Jamie is the first—and only—person who comes into my head.
At first I’m embarrassed, thinking about how Peter basically asked him to be my friend this year. But then the embarrassment disappears, and I’m thinking about how good he looked on Friday night, even with Regina plastered to his lap. I remember the conversation we had about sex during study hall, when Angelo accidentally made me cry. I remember how he almost touched me, and how that was the first time I noticed his hands and arms, how beautiful they are. I imagine those hands touching my face, and I blush, hot and fierce. I look up at Ms. Maso standing at the front of the room, watching us. She’s smiling, but not in a way that makes me feel foolish. It’s like she understands exactly what we’re feeling.
“Now, what if you made that person feel ashamed, or scared, or if you hurt that person deeply? How would you feel?”
No one answers.
“I’ll tell you how you’d feel. Terrible. Miserable. Like a bad human being. Like you couldn’t ever face that person again. And that, people, is why it is so important to take the decision to have sex very, very seriously. It is not just about you, and there is a lot at stake. If you’re not careful, not only can there be pregnancy and disease, but there can be shame and embarrassment and a whole lot of pain.”
The bell rings, and Ms. Maso shouts over the sound of chairs scraping backward on the floor and nervous laughter, “I want a three hundred and fifty-word essay on Wednesday about what it means to respect yourself in the context of sexuality.” The class groans, and she says, “Want me to make it five hundred?” We collectively tell her that no, three-fifty will be sufficient, thank you.
Robert appears at my desk while I’m still getting my things together. He leans over and winks at me. I roll my eyes.
“You know who I was thinking of?” he asks.
“Megan Fox.”
“Too bimbo-y.”
“Angelina Jolie.”
“Too old—”
Tracy steps between Robert and me, grabbing my arm. “I need to talk to you. Will you walk with me to French?”
I look at her eyes and realize that she cried at some point today. I can always tell—her eyes stay red for a while after she cries. I’m so happy that she wants to talk that I don’t even bother to act annoyed with her. I give Robert a sorry smile over my shoulder, and she pulls me out of the room, saving me from having to answer his next question, which definitely would have been, “Who were you thinking of?” He’s predictable when he’s trying to be sexy, or suave, or seductive, or whatever it is he was trying to be.
Until Tracy made the squad, she and I walked to all our classes together. Since then, she sometimes walks with scary demon-fairy Kristin, or she gets stopped in the hall by Lena or Regina, who ask her to do something stupid for them, like risk getting suspended by cutting class to get them slices at Cavallo’s, which is in the mall next to the school.
Today, she wants to walk with me.
“Why did you leave on Friday night?” she asks.
I don’t know if I can be honest with her right now. She seems a little fragile, and a tirade on the idiotic behavior of her teammates might not help things.
“I don’t know, I just didn’t fit in,” I say as we arrive at our lockers. She pops hers open and gets her French book off the shelf. “You were doing all that crazy stuff with the vodka funnel. And you were mad at me.”
Tracy turns to me, and she looks like she’s about to cry some more. “I wasn’t mad at you. I mean, I was, but it was stupid. I know you’re just worried about me and you want me to be safe.” She looks at her shoes. “Matt and I had a huge fight after you left.”
“You did?” I say, hoping against hope that we’re finally done with Stupid Boy for good. That’s what I’ve taken to calling Matt in my head. Hopefully I will never say it out loud.
“Yeah. I was really drunk and I felt sick, so I went upstairs to lie down for a minute, and I found him in my parents’ room with Lena. They weren’t doing anything—they were just sitting there talking, and the door was open....” She stops, not wanting to say anything else. I opt not to mention that I saw them sneaking up the stairs together and that I would put money on that door having been opened only when they heard someone coming.
“What did you say to him?”
“I don’t really remember. I think I just stood there. And then Lena got up and went downstairs. And Matt asked me what my problem was.”
“Trace—”
“I told him he was being a jerk and that there was no way I was going to sleep with him if he was flirting with other girls. You know what he said to me?”
I brace myself.
“He told me there was no way I was going to sleep with him anyway, which was just fine with him because he didn’t want to have to use condoms, and…and I think we broke up.” She turns to put her face in her locker so that no one will see her crying. I notice for the first time that she has a note from Matt taped on the inside of her locker door, right under her mirror, next to a picture of us. It’s a note that Matt wrote her last year on the back of a lav pass. It says, “TRC iz GR8!” The days of Matt writing notes like that are long gone.
“Tracy, he doesn’t deserve you. I mean, for him to take Lena to your parents’ bedroom at your party, even if they were ‘just talking,’ that’s really…bad.”
She doesn’t turn around. I put my hand on her arm.
“Did you get sick after all that vodka?”
She nods and I hear her sniffle.
“Did you get in trouble with your parents?”
