by Robin Benway
“You and Simon making out last night.”
“What?”
By eight thirty-seven, I had crawled out of bed, stubbed my big toe on my desk chair, moved Bendomolena off my laptop, and logged in. “Send the link now,” I begged Victoria.
“Already done. Check your IM.” In the background, I could hear a car starting.
“Are you at Jonah’s?” I asked her, a bit incredulous. Sure, Victoria’s mom is Miss Civil Liberties and all that, but there was no way Victoria was allowed to spend the night at her boyfriend’s house.
“Relax, I’m borrowing my mom’s car. Jonah’s probably still dead to the world.”
“Where are you going?”
“I’m coming over to your house, you goober.” She said it as though we had planned it for weeks.
“Right now?”
“Hello? I’m your best friend and this is a crisis. I’m on call 24/7, baby.”
I was about to say, “Crisis?” when I clicked on the link and it took me to the Do-Gooders’ message board, with a post entitled “OMG AUDREY AND SIMON LOLITA!!!!” It was only a link and I clicked on it, wondering how bad it could be.
Oh, it was bad.
The footage was grainy and a little orange (thank you, streetlights), but it was me and Simon making out in that private outdoor space. You could see us kissing and him gripping my hair, and then a small minute where I had pulled away before going back in again.
It was unmistakably us. I had spent the past six months looking at his picture on my wall—I would know him anywhere.
You could see my red boots and sock-covered arms.
And Simon’s hand.
Under my shirt.
“Aud? Are you there?”
I swallowed hard. “Unfortunately.”
“Don’t worry, I’m on my way.”
Bendomolena, disgruntled from being woken up so early, glared at me and then glanced at my picture on the computer screen. I swear to God, her little kitty eyebrows rose up in surprise. It was way too early to be judged by my cat, whose biggest accomplishment in life was rolling over. So I covered her eyes.
The drive home from the concert the night before had been torture. After Simon left me in the courtyard, I pulled myself together and then went to get Victoria and Jonah out of the party. “We have to go,” I kept saying, and finally we managed to get out of there and back to the car. (I also think I signed two autographs in the parking lot, but I’m not sure.)
By the time Victoria turned left out of the parking lot, Jonah was passed out in the backseat and Victoria was sucking all the air out of the car with her enthusiasm. “That was amazing,” she kept saying. “Best party ever. Fuck prom! Who needs to go to prom this year? We just hung out with the Plain Janes and the Lolitas!” Her eyes were shining so much that she could’ve used them for headlights. “Oh my God, Sharon Eggleston is gonna throw up when she hears about this! Promise me you won’t tell her about it until I’m there, okay? I wanna see her face.”
“Uh, Victoria? There’s something—”
“So did you and Simon exchange email addresses? What about phone numbers? Are you gonna try to see him again before he—?”
“Look, something—”
“Check your text messages, I bet he’s already written!”
There was only one way to stop her when she was on a roll.
“Vicky.”
She stopped mid-ramble and looked over at me, one eyebrow raised. “Have you gone wrong?”
“Sorry,” I said. And then I told her all about Simon. She was appropriately annoyed, then shocked, then outraged.
“He described you two as symbiotic?”
“Yep.”
“What a poseur. I bet Mick Jagger never has to say ‘symbiotic’ to woo women.”
By now, I had bitten off three fingernails and was working my way through a fourth. “Uh, I’m not really interested in how Mick Jagger woos women, Victoria.”
“Well, someone should be, because I don’t get it at all.” She shivered a little. “So do you want me to turn the car around so we can go kick Simon where his balls would be if he had any? Because I will. I will turn this car around, so help me God.”
By now she had made me smile. “He was a good kisser, though.”
She pffft!’d the idea away. “Everyone has one good trait.”
“He’s not that good of a singer, either.”
“Please. I didn’t want to say anything, but he was soooo off-key the entire time. Dogs were howling outside, I swear.”
“And didn’t it look like Simon and the guitar player guy—what was his name?”
