Oh.
“You have to promise you won’t say anything to him,” I said. “Or to Houston.”
Rudy looked up from the batter.
“Okay. But why not?”
“Rudy.”
She turned to retrieve a pan from under the stove, then she lifted the bowl of batter.
“You forgot to grease that,” I said.
“Oops.” She set the bowl back on the counter. “I’m just saying, if you like him you should pursue him. Talk to him at track practice or something. Ask him to hang out with us some weekend.”
“I don’t even know him. What if he doesn’t like me back? I’ll feel like a moron.” I grabbed a handful of pastel M&Ms from the candy bowl on the counter. Easter themed.
“Why wouldn’t he like you? You’re beautiful, you’re smart, you’re an awesome hurdler. You’re a sweetheart.” She rubbed a stick of butter across the bottom of the brownie pan.
“Rudy,” I pressed. “Just let me do this my own way. Or not do it, whatever I decide.”
“Fine. I promise.” She zipped her lips, threw the imaginary key into the pan and slopped a thick, gooey spoonful of batter on top of it.
For three weeks following our kitchen conversation, where I swore Rudy to secrecy, I pursued Drew “my way”. This consisted of sitting as close to him as I could without being conspicuous while we were stretching during track practice. At lunch, I asked Rudy to sit at Houston’s table (they didn’t normally spend lunch together – even the second time around, they were a strange kind of couple) but she happily obliged so I could be just one table away from Drew. I doodled his name in pencil on the borders of my homework, then erased it and drew it again in a different font. At night, I stared at his black and white photo in my yearbook (why were they black and white, I wondered, when color photography had been the norm for decades?) and sometimes I even planted a kiss over his face before I turned the light off to go to sleep.
It wasn’t working. Surprise, surprise.
“I think you should talk to him. Tonight.” Rudy wiggled her eyebrows from across her room. I was sitting cross-legged on her bed; she was rifling through her open closet, selecting outfits for the two of us. It was a familiar scene, with the new addition of Celine, perched on the seat of Rudy’s vanity.
“I agree,” Celine added. “It can’t hurt anything, right?”
But what did she know? She was pretending to be in an internet relationship with a guy who didn’t even exist. I felt a pang of guilt beneath my snotty attitude.
“Maybe,” I said softly.
Rudy disappeared into the depths of the closet, then returned a few seconds later.
“Really, you need to do something tonight,” she said seriously. “If you’re serious about this, you’re running out of time. People are starting to pair up for prom.”
For her, things were so black and white, so “do it or don’t do it”. So easy. I hated her just a little bit, but she was right.
“So, what’re you doing for prom?” I turned the attention to Celine. “Who do you want to ask you?”
“I’ll probably go alone. There’s just not anyone at school I’m really interested in.”
She stretched her arms in the air and yawned.
“You’re not going home tonight, are you?” Rudy popped out from the closet again at the sound of Celine’s yawn.
“I’m so tired. And I have a test on Monday to study for.”
“Me too. We’re studying all day Sunday; study with us then,” Rudy reasoned. “Just come with us tonight.”
I remained quiet. I was already irritated. I didn’t need Celine tagging along to the party tonight.
“I don’t know what to wear. Parties aren’t my thing, really.”
Celine did not drink, Celine did not smoke, Celine did not wear sparkly things or sexy things or things made by companies that tested on animals. Celine was a modern day hippie.
“Borrow something from me,” Rudy said. “Just come, please?”
Celine was cracking. Rudy could wear her down, too.
“Do it, or I’ll punch you. Do it, or I’ll wear my mom’s fur coat to the party.”
Celine laughed. At least she could have a sense of humor about her eccentricity.
“Fine,” she threw her head back in mock exasperation. “I’ll go this time. This one time.”
My mood had improved slightly by the time we strolled into the party, buoyed by my new spring dress and my cute strappy sandals and the strawberry daiquiris Rudy had whipped up in the blender as we were getting ready while her parents were gone for the evening. Rudy actually made us link arms as we walked up the sidewalk; we were those girls.
