“Lula, honey,” Sam nudged him, taking one of the cups of punch out of his hands.
“I hope Sam’s not too hard on you. I know she likes to assign a lot of homework,” he said. Still grinning. What a tremendous goofball.
“Not at all,” I said. “She’s taught me a lot.”
“I bet! She’s one smart lady.” He winked at her. He actually winked. Oh, wow, this guy was unbelievable.
“Yeah. So . . . I’m gonna . . . grab some punch. Nice to meet you, Mr. Lidell.”
“Likewise, Lola!”
Run away! I made for the punchbowl, double time. Watered-down pineapple juice and Sprite never tasted so good. Talk about an awkward situa—
“I forgot to give you your ticket.” Sam Lidell found me by the punchbowl.
“Oh. Thanks.” I slid the ticket into the tiny white purse Janet let me borrow. “Your, ah. Your husband seems nice.”
“He is. He’s got a good heart,” she said. “You know, Lula—”
“Yeah. I know.” I scanned the darkened gym, looking for Rory or Seth, but it was hard to see. Colored lights swung around in time to the Kanye song thumping out of the DJ’s speakers. Maybe I didn’t need anyone to swoop in and save me. Maybe I needed to talk to Samantha Lidell. Clear the air, just like I’d done with Leo. Maybe we needed to put the Humiliating Incident behind us once and for all.
“Mrs. Lidell, do you think—” I hesitated. “Could we talk?” I asked her.
“Sure,” she replied. “Let’s talk.”
“Hi, Mrs. Lidell! Hey, Lula!” one of my ex-classmates, Bethany somethingorother, was standing there by the punchbowl. “Are you coming back to class next semester?”
“Uh. I don’t think so.”
Bethany was still standing there, smiling politely at me.
“Say, I don’t suppose you girls know where they keep the extra trash bags around here?” Mrs. Lidell interjected. “These are getting kind of full, and they didn’t give me a key for the janitor’s closet.”
“Trash bags?” I repeated.
“Oh, I bet there’s some in the locker room!” Bethany said. “They always keep a bunch of supplies and stuff in there.”
“Thanks, Bethany. I’ll try the girls’ locker room, then.” Mrs. Lidell kind of stared at me. “Well, good to see you, Lula. You girls have fun catching up!” She stared at me again. Ohh, now I get it—the girls’ locker room! Nice covert ops, Sam.
I chatted politely with Bethany for a few minutes, finding out that the cafeteria food really sucked this year and that she had no idea that Rory was such a football superstar. I started to reply that I didn’t either, when, thankfully, Tyrone Bosley came up and asked Bethany to dance.
The girls’ locker room was empty and dark except for the lights over the row of showers. Hard shadows crossed the benches. Sacks of basketballs and soccer gear sat in lumps along the painted cinderblock wall. Samantha Lidell leaned against a row of lockers, her arms folded against her chest. My stomach quietly tied itself into a knot. Oh, Lord, let this be over quick.
“So . . . no trash bags?” I asked.
“You wanted to talk.” Mrs. Lidell cut to the chase.
“Yeah. I did. I do. I um.” Well, it was going splendidly so far. Get it together, Lula. “I wanted to apologize. Officially. For coming to your house and . . . behaving the way I did. It was pretty over the top, and I get that now. And I’m sorry.”
“I think I’m the one who should apologize,” she replied. “Do you have any idea how horrible I felt? How horrible I still feel? Every day, Lula. I feel fucking awful.”
Wait a minute, Sam Lidell felt horrible? What on earth for?
“I know I shouldn’t have been so hard on you at the game the other night, for starters,” she went on. “But, Lula, you scared us all half to death. If something had happened to you—if you’d gotten hurt or worse . . .” she shook her head. “I could never have forgiven myself.”
“But you didn’t . . . do anything.” I was totally confused, and still reeling from hearing Mrs. Lidell say the f-word. Sam was, like, wracked with guilt. Over me?
“I sent you out into the night and didn’t see you again for four months! And that whole time I kept thinking, what if I’d given you a ride home? What if I’d made you stay until you calmed down? What if I had just been a little more understanding, somehow? What if I hadn’t laughed at you? Maybe you wouldn’t have left town.”
