Friends with Benefits

by Amy Brent

  My school had no bells, being fancy and whatever, but everybody seemed to know exactly what time we could leave anyway, and, once that time hit, everybody dashed for the door and poured into the parking lot. Usually, I would wait for the bulk of the big, annoying crowd to clear out before making my way towards Gregory and the limousine, but today was a special day, so I ran out too, jostling and squeaking with excitement just like the rest of them. In my hand, I clutched a piece of paper, holding it firmly but careful not to crumble it. It was a short story I’d written for my English class. The teacher had given it an A+, and had even pulled me aside to whisper that it was the best in the whole class. I usually did well in school, but I was so proud of this story and her praise that I wanted to rush home and tell my father immediately. I wanted to see the look in his eyes.

  Maybe, just maybe it would make him happy.

  “Something on fire?” Gregory asked playfully as I shoved past several other kids and burst into the car, slamming the door behind me. “You seem in an awful hurry.”

  “I just want to get home!” I gasped. I knew my cheeks were pink with excitement, and I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself down. “Is Dad there? He’s not working today, right? How is he?”

  “Whoa, slow down there, kid,” Gregory said, as he lowered himself into the driver’s seat and started the car. The divider between him and the back of the limo was of course down. It was always down. I always wanted to chat. He put the car into drive and we began to slide out of the school’s parking lot when he answered, “Yes, I believe he’s home. No, I don’t think he’s working today, but you know the crazy hours Mr. Clifton keeps. As for how he is…well, you know this time of the year always hits him hard.”

  As he spoke, I felt a little puncture in my bubble of excitement. I did know how this time of year affected him, and felt guilty about how I’d forgotten all about it when Mrs. Clayton had given me my paper.

  “Well, maybe this will cheer him up,” I said, waving my prized story in the air.

  Gregory sighed. “I hope so, sweetie,” he said. By his tone, I would guess that he was smiling. But I could also see his eyes in the rearview mirror.

  They looked sad.

  * * *

  My father worked very hard, spending almost all of his time running his hotels, so it made sense that we would live there. Not by getting a room, of course. That’s silly. But we stay on the top floor, something everyone calls a “penthouse suite”. We used to have an actual house, but after my mother died we moved up here. My father said he did it to save money, but I think he did it because our old place reminded him too much of her. I knew that because it had also reminded me of her, but in a good way. Having those memories around made me feel better.

  Not with my dad.

  The Clifton Hotel was so tall that the elevator ride to the penthouse always seemed to take forever. Usually, I didn’t mind. I spent the time pretending I was on a rocket ship, lifting off into space. But now, with the excitement of my story ready to burst from my lips, I danced with impatience and slammed the button about a hundred extra times. Finally, we got to the top floor, and the elevator opened up on an elaborate, gilded wooden door with a large brass lock. Our hotel’s security constantly bugged my father to switch to a more modern security system, like a number pad and an access code, but he insisted on the fancy old lock. I guess he liked it or something. Instead, the access code got put outside the elevator. It was a private elevator, so we were the only ones who needed it anyway.

  Fumbling with the giant brass key, I unlocked the door and rushed inside our beautiful, enormous apartment. I’m only ten years old, and yet I’m smart enough to know that it was a nice place. I had been to dozens of my friends’ houses, and none of them were as nice as this. Fancy furniture, carpets, drapes, everything. But the greatest thing was, nothing was so nice that I wasn’t allowed to run around and play on things. Going to the school I do, I know that a lot of rich parents could be overly protective of their stuff, but not my dad. He was always friendly and welcoming.

  At least, he used to be. Ever since my mother died, it seemed like he just didn’t care.

  Still, I was excited. Once inside, I smoothed out my story as best I could against the kitchen table, making sure the big red “A+” was clearly visible. Then, holding it out with pride, I made my way towards my father’s office.

  “Oh-no,” I muttered, peering through the door. He was sitting at his desk chair, staring at his screen, but he wasn’t working. That was a bad sign. He’d get lost in these daydreams and not come out for hours, and I knew he was missing my mom. Hopefully, my good grade would snap him out of it.

  “Hey, dad,” I said quietly, stepping into the room. He stiffened, and then slowly turned to face me.

  “Hello, Mags,” he said. His voice was hollow and distant, as if he’d replied to me from a across a big, empty garage. “How was school?”

  “It was great, actually,” I exclaimed, rushing forward. I was disappointed, however, because he turned back to face his computer even as I talked. He might as well have been staring at a blank wall.

  “Yeah?” He said. It was like an echo.

  “Yeah! Look at this!”

  I brandished the paper through the air.

  “We had to write stories for class,” I continued, “and Mrs. Clayton gave me an A plus! She even said it was the best one!”

  “That’s great honey.” he said back. He still hadn’t turned to look at the paper. Then, he reached out to a framed photograph of my mother, kept right on his desk, and ran his thumb over the edge. “You know,” he muttered, “your mother liked to write.”