Inside it was warm and bright. Things were good with Rudy and Houston, and she found him right away, sitting in front of a card game over the coffee table in the host’s living room. She settled into his lap, one of his big, muscled arms wrapped around the smallest part of her waist while the other hand held his cards fanned out in front of him. Rudy pointed to his cards with one of her dainty index fingers and leaned over to whisper in his ear. He took a sip from his beer and smiled. I couldn’t stick around in the living room watching her for long; I was sinking again. I needed to find company of my own.
I got up from my seat on the sectional and made my way out of the room with saying a word. Rudy glanced up as I left, but she didn’t stop me or call out. I left Celine sitting with the seniors crowded around the poker game.
In the foyer, I darted into the bathroom to peer at myself in the mirror. I wet my fingers in the pedestal sink and dabbed at the cowlick at the back of my head, pressing it down against my skull. I smoothed the ends of my hair, where it lay flat and white-yellow against my chest. I pulled a tube of sheer pink lip gloss from my clutch and smeared it across my bottom lip, rubbed my lips together and smiled at my reflection. My nerves were boiling over like a pot left too long on the stove. With my sandaled foot, I put the toilet lid down, sat on the fuzzy seat cover and hung my head between my knees. Wasn’t this what you were supposed to do to combat nerves? Or was that for nausea? I opened my eyes, and I was staring at my own green underwear beneath my dress. I took three deep breaths and stood. I smoothed my hair again, flushed the unused toilet and ran water in the sink, lest someone think I was doing something strange in the bathroom. When I exited, a junior girl was waiting outside the door and we avoided each other’s eyes.
The next space I entered was the basement, where kids were polarized either around the bar on one side or the pool table on the other. My eyes lit upon Natalie, leaning against the bar between two other senior girls.
“Natalie.” I set my hand on her shoulder and she turned to smile at me.
“Jill!” She was twinkling. She threw her arms around me and squeezed me around my middle.
“I didn’t know you were coming,” I said into her hair.
“Me neither!” She leaned back and held me at arms length. “I got my letter from Harvard today. I got in!”
“You got in?” In the fall, she had applied for early admission at Harvard and had been deferred. Ogden was a prestigious school in Missouri, but that didn’t change the fact that this was still the Midwest. We weren’t exactly groomed to go to Ivy League colleges. “That’s amazing! I’m so happy for you!” I hugged her again, this time in earnest.
“Thank you,” she gushed. “It doesn’t even feel real yet. I feel like I’ll wake up tomorrow and find out it was a big joke.”
I shook my head and rolled my eyes. “No way. You deserve it.”
Really, she did. Of all the people I met at Ogden, Natalie may have been the most sincerely deserving of her success.
“Thanks, Jill.” She smiled and the corners of her eyes looked damp, like she could tear up at any moment.
“Well, I’m sort of looking for someone, so I’m going to keep moving.” I motioned vaguely toward the opposite side of the room, toward the thwack of pool balls. “We’ll talk more later though.”
“Defin
itely,” Natalie nodded. “I’ll find you and Rudy later.”
“Yes. And congratulations, again, Nat.”
I made my way to the pool table, but I could already tell he wasn’t there. I lingered for a few minutes and watched, standing at the edge of the circle. It was a crowd of underclassmen, of freshmen and my own sophomore classmates, but I didn’t really know many of them, guys or girls. The two boys who were playing, bent over the table with their fingers steadying the cue stick as they sent balls shooting across the green velvet into leather pockets, were named Michael Denalby and Trent Calvert. They were both in my class, and I could sum up what I knew about each of them in neat little gossip-filled packages. I knew Michael had been suspended the second quarter of our freshman year for pulling down his pants and flashing his friend “the goat” – a through-the-legs-from-behind view of his genitalia that boys seemed to be fond of one-upping each other with – during his World History class. I knew Michael’s dad was a lawyer and I knew that, though I didn’t think he was particularly smart himself, Michael was expected to take over his father’s practice once he graduated from law school, which boggled my mind. We were only sixteen; graduating college was six years in our future, and law school would be several years past that. To have your future mapped out that far in advance seemed to me like watching a basketball game when you already knew the outcome. Didn’t that make the present – parties and football games and math class and deciding which college you would go to – seem boring and unimportant? What if he decided he liked engineering or painting, instead? Or did this legacy make things better for Michael; because he had a guaranteed career stamped across his future, because he was backed by his father’s fortune, did that make him feel free to do things like show his penis to an entire class of students without much consequence?
