“I don’t want to talk,” she says dully.
“Well, I want to get warm,” I say. “How about we close the doors and turn up the heat?”
“Whatever,” she says. She digs in her backpack and hands me the keys. I jump in the front seat and start the engine, cranking the heat all the way up. Then I get out of the car and push into the backseat with her, closing the door behind me. I crack the window so we don’t asphyxiate ourselves. I shiver for a while until the heat comes on.
“So,” I say, after my muscles stop twitching, “are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
She rolls down her window, throws her butt out, and lights another cigarette. “Nobody took a picture of me, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Don’t be a bitch,” I say.
“I yam what I yam,” she tells me, blowing smoke out the side of her mouth.
“Give me that,” I say, grabbing for the butt.
She holds her arm away from me. “No!”
“Then tell me what’s wrong.”
“I told you. Nothing.”
“Ash, you’ve been acting all weird for…”
“Stop,” she says, looking hard at the ceiling. She swipes at her face. “Crap. I hate crying. It’s so girly.”
I wait.
“You remember Joelle’s party?” She smacks herself in the head. “Well, duh, of course you remember that party. That’s when Chilly took your picture.”
“Yeah, let’s forget about the picture, like, forever,” I say. “What about the party?”
“While you were hanging out with Luke, Jimmy showed up.”
“He did? Joelle never said anything!”
“I don’t think she knows. Even if she saw him, she probably wouldn’t think anything of it. You know her. She thinks everything is ‘such a long time ago.’ She thinks yesterday is a long time ago.”
This is totally true. “So Jimmy showed up. Was he with Cherry again?”
“No,” she says. “He told me he broke up with her. He said he made a mistake when he cheated on me with her.” Tears squeeze out of the corner of her eyes. “I believed him, and I…” She trails off.
“What?” I say.
“I…”
“Yeah?”
“I did him,” she bursts out.
“You what?”
“On the floor of the bathroom. I am so dumb.”
I’m confused. “But if he broke up with Cherry…”
“That lasted exactly one night,” she says. “One. I went home and I was so…hopeful. Can you believe it? Me? Hopeful? But then I called him the next day and he…” More tears, mixed with her eyeliner, make tracks down her cheeks. “He tells me that they had a bad fight but that everything was okay. He went back to her, Aud. He went back to that twit.” She shakes her head. “And then you tell me that you finally stopped messing around with Luke, and you were all proud of yourself, and I’d been on your case about it the whole time. Don’t lose your head, Audrey, watch what you’re doing, Audrey,” she says, mimicking herself.
I think about this. “That’s why you got upset when I said that I did it with Luke?”
“Yeah. And here I am, the biggest idiot of all.”
“Ash, why didn’t you just tell me?”
“I couldn’t.” She shoots a plume of smoke into the air. “Why didn’t you tell me that you’d done it with Luke?”
Oh, that. Well. “I felt stupid.”
“Well, I am stupid.”
“Stop it. You didn’t know what Jimmy would do.”
“He did it once before. Why did I think he wouldn’t do it again?”
“Because you loved him?” I say.
She puts her face in her hands and sobs. I always thought Ash was so strong—that she could handle anything, stand up to anyone—that it’s a shock to see her like this. So that she doesn’t set her hair on fire, I take the cigarette from between her fingers and fling it outside. Then I put my arms around her and hug her. I tell her that Jimmy’s the biggest loser clown boy ever known to women.
“More,” she says, her voice muffled against my shoulder.
“More what?”
“Call him more names. I like the names. And creativity counts, just so you know.”
“He’s a flesh-eating lamprey. He’s a penis-brained, pimple-headed pimp. He’s a bottom-feeding, scum-sucking slut jockey.”
She sniffs and pulls away from me. “Those are good. Even though I have no idea what a lamprey is.”
“I’ll submit them to the next edition of Ebb&Flow. I have connections there,” I say.
