by JoAnna Novak
“Hitler? Who are you?” Junior Carlos laughs. “V and S, if you’ve got it.” He pauses. “Hey, straight up—wouldn’t you be all over Cher if you were Christian? I mean, he’s gay, but like, even the faggiest fag—”
“Hey!”
The kitchen is separated from the living room by an island. There are cabinets on the kitchen side, and I get on my hands and knees in front of the first set of doors. I move aside my mom’s Grape Nuts and my dad’s Sugar Smacks, a weird number (five?) of canisters of oatmeal, white and brown sugar in cloudy Tupperware tins before I find the Smirnoff. I fill two tumblers with ice, make one mostly vodka and the other just a splash.
“Okay, even the gayest gay—I didn’t mean it, like, bad. You know I’m a friend to the closet. Have you met my cousin?”
I fill the glasses up with Squirt. “I have met your cousin.”
Cenzo is bi. He was in eighth grade at Park last year, and I didn’t really know him, but if you had eyes you knew-knew him: he was District 107 infamous because he’d had to wear his gym uniform every day for all of October, after insisting on celebrating Gay History Month by coming to school in a vintage Laura Ashley party dress. With leg o’ mutton sleeves. And a metallic sash. Hard to miss.
“Twerpy little fag stick. And I say that with, like, so much love.”
I walk back to the couch. The liquid in the tumblers doesn’t even move. In fifth grade, my mom made me take finishing classes—I’ve legit walked around with a dictionary on my head. I am exceptionally balanced. “What were you saying before you started talking smack?”
“Would your sexual orientation preclude you from getting it on with Alicia Silverstone?”
I hand Junior Carlos the vodka-y cup. “Clueless Alicia?”
“That’s who I’m talkin’ about. Wouldn’t you be into that?”
“What do people say, white on rice?”
“And what is this?”
“Sprite on ice?”
“Sprite?”
“Squirt.”
“Just a little squirt for me, babe, please …” He sets his drink on the coffee table and reaches toward me, wiggling his fingers like Creepy Crawlers. For someone who had woofers or whatever installed in his car, he’s such a dork.
“You’re sick. Use a coaster or my mom will slay me. Okay? They’re by the phone.”
I point to the stack. They’re cork, printed with Catholic saints. That’s my mom for you: three mornings a week, she’s at 6:30 Mass; she made me return the Joan Osborne cassette I bought from Hot Rags, where I’ve had a neon orange slip of paper entitling me to an $8.50 store credit ever since; and yet she doesn’t find it at all blasphemous to buy religious iconography from Pier One.
Junior Carlos flicks two coasters like Frisbees. He sets his cup on St. Elizabeth of Hungary, her robes peeled open, revealing white and red roses. I plant my drink on St. Kevin—his left hand hovering over his heart, his right, a perch for a blackbird—and flop dramatically onto the couch. I have another four months of CCD classes before I make my confirmation, and I guess I should feel guilty being duplicitous and premaritally sexual—having my boyfriend over when I’m theoretically pooped-out on the couch; lying to the Elliot, who, really, is a pathetic creature, with no friends but me, and who, according to Dr. Ogbaa, has problems on top of problems—but I don’t. I don’t feel one gram of guilt. I do what I want. I cross my legs, and Junior Carlos grabs them and straightens them across his lap.
“Do you think Alicia Silverstone is hot?” I ask.
We consider the screen, where Cher sits in the backseat as Di practices driving. They’re about to accidentally get on the freeway, where Dionne will be overwhelmed in that weird crocheted swim cap thing and Murray will be keeping her calm and Cher will get all introspective. For now, though, Cher keeps popping her head between the driver and passenger seats. It’s not her most flattering moment: she’s wearing a blue-flowered choker, a scrunchie. She has that weird mollusk mouth. And even though her legs are sometimes good, when she’s in her gym uniform, with the tank top over the T-shirt, her boobs are all Nerfy. I don’t think she’s hot, because, above all, she’s fat, especially her upper arms.
Wrong! She’s not fat, Lisa. By no standard is she fat. She is a young woman. An actress. A daughter. Even if she were overweight, she wouldn’t be defined solely as fat. I don’t know if I believe cognitive reframing but Dr. Ogbaa has me doing it whenever I have a behavior-y thought. Now it’s as automatic as wash hands after flush. Think of celebrities known for fatness. She’s not Roseanne or Whoopi.
