The next day I biked to the drugstore to buy tampons and a new diary. Standing in line to pay, I noticed that the clerk behind the counter was Dean Eagler.
Is it humanly possible to stop yourself from blushing by sheer force of will? Why do some people go red in the face all the time while others get to experience their embarrassment in private? Can anybody tell me?
I would have put the tampons back but he saw me before I got the chance.
“Can I help you?” he said.
Dean Eagler, the secret fantasy of almost every girl I knew, looked kind of like Elvis, with the same dark, brooding eyes, slicked-back hair and sexy lips. Behind the counter he was the moody Elvis, like the one in King Creole. Very cool. It didn’t matter that he didn’t know or care that I existed—there was still no way I was going to buy tampons from him. Without dropping my eyes, I casually let go of the package so it fell on the floor. Since the counter was between us, he couldn’t see anything below my waist. To cover the sound, I coughed just as the box hit the ground.
“Excuse me,” I said, hacking. “I think I’m catching a cold.”
He took my new diary and waved it over the scanner. As he waited for the receipt, I caught him sneaking a glance at me. All of a sudden and completely unexpectedly, he smiled.
“Wait a minute—you’re Floey Packer, aren’t you?”
“Uh, yes …”
His smile got even wider.
Keep in mind that a smile from Dean Eagler, one of the best-looking guys on the planet, was no small thing. His was a mysterious, rock-star kind of smile, and I have to admit it made my knees wobbly.
“I’m Dean Eagler,” he said, holding out his hand. I didn’t know why he was holding it out, but I shook it. “I like your hat,” he said.
Inside, I did a victory dance.
“Well,” he said, “it sure is nice to meet you in person.”
I wasn’t sure what he meant by “in person,” but at the time I was busy wondering why he was talking to me at all.
The New Floey was already attracting attention.
“Listen,” he said, flashing me yet another of his moody Elvis smiles. “I’m having a little shindig. Week after next. You gonna be around?”
Wait. Hold on. Did he just invite me to his party?
Was he actually flirting with me?
“I don’t know. Maybe. Yes.”
He put my new diary in a plastic bag and handed it back to me. “Great. Sunday, the twentieth. Around eight. My folks don’t clear out until that afternoon. You know where I live?”
I nodded.
He leaned on the counter and his voice dropped a little. “One other thing—it’s kind of hush-hush.”
I nodded again, and he winked at me. I was just about to rise off the ground and float away when a high voice interrupted. “Excuse me,” it said. I turned and there was Billy Fishman. “I think you dropped something.”
And then It appeared on the counter between us, big and blue and obvious.
I nearly screamed.
The box practically shouted out, “ATTENTION! THIS WOMAN IS HAVING HER PERIOD!” But Billy’s expression was a perfect picture of innocence. I had to think fast. I only had a second or two before my face would turn beet red again. Denial, I decided, was the cleanest way out.
“Not mine,” I said. I turned away and left as quickly as I could.
Monday, July 7, 6:30 p.m.
Dear Fab Floey,
I have an invitation to Graceland sent directly from the King himself! Who needs a trumpet player when I have Elvis?
And he likes my hat!
Wen is so part of the past. Get this: He finally called this afternoon, but only to tell me that today is Ringo Starr’s birthday. He was a Beatle, apparently. Ringo Starr. I mean, honestly!
I informed Ma that we’re watching Blue Hawaii tonight. If Richard and Tish don’t like it, they can go and sulk.
chapternine: dukkha
There’s a Zen story about a man hiking through the jungle who accidentally walks right up to a vicious tiger. He turns and runs as fast as he can and eventually finds himself at the edge of a cliff. Since the tiger is right behind him, he has to climb down a vine and dangle in the air over a drop that would definitely kill him if he fell. As he hangs there, a mouse starts gnawing at the top of the vine. Suddenly, the man notices a wild strawberry growing on the vine. He eats it. It’s the most delicious strawberry he’s ever tasted.
