Girls on the Verge

by Sharon Biggs Waller

  “They ran us off the damn road,” I say.

  “Dudes don’t have any scripts for how to fail. With women, there’s no expectation we’ll succeed so we know how to try again. Dudes ghost on you or get revenge.”

  “I never thought about it like that,” I say.

  “Not everything is about us. It’s hard to know what he was thinking, but I wouldn’t take it personally. Everyone has awkward sex.” She smiles. “But also, don’t let a guy tear the condom open with his teeth.”

  I let that truth sink in.

  “How about you, Annabelle?” Bea asks.

  “Bea! When did you get so interested in other people’s sex lives?” I ask.

  “Just because I don’t have sex doesn’t mean I’m not curious about it.”

  “I’ll tell you about the first dick I ever touched. It belonged to a boy named Hayden. We went out freshman year.” Annabelle sits on a pink spring horse, her sneakers flat on the ground.

  “Oh my gosh! Freshman year?” Bea can’t believe it.

  “Hey! No judging. We used to make out in the little woods behind his house. He’d been not-so-subtly directing my hand toward his, you know, stuff, and one day, I was like, fine.”

  “What did you do?” Bea asks.

  “I didn’t know what to do,” Annabelle says, “so I put it back where I found it.”

  Bea covers her mouth to suppress a laugh, which makes me burst out laughing. I like that about Annabelle, how open and honest she is.

  “He wasn’t too happy about that. So, I dumped him.”

  “What about you, Camille?” Annabelle says. “How was your first dick sighting?”

  I shrug. “I’ve never actually had a sighting. It was dark when I did it with Dean, and he put the condom on himself.”

  “I’ve never seen one or felt a … you know,” Bea says, bracing her feet against the ground, coming to a halt. “I mean, when Mateo and I make out, I feel a lump against me. But, like, I’ve never, you know, touched it.”

  I’m happy Bea is breaking out of her shell, but Mateo is like a brother to me, and the thought of him with a boner skeeves me out a little.

  “I’m not sure I’d know what to do, much less how to put a condom on it,” Bea says. “I wouldn’t even know how to go about buying one.”

  “Whoa, good pony,” Annabelle says to the spring horse, giving it a pat on the neck. She gets off. “Come on, women.”

  “Where’re we going?” Bea asks.

  “Shopping.” She gestures at a drugstore down the street and takes off toward it. We exchange looks, get off the swings, and follow her.

  “One of the benefits of working in a pharmacy is getting to stock all the crap,” she says, opening the drugstore door. “I always stocked the personal items aisle because no one else wanted to do it.”

  Annabelle heads straight for one of the middle aisles and stops at the family planning section. The memory of the last time I was in this aisle flickers in my mind.

  “I’ve never been down this aisle,” Bea whispers, crowding close to me.

  “Not even when you buy tampons?”

  She shakes her head. “My mom buys them for me.”

  “Well, welcome to Thunderdome.”

  Annabelle stops in front of a rack of condoms. “And here we are, ladies. This is but a sampling of what awaits you in the world of condom usage.” She crosses her arms and studies them. “Hmm, not a bad selection for such a Podunk pharmacy.”

  Bea keeps walking.

  “Beatrice Delgado!” I say. “You get back over here. If I’m going to learn this, then you are, too.”

  “Yeah, Bea,” Annabelle chimes in.

  “All right!” she says. “Jeez Louise.” She stands behind me, like the condoms might jump off the shelf and attack her.

  “Now, listen carefully,” Annabelle says. “Here on the left, you have your standard johnnies—”

  “Johnnies?” I ask.

  “Condoms are called johnnies in England—a little condom lingo I picked up. Please save your questions for the end of the lecture. Now, as I said.” She points to each one. “As follows: Standards are for contraception and STD prevention only; no added features. Beginners should stick with these.”

  Annabelle goes on to explain size, reasons for lubrication, and latex versus polyurethane.

  Bea shifts from foot to foot behind me, but she doesn’t take off.

  A girl looking at tampons down the aisle steps a little closer, her head cocked to one side, apparently listening.

