by Abby Bardi
“What don't you like about Sara?” M.F. asks, still not looking convinced.
This is a tough question. I don't like anything about Sara. For one thing, she's very polite and self-confident, and she talks to adults like she's their oldest friend. Her clothes always look all beat up but I happen to know they all come from Nordstrom. “She's snotty,” I say finally, though that isn't really it. I guess the main thing I don't like about Sara is that she's always judging everyone. She makes these remarks about people that leave you totally sure she's going to say the same thing about you the minute you're gone. Another big thing I don't like about her is that she's crazy. She's always doing things like shoplifting, and buying drugs from weird men in the grocery store, and taking off her clothes with strange boys but not having sex with them because she might get a disease. “And she makes me feel like a geek,” I add, though that isn't it either.
“Then why do we have to go to her party?”
“Because it's the big event, M.F. We have to be there or—or we might miss something.”
“What if we miss something bad?”
“You sound like Mom.” Mom doesn't want us to go out on New Year's Eve because she's scared of the Y2K disaster that is going to shut down the world and give us a week of nuclear winter. She knows people from the neighborhood who have actually moved to Hawaii and set up self-sustaining communities just in case. Mom's solution to the problem was to buy acord of wood from some guy in a flannel shirt and stock up on cans of tuna fish and gallons of spring water. Roy begged her to buy him some Spam but she refused because she says it's full of bad chemicals. The day before Christmas, she got the camping lantern out of the attic and a bunch of sleeping bags, and we are now ready to camp in the living room by the fire eating tuna fish for as long as six months if we have to. “It'll be fun, M.F., you'll see.”
Of course, the party is not fun. The party as a matter of fact is like a celebration in hell. From the moment we walk in, I know it's going to be horrible. A bunch of guys are sitting on the couch in Sara's living room, and I take one look at them and see they're all drunk and high. There's nowhere to sit, so M.F. and I sit on the floor next to the fireplace, where a crummy little log is burning. The girls are sitting on the couch opposite the boys, and no one is saying anything. The stereo is playing some cheesy band like the Goo Goo Dolls. It's all so uncool that I'm shocked.
Sara's parents' house is one of those old bungalows like our house so they don't have a rec room or anywhere to escape to, and though I can see that her parents are trying to pretend they are staying out of our way, they are also watching us like hawks all night from the kitchen, and they keep coming into the room as if they'd forgotten something, then snapping their fingers as if they'd suddenly remembered where it was. Every fifteen minutes or so, they walk in carrying hand-woven baskets full of organic potato chips and clay bowls of onion dip made with real onions and yogurt. They leave food on the coffee table and act like they're not looking at us to see if we're doing anything bad. Whenever Sara's parents are out of the room, the moronic boys on the couch take a bottle of vodka out of their backpacks and swig a bunch of it down straight, while the idiotic girls pour it into their Cokes. They all laughlike they are doing something really clever. I find this incredibly boring, and M.F. doesn't seem to get why they're all drinking water out of a little bottle. I tell her they're thirsty.
After a while, the boys challenge us to a game of Truth or Dare, and they flip a coin to see who has to go first. No one wants to do Dare, since Sara's parents are in the next room, so we spend an hour listening to people confessing their love for guys in their Math class or describing the sexual experiments they've performed out behind the gym. (Luckily, M.F. seems to have no idea what they're talking about.) When it's my turn, I tell everyone that I have a secret passion for Kermit the Frog, in fact he makes me really crazy with lust. Everyone looks disappointed and accuses me of just making that up so I don't have to tell the truth, but I swear on my honor as a Presbyterian that it's true, and that anything green makes me crazy. Some of the guys are messed up enough to believe me, and one of them is wearing a green Polo shirt and gives me what he thinks is a sexy look. I wink back at him, even though he's drunk and stupid-looking. M.F. gives me a confused look. For a moment, I feel morally superior to poor naïve M.F., and then I feel guilty. Heather, you're a bitch, I say to myself.
