Outcast

by Susan Oloier

  When Cassie dropped me off at home, the house was dark. I was afraid my mother had found out and was waiting in the La-Z-Boy for me.

  I uncovered the hidden key from behind the yard gnome and went in the front door. I crept into the house. Instead of meeting my mother, I ran into my father.

  He held a glass of water. His hair was still mussed from a night of sleep. He assessed my clothes.

  “What were you doing out of the house?” He looked around as if to check that it was still night time and not actually the middle of the day.

  I had to think quickly. All I came up with was, “Running.”

  I walked past him so he couldn’t watch the lies register on my face.

  “A little late for that, don’t you think?”

  My dad wasn’t like my mother. He didn’t badger me until I fed him answers that satisfied all the questions that coursed through his mind. He knew I was lying, but at least he didn’t harass me like she did.

  I changed my clothes and crawled into bed.

  I emerged from my room dressed in a skirt, blouse, and mules—-all borrowed from Becca. I spent over an hour rummaging through my closet, trying to find an outfit that was flattering. I had none. Surprisingly, Becca allowed me to go through selective portions of her closet.

  “So is Cassie the one who you’re trying to impress tonight?”

  I didn’t know if I should tell Becca that I had a date. My parents believed I was going out with Cassie. I didn’t want Becca blowing my cover.

  “Noelle, are you gay?”

  I simply rolled my eyes, thanked her for the clothes, and headed for the door.

  Before I left the house, the Grand Inquisitor lunged at me with her interrogation. “Who is this Cassie girl? How come I’ve never met her? What movie are you going to see? What time does it end? It’s not rated R, is it? Who’s driving you home?” And finally, “Remember your curfew is ten-thirty”.

  I was surprised it wasn’t ten-thirty by the time I left.

  I met Chad outside the theater near the marquee. He looked good. He caught sight of me and smiled. He studied me from head to toe. Wow! was all that escaped his lips. He’d already bought the tickets at the box office, so he held the door open for me, and we went inside.

  “Want anything?” He motioned toward the concession stand. I was too nervous to eat, so I passed.

  For any other teenager, the movie probably seemed tame with its language and sex scenes. But for someone like me, sheltered and naïve, it was embarrassing. I felt grateful for the darkness of the theater, so Chad couldn’t see me blush. He reached for my hand, and I let him take it.

  When the movie ended, it was nine o’clock. I didn’t feel hungry because my stomach was still knotted by anxiety, so we walked to a vintage record store. As we ventured over, Chad took my hand in his again. My brain sent out messages to all the nerve endings in my body, and they all responded promptly. My hand started to sweat.

  We looked through the music, sharing headphones; his face was so close to mine our cheeks nearly touched. We listened to Neon Trees, Colbie Caillat, and other songs that I’d forever associate with him. He punched the listen button and the song Oxygen—the one we danced to—played.

  Up until then, Chad and I avoided making much eye contact with one another. In the middle of the song, he watched me intensely. We played games of touch and go with our eyes. We didn’t say anything. When the song ended, Chad removed his headphones, grabbed a copy of the CD, and took hold of my hand again. “Let’s get out of here.”

  After paying, he handed the CD to me.

  “But it’s yours,” I argued.

  “I’ll make sure I get the opportunity to listen to it.”

  Though Chad was hungry before we made our journey to the music store, he no longer seemed to have an appetite. “Let’s go to my house. I live down the street.”

  We walked quietly hand-in-hand. A warm desert breeze softened the night, and the caress of his thumb against the edge of mine was enough to drive me crazy.

  “Where are your parents?” I asked as I skimmed the dimly-lit rooms.

  “They won’t be home until late.”

  Chad led me to the back yard where they had a large pool. Built-in underground lights illuminated the water and the tiled walkway that reached into the recesses of the yard. We sat down at the edge, and his fingers lighted on mine. I’d never grow sick of his touch.

  “I had a really nice time tonight,” I said, feeling as though I stumbled over my words.

