Four-Letter Word

by Christa Desir

  “So I’ll text you about Beau’s later, right?” Chloe Donnelly asked, gathering up her notebook and sliding it into her bag.

  “Yep.” I couldn’t decide if I wanted her to ask me to join her at Holly’s dance team practice or not, but she didn’t say anything, so I waved and headed out.

  I stayed at the media center after school because I didn’t want to have to lie to Nan’s and Pops’s faces. It was bad enough I bailed on family dinner, which they insisted I be part of, with the weak excuse of studying for an English test at Eve’s. Pops was no fool, and he’d mumbled more than once that I shouldn’t be modeling study habits after “that dim Jacobson girl,” but luckily I got Nan on the phone and she agreed to it after extracting a promise from me to help her with housework this weekend.

  The media center was filled with people and it was hard to concentrate on real work. I flipped through my precalc book and tried not to listen in on other people’s conversations, most of which were about Melissa’s miscarriage and if she would ever come back to school.

  Then two freshman girls sat at the study table next to me and started talking about some movie they saw that had a bunch of male-stripper sex in it, which made not listening in practically impossible. One of the girls said the whole thing was so crazy hot she thought she’d come, which I was pretty certain could not happen merely from watching male-stripper sex. At least nothing like that had ever happened to me, though my experience with strippers was nonexistent. Then they started to talk about this issue of Cosmo one of them had read in the dentist’s office that had an article about how women could have a fifteen-minute orgasm. I dropped my book and the girls dropped their voices. Fifteen minutes!

  I wished Eve was with me so we could talk about how bananas it was that these girls were having this conversation in the media center. And I could ask her if she thought the fifteen-minute orgasm thing was real. Part of me wanted to find that issue of Cosmo and read it, but I’d been instructed by my mom never to trust magazines that catered to the male gaze when it came to female orgasms. Still, I couldn’t help but wonder if either of these girls had ever had real orgasms, if they’d even know if they had. If I ever would.

  I didn’t want to be alone with all my questions. I probably could’ve showed up at Holly’s practice and even avoided having her comment on me being such a shadow because I’d have the protective shield of Chloe Donnelly and possibly Eve when she got there. But I didn’t want to give Holly the satisfaction of thinking I’d ever give up my plans to watch her dance. Even if I technically didn’t have any plans beyond homework and eavesdropping. So probably it was good Chloe Donnelly hadn’t asked me to join her.

  I flipped through my precalc notes again and considered going to Beau’s early, but what would I say if Mateo saw me there alone? Then I ditched precalc for my chem book, trying to memorize which compounds were made with covalent bonds and which were ionic so I’d be ready for tomorrow’s quiz. The girls next to me had finally pulled their homework out and stopped talking. I stared at all the letters on the page, but before I could make any progress, my phone pinged with a text from Chloe Donnelly.

  We’re heading to Beau’s. Meet you in fifteen.

  It hadn’t taken her very long to figure out that you could get everywhere in Grinnell in fifteen minutes or less. I texted back. Great. See you there. And then I worried that sounded like I was trying too hard. But texting again would be even worse. Wouldn’t it? God, I was such a case.

  After Spanish I’d transferred the scarf Chloe Donnelly stole for me from my locker to my bag, but I couldn’t get up the nerve to wear it. There were too many ways for that to be interpreted, by her and by Mateo if he was working at Beau’s tonight. And I’d never feel good about the scarf until I somehow paid for it. I wished for one second that my brain wasn’t always calculating what people would think, but I’d learned long ago it was no use trying to shut that function off; it never went away.

  I left school and glanced toward the baseball field like I always did, in case the guys were magically there. I knew they weren’t. Mateo played on the varsity baseball team, and I had his practice and game schedule memorized. They’d had a late away game last night, so there was no practice today. Which meant a fairly decent chance Mateo was working.

