by Teresa Toten
“Thank you, Mike.” I raised my glass first to him and then the rest of the room. “Thank you all so much for all of this! I’m the luckiest Sweet Seventeen on the planet!”
We downed our shots and everybody clapped, for a long time.
I clapped too. My cheeks hurt from smiling so hard.
David reached down behind me, kissed the nape of my neck so tenderly that I was sent flying again. “Go on,” he said. Tonight, I was invincible, almost. A bullet of ice-cold fear shot through me. Dear God and everybody at home on my little altar, wasn’t it against the rules for someone like me to be this happy? Surely, I would have to pay? Then I blew out every single one of my birthday candles. David kissed me again, and it didn’t matter. Even if I did, tonight was worth it. Whatever the price.
I wore his kisses for days. I wore them sleeping, bathing, washing dishes, and going to school. Every so often, like in the middle of math class, they’d make me shiver uncontrollably, but I still wore them. You are mine and I am yours. I could call up and relive his touch so clearly that it felt like everybody in the room could see his hands on me. It made me crazed, but it was also serious proof that my birthday happened the way I thought it happened. Didn’t it?
But I knew it did, because I confirmed it the very next day when Madison came over for the official party debriefing. I talked about it and David, smiling non-stop. So this was what that was all about. I finally got it. I let Madison say three or four words about her and Mike Jr., about Sarah and George, about the other couples, and even a few words about Kit and “poor, poor lovelorn Rick,” but then it would be right back to David and me. Didn’t that have a pretty ring to it? David and me. Madison pretended she didn’t mind; after all, Mike Jr. was like her hundredth boyfriend and David was my first … real one.
I had a boyfriend.
Maybe it wasn’t a dream.
But it sure felt like one.
Things like this don’t happen to people like me.
Then Madison would tell me over and over again that they could and they did. She whispered it over Hungarian goulash when Mama was in the room, and she said it much louder in my room. “Things like that can happen to you, Sophie Kandinsky. He is crazy about you. He was pretty clear about that.” She also said that the whole thing had pumped her up something fierce. “I’m going to tell them, Soph.”
“Who, what?”
“Kit and Sarah, about crazy Edna being my real grandmother.”
“Really, for sure?”
“Yup, I’ve already told Edna that I’m going to straighten it all out.”
“Wow, she must be over the moon,” I said.
“Yeah, she was bawling and tooting all over the place this afternoon. I think she’ll be really happy not to be introduced as our former cleaning lady anymore.” Madison picked up my Buddha and put him down like he was red hot. “I’m ashamed of that, Soph.”
“Hell, we’ve all got stuff, Madison!” I thought about almost going over the edge with Luke, about Sarah struggling to stay a born-again virgin, and about Kit struggling as to whether she should come out or not. “In fact, your stuff is pretty tame compared with most of us.” She almost smiled. “You’re royalty, Madison. We know it and you know it. Edna’s not going to change that.”
“Oh, Sophie.”
“Yeah, yeah, but enough about you. Let’s get back to David and me!”
That’s how I kept his kisses warm, right up until David’s basketball game on Thursday. I blathered on about him non-stop, and to their eternal credit, Madison, Kit, and Sarah listened non-stop.
I had a boyfriend.
Hey, not only did I have a boyfriend, I had this miracle boy who jumped out of stairwells to hug me. Who searched for me at lunch, who lived leaning against my locker before his practices, and who showed me off to his friends. No more skulking around, worried who might see. If I caught his voice in the hallway, my heart would pitch and roll. So would his. I know because he would place my hand on it and then cover it with his.
Kit came with me to the game. Madison and Sarah were having an early dinner at Edna’s. It was secret-sharing time. The deal was that Madison would fess up that Edna was actually her grandmother on the way there, and if she didn’t, Edna would do it herself over dinner. Madison designed it so that she’d have no wiggle room. It worked and we knew this because she did the exact same thing with Kit the day before.