I felt a sudden sting at the corners of my eyes, remembering her laugh.
“It wasn’t just you. I got sort of . . . overwhelmed with everything.” I tried to explain. “I mean, I know I humiliated myself in front of you and all, but that wasn’t your fault.”
“And I didn’t mean for you to leave that night feeling humiliated. Or feeling like there was something wrong with you. With being who you are. It’s all right for you to be gay, Lula. Or bisexual, or just still trying to figure it out. And I understand why you might have thought—why you thought of me that way. Kids have crushes on their teachers all the time. Especially teaching English—I stand there and fill your heads with poetry all day long. Trust me, if I was forcing you to solve quadratic equations, you wouldn’t think I was so great.”
“I think I’d still think you’re great,” I said. “Regardless of your syllabus. Your coolness transcends quadratic equations.”
“My coolness,” she sighed. “Kiddo, my coolness is in permanent storage.”
“The thing is, when I came to your house that night . . . I really . . . I wasn’t thinking,” I confessed. “I wasn’t thinking about, you know. That I was putting you in an awkward position, or whatever. My friend Jay thinks I was just acting out, but it was more like . . . I dunno, it was like suddenly my best friend in the world was on this whole other planet, like a total parallel universe, and you were the only other person I ever . . .” I caught myself. Parallel universe? “Sorry. I’m not explaining this right. Sometimes I’m so bad at just . . . being a normal person around other people. Jay thinks it’s because I watch too much TV.”
“Your friend Jay may be right about the TV,” Mrs. Lidell said. “But if you haven’t figured it out by now, then let me assure you, Lula—nobody’s normal. And pretty much everybody you meet in life is trying to figure out how to be a so-called “normal person.” As if it’s some fixed point that you reach, like zero degrees Celsius. But everybody’s just who they are. Weird, flawed, good at some things, bad at others. There’s no one single person who’s doing everything right all the time. Trust me on that. There is no such thing as normal..”
“So, what you’re telling me is, not only are there no normal people on this planet, but nobody’s even figured out how to pretend? Not even you?”
“Least of all me.”
“Well, shit,” I said, and Mrs. Lidell laughed. “I’m never gonna figure this out, am I?”
“Listen, Lula, you’re, what, seventeen? Eighteen, now? This isn’t the final version. You’ve got years to figure out who you are and what you want out of life. Heck, I’m still trying to figure out what I want out of life. When I was your age, all I wanted was to run away and marry Paul Westerberg.”
“Who’s Paul Westerberg?”
“Look it up,” she sighed. “God, I’m getting old. Look, my point is, you can be whatever you want. And whatever you want to be is just fine, as long as you’re true to yourself. You can even change, if you realize that what you thought you wanted doesn’t make you happy. There are no boundaries. Except that you can’t be my girlfriend. Okay?”
“Okay.” After everything that had happened, I realized that I didn’t want to be Mrs. Lidell’s girlfriend. I wished we could sit in her office and talk about Paris, though. Like we used to. “Can we just be regular friends? I mean, can we not be all awkward if we see each other again?”
“When we see each other again,” she corrected. “And, yes, we can definitely not be awkward.
I COULD NOT BELIEVE MY EYES. Rory’s Homecoming date was Speed Briggs. And, instead
of being a scandal, everybody loved them. They were both attempting to breakdance to Biz Markie, and everybody was gathered around them in a big circle, shouting, “Go Rory! Go Rory!” and then, “Go Speed! Go Speed!” Some of the girls from our class would take turns dancing with them, and then they would all dance, shouting the lyrics along with the chorus: Oh baby you! you got what I need! but you say he’s just a friend! yeah you say he’s just a friend! I leaned against the wall, one of the Homecoming Castaways, watching from afar. I guess if I’d had more courage, I could’ve gone and joined in with them. But I didn’t want to ruin it for him. I’d never seen him like that before. Just being silly. Having so much fun.
“Pretty crazy, huh?” Seth walked up from out of the crowd. Wearing sneakers with his suit. And a pirate eyepatch. “There’s a movement afoot to crown them Homecoming Kings.”