  “Me, too.”

  When I looked at him, he appeared inebriated. I knew he was going to put his lips on mine. He leaned in and closed his eyes. When his mouth touched my own it was warm like bath water. All I could do was feel the bend of his mouth over my own; taste the mix of Certs and saliva; smell Romance on his impassioned skin; and hear Oxygen sweeping us into another dance.

  He took my hand and guided me into the house, venturing into the kitchen. It was an enormous room outlined with maple cabinets and an island in the center. It was immaculately clean.

  “Want anything?”

  I shook my head. Chad once again stood before me. He urgently kissed me as I leaned against the kitchen island for support. His fingers lingered on the collar of my shirt, and then he pulled away. His hand drifted to the first button. He looked at me as if asking for permission. I didn’t stop him. He unfastened the top one, exposing the straps of my bra. He led me to the living room couch while he proceeded to undo my blouse completely. He eased me into the spongy cushions of the sofa and pressed himself on top of me. His finger traced the outline of my bra, coming dangerously close to my breast. The currents running through my body seemed so strong that I could have sworn Chad could feel them.

  Things were moving so quickly. I didn’t feel ready for anything more than a kiss. This was sex. All I knew about it was what I gleaned from sitting outside Aunt P’s room while she carried on with a married man, or watching Becca flirt with a guy she barely knew then sneak off with him to do God knows what, or from an occasional episode of Sex and the City at Grace’s house. This didn’t seem right. I didn’t know what was happening, but all of a sudden I pushed him away. I closed Becca’s blouse over me.

  “I can’t do this.”

  Chad backed away. I shut my eyes, trying to drive the pooling tears back. I didn’t want to see his reaction. I figured he’d be angry and want me to leave.

  “I’m a virgin,” I said, lifting my eyes to his. He seemed shocked at my sudden confession, but his look quickly softened. He moved beside me and helped me fasten the button on the blouse I wore, then draped his arms around me. We held each other for awhile.

  “I’m sorry. It’s just … you’re so beautiful and…” He didn’t finish his sentence. “We don’t have to do anything until you’re ready.”

  I looked at the clock on the wall. Ten-thirty. My mother.

  “I have to go.”

  Chad called a taxi. As I rode home, I realized that I wouldn’t be ready for a long time.

  I didn’t make my curfew, and I paid for it. My mother waited in the La-Z Boy with a cup of coffee and an explosive temper. She interrogated me immediately, never considering the possibility I was in a car accident or abducted by aliens.

  She spent what seemed like hours lecturing me about responsibility and respectful behavior. She yelled so loudly she charmed Becca from her room like a snake from a basket. I think Becca was simply relieved she wasn’t the one bearing the brunt of our mother’s anger.

  She asked me for an explanation. I offered the elusive answer most teens give.

  “I was just hanging out.”

  “Hanging out? What exactly does that mean?” I was surprised her crossed arms didn’t strangle the life from her body.

  “A movie, shopping, you know.”

  “Who is this friend of yours anyway? Cassie, is it?”

  I was tired. I wanted to go to bed. But this was my punishment. I was forced to answer all of my mother’s questi
ons until she felt satisfied. She was equipped with a cup of caffeinated coffee, so if it took all night she was ready for it.

  “A friend. From school.”

  “I want to meet her.”

  “Sure,” I reluctantly agreed to get her off my back.

  “In the meantime, you’re grounded. Now go to bed.” She eased herself back into the chair, exhausted by her inquisition. As I crept toward the stairs, frightful of my mother’s voice stopping me again, I wondered why it couldn’t be my dad who handled these matters. He would have understood losing track of time.

  I was in the middle of the staircase when I heard: “One more thing. You’re going to confession tomorrow.”

  Wonderful.

  Father Charlie was the devil in a priest’s vestments. His hair was black coal dust, he topped out at five feet three inches, and he never smiled. Guilt was his best friend, and he shared it with everyone. He berated, chided, and blamed churchgoers for their sins and those of the community.