“And … so?” I asked while keeping an eye on David running his layups before the whistle.
“And so what?” shrugged Kit. “Loony-tune Edna is Madison’s biological grandmother. I mean really, so what? Madison was so tortured you’d think she was revealing something that was going to undermine the fate of the free world.”
He moved with superb power and speed. The men’s game was completely different from ours. It was brutal. I tried to brace myself for what was coming. “Thing is,” I turned back to Kit, “it was taking up a lot of messy space in her head all this time.” I planted my face in front of hers. “Secrets will do that.”
She pushed my head out of her line of sight. The teams were whistled off and whistled on. Northern was playing Central Collegiate. We had a nice crowd for our boys since it was close to playoffs. They lined up for the toss. David was captain and right forward. The ball was tossed. He got it and off we went.
“Wow, he is something to look at.” She shook her head. “I swear if anyone could turn me—”
I jabbed her.
“Hey, keep your elbows to yourself! I’m kidding! Sort of.” We were first on the board. While she was still clapping, Kit turned to me. “I just can’t, you know? I thought about it a million ways since we last talked. They’re not ready.” Kit looked around; we still had a lot of room around us. She turned back to the court. “And I’m not ready and I’m gutless. Hell, I haven’t even been able to tell my mom that I’m not coming next year.”
“Kit, that’s so not true. The gutless part, I mean.” The ball sped up and down and up the floor, sprouting baskets at each end. Then Central started laying on the muscle. “I don’t get it. You’re the most courageous of all of us.”
“Uh, no …” Her eyes stayed glued to the play. “That would be you, Sophie. I make a lot of noise, but like I say, gutless. I can’t believe that you, of all people, bought it. I hate confrontation and inconvenient personal honesty.”
David was elbowed on the way down from a layup. The ref missed it, but David didn’t. They were now up by two. “Okay maybe, but your mom …”
“Look, I will for sure tell my mom soon.” Her shoulders slumped. “And the rest of them … about the rest of it … later.”
“That’s cool.” I looked at her. “Like I said before, I get it.”
“Besides, I’m doing it for you. You’d be lost if you weren’t holding anyone’s secrets! I can’t imagine Sophie secretless.”
I smiled remembering Sarah and our trip to Honest Ed’s.
“Uh-uh.” She shook her head. “I know what you’re thinking, but sweet Sarah coughed up about your adventures in condom-land the night of your party.”
It was 24 to 18 for us. David sank two shots from a personal foul and they were on him hard.
“Really?” I said.
“Yup. Not only that, but she says that she’s not going to open up that box of safes. It seems like our girl is determined to stick to her new-found purity after all.”
I bit my tongue.
“Yeah,” she sighed. “I don’t buy it either, but you can’t deny that she totally means it in the moment.”
It was 31 to 30 at the end of the first quarter, and David was responsible for nine of those points. He had blistering control and the welts to show for it. David gave as good as he got. I never realized just how loud the men’s game was. The sounds of violence pierced me, a grunt before a shove, skin on skin, muscle pushing against bone, shoes squealing on the floor. Central was taking cheap shots at David. He wouldn’t last into the second half at this rate. My stomach knotted as he lope
d over to the free-throw line.
“Sweet Sarah.” I shook my head. “I’ve said it before, but if the rest of the school knew just how screwed up we are, they’d charge admission.”
“Oh, that’s only us individually.” Kit threw her arm around my neck. “Together we’re indestructible. Hell, together we’re immortal, don’t you think?”
“I think you’re demented,” I said.
The gym doors swung open and heads turned for Anita Shepard, Janice Wilton, and a few more of David’s special “fans.” Janice wore a tight paisley-patterned mini-dress with shiny black boots. The paisleys hugged and swirled around her body in a way guaranteed to make every boy dizzy.
I sucked in some air and felt eleven all over again.
“Steady, girl,” whispered Kit.
David made a shot from the top of the key. He looked for me and winked before he jogged back up the court.
I exhaled.
