by S Doyle
“In the meantime, you’re the only one working.”
I jutted my chin out. “I’m the only who it makes sense for.”
“And college?”
“My plan is to apply for every scholarship I can.”
“There is the state program for…” He stopped himself before he said it.
“Yes, I know. Janie and Heath already have their college paid for. But that’s not me, is it? My dad isn’t an opioid addict, he’s just a run-of-the-mill, white-collar crook. I don’t even know if my mother would admit that we were broke. How am I supposed to ask for money from the state when she’s insisting everything is still fine? It’s all a total mess.”
More silence as he absorbed what I told him. “You know you can’t be expected to hold it together for everyone. That’s not fair, Beth.”
“There is nothing fair about this.”
His lips twisted into a half smile. “If you’re telling me all this so I’ll go easier on you this year grades-wise, you’re deluding yourself.”
“The truth is I don’t know why I’m telling you all of this. You’re the last person I wanted to know. The last person I wanted to pity me.”
“I told you I don’t pity you and I meant it. Not now. Not ever. Do you believe me?”
I looked at him then and the way he was staring at me. Not as my superior but my equal. I nodded.
“Good. So someone knows your secret and the world hasn’t ended. How do you feel?”
I considered that.
“Relieved,” I said honestly.
He nodded. “Let’s see where Maisy is with our snacks and we’ll get back to work on our bit for the fashion show.”
“I told you there is no point in making up a bit.”
“Beth, if you didn’t come here to rehearse, then that means the only reason you did come was to tell me everything. Which might lead me to conclude you actually like me.”
“Never,” I said quickly. Too quickly. “And if you say never is a long time again to me, I’m going to laugh in your face.”
He smiled. “That was a good fucking line.”
“It was sooo cheesy. I looked around for the jar of Cheese Whiz you pulled it out of but I couldn’t find it.”
He laughed again and I was reminded of what made Fitz unique among our crowd. Yes, he was arrogant; yes, there was an air of invincibility he walked the school hallways with; but beneath all that there was humility, too.
Fitz didn’t take himself as seriously as everyone thought he did. Damn it, if that didn’t make him more likable.
9
Fitz
“Thanks for the ride,” Beth said.
We’d worked, if you wanted to call it that, for about an hour before deciding fashion shows were stupid. Mostly, we ate chips while I listened to Beth talk about all of the things she was afraid of. It was infuriating because there wasn’t much I could do about any of it. The only thing I could do was insist I drive her home so she wasn’t walking home in the dark. That argument took almost twenty minutes before she finally relented.
“You’re stubborn as fuck, Beth.”
She had the self-awareness to wince. “I know.”
“There are times when I fantasize about grabbing you around your arms and just shaking you.” I demonstrated for her on the steering wheel.
“You fantasize about me?”
Yes.
“Don’t flatter yourself. Look, it’s not my place to help you talk to your mother. But you can’t go on pretending like this didn’t happen. If you really think your father’s not coming back, you have to get her to at least the start the process of moving on.”
“You don’t know my mother very well,” she said.
“I could talk to my mom,” I offered. “She’s got contacts at the Justice Department…”
“No,” she barked. “Absolutely not. I knew you would try to do something. That’s who you are. But there is nothing to be done. I don’t even know if I want my father found. Can you just accept what I told you without trying to save me?”
Could I? I held my palms up. “I’m not sure if I can. It’s what I do, Beth.”
“I get it Captain America, but you’ve got other battles to fight. Focusing on finding out who is taking bets on our sisters’ virginity, for one.”
“That I already have a plan for.”
“You do?” she asked, surprised since the subject hadn’t come up all night.
“The guys and I decided it’s got to be Wick behind it. I just need to prove it.”
“I don’t know. It seems this has to be more financially driven. Why would Wick need the vig on a betting book? What’s his motivation?”
“Humiliating my sister,” I said darkly. “So he can hurt me.”
“That’s a lot of work just to humiliate your sister and hurt you. And Wick and I have always been mostly friends. It’s unlikely he holds a grudge against Kit or Lyd.”
“Friends, huh? You and Wick.” Why that bothered me I wasn’t sure.
“Friends-ish. Hey!” she exclaimed as if the idea of the century just occurred to her. “What if I get in on the action? I can bet all the money I have, anonymously of course, on the date I’ll lose my virginity and then plan accordingly.”
“In other words, sell your virginity.” I growled. Was I growling? Because it sounded like I was growling. “You know there’s a name for that right?”
“I refuse to be slut-shamed,” she said with her pointy little chin in the air.
“Fine, then why don’t we just add it to the fashion show auction? How much for this Louis Vuitton book bag? For these Manola Blahnik strappy sandals? And for Beth Bennet’s virgin pussy? What is the going rate for that?”
“Don’t say pussy,” she said, and I could see her blushing. The streetlamp in front of her house gave off plenty of illumination for me to see every reaction on her face.
“Why?”
“Because it’s crass. Like what you said the other night about cocks…and stuff.”