“Charles.”
“Charles, thank you. Didn’t it look like they were making lovey-dovey eyes at each other during their set?”
“It totally did! But it’s all for the British press, you know. They love that shit.”
“So it wasn’t destined to work out, anyway.” I shrugged. “I don’t mix well with assholes, I guess.”
“And that’s what I like about you.”
By the time I got home at 1:57 A.M., I was feeling a lot better, I was loving my best friend, and I actually felt bad for Simon for making such a big mistake.
Guess who felt stupid the next morning?
Victoria was at our house and in my room by 9 A.M. “Where are your parents?”
“I don’t know. Farmers’ market. Errand-running. Jogging. Whatever people do at this hour on a weekend. What did you bring?”
She produced some Styrofoam cups and a white bag. “I have coffee and breakfast burritos. Black and with extra salsa, just like you like.”
“You’re an angel sent from heaven,” I sighed.
“Yeah, I get that a lot. And I also brought this.” My angel from heaven was also wielding a huge hammer. “Guess what this is for.”
“Um…you’re going to help my dad with repairs around the house?”
“Ha. Funny. You should teach a class on how to be so funny.”
“Are you going to brain me and put me out of my misery so I don’t have to go to school on Monday?”
“Drink your coffee,” she replied. “Caffeine will make you less suicidal. And this,” she added, tossing the hammer on my bed, “is for smashing our Lolitas CDs.”
I watched as the hammer thunked onto my pillows. “When I look up ‘best friend’ in the dictionary, there’s a picture of you.”
“I know.” She batted her eyes seductively. “I went to Glamour Shots just for the occasion.”
So armed with Victoria, breakfast burritos, and glorious coffee, I braved the Internet once again. By the time my parents came home, Victoria and I had figured out that the video had originally been posted on YouTube, then to the Lolitas’ message board, and then had gotten picked up by, well, everyone else. All the daily gossip sites had it, and the ones that didn’t surely would by Monday morning. Some people had even made screencaps and posted those, so I could watch my humiliation and mistakes unfold frame by frame.
But it was the comments on the message boards that burned through the screen and into my skin.
“She’s such a slut.”
“OMG those arm things are FUG!”
“Awww, she’s sooo pretty, I heart her!”
“I heard Simon has 5 STDs. That’s why his last girlfriend left him.”
“What an attention whore.”
“Can we start calling her Courtney Love now?”
“A friend of mine was at the show last night and she said that Audrey was totally drunk and making out with everyone not just Simon but even the roadies too. Ew! Roadies!”
“Simon looks hot. He deserves better! Where can you get her arm warmers?”
“Your 15 minutes are up, Audrey. kthxbye.”
By the time I had read two pages, I was done. “They’re all crazy,” I said, but my head felt fuzzy. “I mean, do they really think all this? About me? I’m a nice girl! I’m not a slut! I feed stray cats!” I was starting to become hysterical. “I’m the one who made my parents start re
cycling! I was practically the only person who joined Key Club for actual volunteer work, not just because it would look good on my college application!”
“Okay, hang on,” Victoria interrupted. “First of all, if these people were cool, they wouldn’t be home reading gossip sites on a Friday night.”
“Oh. Well, um…” I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. “SometimesIdothattoo.”
“Yes, but do you call people sluts on them?”
“Okay, point taken.”
“See? They are not PLU.”
“PLU?”
“People Like Us. I mean, I’m all for sharing our differences and all that, but we’re cool girls. They”—she pointed at the computer screen—“are crazy. And they’re hiding behind their fucking laptops or whatever. They’re just jealous because they didn’t get to make out with Simon.”
“But…but…but they think I’m something I’m not!”
“Who cares? Have we not established that they’re crazy?” She took a long drink from her coffee. “The way I see it, if crazy people hate you, you’re ahead of the game.”