  “Here are the novelty condoms.” Annabelle waves at the bottom shelf. “I suggest you consider these carefully because they are not always the best for protection. Know the difference.” She takes a box off the shelf and holds it up. “Flavored condoms. Cherry.” She puts it back and takes out another. “Grape. Artificially flavored. Perfect if you’re on a diet.”

  The girl listening starts laughing.

  “But seriously, you don’t want sugar down there.” Annabelle puts the box back on the shelf and chooses another. “Ribbed condoms. It says ‘for her pleasure.’”

  “That doesn’t sound pleasurable,” Bea says. “That sounds painful.”

  “Why do I want friction?” I ask.

  “If a dude whips these out, run for the hills. Any guy who has to rely on a gimmick to do the job for him is just plain lazy.” She scans the shelves. “Ah, here we have a glow-in-the-dark condom. Beloved of truck stop vending machines everywhere, these are for the bros in your life who want to see their dicks glow. Avoid, avoid.”

  “That would have been good for Dean,” Bea whispers to me. “Then you would have seen it.”

  Annabelle continues. “Not illustrated here are warming condoms, colored condoms, and last but not least, your tingling condom.”

  “Tingling?” Bea asks.

  “You ladies need help?” A clerk stands at the front of the aisle, confused.

  Annabelle turns around, startled.

  “Can I help you find something?” he asks.

  Bea grabs a box of Trojans off the shelf. “Nope,” she says. “We got it.”

  We run-walk to the cash register, trying desperately not to laugh. Bea steps to the cashier and drops the box of condoms on the counter like a boss.

  We leave the shop and head back to the tire store. We’re laughing so hard, we’re weaving down the sidewalk.

  “Oh my god, that poor guy,” I say. “We must have looked crazy.”

  “What am I going to do with these condoms?” Bea says in a daze. “I can’t believe I did that. I grabbed them off the shelf, and next thing you know, I bought them.”

  Annabelle puts her arm around Bea’s shoulders. “That’s our Bea!”

  * * *

  At six thirty, Dale comes into the customer room. “Car’s out front, girls,” he says around his toothpick. “Y’all be careful now.” He hands Annabelle the keys.

  We get in Buzzi, and Annabelle turns on the radio. Bea opens her pack of condoms, and they furl out in a long strip. She tears one off, takes the condom out, and unrolls it. “Interesting,” she whispers.

  “So how do these go on, Annabelle?” Bea asks as we pull onto the freeway. “Is it, like, self-explanatory?”

  “Nope,” she says. “I had to look on the internet for instructions.”

  “Planned Parenthood website says…” Bea’s voice fades as she reads. “Gosh … hmm … okay.” I hear her phone click off.

  “Come on!” Annabelle says. “Keep reading. Don’t leave us in suspense here.”

  “No, I’m good,” Bea says firmly. “I know how now.”

  “You read it, Camille,” Annabelle says.

  “On it.” I look up the Planned Parenthood website on my phone and click on contraception. There’s a step-by-step chart, complete with line drawings of condoms and a naked dude. “Okay, so in a nutshell—”

  Bea and Annabelle burst into laughter.

  “Nutshell!” Bea says through giggles.

  “Hush, you two,�
� I say. “This is important, so listen. Basically you wait to put the condom on until the guy has an erection.”

  “That makes sense,” Annabelle says.

  “Also you should check the expiration date—”

  “Of the guy’s dick?”

  I throw Annabelle a withering look. “No, genius. The condoms! Moving along.” I read the next part, and I start laughing so hard, I can’t stop. “I can’t…” I can barely get the words out.

  “What?” Annabelle says.

  “I know why she’s laughing,” Bea says.

  “Why?”

  “The end should look like a little hat,” Bea says.

  “What?” Annabelle says.

  “That way you know you’ve got it the right way around.”

  “Brilliant,” Annabelle says. “That’s seared into my brain forever now.”

  I get hold of myself and continue. “Next, you’re supposed to pinch the tip and put it on the end of your penis,” I say.

