Wicked Jealous: A Love Story

by Palmer, Robin

  As my brother looked at me, confused, I shrugged. So much for Nicola clamming up whenever she was around my brother. It was like someone had given her mouth a laxative.

  A guy with red hair and a smattering of freckles across his cheekbones looked up from what seemed to be a very big textbook. “Max, could you better define ‘little bit’ for us?” he asked. “I think I speak for the group when I say that would be helpful.” He looked at the group. “Right, guys?”

  The group looked at each other and shrugged.

  The guy sighed. “Precision is such an underrated virtue. I’m Ethan, by the way,”

  “But we all call him Doc,” Max said. “He’s pre-med at UCLA. We found him off Craigslist when my roommate Peter backed out when he got that gig as Ryan Reynolds’ stand-in in his new movie.”

  If there was a Ryan Reynolds look-alike living here, I wouldn’t care how messy it was. I nodded. “Got it.” With his green polo shirt and brown khakis, Doc was the most normal looking of the bunch.

  “I like your glasses, by the way,” Ethan/Doc said.

  “Thanks,” I said. I couldn’t believe how much mileage I was getting out of them. Even some homeless woman on the street had complimented me on them.

  Doc turned to Max. “So. As you were saying. A ‘little bit’ would mean . . . ?”

  “Kind of around . . . a month?”

  I waited for a chorus of annoyed “Dude, are you kidding?!’s, but all that happened was that Noob let out a loud “Phew!” as he finally managed to free his arm.

  For good or for bad, these guys seemed very laid back.

  Over by Narc, an Asian guy wearing a Boston Celtics hat sneezed.

  “God bless you,” I said.

  “Thanks,” he said as he took out a tissue. “Please tell me that you don’t wear perfume,” he said after he was done blowing his nose.

  I shook my head. “I don’t.” Now that I was dressing like a girl, it was probably something to look into, but I found it gross.

  He sneezed again.

  “God bless you again.”

  “Than—” he managed to get out before another sneeze ripped through him. This one was sort of a sneeze/cough hybrid.

  I waited for it to happen again, but other than a donkey-sounding throat-clearing sound, he was quiet. He smiled. “Thanks.” He turned to Max. “You didn’t mention how polite your sister is.”

  “That’s because he didn’t mention he had a sister,” Narc said.

  “Yeah, well, still—none of you guys bless me.”

  “Don’t you have to be, like, a priest to do that?” came Noob’s voice from over in the corner. I looked over to see him trying, unsuccessfully, to get up into a headstand.

  “It looks like he’s trying to do a headstand,” I whispered to Max.

  “I am trying to do a headstand!” Noob called out happily as I made a mental note to remember that what the guy lacked for brains he made up in superhero-level hearing. “You know those little video screens in elevators? Last week when I was making a delivery at this ad agency—I’m doing this bike messenger gig for the summer ‘cause it’s hard to get a sculpting gig around here—I saw something that said that doing a headstand for forty-five minutes a day, three times a week, was good for your heart.”

  “Are you sure it didn’t say forty-five minutes of cardio three times a week?” Max asked.

  Noob flopped over again. “Huh. I don’t know. Maybe.” He looked at me. “I never did very well on the reading-comprehension parts of standardized tests.”

  The Celtics fan sniffled. “Okay, so you don’t wear perfume, but do you by any chance wear scented body lotion?”

  I shook my head.

  “Huh. I wonder what’s causing this allergy attack then.”

  Narc shook his head. “Dude, what aren’t you allergic to?” He turned to me. “That’s Wheezer.”

  “You know, Wheezer, I keep meaning to tell you, I think it’s rad that you’re named after a band,” Noob said. “Especially an old-time one. You know that sweater song they sing? It’s, like, actually called ‘The Sweater Song’—”

  “I’m not. There’s an h in there,” Wheezer said, “‘cause of, you know”—before he could finish, he sneezed again—“the fact that sometimes, when the attack is really bad, I start to wheeze,” he wheezed.

