My guy died and I let the game sit for a minute, my guy’s dead body on the ground under the words GAME OVER. I looked at Richard. I felt this was important. I believe you, I said. And I did.
Richard was shaking his head. He didn’t say anything. He was upset, I knew. But to be honest, I was starting to feel kind of good. And not just because it meant that Richard wasn’t ahead of me, that I wasn’t the only guy on the team not getting laid. It was because he had told me. Of all of us, I was the one he came to talk to. I was the one he trusted.
We were each other’s oldest friends. I felt like I was realizing for the first time how important this was. I’d let my own shit get in the way. But we were friends. This was what mattered. Not girls and parties. Loyalty. When your friend got into a bad place, it was your job to back him up. That’s what mattered.
I said, Not to sound like a cliché, but I think we need a drink.
It’s Sunday morning.
What do you care, aren’t you Jewish?
Richard followed me upstairs. My dad was at church, and my mom was still asleep. She had worked overnight at the hospital and was no doubt in her room with the blackout shades pulled down and her earplugs in. We went into the kitchen and dumped the water out of our Nalgenes, then filled them up with white wine from a box in the fridge. This had been my trick for a little while. My parents didn’t drink beer or hard liquor. When I could get a bottle of vodka, I hid it in the basement, in a box marked TAXES, which I knew my parents never touched. But when I ran out I’d go into the kitchen and put some boxed wine in my Nalgene. Richard was the first person I shared this with—I guess, in my own way, I was trying to show him that we could trust each other.
The wine tasted like sheet metal, especially at first, but I found that it was a good kind of drunk. It was better than vodka for sleeping. It kind of lulled you under. And there was always a box in the fridge. It was like a limitless fountain of booze. As I filled my bottle, I tried to ask, casually, So the thing about the toilet paper stuck to her. Do you think that could really happen?
Richard looked at me.
You said that there was a piece—
No, there wasn’t—or, I don’t know, I didn’t see.
I know, I believe you. But where did you get that idea?
I guess I heard it in a porno or something.
I kind of laughed and shook my head. Fuck, that’s disgusting, I said. I was hoping that part wasn’t real.
Then we were laughing, so I didn’t realize how much I’d filled my bottle up. Then Richard put his under the tap. It hadn’t occurred to me that the boxed wine would ever run out, but the stream turned into a little dribble.
I was going to make a joke—performance anxiety? But this didn’t feel like the right moment, so instead I said, Tilt the box forward. My mom always tilted the box forward when it started getting empty.
We went back to the basement and started playing the game again. Okay, I said. We’ll figure this out.
Thanks. He took a sip, then scrunched his face up. This tastes like shit.
I know. But I promise it’s a good buzz. Give it a second. I took a deep gulp of my own bottle to show him. I felt the burst of excitement it always brought in my chest.
The thing I don’t understand is why she tried to kill herself, I said.
I know. It’s like she’s bipolar or something. Who wants to kill themselves just for being teased? It’s not like we’re twelve.
I guess what I mean is, why does she let them tease her, why doesn’t she tell them it didn’t happen? We played for a minute.
Then Richard said, She was passed out. Maybe she thinks it did happen.
I shook my head. A girl would know. I’m sure of it.
Richard’s guy died again. He was no good at this game. He threw the controller against the carpet. People are never going to stop talking about it. I wish we’d never started that stupid rumor.
That’s when I realized.
Wait. I dropped my controller in my excitement. My guy died in a splatter of blood. I didn’t care. I felt giddy. I stood up, like a lawyer on TV. I had cracked this motherfucker. And I was going to get us out of this. All of us.
It’s just a rumor! I said. And who spread the rumor?
Richard was staring at me. Everyone, he said.
No, pussy dick, I said. Haley. She was there at Denny’s. She was so mad at us, remember?
Richard nodded slowly.
She was mad at us, so she told the story to everyone. She must have spread the rumor; it wasn’t us, right? It’s her fault.
But you like Haley, Richard said.
I shook my head. She’s not who I thought she was. I took a long gulp from my Nalgene. Richard, old friend. I know what to do.
* * *
• • •
WHEN THE COPS FINALLY CAME to talk to us, we told them what we knew to be true: How the private school girl had a crush on Max. How she got herself so drunk, really early on in the party, too. How she danced alone in the middle of the floor. That she always drank too much; we’d heard she was bipolar. That Richard offered to drive both Max and her home. They had done the right thing and gotten her home safe.
We told them how we’d met up at Denny’s after, like always. And how we’d teased Max about it because the girl had a crush on him. We told them how Haley misinterpreted things. She’s a pothead, we said. We’d seen her smoking earlier that night. She got all freaked out when Max told us about taking the girl home. We told Haley nothing happened in the car. It’s not that we thought Haley would lie, necessarily. But Haley was not totally reliable. After all, she was the only girl at Denny’s that night. She was the kind of girl who followed us around. We liked her, but actually, when you thought about it, it was kind of weird—kind of attention hungry, you know? To be the only girl hanging out with all those guys. At the time, before things got out of hand, we didn’t say anything. We didn’t want to get her in trouble. But now it was out of hand. We thought it was time she took responsibility.