The night wears boringly on, with the guys getting more and more obnoxious, and the girls looking increasingly drunk and slutty. Finally, after a few hours of this, the guys end up playing catch with a rock that was sitting on the coffee table. The rock has the word “Listen” engraved on it, and they start hurling it back and forth, shouting “Think fast!” to the girls on the couch, who squeal and duck their heads. Eventually, just as the game was getting to be a tiny bit fun, someone tosses the rock so hard that it crashes right through the front window. This seems to be the last straw for Sara's parents, and they call a bunch of kids' parents and then drive the rest of us home intheir minivan. All I can think of when we get dropped off is, thank God Dylan Magnuson wasn't there.
When we get home, Mom is still next door at Paula's. Paula is having a big Millennium party and we can hear loud music blaring from her house. That song “1999,” which I am getting totally sick of, plays over and over and I can hear loud laughing and thumping noises like they are all dancing or something. Ick.
When Mom finally comes home at 12:30, M.F. and I are sitting in the living room watching TV. We gave each other a little hug at midnight and toasted with glasses of grape juice, and by the time Mom gets home we are definitely having more fun than if we were still at Sara's stupid party. I halfway expected the TV to go off at midnight and for everything to shut down for a nuclear winter, but by the time Mom walks in it's still business as usual. “Oh, good, you girls are home. How was it?”
“Oh, we had a great time,” M.F. says, and when I look at her I see she isn't kidding.
“That's good. Well, I'm glad you're home.”
“Me too,” I say, and I notice that I'm actually telling the truth. I would much rather be home with Mom and M.F. than at Sara's horrible party.
Mom walks over and gives each of us a kiss on the cheek, and when she gets to me I notice that she smells horrible.
“Oh, my God, Mom, what is that? You smell so gross.”
“Oh, that's Paula's new aromatherapy spray. There were a lot of psychic healers at the party and they were all working on me. I guess they thought I needed some healing.”
“Are you sick?” Mom never gets sick, and the mere idea freaks me out.
“Oh, no, honey. They thought I needed some help with my love life.”
“Mom, you don't have a love life.”
“That's why they thought I needed help.”
“What did they do?” I am suddenly interested, like maybe there is something I can do to make Dylan Magnuson fall madly in love with me.
“Oh, they sprayed me with this stuff, and they all stood around me and meditated on my aura. There were six of them, and they all took different parts of my body and worked on them.”
“Ew, gross, they didn't like feel you up or anything, did they?”
“Puffin, please. Of course not. They just worked on my energy.”
“Sounds like voodoo to me,” M.F. says, which is almost a Roy comment.
“Well, I figured it couldn't hurt. What have I got to lose?”
“Smelling okay,” I say. But Mom is right. Maybe I'll go over to Paula's before school starts back up on Monday and see what she can do for me.
Paula stands over me with a huge lavender spray bottle and says, “Honey, this is going to wake up all your estrogen. Men will follow you wherever you go.”
“Is that a good idea, Paula?” M.F. asks her seriously. “I mean, it's bad enough as it is, what with men whistling at us on the street and stuff like that.”
“It's really only one man I'm interested in,” I tell her. “Or boy. Can you make it jus
t work on one person?”
“Not unless you go spray some of this right on him.” She laughs and tosses her hair back. She's wearing a long blond wig that looks like it comes from an old movie, parted on the side and kind of wrinkled, like Ginger Rogers's hair.
“I don't think so, Paula. He might think that was kind of weird.”
“All right then, Puffin. Spread your legs.”
“Excuse me?”
“Spread 'em. I need to spray you where it counts.”
“Oh, ICK, Paula. Are you kidding?”
“Darling,” she says, putting one hand on her hip and holding the bottle in the air with the other. “Do you want this or don't you? Auntie Paula has lots of things to do today.”
I sit and think about Dylan Magnuson walking around school like a zombie, mad with love for me. “Okay, Paula, go for it.” I make my knees move apart, though they don't want to, and Paula sends a cold jet of this stinky, disgusting smelly stuff right up my skirt all over my pantyhose. When she has finished, I say, “Oh, God, that was so gross.”