  Nicola and I looked at each other. Allergy attacks, arms stuck in banisters—what was I getting myself into?

  Nicola let out a scream.

  “What?!” I cried.

  She pointed to the couch. “There’s something moving underneath that blanket to the side of the couch!” she cried. In what was an excellent move on her part (albeit a very nonfeminist one) she reached out for my brother’s arm. However, in her nervousness, she overshot the mark and ended up grabbing his chest instead. Which, from the look on his face, freaked him out.

  “Sorry,” she mumbled as she uprighted herself. “I was just . . . see, I . . . you know what? Forget it,” she said, staring at the floor.

  He smiled at her. “That’s okay.” Uh-oh. I knew I’d be spending my afternoon listening to Nicola dissect the twenty possible meanings of my brother’s smile.

  He turned to the blanket. “Hey Blush, what’re you doing? Stop hiding and say hi to my sister.”

  Very slowly, the blob on the floor stood up and the blanket fell to reveal a very tall, very large, very hot African American guy. “Nice to meet you,” he said softly, with his eyes to the ground.

  How a person that large had a voice that soft was hard to imagine. Also hard to imagine was how he managed to stay hidden under a blanket for that long and not suffocate.

  “It’s nice to meet you, too,” I said shyly. He looked so uncomfortable that it was making me uncomfortable.

  “He’s a little on the shy side,” Max whispered, “which is why we call him Blush, but don’t worry—he’ll warm up.”

  I nodded. I knew what it was like to be shy. Maybe we could just hang out and be shy together and not talk.

  Before I could ask if everyone in the house had a nickname and would I have to get one, too, the door opened and a guy with a shaved head and wearing an ANARCHY RULES T-shirt under a leather jacket and black skinny jeans came striding in. “Reason three thousand eight hundred seventy-six why I hate this dumb city—the traffic!” he fumed as he began to pace. “You’d think that at some point the brain trust here could get it together and get a decent public-transportation system up and running, but no! That would mean giving up their yoga and spin classes and fancy fresh-squeezed juices chock-full of antioxidants that make you live to a hundred and twenty, even though with the way things are going now with the government and the economy and the environment, who really wants to live to a hundred and twenty?!”

  Scared, I looked over at my brother, but he didn’t look too concerned.

  The guy stopped pacing. “Huh. I think I just broke through my creative block and came up with my next spoken-word piece.” He looked at me. “Who are you?”

  “Thor, this is Simone, my sister,” Max said happily. “She’s going to be living here with us for a while. She’s awesome. You’re gonna love her. And this is her friend Nicola—”

  “Who won’t be living here, but will be visiting a lot.” She looked at Max. “But not, you know, to the point where it looks like I’m a stalker or anything, because I’m totally not.” She looked at Thor. “Cool name.”

  “His real name is Larry,” Narc said.

  “Yeah, but what looks better scrawled in the lower right-hand side of a canvas?” Thor asked. “Larry or Thor?” He shook his head. “I still can’t believe my parents would give me such a conventional name. There’s a lot of passive aggressiveness in that kind of a move.” He turned to me. “Thor was the god of thunder.”

  That made sense. “So
you’re a painter?” I asked.

  “Painting is one of my mediums, yes,” he replied. “But I don’t like to limit myself. I also do a lot of spoken-word and performance art.”

  “And he plays the ukelele,” Noob said. “Isn’t that rad?”

  The idea of someone so angry strumming a little happy-sounding ukelele was a little . . .

  “I know that probably seems ironic to you,” Thor said, as if reading my mind. “But it’s supposed to be. I’m very into irony. It’s part of my personal artistic credo. So what if it’s a happy instrument? With all the war, and poverty, and corruption in this world, don’t you think we could use a little happiness? I mean, this government of ours—”

  “Okay, so now you’ve met everyone,” Max interrupted. Leave it to my brother to keep things from getting heavy. “So like I said, Simone’s going to be with us for the next month. And just to get a few rules out of the way, I know she’s beautiful, but (a) she’s only sixteen,” he went on, “and more importantly, (b) she’s my little sister.”

