Everything to Me

by Teresa Hill

  “I’m not a freak, am I?” I ask Becca.

  “What? Who called you a freak?”

  “No one. Not to my face, at least.”

  “Who called you one behind your back?”

  “I don’t know, but I feel like one sometimes.”

  “You are not a freak,” she says emphatically.

  “Thank you. I needed to hear that.”

  I know the statistics. For girls my age, it’s about a 50/50 split between the haves and the have-nots. But it sure doesn’t feel like half the girls around me are virgins. It feels like something is wrong with me, that I am not doing this right if I’m not doing anything with anyone. The whole hook-up culture freaks me out. I keep trying to comfort myself with statistics, but it’s not working.

  “Hey,” Becca says, “if you had someone you were crazy about, the way I’m crazy about Brady, you’d be all over him.”

  “Yes, I would,” I agree.

  She’s all gooey-eyed over Brady, can’t even say his name without it sounding like she’s been drugged, which is really funny. Becca is so not that girl. She never has been. I never thought she would be. She’s a little freaked out about it herself, but she can’t seem to fight it. It’s like she’s been enveloped by this love/lust fog, and nothing about the real world registers. It has been fun for me to watch. I think she’s starting to get why I can’t bring myself to give up on Peter.

  “If he came up to you right now,” Becca says, “and said he was sorry, that he’s been wrong about everything, and he can’t last another moment without having you naked, you’d start peeling off your clothes, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yes, I would.” I’m not proud of it, but if he ever says he wants me, there’s no way I’ll turn him down.

  “So, there you go. You’re not a freak. You’re just completely hung up on one guy.”

  “Thank you. I feel better.”

  “You're welcome. Can we walk into this party now?” Becca asks.

  “Yes, I’m ready.”

  “Good. So, what’s the plan?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t have a plan.”

  Not that I didn’t try to come up with one. It’s just that there are no good plans for a situation like this. If there was, I’d have already done it. There’s the smart thing to do, which is to give up, and I can’t. I don’t know how I ever will. I get choked up just thinking about it.

  My sad, really vague non-plan is that thing girls do—the hope to bump into him, accidentally on purpose thing.

  A stupid girl-game.

  That’s what I’ve been reduced to where he’s concerned.

  I hate that. I don’t play games. But I miss him so much. Sometimes, I think just one thing will change, and from there, it’ll be like dominoes falling, changing everything until we’re back together. I’d give anything for that to happen.

  Sometimes, I think maybe I’m not sexy enough. Maybe he doesn’t want me because I have tiny breasts and hardly any curves to my ass. I’m a stick-girl, and not because I starve myself. It’s just the way I am. Okay, it’s gotten a little bit better in the last six months, but still …

  Maybe he wants really sexy curves.

  Are guys really that shallow?

  Probably.

  Even him?

  I don’t know. He just doesn’t seem to want me.

  Maybe he wants a girl who’ll have sex with him, and he thinks I won’t, that I’m too uptight, too much of a good girl.

  So ... I could walk up to him and say, I would do you in a heartbeat.

  Right. Like that’s gonna happen.

  I’m wallowing in my indecision about what to do when we come around the side of the house and a girl I know from AP U.S. History comes running past us, yelling about a fight in the backyard.

  “Oh, great,” I tell Becca. “Do we even want to go back there?”

  “It’s up to you,” she says.

  Another girl—one I know from the tutoring I do — rushes up to us and says a friend texted her that Tripp and Peter are fighting.

  “No,” I say. “Peter doesn’t fight anymore. He hasn’t since freshman year.” Okay, he got into a little scuffle at a poker game last winter, but it was nothing. He won too much money from some guys, and they objected with their fists.

  “He’s fighting tonight,” the girl insists. “Over Andie. She came with Tripp, then ended up with Peter. Tripp got mad and said Peter could have her, that she’s a slut and more trouble than she’s worth. And now they’re beating on each other.”

  He’s in a fight over another girl?