They interviewed us separately, like cops on TV, trying to trip us up. But we played it cool. We told the same story, again and again and again. The more we talked, the more true it became. And soon everyone else knew the truth, too. Even before the cops dropped the whole thing, everyone had heard the girl was bipolar and knew that’s why she took all those pills. It was really sad, we all agreed.
But what was even sadder was that someone could be so starved for attention they’d try to get it the way Haley had, spreading gossip that was so hurtful. Personally, I didn’t think she did it for the attention; she was just angry at us, she just wanted to get back at us for something. But the attention-seeking story was the one that everyone kept telling. People really turned on her for that. I heard people saying it: she’d walk into a classroom and someone would say attention whore, I walked by her locker and it was written in black Sharpie, too, whore, and it seemed a little harsh, but I was starting to understand how the world worked. And anyway, it was Haley’s fault. She’d gotten into that fight with Max. She had egged him on.
Somehow, through it all, Haley seemed fine. She won in the state championships, she had the fastest two-hundred-meter dash in the state. She sat in the front of the classroom and never looked at me. She even got that poem about the boxing ring published in some magazine. Ms. Lomax made a proud announcement about it during class. But I didn’t care either way. By then, it was March, and almost time for our first seeded game, and that’s what I really cared about.
We never really talked about it again. I didn’t get my scholarship, but I got into the University of Maryland, and I felt good about that. I could try out for the team. And it was better that way, because it would inspire me to work hard over the summer, to get in shape, and then I would show up in the fall, and I would show them I was worth something, that I could be part of something.
Rich
ard got into the Naval Academy. We told him he was never going to get to drink again, that he would never have fun again, and that now he would definitely never get laid. It was all military from here on out. Then a few weeks later, he said he had news for us. He’d been accepted at Princeton.
We hadn’t even known he’d applied there.
My dad is pissed, Richard said. His dad was navy. He’d promised Richard a car if he went to the Naval Academy. But Richard didn’t want to be in the military. He was going to Princeton.
Princeton, we said, shaking our heads. We couldn’t believe it.
So things turned out all right after all. Ham got a small scholarship to Georgia. Alan and Max were going to the University of Maryland, too. We all teased Richard about the fun we would have without him. We told him that whenever he got sick of those uptight prep school pussy dicks he was welcome to come to our dorms and party with us. Princeton wasn’t so far away.
Things had turned out all right. We had been through something together, we agreed, and it had made us stronger.
On the day we heard that the investigation would be dropped, Coach canceled practice and invited us all to his house. It was a bright and cold Friday at the end of February. The front door was open, and there was a sticky note on the storm door telling us to come on inside and take off our shoes. Coach was on the back porch in his winter coat, starting up a gas grill. There was soda in the fridge and chips and Cheetos on the kitchen table. He told us to help ourselves and to meet him in the living room.
Coach’s wife was a dermatologist and his house was big. There was a big, wide window over the sink in the kitchen, and from it I could see the dock, at the end of the sloping lawn, where we’d gone that day our sophomore year, right after we were buzzed in, when we first became part of the team. We’d never actually been back to that dock. Matt Iglehart was the one who was friends with Coach’s son, and when Iglehart went to UVA, none of us really felt right going to hang out there. But as I stood in the kitchen, I remembered the weathered wood, the smell of early fall, the feeling of just starting out. And now I had made it into the house. More than anything else, coming back here, as seniors invited in our own right, made us feel that things were going to be okay.
We sat in the living room, on the couch or the floor, and ate burgers and chips on paper plates. Coach stood in front of the TV, a professional pool game on mute behind him.
My buddy called me personally last night to let me know that they’re totally expunging the investigation. It’s over. He reached down and picked up a plastic grocery bag from the floor next to him. He held it in his fist and looked almost like he was thinking of crying. He said, I’m proud of you boys. You stood tall.
Then he looked at each of us. We remembered past speeches he’d given us. When we had smirked or ignored him. Today we were all looking at him seriously, with great respect. You were gentlemen, he said, and we knew that he meant it.
But it turns out you’re also little boys, he said.
We laughed and looked at each other nervously. We weren’t little boys. Of course not, Coach was just lightening the mood. Then he explained: In some of my conversations with you all about these rumors, I realized you all haven’t been prepared for the birds and the bees.
Those of us closest to him saw that the grocery bag was filled with condoms. We laughed. We turned to tell the others behind us. Soon we were all laughing.
Gentlemen, Coach said, holding his hands up to quiet down our laughter, but smiling, too. It wouldn’t have been appropriate to hand these out in the middle of the investigation. But now. You all are going to be back at your parties—as long as you win all your games. We laughed. Of course we would win our games.