  I always had the good fortune of talking to Father Dodd, who prescribed an overdose of Hail Marys and Our Fathers, or Father Christopher, who behaved like a sympathetic psychotherapist running his own office.

  I’d heard stories about Father Charlie and his hellacious confessions. Some said that they saw his eyes glowing like rubies from behind the grating. The rumor at school was that he had a security camera hooked up inside the neighboring box to videotape confessions for hours of late-night, at-home entertainment. Needless to say, I dreaded it.

  As I stepped into the dimness of the confessional, fear overwhelmed me. Like a shot or a blood test, I wanted to end the whole thing quickly. I heard his muffled breathing from behind the thinness of the wall.

  “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.”

  He cleared his throat. I took it to mean he already held some skepticism about the integrity of my confession.

  “How long has it been since your last confession?”

  My last confession? I couldn’t remember so I guessed. “Two months.”

  Minutes passed as he placed silent judgment on me.

  “Go ahead.” I sensed a tinge of irritability in his voice.

  “Well, I talked back to my Mom a couple of times…”

  The clicking tisk tisk of his tongue interrupted my thoughts. I paused before continuing.

  “I also broke curfew last night…” I stopped myself from confessing everything. “And that’s it.”

  I swore I saw the glowing eyes burning through the screen.

  There was no point in telling him. Staying out late, lying to my parents, allowing a boy I hardly knew to remove my clothing—they weren’t things a priest needed to know.

  “God is watching your every move, young lady. He knows when you’re being good and when you’re being bad.”

  I wanted to tell him that description actually fit Santa Claus, but figured he wouldn’t appreciate the comparison.

  “Your penance will be twenty Our Fathers and ten Hail Marys.” He stressed the word penance as though he intended it to mean punishment.

  I heaved an inaudible sigh of relief.

  “And church on both Saturday and Sunday for the next month.”

  Good God! Not more church. I’d hate to think what I’d received if I had actually told the truth.

  Monday. The news of a hanged rat outside Trina’s bedroom was the talk of the junior class. It buoyed me to know that Trina was worried about the message and who had left it.

  I found Cassie smoking a cigarette on Father Timothy’s patio.

  “It worked—the whole rat thing.”

  “Keep your voice down,” she warned. She blew a puff of smoke in my face, then offered me a cigarette of my own.

  I took it and reluctantly placed it in my mouth.

  Cassie lit it for me.

  “I had a date this weekend.” I edged misplaced lava rock back into its landscaping bed. I needed to tell someone.

  “Oh yeah? Who’s the guy?”

  I looked at the lighted Camel, still not really knowing what to do with it. I mostly held it.

  “Chad McCormick.”

  She searched her mind for an image of him, but seemed unsure.

  “Anyway, I told my parents I was out with you on Saturday night.”

  “Why?” She studied her cigarette as if it offered her all of the answers to the meaning of life and her purpose on Earth.

  “Well,” I said, studying the burning tip of the cigarette. “They don’t exactly let me date.”

  “Excuse me? How old are you? Eight? Are your parents from the dark ages or something?”

  “Well, my mother is. Anyway, if it comes up, will you cover for me?”

  She considered my request. “Fucking?”

  “No!”

  She looked me over to find out whether or not I was lying. “Whatever. It’s not like I’ll ever see your mom anyway.”

  “Actually, she kind of wants to meet you.”

  She threw her cigarette down and stomped on it with her Doc Martens. “I don’t do parents. You going to finish that?”

  “Yeah.”

  So much for a cover. I took a drag off the cigarette then repeated her actions. Back to school.

  “So what’s the overriding motif in East of Eden?” I asked Chad while reading from the English handout. It felt natural to rest my head against Chad’s side, as though being with him was the most natural thing in the world.

  I picked up the book that lay open beside me, trying to unearth the answer. “Rejection?” I asked.

  Chad shifted lazily from the pillow so that he looked dreamily down at me. “Good versus evil, I think.” I felt his gaze as I wrote the words down on the worksheet. “What’s your family like?” he finally asked.