Paula makes us each give her a kiss on the cheek and then shoos us out the door.
“You smell like a pink poodle,” M.F. says as we take a shortcut home through the bushes. I turn around to glare at her and see that she is laughing, like she thinks the whole thing is just too silly for words. I get a little annoyed and think, well, maybe it is, and maybe it isn't.
The next day, school starts again, and I just walk around the halls and wait. It took me hours to get that smell off last night, and Mom was pretty freaked out when she found out where Paula had sprayed me. We run into our bowling buddies Jack and Todd in the hall right away, and Todd puts his arm around me, which he has never done before. “It's working!” M.F. hisses to me when they're gone. If it was anyone else I'd think they were kidding, but knowing M.F. she means it.
In Chemistry, Danny Fox keeps looking at me weirdly, like he has never seen me before. Oh, great, I think.
It takes me all day, but finally I walk past Dylan Magnuson in the hall. I have walked past him a million times and he has never noticed me, but today for the very first time, he raises one eyebrow and his left eye meets mine as he passes by, moving very fast without stopping, his messy, uncombed-looking hair flopping as he walks away.
For the next few days, I'm feeling pretty good, as if something exciting is going to happen, like Dylan Magnuson will finally not be able to stand another minute of living without me and will fall at my feet outside of Algebra II and ask me to be his. I try to think of how he will say it—“Will you go out with me?” he begs, looking up at me past his dark eyebrows, his voice all low and sexy like someone in a rock song, maybe that guy from Pearl Jam.
“Of course I will, Dylan,” I say sometimes, and at other times, I hesitate and make him squirm just a little. But we end up kissing in the hallway and everyone around us kind of oohs like they're watching fireworks.
After a few days of wandering around in my happy little bubble of aromatherapy fantasy, I notice that M.F. is not looking too good. She acts normal most of the time but I sometimes catch her rubbing her hands together like she's trying to start a fire, and she gets this terrible look on her face when she thinks no one can see her like she's thinking about something scary.
It doesn't take me too long to realize that this isn't just the normal sad look she gets sometimes—no, I figure out that she's worrying about the Big Whatever It Is, and at first I'm relieved that that's all it is, because since the Y2K turned out to be no big deal, I'm not at all concerned about possible disasters. I mean, why worry. But soon it starts to upset me that poor old M.F. is such a wreck, and it just seems to get worse and worse, and though part of me wants to yell “Get over it!,” another part ofme just wants to cry whenever I look at her. By January 6, she is unable to eat, and she looks like she's going to burst into tears any time. That morning, when Mom writes us both a note to give our homeroom teacher saying that we won't be in school the next day, I remember that we're supposed to drive out to the middle of nowhere and blow up with M.F. Or something.
That night, dinner is totally depressing. M.F. isn't saying anything, is just picking at her food. Mom is scurrying around like a deranged hamster trying to make everything better, but what can you do about the end of the world? I'm grumpy because Dylan Magnuson has so far still not fallen at my feet, and what if the world does explode tomorrow, will I die a virgin, never having known the whatever of love? It's too late in the day to go throw myself at some guy just in case, but I wish I'd thought of it sooner.
As if things aren't gloomy enough, Roy is being difficult too. “Geeze, Al, I really don't have time to go schlepping out to fucking Virginia tomorrow,” I can hear him saying from the living room while they think M.F. and I can't hear because we're in the kitchen doing the dishes. “I mean, I'd like to do it for the little chick, but I can't.”
“Roy, damn it, I don't ask much of you, but Mary Fred needs us all to be there and I damn well want you to be there.” I have never heard my mom talk to Roy this way, though there have been a million times when she should have, and I'm kind of impressed.
“But Al, I have to—”
“Roy, you live here rent free, you go out every day and as far as I can tell you do absolutely nothing, nothing, and I am telling you right now, this is one thing you just have to do.” Mom's voice is like steel, and even I feel scared.
Sure enough, at six in the morning, when I come downstairs, there is Roy, drinking a big mug of coffee.