I was thinking of this story while making a crosshatch pattern in the peanut butter I was spreading to make Richard’s sandwich. It was midday on Tuesday, and Ma had told me to make lunch for my cousins while she went out for a minute. Frank Sinatra was licking himself in a disgusting way right in the middle of the kitchen floor.
On top of the crosshatches, I made a happy face.
Like the man on the vine, even in the middle of hardship I was finding something to enjoy.
Then the phone rang.
I nearly tripped over Frank Sinatra, but it hardly fazed him at all. I grabbed the phone. It was Azra.
“I can’t believe you!” she said. “You’ve been holding out on me! Why didn’t you tell me everything?”
“What didn’t I tell you?”
“About Lillian’s wedding—about what happened! You left out the most important part!”
“I did tell you—I got locked out in the rain.”
“Not that!”
I didn’t follow her. Azra and Wen were the only ones I’d told anything about what happened at the wedding. After everything that had happened to me since that horrible weekend, I was trying not to think too much about any of it. I was now trying a new strategy: complete denial.
In artistically placed blobs, I plopped the jelly onto another slice of bread. “What are you talking about, Azra?”
“You know—oh, come on. Don’t be like that.…”
“Like what? I have no idea what you mean. Isn’t it a lovely day?”
I tenderly placed the bread with the blobs, on top of the bread with the happy face. Then I reached for the knife again so I could slice the sandwich in half. Richard liked his sandwiches cut diagonally.
Over the phone I could hear Azra blowing air like she was losing her patience. “That guy … the poet? The one with the girlfriend? You never told me everything that happened.” When I still didn’t say anything, she said, “About when you danced with him?” And then her voice suddenly got low and secretive. “You know, about how you and he were on the sofa with your hand on his rear end?”
I hacked the sandwich in one quick barbaric chop.
It felt like a bomb had gone off.
If word was out about this, my life as I knew it was over.
“Floey? Are you there?”
Abandoning Richard’s sandwich, I ran with the phone into my room and shut the door. “How did you find out about that?”
“Leslie told me. She heard it from Kate.” Kate was another JC.
“What? How would Kate know?”
“I don’t know. She wouldn’t say.”
This was not good. If somebody had somehow found out about the whole Calvin incident, if people now knew about it, I would forever be known as the tramp who squeezed the butt of the Zen cowboy.
There was probably no way to live something like that down.
“What do you mean she wouldn’t say?”
“Leslie walked home with her today and Kate told her it’s what she heard from somebody, but she wouldn’t tell her who. She said it would be betraying a confidence.”
“What!”
“Leslie told me, but she figured I already knew because, you know, because you and I are best friends and everything.”
“Oh my God, Azra! This is terrible!”
“Then it’s true?”
“You have to tell me who knows about this!”
“I’m not sure. Could be a lot of people, but maybe not. Leslie, Kate and whoever told her. And me, of course. I only heard about it just now.”
&
nbsp; “Floey!” Richard shouted from the office. He was glued to the computer again. “Where’s my sandwich!”
For a moment I wondered if Richard could have been the leak, but he hadn’t been in the same room as Calvin and me, so he didn’t know anything about what had happened.
“Tell me everything. What did you say? What did he say?”
The room was spinning around me. “Please … please don’t tell anyone. Tell Leslie and Kate not to tell anybody else either, okay?”
“Okay, okay. But tell me, are you, like, seeing him now or anything? Does that Melanie girl know? Is that why you’ve been acting so weird?”
“Hurry up, Floey!”
“No, I’m not seeing him, Azra. I have to go.”
I set down the phone without saying goodbye.
