square.

  “Look at my perfect daughter.” She kisses Kenzie on the forehead. Kenzie smiles and continues eating her granola. Her mom pours a cup of coffee and sits down with us at the kitchen table. “Are you girls ready for school tomorrow?”

  “Ugh, don’t remind me.” Kenzie slumps back in her chair and picks at her nails. “How come you didn’t take me with you to get my nails done?”

  “You were sleeping, and I didn’t want to wake you up. But I made you a hair appointment for two o’clock. You can see if Jenny is free to do your nails after. Or maybe we can go a little early and see if she’s free, but you have to get your butt moving.”

  “What time is your mom coming?” Kenzie asks, and seems annoyed. I realize this is rude, but I’ve just about had enough of her, too. I like her house and her food, but overall she’s just kind of a brat.

  “She should be here soon; she said by noon. I can call her again.” I wonder if my mom would take me to the salon later if I wanted her to. Kenzie will look so good at school tomorrow with her new hair and nails, and I’ll just be the same as before.

  “I’m not getting it cut again, Mom,” Kenzie says.

  “Yes, honey, you need your ends trimmed. Just a trim. They’re all ratty at the bottom. You need it cleaned up.”

  “Fine! But if they cut more than an inch, I’m going to die. Or kill someone. Or scream.”

  “You should really go into drama, sweetie. You’re such a little actress.”

  “By the way, Mom, Charlie and I are taking a break.”

  “I was wondering if that love bite was from him.”

  “Ew, Mom!”

  “Who’s it from, then?”

  “Alex Abers.”

  “Again? Charles will be very upset if he hears about that, you know?”

  “Well, we aren’t together anymore…until I feel like it again. He’ll take me back anytime I want him to.”

  “Are you a little heartbreaker like Kenzie?” Mrs. Bedner asks, and I shake my head no. I continue scraping my bowl clean because it was so good, and I feel embarrassed because I’m not a heartbreaker. If anything, I’m the one who always gets my heart broken. It seems like Kenzie and her mom tell each other everything. I feel like my mom and I used to be that close, but once boys and drinking got involved, I got scared to tell her I was into those things. I thought she’d judge me. But it doesn’t feel like Kenzie’s mom judges her at all. She encourages her behavior, supports it.

  When my mom picks me up, she doesn’t ask if I want to go to the salon, but she does ask about my essay for Mr. Michaelson’s class, and I tell her that it’s done, I just need to print it.

  Reading The Outsiders makes me wish I could run away like Ponyboy and do whatever I want. Obviously those boys were under dire circumstances, but the story makes me want freedom more than ever, even though it seems scary and dangerous.

  I wonder why we have to read books about kids who grow up fast. Ponyboy was only fourteen in the book; I’m fifteen now, and the hardest thing I have to deal with is algebra. But maybe they want us to read this stuff so we can see that we don’t have it so bad, that we go to a private school in a wealthy city and none of us will ever have to deal with gangs and murders and chaos. So I decided to copy Ponyboy and write my paper about all the stuff I’ve been going through with the girls lately. My story is about what it’s like to lose a friend and to be the cause of that loss. In my paper, a group of high school girls traverse the halls in a pack. They become divided over issues of boys and family drama, and they end up at the same party, where a big brawl goes down. It’s not as gory as The Outsiders, obviously, but the girls still have it out with one another. In the end, they all apologize to one another, because they realize they don’t have it so bad and that they should do their best to get along. I hope Mr. Michaelson likes it. He’s always encouraging us to be creative, to be ourselves. It’s the first time I don’t ask my mom to proofread my paper for me, and when she asks why, I tell her I don’t need her help anymore, I’m old enough to do the work on my own.

  • SEVENTEEN •

  We get a schedule change on the first day back. Our first-period teacher presents each one of us with a sheet of paper folded in half with a list of our new classes. Our core classes are staying the same, for the most part, unless we are advanced or demoted from an honors course, but the ones that definitely change are our electives. My 2-D art class has been swapped for 3-D art, which is fine with me, because I prefer to sculpt rather than draw. I remember being humiliated in third grade when I tried to trace my hand to make a turkey and got caught and was scolded in front of the class.

  What concerns me the most about my schedule is that my PE class has been changed to swimming. It is Florida, and the school does have an outdoor pool, but I don’t want to swim. I don’t want to wear a regulation one-piece bathing suit in front of boys my age who are expecting to see a filled-out chest and full breasts when I’ve got nothing going on up there. My parents have taught me that there’s always a way to get out of something you don’t want to do, and this has to be the case for swimming.

  Throughout the day, the rest of the girls and I are in communication about our schedule changes. Despite all the tension between us, this qualifies for an emergency cease-fire. We reconvene at lunchtime to discuss our efforts. Kenzie will also be in swimming, but she doesn’t mind and is actually excited about it, except that she has to get her hair wet. Tomassi is exempt from swimming because she’s shadowing the school nurse and uses that time slot to follow her around and help sick students, something her mom wants her to do to help prepare her application for college. And Leigh gets to skip because of her ears, something about the water pressure, which I know is bullshit, because when I went swimming at her house recently she was more than fine. But it seems that Gottlieb, Rosenberg, and even Jensen will also have to endure swimming.

  “If you just say you have your period,
you don’t have to go in the water,” Rosenberg says.

  “That is so freaking brilliant,” Gottlieb says.

  “But we still have, like, three months of school left,” I say. “No one’s period lasts that long.”

  “Well,” Jensen says, “some of the days, we’ll just have to go in the pool.” She speaks to the group but makes eye contact with me for a minor second.

  “How much trouble do you think we’ll get in if we wear bikinis?” Kenzie asks. “Can’t I just say I don’t own a one-piece? I’m not about to go out and buy one from, like, Sports Authority or something just for this dumb class.”

  “It probably depends who’s coaching,” Leigh says.

  “I think it’s McGee,” Gottlieb says. “And she’s a total bitch.”

  “It might be Howard,” Rosenberg says.

  “From the science department?” Tomassi asks. “I’m so glad I don’t have to deal with this. You all should really just pick up a work-study or something.”

  “I don’t want to work under someone else,” Kenzie says.

  “That’s not what Alex Abers said,” Leigh says.

  “Shut up!” Kenzie says.

  “They can’t make us swim today, anyway,” I say. “They just gave us our schedules, and we couldn’t have been expected to bring a bathing suit. They’ll probably just tell us the rules and stuff today.”

  “True,” Rosenberg says. “It’s like the first day of school, sort of.”

  * * *

  —

  We are expected to be in our bathing suits sitting on the edge of the pool at 12:55 p.m. every day. Lunch ends at 12:45 p.m., so this gives us ten minutes to walk to the pool over on the other side of campus, change, pee, fuss with our hair, put our stuff in a locker, and realize we forgot to shave our knees. We swim in cloudy weather, a light drizzle, full rain, but not lightning. We do not swim if we have a sick note, an early dismissal, or our period.

  Kenzie and Gottlieb have swimming at the end of the day, so at least it doesn’t matter if they leave school with a wet head, but Rosenberg, Jensen, and I all have it together. After enduring one day of cold water and wet hair, we decide to take a stand. At twelve fifty-five, when our peers are lined up on the edge of the pool, we will, one by one, pull aside Coach McGee and tell her we have our period. This clears us for seven to ten days, during which we will watch the rest of the kids swim from the sidelines, do our homework on a towel, and stay dry. Although I don’t have my period yet, I’m hoping Jensen won’t rat me out. She and Rosenberg are the only ones who know I’m period-less. We discuss our tactics in the locker room before swimming.