Shut Out

by Kody Keplinger

  I stopped in the middle of the stairs, but Chloe kept walking. “How did you get my password?” I asked.

  She turned around at the bottom and smiled up at me. “Lissa, I’m your best friend. I know you well enough to know your password would be atonement. The book’s constantly under your pillow with the dirty pages dog-eared. I’m not stupid.” She winked and scampered off to the door to let in the guests.

  I hated her and loved her at the same time.

  “All right. So what’s the deal?” Susan asked, sitting on my bed and crossing her legs. She arrived last of all the girls—twenty-one this time. My room was sweltering, and I couldn’t crank the AC up any higher. This had not been a good idea.

  And neither was letting Kelsey into my house.

  She plopped down on the bed beside Susan, after Chloe told her off for stalking around the room, glaring at me and making snarky remarks. I think Chloe’s exact words were Sit down and shut your ugly mouth or I’ll find a much, much more painful method of silencing you.

  “I cannot believe this bullshit,” she snapped, apparently not taking Chloe’s threat seriously. “Who do you think you are, Lissa?”

  I could feel myself getting nervous, shaking as I counted all the girls in my head, over and over again. There were too many. If they got mad or started yelling… Images of the chaos flashed through my brain, causing a knot to form in my chest. What if they made a mess of my room?

  “Kelsey, do you have a point?” Susan asked, sounding bored.

  “The point,” Kelsey said, “is that Lissa’s a hypocrite. She’s not even having sex, but she thinks she can tell us we should stop? And it’s all to solve her problems.”

  “Kelsey, I’m sorry, but can you shut the hell up?”

  I turned and was shocked to find that Ellen was the speaker. Our eyes met, and Ellen gave me a small, imperceptible nod before focusing her attention back on the mortified Kelsey.

  “It’s not just Lissa’s problem,” she said. “It’s all of ours. You’ve complained about the rivalry, too, in case you forgot. And last week, you were singing Lissa’s praises. So stop acting all high and mighty. We’re all sick of your shit, and frankly, Lissa needs friends right now. We’d all be there for you if your boyfriend turned out to be a dickhead. So do you mind showing the same courtesy?”

  There was a long silence—which, considering there were so many girls in the room, was pretty impressive.

  Kelsey took a deep breath, and we all waited to see what she’d do next. I was about to throw myself in front of Ellen to protect her from the pointed, clawlike fingernails I was sure Kelsey would be attacking her with when Kelsey spoke and made the moment even more bizarre.

  “Yeah, you’re right, Ellen. I’m sorry.”

  “Holy shit…. Is that… Did hell just freeze over?” Chloe asked, clasping a hand to her heart.

  “Shut up,” Kelsey snapped. Then she looked at me. “I’m sorry, Lissa. For the way Randy treated you and for the way I acted. It wasn’t cool.”

  “Um… thanks.” I took a deep breath. “And honestly, you may be right. It was wrong of me to keep that detail from you guys. I just didn’t want you to judge me. I felt like I was abnormal or whatever because I hadn’t done it. Then you guys freaked out about Mary waiting, and even after she’d been brave enough to admit it, I just couldn’t…. Still, I shouldn’t have lied, considering what I asked all of you to do. Not that it matters now. I think the strike is over.”

  A rustle of surprised whispers ran around the room.

  “What are you talking about?” Ellen asked. “The boys are still fighting, aren’t they? Adam’s car got vandalized last night, so the rivalry definitely isn’t over. We can’t end the strike.”

  “One of the things you guys worried about was cheating,” I reminded the room. “That if we cut the boys off from sex, they’d cheat. Well, that’s what happened to me, so you were right. We should have never done this.”

  “Oh hells no,” Chloe said. “Don’t go there. I said it at the first meeting and I’ll say it again—if any boy cheats on you just because you won’t fuck him, he’s the prick and you shouldn’t be with him, anyway. If anything, Lissa, this was a good plan. It showed you what an ass Randy really is, and at least you’re done with him now.”

