The Chocolate Money

by Ashley Prentice Norton

  This does not go unnoticed by Meredith.

  “So you know Jake?” she says, almost laughing.

  “Not really—we met over a smoke this morning,” I say defensively.

  “He’s a total slut with major attitude. He’s from California and seems to think the East Coast is lame. He’s slept with over fifteen people.”

  “How do you know?” I wonder.

  “I know almost everything,” Meredith says, pushing a piece of romaine into her pretty mouth. “Seriously, his roommate from last year is a friend of mine and that’s what he told me.”

  “Sounds unlikely.”

  “Whatever,” Meredith says. “Just be careful. Besides, he’s not even hot. You could ruin your chances with other boys down the road. Also, he’s Jewish.”

  Did she really just say that? Is everyone in Meredith-land WASPy?

  “So am I,” I say, just to fuck with her. But maybe I’m not lying after all. For all I know, my father could be.

  “No, you’re not,” she replies confidently. “Bettina isn’t a Jewish name.”

  Huh? Part of me just loves hearing what Meredith considers cast-iron logic.

  “Anyway, way more important,” she continues, “is that last year, Jake gave this girl, Riley Sayler, a black eye. She dropped out after that.”

  Jess says, “Mere, Riley said she ran into a door. Also, she was really depressed all year and had to go on meds.”

  “Whatever. I’d be depressed too if Jake Kronenberg hit me. But I guess it’s your call, Bettina. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  Holly seems concerned all of a sudden. “Bettina, you should listen to Meredith. What if he really does hit girls?”

  I don’t believe Jake is violent, not really, but a dark part of me wants to find out. I also wonder if he really slept with so many girls.

  Jake’s hand on my thigh earlier did indicate a certain expertise, but where would he find fifteen girls to sleep with? Would I be number sixteen? Kind of a scary thought. I feel like once you lose your virginity, you’re in sexual free fall. Open for business. But sleeping with him would give me a leg up on Meredith. And it seems like Jake doesn’t give a fuck about pedicures or lingerie.

  I decide to go back to the house and take a shower. Meredith looks at me strangely when I stand up. You do not leave the dining hall alone, but seeing Jake has given me just a tiny bit of confidence.

  Back at Bright, I go to my room and carefully remove my clothes. Shower. I feel physically dirty, and also somewhat sad, because the adrenaline of defying Meredith is starting to wear off. Why haven’t I made more of an effort to be her friend? Why am I so insanely bothered by her relationship with Cape, a boy I don’t even know?

  I decide to do what I always do when I feel bad. Chase the smash. I’ve never done it in the shower, but if I tilt my hips toward the stream of water and hold my me with both hands, I know the shower will provide enough pressure. Get me where I want to go. If I have one, two, three smashes, I’ll feel better. Will be able to focus on my homework and go to sleep. I close my eyes and think of Lowell, of touching his hair, kissing the sweet spot behind his left ear. Licking his eyelids, grazing his fingers with mine as I do. I am just approaching a smash when I hear the curtain ripped back, feel cold air penetrate the steam. I try to reposition my body, but she sees exactly what I’m doing. Meredith.

  No doubt she’s come to get ready for her walk with Cape. Apply more makeup. Spritz herself with the L’air du Temps perfume she keeps on her dresser. Why she pulls the shower curtain back when I am clearly in there is a mystery. Maybe it is a bizarre form of hazing? Who knows, but what she finds, me chasing the smash, must be better than whatever she expected.

  “Hey, Bettina! That game is much more fun with two players!” she says, laughing so hard I wish I had something to throw at her head.

  Babs never once caught me chasing the smash, and it takes Meredith less than forty-eight hours. She’s not going to let this go.

  There’s this girl in my dorm who plays with herself in the shower. Can you believe it? She won’t even dirty her lips with the word masturbate. Will probably even tell Cape about it tonight. I bet the only times she touches her vagina is when she wipes it after going to the bathroom and sticks a tampon in it during her period.

