“Really?” For some reason, I figured Whitney would do what her mom does—be someone’s wife, which is lame of me to think. Why shouldn’t she do what her brother will probably do? Run a company, be a boss. It’s sad, but I know it’s because she hasn’t been raised to think she can.
“I’ll show you sometime,” she says. “The stories are about girls who play dress-up, and the things they choose to wear transport them to that time. Sort of like Jack and Annie—I have little lessons about the era, but it’s for younger kids. Picture books.”
“Yeah, real stupid,” I say. “Are you kidding me? You’re going to be, like, a hotelier slash writer slash socialite ruler.”
“Oh, please,” she says. “You won’t catch me in Hawaii Luxury.”
“They’ll catch you,” I say.
I look out at our view, our ocean, thinking of the ways we are working and will work ourselves out. It’s like we’re here on the brink of our lives, strategizing the best way to cross the channel. It’s a good sensation, to feel youth, to be aware of it, electrified by it. We will become one day. We are becoming.
“I wonder what our moms wanted,” I say, imagining them on the lanai on a night like this. “What their conversations were like.”
The thought lifts me up, seeing us all in solidarity, but then it brings me down. I don’t see Melanie being silly or joyful, weird or sullen. I don’t see my mom as a bundle of nerve endings set off by a remark or a touch or the proximity of another body. They seem so old. We are almost like toddlers. We can have fun anywhere. We can always find something to play with. My mom and Melanie—women—they need an event, an elaborate premise, costumes and props. When did they become? What happens to you?
“Let’s go swimming,” I say.
“Okay,” she says. Easy. Like a three-year-old. I want to take this with us, cross the channel armed with this easiness, this willingness. Me and Whit at fifty, night swimming, rapping, looking out at the ocean, still wondering how to cross.
• • •
The pool lights are a muted gold, the shadows in the water like grooves and knots in wood. We are treading and side-swimming and lying on our backs. This time I’ve got bottoms on. We rehash the event, laughing, adding on—it will become a highlight of spring break, and my embarrassment will be feigned, my insistence not to tell meaning yes, do tell, something that will be understood in our reenactment for others. I know this already.
“It felt cool, though,” I say. “Skinny-dipping. Down there.”
“Yeah,” she says. “It feels sexy. So does lying in the sun sometimes.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Or walking out of the ocean.”
“Or now.”
She sinks a little, tilting her head up to the sky, then straightens back up and tosses her bottoms to the edge of the pool. I do the same with the bottoms I borrowed from her.
“Will better not come home,” I say, hoping for the opposite.
“He’d think we’re lezzing out. God, Will would love that. I mean, not if I were here, but if I were someone else.”
“And I were someone else,” I say, testing.
“No, you’d be just fine,” she says. “Obviously.”
I touch the bottom of the pool and bounce from foot to foot, trying to read her expression.
“Will likes anything that moves,” she says. “Or doesn’t move.”
She seems to be sending me a message, and it hurts me. She wants to make me feel bad, like I could have been anyone. I want to believe that it happened because it was me. I want Whitney to be okay with it. Maybe it’s the pool water lapping at me, the mysterious, flattering light, the way I can look at us from above, the sensuality of us in this pool by the ocean, under a clear night sky. The tall palms seem bent toward us, listening. I want to talk about him more, but this just creates a weird vibe, and I hadn’t been thinking about him in the first place. It’s like I have to choose sides.
“It must feel different for you than it does for me.” I laugh.
“What does?” she asks, looking like she’s clocked out. I want to pull her back into her good mood. I bounce from foot to foot, then do a kind of twist.
“Your thing,” I say. “Your parts. Since you wax it all off.”
She tucks her chin. “Oh yeah,” she says. “You must have . . . tugging.”
We both laugh.
“I do have tugging! It’s weird.”
“You should take it off. Get waxed.” She bounces closer to me.
“No way,” I say. “It would be . . . I don’t know. Lonely.”
“Lonely? My vagina is not lonely.” She splashes some water at me.
I splash back. “It’s cold! It wants its blanket back!”
We both crack up and go into variations, riffs on the absurd topic, until she says, “I’m cold,” and I say, “Told you so.”
• • •
We go to her room to change back into our clothes and watch TV from her bed. It’s only nine thirty, but I feel like I could fall asleep after the beach day and the food and pot. Whitney yawns so big her jaw cracks, and we both say, “Ouch.”
We watch reruns of Downton Abbey, and when my eyes keep falling shut, I sit up to go, but then I hear footsteps from the pool side of the room. My heart beats as though we’re doing something wrong.
“Did you hear that?” I ask.
We listen, and then there’s a light tapping.
She doesn’t seem concerned or afraid. “Go see,” she says. “It’s locked.”
I go to her door and look through the blinds, and there stands Mike, using his hands as binoculars to look in.
“Mike?” she asks, without having seen him.
I turn, nod. Yes, Mike Matson is at the door.
She makes an expression of annoyance and familiarity—this is something that has happened before, and I think of the other morning, how I thought she was hiding Danny.
“Should I let him in or make him stand there?”
“I don’t know,” she says, rocking up to sit. “I’ll deal with it. Pothead booty call. He’s like a kid, asking if my body can come out to play.”