  No. I don’t believe it.

  * * *

  2

  Dana

  He used to tell me everything, and he’s never said a word about being interested in Andie. He couldn’t be so into a girl that he’s fighting over her without me knowing about it. Could he?

  Becca shoots me a worried look. We keep walking. A moment later, we’re in the backyard, and there they are, Tripp and Peter, rolling around on the ground pummeling each other.

  I still have trouble believing it. I wince at every blow, although it looks like Peter’s winning. Still, Tripp tends to travels with a posse of football player friends, and I see three of them in the crowd watching the fight. Peter’s on the team, but he’s not one of those guys who think football is the only thing that matters. He’s not part of the football posse. If Tripp’s friends jump into the fight, Peter could really get hurt. I can’t stand here and watch that, but what can I do?

  I lean over to Becca and say, “Go that way and start telling people someone called the cops and we all need to get out of here.”

  She gives me a sharp look, like, Do you really want to get into the middle of this?

  “Please?” I ask.

  She does it, putting just the right amount of urgency into the lie as she moves through the crowd. People tell other people and start leaving. We’re all underage, and nobody wants to get caught and charged with possession of alcohol by a minor.

  Peter has Tripp pinned to the ground and says something to him, but Tripp’s friends pull Peter off. For a second, I think Peter’s going to take a swing at them, but I rush in and grab the arm he has drawn back.

  Peter whirls around like he thinks someone else is jumping into the fight. I see his pupils get huge when he sees that it’s me. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  I wince, because he seems so mad. But then he pushes me behind him and turns to face Tripp and his friends, like he thinks they might attack us both and he needs to protect me. Tripp’s furious, but his friends drag him away, telling him the cops are coming.

  Once they get twenty feet away, Peter turns around to me and yells, “Don’t you ever get into the middle of a fight like that again!”

  “Sorry,” I say.

  “Jesus, Dana! I almost hit you! And any one of Tripp’s friends could have taken a swing at me and hit you instead.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say again, noting that he has a swollen, bleeding bottom lip, blood leaking from his nose and a little cut above his right eye. I glance back at Tripp. He’s moving carefully, holding his arm pressed to his ribs. It looks like Peter did more damage to Tripp than Tripp did to Peter.

  Peter pulls the end of his t-shirt up to his nose to try to stop the bleeding. “Why is everybody leaving?”

  “Cops coming,” I feel only a little bad about the lie.

  “Shit. Just what I need.”

  “Come on. Do you have your truck here?”

  “Yeah. Who’d you come with?”

  “Becca, but I don’t know where she is now.” Not necessarily another lie. At this second, I don’t see her. She could be anywhere.

  “All right. Come on,” he says, and we head across the backyard, around the side of the house and toward the street.

  “You scared the crap out of me,” he says. “I couldn’t believe you were here. Promise me you won’t ever do that again.”

  “Even if it’s you fighting?” We move into a po
ol of light from a streetlight, and I try not to look at the muscles of his abdomen that he uncovered by pulling up his shirt.

  “Yes!”

  “Sorry. I … wanted to get you out of there before the cops came.” If I told him I started the rumor to stop the fight, he’d be even madder at me.

  “Not for any reason,” he says.

  Okay, still pissed.

  We get to the street. People are piling into cars and taking off. I see Becca standing in the shadows by her car, catch her eye and point to myself and then to Peter. She gets it. I’m going to ride home with him. She even walks back into the shadows, so if Peter looks around for her, he won’t see her.

  We get to his truck, and I hold out my hand for the keys.

  “What? No way,” he says.

  “Your eye is swelling. Can you even see out of it?”

  “I can see just fine.”

  “It’s maybe ten minutes to my house and not much farther to yours. Plus, there are hardly any cars on the road at this hour. And it’s not like I haven’t driven your truck before.”

  “Yeah. In empty parking lots.”