“Okay,” she says. “But I have to tell you that the chances of your stuff getting selected are slim. We get lots of pieces about scum-sucking slut jockeys.” She tips her face up at me, streaky as Elvira’s left out in the rain. “Are you mad at me?”
“For what?”
“For acting like such a jerk. I was so mean to you. I kept saying all those things about Luke, how he was such a player and all that.”
“Oh, shut up. He is a player. You were worried about me.”
“I was worried. But I think…” She plucks at the rip in her jeans. “I think I was jealous.”
“Jealous? Jealous of what?”
“You seemed to like Luke so much. And he seemed to like you, too. As much as a guy like him can like anyone. Anyway, I wanted that feeling. And I knew I couldn’t have it, and it seemed so unfair that anyone else had it, and it all ends up being for nothing anyway, because guys suck freaking rocks.” Her face twists up. “I should have supported you. I should have been there for you. And I wasn’t.”
I’m about to argue, to say that she’s always been there for me, but it’s insane to deny that sometimes people fail each other. Maybe she wasn’t there, not the way she could have been, but she’s here now. And so am I.
“Listen,” I say. “Here’s what we’re going to do.”
“What?”
“We’re going to sit here until spring.”
Ash thinks a minute. “I’ll run out of cigarettes.”
“Who cares? Don’t you know that smoking is so last decade?”
“What about food?”
“Nah. We need to lose a few pounds anyway.”
“Speak for yourself,” she says. She uses the hem of her T-shirt to wipe off her face. “You’re starting to get roots. Time for another dye job.”
“I’ll dye it pink if you want. To match the tulips.”
She exhales. “We stay till spring?”
“Till spring. I promise.”
“Okay,” she says. She leans back in the seat and so do I. We wriggle around to get more comfortable as the engine purrs us a sad winter song.
We don’t stay in the car, of course. After about ten minutes, Ash is better, and more than that, bored, so we go back to the cafeteria. Then we have to spend the next ten minutes consoling Joelle, who is still upset for making Ash upset. Pam and Cindy get upset because they don’t know the entire Jimmy/Ash/Cherry story, so we have to fill them in. Cindy tells us that it sounds a bit like The Sweetest Vengeance, a romance novel she’s reading, and Ash informs her that bodice rippers are sexist fantasies that only feed into women’s fears of owning their own sexuality. Cindy gets upset all over again. Pam has to buy all of us fries to shut us up.
It’s a long lunch.
When I get home that afternoon, my mom’s waiting in her usual spot in front of her laptop. But today she’s not typing or drinking coffee, she’s smiling big.
“What’s up?” I say.
“We got some mail today.” She waves a sheet of paper.
“Report cards? Gimme!”
I snatch the paper from her. Three A’s. Four A pluses. A personal best. I sigh in relief. “I can’t believe I got an A plus in Lambright’s class.”
“Audrey, look at the class rank.”
“What? Why?” I’ve been number four forever. I scan the page. Class rank: 3/314. “I’m number three?”
“That’s what the
paper says.”
“How’s that possible?”
“Could be all those A pluses. You outdid yourself.” She pauses. “I hope that you can relax now. I hope this makes you just a little bit happy.”
I touch the number 3 on the page. “Almost,” I say. “Almost happy.”
Spring, Sprang, Sprung
January turns into February. For my birthday I get a gift certificate from my friends, a silver necklace with a tiny cross from my parents, the continued cold shoulder from Luke, and a driver’s license from the State of New Jersey. I borrow my mom’s car so much that she complains she doesn’t recognize it (or me) anymore.
In March, Ms. Godwin decides to go traditional for the spring musical: Grease. Joelle is trying to get Pam to try out for Rizzo. Pam is suspicious. She says she saw the movie once a long time ago but doesn’t remember much besides a very young John Travolta in very tight pants.
“Who’s Rizzo?”
“She’s mean, she’s sarcastic, she’s smooth. She’s the leader of the Pink Ladies.”
“I don’t remember any Pink Ladies. Are they lesbians?”
“No!” says Joelle. “They’re like a girl gang. Except that they don’t beat anyone up or kill anyone.”