  I want to run out of there and ignore her, but I don’t. I calmly step out of the shower and look her right in the eye.

  “It’s always good to get warmed up before the real thing. You know what I mean, Meredith? I’m surprised you’re not doing the same thing.”

  I don’t know where this came from. A total Babs line, but it seems to work. Meredith takes a step back. Like she has new respect for me. But of course she pretends otherwise.

  “And who could you possibly be preparing yourself for?”

  “Jake Kronenberg, of course,” I answer, surprising both of us.

  13. Sharp Objects

  September 1983

  I GET DRESSED, DRY MY hair, and go outside. I walk across campus to the bench where I saw Jake earlier. As I’d predicted, he’s sitting there, smoking. It’s still light out. He doesn’t seem at all surprised to see me.

  “Bettina, my lovely. This is getting to be a habit of yours.”

  “Hello, Jake,” I say. Fooling around with him should not be too hard, and now I have no choice. I should’ve locked the fucking bathroom door.

  “Why so glum?”

  I’m surprised he is able to tell what a dim mood I am in. I decide to risk it. See if he’s as sexually sophisticated as Meredith says.

  “The alpha girl in my dorm caught me masturbating.”

  “Meredith? Ha! Seems like you did her a favor. Frigid bitch.

  “What?” he says in response to my embarrassed reaction.

  Talking about sex with Jake is harder than I thought it would be. I am faking it, and this is all going so quickly. I don’t doubt that Jake sees this as some kind of invitation.

  “Don’t be shy. It’s not hard,” he says, reaching for my inner thigh.

  There’s that tickle again in my groin. It feels good. So what if he’s not Lowell. Maybe this is better. Jake might not write me poems, but he’s interested in me in a way that no boy has ever been.

  “Meet me at my dorm at midnight,” he says.

  “Too risky,” I say. “I was already caught smoking in the Bright bathroom.”

  “It’s less dangerous than you think. I am in Wentington, room five. Two buildings down from you. I’ll leave the light on. Come at midnight. You don’t have to decide now, but I’ll be ready for you.”

  When I get back to Bright, Meredith’s door is closed. Holly isn’t in our room. She must be getting details about the Walk with Cape. Maybe they are talking about me. I decide to go visit Jake after all.

  At a quarter to twelve, I quietly pull on my tailored jeans and an agnès b. T-shirt. No bra. Holly’s sound asleep. She didn’t come back to our room until after ten. I had done all my homework and was pretending to be asleep. I go downstairs and out into the Cardiss night. I am nervous, but not really. Jake wants me to come to his room and I’m going there. It’s one of the more straightforward transactions I’ve ever been involved in, especially when the stakes are so high.

  I find Jake’s dorm easily enough. He told me his window would have a light, and sure enough, it does. I rap quietly on the window. Jake pushes it open.

  “Ahh, I knew you would come,” he says, but in a way that is friendly and happy, not smug.

  I don’t want to seem too easy a conquest, so I say, “I couldn’t sleep and thought we could smoke.”

  “Sure, whatever,” he says, grinning. I crawl through the window into his room. It’s filled with Grateful Dead memorabilia. Huge tie-dye tapestries hang on all four walls. His bed has white sheets and a ripped plaid comforter, and there is a copy of James Joyce’s Dubliners on his bedside table. He wears blue boxers and a white T-shirt. There is a guitar in the corner of the room.

  Once I’m in the room, he
hands me a cigarette. “Take off your clothes,” he says so matter-of-factly I’m not sure I heard him properly.

  “What?”

  “Take off your clothes. It’s warm in here.”

  He’s really going to get down to it. No pleasantries, no insipid conversation.

  “No,” I say, more because I hate my body with its lack of boobs than because of any moral objection.

  “Okay, Bettina. I’m not going to make you do anything you don’t want to. But the fact that you came to see me is a tell. Here’s my deal. I love girls, and I love sex. Dating is lame. Anything really worth doing is secretive. What happens here is between you and me, got it? Bright House wouldn’t get it anyway.”

  I say, “Okay,” and pause, knowing there’s more to come.

