Sloppy Firsts

by Megan Mccafferty

  Maybe if I keep telling myself this long enough, I’ll believe it.

  the sixth

  I arrived at school today with a mission: To find out the message inside the origami mouth. I knew there was no hope in retrieving it, so there was only one option left. An option simultaneously terrifying and titillating.

  I’d ask Marcus what it said.

  This would be a big deal for all the obvious reasons (I’m me, he’s Marcus Flutie.… It could draw unwanted attention to my crime.…) plus one more. See, this would mark a dramatic departure from our previous exchanges. Up to this point, he had initiated all contact between us. But today I would be the one to decide that it was time to talk. I would be the one in the powerful position.

  If I didn’t projectile-vomit all over him.

  So I lingered outside the door to homeroom, hoping to catch him as he walked in. I waited through the five-minute bell. I waited through the warning bell. At the final bell, I went to my seat. I told myself that it wasn’t uncommon for him to shuffle to his seat a minute or two late. But by the time we got to the pledge, I’d lost all hope.

  Marcus never showed up for homeroom. Maybe I would’ve known that if I hadn’t lost the mouth.

  Of course, it was Sara who broke the news.

  "Omigod! Did you hear about Kripsy Kreme? He got some girl to fake his drug test last week!"

  I almost launched my Cap’n Crunch.

  It turns out that there was a way for the docs to tell that the pee came out of a girl and not a guy—a hormonal thing. It took them a few days to get tipped off. Marcus must have been called down to the office right after he gave me the origami mouth. There, his parole officer, Principal Masters, and good ol’ Brandi confronted him about the faked sample. They knew it wasn’t his, but they wouldn’t know who it came from unless he told them.

  "So far Marcus has refused to tell who he got it from," said Sara, positively beside herself with this juicy gossip. "They threatened him for hours, supposedly. But he wouldn’t cave."

  "How do you know all this?"

  "My dad went golfing with Principal Masters."

  "Oh."

  "And he asked me for ideas on who it could be, you know, since I’m a fountain of information."

  Jesus Christ.

  "I suggested his girlfriends, the ones I could remember," Sara continued. "It’s probably not any of them, though."

  "Why?"

  "Because the faked sample was drug-free."

  "Really?"

  "Which means his partner in crime was someone like you …" She paused, for approximately a half hour. "Or me."

  At that moment, I knew that I was going to get caught. And my life was going to be destroyed. And for what? To prove to everyone they were wrong about me? Brilliant. But I wasn’t ready to fess up. Not yet.

  It took every ounce of strength that I had to act normal and respond to conversation about this subject as though I were a totally uninvolved observer.

  "What kind of chickenhead would help him pass his drug test?" said Hy.

  "An insecure one," I said.

  "He must be really good in bed," said Manda.

  "I doubt he promised sex," I said.

  "Burke says that he’s seen Marcus in the locker room and that he’s got like, ten inches of New Jersey Whitesnake," said Bridget.

  "What?" all four of us asked.

  "He’s got a huge penis."

  "Oh," said Hy.

  "Oh!" said Manda.

  "Oh?" said Sara.

  "Whoa," said I.

  It was exhausting.

  The Clueless Crew aren’t the only ones talking about it. Everyone has theories on what Marcus said to the secret donor—that he promised her drugs, or a date. Of course, I didn’t correct them. I didn’t tell them that I know he wouldn’t be so crude. That he just asked her in a way that only Marcus could ask. Putting his hand on her knee. Promising to return the favor. Grinning.

  the ninth

  I have survived the most nerve-racking five minutes of my life.

  I had gotten used to acting innocent around the Clueless Crew and everyone else. It was as easy as breathing.

  Then I got called out of class.

  "Could you send Jess Darling down to Principal Masters’s office immediately?" said the fuzzy, disembodied voice of Mrs. Newman over the PA system.

  The whole class looked at me with wonder. I made a big deal out of shrugging and wearing a What’s this all about? expression.