“Well, what do they do?”
“They just go around acting cool.”
“Sounds boring,” says Pam.
“It’s so not boring. It’s fun! You’d be perfect, I swear. I’ll help you learn the part.”
Pam shakes her head. “This is really not my thing, you know.”
“I’m telling you, you’ll love it. You get to dress up in these great fifties costumes and sing these songs…”
“Sing! I’m not singing anything!”
Joelle puts her hands on her hips. “Pam, you never study and you don’t do any of your homework. You don’t have a job. You hang around the theater at every rehearsal. Plus, you’ve given up on guys, right? What else do you have to do?”
Cindy nods. “She has a point.”
Pam crooks a finger at Cindy. “I’ll try out if she tries out.”
“But I don’t want to try out!” Cindy says.
“And I’m not the only one who’s going to make a fool of myself,” Pam says. “So you’re trying out, too.”
They both do. Pam doesn’t sing well or act well, and she forgets a few lines, but she has a kind of presence that makes you want to watch her, some sort of razor-y, grit-your-teeth, man-eater thing. You see why people fall for it. Ms. Godwin does, anyway. Pam gets the part. Joelle snares the lead, Sandy, and her brand-new boyfriend, O/Joe, will play the male lead, Danny Zuko. Cindy ends up on the crew with me, which suits her just fine. Ash promises to attend the rehearsals and write terrible tentacle poetry about the set and the performances.
“Ooh! Black bile!” I say.
“Frozen dread!” says Pam.
A new play means another Slut City World Tour road trip to the Home Depot, and also to the junkyard, where I can buy an old car door and some panels for the “Greased Lightning” sequence. And it also means more hammering and sanding and painting, more pizza for the minions, more hours spent at the theater listening to Ms. Godwin bark at Pam for trying to read her lines off her cell phone and at Joelle for not learning them fast enough.
Nobody’s fast enough. Mid-April, two weeks before the show opens, Ms. Godwin wants to know when the sets will be finished.
“We don’t have that much more to do,” I tell her. “Some painting and some assembly. It shouldn’t take long.”
She’s wearing some sort of capelike scarf that’s fastened at the throat with a large jeweled brooch. She tugs at the brooch and looks down her nose at me. “I’m surprised at you, Audrey. I’ve never seen you as behind as you’ve been this past month or so.”
I think we’re right on schedule, but that’s not the kind of thing you say to Ms. Godwin. You say, “I’m sorry, Ms. Godwin. I’m working as fast as I can.”
“Hmmm…,” she says. “Well. I suppose you’ve been distracted.”
“Excuse me?”
She heaves one of her why-must-I-spell-everything-out sighs. “I don’t like to get involved in the personal affairs of my students, but I have to say that I thought you of all people would have had better judgment.”
I feel a cold flame in my cheeks, as if someone has pressed ice cubes to my skin. “What do you mean?”
“Audrey, I do have eyes and ears, even if I don’t always comment on everything I see and hear. I thought you were far too smart to put yourself in that position.” She realizes what she’s said, and I see her cheeks flush. “But I am glad it wasn’t worse for you.”
This is the woman who wanted us to turn Hamlet upside down. What about a little female solidarity? A little support? I’m so mad I want to pound a nail into her head. “You know what, Ms. Godwin?” I say, the words practically shredding my vocal cords. “I have to say that I think it’s been bad enough for me. And you know what else? I would have thought that you of all people would be a little more understanding.”
I stomp out of the auditorium and over to my locker. It’s close to seven o’clock, and I’m tired, sweaty, totally pissed off, and covered with dust and paint. I’m standing in front of my open locker, yanking on my jacket, checking my pockets for my precious car keys—okay, my mom’s precious car keys—and thinking that if Ms. Godwin threw me off the design team it would be okey-dokey with me, when the door at the other end of the hallway opens. I’m not alone anymore. Luke’s in the hall with me. He’s wearing his baseball uniform, his mitt tucked underneath his arm. He’s as dirty and sweaty as I am—dirtier, sweatier.
