The Accidental Bad Girl

by Maxine Kaplan

  “Simone,” she said excitedly, “I was wondering if you’d be interested in entering that PVC sculpture you’ve been working on into the National Art Awards this year. I know you don’t like contests, but—”

  I nodded at Simone from behind the teacher’s shoulder and hurried away to class, trying to feel empty. Empty was better than how I felt when I thought of that video.

  The day inched along.

  “Kendall?”

  I looked up blearily, and Gilly had materialized in front of me. I was in AP Bio, but I could have been on Mars. I would have preferred to be on Mars.

  “Are you OK?” he asked.

  He was too close to me. It was reminding me of too many things, things I couldn’t think about without breaking down—my hands in his hair and rainstorms and him pulling me out of the way when a cab splashed by. “What do you mean?” I asked warily.

  “You got suspended?

  “Oh, that.” I was relieved. And I was reminded of one more thing: He didn’t know about Simone’s rape, about me taking the pills, about the video. Gilly was clean. Gilly was safe.

  He sat down next to me. “I’ve been texting you. You haven’t texted back.” A brittle quality crept into his voice. “You’ve been pretending you don’t see me when you pass me in the halls.”

  Gilly was safe, but only because of the things he didn’t know about me, about the world I was living in. Maybe it should stay that way, I thought.

  I made my voice hard. “Maybe I just don’t see you when I pass you in the halls,” I said. “Did you think of that, Mikey?”

  He was sitting close to me—close enough for me to hear a catch in his breathing.

  Dr. Forrester stopped in front of us. “You were late, Mr. Gilbert. Ms. Evans almost had to do this lab by herself.”

  I clenched my fists. I couldn’t be near Gilly with all of his gazing and questions. “I don’t need a partner, Dr. Forrester,” I said. “I can do it by myself.”

  He folded his arms. “Really, Kendall? Tell me, what lab are we doing today?” I didn’t have the answer. “Page 138, Ms. Evans. You’re working with a partner—with this partner, in fact.”

  Gilly finished setting up the microscope. “Here,” he said, his voice gruff. “You look. I won’t do this by myself.”

  “You go first.”

  He pressed his lips together but stood and peered into the microscope.

  “I even called Simi,” he whispered. “You should have checked in with me.”

  “You’re not responsible for me or my well-being, Gilly. You should stop caring. Remember that week you decided you didn’t have time to talk to me anymore? Go back to that.”

  “No, but I am responsible.” His voice was just one level under a shriek. Kids turned to look at him, and he sat back down. “You confided in me, remember,” he said in a lower voice, making notes on the lab work sheet. “I am involved, whether you like it or not.” He threw down the pencil. “Your turn.”

  Standing heavily, I leaned over his arm to peer into the eyepiece, not really looking at the cells on the slide. He shifted a little out of my way, tapping his toe like a malfunctioning metronome.

  “Am I making you nervous, Gilly?” I asked blandly.

  He laughed, short and breathless. “You always make me nervous.”

  “That’s probably smart.” I gave up on the slide and dragged the lab notebook to me, checking off the same boxes he had on the data sheet. “If I took down Ellie Kurtz, I can certainly kick a stage manager’s ass.”

  He caught my wrist and held it. Leaning down, he put his mouth next to my ear and said in a low, harsh tone, “Always. You have always made me nervous.” He drew in some air and blew it out shakily, sending warm ripples across my earlobe and down my collar.

  A sweet electric shock shot through my lower back. I wasn’t prepared, and the rush was enough to buckle my knees into the lab stool, whacking it against the table with a cringe-worthy linoleum squeak.

  I looked up at Gilly, ready to tell him to knock this off once and for all, but was stumped by his face. It was absent of any and all nervous or pissed-off tics. He was just looking hard at me, his silver eyes clear and locked on mine. His mouth, that unbelievably—like, literally, would not have believed it if you had told me a month earlier—gorgeous mouth, was straight and set.

  Adjusting his fingers more comfortably on my wrist, circling it with more decision, he started, “I . . .” He shrugged and then simply told me, “I don’t want you to pretend I don’t exist. I care.”

