But that was last year. This year I’ll be seventeen. Maggie and The Mouse are nearly eighteen, and Walt is already legal, so they can’t kick him out.
Lali and I find Walt and The Mouse and they want to go too. We troop out to Maggie’s car, where she and Peter are deep in conversation. I find this slightly irritating, although I don’t know why. We decide that Maggie will drive Walt to The Emerald, while The Mouse will take Peter, and I’ll go with Lali.
Thanks to Lali’s speedy driving, we’re the first to arrive. We park the truck as far away from the building as possible in order to avoid detection. “Okay, this is weird,” I say, while we wait. “Did you notice how Maggie and Peter were having some big discussion? It’s very strange, especially since Walt says he and Maggie are having problems.”
“Like that’s a surprise.” Lali snorts. “My father thinks Walt is gay.”
“Your father thinks everyone is gay. Including Jimmy Carter. Anyway, Walt can’t be gay. He’s been with Maggie for two years. And I know they definitely do more than make out because he told me.”
“A guy can have sex with a woman and still be gay,” Lali insists. “Remember Ms. Crutchins?”
“Poor Ms. Crutchins,” I sigh, conceding the argument. She was our English teacher last year. She was about forty years old and she’d never been married and then she met “a wonderful man” and couldn’t stop talking about him, and after three months they got married. But then, one month later, she announced to the class that she’d annulled her marriage. The rumor was that her husband turned out to be gay. Ms. Crutchins never came right out and admitted it, but she would let revealing tidbits drop, like, “There are just some things a woman can’t live with.” And after that, Ms. Crutchins, who was always full of life and passionate about English literature, seemed to shrink right into herself like a deflated balloon.
The Mouse pulls up next to us in a green Gremlin, followed by the Cadillac. It’s terrible what they say about women drivers, but Maggie really is bad. As she’s trying to park the car, she runs the front tires over the curb. She gets out of the car, looks at the tires, and shrugs.
Then we all do our best to stroll casually into The Emerald, which isn’t really seedy at all — at least not to look at. It has red leather banquettes and a small dance floor with a disco ball, and a hostess with bleached blond hair who appears to be the definition of the word “blousy.”
“Table for six?” she asks, like we’re all absolutely old enough to drink.
We pile into a banquette. When the waitress comes over, I order a Singapore Sling. Whenever I’m in a bar I always try to order the most exotic drink on the menu. A Singapore Sling has several different kinds of alcohol in it, including something called “Galliano,” and it comes with a maraschino cherry and an umbrella. Then Peter, who’s ordered a whiskey on the rocks, looks at my drink and laughs. “Not too obvious,” he says.
“What are you talking about?” I ask innocently, sipping my cocktail through a straw.
“That you’re underage. Only someone who’s underage orders a drink with an umbrella and fruit. And a straw,” he adds.
“Yeah, but then I get to take the umbrella home. And what do you get to take home besides a hangover?”
The Mouse and Walt think this is pretty funny, and decide to only order umbrella drinks for the rest of the night.
Maggie, who usually drinks White Russians, orders a whiskey on the rocks, instead. This confirms that something is definitely going on between Maggie and Peter. If Maggie likes a guy, she does the same thing he does. Drinks the same drink, wears the same clothes, suddenly becomes interested in the same sports he likes, even if they’re totally wacky, like whitewater rafting. All through sophomore year, before Maggie and Walt started going out, Maggie liked this weird boy who went whitewater rafting every weekend in the fall. I can’t tell you how many hours I had to spend freezing on top of a rock, waiting for him to pass by in his canoe. Okay — I knew it wasn’t really a canoe, it was a kayak, but I insisted on calling it a canoe just to annoy Maggie for making me freeze my butt off.
And then the door of The Emerald swings open and for a moment, everyone forgets about who’s drinking what.
Standing by the hostess are Donna LaDonna and Sebastian Kydd. Donna has her hand on his neck, and after he holds up two fingers, she puts her other hand on his face, turns his head, and starts kissing him.
