Firsts

by Laurie Elizabeth Flynn

  Angela glances from Charlie to me and back again. Somehow I know this is a decisive moment, her time to figure out where she stands. Finally she flings the little white book onto the ground and brings her gaze up. To me. Except it’s not a gaze but a full-on glare, her facial features screwed up in rage.

  “You should leave,” she says. “And you probably shouldn’t come to prayer group anymore.” She turns and runs toward the house. I can see her parents in the window, surveying the action with concerned expressions. Whatever they think is happening out here, this I’m sure they’d never fathom.

  I stoop down to grab the book, but Charlie beats me there. “I’m going to hold onto this,” he says.

  “Fuck you,” I say through gritted teeth. Never before have I felt so much like I wanted to kill somebody.

  “If you would have, none of this would have happened,” he says with that infuriating wink. I lunge to grab the book, but he sidesteps me.

  “You should have known I would never let her side with you. Angela’s everything to me. And I’m always going to be everything to her.”

  “If Angela’s everything to you, why did you want to have sex with me?”

  He shrugs casually, like I asked him if he wants pizza or Chinese food for dinner and he can’t make up his mind. “Because you got in my way. You went behind my back. I figured you owed me for fucking things up. But now, I’m glad I didn’t waste my first time on you. I have other plans for it.”

  I clench my jaw. “It’s not going to work,” I spit out. “Angela will figure everything out. She won’t believe you.”

  He raises an eyebrow. “Did you miss that part? She already does.”

  I stretch out my hand. I’m not sure what I plan to do with it. Maybe hit him, or scratch him across the other cheek. But he grabs it in midair and pulls me close to his face.

  He drops his voice to a whisper. “They say you never forget your first time. I won’t forget mine with Angela next weekend. Her parents are going away. It’ll be just the two of us.” He squeezes my wrist so hard that it hurts, then abruptly lets go.

  “You think you’re ruined now, Mercy? Wait until you see what I do next. All you had to do was keep your mouth shut. But I guess I should have known you’re not very good at that.”

  “You’re not going to get away with it,” I say under my breath. I don’t know if he heard me, or if I meant for him to. But he gets even closer, close enough for me to feel his hot breath on my ear.

  “Oh, and Mercy? When I’m riding Angela, I’m going to be thinking about you.”

  I swing my arm back and punch him as hard as I can in the face. I have never punched anyone before, but judging from the blood on his lip and my stinging knuckles, I probably did it okay.

  “Bad kitty,” he says, licking the blood off his lip and winking at me before running to the house.

  I stand at the end of the driveway for a long time, until Angela’s mom looks out with a frown and closes the blinds. I think about what’s being said inside of the house, if anything. I consider what Angela’s mom and dad think of her problem friend, the one who made her cry on the night of her engagement. But mostly I think about what Charlie is saying to her, what poison he is whispering into her ear. And what might be going on in her bedroom right now.

  Bad kitty. That’s what Charlie said. I bite my lip hard enough to draw blood and savor the metallic taste in my mouth.

  If Charlie wants to think of me as just another pussy, he’s dead wrong. Because I’m going to be the one cat that has more than nine lives.

  31

  I don’t go home. I can’t go home, not knowing whether Kim and my dad might be in the house. Neither of them knows me at all, but if I show up at home with a face raw from crying, they’re going to pretend they know me and want to know the source of my tears.

  There’s nowhere for me to go, so I walk around the neighborhood for hours, until my feet are sore and my legs are sore and the air starts to hurt my lungs with every inhale. I talk myself out of going to Zach’s house about a hundred times. Julia would probably give me one of her soft hugs, ask me what’s wrong, and make me hot cocoa. But then I’d have to tell Zach what I did, and I don’t think he would forgive me. I don’t want to keep lying to Zach. I’m going to lose him either way, and I can’t lose him tonight.

