Confessions of an Angry Girl

by Louise Rozett

  “What?” My irritation is always right there, ready to surface. I know that my impatience with him is in direct proportion to his patience with me, but there doesn’t seem to be anything I can do about that.

  “Were you out here with Forta?”

  My neck feels hot and slick where Jamie kissed me, and my heart is still beating really fast. “What?”

  “He passed me while I was on the way out. What was he doing out here?”

  “How should I know?”

  “Did you come out here to be with him?”

  “No,” I say, telling the truth.

  “Well, did he come out here to be with you?”

  “How would I know that, Robert?” I say, reaching for the other handle and pulling open the door.

  The gym is hot, the windows dripping with condensation. Bodies stumble around in the darkness of the dance floor, and I see a few teachers in the corner, inhibitions nowhere to be seen.

  Tracy and Stephanie are huddled together, probably conferring about whether Stephanie should break up with Mike tonight, just to make a point. Michelle, Regina and the rest of the homecoming court, having just been crowned, are posing for pictures for the local newspaper. Michelle looks radiant, and Frankie, standing on the edge of the crowd, keeping an eye on this year’s homecoming king, looks bored. I wonder if Frankie misses wearing the crown.

  Between flashbulbs, Regina bitches at Frankie to find Jamie. But Frankie has no intention of going anywhere while Michelle is standing next to her king, Mr. All-American Quarterback Richie Hamilton, who has had too much to drink and is enjoying the feel of Michelle’s arm in his. When he starts to get a little too handsy, Frankie steps into the frame and tells the photographer that he’s taken enough photos. The photographer smiles patiently and suggests a few photos of the former homecoming couple. Frankie and Richie stare at each other until Richie calls him a guido, and Frankie starts for him but is held back by something Michelle says. Richie returns to his football frat boys who have already gathered to stoke the fire. Michelle smiles anxiously for the camera as the footballers sulk and lurk, as Frankie and his pals decide who is going to take which jock, as Regina screeches about Jamie.

  I am tempted to go up to Regina and tell her that Jamie just kissed me in a way that I am almost certain he will never kiss her, but I know that if I don’t want to cause an international incident, I should keep my mouth shut. In an uncharacteristically bold move, Robert, who has silently been watching the homecoming court next to me, takes my hand and leads me out on the floor. I’m too lost to protest.

  notorious (adjective): widely known in an unfavorable way

  (see also, for the third time: me)

  11

  I CAN'T BELIEVE the cops haven’t shown up yet. About a hundred of us are crammed into two rooms at the gross Amore Motel in West Union, the next town over, and MGMT is blasting out the windows of a car in the parking lot because nobody remembered to bring an iPod dock. The guy who’s playing Parking Lot DJ is arguing with a trombone player I recognize from orchestra about whether this is the right musical choice for the moment or not. Apparently Orchestra Guy would prefer the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, while a girl I’ve never seen before is trying to make a case for Florence + The Machine. I agree with the girl.

  Robert and I have ended up at the seniors’ after-party because that’s where Tracy, Matt and Mike wanted to go, and they were in our car. Stephanie was outvoted because Robert and I didn’t vote. We were too busy not talking in the front seat. Stephanie wanted to go to the underclassmen party, and I’m starting to see her point. So far, after a tour of the two rooms and a perusal of the parking lot from the second-floor balcony, the only person I know even remotely is Orchestra Guy, and he just got in his car and drove away without his date, presumably because he was not pleased with the music selection, or with her speaking up in favor of Florence + The Machine rather than seconding his vote for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. I figured out she was his date when she started chasing after his car and screaming, “You dick! Are you really going to leave me at this shitty motel with these people?!”

  I get it. I really do.

  When Stephanie, who is drunker than I’ve ever seen her and still drinking, complains that we don’t know anyone here, Tracy tells her that the squad will be here any minute—like that’s supposed to make us all feel better—and that they’ve got a surprise for everyone.

  Whatever their surprise is, I can pretty much guarantee that I don’t want it.

  As Tracy mysteriously excuses herself with great self-importance, I contemplate asking Robert to take me home, but I really don’t want to be alone in the car with him and the condoms. It’s not like I think they’re going to jump out of the glove compartment and do something, but I just don’t want to be around them any more than I have to. I’ve only got a half hour left before my curfew anyway. I can stand anything for half an hour, I think.

  Famous last words.

  What I really want is to go home, take off this ugly dress, and lie in bed thinking about Jamie.

  Who kissed me.

  Six months ago, I thought nothing good would ever happen again. But now…this.

  It was perfect.

  I haven’t kissed anybody before, so I might not know what I’m talking about when I say that what happened with Jamie was perfect, but I can’t imagine how it could have been any better. His hands were gentle but they felt strong—I knew they would feel like that. I knew it the first day I looked at them, and he had that smudge of blue ink on his thumb. And he has perfect lips. I wanted them to stay on my neck forever.

  But what does it mean, that he kissed me? Am I his girlfriend? Is he just cheating on Regina with me? Is Regina going to come after me?