  I set the page down on my stomach and stared up at the ceiling of his bedroom. White like any other, yet so very different. “I don’t know.” My eyes finally settled on his. “My dad’s just…a dad. He’s basically around to put food on the table and do what my mom says.”

  Chad listened intently, studying the contours of my face.

  “Becca’s a girly girl. She likes fashion, talking on the phone, and boys.” I let my thoughts drift back to the ceiling.

  “Don’t you like boys?” he asked, moving closer until I could feel his breath on my cheek.

  “Boys no.” I turned to him. “Boy yes.”

  “I love these freckles,” Chad said, running a finger over my cheeks and nose. He seemed drunk from the intimacy.

  “Stop,” I said, embarrassed. I pushed his hand away, and he captured it with his own.

  “And these lips,” he continued, grazing them with a touch, then with his mouth as he continued to hold my hand. He felt soft and warm and filled with the stuff of blankets, hot chocolate, and a crackling fire on a bitter cold winter’s day. “I wish we could stay like this forever,” he said when he pulled away.

  “Me, too.” I smiled up at him.

  “What about your mom?” he asked, tracing lines on the palm of my hand, across my knuckles. I let him, loved the feel of his skin over mine.

  “She’s ultra religious. Controlling. A total dictator. I think she hates me.”

  “How could anyone hate you?” he asked, watching me, my hand still in his.

  I simply shrugged. “What about your family? They’re never around. When do I get to meet them?”

  “When they’re around,” he said softly, teasingly. “They’re at work right now, silly.”

  “So is it just you and your parents?” I asked, taking my hand from his and touching the perfection of his face: the line of his jaw, the bridge of his nose, and the lips I kissed—that I longed to kiss again.

  “Right now,” he said, a sleepy look overtaking his eyes as he considered me. “My sister’s away at college.” He ran the back of his hand down my arm. “Why do you think your mom hates you?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe because I remind her of her old self. It seems like she wants to erase me.
”

  “No one could ever erase you.”

  But Chad didn’t know my mother. If she could manage it, she’d do her best to make sure everything she hated about me disappeared.

  Play tryouts again.

  Cassie thought theater was a waste of time. Her theory was that Drama was for people who have no life, so they have to act lie someone else. At this point, pretending to be another person didn’t seem so bad.

  Father Dodd wanted desperately to perform Barefoot in the Park. Again, the administration refused to allow it. I saw the frustration painted on his face. He was a tormented Munch, resurrecting his own version of The Scream. The play would be The Merchant of Venice. Shakespeare again, and a huge departure from Neil Simon.

  Chad and I quietly rehearsed lines while other students tried out. As he recited, I dwelled on the weekend. Questions jumped to mind. Did he feel for me what Lorenzo felt for Jessica? What Lysander felt for Hermia, then Helena, then Hermia again? Where was our relationship headed? And particularly, did what almost happened between us happen to him before? And if so, was it with Trina?

  “Noelle. Your line,” Chad said.

  “Have you ever had sex before?”

  He looked at the copy of the play, searching for that line. Not there.

  “What?”

  I simply looked at Chad, wanting and not wanting him to answer.

  “I don’t think here is the best place to talk about this.” He glanced around to make sure no one was listening.

  “Yes or no?” I pressed.

  “Yes.” It wasn’t what I hoped to hear. But Aunt P had said that boys crave more than hand holding. I set down my book; I was through running lines. Though I really didn’t want details, I persisted. “With Trina?”

  He hesitated. “Yes.”

  My stomach bottomed out. I wished he had lied. I looked into the empty space of the theater, trying to pull my unraveling feelings together. Then I spotted Grace. She was talking with Trina. I watched the two of them chat like they were long, lost friends. Trina had slithered her way into so many parts of my life, invading it like a nasty tapeworm, feeding off the people and things I loved: Chad, Grace, Acting. The girl had no boundaries, no end to where she would stop.