  So I go somewhere else, somewhere I have purposely avoided since the summer before grade nine. It’s a playground, small and orderly, filled with screaming kids and their parents during the day but completely silent at night. I feel my breath catch in my throat as I see the big red slide come into view. Bits and pieces of memory flash before me. Luke pressing me against that slide, the way his breath smelled before he kissed me, a mixture of Cool Mint gum and beer and weed. I tried so hard to erase every detail of Luke, to bury them beneath every other detail of everybody else who came after him. I thought in time the memories would fade, but standing here now, I might as well be thirteen again, desperate for the boy I love to love me back.

  I sit on a swing in the darkness, digging my toes into the sand. My stomach makes a grumbling noise that echoes in the silence. I should be hungry or thirsty or tired, but I know I couldn’t eat or sleep.

  You think you’re ruined now, Mercy? Wait until you see what I do next.

  Charlie’s voice comes from every direction, even though I know it’s just in my head. He doesn’t know where I am. But I can still hear it, just like I can almost feel his hands pushing me against the wall, his fingers digging into my shoulders.

  I jump off the swing and drag my feet through the sand. You tell anyone, and I will destroy you. I break into a run. This is what girlfriends do. I keep running when I get to the edge of the park. I shouldn’t have come here, not tonight, maybe not ever. I run home feeling like Charlie is behind me, so close that I can hear his breath in my ear.

  When I’m home, I dash up the stairs and through my bedroom and lock myself in my bathroom. My bathroom is safe. I haven’t slept with anyone in here. In here, nobody can touch me. I make a bed of towels in the bathtub and that’s where I wake up. But even though I can lock people out, I can’t keep them from burrowing into my head. Charlie. Luke. The virgins. Everybody I have given a piece of myself to.

  I seriously consider staying in here all day. Charlie will be at school, fixing me with that smile. He already won. There’s nothing else I can say to change that. Faye will be there, with her big eyes full of concern. Zach will ignore me. Angela won’t talk to me or even look at me.

  But I can see her, and that’s better than not seeing her, not knowing what’s going on.

  I steer clear of prayer group—which isn’t hard to do, considering they’re tucked away in a back corner of the library—and make a beeline for my locker. But this isn’t your average beeline. I’m very aware of the eyes on me. Almost every single person I pass gives me a second look. This is not natural, not for eight a.m. when most of us have barely woken up.

  And when it’s not natural, that means it’s not good.

  I duck into the bathroom, where I’m met with a cloud of perfume and giggling girls who vacate as soon as I come in. I survey myself in the mirror, turn in a full circle. My skirt isn’t tucked into my underwear. I don’t have toilet paper hanging down the back of my leg. I haven’t put on eye shadow as blush, and lipstick isn’t on my teeth. My boobs aren’t hanging out. Despite the purple half-moons under my eyes, I look normal. Which must mean whatever is going on is internal, which is even worse.

  I hide in a stall, the handicap one that nobody ever uses. Hiding in a stall is always the best place to hear gossip. I learned that by accident when senior year started. And today, it proves itself as true once again.

  “She’s going to have to change schools,” a voice says. I don’t recognize the body it is attached to. And when the rumors spread to people you don’t even recognize, that’s when you know somebody has been hard at work.

  “I still can’t believe she did Isabella’s boyfriend,” the other
voice says. “I wouldn’t have believed it unless I saw it myself. And I sure did.”

  “I have to say, that was a lot of Rafe Lawrence before breakfast,” a third voice chimes in. “More of Rafe Lawrence than I ever wanted to see.”

  “I don’t know,” the first voice says. “I say Caroline is lucky. I had no idea what Rafe is working with. I guess it’s true what they say about guys with big hands.”

  “Like you even noticed his hands,” the second girl says. “Anyway, I don’t think Caroline’s so lucky now that she knows what Rafe was doing behind her back.”

  “Speaking of backs,” the third girl says. “Can you believe what Mercedes can do with hers?”

  “I wish I could bend like that,” the first girl says. “I can’t believe I had her written off as a prayer-group nerd.”

  Suddenly I’m glad I’m sitting on a toilet, because I feel like I’m about to be sick in one.

  The webcam Charlie said he placed in my room. The video he threatened to release, if I told anyone. I told. He must have shown it. Which means he worked fast, and the whole school has probably seen every single part of me.