“Audrey, are you actually awake?” I could hear my mom coming upstairs. The last thing I needed was for her to see photos of me making out in Hollywood. There wasn’t enough coffee in the world for that conversation, so I slammed the laptop shut and, for reinforcement, threw Bendomolena on top of it. “I’m gonna buy you the best kitty condo ever,” I promised her when she gave me a halfhearted swipe with her paw. “Just stay there.”
“Stay there or you’re gonna be a throw rug on my bedroom floor,” Victoria added under her breath. She takes a very no-nonsense approach with Bendy. They have an odd respect for one another, like two warriors engaged in battle.
“Wow,” my mom said when she poked her head in the door. “You’re both awake! Did the fire alarm go off?”
“Hi, Mrs. Cuttler,” Victoria said. “Hope you don’t mind that I came over. Audrey and I were just—”
If she said ‘doing homework’ or anything lame like that, we were dead.
“—getting an early start on this mosaic project we’re doing.”
I knew my cue. “Yeah, it’s just some idea Victoria had. We have to smash up CDs.”
“Well, be sure to do it outside.”
“Is our daughter alive?” My dad came up behind my mom and grabbed at his heart. “My Lord, it’s a miracle. I thought you were doomed to never see morning hours again.”
I turned to Victoria. “Don’t adjust your television. My dad’s really that funny.”
“I can see where you get it from,” she shot back.
But I missed the jab because I was too busy looking at my parents’ clothes, which were suspiciously…athletic. “Did you guys…do you go to yoga?!”
“For three weeks now.” My mom flexed a bicep. “Check it out: I’m built.”
“I did my first downward dog today,” my dad added proudly, and Victoria made a weird strangled sound and then choked on her breakfast burrito.
“That…that’s great, Dad. Really.” I bit my cheek so hard that it hurt. “Way to go. Good personal growth and all that.”
By the time they went back downstairs, Victoria and I both had tears in our eyes from trying not to laugh, and she ran across the room and buried her face in my pillow, muffling her howls of laughter. “Your dad! Yoga! Downward dog! Ahahahahah!”
I was laughing too hard to talk, but I joined her on the bed. “Are my parents PLU?” I asked after gasping for air and wiping my eyes.
“Oh God, I hope not.” She sat up a little and raised up the hammer like a punk rock Thor. “So. Let’s go wreak a little Saturday morning havoc.”
15 “Lying wide awake in the garden, trying to get over your stardom.…”
—Pete Yorn, “Just Another”
TO SAY I THOUGHT ABOUT THE VIDEO for the rest of the day would be an understatement. It consumed me and made my stomach do contortion acts that belonged in Cirque du Soleil. Victoria and I smashed up the Lolitas’ CDs (“C’mon!” she yelled from the side as I bludgeoned them into smithereens. “Put some muscle into it! Channel your inner Trent Reznor!”); then we found pictures of worthier rock stars to paste over the Lolitas on my wall collage, but nothing worked. By nighttime, all my fingernails were nubs, and I had gone to work on my cuticles. I was a masochist from the wrists down.
The weird thing was, music wasn’t fixing the problem. Normally, I could put on a well-chosen song or two and I’d feel better. But every time I tried to make a playlist, I thought of making the playlist at the backstage party. When I went through my CDs, my first instinct was to put on the Lolitas, but that CD was now at the bottom of a trash bag in a million pieces. And forget the radio. I couldn’t risk hearing “Audrey, Wait!” come on again, lest my ears start to bleed in agony. It was playing all the time now, and not just on KROQ or KUXV or whatever radio station my parents pretended not to listen to. It was still moving up the Billboard charts—number fifteen, last time I checked—and it didn’t seem to be stopping any time soon. I’d even heard my geometry teacher humming it in the hallway, but at least he’d had the good sense to look apologetic after he saw me.
So that night, I lay in bed in total silence, looking at the glow-in-the-dark stars on my ceiling. (I had spent a whole afternoon last year putting them up in the form of constellations, which Evan had called anal. “Just stick ‘em wherever,” he said. “You’re gonna be sleeping anyway.” Jerkface.) Bendomolena was asleep at the foot of my bed in her normal space—right between my ankles, so it was impossible to roll over without kicking her—and I could hear my dad watching TV downstairs. I couldn’t understand how things stayed so normal with everyone else while inside, I felt like a tornado with no place to touch down.