Trent, I knew, was a scholarship student. This fact didn’t make him any more or less liked, and it wasn’t really something anyone talked about at all; it was just a fact I knew. Trent’s mom was a single parent, and the general opinion of the guys in our class was that she was very attractive. The whispered opinion of the girls at Ogden was that she was kind of a slut. Because the two rumors seemed to reinforce one another (I was a disgrace to feminists everywhere), I believed them both. I also knew Trent was a very good public speaker (despite being only a sophomore, he was captain of the speech and debate team, which was actually a highly sought after position) and he was very smart. In the fall, when most of our class took the ACT for the first time, he was rumored to have scored 35 out of 36. I, on the other hand, had scored 24.
I watched them slowly circle the perimeter of the table, knocking the balls in one or two at a time, until only the eight ball was left.
“Right corner pocket,” Michael called. It went in, but so did his white cue ball. He cursed under his breath and he handed the stick off to the next boy in line before he cracked open his beer and proceeded to chug the entire thing as I walked away.
Upstairs, I spotted Drew from behind, recognizing him by his blonde hair and pale blue polo and the curves of his calf muscles as they disappeared up the stairs toward the second floor. I held my breath as I weaved through arms and legs and torsos in the large hallway leading to the second floor staircase. He was out of sight, and I bounded up the stairs after him, my heart pounding in my chest. At the top the light was dim; I stopped and looked left. My heart flattened and dropped, sliding down my spine.
Drew, with his luscious locks and perfect white teeth, his sturdy arms and stomach muscles and his boyish laugh, followed another girl into a dark room at the end of the upstairs hall. She was leading him by the wrist; all I could see of her before she disappeared through the doorway was her slim, bangled arm, her purple fingernails clutching Drew’s forearm. But by the way he was smiling at her through the empty doorway, I didn’t need to see her to know.
My face fell and just before the door closed with a thud behind the two of them, he glanced back down the hall and our eyes met. I tried to smile a little, nonchalantly. ‘Oopsies! Sorry I caught you sneaking off! Don’t mind me; I won’t interrupt your fun!’ That’s what I wanted my smile to say, but I’m sure I didn’t pull it off. In the split-second that the door was closing, his eyes looked a little confused. But he returned my small smile and then he was gone.
I turned and slunk back down the stairs, my stomach swinging between my ankles.
“Jillian.” I heard someone’s warbled voice calling my name, but I turned in the opposite direction at the bottom of the staircase. I just wanted to leave, but first I had to get to Rudy. Before I could reach her, Celine materialized in front of me.
“Hey.” She grabbed my arm and I pulled it away. She tried again, this time setting her palm on the front part of my shoulder, just above my bicep. “Hey, will you go outside with me? I wanted to talk to you about Zach.”
There were only three or four people besides us in the entryway; two girls sitting at the bottom of the staircase and some other people wandering in and out from other rooms of the house. I still shouldn’t have said it; we were supposed to be friends, Celine and I.
“Give it up already,” I sneered.
“What?” Her face crinkled in confusion.
“I said, give up. Stop talking about him.” I wasn’t speaking quietly. The girls on the staircase turned to look at us.
In the morning, I would decide I did it because I was drunk. That’s what I would tell Rudy; I was drunk and upset, I didn’t mean to say what I said, especially not in front of everyone or at the volume that I said it.
“He doesn’t even exist. Zach’s not even real.”