  On the walk to the office, I kept hearing Marcus’s words over and over again: I won’t narc on you. I won’t narc on you. I won’t narc on you.…

  When I got to the office, Principal Masters was waiting for me. He greeted me with a smile and a "So sorry to pull you out of class." But I knew from watching enough interrogation scenes on TV cop shows that his warm countenance could be a setup.

  "I’m sure you’ve heard about this incident with Marcus Flutie, correct?" Principal Masters asked as soon as I sat down.

  "Yes."

  That’s good. Keep it simple. Don’t elaborate.

  "Nurse Payne says that you were in the recovery room that afternoon."

  "Yes."

  Good. Simple. Good.

  "What were you doing there?"

  "Oh. I had some, uh … feminine problems …"

  "Oh!" he exclaimed, looking embarrassed. "Sorry."

  He shifted in his creaky leather chair and stroked his bushy gray beard. His ample stomach strained against his cheap brown polyester suit.

  My life is about to be destroyed by a fat man in a cheap brown polyester suit.

  "The reason I’ve asked you here is because you were the only one in there about the time that Marcus was called down for his test …"

  Here it comes. He’s moving in for the kill. I’m dead. Done. Toast.

  "Did you see him with anyone? Don’t be afraid to tell me."

  What?

  "I know that these troublemakers might have put pressure on you …"

  Is he suggesting what I think he—

  "They might have even threatened you physically …"

  Hallelujah! He didn’t suspect me at all. Once I understood the goal of our meeting—to rat out the troublemaker who did this—I was able to speak more freely. I told him that no one had threatened me. I was asleep the whole time. I hadn’t seen Marcus or anyone else.

  "I wish I had, so I could help you out," I said.

  "I wish you had, too," he said.

  My cutesy last name and straight As had saved me again.

  the thirteenth

  My conversation with Principal Masters had calmed me down quite a bit. But I knew that until they found the culprit, I’d never be completely off the hook.

  Today, they got one. And no one was more stunned than I was.

  "They found out who peed in the cup!" Sara cried in homeroom.

  "They did?"

  "Yeah. A total nobody named Taryn Baker."

  Taryn Baker is a dweeby freshman, so desperate for notoriety that she voluntarily confessed to the crime that she didn’t commit. At band practice yesterday, she bragged to a bunch of her fellow clarinet players that she was the one who had peed in the cup. They turned her in because they were sick of her ego trip. Band nerd betrayal.

  The administration is so thrilled to have a guilty party that they aren’t even checking out her story. Marcus didn’t confirm or deny it. Of course, poor, insecure Taryn couldn’t help but do whatever the cold, calculating Marcus told her to do, so she’s getting off relatively unscathed: suspension for the rest of the year. While I certainly appreciate her voluntary scapegoating, I can’t help but pity her. Doesn’t she know about Pineville’s short-term memory? That the name she’s making for herself today will be forgotten when she comes back next year?

  The evil Marcus, on the other hand, is being sent to Middlebury. Word is he won’t be coming back. His parents are sending him to military school. I know I’ll never hear from him. He’s too smart to trust the co
nfidentiality of any form of correspondence.

  I keep telling myself that even if I had had nothing to do with this, the end result would’ve been the same. He would’ve ended up in rehab. I wish I knew that was the best thing for him. I can’t help but think about what happened to Heath. Getting kicked out of school didn’t help him. That special high school for "high-risk" students didn’t straighten Heath out or keep him off the streets. Or even save his life.

  The phone ban has been lifted. But I still can’t tell Hope about any of this. How can I possibly tell her that I helped one of the people she hates most in the world get away with one of the sins she hates most in the world? I can’t afford to lose her friendship over something as insanely stupid as this.

  So all I can do is vent here.

  Who is this for, anyway? Who are you? Who actually found this notebook and cares enough to read it? You must have little to do. Wait. Are you me twenty-five years from now? Too weird. Stop thinking, Jessica. Stop getting so ahead of yourself. Just stop.

  the sixteenth

  At 1:42 A.M.I heard some cracking noises at my window. I was awake, so it didn’t take me long to react. I opened the window and leaned out to take a look.