My mom, however, is not an idiot. She knew something was up. “Audrey?” she poked her head in my door. “Are you asleep?”
“Yes.”
“Somehow that answer doesn’t surprise me.” She opened the door a little bit more. “Are you feeling okay?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Because you’re in bed at ten o’clock. And you didn’t eat a lot of dinner. And your fingernails look like they lost a bet with your teeth.”
“No, I’m fine.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
“So I shouldn’t be worried by your monosyllabic answers?”
“Not at all. See, there’s three syllables right there.”
Still, she came into the room and bent over the bed to kiss my forehead. “I love you, my crazy, music-obsessed daughter.”
“Love you, too.”
“You sure everything’s all right?”
This is what I wanted to say: “No, everything’s not all right, it’s a mess, and I made out with a hot guy who turned out to be really mean and then pictures got posted online and girls think I’m a slut and the entire nation is singing about my love life and my best friend is totally in love with a great guy and they’re going to get married and they’ll leave me all alone and I’ll be so depressed that I won’t get into college and I’ll end up being one of those creepy wrinkly old women who try to get backstage at hair-metal shows and hook up with roadies! So if you could just do that great Mom Thing you do where you fix everything and make it better, that would be perfect, okay? Is that good?”
But this, of course, is what I said: “Everything’s fine.”
It’s the worst thing to be the best liar.
16 “To me my life, it just don’t make any sense….”
—The Strokes, “Barely Legal”
I HAD THOUGHT that Monday morning would be more of the same, just like after “Audrey, Wait!” premiered on the radio and everyone was all interested in me. I figured that people would be even more curious and Sharon Eggleston would flip her hair a few extra times and Tizzy would pop a blood vessel in her eye from sheer excitement and that sort of thing.
Ha.
By 10 A.M., I knew things were different. It was like people were af
raid to talk to me, even people I had known since junior high. When I walked through the front door, there were clusters of people just watching me, staring like I was parting the Red Sea instead of going to first period.
Also, five different girls had homemade arm huggies on.
But what really sealed the weirdness deal was that Tizzy had suddenly gone shy. She was the first girl I saw with arm huggies, and of course, they were made from her dad’s work socks and looked kind of wrong and wrinkly, but when I made eye contact with her, she got red and flustered.
This would not do at all. If anyone had the right to be all red and flustered, it was me, not Tizzy.
“Hey!” I said, running after her once class ended. I was going to ask her what was up, why no one was talking to me, but I got my answer without asking the question.
“Oh, hi,” she said, and a huge goofy smile came over her face. “Hi.”
“Hi.”
She couldn’t hold it in any longer. It was like watching a rocket launch. “Omigod, you made out with Simon Lolita!” She grabbed my arm and began jumping up and down, pinching me with every syllable. “I saw the pictures online last night—my mom said I couldn’t go online because I’m totally grounded right now, but she goes to bed so early so I snuck on the computer and Oh. My. God. I saw you and him kissing!”
Blastoff.
Beads of sweat were forming on her upper lip and her cheeks were crimson with excitement. “We’ve never had, like, a real celebrity at school before!” she continued. “Oh my God, I don’t even know what to say! You’re famous and you’re, like, talking to me!”
“Tizzy, I’m not fam—”
“You are, though! Everyone’s talking about you! Everyone! In the girls’ bathroom this morning, everyone was saying that you’re sooo lucky, and a couple of girls were all jealous, but don’t worry, Aud, I told them that you totally deserve it and that Simon Lolita is lucky to have you and that you two are gonna be the cutest couple. Is it okay that I just called you Aud?”
“Tizzy.” My head was spinning just watching her. “Breathe.”
“Okay!”
“Try doing it right now.”