“You’re not ready to have sex if you can’t use the words,” I told her. “Pussy and cock. Dicks and cunts. That’s what it is. Everything else just romanticizes it like some kind of movie.”
“Oh, and I guess because you knew the words you got to have sex.”
I wasn’t going to try and explain again why I’d made the decision I did. I’m fairly sure I fucked it up last time so there didn’t seem to be a point.
“You and I both know you’re not going to have sex until it means something for you. Anything else you tell yourself is bullshit.”
“Did it mean something for you?” she asked me quietly.
“No,” I said truthfully. “It was a means to an end. I don’t regret it. I just didn’t think about it in those terms. I didn’t need my first time to be special.” I put rabbit ears around the word special.
“Why not? Why didn’t you deserve for it to be special?”
“When I’m with the right person, it will be. And now I know I can make it good for…her. That mattered more to me.” I waited a bit. “I can hear you breathing.”
“I’m talking about sex with a guy I’m alone with in a car. My heart is going to speed up. Deal with it.”
I laughed. Beth Bennet made me laugh a lot. “So we’re not auctioning off your virginity next Sunday?”
“Apparently not,” she said sarcastically. “I can’t say pussy and cocks.”
“You did a pretty job good right there. And you know, if you ever want to…practice.”
“Practice saying the words?”
I shrugged. “Practice anything. Now you know someone with experience.”
I didn’t say more than that. Just let the words hang for a bit. Then finally:
“I can still hear you breathing.”
“I’m leaving!” she announced and opened her car door. She nearly fell in her haste to get out.
“You’re an easy target, Bennet,” I said, chuckling.
“You’re an asshole, Fitz!”
This she shouted over her shoulder as she stormed up her driveway. I waited until she was safely inside then pulled away with what I knew to be a shit-eating grin.
Beth
I closed the front door behind me in an utter daze.
Practicing. With Fitz.
Had he really been joking or had he meant something else entirely? After all, this was Fitz. My nemesis. My competition. My mortal enemy.
The person to whom I’d confessed everything, including my virgin status.
“Ugh!” I groaned, slapping my forehead. Was I feverish? Why would I do something like that?
Or worse, did I know why but was in a state of utter delusion?
“Beth? Is that you? Did I see you getting out of a fancy car?”
I heard my mother calling from the great room. I made my way toward the room and saw her sitting on the couch in the dark. She had the wall-mounted TV on but the sound was very low.
There was a window that looked out onto the driveway. I think purposely designed by her just so she could see the nature of the cars pulling into it.
“You did,” I said. Of course Fitz drove a fancy car. His father’s car as he called it, but it was his. A sleek, black Audi. Some model I had absolutely no clue about. It had been luxurious and so very like him. Not to flashy, not too overdone. But something that screamed money.
“What are you watching?” I asked.
“I’m not,” she said, holding up a book. “I just like the background noise. Where you’ve been?”
I’d told her this morning I had rehearsal, but she must have forgotten. “With Fitz. We’re co-hosting the Fall Fashion Show, remember? We’re trying to come up with some kind of skit.”
She frowned. “Fitz Darcy. Is he still as insufferable as ever? I swear that boy walks around town like he’s some kind of prince. And don’t get me started on his father. You’d think that man owned the whole town.”
“Not the whole town. Just three restaurants and a fashion boutique on main street,” I said.
“You know what I mean. He’s showy. People who like to show off how much money they have don’t impress the people of this town. Here it’s all old money.”
“You mean old, white money.”
My mother appeared to be affronted. “Elizabeth Bennet, don’t you get fresh with me. This isn’t because the man is black. You know I’m not a racist.”
It was hard to know that when you lived in a town with mostly white people and your mother considered the one African American man in town showy. Hell, at this point, I would much rather have showy money than no money.
“You’re not actually interested in his son, are you?”
“Fitz is considered the best looking, most athletic, most popular guy in our class. The question should be who wouldn’t be into him?”
“But I thought you hated him.”
“I thought I did, too,” I muttered. I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t have time to think about boys when we really need to be considering what needs to be done next.”
“What needs to be done next?”
I moved to sit on the couch with her, Fitz’s earlier point made.
“Mom, how long are we going to deny the reality? We can’t keep fooling people. We have to get a lawyer and deal with the fact that dad isn’t coming back.”
“What has gotten into your head? We are fooling people. No one thinks there is a problem and, as long as we can keep doing that, we’re going to do it. Besides you don’t know that he’s not coming back. None of us do.”
I closed my eyes. “But it can’t last. How much jewelry do you have?”
“Enough to buy us more time.”
“More time until what? Maybe we get through this year. Then what? And there are Mary and the twins to consider. What do you imagine their future is going to be like?”
My mother’s expression grew hard. “I don’t know, Beth. I don’t have all the answers. I can only take this one day at a time. I don’t even know why you’re asking me these questions.”