  Helplessly, I curled my fingers so the tips touched his. His mouth tightened.

  At that moment, Simone’s dejected, angry face popped into my head. Girls like you and me are just going to keep participating in the system, she had said. No recourse at all.

  It had infuriated me at the time, but she was right. I couldn’t seem to let go of Gilly’s hand, because it felt too good. Was it me? Was I the problem? Was I helpless?

  “I know,” I said, cutting him off as he opened his mouth again. Forcing myself, I unwound my fingers from his. “I know you do.” I looked away.

  The bell rang. I scooped up my bag and my books in one gesture and left, counting my breaths on my way down the stairs, trying to shake the reverberation of Gilly out of my hand.

  Simone’s words kept sounding in my head: No recourse. Only alternative.

  Girls like you and me.

  I stopped dead on the stairs. Girls like me. Well, who was that? If I believed Mason, I wasn’t the kind of girl without recourse, without resources. I could make my own rules. I craned my head up and saw Gilly shuffling through the hallway above me. I turned and loitered there.

  His steps slowed down as he approached. When it became clear that I was waiting, they stopped altogether.

  He was clutching his messenger bag much harder than it needed to be clutched.

  I moved up a step. Snatching his hand, I jumped back down the stairs, looked both ways down the empty hallway, and pressed my fingers into Gilly’s chest.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, his voice cracking.

  I met his eyes and dropped my bag. “Taking something,” I said, backing him into a corner.

  Gilly froze and then rushed me, grabbing the back of my shirt and crushing his mouth against mine. A small bonfire exploded in my chest, and my mind went blank for a second. Or a century.

  My cell phone went off, the pink one, and I broke away.

  He cleared his throat. “Do you . . . do you need to answer that?”

  I thought about it for a minute. “Yes,” I said. I had made a deal after all.

  “Are you going to, then?”

  I looked at the boy in front of me and thought of the boy waiting for me in a shady basement. They both thought they knew what kind of girl I was—namely, the kind they wanted me to be.

  Gilly spoke again. “Don’t go,” he said quietly. “Come over to my house. Don’t go to Mason. Be with me.”

  A line from The Wizard of Oz flickered through my head: Are you a good witch or a bad witch?

  Are you a good girl or a bad girl?

  “Mikey! I didn’t know a guest was joining us tonight,” said Gilly’s mom as she opened the door. She was a tall, athletic woman with bronze-colored hair. She looked nothing like her son.

  “Oh,” I said awkwardly. “I’m sorry. Gi—Mikey invited me.”

  “You must be Kendall,” she said warmly, ushering me in. “I’m Donna. I’m afraid we already ordered food, but I’m about to set out some ice cream sundaes. Friday night tradition—we do dessert first. We call it Friday Sundaes.” I laughed and she smiled. “Let me just go get the restaurant on the phone,” she said. “Mikey, set another plate at the table. Does Chinese work for you?” I nodded, and she hurried out, Gilly trailing after her with a reluctant look back at me, still in the foyer.

  This was the kind of house where all the lights were left on, all the time. It was environmentally and economically irresponsible. At least that was the party li
ne in my house, where reading or table lamps were used more often than overhead lights. But here, even the shadows glowed and I could see into all of the corners.

  A tiny sprite of a girl with golden-red curls wandered into the hallway and stared at me with blatant tween rudeness. She looked familiar. What was her name? I tried to remember.

  Eventually she bailed me out. “I’m Sarah,” she told me, sounding bored.

  I tried to smile at Gilly’s little sister. “I’m Kendall,” I said.

  “I know who you are,” she said. She appraised me. “Why are you hanging out with my brother?”

  “Why shouldn’t I?”

  She gnawed on her pinky nail. “No reason, I guess. Just . . . I mean, he’s such a loser.”

  I smiled genuinely this time. Sarah Gilbert looked like she might be trouble. “You’re at Howell, right? What grade are you in again?”

  “Seventh.”

  I looked at the small, pretty girl in front of me, from her not-quite-tamed red curls to her enormous, scornful eyes. “I could do worse than your brother,” I told her.