“Speaking of virginity,” Kit said.
“We weren’t.”
“Yeah we were, Sarah’s on again, off again virginity. What are you going to do, Soph? You are not Sarah.”
No use pretending I didn’t know what she meant. I looked back at Janice and the air leaked out of me. “I’ve been praying to my altar about it.”
“And?” She moved in closer and handed me her Pot O’ Gloss. “Start smearing. It’s your best coping technique.”
I applied lip gloss like it was going to win the game for us. “I don’t think I’m ready, Kit.” David reached for a long jump and made it. What arms, those amazing arms. A boy could hold up the world with arms like that. “But the way he makes me feel … I’m … it scares me. It’s like my skin’s on too tight, but still, I’m not really, entirely, ready for that, not yet.”
“Tell him,” she said. “I mean it. Straight up. Don’t mess this up, Sophie, you guys were meant for each other. Don’t play games. Tell him or you’ll lose your courage and pretend you’re ready when you’re not. Don’t pretend you’re something when you’re not.”
“Like you, you mean?” I wanted to suck the words back instantly. “I am a worm and must be crushed. Sorry, sorry.”
“You’re right.” Kit looked down at her hands. “I know about the not having courage part. About the not being true to yourself part.” Then she smiled. “Maybe I need you to be my role model, eh?”
“He’ll dump me,” I whined. “Why wouldn’t he? I’d dump me. I mean, he has had …” I snuck a look at Janice, Anita, and the others. There were so many others. “Let’s face it, he makes Luke look like a boy scout.”
“Yeah, but he’s smarter than Luke.” Kit snatched her lip gloss back. “Look, that boy has cut a wide swath through this school while he was waiting for you, no doubt about it. I think we’re pretty well the only ones he hasn’t slept with.”
I groaned.
“Sophie, none of them is his girl. You are. He made that pretty public at your party. I’m dead serious about this. Don’t pretend. Pretending sucks. Massive mistake.”
“Whoa, Kit, ‘fear of confrontation’ my foot!”
She rolled her eyes, just as Janice and the girls began cheering extra exuberantly. Bouncing up and down like that, they made the cheerleaders look like Mennonites. A few guys from our chemistry class and a couple of football players came in and joined Kit and me, beefing up our cheering section but putting an end to our heart to heart. Just as well. I was in a righteous freakout as it was.
At the top of the fourth quarter, David was nailed coming down from a jump shot just inside the key. Number 34 elbowed him in the cheek, just missing his eye. David started bleeding immediately. I exploded out of my seat and would’ve leapt onto the court if it weren’t for the quick hands of Kit and Joshua Singer.
“What are you going to add to the party?” Kit patted my knee. “His people will take care of it.”
And so they did. While David was getting patched up, his right guard and left forward double-teamed 34, sent him flying, and stepped on his hand by accident as he tried to get up. He had to leave the game. Message delivered. No fouls.
“Told ya!” said Kit.
So this was how the big boys played.
We won 67 to 59. Kit wouldn’t let me wait outside the boys’ locker room by myself. Thank God, since as soon as we turned the corner we saw Janice Wilton, panting outside the doors. Kit glared at her. Janice took off as soon as we parked ourselves across the hall from the doorway and made it clear we weren’t moving. We watched Janice wiggle away. “Your people will take care of that,” said Kit. “One of us will always be with you on slut alert after each game.”
The boys broke through the doors hooting and hollering, smelling like Irish Spring and victory. We got a lot of long looks and low wolf whistles.
David beamed as soon as he caught sight of us. “Hey, Kit, thanks for coming and thanks for taking care of my girl here.” He winked at her. “Let us walk you home.”
“Damn, and manners too! I swear, Soph, he could turn me.” She walked off down the hall. “Thanks, but I’ve got my car,” she called.
“Turn her?”
“Never mind.” I pulled his head toward me, stood on my tip-toes, and ever so gently kissed the surgical tape on his cheek. “You were awesome, a machine, amazing, terrifying …”
“What’s wrong, Sophie?”