I know you’ve learned a lot. You’ll keep yourselves safe from here on out, right? Because there are gifts girls will give you, you can’t give back. I’m talking about herpes. I’m talking about babies. So, gentlemen—and now Coach was chuckling, we were all laughing—remember these! He reached into the bag and started throwing the condoms at us. He threw handfuls at a time, like confetti. We laughed and caught them. We joked that we needed more; we joked that we needed a larger size. We stuffed our pockets with them.
Then we got down on our hands and knees and searched the floors and the couch cushions and made sure we got them all. We joked that we needed every last one. But we also had to make sure that Coach’s wife didn’t find one of them later and get the wrong idea. Coach didn’t have a son in the house anymore to blame for a stray condom. We were still laughing. We laughed and laughed. We laughed at the thought of Coach trying to explain the condom in the couch cushions to his wife; we laughed at all the silly ways a misunderstanding can occur.
PART II
FINAL GIRL
2000
DRAFT 1
For this college application essay, I’m supposed to write about a “significant experience” that’s “had an impact” on me. But I’m not supposed to write about when I was raped. And . . . I just did. Shoot.
DRAFT 2
For this college application essay, I’m supposed to write about a “significant experience” that’s “had an impact” on me. I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean. My tutor Ms. McConnolly says not to worry too much, the prompt doesn’t really matter.
How the heck do you write a good essay based on a question that doesn’t matter?
It kind of reminds me how everyone says “How are you,” but they don’t really mean it. People ask me how I am all the time, but they don’t actually want to know. Probably because they suspect I’m probably not all that great, after my accident. Which . . . ha ha, I’m not supposed to write about, either.
DRAFT 3
For this college application essay, I’m supposed to write about a “significant experience” that’s “had an impact” on me. My tutor Ms. McConnolly suggested I just start writing and see what comes out.
So: Ranch dressing and swiss cheese. Michael Stipe. Lampedoodle. Freak out. Hang ten. Power down. Whistle stop. Cry for help.
Game over. Try again.
DRAFT 4
For this college application essay, I’m supposed to write about a “significant experience” that’s “had an impact” on me.
To help me think of a good topic, my mom bought me a book of sample college essays to read through. They were all freaking terrrrible.
In one of them, a guy who wants to be an engineer writes about the time he took the family microwave apart. In another one, this girl goes through the etymology of a bunch of interesting words that have been important in her life, because she found words so interesting and wanted to be an English major. In the worst essay of them all, another girl talks about the time her mom took her on a very, very, very special shoe-shopping trip.
All of them made me feel like a monster.
DRAFT 4.5
For this college application essay, I’m supposed to write about a “significant experience” that’s “had an impact” on me. One such experience was the time I took the family microwave apart. The impact was that it exploded. The end.
DRAFT 4.75
For this college application essay, I’m supposed to write about a “significant experience” that’s “had an impact” on me.
I think the word “impact” is really interesting. I looked it up in the thesaurus because that’s more interesting than starting an essay with a dictionary definition. The synonyms for impact are: 1) effect, influence, consequences, OR: 2) crash, smash, bump.
It’s interesting to think about how that second one applies to my life.
So here’s a short list of some crashes and bumps in my life. When I was eight years old, Gretchen Langeloth pushed me off the swing set. The impact was two bones in my elbow against the ground. My cast was hot pink. Everyone wanted to be my friend the next day. By the end of recess, there was no pink left on the cast, it was covered in Sharpie signa
tures. That was the last time in my life that I felt popular.
When I was ten years old, I was the only girl on the baseball team, and I made contact with the ball during a game one time. I hit a double. The impact was my heart exploded. (My feelings have been in a million pieces ever since.)
When I was twelve years old, I snuck out of my bunk at camp and swam across the lake. Because my friend Madeleine had chickened out, there were two boys waiting for me on the other side. So I had both my first and second kiss in the same night. The impact was the slap of our lips. The first boy, especially, kissed too hard.
When I was fourteen, they found a serial killer in the neighborhood next to mine. They found him out because his wife was in a dumpster, cut into fifteen pieces. I couldn’t figure out where you would cut a body to make fifteen pieces. The husband told the police that a burglar had broken into the house and kidnapped her. Later they found out he had told the same story in a different state about a different cut-up wife. I tried to be a lesbian after that but couldn’t do it. I kept chasing boys, and then when I was sixteen, two boys took advantage of me in the back of a car after a party, and everyone at my school knew about it, and they were so mean to me about it, I basically wanted to die. A month later, I had an accident where I almost did die. I drank a lot of vodka both times, I was unconscious when they both happened. So I don’t actually know the impact of either one.
If a tree falls in the forest and you’re passed out, does it have an impact?
I guess the impact was these wads of wet toilet paper Tonya Simpson used to throw at me in the hallway back when I was still in school. They’d stick to the lockers above my head with a sound like crash, smash, bump, or more specifically, schlop (an accident, she said, when one of them hit me in the face). I guess the impact was my dad, breaking the window of the car where I was sitting in the driver’s seat after I took too much Tylenol (an accident, he said, an accident).
True Story Page 6
