Good Girls

by Laura Ruby

  Now Ash stands next to the table, glaring at me, at us.

  “Welcome to Slut City,” says Pam, her voice like a refrigerator. “What do you want?”

  Ash doesn’t answer. Her face relaxes, and she flicks at her eyebrow ring nervously. She sighs and stares at the floor. “I’ve been a jerk.”

  “Yes,” I say. “You have.”

  “Yeah,” says Pam. “You have.”

  “Ditto,” Cindy says.

  Nobody breathes for a minute. Then Pam crosses her arms over her chest. “That’s it? That’s all you’re going to say?”

  The muscles in Ash’s jaw grind and shift, and I’m afraid she’s going to tell Pam to screw herself. They have completely different styles and attitudes, but the same sort of fierceness. Inside the rings of liner and shadow, their eyes sparkle with hostility. But instead of telling Pam off, Ash says, “No, that’s not all I’m going to say, as if it’s any of your business. Audrey, this is all my fault. I just didn’t want you to get hurt like I got hurt. And I was upset that you didn’t tell me the whole story. But I shouldn’t have yelled at you. I’m sorry.”

  Pam and Cindy glance at me. I know there’s more to it, and she owes me, but I can’t stay mad. I miss her. “That’s okay,” I say.

  Pam sighs and Cindy shrugs, as if to say, Oh, well, I guess that’s the end of this little friendship, see ya. But Joelle claps her hands together in relief. “Thank GOD that’s over. I was so stressed I thought I would have to get a prescription.” She climbs into a seat next to Cindy. “Can I have a fry?”

  Just like that, it’s the five of us. I don’t have to ask my dad to help me get the materials for the Hamlet stage set; Cindy’s dad has an oversized van. Over Thanksgiving break, she drives me over to the Home Depot to buy wood, paint, and other supplies. Ash, Pam, and Joelle insist on coming. Pam is a bad influence on Ash; there’s enough chain-smoking to fill the entire van with a thick gray cloud. I roll down the windows to let some out. We’re like a traveling five-alarm fire.

  “Do the two of you have to smoke at the same time?” Joelle says.

  Ash and Pam say “Yes.”

  “I’m freezing, and my clothes are starting to stink,” Cindy says. “Smoking is so gross. I don’t know how you guys can do it.”

  Pam says, “You and Joelle could have stayed home.”

  “I’m not even sure there’s going to be enough room for the wood with all of us in the car,” I say, my eyes stinging.

  “You would have missed me too much if I didn’t come with you!” says Joelle.

  “Didn’t you have a rehearsal or something?” Pam asks her.

  “Yes,” Joelle says irritably. “But it was only Polonius. I can’t stand Polonius.”

  “Joelle’s got a crush on Ophelia,” I explain.

  “You have a crush on a chick?” says Pam. “That’s kind of cool.”

  “It’s O, not Ophelia,” Joelle says. “And he’s not a chick. He’s a guy. And he’s hot.”

  “Guys, schmuys,” Pam says.

  It’s Cindy’s turn to explain: “Pam’s sworn off the male species.”

  “Really?” says Ash, blowing smoke out of her nose, like a cartoon bull.

  We park the van and stumble into the store. “Watch this,” says Pam. She takes my list, picks out the cutest guy in the lumber department, and goes to work. “Hi,” she says, in her honey-gravel voice, “I was wondering if we could—oops!” She drops the list on the floor. She turns away from him, bends from the waist, and picks up the paper. She’s wearing a skirt, and the visual is just short of porn. “Sorry,” she says sheepishly when she stands up again.

  “That’s okay,” the guy says. You can see the Adam’s apple go up and down a few times as he tries to swallow.

  “We just need a little help finding all these things, and we’re not sure where to look,” she says. “Can you help us?” She hands him the list and leans over so that her breasts push up against his arm. His eyes are wide, and he stammers, “Uh, sure. This way.” The lumber guy takes us up and down the aisles, pointing out this wood and that wood and grinning like an idiot whenever Pam smiles. He gets us what we need and has it loaded onto a cart by three more grinning idiots in orange aprons, all moving so fast that they’re practically blurred. “Three blind mice,” whispers Ash. “See how they run.” Pam thanks the cute guy for all his help by giving his butt a swift pat, turning tail, and leaving him in the dust. As we walk away, we hear him squeaking, “Wait, can I have your number? Wait!”