  He’s been trying to teach me to be a better driver. It’s the other thing I can’t do right that every other teenager seems to love. Not me. I’m bad at it, as awkward and unsure of every move I make behind the wheel of a car as I am with the whole boy-girl thing.

  Still, I argue, “I can get us home.”

  None too gently, he pulls open the passenger-side door for me. “Dana, get in the truck.”

  Glaring at him for another three seconds or so, I give in and climb into his truck. He’s quiet on the drive. I’m still trying to figure out how to ask if the fight really was over Andie when I look up and we’re in front of my house.

  I can’t let him go like this. If he got into a fight over a girl, he must be really into her. I can’t stand that idea, and I’m desperate to have some time with him, just the two of us.

  “Come inside. I’ll take care of those cuts,” I say.

  “I’m fine.” He presses his fingers all around his nose, grimacing, like he’s checking to see if it’s broken. “Just go.”

  I was so sad, so mad about everything, I couldn’t even look at him for much of the drive home, but I am now, and that’s when I notice. “Your nose is bleeding again. Blood’s dripping onto the seat of your truck.”

  “Ahh, shit.”

  He shifts the t-shirt to try to fix the problem, and suddenly I’m sick of him always trying to push me away.

  “We should at least stop the bleeding. Do we have to argue over something as simple as that?”

  * * *

  Peter

  So, the thing is, this girl owns me. I have a hard time saying no to her. And a really hard time staying away from her. I know going into her house is a mistake, even as I get out of the truck, but I still do it. I walk down the driveway to the kitchen door and follow her inside, knowing I’m only making things harder in the long run.

  The only excuse I have is that she caught me all jacked up from the fight. It’s so easy to be stupid when I’m like that. When anybody is.

  Zach told me once we’re still like cavemen, hard-wired biochemically in times of extreme stress to react with our muscles, instead of our brains. The body sends blood away from our brains — which makes it harder to think — and sends it to our muscles, to help us be stronger, react faster. Without thinking. It’s hard as hell for anybody to think straight all amped up.

  I had to hand it to Zach that time. Instead of getting all frustrated and yelling, he explained it. You’ve got to give him points for trying, especially when I did more than my share of yelling at him back then.

  So, I know why I’m being stupid right now, even if I am still doing it.

  That, and I really want to be here with her, to have her touching me. I want it so bad, even though I know it’s a bad idea.

  She takes me by the hand and pulls me into her house, through the mudroom, into the big kitchen. At the sink, she tugs my bloody t-shirt over my head and takes it away. Then she pushes my head forward until I’m nose-down, puts my hand on the bridge of my nose and tells me to pinch hard.

  Blood starts to drip onto the clean, white sink.

  “You’re supposed to tilt your head back,” I say.

  “No, forward. If you tilt it back, all the blood runs down your throat, and you don’t want that. It’ll make you nauseous.”

  So, all these years I’ve been doing it wrong? “Do you know everything?”

  “No, but I know this. Tricia went through a nose-bleed phase. I looked it up, so I’d know what to do.”

  She walks away for a minute, then comes back and sticks what feels like an ice cube on the back of my neck. Freezing cold against my warm skin, it startles me. I jump, lose my hold on my nose for a few seconds, and blood flows faster until I get a hold again in the right place.

  “What the hell, Dana?”

  “Give it a few minutes. It should help your nose stop bleeding. Just relax.”

  With her standing so close to me? Her arm resting on my shoulder, her hand cupping that ice cube to my neck?

  Not gonna happen.

  “This is ridiculous,” I say, but as I try to lift my head, she pushes it back down. It’s not like I couldn’t make her stop. I’m a lot stronger than she is, just like Tripp is so much bigger and stronger than Andie.

  I’m still pissed about that. It’s not fair, but I’m probably going to take it out on Dana, because she’s here and it’s so damned hard not to touch her the way I want to, to grab her and kiss her and never let her go.