  Beau’s was pretty empty when I got there. It was the less popular of the pizza places in town, with most of the college crowd preferring Pagliai’s for their superior breadsticks. Plus, it was too early for the college students and not exactly the kind of place where Nan and Pops’s five-o’clock-dining geriatric pals liked to eat. I looked around the dark interior for Mateo but couldn’t see him anywhere. The bartender was an older woman shining glasses and talking to one of the busboys. She laughed and it ended in a hacking cough, which reminded me to dig out my hand sanitizer and scrub up. I might have been a nail-biter, but I tried to be as germ-free as possible.

  Chloe Donnelly, Eve, and Holly were in a corner booth, laughing and whispering. I braced myself to walk up and have them stop talking, but it didn’t happen. Chloe Donnelly merely slid over and patted the seat next to her, then went on with her story. “. . . and then I told him if he ever wants to get laid again, he’d better show up with real condoms, not the Magnum XLs.”

  Eve squeaked in laughter, and even surly Holly seemed charmed by the whole thing. I laughed a little too, because what else was I going to do, but I didn’t really get why Magnum XLs were funny. Mom had given me the sex talk early and often when I was little, and it damn near traumatized me into never wanting to consider sex as an option for me at all. No seven-year-old needs to hear about gonorrhea. As I aged, Mom’s full disclosure sex ed agenda got even worse, with her sticking Planned Parenthood pamphlets in my backpack and making the Scarleteen website the home page for the family computer. When I was nine.

  “How was dance practice?” I asked when their laughter died down, hoping the subject change wasn’t too obvious.

  Holly was still a little sweaty and flushed, but she grinned at Chloe Donnelly and said, “It was great. Chloe totally agrees my routine isn’t racy at all and it’s just the general prudishness of this dumb town making everyone nervous. She even talked to Coach about it and mentioned her friend in Chicago at the Academy for the Arts, and get this, Coach changed her mind and said we could do my routine at the dance show!”

  Of. Course. I didn’t want to be salty about it, but I couldn’t help feeling like it was just another example of how Holly always got what she wanted in the end. Which was bratty of me, but I didn’t care. “That’s great,” I choked out, but it must have been obvious I did not think it was great, because Eve frowned at me.

  “Yeah,” Chloe Donnelly said. “I could’ve shown them how to push it into PG territory even more, but it definitely didn’t need it.”

  “Wish I could’ve been there,” I mumbled.

  I didn’t know what to do with my hands, so I pulled out my sanitizer again and offered it to Chloe Donnelly, who tilted her head and looked at me for a second before taking the tiny bottle and liberally squirting some out. She twisted her rings as she spread the sanitizer and said, “Thanks.” Then she handed the bottle over to Eve and Holly, who both sanitized without giving me grief about my cleanliness like they usually did. Score one for Chloe Donnelly.

  Mateo’s best friend, Josh, came up to our table and pulled out a pencil. “Who’s this?” he asked, glancing at me first, then Chloe Donnelly, while smoothing his hand over his waiter apron, as if pulling out the pencil caused him to get all disheveled.

  My favorite thing about Josh was how tidy he always was. With red hair and freckles and what my mom called “Irish good looks,” he was the oldest of six children, and from what I could tell, the nicest. He was shy and sweet, and best of all, he stepped in a lot when someone was being bullied. It made complete sense that he and Mateo were best friends.

  “This is Chloe Donnelly. She’s new. Chloe, this is Josh.”

  She smiled and did her quick-gaze full-bod
y assessment, and because it was Josh, who was pale and always self-conscious and maybe not used to being checked out much by girls, his cheeks burned red in about two seconds.

  “Josh is Mateo’s friend. He goes to our school too.”

  “Cool. Nice to meet you,” Chloe Donnelly said, holding out her hand for him to shake, which to me was a little weird, but maybe Chicago people did that. “Can we get some Cokes?”

  “Actually, I’ll just have water,” I said.

  “You already have water. Cokes for everyone, Josh,” Chloe Donnelly said. Which I guess settled it. Eve didn’t drink Coke either; she’d told me it made her break out, but she didn’t say one word as she looked between Chloe Donnelly and Josh.

  When he left, Eve asked her, “How do you do that?”