  “Nice,” says Ash when we are in the paint department.

  “Oh, I could do that,” Joelle says.

  “Any girl can do it,” says Pam. “That’s the point.”

  I snort. “And they say girls are easy. Girls are the sluts.”

  “And we’re the biggest sluts of all,” Pam says. “Well, except for Cindy.”

  “What do you mean?” Ash says. Then her eyes widen. “Are you still a virgin?”

  A man and a woman wearing matching shirts stop comparing cans of ceiling paint to gape at us.

  “Shhh!” Cindy says. “Don’t say it so loud.”

  “I didn’t,” says Ash.

  “And don’t look so surprised, either.”

  “I’m not surprised.”

  “Yes, you are,” Cindy says. She twirls a lock of over-dyed, overfried hair around her finger. “I don’t know what the big deal is. Lots of people are virgins. I want to do it with someone I love. Is that such a bad thing?”

  I shuffle my feet and will not look at Ash. “No, I think that’s a good thing.”

  “Someday her prince will come,” says Pam sarcastically.

  “Sure, tons of those around,” Ash says.

  Cindy looks wounded. “I like guys. Just because you hate them doesn’t mean that I have to.”

  “Of course it doesn’t,” Joelle says, putting her arm around Cindy’s shoulders. “Don’t let the mean girls bother you. They’re dried-up, bitter old hags. Princes don’t like bitter old hags. They like nice girls like us.”

  Ash jerks her head at Joelle. “She’s a virgin, too.”

  “You?” Pam and Cindy shout at once. “Get out!”

  Smiling proudly, Joelle tosses her head. “Out.”

  “But you’re an actress,” Cindy says.

  Joelle stamps her foot. “Now, what’s that supposed to mean? Everyone always assumes…” She sees the matchy couple sneaking glances at us. “Oh, hello,” she says. “Don’t mind us. We’re rehearsing a scene for a new movie.”

  “Yeah,” says Ash. “It’s called The Slut City World Tour. Want tickets?”

  As if his wife might get ideas, the man drags her away from us by the arm. Pam snickers and Cindy gets nearly hysterical, she thinks it’s so funny. It takes more than two hours to buy six cans of paint, a package of screws, ten hinges, and a few doorknobs because Joelle won’t stop singing, “The girls are pretty in Slut City” and “In Slut City you won’t get no pity,” which she accompanies with high kicks and semi-spastic tap dancing.

  Pam shakes a box of nails and holds it up to her ears like a seashell. “I wouldn’t mind boys so much if they knew how to give a girl an orgasm.”

  Ash agrees. “They should offer anatomy lessons at school as a public service.”

  “I’m not sure it would help,” says Cindy, shaking her head gravely. “Boys have concentration problems.”

  Pam replaces the box of nails. “Ash, you went out with that guitar guy, what’s his name, for a while, right? The one in the band?”

  “Jimmy,” Ash says, looking like someone just poured vinegar into her mouth.

  “So was he any good?”

  “Good at playing the guitar?”

  “Good at sex.”

  Ash flushes sweetheart pink. “Yeah, he was.”

  “Really?” Pam says. “How good?”

  “Good,” says Ash. And I know it’s true. Not because she was so free with the details, but because she always had this little smile after she’d been with Ji
mmy, this sweet, private smile. I wonder how Jimmy could have done it, how he could have made Ash smile like she was keeping the best sort of secret and then leave her without looking back.

  Pam’s not finished with her questions. “So we’re talking orgasms on a regular basis?”

  Ash squirms. “Jesus!”

  “Pam gets in everyone’s business,” Cindy says. “She’ll talk about anything.”

  “I’m eighteen years old,” Pam says. “I’m a legal adult, and I’ll talk about adult things if I want to.”

  Ash is biting her lip. “With our clothes on,” she says.

