“Why have you been ignoring me?” Brad said, now that we were alone. The desperation in his voice made me want to slap him. He was the captain of the lacrosse team. Every girl wanted him. Susan wanted him. He was supposed to be confident, to know where to put his hands.
“I’m not ignoring you,” I managed to say.
He was right, though.
“You’re supposed to be my girlfriend,” he said, as if he were reading my mind.
Starting in middle school, my friends would get upset about boys. They cried in bathrooms at dances, they held hands with boys in the hallway, and they wrote their initials next to the initials of whoever they had a crush on, with little hearts around them.
I’d tried having boyfriends—I even agreed to go out with Scottie in eighth grade, then avoided him until finally dumping him at a school dance. I just couldn’t muster up the same emotions as my friends. It was around that time I knew something was wrong with me.
“Aren’t you?” said Brad. “Still my girlfriend?”
His voice sounded like a child asking to sleep in his mother’s bed after a nightmare.
“Yes,” I said, trying to be kind. “I’m still your girlfriend. I’m sorry I didn’t call you back. I’m not sure how to do this girlfriend thing.”
He took my agreement as permission. He reached for me and kissed me, very gently. Still, his stubble scratched my chin, and it hurt.
Then he stepped out of his pants and put his hands on my thighs. I watched his every move, trying to learn from him, to learn what it was that Susan loved.
I thought of eleven-year-old Susan’s sleeping face as he pushed his body against me. That face was so far away.
Before I knew it, he’d tugged his boxers off, and there it was: his penis, which looked like a floppy joystick. He reached for the button on my jeans. I was still fully clothed.
I slid out of my jeans and pulled my sweater over my head, tossing it on the floor. He pressed his body against mine.
Brad was breathing heavily now, and he slid his hand under the elastic band of my underpants. No penetration had occurred when, suddenly, he froze, his face white, and I felt moistness on my thigh.
Oh my God. Gross. Gross!
“Oh . . . okay,” I said. I knew that I wasn’t supposed to reassure him. It would make both of us feel worse.
I needed a shower. I wanted to take about seventeen showers, and put on the cleanest pajamas in my bureau.
At least this meant I wouldn’t have to do it with him.
“I . . . Sorry,” he mumbled. And then he was pulling his boxers back on, followed by his pants.
“I’ll call you more from now on,” I said miserably, but he was already halfway out the door.
I felt a wave of nausea so huge that I leaned back on the bed without even getting dressed. Everything was spinning.
“Susan!” I shouted. I doubted she could hear me over the music downstairs, but I shouted her name again and again, and finally she appeared in the doorway.
Susan came over and sat on the edge of the bed, leaning over me. Her black hair spilled onto my chest. She placed a palm on my forehead, but there was still resentment in her expression.
“Did you guys do it?” she asked.
“I don’t feel good,” I said.
“What do you need?” she said absently.
My nausea passed. I blinked.
“A lime,” I said.
The Note
I left Scottie’s party with six rolls of stolen toilet paper in my bag, then drove to Corvis’s house.
I saw that only her car was in the driveway—her parents’ old Subaru Outback, recognizable because of the bumper stickers Corvis had plastered all over the back. Leaving my bag in the car, gathering the rolls of toilet paper in my arms, I walked to the front door and rang the bell with my elbow.
When Corvis opened the door, she looked surprised to see me, but not that surprised.
“Hi,” I said.
She raised an eyebrow. Her jeans were ripped, and she wore a faded T-shirt that said FREE PALESTINE, which made me feel stupid, because I didn’t know anything about Palestine or why it wasn’t already free.
“What are you doing here?” Tucked under her arm was a book by someone named Virginia Woolf. I liked that name—it sounded like the name of a famous dead female pilot or an incredibly sexy double-jointed circus performer.
“Listen,” I said. “I was here the night everyone egged your house. I mean, I showed up first—I don’t even know why—but I was still here when everyone messed up your house, and I didn’t stop them, and I’d really like it if you’d get me back.”
She shifted her weight from one leg to the other and leaned against the door frame. Her socks had little tacos on them.
Sandra’s face popped into my mind—her languid, distant who-cares face. I looked at Corvis desperately. Punish me, I thought. Please punish me.
“I’m sorry for everything I did in seventh grade,” I said, “and everything I didn’t do since then. I’m an asshole. Look, I even brought supplies.”
I held out a roll of toilet paper, persistent, and she said, “Stop.”
“No, I’m serious,” I said. “Mummy me.”
* * *
—
At middle school dances, I cried in the bathroom sometimes, just like the other girls, but for different reasons.
Once, at the beginning of seventh grade, I was dancing with Mike O’Malley, and his touch made me feel sick, so I ran away, leaving him on the dance floor.
Corvis found me in the bathroom.
“I didn’t mean to,” I said, crying. “I didn’t mean to leave him there.”
She pulled some toilet paper from one of the rolls and brushed the tears from my cheeks.
“I know,” she said.
She looked at me a little too long. Lately, I’d started to see similarities between Corvis and me. We both loved Drew Barrymore and Madonna just a bit too much. Susan and Heather loved them, too, but then their posters switched to shirtless boys from Abercrombie magazine ads, while Corvis and I both kept Drew Barrymore and Madonna on our bedroom walls.
“I don’t want to dance with them either,” she admitted.
I stopped crying. The toilet paper she’d given me was moist now and wadded in my fist.
The bathroom was gross. Girls drew their names and hearts all over the mirror with lipstick, and no one washed it off. There were carvings of penises in the metal of the stalls, tampon wrappers on the floor, unidentifiable stains everywhere. In the middle of the room, there was a drain, stopped up by hair.