Firsts

by Laurie Elizabeth Flynn

  After I leave the letter in the mailbox, I park down the road and wait. I don’t know what I’m waiting for. Part of me just wants to see Angela, to know she’s okay. Every minute that passes means the weekend is that much closer, a thought that fills me with dread.

  On impulse, I pull out my phone and dial her number before I can chicken out. The phone rings and rings and eventually goes to voice mail, but I can’t think of a message to leave so I say nothing and hang up.

  I’m about to start the Jeep and drive away when a car pulls into the driveway. Charlie gets out of the driver’s door and stretches his arms overhead, a gesture that makes me instinctively clamp my own arms around my chest. I hate how just the sight of him makes my whole body shake.

  I don’t want to watch, but I do. He walks around to Angela’s side and opens the door for her. I can’t see his face, but I know the expression on it. That smirk, the smile that says I get everything I want, eventually.

  But Angela doesn’t get out of the car and kiss him. She slams the door shut, trapping him outside. They’re fighting. I lurch forward against the steering wheel, hoping for a better view. They’re fighting, the day before their anniversary weekend. Maybe they won’t be celebrating after all.

  Charlie gestures for her to roll the window down, then he goes back around to the driver’s side. I can’t see what’s going on in the car without pulling up for a closer look, and I’m not about to do that. If Angela saw me now, that might propel her to go through with something she doesn’t want to do because she’s mad at me, because she thinks I betrayed her.

  And if Charlie saw me now, I don’t even want to know what he might do.

  My phone vibrates on the dashboard. I jump in my seat and press it to my ear. It must be Faye or Zach, finally set loose from Principal Goldfarb’s office.

  “What happened?” I half whisper into the phone, forgetting that Angela and Charlie are nowhere near close enough to hear me.

  “What happened? You’ve been avoiding me all week, and now it’s coming to a head. Dinner’s in half an hour, and you’d better be at the house.” Kim’s voice floods my ear, and it’s her angry voice, the one she reserves for people who seriously piss her off. She hasn’t used this tone with me in a long time. Even when I try to get a reaction out of her, she still doesn’t get angry. But this time, when I don’t want her wrath, I don’t know what I did to deserve it.

  “I don’t remember having dinner plans,” I say coolly, keeping my eyes on Charlie’s car.

  “That’s because you have conveniently been preoccupied this whole week,” Kim says. “You could have checked the messages I left you, or the note in the kitchen.”

  “What’s the big damned deal? Sorry if I didn’t see some stupid Post-it note. It’s been a busy week.” My voice is laced with anger, but worst of all are the tears behind it. I want to scream at Kim. I want to blame her for letting Charlie be our gardener and for letting him dig into our lives. My life.

  “You’re coming home for dinner,” Kim says. Now she sounds preoccupied, like she’s doing her nails and talking to me at the same time.

  “Since when have we ever made dinner plans? Usually I eat alone.” I think of Faye and her spaghetti and the way her eyes lit up when I ate the whole plate.

  “We’re having a special guest tonight.” Kim sighs. “Your father.”

  I grip the phone, wanting to yell into it but too exhausted to bother arguing with Kim. I knew this was going to happen sooner or later. A week ago they were groping on the porch, and now my dad is coming over for dinner.

  Kim takes my silence as tacit consent. “Come home, Mercedes.”

  I throw my phone in my purse and start up the Jeep. Angela and Charlie are still in the darkened car. Whatever they’re doing in there, I can’t wait around to find out.

  When I walk in the door, Kim is a flurry of activity. She’s wearing about eight pounds of diamonds around her neck and a black cocktail dress with matching high heels. She looks like someone ready to go on a fancy date with somebody she wants to spend a lot of money on her.

  “Do I look okay?” she asks me as she stands in front of the fridge and fluffs her hair. This is definitely not normal Kim behavior. She never asks if she looks okay. She’s nervous. I swallow the comment I was about to make about seeing her with my dad on the porch the other night.

  “You better go upstairs and change,” Kim says, giving me a once-over that ends with a frown.