I freeze, he freezes.
We stare at each other. His eyes flick to my head, where I’ve knotted my hair—now even darker than before—in a crazy, fraying ball, and I just now remember that I have pencils sticking through it. I look him up and down, take in the smudges on his forehead and cheeks, take in those stupid short pants they make the baseball players wear. It annoys me that Luke can make kneesocks look good.
I don’t know what to say. Hi? I love you? I hate you? You make my guts twist? Where’d you get those rockin’ socks?
I say: “Love the knickers.”
His head jerks back as if I’d slapped him. I can see him debating whether he wants to talk to me or not, but then he says, “What is your problem?”
I jam my arm into my jacket. “I don’t have any problems. Not anymore.”
He walks toward me. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Exactly what I said.”
He stops about five feet away. The shine in his eye says that he’d like to slap me for real. “Let’s get one thing straight: I didn’t take that picture. You know I couldn’t have taken it. None of my friends took it. I didn’t pay anyone to do it or talk anyone into doing it. And I didn’t send it to anyone. I know you know this, I heard what happened with Chilly. This. Was. Not. Me. None of it was my fault.”
“I didn’t say it was.”
“Then what is up with you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say. I slam my locker shut and spin the lock.
“You look at me as if I just poisoned your cat. Your friends look at me as if I just poisoned your cat. I’m freaking sick of it. What did I ever do to you?”
His face is red, and the veins in his neck stand out. I’ve never seen him mad before. It feels good to be able to make him mad. And then it feels weird. Why should I care if he’s mad or not? Why should I care at all?
“Nobody’s looking at you like anything,” I say. “Get over yourself.”
He shakes his head. “Never mind. You’re crazy.” He spins around to go back where he came from, the magical land of untouchable boys who flit around on their magical golden wings, wearing their magical kneesocks.
But he changes his mind and turns to me again. “They all know it was me in the picture. Everyone knows. They knew as soon as they saw it.”
“You think that makes a diff
erence?” I say. “Were you dropped on your head as a baby? Nobody cares whether it was you. Nobody cares what you did. Actually, it just makes you more popular.” I zip up my jacket. “It makes me a slut.”
“Come on,” he says. “You’re not a slut.”
“Great,” I say, “I’ll go home and inform my dad. He’s been a little confused since someone e-mailed him some porn starring his only daughter.”
He has the grace to wince at the dad bit, I’ll give him that. “I’m sorry,” he says. “But I didn’t have anything to do with it.”
I was tired before, and I’m getting more tired. “Whatever,” I say. “It doesn’t matter. Most people have forgotten about it anyway.”
“Except you,” he says.
Except me, except Ms. Godwin, except everyone. I can’t imagine a day I’ll ever be free of this stupid picture. And I’ve had enough of the whole thing. I don’t want to talk about it ever again, especially not with him. I pick up my backpack and swing it up on my shoulder. “I gotta go. I’m sure you’ve got places to be, games to play, girls to do.”
“God! What is wrong with you? You dumped me, remember?”
I almost drop my backpack. “Dumped you? I didn’t dump you.”
He doesn’t look mad, he looks furious. “Really? What was ‘’Bye, have a nice life’ supposed to mean, then?”
“But…” I say. I’m totally baffled. I had dumped him, but I didn’t know he would see it that way. You had to be going out for someone to dump you. Did he actually think…???
“How could I dump you when we weren’t even going out?” I say.
“We were doing something,” he mumbles, almost under his breath.
I can’t believe what I’m hearing; that’s exactly what I said to Ash. “What?”
“Forget it,” he says. “I’m out of here.” He stalks away, his cleats clicking on the tiles.
“Wait,” I say, running after him. I grab his arm. “If that’s what you thought, that we were…doing something, why didn’t you say anything? Why were you with all those other girls?” I can’t help it, my eyes start to tear up. I can finally understand how Ash has been so pissed for so long.