I cringe. It’s too crude. I know girls in my grade have sex, but usually they’re the ones with boyfriends. I wonder if she’s just being provocative, like how we’ve been with one another—using words to entertain. I’m annoyed and left with a juvenile sense of unfairness, an urge to tattle, as if I’ve drawn what I see as a complete, wonderful picture, and she’s marking it up with her Crayolas.
Still, I play along, going for an expression that connotes conspiracy, maturity versus bewilderment. If she’s a friend, this is part of the package, then. More knocking. Her other life wanting in.
“Well?” I say.
She’s still on the bed, holding the edge of her blanket. I don’t feel like my emotions are so weird after all. She looks a bit confused, not ready for the change of scenery. “I just want to go to bed,” she says.
“Then go to bed,” I say. “Do you want me to tell him?”
But then her face lights up. “You want to see him naked?”
“What?” I say. “No.”
“Come on.” She swings her legs off the bed. “I’m going to mess with him. Get in the closet.”
I look at the closet door on the other side of her room by the TV.
“Just leave it slightly ajar.”
For some reason, I’m more shocked by her using the word ajar in this moment than I am by the actual situation. I go to the closet, my heart beating as though I’m about to hide from a serial killer. I leave the door slightly ajar.
I hear her letting him in—the clank of the blinds, the suction and swoop of the sliding door. I can see a slice of her in her long T-shirt.
“What’s up, playa?” I hear Mike say, and I cringe for him, for her, for me, for girls everywhere.
I hear the slap of slippers, and even back here with her clothes and shoes and what looks like school stuff, I get a whiff of the salty outdoors.
“What are you up to?” he asks.
“Just chilling,” she says. “About to go to bed.”
“To bed? You can’t go to bed.”
“I can do whatever I want,” she says, and I immediately think of the script, how it’s as though I’m watching a really shitty show that I can’t keep my eyes off of.
“I was thinking of you,” he says, and I roll my eyes.
“Okay,” Whitney says.
“My parents are at that thing tonight, with your parents, so . . . just making sure you weren’t too lonely.”
Whitney walks across the room, briefly glancing in my direction. I see a flash of her smirking face and then Mike trailing behind, looking up and rolling his neck.
“My back is killing,” he says. “South swell’s on fire. What did you do today?”
“Nothing,” she says, and even though I know she is coaxing out a little sitcom for me, I can’t help but be offended. I want to jump out of the closet and say, We did a lot today! We took risks, cooked dinner, swam naked! I almost crack myself up. When I put it that way, we sound like a couple. I look around the closet, the boxes of papers, and I wonder if she keeps her children’s stories in here. I wonder if the idea for them came from a longing to be transported, the urge to try on different personalities, seeing what fit best.
“Want to go out?” Mike asks.
“What?” she says. “No.”
“Or mess around or something?”
I can’t see them and don’t know where they are in the room, so I’m left to envision her reaction, or his face after he has boldly, nakedly, expressed why he’s here.
I am left to imagine their faces and gestures, and then I see her—she walks in front of her bed, to its center, and it’s like I’ve gone from book to film. I don’t need to imagine the characters anymore. There’s her face—coy, seductive. There’s his stance, strong, slightly twitching with impatience.
“I’ll mess around,” she says. “Take your clothes off.”
He makes a clucking sound, and normally, I think he’s super cute, powerful even, one of these big guys, but now he seems reduced, shriveled in a way, which I guess is what she has intended. I can’t help but think, though, that if I weren’t here, this wouldn’t be how it played out at all. She would be the small one.
He leans down and tries to kiss her, and I automatically close my eyes, a blink, as though feeling it for myself. She pulls back. “No,” she says. “Just stand there and take everything off.”
“Why?” he asks.
“Because I like it.”
“Yeah?” he says. “So frisky.”
Mike crosses his arms and pulls his shirt over his head, but the collar gets stuck on his chin, and he has to tug and push, and I feel like I’m watching him being born. I stifle a laugh, and so does Whitney.
“Okay, you take something off too,” he says after getting his shirt off.
“No,” she says, and I’m relieved, knowing I’d feel like a pervert if she did, because I’d keep watching the bad show. I’m filled with a churning kind of sickness and thrill, like being on a ride at the carnival. Mike pushes his thicket of bangs to the side.
“Can we turn off the lights at least?” Mike is olive-colored from the sun. His back muscles, defined, ebb down into his jeans.
“We need tunes.” She leans back on her bed and reaches for her phone. A song plays, one that’s on constant rotation on 102.7, catchy and upbeat, something you love now but know you’re going to hate in a month.
Mike slides his jeans down his legs, revealing blue boxers stamped with something yellow. I step closer to the door: Labs. Yellow Labradors. I want to joke with her about his toddler-like undergarments and the goose bumps on his arms. Now, this is fun. The music has made it better—the song’s scratches, the cyclic strokes of keyboard notes, the ethereal refrain. Another air enters the room, and we’re just kids with a soundtrack, but then Mike, as if tearing off a bandage, sheds his blue boxers, taking away the puppies and revealing a white ass, almost like its own entity, since the shade is so different from his legs, which sprout curled brown hairs. The good air dissolves, making way for something else.