Her face crumpled further. She looked at me like I was speaking a different language. French. Mandarin.
“What are you saying? What does that mean?” She crossed her arms over her small chest and leaned back a bit, distancing herself from my obvious hostility.
“He’s not real. We made him up; it was me and Rudy this whole time.” I was almost yelling now. In my peripheral vision, behind Celine’s head, I saw Rudy rise from Houston’s lap when my words reached her ears. But I couldn’t take it back now; there was no stopping me. “It was a joke. You weren’t supposed to like him. It was just a fucking joke.”
Celine’s small, pale features were going pink.
I didn’t know how big of a mistake I’d made until I saw it in Rudy’s face as she approached us. The moment cracked; my anger melted into a sickly puddle. I looked to the side and I saw the two girls were whispering, staring up at me. A boy had frozen in place on his way into the bathroom, his fingers hovering over the doorknob.
Celine looked like she was going to cry. A tidal wave of regret washed through me so suddenly I thought I would throw up.
“Celine,” I said.
“Jillian.” Rudy had reached us at that exact moment. Celine shook her head, like she was trying to physically shake sense into what was happening. Rudy reached out for her, but she jerked out of Rudy’s reach and stormed out the front door in a half-run.
My face was on fire. I looked down at my feet and heard chatter around me, that distinct brand of talking-about-what-just-happened chatter.
“Let’s go.” Rudy was pulling me toward the front door. “Let’s go home.”
I thought we were going to chase after Celine at first, and my gut thumped, but Rudy kept walking down the driveway and I didn’t see Celine. Rudy was walking fast and I shuffled to keep up with her. We were going to Rudy’s car, I realized. We were really going straight home.
I didn’t get the nerve to look her in the face until we were inside the car, her gripping the steering wheel with both hands, even though she hadn’t started the engine yet. She didn’t make eye contact with me for a long time, and when she did she wore a peculiar look. I looked down at my lap and wanted to disappear.
“What happened?” She sounded, of all things, incredibly sad. “Why’d you say those things?”
“I don’t know. Shit, I really don’t know.”
&nb
sp; She started the car and we idled. I let out a loud breath.
“He went into a room upstairs with another girl,” I said, biting my lip. “I didn’t even get a chance to...”
I couldn’t finish the sentence. My chin quivered and tears emerged out of nowhere in the corners of my eyes.
“Don’t cry, Jill.”
“I’m sorry. Really, I’m sorry.”
I met her eyes and burst into tears and she put her arms around me in an awkward hug over the console.
“It’s okay,” she said. “It seems really bad now, but it’ll be better in the morning.”
I laid my head on her shoulder and let out a flood of tears. Rudy the angel. Saint Rudy. She had stayed with me, when she could have chosen Celine.
That night at the Goldens, I couldn’t sleep. I crept out of Rudy’s room and down the long, dark staircase toward the trophy room, where I sat with my back up against the wall and my legs outstretched, my hamstrings and calves pressed against the cold floor. There were sconces at either end of the hallway that were always left on, and their light made the picture frames cast shadows across one another so that parts of all of the photographs were shaded and grotesque-looking. It was cold and I had a stomachache. I wrapped my arms around my body.
There were three new photos on the wall – new since the first time I had been in the trophy room. One was of Marta; a photograph of her sitting behind a desk in her small office at a New York nonprofit organization. It was a clipping from a newspaper story about young world-changers; they picked fifty of the top young professionals in New York City and they had written a whole paragraph for Marta. Mrs. Golden had gushed for a month.
The second was of Kent studying abroad in Portugal the spring before. Rudy had gone to visit him with her parents, even though that meant she’d had to miss the first day of our final exams (Ogden, of course, allowed her to make it up and she got an A). In the picture, Kent was smiling and handsome as ever, but I no longer felt the same stirring when I thought about him. He was preparing for his final year of undergrad and was applying to law school at the University of Missouri. He would be only two and a half hours from home, but he was eons away.
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