  “Also, when you are with me, you are with me. I don’t share. And whatever you do, don’t fall in love with me. I will probably always like you, but I will never, ever love you back.”

  What an arrogant ass, I think. Anyway, I’m just here to save face. But I’m intrigued by the disclaimer and what is to come.

  He reaches over and touches my face, running his fingers across my eyelids, cheeks, tracing the outlines of my mouth.

  Jake pauses and says, “So. Now. At least take off your shoes.”

  I do. He pulls my feet into his hands and begins massaging them. His thumbs circle my anklebones. He stops for a second, leans in, and looks carefully at the scar I gave myself after Babs’s deluxe room thrash.

  “Tell me about this,” he says.

  No one has ever noticed it before.

  “It’s nothing.”

  “Looks like a cigarette burn.”

  “When I was eleven, I was mad at myself for pissing off my mother. I ruined what started out as a good evening and wanted to punish myself.”

  Jake lights up a cigarette.

  “Want another one?”

  “What?” Who the hell thinks up such things? If it’ll stop him from trying to get me naked, it seems worth it. For all the wrong reasons, I say, “Yes.”

  Jake takes my left foot in his hands and kisses the anklebone. Then he takes his cigarette and pushes it into the space right above it, matching the first one. I wince as he burns my skin, but that’s it. Make no other complaints.

  After the pain subsides, I think about Meredith. This is more significant than some dumb walk with Cape. Anyone can have that. It takes a special form of intimacy to allow someone to burn you.

  “You are such a good girl, Bettina,” Jake says and then kisses the burn.

  I nod and for a brief moment wonder if he has done this before. But it doesn’t really matter; the gesture seems fresh. A first time. I present my face to him. He kisses my mouth. Then he backs away and smacks me hard.

  What the fuck?

  I am tempted to smack him back. He has unleashed something. I realize that underneath my attraction to this strange boy is a strong hatred. He’s not what I want. And it really, really pisses me off.

  He pulls his arm back to do it again. I grab his wrist and push him away.

  “No!” I say. I’m not some kind of freak.

  “Each one gets better.”

  “I don’t want any more.”

  “Fine,” he says in a cool voice that is neither angry nor disappointed. He’s above all that. “Suit yourself. I guess I was wrong about you.”

  “Yeah, whatever,” I toss back. I put my shoes on and leave.

  I touch my cheek as I walk to Bright. It’s hot. I wonder if his hand has made an imprint.

  When I wake up the next morning, I think Jake was right about taking the liberty to burn and smack me. Such violence is already buried in the intensity of my smashes, which I have depended on forever. I will go back to him. Let him push further.

  I sneak out almost every night and go see him. He doesn’t smack me again. I want to tell him to go full force, but Jake’s not someone you tell what to do. We just make out. He is probably punishing me, making me wait. This is boring and tense at the same time. I want him to do something rough, even just bite my lip, draw a bit of blood, but for now he does not.

  One night not too long after we begin our game, we meet at the library during study hours in one of the private rooms. I tell him I have a Donaldson story due, and he promises to help me. He reads a book as I work. I decide to write about when I cut my hair, when I was ten. The day I cut my hair and completely fuck up the Christmas Card, I am merely bored, not a defiant brat like Babs tells all her friends. Jake puts our two chairs close together but does not even glance at my work.

  After I have written about four pages, Jake throws his books down and I kiss him with as much force as I can muster.

  Jake flips off the light in our carrel so the space is completely black. He almost rips the buttons from my shirt as he undoes it, and then he slams his head between my breasts. He takes each one into his mouth and goes right for my nipples. He circles his tongue around them until they are erect. He takes the left nipple fully in his mouth and bites down, hard. I am so grateful he has come back, I want to cry. I put my hand inside his shirt and touch his shoulders, his back. I can feel his muscles, and he is warm, almost to the point of sweating.