  I flinched. I knew she was right, but the idea that this was better—that having him chase other girls was best for me—still stung, and it probably would for a while.

  “Let’s be fair about this,” Susan said, getting to her feet, which wasn’t easy since every inch of floor was filled by the bodies of teenage girls. “All in favor of ending the strike prematurely, raise your hand.”

  No hands.

  Not even Kelsey’s.

  “Excellent. And all those in favor of continuing as planned with Lissa at the lead?”

  All around the room, hands shot up.

  “Seriously?” I asked, surprised.

  “It actually might be better,” Ellen said. “You know, for you to be in charge without a boyfriend and all. It gives you a clearer perception, maybe. You aren’t biased by the pressure anyone is putting on you anymore.”

  “Well, except me,” Chloe said, leaning against me and running a teasing hand up my thigh. “Can you resist me, Lissa? I don’t think you can.”

  I bumped her hand off my leg, laughing. I was overcome with emotion, so awed by the girls’ support, that I forgot to be on edge. Even with twenty-one girls piled into my room, I found myself suddenly relaxing, trusting all of them more than I’d ever expected to.

  “Wow, Chloe is getting desperate.” Mary giggled.

  “No shit,” Susan said. “But we all knew she’d be dying inside without some booty.”

  Chloe clutched a hand to her chest, made a few gagging noises, and then fell back onto the carpet, playing dead.

  “So how about it, Lissa?” Ellen said, calling back my attention. “You still with us?”

  “Yes,” I said, beaming. “I’m still with you. The strike continues.”

  “Awesome,” Chloe said, using my shoulder to pull herself back into a sitting position, apparently no longer dead. “Now, where the fuck is my ice cream?”

  “Can I tell you something?”

  I was standing at the kitchen sink, washing a few of the bowls that had been used for ice cream, unable to stand the idea of letting them sit around for more than a few minutes. I could still hear the chaos upstairs, where the others waited. I was just trying to figure out the sleeping arrangements—there was no way they were all staying in my bedroom—when I heard Kelsey’s voice behind me.

  I glanced over my shoulder and found her standing in the doorway to the kitchen, looking way more nervous than I’d ever seen her look before.

  “Sure,” I said. “What’s up?”

  “The thing is, I…” She stopped and turned to look into the living room.

  “My dad isn’t here,” I said, knowing instantly what she was doing. “My brother decided at the last minute that he wanted to drive to the lake and go fishing in the morning, and Dad wanted to go with him. It’s just us here. Which is a good thing, you know? It opens up some rooms for everyone to sleep in…. Sorry. What were you going to tell me?”

  Kelsey stepped into the kitchen, easing up to the counter, her keen eyes watching as I put away the clean bowls. “Okay,” she said, “this is going to sound weird, but… I don’t like sex.”

  I dried my hands on the dish towel and turned to face her, confused. “You… What?”

  “Don’t tell anyone,” she insisted. “Please. It’s embarrassing. But I really don’t enjoy it. It’s just kind of… underwhelming. I only do it because it makes Terry happy, and I love him, but… I don’t know. I don’t know why I’m telling you this. It’s just, you felt like you had to lie about being a virgin and I feel like I have to lie about this, and… I’m so weird.”

  I remembered standing in Susan’s kitchen with Mary and how she’d asked if she was weird for being a virgin. I’d almost told her
the truth about me that night. That she wasn’t weird, because I was a virgin, too. Or, rather, that we were weird together. This moment with Kelsey felt like intense déjà vu. Only this time, I couldn’t relate quite as much. Still, I said the same thing.

  “You’re not weird.”

  “How would you know?”

  “I guess I don’t,” I admitted. “I don’t know if I’ll like it or not once I do it. If I ever do it. Because I may not.” I shrugged. “But why does not liking it have to make you weird?”

  “Because everyone else seems to like it so much.”

  “Maybe some of them are just pretending,” I said. “So no one thinks they’re weird.”

  “Maybe,” Kelsey murmured. “God, why am I even telling you this? It’s so weird.”

  “Stop saying it’s weird.”