  “Huh?” I say.

  Even redder now, Ash says, “If we kept our clothes on, then I would, you know. Something about the pressure…”

  Joelle shivers. “Orgasms are so cool. You feel nice all over.”

  Pam’s laughter hangs in the air. “Honey, a cookie makes you feel nice all over. You probably haven’t had an orgasm yet.”

  “I haven’t?” says Joelle, and frowns. “Oh. Well, that sucks.”

  “A lot of girls don’t,” says Pam.

  “That really sucks,” Joelle says. “How is that fair?”

  “You can always take care of it by yourself, you know,” Pam tells her. “Do you have a shower massage?”

  “Ew!” Joelle says.

  I’m still confused about Ash. “With your clothes on?”

  Pam shakes her head at my stupidity. To Ash, she says, “With guys, it’s so easy. Not so easy for us. And it’s not like you get any actual help from them. Sometimes I’d just give up and blow the guy. You can keep your clothes on for that. You can wear a winter coat and they don’t care.” She’s dropped the honey out of her honey-gravel voice but seems sad somehow, or maybe disappointed. She sounds like some old barfly talking about her tragic, messed-up youth. We don’t know what to say.

  To change the subject or to cheer her up, Joelle decides to go back to her high-kick song-and-dance routine, this time singing, “Here a ho, there a ho, everywhere a ho, ho.” A couple of goons in flannel—one short and light, the other tall and brown—amble by, smirking like fools. “You girls want any help?”

  “Why?” says Ash sharply. “You work here?”

  “No,” said the light one. “But I’m sure I can find whatever it is you need.” The brown one laughs.

  Joelle turns on her sexiest smile and runs her finger down the light one’s chest. “And what do you think we need?”

  He jumps a little, as if Joelle’s finger were electrified. “Well, uh, I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?” says Joelle. She turns to us. “Girls, did you hear that? They don’t know what we need.”

  Ash elbows Pam, and Pam’s back to her smirking, sassy self, a forty-year-old divorcee on a hip TV show. “They don’t know what we need?” Pam says. “Now, there’s a freaking surprise.”

  The Third Time

  (and Fourth and Fifth and…)

  Early September, and this was what I needed: Luke, Luke, and more Luke. School started, and we passed each other in the hallways. My throat closed up as if I had some wicked allergy. He said, “Hey,” and I couldn’t speak, so I flashed my teeth in what I hoped was a brilliant smile but was afraid was the grimace of a constipated baboon.

  “You avoiding me?” he said at the first party after school started, at Ray Dale’s house on the second Saturday of the month. I wasn’t big on parties during the school year, but I had been frantic to go to this one because I thought I’d see Luke there. I did, but he had to torture me first. For close to an hour, me and Ash watched him make the rounds, flirting with every girl in the place. Nearly puking with anxiety, I was digging around in the fridge for something nonalcoholic to drink when he spoke.

  “What?” I said. I dropped a can of Pepsi on my foot. “Ow!”

  “Are you okay?”

  I winced. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  Ash, who was leaning against the kitchen counter, said, “Hey, Luke.”

  Luke turned. “Oh, sorry, Ash. Didn’t see you. What’s up?”

  “Not much,” she said, giving him her own monkey grimace. She nodded at me. “I’ll be in the other room.”

  Luke called after her, “Nardo’s in the basement.”

  “Yeah,” Ash said. “Thanks.”

  Luke turned back to me. “So,” he said.

  “So.” My foot was killing me. I held it up, like a bear with a thorn in its paw.

  Luke grabbed a bunch of paper towels off the roll hanging from the wall and wrapped some ice in them. “Sit,” he told me, pushing me into one of the kitchen chairs. He pulled up another chair and placed my foot between his knees. After sliding off my flip-flop, he pressed the ice to my foot. “Better?”

  “Yeah.” And not because of the ice, either. He seemed to have some sort of foot fetish. Not that I minded.

  He held the ice on my foot for a few minutes. “So you’re not avoiding me?”

  “No,” I said. I thought it was a retarded question, especially after the marathon flirting he’d been doing at the party. “Why would you think that?”