“They should be,” I shouted over the music. Seth took off his eye patch and we stood and watched them for a minute.
“Speed just told me he gave up drinking for him,” Seth said, nodding toward Rory.
“Wow. That sounds serious.”
“Could be. You having fun?” Seth asked, rubbing his eye.
“Fun? Yeah, it’s, uh . . .” I looked around at the Castaway Corner where I’d been hiding most of the night, with its fake ocean and volleyball net decorated with plastic starfish. “It’s like gym class meets Lost.”
Seth laughed and said something I couldn’t hear over everyone cheering for Speed’s attempt at the moonwalk.
“What did you say?” I shouted.
“Pretty loud in here. You wanna go outside?” He leaned in.
“Outside? Sure.” He brushed his knuckles against my wrist, by accident, I thought. Then he threaded his fingers through mine. Suddenly I was holding hands with Sexy Seth Brock. It seemed like every girl in the gym was watching us leave. I didn’t blame them. Why am I holding hands with Sexy Seth? Even Mrs. Lidell, smoking a cigarette under the dogwood, hiked an eyebrow at me. I shrugged my shoulders in response.
“My truck’s parked over here,” Seth pointed to the senior lot. “I, uh. Brought something for you. Rory said you might show up.”
“He invited me,” I tried to explain. “What about your, um—your date?”
“I’m flying solo on this one.” He smiled back at me over his shoulder. My head was sort of mildly exploding as we wove through the cars until we got to the darkened corner of the lot where Seth’s banged-up blue Chevy pickup was parked. He reached in his pocket for his keys and unlocked the doors. He let the tailgate down. There were thick wool blankets spread across the bed.
“Wait right there,” he said, running around to the driver’s side door. My heart was going a mile a minute. What was this? I was standing there with this guy I barely knew in a dark parking lot, and his truck bed was lined with blankets. Janet always told me, if some boy tried to get me into a compromising position, I should just leave. But he dedicated those songs to me. He tried to, anyway. Was I being compromised yet?
The window in the back of the cab slid open, and I jumped. I heard music—Seth had turned the radio on. I heard the unmistakable hollow click-chunk of a cassette sliding into a cassette deck. There was a hiss, and then the sound of wiry guitars drifted out to meet the night.
“Can you hear it all right back there?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Perfect.” Seth got out and hopped up into the back of the truck. He stood at the end of the truck bed, offering me his hand.
“Come on up,” he said. I stopped being nervous and climbed up into the truck bed, careful to keep my skirt from flying up. I sat down on the raised hump of the wheel well. Seth sat on the one opposite me.
“You like the music?”
“Yeah. It’s good.” I was pretty sure I’d heard the song before, on Midnight Pete.
“This is the mixtape I made for you. Here, this is the case for it.” Seth reached into his shirt pocket and handed me an empty cassette box. I read the tiny ink letters crammed onto the spine. Underground Initiations to Awful Bliss: Seth’s Bad & Rare GBV Greatest Hits Vol. 001. The first song was “Hardcore UFOs.”
“It’s an actual tape, too.” I was impressed. It was a lot harder to make an actual mixtape than just burn a CD. “I’m glad I kept my old Walkman.”
“I told you I was gonna bombard you with Guided by Voices,” he said. Was he blushing?
“This is—thanks. This is cool.” I didn’t know what else to say. I wished we were somewhere else. Somewhere with people. I wished Rory was there. I wished I knew what to say. I wished this was easy.
“You wanna, um . . . you wanna look at the stars while we listen to it?” Seth knelt down in the truck bed, stretching out. “I parked away from all the lights and stuff so we could see better.”
“Seth—” I laughed. I couldn’t help it. This whole thing felt strange and silly.
“What?” he sat up.
“Look at the stars? I mean, seriously! What are you up to?”
“I just . . . I thought it’d be cool. We could listen to the tape together and look up at the stars. It’s a nice night. And I made this tape kind of . . . specifically for the purpose of looking up at the stars. With you.”
“With me?”
“Well,” Seth hesitated. “I mean—yeah. Of course. With you.”
“But—this doesn’t strike you as odd? You’re not weirded out by this in the least?”
“Weirded out? By what?”