  Kelsey shook her head, laughing slightly. “Don’t repeat this,” she said, “but that’s part of the reason I hate Chloe. I’m jealous. She obviously enjoys it. I wish I liked it that much.”

  “Well, Chloe gets hell for liking it too much. From you and others.”

  “So she’s the weird one for liking it,” Kelsey suggested.

  “Or it could be that no one is weird,” I offered. “I mean, Mary and I thought we were weird because we hadn’t done it at all.”

  “Maybe we’re all weird, then,” Kelsey said.

  “If that’s the case, then why does it matter?”

  “Because I want to know what’s normal.” She hesitated and then looked down at her bare feet on the tile. “I want to be normal, but no one talks about sex, so how should I know what normal is?”

  I considered this for a second. She was asking the same questions that had been running through my head for weeks: What’s normal? What is expected of us?

  “You know,” I said quietly, “I don’t think normal exists.”

  chapter eighteen

  The next day, after all the girls had left, I decided to spend the afternoon cleaning up. Dad and Logan wouldn’t be home until dinner, so there was no one to get in my way while I vacuumed and dusted and sanitized nearly everything in the house—my version of a relaxing Sunday. I was in the middle of reorganizing my closet by color—Chloe had decided to raid it during the sleepover—when the doorbell rang.

  “Just a second,” I yelled down the stairs. I ran into the bathroom to check my reflection. Part of me expected it to be Randy, coming to grovel and beg for forgiveness, and while I had no intention of taking him back I still wanted to look good, to show him I wasn’t suffering without him.

  Once I was certain that none of my hair was sticking up in the back and that no stress acne had popped up overnight, I ran down to the living room. “Coming! Sorry.” I tugged once at the hem of my tank top before opening the door.

  But Randy wasn’t on my front porch.

  Cash was.

  “Hey.”

  “Um… hi.”

  The surprise must have shown on my face, because he glanced over his shoulder before turning back to me. “Are you expecting someone?”

  “No, I just… I thought maybe you were Randy.”

  “Oh.” There was an awkward pause and Cash ran a hand over his cropped hair, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “Sorry I’m not who you were hoping for. I can go if you—”

  “No!” I exclaimed. I blushed and glanced down at my feet. “No, I… I wasn’t hoping to see him. I just kind of expected to. He hasn’t come to apologize yet, so… But I’m glad it’s you and not him. I don’t think I’m ready to see him yet—I mean, I guess I should get over it, since he’ll be at school tomorrow, but I’m hoping I can avoid him, since we don’t have classes together, or maybe he’ll avoid me, and now he has The Blonde, so… Ugh, sorry. I’m rambling. Why are you here?”

  Cash shoved his hands into his pockets. “I wanted to check on you,” he said. “To make sure you’re doing okay after everything that happened Friday night.”

  “Oh… Yeah, I’m fine.”

  He raised an eyebrow at me. “Really?”

  I opened my mouth to say, Yes, really. Why do you care? But the way he was looking at me, so genuine and warm—I knew he did care. Somewhere along the way, Cash and I had become friends. I knew that should bother me, that I should be wary of getting close to anyone after what Randy had done to me, but I couldn’t fight the feeling of calm that washed over me when my eyes locked with Cash’s.

  “Do you want to go for a walk?” I asked.

  “Yeah—sure.”

  “Great. Give me a second.” I stepped into the house and slipped on my sandals. I grabbed the house keys off the hook and joined Cash on the porch again, locking the door behind me. I double- and triple-checked the lock before shoving the keys into the back pocket of my jeans. “Okay, let’s go.”

  We started walking down the street in silence. My arm brushed against his, but I didn’t move away, and neither did he. We were on the corner, turning to follow the sidewalk, when I finally decided to speak.

  “I’m better than I thought I’d be.” I could feel his eyes on me, but I just kept walking. “After Homecoming, I expected to be a wreck. I expected to cry or be locked in my room or something…. I expected to miss him more, I guess. And I do—miss him, I mean—but it’s not as bad as I’d thought. Some of my friends came over last night, and they really helped me. They made me realize that I could do better, you know?”