“Um, yes.” Junior Carlos takes his drink from St. Elizabeth. A wet ring haloes her torso, circling the roses, her miracle, a sacrifice. He gulps and the dark stubble on his neck/throat prickles as he swallows. “I think she’s very, very hot.”
“How hot?”
“I mean, very, very, very hot.”
“Like, what would you want to do to her hot?”
He laughs. His blue eyes darken and wander up, like the answer to my question is threaded through his black hair. He’s a secret geller, which taught me that some things junior high boys did weren’t inherently awful; hair gel and pants sagging just look better mature.
“I feel like you’re selling me something I shouldn’t buy. What are you saying, Lee-Lee?”
I dip my middle finger in my drink and suck it. It fizzes in my mouth and the alcohol—half a shot, half of what I put in Junior Carlos’s drink—stings my sore throat. I really love how I can ask one question and completely change the afternoon.
“Wanna pretend I’m Alicia Silverstone?”
Boys are amazing. I forgot this, spending so much time with Elliot, talking with girls in the hospital and the Monday night LoveThySelf support group. Girls’ bodies are about hiding, erasing, minimizing—i.e., wrinkles. Or overemphasizing—cleavage—so everything else recedes. This is why I can’t have E.’s negativity in my life. I don’t want secrets. I don’t want to apologize for eating cereal for breakfast, bowl one or two. I don’t want to hide my body if it’s tiny or if it’s normal or—God forbid—fat. I don’t want to care if I look pretty or ugly. Boys get to be out there! All whatever! Under my legs, electricity flexes through Junior Carlos.
“Are you going to make me be criminal?” Junior Carlos says. This game. “How old are you? I’m starting to think you get off on playing jail bait.”
I reach my hand into his lap, feel around the Last Supper, where Jesus is holding up a chalice over Junior Carlos’s crotch. Then I bend over and plant my face like I’m bobbing for apples. I find one. He’s got an erection. I feel an unbelievable sense of accomplishment, like I’ve figured out how to control matter, transform liquid to solid, make ice, fit my hand inside a sock puppet.
“All right, Fiona,” I say. “Let’s get criminal. How old am I … meaning Lisa or how old am I as in me-being-Alicia Silverstone?”
I turn my head so I can look up at him. Now my ear is on his boner. Through the blanket and his pants, I listen for a pulse. Nothing. Maybe it’s dead. I swallow a cough. Then the boner grows. It reminds me of when an earthworm scoots. Junior Carlos has big fingers, but the nails are always trimmed and his skin is soft and smooth, and all parts of him smell good, even his crotch, which smells like Acqua di Gió, and he has zero acne, unlike Park boys who need to be Oxy-cuted. Junior Carlos traces a finger around my mouth. He touches my lips. His skin rubs my skin, paper and paper. Electricity rushes through me: is that osmosis?
“You have a sore throat, young lady. Don’t tempt me. I’m not into playing evil doctor.”
I open my mouth, gum his penis through his pants. Boys like silly, I learned from an interview with Cameron Diaz. My mom—for real? She still subscribes to InStyle and Jane, even though Dr. Ogbaa told her keeping fashion magazines in the house isn’t prudent. (When I told Elliot about that, she said it would be like giving pyros firecrackers.) But hey: screw prudence. I do what I want.
“I’m fourteen,” I whisper into the fabric, muffling a cough.
“But I still fit in the kids range for Dimetapp.”
He laughs. “How are you fourteen?”
“How are you nineteen and knocking out your Gen. Eds.?”
“I flunked first grade?”
“Cuuuuute.”
“Statuuuuatory.”
I sit up like a whisper. “Be still, Statue.” I head for his mouth and then start hacking up thick green phlegm.
Junior Carlos grips my shoulders. I don’t feel, like, very thin most days, but when he holds me or lifts me up, I do. He’s not so huge, either, so it’s not a given that he should be able to pick me off the floor with one arm. He’s five eleven and in high school he was a swimmer. Now he coaches kids in the summer for their adorable IM relays: 100 yards. Who knows what he weighs? Yeah, I’ve wondered. But men’s weights make as much sense as Illinois’s laws about age of consent. Those declare our relationship literally illegal.
“Hey, Coughy McCough Cough, I’m not getting sick. I’ve got a physics exam tomorrow. Believe it or not, there are classes I actually care about passing.”
I doubt that, I think. “What’s physics even, anyway?”