  He reaches down under my skirt, puts his left hand inside my underpants and then swiftly inside me. He begins a smoothly tempered stroke, in and out, out and in. Despite all my smashes, it hurts. I feel a wetness and know I’m bleeding. Jake brings his bloody hand up to his mouth and sucks on his fingers like they are covered in chocolate. Then with his right hand, he smacks me so hard, I just know he has left the imprint of his fingers. My head’s reeling. I’m completely disoriented, but I’m ecstatic. He undoes his belt. I bend over and lick the copper buckle. I want to take the belt from his belt loops and lash him across the back but am not sure this is allowed. He jerks my head up and pulls down his pants.

  Jake puts on a condom. He lifts me up and puts me on the carrel’s desk. He flips up my skirt and enters me. This hurts more than his fingers, like he is jabbing me with a poker. I just hope it will be over soon. Jake comes after about five minutes. I do not smash, but it doesn’t matter. I am completely gone. Jake balls the condom up in some Kleenex and throws it in the trash

  As he told me before, there are no I love yous, no sweet kisses on my neck, but somehow I still expect something tender. Jake has done this many times, I remember, and I’m now just another girl on his list. But maybe this doesn’t matter. I am, after all, always one for intensity, and Jake certainly gives me this. If only I could stop crying.

  “You won’t care so much next time,” is all Jake says.

  14. Package

  October 1983

  THE CARDISS PO is a small space. A room shaped like an L with nine hundred mailboxes, one for each student. Almost all students go there after morning assembly, and there’s much pushing and shoving to get to your mailbox. I really have no hopes about getting mail, just follow everyone else, wanting to keep time with the pulse of the school. Babs is unlikely to put pen to paper, and besides Cécile, no one would really write to me. But today, there’s a pink slip in my box. A package. To claim it now, I would have to push my way through the sea of students to get to the post office window. The effort seems enormous. I decide to wait until after third period, when the small room will be empty.

  I return in an hour. The post office is deserted. Except for one boy. Not just any boy but, of all people, Cape. After all Meredith’s talk about him, he’s more a concept to me than a person in his own right, so I don’t anticipate conversation. Also don’t want to let on how much I know about him. It’ll demonstrate an inequality between us and might make me seem like a stalker. After all, I have seen him only once, that breakfast in the dining hall. Still, for some reason I feel like I know him from somewhere else.

  I approach the window, where Cape stands empty-handed, waiting. He turns to me.

  “They are interminably slow.”

  “Oh,” I say, still holding back. We’re going to
talk after all. I’m determined to make a good impression. Want to think of something interesting to entice him with.

  “First package?” he says.

  “Yes,” I answer, slowly picking up the thread of a conversation. “You?”

  “Second. My mother always thinks I’ve forgotten something important. Toothpaste. Shaving cream. Socks. She just doesn’t believe that I can pick up these things at Woolworth’s in town. Any idea who sent yours?” The mention of shaving cream marks his boy-ness and it seems too intimate an item to be discussing with me. I’m happy to go back to my package.

  “I don’t know,” I admit.

  “Huh.” Then:

  “I forgot to introduce myself. Cape.”

  “Bettina.”

  “I remember you from breakfast the other day. You’re in Bright with Meredith, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “She’s my girlfriend.”

  “I know. She talks about you a lot.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes,” I say, and leave it at that. So much for drawing him in.

  The lady finally returns with his package, which is the size of a jigsaw-puzzle box. The address is written in a blue ballpoint pen, loopy script. I give her my pink slip.

  “Just like my mom,” Cape says. “She always sends things FedEx even though this stuff can wait.”

  “What dorm are you in?” I ask, not wanting him to leave yet.

  “Wentington.” Jake’s dorm, also Lowell’s. I don’t want to admit any association with Jake, so I say, “Do you know Lowell?”

  “Of course. He’s my roommate. Really good guy. How do you know him?”

  “English class.”

  “I’ve heard all about Donaldson from Lowell. Writing about being embarrassed. Sounds kind of cool.”

  “Yeah.”

  This new development in our conversation has stalled his departure.

  Cape continues, “I write poetry. Mostly for myself.”