  “What’s wrong with what I have on?” I say, crossing my arms. I know I’m giving her a hard time, but I shouldn’t have to dress up to impress someone who hasn’t been around to deserve it.

  “Just put on a dress, Mercedes. Make yourself presentable.”

  I stomp upstairs and take off the jeans I’m wearing. I replace them with sweatpants and smirk at myself in the mirror. This will show Kim. Then I take the sweatpants off and put on a skirt and top and brush my hair. Dammit. I don’t want my dad to think I’m a slob. I apply a dab of lip balm and spritz myself with perfume. Maybe Kim’s antsy energy rubbed off on me, a mixture of nerves and excitement. My dad left us in his fast car so many years ago. Will I even recognize the person who walks through the door?

  When the doorbell rings, I leave my room and watch from the landing as my dad comes in and gives Kim a peck on the cheek. They don’t make eye contact, which must mean they’re sleeping together again and don’t want me to know it. Not making eye contact is the most obvious sign of all.

  From my vantage point, I can see the top of my dad’s head. He has a bald spot at the back that wasn’t there the last time I saw him, and his hair is considerably grayer. Other than that, he’s exactly as I remember, right down to the suit that’s just a bit too snug around his beginning of a potbelly.

  Kim clears her throat, which is either her signal to my dad that I’m in the room or her signal to me that I should come downstairs. I walk down the stairs on shaky legs and grip the banister for support. My dad is watching me, almost like he’s seeing me for the first time. For some reason I start thinking I’m in a movie and this is my prom and my perfectly normal, loving parents are at the bottom of the staircase, waiting to see me off. My throat’s dry and my palms are sweaty on the railing. I hope my dad doesn’t want to shake my hand, because he’ll know how sweaty it is. But he won’t shake my hand. He’ll hug me. Except he’s staring at me like he doesn’t know who I am, which I guess is true. So much has happened to me that he has no idea about. My dad was always good at knowing when something was bothering me. Penny for your thoughts, kiddo, he used to say when I was seven and stressed out about some stupid seven-year-old problem. I wonder if he can still read me. Now it would take him a lot more than a penny to know what’s on my mind.

  When I reach the bottom of the stairs, we stand in front of each other. I wipe my palms on my skirt, just in case he does decide to shake my hand. But he just gives me a funny smile instead and inches forward, like he’s asking for permission to touch me. I like that he doesn’t just expect me to want to be hugged. He’s respectful of boundaries. I step forward and drape my arms loosely around his shoulders.

  I don’t know what I expect from the hug. I guess I’m waiting for him to pull me in and try to apologize for being missing in action for a good chunk of my life. But he just gives me a little squeeze and pats me on the back. I can feel the heat from his hand through my shirt. He’s nervous, too.

  When we pull away, he holds me by the arms and shakes his head. “You look so much like your mother,” he says. I bite my tongue. I want to tell him that our looks are where the similarities end, but I don’t want to spoil the moment when it barely started.

  Kim hired a catering company to make dinner. When the three of us sit down at the dining room table, it becomes blatantly clear just how uncomfortable my dad feels in the house he used to live in. He makes little comments about the renovations Kim has had done—the ones on the house, not on her body, although I’m sure he has noticed those, too. “Great paint colo
r,” he says, along with “You finally got that hardwood floor you wanted.” I keep my mouth shut until he makes a comment that sucks away my appetite completely.

  “The yard looks great,” he says, gesturing out the open window beside us. “You did something with that dirt garden. Those are beautiful roses.”

  I swallow and bite the inside of my cheeks. My hand clenches around my fork like a weapon.

  “Thanks,” Kim says, obviously loving his attention. “I hired a gardener. He goes to school with Mercedes.”

  My dad nods appreciatively. I stare at my plate. The chicken breast sitting in a pool of gravy looks gray and blubbery and totally inedible.

  “And how is school, Mercedes?” My dad asks. I push the chicken around on my plate and collect peas on each tine of my fork. I have a sudden flashback of doing this very thing with peas when I was a little kid.