  “What?”

  She fussed with the little BEST charm on her bracelet, then said in this shy way, “How do you figure a guy out and get him all flustered in five seconds like that? Is it a Chicago thing?”

  I shut my eyes for a second, trying not to snap at Eve that assessing guys wasn’t regionally specific. I didn’t want to be mean, but I was rattled by that dumb bracelet. I inhaled a long breath through my nose. Eve at her best was a sweet friend who would do anything for you, but sometimes, particularly when I was feeling left out and hurt, I thought her curiosity bordered on idiotic.

  Chloe Donnelly nudged my knee under the table, but she folded her hands and said, “No, Eve, it’s just something I figured out, I guess. You probably could do it too.”

  I snorted but covered it with a cough and quickly gulped down some water as Chloe Donnelly nudged me again under the table. I loved being a conspirator with someone, even if I felt a little bad that it was directed at Eve.

  Holly gulped down the water the busboy had put on the table in front of her and said, “I still can’t believe we’ll get to do my routine at the show. Thank you so much, Chloe.”

  Chloe Donnelly shrugged. “It’s not a big deal. Your dance is amazing. I bet Other Chloe would’ve agreed it wasn’t that provocative either.”

  “Just Chloe is fine.” I shoved my hair behind my ear and sat up as tall as I could.

  “Hmm?”

  “You don’t have to call me Other Chloe. Chloe is fine.”

  “No,” Holly said, shaking her head and offering a small smirk only I could see. “That’s too confusing. Other Chloe works better.”

  I shut my eyes and imagined hockey-slamming into Holly on the ice while she wasn’t wearing any pads. I took another deep breath and opened my eyes. “Whatever.”

  “You should’ve worn your scarf today,” Eve said, then I noticed her looking at the acne constellation on my forehead. Not completely obvious, but enough that I suspected she was feeling grateful not to have the same problem. I let my hair fall forward so my forehead was less noticeable, even more glad I’d decided not to wear the scarf.

  Chloe Donnelly rolled her eyes. “She’s feeling guilty about it. Mateo got all judgy on her.”

  “No, he didn’t,” I said, immediately regretting it. I did not need to call attention to my crush on Mateo any more than I already had.

  “It’s no big deal,” Chloe Donnelly said, her ringed hand flickering. “I don’t care if you want to pay for the scarf now because of Mateo. You wouldn’t believe the stuff I did for my last boyfriend. Do you know that he got me to go to church? Shudder.”

  No one said anything for what was a painfully long thirty seconds. We all went to church. Most people in Grinnell did. But apparently no one had explained this yet to Chloe Donnelly.

  “So what do you all do around here for fun?” she asked, pushing past the silence as if she didn’t notice it at all.

  I sipped my water. “Hang out. Go to the Dari Barn. See movies. Sometimes the college has things we can go to, but a lot of times they’re weird and kind of boring.”

  Chloe Donnelly stared at us and her eyes narrowed slightly. She flicked her black-polished thumbnail, then twisted each of the rings on her fingers. It looked strange and a little contrived, as if any second she’d start stroking her chin thoughtfully. Or maybe I was struck by the slightly-too-sophisticated package of her, so out of place sitting there with us in Grinnell.

  “Do you know any guys?” she asked us when Josh returned with our Cokes. He blushed again.

  Eve sipped her Coke and made a face. “Of course.”

  Holly leaned forward, boobs shelving on the table so we couldn’t help but notice them in her tight dance leotard. “I have a boyfriend. He’s a twin.”

  I held back a snort at how she said twin as if that leveled him up to some über-boyfriend status.

  Eve said, “She knows. I told her about Cam last night when we were doing manis.”

  Holly looked huffy, pissed at Eve for stealing her thunder, or maybe pissed she hadn’t been there for manis. It was the second time I’d noticed tension between them in the past day, and the small and petty part of me wanted to do a victory lap.

  “You told her about Cam?”

  Eve looked at Chloe Donnelly, then at Holly, then at the table. “Yeah.”