  “Yeah, dad, I know,” I said. I was starting to get annoyed. Not that he wasn’t paying attention to me. I was well used to that. What was I, six? No. What made me mad was how sad he was. I know he missed mom, but he was just always sad all the time! And no matter what I did, he just kept on being sad! Not even an A+ paper could shake him out of it!

  “Come on dad, please!” I said. “Won’t you read it?”

  “Of course.” he said. He reached over, took the paper from my hand, and placed it down on the desk. He still hadn’t even looked at it. I knew that he wanted to want to read it. But I also knew that he wasn’t going to. Not anytime soon, anyway. Not while the picture of my mother kept drawing his gaze.

  I felt tears springing into my eyes. I hated to cry. Crying was for little girls. But I just felt so helpless. What was I supposed to do? How could I possible cheer him up?

  Then, something quite interesting occurred to me.

  I bit my lip, unsure. Both my parents had taught me to be honest. But they’d also taught me to help those in need – and wasn’t my father in need right now?

  I sighed, strode forward, and snatched my story from the desk.

  “Actually, Dad, I lied.” I declared. “I got an F on the story. Mrs. Clayton was very disappointed, and actually wants to hold me after school to redo it.”

  “What?” He asked. For the first time, I heard urgency in his voice. His eyes snapped into focus, and he looked down for the first time at the paper in my hand.

  “I told you!” I spat. “I got an F!”

  He frowned. His body tensed. It was the most present I had seen him in ages. “But, Mags, you’ve always gotten A’s. I don’t understand – ”

  “An F, dad! An F! I got a fucking F!”

  I gasped, amazed at my own temerity. I had used the forbidden F word, and for an F!

  Mrs. Clayton would have been pleased with the irony.

  Anger crossed over my father’s face, and he rose from his chair. I swear, dust fell off him as he stood, that’s how long he’d been sitting there, staring. “Young lady,” he snapped. “I do not expect you to use that language in front of your father – ”

  “Aw, fuck it!” I swore again, tearing the paper into shreds before his eyes. It wouldn’t do to have him see the A+. Not now.

  “Margaret Victoria Clifton!” My father thundered. He
was standing up at full height, full of righteous anger. I quailed beneath him. He was almost never angry.

  Grabbing me by the shoulder, he drove me from his office, right into my bedroom. He thrust me inside and yelled, “Your mother would be ashamed! Now, you’re grounded! No phone, TV, anything! Good night!”

  And with that, he slammed the door closed.

  Now that I was alone, I slid down to sit on my rug, waiting for the trembling to stop. Even though I was freaked out from him shouting at me, I was smiling.

  Sure, my dad was angry. But this was the first I had seen him be anything but sad in ages.

  And after month after month of sadness, even a bit of anger was welcome.

  Chapter 2

  Danielle

  The drive to New York City seemed to take forever, and not even because Jacob insisted on driving the speed limit the whole time. It’s just that driving from Vermont to Brooklyn in a creaky old van, overstuffed with luggage, is a really, really long drive.

  It was really nice for Jacob to take me. There was no real reason for me to have a car in New York City (or so people told me. I found it hard to imagine living anywhere without a car) so he would be inheriting the family “shit-mobile”, as my brothers affectionately called it. I knew they didn’t mean anything by it. Hell, they wouldn’t have been able to get to half their hockey practices without the damn thing.

  However, even though the ride was long, and even though the car was cramped, we went out of our way to drive through Manhattan itself. Jacob had never seen it, and I had only seen it once, on a drunken college trip the year before. It was fun for me to show off my (limited) knowledge to Jacob, and grin at his wonder.

  “I can’t believe you’re moving here, sis,” he said. “It’s amazing.”

  “I know!” I agreed. “It’s crazy! But I’m not exactly going to find my dream job in Vermont, am I?”

  We chuckled. After our mother had died and our father was laid off, we knew exactly how hard it was to get a good job in our shabby little town, let alone a dream job. There was another reason to be grateful to Jacob: now that he was old enough, he could start working full-time to feed our younger brothers. I was finally able to break free!

  Well, free-ish. There was still money and jobs and crap like that to worry about.

  Fortunately, a good friend of mine from school lived in Brooklyn, and she’d been looking for a roommate. Of course I leapt at the chance. She was waiting for us right outside the apartment complex as we pulled up, looking happy and yet somehow annoyed at the same time.

  “Veronica!” I exclaimed, rushing over to give her a hug. She felt stiff and tiny in my arms – not at all like the massive, half-wrestling bear hugs my brothers would give me.

  “Danielle!” She chirped back. “You’re late! What took you so long?”

  “Aw, well, we wanted to see the sights,” Jacob said. Already, he was out and behind the car, ready to unload.

  “It’s number two forty one,” Veronica stated, and then tossed him the keys before turning back to me. Jacob frowned.

  “Don’t worry, we’ll help in a sec!” I promised. Then, to Veronica, “So, how are you?”

  “Good, good. Been busy, but you know how things are.”

  “Definitely!” I exclaimed. “You look great! Still doing the interval training? I know how much you were into that in college.”

  She made a face as if she’d just tasted something unpleasant.

  “Eh, it’s too expensive in the city,” she complained. “I see you haven’t stopped though. You’re looking very…buff. Sure you want to work out that much?”