  Is it okay for me to feel happy about something?

  “Are you all right, Rose? Your face is flushed, like you have a fever or something,” Robert says. I don’t know when he ended up standing next to me, leaning against the balcony railing on the second floor of the motel, looking out over the parking lot. It takes a few seconds for me to come back from wherever I was.

  “It’s December. It’s cold out here,” I say, pulling my down coat tighter around me. Everyone else seems to have dress coats on. I forgot about that part of the outfit. As usual, I didn’t read my Lucky magazine this month—Tracy forced me to get a subscription—and so have no idea what girls wear over their dresses when they go out to, say, a dance. If Tracy hadn’t gotten drunk before we even got to dinner, I’m sure I would have heard about it.

  “Are you still mad at me?” Robert asks quietly.

  He looks so upset that I feel like I’ve been torturing him. Actually, I know I’ve been torturing him.

  “I just don’t understand. We’re not even going out.”

  “I know.”

  “So why do you act like we are? Why do you tell people we are when I ask you not to?”

  He shrugs. “I guess because I wish it were true. And sometimes it seems like you do, too. Like this summer.”

  I know what he’s talking about, and he’s totally right—I can’t deny it. Right after my dad’s funeral in June, we went to the beach with Tracy, Matt, Stephanie and Mike, and I flirted with Robert. I did it because I knew he’d flirt back. It made me feel good to hear that I looked cute in my new pool-blue bathing suit, and I liked having someone put lotion on my back and act like it was the coolest thing he’d gotten to do all year.

  But deep down, I knew I was being unfair. I didn’t
have any intention of going out with him, and I shouldn’t have been flirting. I guess I didn’t want to be the girl with a dead dad and no boyfriend. Tracy had Matt, Matt had just introduced Stephanie and Mike, and I was feeling left out. So I used Robert. Which was kind of an awful thing to do. But Robert had been so nice since my dad died, and he took care of me at the funeral, and he was…there. I was feeling bad and it was easy to treat him like that.

  I used to think that Robert let me use him in those situations, which made it his fault and meant that I wasn’t responsible. But now I think that he doesn’t exactly know I’m using him. He’s just hoping that I’ve finally seen the light.

  Some girls do this kind of thing all the time, but I think it’s stupid and mean. I wouldn’t want someone to do it to me.

  Sometimes I’m not too proud of the way I act.

  The sound of squealing tires saves me from having to hear Robert go into detail about how confusing I can be. A big SUV pulls into the parking lot, and cheerleaders pile out of it like it’s some sort of weird clown car. They are no longer wearing their homecoming dresses—they’ve changed into their uniforms—and they are getting into some sort of formation in the parking lot, shivering and jumping in place in the below-freezing weather. I notice that the whole team is here, except Michelle. She probably decided that it would be wise to keep Frankie and Richie as far away from each other as possible. Although I haven’t seen Richie anywhere, so maybe he and Frankie are beating the crap out of each other in the school parking lot, and Michelle is trying to pry them apart.

  Michelle’s absence probably means that someone is about to be humiliated. Tracy told me that Michelle doesn’t participate in initiation because she doesn’t believe in it. But even the all-powerful Michelle can’t stop it from happening—it’s a tradition with a long history that’s just too delicious for some people to resist.

  Regina is strutting around, barking directions. Every once in a while, she looks up at the balcony, scanning the crowd for someone. Probably Jamie, who I have to admit I’ve been looking for, too. But when her eyes land on me, she stares for a few seconds and then turns away as if she found what she was looking for.

  “Could you turn that off?” Susan yells to Parking Lot DJ guy, waving frantically to get his attention. “We need our own music for this!”

  When he ignores her, Regina stomps over and tries a different tack—screaming at him. He screams back for a minute and then realizes the futility of trying to outscream a witch. He jumps in his car and takes off, yelling some obscenity out the window that no one can hear because he’s now blasting Takka Takka, a band I’m sure that no one at this motel has ever heard of besides me.

  Maybe that means I should leave, too.

  There’s a strange moment of silence while the cheerleaders stand in formation in the parking lot, and nothing happens. And then I hear a count-off, and “Single Ladies” blares out of the SUV. The girls start gyrating and the crowd goes crazy.

  “Are they doing a dance routine?” asks Robert, incredulous.

  They start to do their own version of Beyoncé’s video, minus the cool body suits and talent. They’re dancing with pom-poms and short skirts, which makes it seem like a Saturday Night Live skit. And then suddenly Kristin and Tracy bound into the middle of the group and become the lead dancers. The other girls form a line behind them and start clapping and chanting. For a second, I don’t understand what they’re saying. And then it becomes painfully clear.

  “Strip! Strip! Strip!”