  It’s hard to even keep my distance from her, because the girl insists on taking care of me. It’s the damnedest thing. Nobody’s ever really done that. Julie used to try, after she first came back, but I let her know right away that it was too late. I’d just turned fourteen, and I’d been taking care of myself for a long time with no help. I could damned well do it living with her and Zach. I was mad at the world, so I pushed her away.

  I tried that with Dana, too. I really think I did. It didn’t work worth a damn. She is the most stubborn girl on earth, always seems to find a way to get what she wants, and for some reason, she wants to take care of me.

  She must think I need it tonight, so she’s fussing over a bloody nose and a few cuts and scrapes. Like they’re important. I’ve had so much worse than this. But I don’t tell her that, because I don’t want her to know.

  So that little ice cube melts all over me. It drips down my neck, my chest, my back. She tries to catch the trickle running down my neck with her hand at first, and it’s all I can do not to groan, to growl at her to stop fucking touching me, before I do something I really shouldn’t. Finally, she manages to tear off a paper towel single-handedly and uses that instead of her hand to catch the water running down my neck.

  I survive it all long enough for my nose to stop bleeding. Finally, I can stand up straight, and she backs away a step.

  The next thing I know, she’s coming at me with another paper towel. I grab it and take it from her before she can wipe the melted ice water off my chest and my neck. She looks at me like I’m being ridiculous, as if to say, What is wrong with you?

  Really? Is she kidding me? Does she think nothing of having her hands all over a guy? That thought pisses me off even more. I know it’s unfair. I get that completely. But I’m not quite rational where she’s concerned. And the sad truth is, even if I can’t have her, I hate the idea of any other guy being anywhere near her. I hate guys looking at her, wanting her, saying things about her.

  Which they do. All the fucking time.

  Guys talk. Believe me, it’s a damned miracle I fight as seldom as I do, considering what I hear about her at school. They talk about her ass, her long legs, her sweet mouth, her gorgeous hair, her laugh, her pretty brown eyes and which one of them will finally be the one to nail her.

  That’s another thing. If I had a million dollars, I’d bet it all on her being a virgin. N
o doubt in my mind. If our school had a Queen of the Virgins, she’d wear the crown. Not that she makes a big deal about it or tries to say she’s better than anybody else or to tell anybody else what they should do. She just doesn’t fool around with anybody. She’s the prettiest, most amazing girl, and she seems untouchable and untouched. A guy could never smile at her at a party and five minutes later be in a dark, quiet corner with his hands down her pants or have her on her knees in front of him.

  So completely not her.

  Which means guys see her as a challenge. Some of them try stuff with her, but as far as I know, she’s shot all of them down. I don’t know what I’ll do if, one day, I hear something different from one of those guys.

  And I’m here, in her house with her, late at night, might as well be alone because everybody else is asleep, and she wants to play doctor.

  She pulls out a stool from the little desk in the kitchen, and the next thing I know, it’s hitting the back of my knees. I sit, thinking if I don’t, she’ll have her hand on my chest, pushing me down, and I can’t let that happen.

  Next, she’s up on her toes, trying to reach something on the top shelf of one of the kitchen cabinets. I see those toned, tanned legs of hers. Her shirt rides up enough from her jean shorts to give me a glimpse of her flat belly, her little belly button.

  I want my hand on her belly, my tongue teasing her belly button.

  No hardware of any kind there. Not that kind of girl.

  I bet there’s not a mark anywhere on her skin. It’s flawless. The only piercing is on her ears — just one in each lobe.

  That’s my good girl.

  Okay, not mine. But in my head, she is. In every fantasy I have, she’s absolutely and completely mine. We have the most amazing life in my mind. It’s perfect. I’ve had her a million times in my dreams.

  She finally manages to get what she needs out of the cabinet, and I manage not to press my mouth to her belly as she does it. She shoots me an odd look as she places a big first aid kit on the counter beside me.

  I close my eyes and try to breathe, to get that image of my mouth on her out of my head. She thinks I’m doing that because something really hurts and wants to know what that is.