Those Girls

by Lauren Saft

  “V?” I asked. This was her test, time to officially see if she’d jump at the chance to hang with Drew after big public Halloween make-out number two or make up some excuse to go social climb, and blow lax players with Mollie.

  “Did Drew actually say ‘invite Veronica,’ because we talked about hanging out this weekend, but he didn’t mention bowling. I don’t want to just, like, show up and have him think I’m, like, stalking him.”

  “Aren’t you guys, like, dating now?” Mollie asked. “Wouldn’t it be normal for you all to hang out?”

  Veronica rolled her eyes and leaned toward me, caging Mollie out. “You’re positive he said invite Veronica?”

  “Yes.”

  That wasn’t actually what he’d said. He said something closer to so what should Veronica and I do this weekend? He said that he wanted to take her on a date, but I told him that was premature and that we should all do something fun together—then I pulled bowling out of my ass, because it seemed asexual and low contact.

  I glanced at Mollie and said, “Molls, last chance?” Just for fun. Knowing she’d never give up a night in the infamous Rizzuto basement (lovingly referred to by Sam and his Cro-Magnon cohorts as the ’Zu, because they’re fucking animals, bro) for something so parochial as bowling with boys in her own grade who weren’t on sports teams (ultimate Frisbee didn’t count).

  The ’Zu was just Lindsay and Tom Rizzuto’s basement, an institution and Greencliff legacy. All the “cool” kids from all the private schools partied at the Rizzutos’ and had for years. Lindsay was a senior at Harwin when we were freshmen. She was a legendary whore, but was one of those “knows everybody” and “friends with all the guys” types. Tom Rizzuto was a year older than us at Crawford. He didn’t seem to be anything particularly special or exciting, but people hung out with him because of his house and his sister’s cachet. Both Mollie and Veronica were weirdly obsessed with it. I had gone a few times and didn’t see what the big deal was. It was just a bunch of douchey guys and drunk girls vying for their attention. The only topic of conversation allowed there seemed to be either how drunk you currently are or how drunk you were when you were there last week.

  I wanted to see if, just for a passing moment, I could make Mollie confront her own agenda and admit that going to the ’Zu was more important to her than hanging out with us, her “best friends.”

  “Still definitely pass,” she said. “I told Sam I’d do the ’Zu thing tonight.”

  V CAME OVER TO get ready for our big bowling night. She tried on a million of my T-shirts, claiming she wanted to go for my chill, retro-chic look, before inevitably, and predictably, going with the lowest-cut leftover baby tee from sixth grade she could find. I hated when she tried on my clothes. When she stood there, in front of the mirror, wiggling around in various items saying, Oh my god, Lex, do these fit you? This can’t fit you! It’s huge! They’re my clothes, whorebox. They fit me. Unlike her clothes, which were made for bulimic preschoolers.

  I debated inviting the band boys, but I decided I needed to stay focused on running interference between Drew and Veronica, which was the whole point of my orchestrating this whole date insurrection in the first place. Despite my initial instinct to use Fernando to make Drew jealous, I decided that keeping a watchful eye on the progress of this bullshit relationship was more important. I couldn’t let a Fernando-type distraction result in another stolen kiss or back-alley tryst. I also didn’t need Drew’s reaction to seeing me flirt with Fernando to be a full-throttle plunge at Veronica. I wondered what I’d started here and if I had the stomach to see it through.

  Drew texted me: Hope you’re stretching and hydrating. You’re about to get schooled in the art of bowling.

  I replied: Game on.

  I fought every impulse I had to check Veronica’s phone and see if he sent her the same thing. Or, worse, if he sent her something else—something cute and mushy or, oh god, sexual. I wondered how he talked to her, if they joked around or if they were earnest and romantic. An eerie panic rolled over me, and I left Veronica to rummage through my closet while I went downstairs for food.

  My mom sat cross-legged at the kitchen table, her new super-hip cat’s-eye glasses perched at the tip of her nose. She was thumbing through the Arts section, as she usually did at this particular time in that particular spot. My brother stood at the counter twirling spaghetti in a Tupperware. My mom looked up at me over her glasses and proceeded to rattle off everything we had in the fridge, as if I hadn’t just opened it and wasn’t staring directly into its contents.