  “Got it, got it,” Annabelle says, nodding. “End of my penis.”

  “The pictures are something else,” Bea says.

  “Then roll it down, stop when you reach the base. God, I’m glad I don’t have a dick,” I say.

  “Don’t feel too sorry for dudes,” Annabelle says. “Putting on a condom is about the hardest thing they have to do with those things. That and getting kicked in the nuts.”

  “It hurts to get kicked in the vagina, too,” I say. “I fell on the bar of my bike when I was ten and it hurt so bad. My mom traded it in for a girl’s bike after that. I guess it was okay for my brother, Chris, to fall on it.”

  Bea snorts.

  “So go on,” Annabelle says. “This is fascinating.”

  “I thought you knew how to do this?”

  “It’s always good to have a refresher.”

  “Next up, it says have sex—”

  “Duh,” Bea says.

  “Then take it off before your penis goes soft,” I read. “Make sure to hold the end of the condom when you do this. Pull it off from the tip and discard.” I start laughing again. “It says not to throw it in the toilet because it clogs the pipes.”

  “Can you imagine telling your parents you’ve clogged the toilet with used condoms?” Annabelle says. “Mortifying.”

  “My parents would send me to a convent if that happened,” Bea says.

  I click off my phone. “So now we know the ins and outs of condoms.”

  Bea and Annabelle erupt in hysterics.

  “What?”

  “Nutshell. Ins and outs,” Bea says between giggles. A packaged condom flies through the air and lands on my lap. “Here. You win the condom award.”

  I pick up the condom and pretend to sob in joy. “I’d like to thank the Academy and all the boys in the world who have to turn their dicks into balloon animals to do it.”

  “You’ve earned it, Camille,” Annabelle says.

  “I have my own lucky condom now,” I say.

  * * *

  We drive for a little while, listening to an interview show on public radio.

  “What’s our ETA?” Annabelle asks.

  I look at the Maps app. “Eleven if we don’t stop for bathroom breaks.”

  “Or coffee.” Bea taps the back of Annabelle’s head.

  Annabelle grips the wheel and sighs. “It feels good to be finally on our way.”

  Bea leans forward and hooks her elbows over the seat. “Shall I call around to see if we can get a hotel room in Alamo?”

  “We already have one,” Annabelle says. “Camille needs to rest after she takes the pills, and we wanted to make sure we had a room ready.”

  “Why? Can’t you rest on the way home, Camille?” Bea asks.

  Annabelle looks at me.

  “No,” I say slowly. “I need to be near a toilet because … because.” I try to reach for words that Bea will understand. Words that won’t upset her.

  “It will be like a miscarriage, Bea,” Annabelle puts in. She says it gently, looking in her rearview mirror at her.

  “Oh,” Bea says. “I didn’t think about that. I don’t know what I thought … that maybe the pills would make it dissolve or something. That’s so dumb of me.”

  “You couldn’t have known,” I say. “And why would you? I didn’t really know about any of this until I needed to.”

  “Will it hurt?”

  “It’s supposed to feel like a really bad period … so”—I shrug—“I have ibuprofen, and I brought my heating pad with me.”

  “How big will it be?” she asks.

  “Will what be?” I ask.

  “The … you know.”

  “Don’t think about it, Bea—” Annabelle says.

  “I’m eleven weeks pregnant so it’s about an inch and a half,” I interrupt. I hold my thumb and forefinger up. “About this big.”

  Annabelle glances at me, shakes her head.

  “She asked, and so I’m going to tell her,” I say. I know why Bea’s asking, because she’s like me. There’s something about knowing what’s going to happen and how it’s going to happen that’s calming. When I’m at the dentist, I ask exactly how long I’ll be stuck in that chair with my mouth wide open. When my grandma went into the nursing home, I wanted to know why, and I made my parents tell me everything.

  “Will you see it … floating in the toilet?” Bea asks.

  “I don’t know what I’ll be able to see. I might see a little sack and maybe even the fetus,” I say.

  “Okay,” Bea says quietly. “What will you do after it comes out? Flush it down the toilet?”