She nods again, and I can tell she just wants to crumple to the floor. I take her by the arm, close her locker for her and lead her down the hall to the bathroom. The bell rings, but I know Monsieur Levert won’t ask any questions when we show up in class a few minutes late. Tracy’s swollen eyes will pretty much say it all, and Monsieur Levert is old-school—he would never make a lady discuss her problems in front of others.
Thank god Matt takes Spanish. We can both use a break from that jerk for at least one period.
We go into the bathroom. I check under all the blue stall doors to make sure we’re alone. Tracy looks in the mirror, on which someone has painted Suck this in fuchsia nail polish. Same handwriting as Suck it, which is still on the door of the stall I was hiding in the day Jamie drove me home. At least the nail polish color is different. Slightly.
Tracy is trying to figure out how she’s going to fix her runny eye makeup without any makeup remover. I can tell it’s stressing her out.
“Why were Regina and Kristin making you drink on Friday?”
What I really want to ask is why she let them make her drink. I resolve to rephrase.
Tracy shrugs. “It’s just a stupid tradition, initiation. Everybody goes through it.”
“But I don’t understand why you would let them treat you like that,” I say.
“I don’t have a choice. If I want to cheer, I have to do things like that.”
“For how long?” I ask, kicking at the wet, brown paper towels that have spilled onto the cruddy tiled floor from the overflowing trash bin.
“Maybe for the rest of the year.”
“I don’t like those girls,” I say.
She looks up at me sharply. “You don’t like Regina, you mean. But you don’t really know her, or any of the other girls.”
I feel my face getting hot. “I know them enough to know that I don’t like any of them.”
“You don’t like Regina because she’s with Jamie.”
I prop my books on the sink and take my makeup bag out of my backpack. I pretend to look for something in it. I see the sharpener and the blue eyeliner. Tracy, who studies Teen Vogue religiously, informed me recently that girls with blue eyes should actually wear brown eyeliner. I wanted to remind her that she’s the one who put this makeup bag together for me in the first place, and she should know what color my eyes are at this point, so if I’m wearing blue eyeliner, it’s entirely her fault.
Then I remember that all these things in the bag are her hand-me-downs. She probably didn’t even stop to think about what color my eyes are. She probably just crammed all the stuff she didn’t want anymore in the bag and figured it would be good enough for me.
I’m still ignoring what she said about Jamie and Regina.
“You like him, Rose. Why don’t you just admit that, at least to me?”
I often think I can sneak things by Tracy but then she says something that makes me realize she has known what was going on the whole time. It makes me feel kind of bad for underestimating her intelligence, which I seem to do again and again. I mean, Tracy has known me forever. She knows when I have a crush—why would I think I could hide that from her?
“I didn’t want to tell you because you don’t like him. You think I should go out with Robert and you think Jamie is stupid and too old for me.”
She blots under her eyes with a tissue and reapplies her lip gloss before she answers me.
“What I think about Jamie is that he’s with someone. But it shouldn’t matter what I think, Rose. If you like him, you like him.” She turns from the mirror and tilts her head to one side. She’s deciding whether to tell me something or not.
“What?” I say, feeling nervous for some inexplicable reason.
“I think he likes you, too.”
I know that he doesn’t, that he’s just “keeping an eye on me” like Peter asked him to. But my heart stops in my chest anyway. “What makes you say that?”
“He left right after you left on Friday. Did he bring you home or something?”
I shake my head, imagining how different my Friday night would have been if Jamie had come to find me. Even if he was just doing it to make sure I was okay.
“Well, it looked like he was going after you, and Regina didn’t like that at all. She got really, really mad. In fact, you might want to avoid her for a while.”
As big as our high school is, there is no avoiding anyone. Ever. Unless you’re Jamie Forta, in which case you can appear and disappear at will.
“She doesn’t have to worry, Trace. Jamie doesn’t like me. He’s just doing Peter a favor.”
“What favor?”
“Peter was worried about me starting school this year without him, and he asked Jamie to look out for me.”
Tracy stares at me, dumbfounded. “Why would he ask Jamie to do that?”
“Because Jamie’s tough, I guess. I don’t know.”
Tracy shakes her head. “Whatever is going on with Jamie and you, Rose, it’s not because Peter asked him to watch out for you. I saw the way he watched you leave on Friday night.”
He watched me leave? With Regina sitting right there on his lap, trying to force him to make out with her?
“How could you have seen anything?” I ask. “Those girls were pouring vodka down your throat.”
Tracy rolls her eyes, then takes one more look in the mirror. “Come on. Let’s go while I still look like I’ve been crying so Monsieur Levert won’t ask any questions.”
“Tracy.”
She turns to me.
“I’m really sorry about you and Matt. But I don’t think he respects you the way you deserve.”