  “There’s leftover spaghetti—and I bought that expensive cheese you like.”

  I grabbed the fork and spaghetti out of Josh’s hands.

  “I was done anyway,” he said.

  I smiled up at him with my mouth full. The dynamic between us hadn’t quite adjusted to his growth spurt. I chose to ignore his new size and structure and continued to treat him like the snotty runt I always had. Even though sometimes I felt like I was standing next to a stranger, or worse, my contemporary.

  “Where are you going tonight?” my mom asked, not looking up from her paper. “See if your brother wants to go.”

  Her gray roots were growing in. She never had roots or holes in her sweaters or wore clogs when my dad was around, but she did now, all the time, and seemed to be pleased as punch with her newfound languor. She’d started smoking again, too, even though she wouldn’t admit it. She’d caught me with cigarettes a few times, and she was always completely unconvincing when attempting to scold me about the danger they presented to my health and general image. I could see the sides of her mouth turn up when she called it a disgusting habit. I wondered when we’d both be able to come out of our bathrooms, untowel the doors, put away the air freshener, and be able to sit at the kitchen table and smoke together like two civilized adults.

  “I can make my own plans, thanks, Mom,” he said, grabbing the Tupperware back.

  “We’re going bowling,” I said as I gathered an armful of assorted snack crackers and baked goods to bring upstairs.

  She burst into a loud guffaw, slid her glasses off her nose, and let them hang off her fingers.

  “Bowling?” Sometimes she was way too amused by things that just weren’t that amusing. She dabbed her watering eyes with her knuckle. “Like when you were little? That’s a riot.”

  Feeling patronized and belittled, I rolled my eyes and left the kitchen. Josh followed me up the stairs.

  “Is Mollie going tonight?” he asked.

  “No, she’s too busy social climbing with Sam,” I replied, not bothering to look back at him.

  “Fuck that guy,” he said.

  “Did she ever thank you for Veronica’s party?” I stood at the top of the staircase, he three steps below me, which allowed me to be taller than him again.

  “No, but it’s okay.” He looked down at the tan specks in the navy carpet. “She doesn’t really need to. What was I gonna do, leave her there with that guy?”

  I gave him a little pat on the shoulder. “You’re too good for her, Josh.”

  “That’s a nice thing to say about your best friend.”

  Veronica busted out of my room in a T-shirt and no pants.

  “How do we feel about this top?” she said, pulling and twisting the T-shirt around her hips. “Oh my god, Josh! Whoops. Sorry!” she said, sheepishly covering her lady parts with cupped hands. Not running back into my room, or retrieving a pair of pants or anything of that nature—just standing there, half naked, in my hallway, in front of my fifteen-year-old brother, twisting and posing. He turned bright red and looked at the floor.

  “It’s fine,” he said. “Don’t mind me.”

  “Whoops!” she said again, before spotting the buffet in my arms. “Oh, yay! I’m starving.”

  VERONICA COLLINS

  Drew and his gang were already bowling and drinking 40s out of paper bags when we got there. People liked to hang out at the bowling alley, because it was one of the few
places kids could still drink without much hassle.

  He hugged Alex first.

  Then he said, “Hey, you,” to me. He poked my stomach and kissed me on the cheek. “You look pretty.”

  The boys were already on their way to drunk and Alex seamlessly rolled herself right into their game. I wondered what the guys knew about us, about me, if they’d heard things about me and if they knew that Drew and I had kissed. Twice. In public. If guys told each other stuff like that. The second kiss meant that we were dating, right? Or at least that he wanted to date or that we were on our way to dating. It meant that he wanted to kiss me on a relatively regular basis and wasn’t embarrassed to do it in front of other people, right? None of the jocks had ever kissed me in public, not soberly anyway. It felt like a big step to me.

  “So,” Drew said, plopping down as I tied my rental shoes, “you gonna be on my team?”