Richard looked irritated when I brought him his sandwich. Under normal circumstances I might have said something like “Why are you still here?” or “Have you started packing yet?” or something equally witty, but my mind was reeling. I just handed him his plate and left the room. I was trying to understand what could have happened. There were only three people who had seen me dancing with Calvin at the wedding: Lillian, Rebecca Greenblatt and Aunt Sarah. Lillian was on her honeymoon and Aunt Sarah was in Alaska. Rebecca might have said something, but I didn’t think it was her. How would something Rebecca said get to Kate Bates? But then I remembered that Kate used to go to Moses Brown until she was kicked out because her grades were so bad. Then I remembered that her older brother still went there.
Just like Calvin.
I wasn’t sure if Kate’s brother was a poet too, but I vaguely remembered hearing that he read a lot. He and Calvin were probably friends. The most likely person to have blabbed about what happened between Calvin and me was Calvin himself. That had to be it. It made perfect sense.
I ran to my room and grabbed a pen and a blank sheet of paper. My fingers couldn’t write as fast as the angry words burned through my mind. I’d crumpled up a few sheets before I was satisfied enough to send it, which I did immediately. I didn’t know Calvin’s address but figured that the main office at Moses Brown would know where to find him.
Dear Calvin,
I hope you and your Cro-Magnon buddies are happy. You must have felt like such a big man showing off about how you got a thirteen-year-old drunk and then embarrassed her in front of her own family! What an impressive accomplishment! I bet you and your friends laughed pretty hard. I bet you scratched yourselves, pounded your chests and grunted like the testosterone-fueled cavemen you really are. But I just thought you should know: now that word is out about that night, my life is completely ruined. I’ll never be able to look my friends or family in the face again. I hope it was worth it to you, you big skinny unenlightened fake.
Very sincerely,
Floey Packer
P.S. I also hope you realize I will never ever forgive you as long as I live!!
Soon after that, I caught three different people leering at me.
It started that afternoon at the studio when a kid with glasses got his picture taken with his Saint Bernard. Gary had gone to the bathroom, probably to adjust his comb-over, so I got to set up the boy and the dog. They were wearing matching sweaters. The weird thing was, the kid seemed a little scared of me. He wouldn’t make eye contact but I felt his eyes follow me around the room. It was really creepy. And then when I leaned over to adjust his position, I caught him staring down my blouse! What kind of lowlife sneaks a peek at the photographer’s assistant’s boobs? So I gave him the most hateful stare I could. He turned white and pretended he was looking at something behind me, so I carried on with what I was doing.
Then when I left to go home it happened again. Outside the door, a couple of kids about Richard’s age stopped talking when I came out. While I unlocked my bike they pretended they weren’t watching me, but I turned my head quickly and caught them. My heart started racing and I know I blushed.
When I was a little way down the road, I looked over my shoulder again. They were still watching.
Tuesday, July 8, 3:35 p.m.
Dear Insightful Floey,
Is it my imagination or does something about me attract little boys? What is it that makes me so fascinating to them and invisible to everybody else? Is it possible that a story Calvin told could get all the way to these kids? Are Leslie and Kate complete blabbermouths? Do they have absolutely no sense of decency? Or does Richard really have that picture? Has he hung it up somewhere? Oh God!
I called Azra to find out if she’d heard anything else about Calvin. She hadn’t. I asked if she’d heard anybody say they saw my picture. She hadn’t. So I told her about the boys. Was I being ridiculous? She didn’t think so.
“That happens to Leslie and me all the time,” she said. “It’s a guy thing. They pretty much spend their entire lives sneaking looks at us.”
“They do?”
“You didn’t know that? God, Floey, even after your little thing with that cowboy, you’re still so innocent! Leslie and Kate and I talk about this all the time. Girls are about the only thing guys ever think about. That’s why boys in passing cars shout out their windows at us. That never happens to guys. It’s not fair, but it’s the way it is.”
“But these are little kids, nine or maybe ten years old,” I said, ignoring the crack about me being innocent.
“Doesn’t matter. Leslie says they’re all the same. They think it’s funny. Leslie has three brothers, so she ought to know.”
I took a deep breath. Usually I didn’t hide it when I got mad at Azra, but now, hearing her talk as if Leslie were her best friend instead of me, I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want her to know how hurt I felt.