Junior Carlos laughs. He has a nice laugh. A really nice laugh. It lands once loudly and then trails off, like a basketball dribbling across the court, unmanned, losing steam. The sort of laugh that makes me consider extreme, highly unlikely, semi-charmed scenarios: Do relationships begun when one party is still in junior high have a shot at success? What would success even feel like? Is life so long as it seems?
“Oh to be in the paradise of junior high. Lisa, Lisa. Wait until you meet Mulderink. Or any teacher that doesn’t care if you pass or fail, for that matter. College. Then ask me about physics.”
“Mulder, like X-Files?”
“You’re one in a million, you know that? Mulderink, physics sphinx. So brilliant he left Hampshire High and started teaching at Cook Count. The guy has, like, patents. Okay, he’s a supreme a-hole, but, yah know, smart as fuck.”
“Fuck?” I wink.
Junior Carlos slaps his forehead. “Don’t you feel like you should be less horny, with your grandma sick and all? Who was that on the phone?”
“Keepers of the fuck, wondering why you haven’t been fucking.”
We have fucked. Twice. It felt like being snowplowed in a well or being rolled up into a carpet and pushed off the Dan Ryan. And, according to Junior Carlos, it’s only going to feel better and better the more we do it. Which, even though I’m sick, is the only thing I want to do. I want to kiss and kiss and kiss until my face is hot pink with kissing then fuck fuck fuck.
“I want to fuck fuck fuck,” I say.
Junior Carlos pushes me off his lap and the blanket off the couch. It knocks over a cup. This is what I love: how quickly he goes from respectable to rough. Fuck my mom for hating on the sheer idea of me having a boyfriend. Fuck Elliot, too, for being creepy and possessive. I do what I want. Junior Carlos pulls down my pajama pants and throws them on the floor.
“Well, then—where’s the pussy?” He starts sucking my hipbones hard, scraping his teeth across my skin, trying to gnash my bones.
“I don’t know, Ace Ventura.” I sigh. “Keep looking.”
I sit up, like I’m about to crunch. I don’t do those now. No more eroding the skin off my tailbone doing fifteen hundred sit-ups a day. Futile! Spot correcting is a no-go without proper nutrition. Despite Elliot’s admonishments, I don’t miss all-nighter workouts any more than I’ll miss this sore throat. My poor stomach, the one I forced to contract, the one I can’t even see now, covered by Junior Carlos’s head.
I wonder if my grandma watched.
I’m wearing new navy-blue striped boy shorts from Victoria’s Secret. I changed out of my Jockeys before Junior Carlos came over. My Jockeys are still from sixth grade, except now my butt fills them out. My Jockeys, I wore when Elliot took my picture. The Before. The After was only mirrors. Mirrors and mirrors. Me in my underwear, diving into the mirror. I swear, I don’t miss that emptied-out me. Gutted-me in my Jockeys—white cotton. I’m better. I do what I want. I wear cute panties. These: they have glitter woven through the blue parts. They itch. I’m glad when Junior Carlos pulls them off.
4 ·· ELLIOT
THE ONLY THING TO DO was work. “25 Things To Do Instead of Emotionally Eating” would be a cool Real Talk piece. I added it to my queue of article ideas.
The library was empty except for the aide, Miss Nancy. She had red, crimpy hair and gelatinous skin, like cold Play-Doh, and a wheedling way of flirting with Mr. Tim, the janitor who drove a razzmatazz Ferrari. She was labeling CD-ROMs at the Computer Ed desk. She only pursed her lips when I walked through the security sensor gates.
Don’t think about the phone call, I told myself sternly. Yet how could I forget? Days contained limited interactions. Mine with Lisa were always red-lettered. And now, she’d dissed me. I was angry, with no one to spar with but myself. When you’re lacking in the friend dept., devils and angels perch on your shoulders. I assessed the facts. Lisa threatened me: Shouldn’t I say something? Or would saying anything lead to an even worse situation? At the same time, Junior Carlos could’ve been holding cue cards, forcing Lisa to read. Loca, said my volition. The truth was we needed to talk, faces mouths lips breathing the same air, not overanalyzing the words. I felt like a loser. A has-been. Pathetic. Desperate, stressing in a sarcophagus of books. My emotions were mosquitoes I couldn’t slap fast enough; today, I was being eaten alive.
At full capacity, Park housed three hundred bodies; the library held one-tenth of them. Kids didn’t check out books. They liked researching on the computer, where clip art dripped with clean lines and uniformity, where, bored, you could Microsoft Paint: draw a stick figure with bazoombas, dump a bucket of black over the whole deal, erase.