  At this point, it seems like our whole high school is watching from the motel’s balcony, picking up the chant. Matt is standing nearby with Mike, clearly enjoying his girlfriend’s public humiliation. Although, to be honest, his girlfriend seems to be enjoying her public humiliation, too. I’m puzzling over whether Tracy was wearing her uniform under her homecoming dress when, with one swift motion, Tracy and Kristin yank their tops off and throw them up at the balcony, directly at Richie Hamilton, who has just arrived and doesn’t seem to have been beaten up by Frankie. The boys lose their minds as Tracy and Kristin continue the dance in their bras in zero-degree weather. When the chanting doesn’t stop, I turn away.

  “I can’t watch anymore. This is pathetic,” I say, expecting Robert to agree with me, but he stares, enraptured. What is it about cheerleaders and high school boys? Even the boys who claim to think they’re idiots will still watch them strip, drunk, in a sleazy motel parking lot.

  I have a lot to learn about high school boys as a species.

  I go into one of the rooms, looking for my mom’s clutch. I’m going home, whether Robert is taking me or not. I find the bag, and I’m about to leave when I hear a noise in the bathroom. It sounds like someone groaning. I push the door open a little, and it hits something in the dark. I push a little harder. When I get it open wide enough to stick my head in, I flick on the light and I can see that Stephanie is passed out on the floor in a puddle of vomit.

  Great. Of course I had to be the one to find her. Now I’ll have to do something responsible.

  “Stephanie?” I say, bending over her and trying not to inhale the smell. I shake her by the shoulder, but she doesn’t respond. “Steph!” I yell, but I still get nothing. I get closer and realize that she is the color of pea soup. I also realize that she’s not breathing.

  Is that possible? I stare at her, desperately hoping to see some movement that indicates breathing.

  Nothing.

  I run back into the room and grab the phone. I pause for just a second, realizing that I’m about to blow the whistle on my entire school. I know it’s the right thing to do—I’m not going to be the person who let Stephanie Trainer die on the floor while everyone was getting off on an underage striptease—but I just need this one second to gather my strength before I destroy myself and sink even lower in the caste system of Union High.

  I call 911.

  “Operator here. What’s your emergency?”

  “Hi, um, I’m at a party at the Amore Motel and my friend is passed out in the bathroom. I don’t think she’s breathing. We need an ambulance.”

  “What’s your name, please, miss?”

  “My name? Do you really need that?”

  “Your name, please?”

  I knew it would come to this, but hearing her ask really drives the point home. I might as well move to another state right now, tonight. I am never, ever going to live this down.

  I take a deep breath. “Rose Zarelli.”

  “An ambulance is on the way, Rose. What room are you in?”

  “Thirty-three.”

  “Do you know CPR?”

  “Yes. Um, I mean, I think so. We just learned it in health class.”

  “Okay. If your friend isn’t breathing, administer CPR until the EMTs arrive, okay? You could save her life.”

  I hang up the phone and run back into the bathroom. Stephanie is completely covered in vomit. I’m not generally a squeamish person—I don’t get freaked out by blood. But there are two things that I have a hard time with: mucus and vomit. Mucus because of the consistency, vomit because of the smell.

  I kneel down next to her, trying not to gag. Can I really do this? Can I put my mouth over hers? Will she die if I don’t?

  As I’m trying to picture the health class CPR dummy and remember whether I’m supposed to clear her airway or tilt her head back first, Stephanie rolls over and throws up again, right on my knees. I guess she’s breathing after all.

 
“Steph? Can you hear me?”

  She groggily opens her eyes and tries to speak, but gibberish comes out. The only word I catch is “Trace.” For a second, I’m so relieved that she’s alive that I’m not grossed out by the puke on me, and I forget about the fact that I just called 911. And then I hear the sirens, followed by someone on the balcony yelling, “Cops!”

  Everyone scrambles back into the rooms to get their stuff and get the hell out. But people are too drunk to move fast, and no one makes it out before the cops and ambulance arrive, except, of course, for the cheerleaders, who were already next to their car. I can hear them screaming at the sound of the sirens, and I just know they’re piling back into their clown car and taking off, leaving everyone else behind to fend for themselves. And I’m sure that Tracy is with them.

  Would she still go with them if she had any idea what was going on up here?

  I peek out into the room just as an EMT guy comes barreling through the door of room thirty-three, followed closely by a pair of cops. He pushes through the crowd of people who ran into the room when they heard the sirens, and the cops block the door so no one can leave. I duck back into the bathroom, wishing this night would either end or go backward in time, before all the Beyoncé wannabes and vomit, so I could kiss Jamie again. Except this time, I wouldn’t let him out of the car, and we wouldn’t go back to the gym. We’d leave the dance and go…somewhere.

  “Rose Zarelli?” asks an EMT from the bathroom doorway.

  I raise my hand like I’m in class or something.

  “You the one who called this in?” He comes into the bathroom holding a red plastic box by the handle that says Emergency on it in big white letters. He has curly brown hair and blue eyes, and looks vaguely familiar to me.

  I nod and get out of his way. I can hear people in the room whispering to each other already. The cops start to take down everyone’s names, threatening to haul them in for underage drinking if they don’t cooperate.