“You and me! Out here like some kind of . . . I don’t even know what. What is this? I don’t get why you’re being so nice to me. Don’t you get it? I’m Weird Girl. You’re Sexy Seth. You’re the quarterback of the undefeated varsity football team. I’m a high school dropout. I mean, pardon my French, but what the fuck?”
“Geez, Lula.” Seth raked his hair back. “I reckon I don’t get it. I thought you were different from these girls that just expect me to be Mr. Perfect Quarterback. But you make it sound like we’re in some . . . teenage high school movie or something. You know, I used to be this spacey little kid, always listening to my headphones. People used to call me weird, too, before they figured out I can throw a football. You think I don’t get how people act? You think you’re really just some loser I’m not supposed to be friends with because I’m this big jock with my head too far up my ass to know who you really are?”
“I—” I had no snappy comeback at the ready. “But you don’t know. You don’t know who I really am. For crying out loud, I don’t even know.”
“I know we were probably both lying awake in our beds at night, listening to Midnight Pete on the radio when we were kids, hearing the same songs and not even realizing it. I know you’re Rory’s best friend. I’ve read everything you wrote. I know you left school to go live with your mom. I know they thought you were missing for a while. I don’t know—” He looked away. “The only thing I don’t get about you is why you left town like you did. But I guess you figured you had to. You’re smart, and you’re brave, Lula—”
“No, I’m not. It wasn’t so smart of me to leave. It was stupid and selfish.”
“Maybe it was selfish, but it was still brave. And you are smart. Hey, you’re in college already. Even if it is just community college. I dunno, maybe you’re right that I’m this dumb high school jock. Or whatever. Maybe compared to you, I am.”
“Seth, you’re not a dumb jock.” I sat down beside him in the truck bed. Crossed my legs and tucked my skirt around me. “And I’m not that smart. I’m not that great. My own mother could care less about me. In the past six months, I’ve managed to piss off everybody that ever loved me, I ran away from home, and I’ve kissed two girls on the mouth. I also did some heavy canvassing for The Campaign to Arrest Dick Cheney for War Crimes. Now, are you sure you don’t wanna go back up to the gym and find yourself a nice nubile cheerleader to make out with?”
At that, Seth threw his head back and cackled. “That’s what I dig about you, Lula. You say the craziest stuff.
”
“But it’s not crazy! It’s true!” And I told him the story of going up to DC with Trey, working for Tracy’s dad until I had enough money for the train ticket out west. I told him about my mother and Walter. Riding horses. Learning how to drive. And he just sat there and listened to it all.
“Now, where did kissing the girls figure into all that adventure?”
I sighed. How could I begin to explain myself when I still didn’t understand?
“I’m not sure I—I’m not sure I know how it figures in.”
“Are you dating anybody right now?”
“No.” Dating. That word sounded so nice and normal. Dating was such a wholesome activity, so many light years away from showing up at somebody’s house in the middle of the night and laying one on them in the desperate hope that they’ll save you from your own edgeless lonesome.
“The truth, Seth, is . . .” What was the truth? I wished the truth was some fixed, solid little box I could explain and describe and understand. But the truth was this wobbly, gelled thing. I had this idea of my heart as this separate being that just spilled over everywhere, consuming whatever fell in its path. Like the Blob in that old movie. “The truth is, I don’t know what I’m doing. I always thought—I always just had it in the back of my mind that Rory and I would end up together. And then he realized he was gay, and it took me a long time to realize that we weren’t going to be what I thought we were. Then I . . . met this girl—a girl I thought I understood. I thought she understood me. And I thought maybe that meant we should . . . be together somehow. But I misread it—she was just trying to be a friend. And then there was another girl, a friend of mine, but she was just . . . using me to get back at someone.”
“So what do you want? Deep down, do you really want to be with a girl? Or a boy?”
“Deep down, I want . . . I want somebody who sees me. I mean, really sees me. Sees everything I am, even all the horrible things I am. My dirty mouth and my stupid X-Files action figures and my total failure at graduating from high school and my messed-up mom and my crazy grandparents. I just want somebody who sees all that but . . . loves me anyway.”
Weird Girl and What's His Name Page 24