  Gilly reentered the room and scrambled in between his sister and me. “Sarah, go away,” he commanded.

  “Fine,” she sighed, stalking off. “It’s dessert anyway.”

  Gilly exhaled slowly. “I didn’t really think this through.”

  “No?” I asked, turning to face him. “You didn’t want the criminal you’re sweating to have ice cream with your family?”

  The front door opened, and a tall, reedy man with dark hair and glasses came in. He put down a briefcase and cordially stuck his hand out at me. “Well, hello,” he said. “Are you joining us for our weekly Friday Sundaes, my dear?” Gilly muffled a groan.

  He had the kind of New England accent that almost sounds British. “Hi, Mr. Gilbert,” I said, slipping a gratified mask over my face. “If it’s all right with you, I would love to. Donna was already nice enough to ask me.”

  Still holding my hand, still smiling, Mr. Gilbert asked, “I’m sorry, dear, you are very familiar, but I’m afraid I’ve forgotten your name. Encroaching senility and all.”

  “I’m Kendall Evans—Judith Evans’s daughter.”

  He made a delighted guffaw noise. “That’s why I know your face so well! You are so like your mother.”

  I hesitated a moment and then said, “Thank you. I’ve never really thought I looked all that much like her.”

  “You do! Even in the way you’re holding yourself. I can’t wait to let her know that I’ve seen you again after all this time. Last time, well, you and Mikey here were babies.”

  Donna called out, “Get in here, guys.”

  Gilly closed his eyes and seemed to collect himself. “Mom, we’re just going to watch a movie, OK?” he called out.

  She looked up and over at Gilly. “Just this once, you can skip the sundaes,” she said, with only a moment’s hesitation. “Because you have a guest. I’ll call you when the food gets here.”

  I watched in fascination as she walked over, kissed Gilly on both cheeks, and turned around, striding back into the dining room without another word or a look behind. That was not the way my mother would have reacted. My mother would have wanted answers.

  Like me, I realized.

  Gilly grabbed my hand and pulled me up the stairs to his bedroom. As he shut the door behind me, I couldn’t help remembering that I had been in this exact position before. Hustled away from his mother and up the stairs, virtually tossed inside, and left to stand awkwardly on the wall-to-wall while he locked the door with his back to me.

  I spun slowly in place. Gilly’s room basically looked the same. If anything, it was actually neater and more organized. It was a comforting room, full of soothing colors and soft textures and action figures in their original packaging.

  It was a comforting room, but it hurt to look at it. It was hard not to remember the last time I had been here and him brushing an eyelash off of my skin with a gentle finger, to not remember the way he’d given me his raincoat. It felt like a long time ago.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Gilly was standing in front of his door with the bearing of someone who had no idea what he was doing there or why.

  “I’m just giving myself a headache,” I answered, looking away.

  “You want some aspirin?” He started fumbling with his nightstand drawer, and then he stopped, dismayed. “I forgot to ask if you wanted ice cream.”

  “Shocking. Not like you were in a hurry to get out of there or anything.” I slipped off my shoes, kicking them in opposite directions across his room, knowing that would drive Gilly crazy. “What was that about? You must really not want me to spend time with your parents.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t like spending time with them.”

  I studied his face. “I don’t think that’s true. You have ‘Friday Sundaes.’”

  He looked uncomfortable. “OK. I don’t like spending time with my parents when it’s not just us. All right?”

  “Why not? Your parents aren’t embarrassing as parents go.”

  “Because it’s no one else’s business,” he snapped. Then he took a deep breath and tried again. “It’s like . . . I’m weird.”

  I laughed before I could stop myself. He scowled and I stopped. “Sorry.”

  “I’m weird,” he continued stonily. “And they’re not really weird. And I can’t . . . act . . . when they’re there. Like I did with your parents. I can’t pull it off in front of them. So I just seem weirder.”

  “Do you really care if you seem weird in front of me? At this point?”

  He avoided my eyes, and I grew warm. “Where are your movies?” I asked, changing the subject.