  And leave it to him to embarrass me. “What are you doing?!” I hissed.

  “What?”

  “I keep telling you to stop with the beautiful thing.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s not true,” I hissed louder.

  “It so is.”

  “Omigod—I keep telling her the same exact thing!” cried Nicola. “I had no idea we had so much in common!”

  I cringed. I didn’t know who I was more embarrassed for—myself or Nicola.

  Max looked out at the group. “Guys, is my sister not beautiful?”

  Okay, question answered. I was definitely more embarrassed for myself. As my shoulders scrunched up to my ears, I wondered if Blush would mind if I borrowed his blanket.

  “Hold on—is that totally wrong for me to say because I’m her brother?” he asked. “I don’t want to come off as all creepy—”

  “No, man, it’s cool,” Thor said. “You’re expressing yourself. That’s key. Our government might not like it, but—”

  “I think your sister is totally hot,” Noob said. “She could totally be an avatar.”

  Narc nodded. “For sure.” He turned to me. “Just so you know, that’s like the highest compliment he could ever give you.” Then he yawned.

  How did girls who were actually pretty deal with this? Maybe that’s why supermodels always looked so pissed off, because they found the compliments so embarrassing. That, or because they were hungry.

  “I think you guys need to stop,” came Blush’s soft voice. “You’re embarrassing her.”

  “Thanks,” I mumbled.

  “Okay. Well, anyway, like I said, just be cool with her, okay?” Max said. “Just make her feel at home.” He turned to me. “I think this is going really well so far, don’t you?”

  Sure. If you were comparing it to getting a cavity filled without Novocaine.

  Originally, I was going to sleep on the couch (“We didn’t get it off the street or anything, so it’s clean,” Max explained. “Wheezer’s mom lent it to us after she saw the first one we had. Which we had gotten off the street.”). But because Max said that as cool as his roommates were, he had woken up that day realizing he couldn’t bear the idea of walking out some morning to discover one of them staring at me while I was sleeping, he decided I should sleep in the attic.

  Which, if it were all done up or something—like you see on those design shows on HGTV or something—would’ve been cool. But this was like an attic attic. Complete with dusty bikes and cardboard boxes full of old clothes and board games missing either boards or pieces or—in the case of Life—both.

  “It’s got a lot of potential, don’t you think?” Max asked later that night as we positioned the air mattress in the area with the most amount of light.

  Before I could answer, a rake fell down from a hook above me, missing me by thismuch. “Whoops,” he said, quickly picking it up and shoving it to the side. “I guess we should take down anything on the walls that could fall down in the middle of the night and possibly kill you.” He started inspecting the corners of the room.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Just checking for mouse droppings.”

  I paled.

  “And I don’t see any, which is a great thing,” he said. “So I guess I’ll leave you to get settled.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “See you in the morning,” he said, giving me a hug.

  “Okay.”

  After he left, I plopped down on the air mattress, cringing at the fart sound it made. I could tell from the way I was fantasizing about how great a sheet cake from Ralph’s would taste that going from spending so much time alone to all this . . . boyness . . . was really screwing with my system. Kind of like being thrown into AP English when you had just emigrated from Cuba or somewhere and only gotten a C plus in your English as a Second Language course.

  Maybe this was a mistake. Maybe I should have gone with my dad and Hillary and sat in the shade all day as I listened to Hillary talk about herself. And then talk about herself some more. And some more. As I thought about whether it would hurt Max’s feelings if I told him that I had changed my mind and was going to go stay at Nicola’s, I heard footsteps.

  “You decent?” Max’s voice called out. “’Cause I wouldn’t want to walk in on you if you weren’t. We’re all about respecting boundaries here.”