  “If you’ll have me,” I replied, hoping he’d get a nice flash of cleave while I took my time stroking and bowing my laces.

  “You any good?”

  “I’ve been told I know how to handle balls.”

  He laughed, but I kicked myself and swore I’d lay off lines like that.

  “Drew!” Alex shouted from the red line thingy. “It’s your turn, buttface.”

  He popped up, grabbed the ball from her hand, and said, “What the hell is this girly light ball shit? I thought you were an athlete.”

  “You think you can handle the heavy one, Rocky? Please. My biceps are bigger than yours.”

  He grabbed her arm. “Woman, I could bowl you.”

  “She is like a bowling ball,” shouted Marc Seidman from the sidelines. “Ya put three fingers in her and throw her in the gutter.”

  The group roared with laughter.

  Alex swiveled her neck around and stood at the ball dispensary with her hand on her hip, black Led Zeppelin T-shirt dripping off her square shoulders like she was a closet hanger.

  “Well, you’re so fat that when you wear a yellow T-shirt, kids line up for school,” she said.

  The group roared again. High fives were exchanged. I giggled along, wishing I could be that quick and clever. And that I was getting as much of Drew’s or anyone’s attention as she was.

  I took a medium-heavy ball and walked toward the line, looked back at the boys, winked, and told them I’d show them how it was done. I bent over, slowly, hoping Drew was watching and that my new jeans were doing what I’d bought them to do.

  WHEN THE LANES CLOSED at ten, Alex decided that she was too drunk to drive home. Drew stood between us, hands in his pockets, eyes darting to Sam and then me, to Sam and then back to me.

  “I can drive you guys home. I’m fine.”

  “V, are you sleeping over?” she asked.

  I hadn’t planned on it, but I said sure, figuring that I’d rather us both get out of Drew’s car at the same time than give them time alone to talk about me—I knew there was no way to justify him taking Alex home first, though that would have been ideal. Goddamn Alex for living on his street and making it impossible for him to come up with a slick way to take her home first! Seriously, goddamn. If Alex was a good friend, she would have thought about this in advance and we would have come up with a plan, right? Why hadn’t she thought about this and come up with a plan?

  We said good-bye and walked out to the parking lot. Alex hopped in the front seat without even calling shotgun. The two of them bobbed their heads to some song I didn’t recognize but Alex seemed to know the words to. Drew occasionally glanced back at me, over that puffy yellow vest, to ask, are you okay back there?

  I said I was, but I found myself becoming increasingly discouraged. I was always in the backseat, straining to hear, feeling like I missed the day when everyone else learned the words to the song. Whether it was Alex and Mollie or Alex and Drew, I was always somehow in the backseat, always a beat behind. I was still trying to figure out how I’d orchestrate a kiss good night around the logistics of this car ride. The logistics of this whole night, really. Drew and I had barely talked at all—I felt more like I’d taken a supervised field trip to Drew/Alex-land only to now head back to slut/jock-land with tales of bowling and banter from abroad.

  We pulled into Alex’s driveway and sat in his car in front of her house while we all smoked a joint. Even I took a few hits; clearly all that was left in my night was cleaning out Alex’s fridge and passing out, so for that, I could handle getting high.

  “Thanks for driving, buddy,” Alex said, and she leaned across the console and kissed him on the cheek.

  “No problem, ladies,” he said. Then he looked back over his shoulder at me, grinning his cute, crooked grin. I smiled back, leaned forward, and gave him a long, soft kiss on the cheek, half openmouthed, hoping maybe I could get something started. I caught his eye for a minute and held it there, about an inch away from his face, hoping he would have the balls to kiss me in front of Alex. He stayed there for about four seconds before he pulled back. Alex let out a deep sigh, said, “See you tomorrow!” and jumped out of the car.

  I raised my eyebrows and looked at him one more time, trying to imply that he had one more chance.

  “Maybe we’ll hang out this weekend?” he said.

  “Yeah, call me.”

  And I scooted out the passenger side and slammed the door.

  Alex fiddled with her keys before letting us in.

  “You hungry?” Alex asked.

  “Always,” I replied.