It takes Mom a while to start the car. She has to pump the gas, pull out the choke, then wait, then try to start it, then wait again. Roy suggests at that point that she should get out and do a little dance, too, but Mom just glares at him. I hate Mom's car. I will never learn to drive because I wouldn't be caught dead driving it. It's an old rusty orange Volvo with a million bumper stickers on the back, stickers for Amnesty International, some failed political candidates, and one that everyone in our neighborhood has that says “Friends Don't Let Friends Vote Republican.” I'm saving up to buy my own car, and I figure that with my allowance, I will be able to get one in about fifty years.
Actually, Dad offered to buy me a car, but Mom wouldn't let him. They had a big argument about it a year ago, and it was one of the few times I'd seen them talk to each other since the divorce. They both spoke in exaggeratedly pleasant voices the whole time, but I could see that they were really mad. “She'll be sixteen soon,” Dad said, “and she needs a car.” “I don't want her driving,” Mom said. “It's dangerous. We have good public transportation.” “You just want her to be a little kid forever,” Dad said, smiling with his teeth clenched. “Maybe I do,” Mom said, “is that so bad? Kids grow up too fast nowadays.” When it was all over, I knew that I would never have a car, and the truth was, I didn't mind that much. It seemed like too big a responsibility for me anyway, especially the driving part. I have enough trouble just walking without bumping into anything.
Finally Mom gets the car started and we take off down the road. It's only seven in the morning and everyone is still asleep, and there are no other cars on Laurel Avenue whenwe drive down it, just a school bus. I check out the windows just to make sure Dylan Magnuson isn't on the bus, though I know he's too cool to take the bus to school. I see him in the parking lot at school most days getting into a banged-up Toyota when M.F. and I are waiting for the bus, which is always late, and sometimes I actually walk over to the parking lot to watch him, pretending I am heading toward my own car, but I just can't remember where I parked it. I stand outside someone's brand-new Jeep and dig in my purse like I can't find my keys while he speeds by, and I can hear the stereo on really loud inside his car but I can never figure out what he's playing, though one day I'm pretty sure it was Rage Against the Machine. When I get back to the bus stop, M.F. is always freaking out because she made the bus driver wait for me and she doesn't want to make him late, since he has to get to his other job. I tell M.F. she has no sense of romance.
Right now, I look over at M.F. and see that her face is tight and pinched, like something hurts her. I can't actually see through the windows—they're all frosted up because it's cold out and still dark. We drive past all the locked-up stores in town, then onto a bigger street, and finally we're on the Beltway, cruising. I settle back in my seat to take a nap, but I keep waking up and looking at M.F. She is staring out the window like she's expecting to see something horrible coming down from the sky, the devil (if she even really believes in the devil, I don't know for sure), or poison arrows, or aliens. I have no idea what the deal is with this Big Thingybob, and I don't want to know.
We drive all the way to the other side of the Beltway and then head west. I am in and out of a doze, and traffic picks up after a while, though the cars all seem to be headed the otherway. I see a sign for Manassas just as my eyes close heavily and I start to dream. I am in the hallway at school and at the far end, I see Dylan Magnuson walking with Danny Fox. They are talking in a whisper, and when they see me, they're suddenly quiet and I just know they were talking about me. I'm standing there by my locker and suddenly I realize that I smell really bad, like that lavender spray stuff only worse, like a whole florist shop has rotted somewhere inside me and I am just reeking of dead orchids or petunias or something. I see Dylan Magnuson start to move toward me and I back away because I don't want him to smell me, but he is coming closer, closer, he is looking right at me with the same eye he looked at me with in the hall, plus the other eye, and he is about to say something. No, no, don't inhale, I think, but he comes up right next to me and says, “Beware, Heather, beware, because the Big Whatever It Is is coming and coming soon.” I see Danny Fox in the background, and he is waving at me and grinning like he knows just what Dylan is saying and he couldn't agree more. I am about to say something back to him, to thank him for his concern or whatever, but when I start to talk I realize I am babbling in real life, in the backseat of the car, all smooshed up next to Mary Fred, who is wide awake and staring out the window looking pale and freaky.