  I frowned. In Vermont, my strong, suntanned shoulders were usually considered a good thing. Suddenly, I grew very worried that maybe, in New York City, people preferred little waifs like Veronica. I hunched my shoulders, trying to make myself look smaller, and muttered, “Oh, I don’t know. It’s fun, sometimes.”

  “Well, at least you’ll be great on unpacking all those boxes!” She exclaimed, clapping me on the shoulder. “Come on, before that hulking brother of yours murders us…”

  Jacob was, in fact, not angry at all, and helped me unload the whole car in one go. Even Veronica helped with a box or two. She and Jacob spoke little. I guess a city socialite and a Vermont farming kid don’t have much in common. As we worked, I brainstormed ways to make sure that I, at least, didn’t stick out as so much of an outsider here in New York.

  We finished unpacking, and, after planting a big kiss on his cheek, Jacob headed home, leaving Veronica and me alone with a whole city of opportunities before us.

  “So, what now?” I asked her, rocking back and forth on my heels in excitement. I noticed her staring and quickly stopped.

  “First,” she said, “let’s see if you actually have something to wear.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. “I’ve got a whole wardrobe. You just saw me move all those boxes…”

  “No, I mean something to wear in the city,” she said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

  “Uh, right,” I replied, a little hurt that she didn’t think any of my clothes were acceptable. Still, she was the city girl, and my friend. If there was anyone I should trust, it was her.

  * * *

  After ransacking all of my clothes – and leaving them all over the floor, which bugged my inner cleaning-lady – Veronica decided that I did not, in fact, have anything good to wear and that we needed to go shopping.

  “But, Vee,” I said. “I don’t even have a job yet! Where am I supposed to get the money?”

  This, she answered with another roll of her eyes.

  Finally, I agreed to let her take me shopping, so long as it was somewhere cheap. “Come on, Danielle,” she teased, as I tried on department store get up after get up. “You’re going to end up dying a virgin if you keep dressing like that! department store You look like a hillbilly!”

  The sundress in question – a light, yellow thing with white flowers – was quickly discarded, and I began to look for “sexier” things. Eventually, Veronica found a skinny black dress that was both way too expensive and way too small. She decided at once that it was “the one.”

  “I really shouldn’t…” I kept protesting until she, with a huff, declared that she would simply pay for it.

  “Somebody’s got to,” she explained. “It’s for your own good, Danielle.”

  I smiled, thanking her profusely. With money so tight at home, people rarely bought me things, so it felt really good to get such a gift. Such a feminine one. My brothers were more likely to buy me a new hockey helmet than a dress. I felt really lucky to have a friend as good as Veronica.

  “Of course you are,” she said, when I told her this. “Now come on. It’s getting dark, and we have to get some makeup on you.”

  So we rushed back to the apartment, Veronica had a fight with my face, poking and swabbing it until it was acceptable, and then we went out.

  “Oh my god!” I chirped. “I can’t believe I’m about to party in New York City!”

  Veronica smiled, and then frowned. It was funny how she could do that. “Rule number one about New York,” she said. “Never get too excited about anything. Now, let’s go.”

  I expected our first stop to be some sort of pub, where we could get food as well as drinks, but to my surprise Veronica led us right to a club.

  “What, why waste alcohol by eating beforehand?” She said. “This way, you get drunk, faster.”

  She demonstrated her point by taking a third shot.

  “Okay. If you say so,” I said, still sipping my first beer. Either way, the club was still amazing. There seemed to be a million people there, and yet, somehow, we didn’t have to wait that long for a drink! It was as if they were used to having such a crowd, and were staffed regularly to deal with it – which, I realized, they most definitely were. Isn’t New York City amazing?

  After that first club, we went to a bar, where we proceeded to drink even more and still not eat. By th
is point, Veronica was wobbling around on her high-heeled shoes, and I was starting to feel awkward. Men kept coming over and grabbing her. Half the time she seemed to like it, cooing back at them like a kitten, and the other half she would hiss like a snake, complaining about the death of chivalry.

  After about an hour of this, I finally started getting annoyed.

  “If you don’t like it, Vee, then maybe you should stop staring at all of them!” I flared, then instantly regretted it. Her drunken gaze hovered on me, and she chuckled.

  “You’re just jealous,” she slurred, “that all these guys are coming up to me, and not one of them have talked to you.”

  “That’s not true!” I snapped, and yet I had to hide my face, for I was blushing. She wasn’t precisely correct. I didn’t actually want the hounding attention of a bunch of drunk idiots. Not really. But I was confused and hurt that every single guy in the vicinity seemed to be more interested in Veronica’s petty cattiness than someone like me.

  You’re just not that hot, I told myself. That’s okay though. You’re hard-working and nice. Men like those things, right?

  Right.

  So, by the time the bouncer kicked us out of that last bar, I was feeling pretty depressed.

  “Let’s go home, Vee, please,” I said, feeling helpless because I didn’t know the way back. If I had thought ahead, I would have ordered a cab, but I’d spent all my spare cash on drinks.