  “I’m decent.”

  He poked his head in. “Okay, good. Listen—I just wanted to tell you one more thing.”

  “Try not to breathe too much up here because there’s asbestos in the wall?”

  “No. I just wanted to tell you I’m really looking forward to this next month,” he said. “Getting to hang with you again. And so are the guys. They really like you. Usually, there’s no talking when Sorority Girls Slashers Part Two is on, but they’re all down there talking about how awesome and chill you are. Not, you know, like most girls.”

  I smiled. “Thanks. That’s really sweet,” I replied. “It means a lot to me.”

  “Well, good night.”

  “Good night.”

  I guessed I was staying.

  For the most part I liked to think of myself as pretty laid back. Which is why, after I almost fell into the toilet the first time I went to pee because I didn’t check to see if the seat was up, I didn’t freak out. I just made a mental note to look before I sat down, which was a good thing because every time, no matter which of the two bathrooms I went to, it was up. And when I came out of one of them and smacked straight into Thor—who was wearing nothing but a towel—I kept cool and listened to him give me his take on how the world would be a much better place if people would get over their hang-ups about nudity, while praying silently that his towel didn’t fall down. And when I discovered that their idea of “leftovers” included hamburgers that had turned green and fruit with mold on it, I only gagged rather than actually threw up.

  However, when I came downstairs the first morning for breakfast and came face-to-face with a mouse gnawing at a three-times-removed-from-fresh slice of pizza, I lost it. As much as I knew I’d probably get grief for it, I couldn’t stop the high-pitched girly-girl scream that flew out of my mouth. Possibly falling into a toilet was one thing, but rodents as roommates? No way.

  “What’s the matter?!” Narc asked after he, Noob, and Doc came rushing into the kitchen.

  “I . . . it . . . ewwww!!” I cried from my perch on the counter (I had had no idea that I possessed the coordination to leap into the air and scramble onto a countertop in one fluid motion until that moment) as I watched the mouse chomp away. Although, I had to say, from the disappointed expression on the mouse’s face, he looked pretty underwhelmed by the taste.

  “Oh man. Tell me I didn’t forget . . .” Noob said as
he looked down at his sweats. “Phew,” he said, relieved. “For a second I thought I had forgotten to put pants on this morning.”

  I cringed. The idea of Noob walking around without pants was almost as disturbing as the mouse. “Does that . . . happen a lot?” I asked.

  “Not, you know, a lot a lot,” he replied. “Just like, I don’t know . . . every other day?”

  The mouse stopped eating. As it made its way closer to the counter, I screamed again. Having never been in the same room as a mouse, I had had no idea I was such a wimp.

  “Awww . . . look at that,” Noob said. “He wants to be friends with you!”

  As the mouse began to chortle, Noob leaned his head in. “What do you think he’s trying to say?”

  “I think he’s saying that he finds it really annoying when humans try to give animals all these humanlike qualities,” Narc said. He yawned. “I’m going back to bed. Right after I have some cereal.” He walked to the freezer and took out a box of Corn Pops.

  “Why do you keep the cereal in the freezer?” I asked. Out of the corner of my eye I kept glancing at the mouse, in case he got any big ideas and decided to try and join me on the counter.

  He shrugged. “Why not?” he replied with his mouth full. “It’s as good of a place as any, right?” He yawned again. “Well, good night,” he said as he padded back to his room.

  I shook my head and sighed. Being laid back was one thing. Living in complete and utter chaos and filth was something else. “Not to be one of those people who gets all up in people’s business, but I really think you guys need—”

  “Some order? Organization? A to-do list that’s updated twice weekly and a whiteboard with a chart of everyone’s responsibilities?!” Doc cried.

  I shrank back. Whoa. Someone was a bit on the Type A side. “Well, maybe not all of that, but something—”

  “Finally! A voice of sanity in this place!” he said. “I’ll be right back,” he said, before he ran out of the room.