  "You’re awake!"

  It was Scotty with a handful of pebbles.

  "I’m always awake. What do you want?"

  "I need to talk to you. Can you come out?"

  I knew it must be major. Scotty and I hadn’t said more than Hey to each other since he hooked up with Kelsey. Anyway, I had been too distracted by the whole Marcus thing to care.

  "Shhhhh … I’ll be right down."

  I was already dressed for a middle-of-the-night run, so I met him in the front yard in less than a minute. I made a slashing motion across my throat to silence him before he spoke up and woke my parents.

  "Do you do this a lot?" Scotty asked.

  "What?"

  "Sneak out."

  "Why?"

  "It was like you were expecting me."

  "Oh. No." I explained how I go running at night.

  "I never knew that about you," he said.

  "How would you know if I never told you?"

  We reached the kiddie park and I headed straight for the swings. The swings have always been my favorite. There’s a secret game that I have played on that playground’s swings for as long as I can remember: I swing higher and higher and try to hit the leaves on the oak tree with my feet. It’s impossible—the leaves are about twenty-five feet up. Even now, I still try in the dark. But I didn’t do that with Scotty there. I just sat and swayed.

  "So what’s up?"

  Scotty sighed. "I broke up with Kelsey."

  I tried to look surprised.

  "Are you upset?" I asked.

  "Not really."

  "Then why the nine one one?"

  "She’s really p.o.’ed at you and I wanted you to know before school tomorrow."

  "Why is she pissed at me? I’ve barely talked to you."

  "I know," he said, drawing lines in the dirt with a stick. "I kind of missed talking to you and it caused a problem." He snubbed out the lines with his sneaker. "I thought she deserved to know the truth. That my friendship with you is more important than her."

  There was a time when I would’ve thought that was just about the sweetest thing I’d ever heard in my life. But not anymore. Now, Scotty’s words only came off as cinematically sweet. Molly-Ringwald-movie sweet. And while I love watching those flicks, living one was all a bit too contrived for me.

  "I sound like a total fag, but it’s true," he said.

  Scotty was pulling out all the stops to get back in my good graces. How many sixteen-year-old guys would forsake sex for friendship? Now I know that the reality is far less monklike because Scotty is ultimately hoping that this will help him have sex with me. Still, it’s fairly impressive, even if the more accurate question is: How many sixteen-year-old guys would give up today’s booty for a between-the-sheets uncertainty?

  Somehow, it just wasn’t enough.

  "I feel bad about dissing you right before your sister’s wedding and all."

  "Uh-huh."

  "And I could still go with you."

  "Uh-huh."

  "If you still want me to."

  That was funny. I never really wanted to go with him in the first place. Everyone else wanted me to. No way was I going to give them all the satisfaction for a second time.

  "You know what, Scotty? It’s too late."

  "Oh."

  Of course, it wasn’t too late at all. My sister could’ve accommodated him, no problem. It was just too late for me.

  "Sorry you came out here for no reason," I said.

  "Hey," Scotty replied, "no big fucking deal."

  the twenty-second

  Today was the last day of school. Sophomore no more.

  As usual, PHS held its annual awards assembly today. I think it’s supposed to give us incentive to show up. The obvious flaw in this logic is that the Hicks, Hoochies, Wiggaz, Dregs, and miscellaneous PHS bottom-dwellers who would be naturally inclined to skip aren’t going to be tricked into showing up by the promise of engraved plaques that will never be theirs. And those of us getting awards would show up anyway.

  I usually rack up the plaques. Last year, for example, all the individual subject awards were divided evenly between me and Len Levy—four each. But this year I only got the sophomore English award and the French I award. It’s not fair for me to get the latter since I’m a year older than everyone else in the class. Pepe was robbed.

  As much as I don’t give a crap about these things, I was shocked to be shut out of the rest of the awards. I was beat out by lesser brains. Plus, for the first time ever, Len Levy nudged me out of the top GPA award with 99.02. Apparently, my less-than-stellar performance on my finals (all taken during the Marcus brouhaha) dropped my GPA down to 97.98. That’s a two-point drop in less than a marking period. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but it is.