After about ten seconds of this excessive display of affection, Maggie can’t take it anymore. “Gross,” she exclaims. “Donna is such a slut. I can’t believe it.”
“She’s not so bad,” Peter counters.
“How do you know?” Maggie demands.
“I helped tutor her a couple of years ago. She’s actually kind of funny. And smart.”
“That still doesn’t mean she should be making out with some guy in The Emerald.”
“He doesn’t look like he’s resisting much,” I murmur, stirring my drink.
“Who is that guy?” Lali asks.
“Sebastian Kydd,” The Mouse volunteers.
“I know his name,” Lali sniffs. “But who is he? Really?”
“No one knows,” I say. “He used to go to private school.”
Lali can’t take her eyes off him. Indeed, no one in the bar seems to be able to tear themselves away from the spectacle. But now I’m bored with Sebastian Kydd and his attention-getting antics.
I snap my fingers in Lali’s face to distract her. “Let’s dance.”
Lali and I go to the jukebox and pick out some songs. We’re not regular boozers, so we’re both feeling the giddy effects of being a little bit drunk, when everything seems funny. I pick out my favorite song, “We Are Family” by Sister Sledge, and Lali picks “Legs” by ZZ Top. We take to the dance floor. I do a bunch of different dances — the pony, the electric slide, the bump, and the hustle, along with a lot of steps I’ve made up on my own. The music changes and Lali and I start doing this crazy line dance we invented a couple of years ago during a swim meet where you wave your arms in the air and then bend your knees and shake your butt. When we straighten up, Sebastian Kydd is on the dance floor.
He’s a pretty cool dancer, but then, I expected he would be. He dances a little with Lali, and then he turns to me and takes my hand and starts doing the hustle. It’s a dance I’m good at, and at a certain point one of his legs is in-between mine, and I’m kind of grinding my hips, because this, after all, is a legitimate part of the dance.
He says, “Don’t I know you?”
And I say, “Yes, actually you do.”
Then he says, “That’s right. Our mothers are friends.”
“Were friends,” I say. “They both went to Smith.” And then the music ends and we go back to our respective tables.
“That was hilarious.” The Mouse nods approvingly. “You should have seen the look on Donna LaDonna’s face when he was dancing with you.”
“He was dancing with both of us,” Lali corrects her.
“But he was mostly dancing with Carrie.”
“That’s only because Carrie is shorter than I am,” Lali remarks.
“Whatever.”
“Exactly,” I say, and get up to go to the bathroom.
The restroom is at the end of a narrow hall on the other side of the bar. When I come out, Sebastian Kydd is standing next to the door as if he’s waiting to go in. “Hello,” he says. He delivers this in a sort of fakey way, like he’s an actor in a movie, but he’s so good-looking, I decide I don’t mind.
“Hi,” I say cautiously.
He smiles. And then he says something astoundingly ridiculous. “Where have you been my whole life?”
I almost laugh, but he appears to be serious. Several responses run through my head, and finally I settle on: “Excuse me, but aren’t you on a date with someone else?”
“Who says it’s a date? She’s a girl I met at a party.”
“Sure looks like a date to me.”
“We’re having fun,” he says
. “For the moment. You still live in the same house?”
“I guess so...”
“Good. I’ll come by and see you sometime.” And he walks away.
This is one of the oddest and most intriguing things that has ever happened to me. And despite the bad-movie-ish quality to the scene, I’m actually hoping he meant what he said.
I go back to the table, full of excitement, but the atmosphere has changed. The Mouse looks bored talking to Lali, and Walt appears glum, while Peter impatiently shakes the ice cubes in his glass. Maggie suddenly decides she wants to leave. “I guess that means I’m going,” Walt says with a sigh.
“I’ll drop you first,” Maggie says. “I’m going to drive Peter home, too. He lives near me.”
We get into our respective vehicles. I’m dying to tell Lali about my encounter with the notorious Sebastian Kydd, but before I can say a word, Lali announces that she’s “kind of mad at The Mouse.”
“Why?”