  Chloe Donnelly placed her hands flat on the table. “Yeah, I heard all about Cam. It’s weird you didn’t say anything, Holls. Is it supposed to be a secret?”

  I also couldn’t believe Holly had waited this long to mention Cam, but maybe she wanted him to be there so she could prove it. Or maybe she was feeling a little cagey and territorial about him. Holly’s motivations for practically everything sort of baffled me.

  “No, it’s not a secret,” Holly said. Her nostrils flared, but then her face smoothed out to normal again. Apparently, having a boyfriend was enough not to be too crabby about Eve filling Chloe Donnelly in about it first.

  “Anyway, twins are great. And Other Chloe knows Mateo. And Josh goes to our school, so that’s four. Perfect.”

  “What are you talking about?” Josh asked, not even hiding that he’d been sponging off a nearby table way too long so he could snoop on our conversation. Before anyone could respond, the front entrance door swung open and Mateo walked in.

  My breath clogged in my lungs for a second when I saw the small nod he gave me as he crossed to our table. At least I was pretty sure the nod was for me. Maybe. I hoped.

  I nodded back and squeezed my legs together. Guys probably shouldn’t look as pretty as he did, with full lips and round cheeks and soft dark-brown eyes, but he really was beautiful. My dad, a science-obsessed father to his core, would point out all the facial traits in Mateo that were symmetrical or divided in thirds perfectly to make me feel this way, but I didn’t really care. I wanted to figure out a way for Mateo to like me, not figure out why I liked him so much.

  “What’s up, guys?” he said, dropping the pizza-warming delivery bag at his feet, not even glancing at Holly’s boob shelf.

  “Mateo. Perfect timing. I was just about to explain Gestapo to everyone,” Chloe said.

  “Gestapo? The Nazi secret police?” I asked, feeling my forehead scrunch and then trying to relax it so the zit constellation wasn’t as obvious. “Is that starting up here now?” I tried to joke, but it fell flat. What was wrong with me? Always with the awkwardness. No wonder Eve was constantly ditching me.

  “No, Other Chloe. Not the real Gestapo. Gestapo the game.”

  4

  “What’s Gestapo?” Eve said, almost bouncing in her seat. Her Tigers T-shirt was too small, though not so much in the chest as in the arms, as if she’d gotten a children’s small instead of an adult small. It suited her little-kid enthusiasm but made the difference between her and Holly’s bra-cup sizes very obvious. The two of them sharing a wardrobe was not always the best idea, though Holly didn’t seem to mind too-small-in-the-chest shirts.

  “It’s this game we played in Chicago,” Chloe Donnelly said. “You need at least four guys and four girls. Two teams. Girls against guys. Each team has a captain who picks a four-letter word—”

  “Wait, wait,” Josh said, sliding into the
booth next to Holly as Mateo pulled up a chair at the end of the table. I glanced at the bartender to see if this little employee break was a problem, but she was wiping the bar and ignoring us. “This is a word game? Called Gestapo? Do you play it in school?”

  Chloe Donnelly sighed like Josh’s questions were a big hassle and said, “No, of course not. You play it outside. At night. I was trying to explain.”

  Josh tugged his ear self-consciously and said, “Sorry.”

  “Anyway, how it works is the captain of each team picks a four-letter word that only he or she knows. And then whispers a different letter from the word to each teammate. Then everyone goes and hides. Or goes on the offensive. The object of the game is to get the letters of the other team and figure out their word without giving up your own letter. It’s sort of like capture the flag, only the flag is whispered letters. And we each have to protect our own.”

  “Girls against guys?” Josh asked, his face looking a little pale with those freckles popping like they’d been made with an orangish-brown Sharpie.

  Chloe Donnelly nodded. “Yeah, usually.”

  “And it’s called Gestapo?” I said, still hung up on that one thing. Was this a joke?

  “Yes, Other Chloe, I believe that’s already been established,” Chloe Donnelly said.

  “How do you get the other team’s letters, though?” I asked.

  Chloe Donnelly grinned and looked around the table again. “By any means necessary.”