  “I have a bunch in the cabinet under the TV, but they’re mostly old.” I went to the cabinet and felt him following me. “We can just watch something on Netflix.”

  But I had already seen what I wanted. “North by Northwest!” I cried, grabbing it out of the cabinet and thrusting it at him. “I want North by Northwest.”

  Gilly took the DVD, looking at me curiously. “You want to watch this?” he asked. I nodded and launched myself onto his bed, feeling the grin spread across my face.

  I had always suspected that I was named after the girl in North by Northwest, a cool blond named Eve Kendall. She’s not really the lead: That’s Roger Thornhill, played by Cary Grant, who gets mistaken for George Kaplan by a bunch of gangsters. But it turns out that George Kaplan doesn’t exist—he’s an invented character, part of an FBI sting against a criminal mastermind. Thornhill gets involved against his will, coming across Eve Kendall, the gangster’s girlfriend, along the way. In the space of a day, she seduces him, betrays him, and then sacrifices herself for the greater good, and Thornhill turns out to have been wrong about everything: Eve Kendall was working for the FBI the whole time.

  When I was a little girl, I just loved her poise and her shiny, shiny hair. When I was a bigger girl, I admired her as a brave and skilled player in a game I was just beginning to grasp. She could switch from femme fatale to ingenue at any second, and in all that chaos she was the only one who really understood what was going on: the only one with the whole picture.

  Anyway, it was my mom’s favorite movie when she was growing up.

  Gilly slid the DVD into the player and walked back toward his bed, turning off the overhead light. Then he sat down next to me, his legs sprawled across the top of the bedspread, hanging awkwardly over the side of the mattress.

  The mischievous patter of the score started up, and the credits flashed across the screen. The room was dark except for the desk light Gilly had left on, casting golden shadows on the wall around the TV. I suddenly realized that I had crawled enthusiastically into Gilly’s bed, without giving any thought to how that might look. And then remembered how I had attacked him in the hallway.

  But that encounter had been an act of defiance, a snap decision. A singular desire fulfilled at my discretion.

  I snuck a look at Gilly. Wh
at did I want from him now? Did I just want to kiss him? I was pretty sure I could kiss him. Maybe the better question was, what did he want from me?

  He caught me looking at him, and I swung my eyes back to the movie.

  Eve doesn’t show up until about forty-five minutes in, so I had a good long while to enjoy the movie’s easy charm.

  But when she did show up, something occurred to me that had never occurred to me before. Eve had been sent there to seduce Thornhill. By her boyfriend, presumably with the knowledge of her secret employer, the FBI “good guys.” And suddenly Thornhill, despite being played by Cary Grant, seemed . . . stupid. He seemed like a sucker.

  On the screen, Eve pressed up against the doorframe and whispered into his ear, “I’m a big girl.”

  Thornhill replied smugly, “Yes. And in all the right places, too.”

  Stupid.

  And then Gilly’s face was right there, his cheekbone grazing against mine. I turned to look at him and saw that he was breathing hard and his eyes were glassy.

  “Gilly—?”

  Then he was on top of me, pushing me into his pillows, his mouth moving all over mine and then down my neck. To be honest, my first instinct was to push him off and rewind the movie so I wouldn’t have missed anything, say I didn’t feel like hooking up anymore. But then he did something that made my insides melt and then fuse back together, like I was being smelted into a slightly finer metal.

  He pulled his face back and looked at me, running his fingertips over my nose and down to my chin. Still looking right at me, he said, “Kendall. Goddamn it, Kendall.”

  I could have kissed him. So I did.

  It started out as just a little kiss. I meant to pull away after a decent interval, but my arms just wouldn’t unwrap themselves from around his waist. I felt an intense desire for heat, his heat, first rolling up the hem of his shirt to access his hips and then rolling it higher and higher, wanting more and more of his smooth, burning skin, until I’d nudged it off entirely.

  In some faraway, removed corner of my brain, I was aware of soft, strangled sounds coming out of my throat, muffled by two sets of lips, but I was mostly just focused on his skin, and wanting more of it, so much so that I couldn’t even tell you when my shirt came off, or my bra, or my pants.