“Because of what she said. About that guy, Sebastian Kydd. Dancing with you and not me. Couldn’t she see he was dancing with both of us?”
Rule number five: Always agree with your friends, even if it’s at your own expense, so they won’t be upset. “I know,” I say, hating myself. “He was dancing with both of us.”
“And why would he dance with you, anyway?” Lali asks. “Especially when he was with Donna LaDonna?”
“I have no idea.” But then I remember what The Mouse said. Why shouldn’t Sebastian dance with me? Am I so bad? I don’t think so. Maybe he thinks I’m kind of smart and interesting and quirky. Like Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice.
I dig around in my bag and find one of Maggie’s cigarettes. I light up, inhale briefly, and whoosh the smoke out the window.
“Ha,” I say aloud, for no particular reason.
CHAPTER SIX
Bad Chemistry
I’ve had boyfriends before, and frankly, each one was a disappointment.
There was nothing horribly wrong with these boys. It was my fault. I’m kind of a snob when it comes to guys.
So far, the biggest problem with the boys I’ve dated is that they weren’t too smart. And eventually I ended up hating myself for being with them. It scared me, trying to pretend I was something I wasn’t. I could see how easily it could be done, and it made me realize that was what most of the other girls were doing as well — pretending. If you were a girl, you could start pretending in high school and go on pretending your whole life, until, I suppose, you imploded and had a nervous breakdown, which is something that’s happened to a few of the mothers around here. All of a sudden, one day something snaps and they don’t get out of bed for three years.
But I digress. Boyfriends. I’ve had two major ones: Sam, who was a stoner, and Doug, who was on the basketball team. Of the two I liked Sam better. I might have even loved him, but I knew it couldn’t last. Sam was beautiful but dumb. He took woodworking classes, which I had no idea existed until he gave me a wooden box he’d made for Valentine’s Day. Despite his lack of intelligence — or perhaps, more disturbingly, because of it — when I was around him I found him so attractive I thought my head would explode. I’d go by his house after school and we’d hang in the basement with his older brothers, listening to Dark Side of the Moon while they passed around a bong. Then Sam and I would go up to his room and make out for hours. Half the time, I worried I shouldn’t be there, that I was wasting precious time engaging in an activity that wouldn’t lead to anything (in other words, I wasn’t using my time “constructively,” as my father would say). But on the other hand, it felt so good I couldn’t leave. My mind would be telling me to get up, go home, study, write stories, advance my life, but my body was like a boneless sea creature incapable of movement on land. I can’t remember ever having a conversation with Sam. It was only endless kissing and touching in a bubble of time that seemed to have no connection with real life.
Then my father took me and my sisters away for two weeks on an educational cruise to Alaska and I met Ryan, who was tall and smooth like polished wood and was going to Duke, and I fell in love with him. When I got back to Castlebury, I could barely look at Sam. He kept asking if I’d met someone else. I was a coward and said no, which was partly true because Ryan lived in Colorado and I knew I’d never see him again. Still, the Sam bubble had been punctured by Ryan, and then Sam was like a little smear of wet soap. That’s all bubbles are anyway — a bit of air and soap. So much for the wonders of good chemistry.
With bad chemistry, though, you don’t even get a bubble. Me and Doug? Bad chemistry.
Doug was a year older, a senior when I was a junior. He was one of the jocks, a basketball player, friends with Tommy Brewster and Donna LaDonna and the rest of the Pod crowd. Doug wasn’t too bright, either. On the other hand, he wasn’t so good-looking that a lot of other girls wanted him, but he was good-looking enough. The only thing that was really bad about him was the zits. He didn’t have a lot of them, just one or two that always seemed to be in the middle of their life cycle. But I knew I wasn’t perfect either. If I wanted a boyfriend, I figured I would have to overlook a blemish or two.
Jen P introduced us. And sure enough, at the end of the week, he came shuffling around my locker and asked if I wanted to go to the dance.