  “Yes.”

  Bea doesn’t say anything more, and I don’t press her to talk.

  * * *

  “What sort of plays did you do in England?” I ask Annabelle. We’re flying down the highway, making good time.

  “Let’s see. We did King Lear and Waiting for Godot.”

  “Ugh,” I say. “I hate that play.”

  “Yeah, it wasn’t my favorite, but the creative director has a thing for Beckett, which I don’t understand because she’s a woman and Beckett hated women.”

  “Tracy despised him. That famous ‘women have no prostates’ excuse and that’s why they can’t play the male characters is beyond.”

  Annabelle shifts the car and changes lanes.

  “Do you like England?”

  “I do. It’s expensive, though, although I found this café where you can get curry and rice for four pounds. But curry and rice gets old after a while.”

  I imagine Annabelle riding the Tube, getting off at Piccadilly station or whatever it’s called, and walking around London past Buckingham Palace and Scotland Yard and Big Ben, a cute scarf wrapped around her neck, umbrella hooked over her arm. “Did you go to Stratford-upon-Avon?”

  She shakes her head.

  “Did you meet any guys there? I love accents, especially French and British—”

  “I don’t really want to talk about England anymore, okay?” Annabelle says. She looks a little upset.

  “Oh, okay,” I say, dropping the subject.

  “Camille,” Bea says, “you never told me how you and Annabelle met up.” Bea has always been good about redirecting a conversation.

  “Annabelle was home for summer break working at that pharmacy off the freeway.”

  “Fred’s Pharmacy?” Bea says. “Ugh, that place is so gross.”

  “Yeah, no joke. I didn’t stay long,” Annabelle says. “God, I was so freaked out when I saw you, Camille.”

  I laugh. “I was freaked out when I saw you! I mean, I was your biggest fan, and no way did I want you to see me buying a pregnancy test.”

  TWELVE

  JUNE 22

  The orange neon sign for Fred’s Pharmacy stutters on and off; the top part of the F is burned out. A plastic grocery bag dangles from a lamppost, and Sonic cups stabbed with straws lie scattered under the parking lot lights, their contents sucked dry long ago.

  The clock in my mom’s o
ld Buick ticks as the second hand sweeps around once, then again and again.

  I stare at my hands, begging them to let go of the damn steering wheel. But I sit here, seat belt clicked in place; my hands stuck to the faux leather like a bird clutching its perch.

  My phone dings in my purse, shaking me out of my zombie state. I scramble through my bag to find it. A text message from my mom:

  Where are you? Who said you could take the car?

  Shit. I open the door and a rush of hot air blasts in. My phone dings again.

  You’d better be on your way home.

  I didn’t expect to be gone this long. I saw someone I knew in the pharmacy at Bridgetown and so I drove to this drugstore, which is a half hour away from my house. I’ve never taken my mom’s car without permission before and never driven it this far, but I didn’t know what else to do. I thought she’d still be at church with my dad.

  I shove my phone in my back pocket, cringing at the ding that follows. I can almost feel my mom’s anger radiating hot through the screen. I run-walk across the parking lot.

  I rummage in my purse for my sunglasses and slide them on. Sunnies aren’t much of a disguise, but it makes me feel a little better. The automatic doors slide open.

  I search for the sign marked FEMININE NEEDS and force my feet in that direction, taking a shortcut down the INFANT NEEDS aisle. The only person there is an employee tagging baby formulas.

  My sneakers squeak to a stop on the scuffed tile floor. I know that employee.

  What the hell is Annabelle Ponsonby doing here?

  Annabelle sports a tomato-red vest with HOW MAY I HELP YOU? written on the back in peeling iron-on letters. I have to get out of here, find another pharmacy. No way can Annabelle Ponsonby see me buying a pregnancy test. I step away, and a loud ding! comes from my pocket. Annabelle glances over. I think her eyes light up when she sees me, but then her face instantly falls.

  “Hey, Annabelle,” I say. “I thought that was you. Um. Aren’t you supposed to be in England?”