I moved like a ghost solider, eyes on my destination, the Xerox (not on the booger-green carpet). I needed to copy Real Talk. The library smelled like a warm blueberry muffin. The normal world aureated with my spaceyness. There were circular tables for group work. A grandfather clock, with its freaky pale moon face that reminded me of a pedophile. An L-shaped accumulation of books—fiction here, nonfiction there—challenging my intellect: the space of this room is wide open, ready for your contribution, Elliot. And, across from the circulation desk, an oak card catalog, the piano of furniture. The drawers had been opened so many times, they slid soundlessly, like hands into gloves. I’d thumbed my share of blue index cards in that catalog—eating disorders; anorexia nervosa, fiction portrayals of; self-starvation; fasting, history of—spent hundreds of lunches starving sans hunger as I gobbled words in place of food, which wasn’t even permitted in the stacks. Adults didn’t bother bookworms—as long as they weren’t bingeing on Goosebumps.
I stopped at the shelves of burgundy encyclopedias and opened one, the second “C” volume of Britannica. I searched for “Concentration Camp,” scanning the index words at the top of each page. I could get a picture of a truly emaciated person, someone who’d survived Auschwitz, and paste that in place of Marissa’s After. Unfortunately, the only images were of crematoriums.
I stationed myself in the Copy Corner. On the Xerox, there was a random newspaper; “PERJURY UPON PERJURY” read the headline. Underneath, in a grainy picture, Bill Clinton looked like he wanted to suck his thumb. Monica Lewinsky, Kenneth Starr, Paula Jones: last night, when those names came on TV, my mom finished her big glass of wine in one sip. Our country is flushing away the integrity of a private life, she’d said. In favor, I should add, of Private Parts. Not that Howard is to blame, but—he hasn’t helped. In the corner, a blip about Michael Jordan: he’d announced his retirement.
I tossed aside the paper. I couldn’t handle any more depressing news. I had twenty Real Talks to print. The Afters I’d add, in color, from Walgreens. The next issue would be delivered to my clients, even Rocyo the new one, next week. You are an all-star, I chanted. You’re fine. You need to talk to Lisa. There’s always something you can do. I
slid my work into the rickety, gray plastic feed, and hit start.
The copy machine creaked. I did calf raises. Waiting, I wrote in my clients’ plans, is an opportunity. There’s never killing time. Only making every minute count. Deep inhale, four holds, exhale: my toes cracked, my ankles stretched. Through the glass doors, I saw the courtyard, gray concrete, muddy snow. Once, in the fall, ditching lunch in that very courtyard, I’d mistaken a dead sparrow for a leaf.
In sixth grade, I’d told Lisa how to exercise without people noticing. We were in the girls’ bathroom, and while she was brushing her goldilocks I’d gone into double jacks. Lisa’s diagnosis was nowhere in sight: she’d arched an eyebrow, watching my jumping like I’d come to the Park Sock Hop in Zubaz. But lunges in the shower, crunches in bed. Leg lifts on the pediatrician’s table. Butt clenches anywhere—in line at Blockbuster, sitting through The Voyage of the Mimi. Point your fingers and flex your triceps when you raise your hand, I explained. It adds up. Her blonde hair satin. Her lips glittery. A heart-shaped lilac jelly ring around her thumb. That way you’re making progress, your secret, your terms, she’d said. I love it. Your brain is perfect, El.
Outside the library, a gust of wind sprayed snowflakes like confetti. I stopped calf raising. Lisa had loved my brain—now what? I wasn’t Junior Carlos, I’d never be.
On top of the Xerox, built-in compartments held paperclips and staples. The staple spot was empty (except for an image of a staple, raised in plastic), but thirteen paper clips catcalled me in a shining, practical way, like the birthstone post earrings I’d ganked from Claire’s. They were small, silver with variegated bodies.
I checked for Miss Nancy. (She’d use library footsteps and suddenly be all about your personal space.) The library was empty: the Encarta CD-ROM set was up for grabs. I rolled up my sleeve.
I unwound a paper clip. It was a fraction of cold, like a thumbtack. My left arm was pale, grayish and creamy: sand dollar, vanilla wafer, scallop. I liked how the parts of my body showed me my viscera, the cat’s cradle of veins on the inside of my wrist, contusion purple and storm blue, close and usual as postage stamps.