  He peeked up at me. “I don’t know. I must be nervous around you or something.”

  This made me laugh. “That must be it.”

  Luke pulled the ice away from my foot. “I think you’re going to live.”

  I didn’t know what it was, but just being near him sometimes turned me into a completely different person, this say-anything person. It was a person I wanted to be, but also a person I was afraid of. If she’d say anything, what would she do?

  “Are you sure it’s all right?” I said. “I might need more medical attention.”

  “Medical attention,” he said, pulling a shifty little grin. “I don’t think you need me for that. You’re a genius, right? You can probably diagnose and treat yourself.”

  And then, sometimes, I’d come rushing back to myself—the tense Audrey, the hyper Audrey. “Shut up,” I said. I’d meant for it to sound teasing and sexy, but it came out whiny and annoyed. I was tired of everyone getting on my case for the work I did.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I was just joking.”

  “I know. I’m just…Look, I’m no genius, okay?”

  He paused. “You did skip a couple of grades.”

  “One grade. Third grade. And not because I’m smarter than everyone else. Only cause I’m a finisher.”

  “A finisher,” he said. “Sounds like the title of a kung fu movie. The Finisher.” He punched the air.

  “It wouldn’t make a very good movie.” For some reason, I felt like I should explain it to him. “Like, you get an assignment in English class to read five chapters in whatever book. How many times do you actually read all five of them when you’re supposed to?”

  “People read books? That’s so strange. I thought they were just decoration.”

  “Ha-ha,” I said.

  “I’ve been known to read the occasional book,” he told me. “I finished Moby Dick. Funny.”

  “You thought Moby Dick was funny?”

  “Yeah. Mostly, though, I skim. I’m more of a skimmer.” The tips of his fingers skimming up my calf demonstrated his skills.

  Moby Dick should have distracted me, the skimming should have distracted me, but I was in Audrey Overthink mode and there was no stopping me. “I read all my chapters,” I said. “Every word. Twice, or maybe three times. Every assignment I get, I finish as fast as I can. Papers, homework, posters, essay tests, whatever. If the rest of you guys finished everything you were supposed to when you were supposed to, you would have skipped grades, too.”

  “Come on. You’ve never blown off a homework assignment? Or a chapter? Not once?”

  “No,” I said. “When I was in kindergarten, the first day, we got this purple workbook, right? With all these little exercises in it, spelling and colors and that kind of thing. And I was so excited that I sat down and finished the entire book, beginning to end, then and there. I thought my teacher was going to have a heart attack w
hen I showed her.”

  “I feel one coming on now,” Luke said.

  “It’s like I can’t not finish,” I said. “I don’t know why.” Which was a lie. I knew why. If I didn’t study as hard as I could for a test, I could fail. And if I failed one test, I could fail two. If I failed two, I could fail them all. And if I failed them all, then I wouldn’t go to college. And if I couldn’t go to college, I couldn’t study architecture or design or anything else, and my life would be ruined. Because of the one test I didn’t study for, the one chapter I didn’t read. That’s all it takes. One mistake, and everything you’ve worked for is gone. It happens all the time. It happened to my parents. I came along and blasted everything to pieces. Instead of a graduate degree for my mom and a law degree for my dad, they did the right thing and had a wedding. And they didn’t even get the baby brother to complete the family portrait.

  Luke said nothing for a few minutes, and I figured that I’d ruined the mood with this lecture on my deranged study habits. Who the hell wants to talk about kindergarten workbooks? Sex-y.

  Luke stood and pulled me to my feet, or foot, because I couldn’t put any real weight on my right one.

  “This really hurts,” I said. “Who knew Pepsi cans were so deadly?”

  “Here,” he said. “Let me help you.” He tossed the wet wad of paper towels in the sink and swung me up into his arms, which was totally terrifying because he’s not that big and I’m not that small.

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” I said as he carried me toward the stairs. On the way, we passed Ray Dale, who raised his fist in the air and said, “Dude! Caveman!”

  “You’re not going to drop me, are you?” I said as Luke took the stairs.

  “You doubt my animal strength?”