Because I’d been willing to believe that some miracle was headed our way, but spilling it all out for Fitz, I knew this whole time I’d been burying my head in the sand. Closing my eyes and sticking fingers in my ears, crying I’m not listening. I’m not listening.
I could see it in Star’s face earlier. The realization of what we were doing or attempting to do. It was foolishness. Eventually, everyone would know what happened.
Clearly my mother wasn’t ready to come to that understanding tonight. I was just going to have keep chipping away, until it finally sunk in with her.
Dad was gone. He wasn’t coming back. We were broke. Our lives were going to have to change.
“I’m sorry, Mom. Just tired. It was a long day.”
“Then you should go to bed,” she said, although it sounded more like an order rather than a request.
Go to bed, Beth. Don’t say the bad part out loud.
I leaned in to kiss her on the cheek. I didn’t want to upset my mother. I just wanted her to start acting like a responsible adult.
That only seemed fair.
Making my way upstairs, I could hear the twins giggling about something in their room behind a closed door. That was a relatively new development. Last year they didn’t mind doing their giggling with the door open.
Mary’s door was also closed. She preferred her own company above any others’. Something else this family maybe should be concerned about. She’d always been quiet, but since Dad’s abandonment it’s like she’d become nearly invisible. Which made it too easy to forget she was suffering, too. I had a thought I should stop and knock on her door. At least try to have a conversation with her, but the effort of that seemed like more energy than I had to give.
At least not tonight. I would talk to her tomorrow. Tonight, I wanted to get into bed and not think about what Fitz had meant about practicing.
10
The Next Day
Beth
“Ow! Hey,” I yelped, stumbling into Janie after Jeff, one of the offensive linemen on the football team, bumped into my shoulder as he walked down the hallway in the opposite direction.
“Sorry,” I apologized to Janie. “Did you see that? He just bumped into me and didn’t say anything.”
“Asshole,” Janie said.
We continued to walk toward our next class, when this time, I saw Wick walking toward me. I smiled and nodded, only because it was polite. Then he steered in my direction, seemingly deliberately on a collision course, just moving away at the last second but also bumping into my shoulder.
Hard.
“WTF?” I barked at him, but he just walked away, laughing.
We finally made it to class, and I took a seat with Janie right in front of me. Immediately, she turned with a confused expression on her face.
“What was that?”
Locke had come in behind us and took the seat next to me.
“I have no clue, but it’s not a coincidence,” I said. I was both angry and had this odd sense of dread. Wick’s attack was definitely deliberate. Was Jeff’s, too?
Why me?
“They’re intimidating you,” Locke said.
I blinked at him, realizing he was talking to me.
“Harassing you. Bullying you. Giving you the business. Is this not translating to American?”
“How do you even know what happened?”
“I saw it. I see a lot of things. I heard about it, too. I hear a lot of things as well. It’s amazing what people will say in front of a complete stranger when they don’t realize that stranger is listening to every word.”
“What do you know?” Janie asked bluntly.
“I know that your friend is hosting a fashion show that people in some circles feel she’s unqualified for, i.e. not quite popular enough. The expectation was that her role would go to a young woman named Anne. They have petitioned Miss Havisham to replace you, but she told them to go pound sand. So they’re attempting to intimidate yo
u until you give up the part.”
“Fucking Snobs,” Janie muttered. “Really, they would do this? Over a fashion show?”
“Apparently it’s one of the major events of the semester,” Locke said, his lips twisted into a smirk. “This school…is unique.”
The fury inside me raged. I didn’t give two shits about their stupid fashion show. For me, it was nothing more than a night when I wouldn’t be working a shift at The Club. I was fine with them wanting to replace me. But to physically bump me around like some damn doll?
“I’m quitting today.”
Janie shook her head. “You can’t quit. That’s just letting them win. Stand your ground. Fight!”
“Not everything is worthy of a battle, Janie,” I said. “I’m not fighting for something I don’t care at all about on principle. They want their show to themselves, let them have it. I’ve got more important things to care about.”
She huffed and faced the front of the classroom. I knew I’d disappointed her, but I didn’t care. This was not my hill to die on.
The teacher started class and I tried to focus on the material but it was nearly impossible. Beyond being furious I knew I was going to have tell Fitz, who was probably going to give me his own brand of grief. I didn’t want to look weak in front of him, but I meant what I told Janie. I didn’t care enough about this to even try to stand my ground.
I glanced over at Locke who appeared highly bored by the subject matter. He seemed utterly checked out, but I started to wonder if it wasn’t an act. If instead of just letting his eyes roam around the room because he could care less about what the teacher was saying, he was actually taking in what everyone in the class was doing at that moment.
I did my own glance around the room and I could see there were people who had their not-approved-for-in-class phones tucked inside text books. Others, with phones under the desk, who were texting.
Two classmates, Erica and Brent, who were clearly texting each other based on the way one texted, stopped, then the other texted and stopped. Interesting. Brent was Snob and Erica was a Havenot. Did anyone know they were dating?