  I glanced over and saw Cash nod.

  “I thought I’d miss him more, but… that’s not the problem.”

  “What is?”

  “It’s just… I keep asking myself, Why? Why wasn’t I good enough to wait for? What’s so wrong with me that he could just throw everything away for one night? Why was sex so damn important?” I felt the heat rise into my cheeks. “Oh, God, sorry. I shouldn’t be talking to you about this.”

  “About what?”

  “My, um, sex life… Or, as everyone now knows, my lack thereof.”

  “Oh.”

  I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Sometimes I wish Mom was still around to talk to me about this stuff. She’d be able to tell me what to do.”

  “What do you think she’d say?”

  I smiled, remembering her voice. Soft but stern. “She’d probably say something like, ‘Melissa Anne, stop questioning yourself. You’re smart and beautiful, and that boy is a fool. Never, never let anyone pressure you… and please get your shoes off the couch.’ ”

  “I’m going to assume you take after your mother.”

  I laughed. “That’s what I’m told.”

  “Well, you know,” Cash said tentatively, “she may not be around to tell you in person, but it seems like the advice you think she’d give is good.”

  “I know. But it’s not the same.”

  “I’m sorry. We don’t have to talk about her if it makes you uncomfortable.”

  It did, usually. I never let Randy talk about my mom, but with Cash, it was okay. It was easy. Still, I said, “Let’s change the subject.”

  So for the next few minutes, we talked about nothing important—television, a book he’d just finished, our mutual belief that the lunch ladies were trying to poison us. Then, after a while, we fell quiet.

  As we walked along Levitt Avenue, a few mothers pushed strollers past us and, across the street, two middle school–aged girls walked side by side, both holding leashes attached to Labrador puppies. It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon, and for a moment I marveled at the fact that I’d planned to spend the day cleaning instead of walking around the neighborhood. Hamilton really was a nice place—a generic suburb, sure, but pretty and friendly. Usually, I was too worried about other things to notice.

  I didn’t even notice that Cash had taken my hand until we’d reached the next corner. We were almost back to my house, having walked around the whole block, and he’d been holding my hand half the time without my even realizing.

  “Lissa,” he said slowly. “Look, about Randy and the whole sex thing—”


  “Cash, please, it’s embarrassing. Let’s not—”

  “No, just listen for a second.” We were standing in front of my house again, and Cash had stopped, using our entwined hands to turn me toward him. “I know you don’t want to talk about your…” He cleared his throat. “About what Randy said at Homecoming. But you should know this. The other night, I told you a decent guy wouldn’t have done that to you. I didn’t just mean embarrassing you in public like that. I meant…”

  I stared up at him, our palms still pressed together.

  He sighed. “I meant that a decent guy—a smart guy—wouldn’t have let something like sex ruin a good thing. A guy with half a brain wouldn’t have screwed things up with a girl like you.”

  “Thanks. That’s sweet of you to say.”

  “I’m serious, Lissa.” He lifted his free hand and brushed my cheek, tucking a few strands of hair behind my ear. Both of his hands were touching me, and I didn’t miss the way my heart sped up just a little. “You’re amazing—and he really fucked up.”

  Amazing. He’d said that at Vikki’s party, too. Right before he’d kissed me. Right before he’d broken my heart. I wondered if he meant it this time. If maybe he was trying to tell me something—that he’d been wrong, that he’d made a mistake, that he liked me after all.

  “Thank you,” I said. “That means a lot.”

  Cash smiled down at me. Then, after a long moment, he let go of my hand and took a step back. “Well… I should get going. We have a game in an hour—Coach wants us there early.”

  “Right. I’m glad you came by.”

  He looked at me a little skeptically. “Really?”

  I laughed and smacked him on the arm. “Of course. We’re friends, aren’t we?”

  Cash grinned—that sweet, flirty grin he gave me in the library sometimes when our banter went a little further than I’d intended it to. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then.” He touched my cheek one last time before turning and walking toward his car.