  “School’s fine,” I say. “Actually, I just got into MIT, so I’ll be moving away soon.” I give him a tight-lipped smile. It’s not like I can tell him the truth. I lost my best friend last week because I slept with a good chunk of the senior class. My only two other friends just slept together. Now all I can do is think about what I could have done differently to change it. I can’t go back, but at least I get a fresh start.

  “Wow,” he says. “Very impressive.” He pauses, and an awkward silence ensues. Which he breaks with an equally awkward question. “Any special men in your life?”

  I shake my head. No, the ones I used to have over aren’t special at all.

  “What about the boy who brought you soup?” Kim says. “He seemed promising.”

  “Zach,” I snap. “His name is Zach. And he’s not my boyfriend, Kim.”

  My dad raises both eyebrows. He looks like he wants to say something but isn’t sure how to phrase it, so we eat in silence. Until I ask Kim to please pass the potatoes.

  “Why do you call your mother that?” he asks.

  “Call her Kim? Because it’s her name.” I spear a potato and cut it in half much more violently than I rightfully have to. I don’t even intend to eat it. I just want to slice into it.

  “Okay,” my dad says. “But you don’t call me Roy. I mean, you could if you wanted to…” His voice trails off. He’s trying to be the cool dad, the one who doesn’t care what his daughter calls him, as long as she wants to call him something.

  I shrug. “No, I’m fine with calling you Dad,” I say. Maybe this is more to hurt Kim than anything. My dad is the one who left, but Kim’s the real absentee parent. At least my dad up and left in body and mind. Kim pretends to be here, probably tells herself she’s doing a good job as a parent. She’s the biggest fraud of all.

  Kim massages her fingers into her temples. My dad shoots her a sympathetic look. I roll my eyes. Kim is way too good at playing the victim. I might have inherited her cheekbones and green eyes, but I’m glad I didn’t inherit that quality.

  We’re interrupted by the doorbell ringing. I know it must be Faye or Zach. I left my phone upstairs, and I’m sure they have both been trying to call me. I jump out of my seat and run down the hall before Kim can stop me to admonish my bad manners.

  It’s Faye, leaning against the door much more nonchalantly than I would be in her position. Even though I have been waiting to hear from her, I’m not sure I can handle seeing her this close right now. I want to hug her as badly as I want to push her away. I’m angry with her, angry about her and Zach and their bodies pressed together.

  “What happened?” I hiss, slipping onto the porch and closing the door behind me. Whatever she says, whatever I say, I don’t want Kim or my dad to overhear.

  “They called Lydia, and Zach’s mom, too. Lydia’s working, so she won’t get the message until she gets home, and I’m sure I’ll have some explaining to do. Zach’s mom wasn’t too happy. He got two weeks of detention. I got suspended. Indefinitely.” She says all of this with a smile.

  I clasp my hands together. “But why’d he get detention and you got suspended?”

  “Because I told Goldfarb it was my idea. Which is totally true. I told him I did the whole thing, that Zach didn’t have a clue. I said Zach thought nobody else would ever see that video. God love that kid, but he’s a terrible liar. I don’t know if Goldfarb bought it, but Zach has such a good record, he didn’t have much of a choice.” She smiles. “I can be very persuasive.”

  “I can’t believe you did this for me,” I say, pressing my palms together tightly to stop them from shaking, shaking from anger or fear or both. “I don’t see how you can be so okay with this. You got yourself in huge shit.”

  Faye leans in so close that our noses are almost touching. “What did I tell you before this went down? I said there would be fallout. And I’m okay with that.”

  “I’m not,” I say, and my voice is high and shrill. “I’m not okay with you being suspended, and I’m not okay with you and Zach having sex.” I cross my arms, wanting to push her away and pull her in but doing neither.

  She moves in even closer so that she’s almost speaking into my mouth. “We didn’t,” she says. “But it looks like we did. Everyone thinks we did.”