  “I can’t believe Jeremy Roth went down on her. Anna always said he’d never go down on her. Thought it was gross. I guess it wasn’t gross with Mercedes.”

  The first girl lowers her voice. “I just never imagined any of that from Mercedes. She was always so quiet. I talked to her once.”

  This is a lie. I’m almost positive I have never talked to her in my life.

  “What did she say?” the second girl says. Her voice is so hushed and serious that I almost want to laugh. Laugh or throw up.

  “She said, ‘Get a life, you dumb cunt.’” A new voice enters the mix. I’d know it anywhere.

  Faye.

  The girls disappear in a cloud of hushed voices and too much perfume.

  Faye chooses the stall beside me. When she flushes, I make the mistake of half sniffling, half crying into my hand.

  “I know you’re in there, Mercedes,” Faye says. “I can see your dirty Converse shoes. You really should get a new pair.”

  “Did you see it?” I croak. “If you saw it, you probably saw a lot more of me. You probably shouldn’t be seen talking to me. And I should probably switch schools.”

  “That’s the thing,” Faye says, stopping right outside the stall door and rapping on the metal with her fist.

  “What’s the thing?” I say, pushing my shoe against the toilet paper dispenser, making no move to let her in.

  “I never was any good at doing what people tell me.”

  And like that, her head appears under the stall door, followed by her body. She pulls herself in and wipes her hands on her jeans.

  I raise my eyebrows. “You know how disgusting that floor is?” I say. “Janitorial service at this school leaves a lot to be desired.”

  She cocks her head and puts her hands on her hips. She looks like what I imagine a stern parent would look like, not that I know from experience. I wonder if she got that posture from Lydia.

  “First of all, you didn’t let me in, so I had no choice.”

  I shrug. “And what’s second of all?”

  “Second of all?” She puts her hand under my chin and tilts my face up and shakes her head. “I debated telling you this, because I didn’t want you to think less of me. But I’ve actually been there.”

  I look away from her prying eyes. “You’ve been there?” I say. “You’ve been in the same situation? Come on…” My voice trails off. “Did somebody send you here to spy on me?” I whisper, defeated.

  She puts her hands on her hips. “Seriously? You and Zach are the only people I like at this school. And I think you need a friend right about now.” She smiles, that heartbreakingly sweet smile she flashed in home economics on that first day.

  She crouches down and puts her hands on my knees. “Look. I saw the video. Everybody saw the video. I already knew you were lying about Zach. And so what? You had sex with some guys. Who hasn’t?”

  I shake my head. “I didn’t just have sex with some guys. I had sex with some guys who had girlfriends.” I swallow against a hard lump in my throat.

  “Look, Mercy. I’ve been the other woman. I got myself in a mess. I ran from my problem, and you sure as hell aren’t going to run from yours. That only makes it worse. So you’re not going to hide in here for the rest of senior year. You’re coming with me, and we’re going to walk down this hall like nothing fucking happened. You got me?”

  I want to hug her, to bury my face in that beautiful hair of hers and sob into her and ask her why she’s committing social suicide by being my friend when it would be so easy to be my enemy. But if I let myself be weak, I might never leave this bathroom stall.

  “How can I look them in the eye?” I squeak out. “I never wanted anyone to get hurt. They were never supposed to know. I thought I was helping.” Suddenly, saying it out loud, I hear how pathetic it sounds, how completely ridiculous. I wasn’t helping anyone, myself least of all.

  “How do you look people in the eye after that?” I whisper.

  Faye smiles and laughs, that goddamned seal-bark laugh. Right now, it sounds like music. She extends her hand to help me up.

  “Who says you have to look them in the eye? Pick a spot on the wall and stare at that instead.”

  I sling my bag over my shoulder. “Where’d you learn that?”

  “I told you, I made mistakes, too,” she says. “We didn’t really move here because Lydia got a better job. Let’s just say I’m pretty good at being Girl Most Hated by now.” She grabs my hand and squeezes it in hers.