David dropped his gym bag and leaned back into the lockers. He put his hands on my waist and pulled me in a bit. I instantly started to pulse. My body was built for cheap romance novels. “See!” I said accusingly. “See!”
“Uh … no.” He smiled.
I sighed for extra courage. David waited patiently, looking at me and looking amused. I wanted to remember how sweet he was right then, all clean and scrubbed, his hair still wet, and wearing a little white bandage high on his cheekbone. His mouth curled up into a smile, anticipating something. I photographed him in my head, my heart imprinting every part of him. It had been a miraculous five days.
“All you do is touch me and I lose it!”
His eyes danced and he gripped me tighter. “That’s bad?” he asked.
“Aargh!” I looked at the ceiling, examining the acoustic tiles. Then I faced him with my heart firmly planted in my feet. “David, you don’t know what you do to me. You may think you do, but you don’t, not really, because you’re not me, thing is, I’m so incredibly … but, you said yourself that there were lots of ways of being too young, and Anita and Janice and Susan and God knows how many others were not too young that way so that you must be used to getting … of course and why not, but I just can’t because I’m not like Alison, but then if you asked my body, I am, but on the other hand you know, maybe the religion stuff got to me after all at least for now, the next little while, I mean, you know?” I looked deep into his eyes and got lost a bit. Everyone was gone except us.
His dark eyes sparkled, playing with me. “Uh, is there a sentence in there somewhere?”
How to get the words out?
“I …” I gulped. How could I lose him? I just got him. I couldn’t bear to lose him. I looked at my feet. “Thing is, you’re so … and you would expect and quite right and I can’t just yet what you expect and Kit said I should say so. I want to kill her, but then I agree, the truth and all, no games, no lies, and I don’t blame you, ’cause I can’t, not now.” I watched him, watching me, tracking his reaction to whatever it was I’d said.
I take it all back! I screamed in my head. I braced for a pain that I knew there was no bracing for.
“Kit,” he sighed, “is wise beyond her years. Are you saying you want me to be a good boy?”
I felt my eyes get prickly. What did I expect? Things like this don’t.… He shook his head. No, don’t, don’t, please.…
David took my hand and put it under his cotton shirt. His heart was racing. “I’ve waited two years for you, Sophie. I’ll wait longer. I only want you.” He pulled me closer. “It’ll be okay. I’ll take care of you, Sophie. I’ll protect you.”
He sighed, took my hand back out from under his shirt, and kissed it. “Even if it’s from me.”
I fell into him and he held us.
It was like my soul finally came home, sat on the couch, and made itself comfortable. I knew in that moment three big things were true and I would remember them forever. One, I believed this boy. Two, I loved this boy. And three, maybe things like this could happen to people like me.
Papa picked me up after my shift at Mike’s on Saturday, the last Saturday in February. It was time for his present. He waited for me in the Luigi limo and kissed me as soon as I got in. Then he made a big show of trying to look semi-stern. “So, Sophie, tell me, how is your young man?”
“Unbelievable, Papa. You just wouldn’t believe it and even more unbelievable, my ‘young man’ is crazy about me! I think.”
“How could that be anything but believable, Sophie?”
“Easy for you to say.” I smiled. “You’re blinded by the parental obligation of loving me. Speaking of which, where are we going and what’s my present? I can’t wait. What a week, what a birthday week it’s been, Papa, the best week of my entire life! There’s really something to this praying and lighting candles and religion stuff, you know?”
Papa didn’t say anything as I was bouncing off the car walls, but he smiled when he turned the key. “I’m taking you to my AA meeting.”
“Oh goody! I …” Whoa, I was about to say how much I love those meetings when for once, miracle of miracles, I shut my mouth in time. “I can’t wait to see what it’s like and how it’s helped you. Thanks, Papa. Really great present.” I turned around to the back seat as if I had somehow missed her. “You didn’t invite Mama?”