  The backs of my legs and arms start to quiver slightly. I realize they’re quivering with relief. Immense relief, like even though so many terrible things have happened, everything could possibly be okay again. Faye didn’t sleep with Zach. There really isn’t anything going on. She smiles at me like she can read my mind, and I shift uncomfortably.

  The door opens behind me. At first I don’t register the sound of it, but Faye pulls back and her eyes leave my face.

  “Mercedes, what’s going on?” Kim says. “Oh. Hello,” she says, noticing Faye.

  “I’m Faye,” she says, stretching out her hand, which Kim takes. “Sorry to interrupt. You guys must have been eating dinner.”

  “Would you like to join us?” I say before Kim can stop me. “It’s a family dinner. My dad’s here, too. We have lots of food.”

  Faye’s eyes widen slightly. She knows my dad being here is a big deal. And she knows it’s a big deal that I want her here for this.

  “Dinner sounds great,” she says. “I’m actually famished.”

  I don’t get a chance to tell Faye thank you, but it doesn’t matter. Dinner gets a hundred times less awkward when she sits down. She has my dad laughing, and even Kim breaks into a smile. You would never guess that this girl, the one helping herself to seconds of chicken and potatoes and telling my dad how to properly barbeque a steak, is the same girl who just voluntarily showed the whole school her naked body on a giant screen and got suspended as a result.

  “I hope we see a lot more of you,” Kim says when I get up to walk Faye to her car.

  “You will,” Faye says. “Thanks for dinner.” She turns to my dad. “And nice meeting you, Mr. Ayres. If you’re in town again, we’ll have to try that steak house I told you about. Best filet mignon you ever had.”

  “Please, call me Roy,” he says. “And it was my pleasure. Any friend of Mercy’s who knows her way around a steak is a friend of mine.”

  I walk Faye out to the driveway, expecting to get no farther than her car. But instead of opening her door and getting in, she walks around and opens the passenger door instead.

  “Take a drive with me,” she says. “There’s somewhere we need to go.”

  37

  We drive in silence, which is something Faye and I haven’t had much of since we met. It seems to me like she has always been talking or laughing or singing or doing something to make sure silence doesn’t happen. I took her for the type who has to drive accompanied by the car stereo, but she doesn’t make a move to turn it on, so I don’t, either.

  I have zero control.

  “Where are we going?” I finally ask.

  “You’ll see,” is all she says. Another cryptic answer.

  We end up in an empty parking lot near the beach, but Faye makes no move to get out. Instead, she pushes a button and the top of her convertible folds down.
She reclines in her chair and looks at me expectantly until I do the same.

  “Now look up,” Faye says, tipping her face up to the sky. And when I do look up, all I see is stars. I guess I never realized how much the city lights block them out.

  “They look different horizontal,” I say. The whole sky looks more panoramic, like it really does stretch on forever.

  “Lots of things look different horizontal,” Faye says. “That’s why sex is so honest.”

  “Funny how I wasn’t honest at all,” I say with a bitter laugh. “Not with the people who mattered.”

  “Speaking of honesty,” Faye says, pressing her cheek against the seat and facing me. “You have to know that what Zach and I did, it was for you and also for me. Because that’s the real reason I left my old school.”

  “What happened?” I say slowly. “If you want to tell me.”

  “You’re the one person I want to tell.” She pushes her hair back from her forehead. “I was dating a guy at the start of this year. I really liked him. I thought he really liked me. But one night we both got drunk at a party and hooked up in one of the bedrooms. I remember not wanting to do it there, but he really wanted to, so I gave in.” Her voice is airy and the words are coming out in fast-forward, almost like she swallowed helium. I can tell I’m the first person she told this story to in a long time. Maybe ever.

  “Anyway, his friend was in the room with us. I was sort of out of it, but his friend videotaped us. The one thing I distinctly remember is telling his friend to leave. And my boyfriend said no. He wanted a tape, said we were the only people who would ever see it. Turns out, my boyfriend had another girlfriend, and I guess he was trying to make her jealous. By Monday, the whole school had seen that tape.”