That was all right. Doug picked me up in a small white car that belonged to his mother. I could picture his mother from the car: a nervous woman with pale skin and tight curls who was an embarrassment to her son. It made me kind of depressed, but I told myself I had to complete this experiment. At the dance, I hung around with the Jens and Donna LaDonna and some older girls, who all stood with one leg out to the side, and I stood the same way and pretended I wasn’t intimidated.
“There’s a great view at the top of Mott Street,” Doug said, after the dance.
“Isn’t that the place next to the haunted house?”
“You believe in ghosts?”
“Sure. Don’t you?”
“Naw,” he said. “I don’t even believe in God. That’s girl stuff.”
I vowed to be less like a girl.
It was a good view at the top of Mott Street. You could see clear across the apple orchards to the lights of Hartford. Doug kept the radio on; then he put his hand under my chin, turned my head, and kissed me.
It wasn’t horrible, but there was no passion behind it. When he said, “You’re a good kisser,” I was surprised. “I guess you do this a lot,” he said.
“No. I hardly do it at all.”
“Really?” he said.
“Really,” I said.
“Because I don’t want to go out with a girl who every other guy has been with.”
“I haven’t been with anyone.” I thought he must be crazy. Didn’t he know a thing about me?
More cars pulled in around us, and we kept making out. The evening began to depress me. This was it, huh? This was dating, Pod-style. Sitting in a car surrounded by a bunch of other cars where everyone was making out, seeing how far they could go, like it was some kind of requirement. I started wondering if anyone else was enjoying it as little as I was.
Still, I went to Doug’s basketball games and I went by his house after school, even though there were other things I wanted to do more, like read romance novels. His house was as dreary as I’d imagined — a tiny house on a tiny street (Maple Lane) that could have been in Any Town, U.S.A. I guess if I were in love with Doug it wouldn’t have mattered. But if I had been in love with Doug it would have been worse, because I would have looked around and realized that this would be my life, and that would have been the end of my dream.
But instead of saying, “Doug, I don’t want to see you anymore,” I rebelled.
It happened after another dance. I’d barely let Doug get to third base, so maybe he figured it was time to straighten me out. The plan was to go parking with another couple: Donna LaDonna and a guy named Roy, who was the captain of the basketball team. They were in the front seat. We were in the
back. We were going someplace we’d never get caught, a place where no one would find us: a cemetery.
“Hope you don’t still believe in ghosts,” Doug said, squeezing my leg. “If you do, you know they’ll be watching.”
I didn’t answer. I was studying Donna LaDonna’s profile. Her hair was a swirl of white cotton candy. I thought she looked like Marilyn Monroe. I wished I looked like Marilyn Monroe. Marilyn Monroe, I figured, would know what to do.
When Doug unzipped his pants and tried to push my head down, I’d had enough. I got out of the car. “Charade” was the word I was thinking over and over again. It was all a charade. It summed up everything that was wrong between the sexes.
Then I was too angry to be frightened. I started walking along the little road that wound through the headstones. I might have believed in ghosts, but I wasn’t scared of them per se. It was people who were troubling. Why couldn’t I just be like every other girl and give Doug what he wanted? I pictured myself as a Play-Doh figure; then a hand came down, squeezing and squeezing until the Play-Doh oozed through the fingers into ragged clumps.
To distract myself, I started looking at the headstones. The graves were pretty old, some more than a hundred years. I started looking for one type in particular. It was macabre but that’s the kind of mood I was in. Sure enough, I found one: Jebediah Wilton. 4 mos. 1888. I started thinking about Jebediah’s mother and the pain she would have felt putting that little baby into the ground. I bet it felt worse than childbirth. I got down on my knees and screamed into my hands.
I guess Doug figured I would come right back, because he didn’t bother looking for me for a while. Then the car pulled up and a door opened. “Get in,” Doug said.
“No.”
“Bitch,” Roy said.
“Get in the car,” Donna LaDonna ordered. “Stop making a scene. Do you want the cops to come?”
I got into the car.
“See?” Donna LaDonna said to Doug. “I told you it was useless.”
Carrie Diaries Page 4