  Alex’s house was warm and smelled like laundry and spicy food. Mail, mugs, and reading glasses were always strewn over the kitchen table, like people actually lived there. Sweaters hung on the backs of chairs; sneakers and slippers were thrown by doorways and under coffee tables. Her mom sold antiques, so there were all sorts of interesting, old-looking things everywhere. Weird things like red wagons, tapestries, and copper pigs. Things my mom would call crap. My house was like a museum. The rooms were all too well lit and too big, and nobody had been in most of them in years.

  “Tonight was fun,” she said, basking in the glow of her refrigerator light.

  “Totally.”

  My phone beeped, and I reached into my purse to see who was calling. Maybe it was Austin, leaving the ’Zu and looking for a booty call. Or maybe even Sam…

  It was a text from Drew: I wish I’d gotten to kiss you again tonight.

  A smile spread across my face. Phew, I thought, though if he wanted to kiss me, why hadn’t he when I gave him the chance?

  I texted back: Me 2 :(

  He immediately replied: I will kiss you again soon. I promise. Good night, Veronica.

  “What are you smiling about?” asked Alex, pulling some leftover spaghetti out of the microwave.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Booty text.”

  MOLLIE FINN

  Alex had been pretty closemouthed about the Drew/Veronica thing. V and I had bio lab together, so I took the opportunity to get her side of it—to see if maybe she had some idea of what a self-involved cunt she could be.

  “So,” I said over Bunsen burners, “what’s going on with you and Drew?”

  She looked at me, her cow eyes peering out from under the plastic lab goggles. “I don’t know,” she said, still focused on the beaker. “We talk on the phone sometimes and had fun bowling the other night. It’s all been pretty PG. We’ve only kissed, like, twice.”

  She hovered over our lab station. The sleeves of her white coat were rolled up, exposing her tan, bony wrists stacked with Tiffany charm bracelets and a Cartier watch. Veronica and her fucking charm bracelets. It always cracked me up that someone so lewd could be so obsessed with something so precious. But she’s worn them, and has just continued to stack them farther up her bony little arm, since I’ve known her. She used to let me borrow them, back when we used to go to all the ’Zu parties together and I’d stay at her house to avoid curfew.

  “Do you like him?” I asked.

  “What’s not to like?” she said.

&nb
sp; “Do you think Alex is weird about it?”

  “I thought she might be, but she’s been cool. She was the one who told me he liked me in the first place, right?”

  She was?

  “Well,” I said, taking the forceps from her limp fingers and rearranging our test tubes, “if you actually want to date Drew, my advice is to take it slow.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Trust me, we are,” she said.

  It was ironic, me giving Veronica sex advice. I used to look at her as my sex guru. When I first decided to sleep with Sam, I asked her about everything—condoms, positions, underwear, pacing. I figured people keep wanting to have sex with her, so she must be pretty good at it.

  That was actually how we even really became friends. She was always Alex’s annoying friend who I tolerated because her parents were never home, and, well, you don’t have a girl who looks like that running around and not keep her on your side. But when Sam and I started sleeping together, I’d run right to her, not to Alex, with everything. I’d asked if it was normal that it was over so quickly, that it hurt sometimes, that he really liked doing it from behind, that we stopped making out beforehand after a while. I couldn’t talk to Alex about that stuff; she’d just get awkward and think I was bragging or that Sam was a weirdo and hate him even more than she already did. But Veronica could make a joke and funny story out of anything—it was one of her greatest and most annoying qualities. Whatever strange, embarrassing, scary debacle happened during sex, nothing was a big deal, everything was normal, and happened to everyone all the time. I used to sleep at her house every Friday night after ’Zu parties. She even used to let Sam come over, and we would have sex in one of her guest rooms. Until everything came out about her parents, and my mom found out that there were never any adults in that house and stopped allowing me to stay over there.

  “Remember what a big deal it was when I first slept with Sam?” I asked her as I scribbled down the lab notes. “We’d been together, officially, for, like, months. Unlike the rest of the dipshits you hook up with, Drew is potentially interested in being your actual boyfriend.”