All I could think to say was “What about Wen?”
“Him too, I’m sure.”
She’d certainly become the expert on worldly matters. I supposed that was what came from being a day-camp junior counselor. I, on the other hand, didn’t think I’d ever understand boys.
Tuesday, July 8, 4:05 p.m.
I’m sitting in the anjali mudra position, legs crossed, back aligned, chin pulled in. Just because the world is full of creeps and crazies, that doesn’t mean I have to let it affect my journey to enlightenment. Deep breaths. I’m envisioning the relationship between my posture, breath and mind. I’m becoming one with everything.…
Wait, that reminds me of a joke.
This Zen master goes up to a hot dog stand and says, “Make me one with everything.” Ha!
But there’s more: So the hot dog vendor gives him his hot dog, takes his money and puts it into a box. After a moment, the Zen master says, “Where’s my change?” but the hot dog vendor just stares at him and says, “Change must come from within.”
Ha!
Oh, typical! Ma just came in and told me to stop wasting the whole day in my room making weird noises and get outside and enjoy the sunshine. She’s about as unenlightened as they come.
My mother gave me a list of groceries to pick up and told me I had to bring Tish along. Since Tish didn’t have a bicycle, we had to walk. First, though, I had to wait while she made herself a Fluffernutter sandwich. She offered to make me one, but I said no. I decided to try to subtly help her see how bad it was for her, so I told her that instead of eating it I might as well rub the sandwich directly onto my butt since that was where it would end up anyway.
As usual, she didn’t take the hint.
Billy Fishman was sitting on his lawn with a couple of his henchmen. I wasn’t sure where Richard was. Their eyes followed us as we walked up the street. When we were almost at his house Billy called out to me.
“Hi, Floey,” he said in that squeaky voice of his. “Did you have fun at the barbecue? Everything certainly seemed to go off with a bang! You sure showed your sparkling personality!”
The little boys giggled.
“What you did with that firecracker wasn’t funny,” I said. “I ought to pop you one right now.”
“No need to g
et explosive!”
It’s amazing how much difference two years can make in terms of maturity. Compared to me, these boys were like babies. I kept walking. I didn’t feel like getting into a big thing with Billy Fishman.
“Shut up, Billy,” Tish said. But she wasn’t looking at him. She kept her eyes down.
He laughed. “Careful eating that sandwich. You might get overexcited and bite off your own fingers.”
“Grow up,” she said.
Billy said something back to her, but it was quiet. His friends laughed pretty hard. I wasn’t sure I’d heard it right, but it sounded like he called her something mean. From Tish’s face I could tell she’d heard it.
Now, the Old Floey would have kept walking. But I decided that the New Floey should be different. Maybe Tish wasn’t my favorite person in the world, but she was my cousin and Billy shouldn’t talk to her that way. The New Floey, I decided, stood up to bullies.
So I stopped and turned around. “What did you say?”
“Never mind,” Tish said. “Let’s go.”
“No,” I said. “He said something. What was it?”
Billy just grinned.
“Whatever it was, I bet you wouldn’t say it again.”
Slowly, he stood up. I immediately realized I’d made a terrible mistake. Somehow, I’d forgotten just how big Billy was.
“Sure I would. I called her Chunky Monkey,” he said, taking a step toward me. “What are you going to do about it?”
Suddenly, I wasn’t so sure I wanted to do anything about it. Was I actually going to get into a fight with Gorilla Boy? I’d like to say that I stared him down, that it didn’t matter that he stood at least a head taller than me. I’d like to say that I stood my ground and told him to take back what he’d said to Tish.
But that would be a lie.
A couple of Billy’s friends stood up too, and the others sat up on the grass. Like me, they could sense a fight coming. Billy took another step forward. My heart was beating fast and I felt sick to my stomach. I wondered how vomiting on Billy might work as a battle tactic.
I Am the Wallpaper Page 9