On Mike, only a thin gold necklace remains. Oh my God, I keep saying and thinking to myself. Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god. And then: I hate when guys wear jewelry. Gode jewry.
Mike shrugs his shoulders, a sign of sportsmanship. Whitney tells him to turn around. He turns to face me and laughs, flexes and poses, his boxers still cuffing his ankles. I’ve never really looked at a penis before, and it’s only now that I realize I haven’t seen this thing that’s everywhere I go. I touch my neck, thinking of Will, feeling him through his boxers. And there were times during make-out sessions with my boyfriend in San Francisco, but I never really studied it or anything. I trace back and confirm that, yes, this is my first penis, past the age of say, eight, when Bobbie Schmidt flashed the row of us at a field trip to the symphony. Mike’s is off duty, and it seems as if there’s a puppet peeking out between his legs, Gonzo, perhaps. Gonzo’s nose begins to point at my feet, then wavers like a temperature gauge. Shit, that thing’s ugly.
He turns back to her, moves in, puts his hands on her thighs. I look down, put my hand on the doorknob.
“Happy?” he asks. “Can we do this now?”
From this angle I think he briefly touches what I’ve come to think of his puppet and then he moves his face toward Whitney’s. She moves back, and I don’t know whether it’s to get away or to lie down. I feel like I’m watching myself and Will, but it’s not the same. Mike doesn’t even care who she is right now. She’s just a body that is willing to have him. And then he will go. Whitney knows he has a girlfriend. What is she doing?
I step back and almost trip on her shoes and then I intentionally hit a hanger, which makes a meager noise, but hopefully enough to alert her, like a faint SOS.
“Time’s up,” Whitney says. “I think my parents are home. My dad’s going to feed you to the sharks.”
“Shit,” Mike says, and he hops back into his boxers and jeans, moving in tiny circles like a chicken. I cover my mouth from my front row seat. He slips on his slippers, then walks to the door, his shirt balled in his hand.
“Bye,” Whitney says.
“Late,” he says. “You owe me. See you at the hotel. I’ll bring weed.”
I can’t see her expression, if she’s joking or angry, happy or hurt.
After hearing the outside door slide closed, I open mine slowly and walk out.
“Wow,” I say. “That was crazy.”
“Hilarious, right?” she says. She searches my face as if for clues on how she did, like it was all for me, and maybe it was. Maybe this thing with Mike isn’t known by her other friends—this habitual booty call—and she wants to see my reaction, how I receive this parcel of truth.
“Right,” I say. I lower my gaze. I just want to go.
“Say something,” Whitney says, her face falling a notch. Her smile has become nervous and slightly defensive, as if she’s expecting me to say something she’ll have to refute.
I sigh and smile at the same time. “That was funny.”
She looks down. I don’t think I was very convincing.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“Of course I’m okay. Jeez, lighten up.”
“What about Maile?” I ask, trying to keep a light smile.
“I didn’t do anything,” she says.
“But you would have. He would have.”
“Life is short,” she says. “I’m just trying to have fun.”
“I know,” I say. But you don’t even like him, I want to say. So how is it fu
n? Life is long, I think. “I’m going to go, okay?”
There’s no point in my being here right now. We’re both pretending. She knows that I’m judging her, that we had a great night, but now it’s like a hinge is moving in the wrong direction.
Something hardens in her face, a look I remember from when we did the truth walk across the gym—she sees me, but doesn’t know me, doesn’t care. Her eyes flicker resentment. I don’t know what to say. The only thing I want to say is too cheesy. If you’re happy, then this is all okay. But I can’t imagine being happy this way—as someone’s secret. Someone’s last resort.
I turn to walk out the front door.
“What about Lissa?” she asks. I stop walking but don’t turn around. “They’re still together and will probably always be together. It’s like an arranged marriage, practically.”
I think of Vicky and Melanie cooing at the two.
“Guess that makes two of us,” Whitney says.
I hold it all in—words and reactions.
That makes two of us. What, exactly, does that make us? I don’t want to fill in the blanks, but I know what she’s thinking: that I have no right being disappointed in her if I’m not going to include myself. I was someone’s secret, someone’s last resort. I turn back to her, wanting to deny everything, but I can’t lie to her.
“You’re just like everyone else,” she says. She looks disgusted, and she fidgets, as if surging with anger and irritation. “Using me to get to my brother, using me for this house, the hotel—”
“What? Oh my God, that’s not true at all. I could care less about your house or the hotel.” But as I say this, I can’t hold eye contact. I totally care. I knew way more about her than anyone else at the school because of these things she has. I’ve already admitted to myself that it’s part of the package that makes everyone rank her so highly. But that’s not why I’m here now. “We’re friends,” I say. It’s all I can think of to say.
“Have you hooked up with Will?” she asks.
She watches me, and I feel I can’t escape. “Yes,” I say.
She shakes her head.
“But I didn’t use you to get to him.” Did I? Did I want to spend time with her just on the off chance Will would be around too? What about her? Did she use me to have Danny around?
Juniors Page 20