  And this is how we make it to chemistry. I take Faye’s advice, staring past the laughing and glaring faces, faces of everyone who has seen me naked. I tune out the jeers, the excited chatter, the judgemental expressions. I ignore the screeching cries of “SLUT!” the people trying to shove their cell phones in my face. I grip Faye’s hand so hard that I probably almost break bones. And when class ends, she’s there to hold my hand and carry my books for me, like an old-school boyfriend from the fifties. And I have never been so grateful for anybody in my life.

  But even Faye can’t save me from the girl who comes out of nowhere and hits me in the face.

  Her face is a twisted mask of fury. I don’t recognize her, but she recognizes me. And hates me.

  “You bitch!” she screams.

  My face is stinging from where she hit me, and I reel into what I think is a bank of lockers but is actually another girl, who yanks on my hair so hard that a chunk of it must come out of my scalp. Faye lets go of my hand and pushes the second girl backward with surprising force for somebody who can’t weigh more than ninety pounds. The second girl topples over and Faye pins her down. The first girl is on me again, until a strong pair of hands picks her kicking and screaming off the ground.

  I recognize his smell before I see his face. It’s Zach. He’s not ignoring me. I haven’t lost him.

  “Everybody needs to calm the fuck down!” he shouts.

  I have never heard Zach speak with such authority before. I remember when I first met him, telling him he needs to stop being so shy. I guess he finally took my advice, at the best possible time.

  But nobody else seems overly intimidated. A pack of other girls, a few of whom are vaguely familiar, are advancing on me, all of them wearing the same angry expressions, some of them fluttering pieces of white paper in their hands and pointing at what I recognize as my own handwriting. As they get closer, their faces come into view. I recognize Laura, my onetime elementary school friend, and Britney from French class, whose mouth is twisted in a scowl. They’re like a pack of wolves, advancing on their kill. I have never seen a fight in the halls of Milton High in all of my years here, and now I’m lying in the thick of one.

  One that I caused.

  My eyes dart to the periphery of the pack, where Jillian Landry stands by herself, her mouth open in shock. She doesn’t look mad. She’s not crying, either. She just l
ooks heartbroken, which is the worst of all to see. I did that to her. Maybe I deserve to be left to the wolves.

  “Back off, before I get Principal Goldfarb,” Zach says, extending his arms to keep the pack at bay. “Don’t think I won’t do it. You all want detention before prom?”

  One of the girls starts wailing. “My boyfriend Connor was supposed to take me to prom!” She bursts into tears. “Until that little skank took him away from me!” Her friends put their arms around her and make murmuring sounds. I know they are burning holes into my head with their hateful glares.

  Zach glances from me to Faye. “Run,” he says. “Meet me back at the place we meet on Wednesdays.”

  Faye grabs my hand. The pack lets us go, calling out after us. I hear a slew of colorful names. SLUT. HOME WRECKER. WHORE. BOYFRIEND THIEF. TRAMP. Once we’re in my Jeep—Faye wisely doesn’t let me drive when she sees my hands shaking over the wheel—we speed out of the parking lot and back to my house. Only when we’re in my bedroom with the door locked do I let myself actually breathe.

  I flop backward on my bed, feeling like all the energy has been sucked out of me. I’m dizzy and nauseous, but there’s one thing I have to say, one thing Faye has to know.

  “I never slept with Charlie. I never tried to seduce him, like he’s probably telling everyone. He planned the whole thing. He wanted to ruin my life.”

  Faye sits on the bed and takes my hand. “I know,” she says.

  She believes me. Maybe Zach will, too. I think of his text messages from that night. See you around. And the way he ignored me in the hallway like I was nothing to him.

  “He’ll come around,” Faye says, smoothing my hair off my face. “He just needs time.”

  I don’t know how somebody who has known me for such a short time can already read my mind.

  Zach knocks on the door five minutes later. “I barely made it out alive,” he says, standing with his arms crossed in front of us. “It’s fucking mayhem back there.” He clears his throat. “And I think you owe me an explanation as to why my bare ass is all over the Internet.”