She nods and picks up her books, crossing to the door. I know her well enough to know that she’s already figuring out how to win Matt back. And despite the show she put on in health class today, I’m sure I’m not going to like her tactics.
I wish I could just stay in this smelly old bathroom with the unbreakable mirrors and the stall-door graffiti. Because in here, today, right now, my best friend and I are talking again, like we always have. And who knows how much longer that will last.
surreptitious (adjective): doing something or behaving sneakily
(see also: my mother)
9
“ROSE, PLEASE PUT your seat belt on. You need to wear it whenever you’re in a car, okay? It’s the law.”
I’m tempted to tell my mother to stop treating me like I’m in elementary school, but I reach over my shoulder and grab the belt without saying anything. We’re driving to Morton’s, where we will pretend that our first Thanksgiving without my dad—or Peter—is just peachy.
A few weeks ago, she asked me again if I wanted to go to the city for Thanksgiving to see The Lion King on Broadway, and I decided it was about time to remind her that we’d already seen it for my birthday. She stared at me as if she were trying to figure out whether I was lying or not, and then said, “Right, I remember now,” even though I could tell that she didn’t. I don’t really know how anyone could forget The Lion King on Broadway—even if you hate musicals, which she doesn’t, there’s no way you could forget actors manipulating huge animal puppets with every muscle they have, decked out in spectacular body paint. I mean, it’s unforgettable by design. But somehow it didn’t make an impression on my mother. Or she doesn’t remember that it did, which ends up being essentially the same thing.
After that conversation, she stopped trying to come up with “fun” ideas for Thanksgiving, which was more than fine with me. I don’t need to have fun for Thanksgiving—I just need to get it over with.
Peter called from that girl’s house this morning. Mom talked to him, but I got in the shower as soon as the phone rang and I stayed there until I was sure that they’d run out of things to say and hung up. I haven’t talked to Peter in almost a month. He emailed me once, trying to be all casual like nothing had happened, but I didn’t answer him. I keep waiting for my mother to say something about it, but I don’t think she’s even noticed that we’re not talking.
Mom and I cross the icy parking lot and head toward the squat, brick restaurant with the big plate-glass windows facing Union’s main street. Before we even set foot in the place, I smell cooking oil and French fries—Morton’s isn’t in danger of winning any awards for fine dining. “It’s not bad, it’s basic,” Dad always used to say whenever I would complain about eating there. Then he’d wink and add, “Just don’t eat anything that’s not thoroughly cooked.”
Robert is standing at the host stand when we walk in, dressed in all black with a white waiter’s apron around his waist. In his thrift-store wingtips and slicked-back hair, he looks like he stepped out of one of the 1930’s photos on the walls that are supposed to make guests feel like the restaurant has been in town for decades instead of about a year and a half.
“Ah, the guests of honor have arrived!” he announces too loudly.
“Hello, Robert,” my mother says.
“Mrs. Zarelli, you look lovely, as always,” he replies, kissing her hand instead of shaking it, even though that’s clearly what she intended for him to do when she offered it. He smiles at me as I roll my eyes. “And Rose, you look ravishing, of course. Right this way, please.”
Robert has been waiting tables at Morton’s since he turned sixteen a few weeks ago. He’s already on probation for allowing friends—or rather, people who b
ecame his friends when he got his license and started working at Morton’s—to hang out after closing. When I told him that my mom and I had a reservation for Thanksgiving, he arranged his schedule so that he could wait on us. My mother likes Robert—he can make her laugh, which is way more than I can do these days. Not that I try.
After we’re seated, Robert asks, “What can I get you ladies to drink?”
“I’ll have a glass of the house red,” my mother answers.
“Cranberry juice and ginger ale, please,” I say.
“I’ll be right back.” He winks at me as he leaves, making my mother smile.
I keep my eyes focused on the menu. Morton’s is quiet, although it’s still early. Maybe people are coming later. Or maybe they’re having normal Thanksgivings at home with their families, sitting around their dining room tables, serving themselves huge portions of sweet potatoes and turkey and stuffing and gravy. I look at the empty tables with their brown, red and orange crepe-paper-turkey centerpieces, and I want to go home and get back in bed.
“Robert’s sweet,” my mother says.
“He’s annoying,” I reply.
My mother looks at me over her menu, one eyebrow raised. “Let’s focus on what we’re grateful for. You have a friend who arranged his schedule so he could be here for you on Thanksgiving when he could be home with his family.”
It’s actually not as big a deal as my mother is making it out to be. I’m sure Robert was thrilled to have an excuse not to spend Thanksgiving with his non-family family. He works hard to spend as little time as possible in that house.
“So, Rose, I sensed that you were avoiding Peter when he called this morning. You haven’t spoken to him since he told you about his girlfriend, have you?” she says.
Turns out my mother is paying closer attention than I thought.
“Nope,” I say.
Confessions of an Angry Girl Page 8