  I’m slipping.

  Hy wasn’t at our school long enough to earn any awards. But she came up to me in the auditorium and congratulated me as I gathered up mine. I thanked her, wondering if she still thought I was as smart as the girls at her private school.

  Then she opened her mouth like she was about to say something else, but changed her mind. This was weird, because Hy usually says what’s on her mind.

  "What?" I asked.

  "Girl," she said. "Don’t take anything I do personally."

  What a bizarre thing to say out of nowhere like that. I really wanted to say something snotty to put Hy in her place and vent some pent-up resentment. But I was so drained by the Marcus thing that I didn’t really give a damn.

  "Ain’t no thing, Hy," I said, using her own words against her. "Ain’t no thing."

  When I got home, I dumped my unimpressive awards into the corner with the rest of them. They’re such a given, my parents don’t even ask to see them anymore, let alone ooh and ahh over them.

  Then I fell asleep for five minutes. Long enough to have a dream about an origami mouth trying to swallow me up.

  the twenty-fifth

  THE BIG DAY.

  Bethany is no longer Miss Bethany Shannon Darling. She’s Mrs. Grant Doczylkowski, which is about as bad a new name as you can get.

  My primary duty for the big day was to fluff Bethany’s train and hold her cathedral-length veil so it didn’t drag all over the floor. My secondary duty was to tell her how beautiful she looked. Which, of course, she did. But it got annoying having to reassure her.

  "How does my makeup look? Not too much, is it? I don’t want to scare Grant when I walk down the aisle."

  "It looks beautiful."

  "How does my dress look? It isn’t too tight, is it? I don’t want to look like a whale when I walk down the aisle."

  "It looks beautiful."

  "How does my hair look? It’s not too poufy, is it? I don’t want to scream Jersey when I walk down the aisle."

  "Your ba
ngs are a bit mallratty."

  "WHAT?!"

  "I’m kidding. I swear. It looks beautiful."

  Ad nauseum.

  The universe gets so ga-ga about weddings that I expected sentimentality to sneak up on me and make me a mushy mess. But it didn’t. Bethany’s and G-Money’s vows left me unmoved.

  Here’s what I remember about the ceremony: I sat with my arms folded tightly across my chest, trying to keep warm in the overenthusiastically air-conditioned church. The setting sun through the stained-glass windows turned my yellow ("Maize!") dress into a muted tie-dye. My strapless bra was cutting off my circulation, and I couldn’t help but think it would have a long-term breast-stunting effect.

  The real action was at the reception.

  As the Maid of Dubious Honor, I automatically got paired up with the Best Man all day. We walked down the aisle together. We posed for pictures together. We made our entrance into the reception hall together.

  The bad news: G-Money’s best man, Tad, is thirty years old and resembles a bloated manatee after a beer bender.

  The better news: Tad introduced me to his nineteen-year-old brother, Cal. Cal is one tasty morsel in a clean-cut, Abercrombie-ish kind of way.

  The best news: Cal is a computer genius who pissed off his parents by dropping out of MIT this year to be a whiz-kid consultant for an up-and-coming software company.

  The supa-dupa stupendous news: When Cal shook my hand he said, "I told my bro I had to meet the girl who made that butt-ugly dress look so damn good."

  Paul Parlipiano, who?

  "Let’s make our getting-to-know-you banter more challenging," he said.

  "Okay."

  "We’ll only discuss subjects most commonly known by abbreviations."

  Cal was odd. But I liked it. I asked for an example.

  "TRL," he said. "MTV democracy at it’s best? Or pitiful battleground for boy bands?"

  "WWF," I said. "Harmless white-trash fun? Or the low point in America’s cultural landscape?"

  And so we went on to discuss: MP3, PBS, IPO, and YMCA.

  "Everything a man can enjoy? Or where you hang out with all the bo—?"