by Cyn Balog
The room gets a little fuzzy, but I recover and choke out, “Oh, of course we have.” My mind says stop, but for some reason my mouth keeps going. “I thought you meant … um, like, was he good with charity work or something.”
So even though I supposedly do Wish, which should make me a rock star, I still cannot shake the cloud of lameness that follows me. Luckily, they don’t seem to notice. Erica raises her eyebrows. “So he is good?”
This is the weirdest conversation I’ve ever had. It’s like trying to converse with three extraterrestrials. Even if I’d had sex with Wish, I wouldn’t have anything to compare him to. But then again, this is the new Gwendolyn Reilly. New clothes, new hair, new past, new sexual history. “Yeah,” I say. “Really good.”
“I knew it.” Erica grins her little sex-kitten grin again and pulls out a small notebook. “Wish always comes out on top.”
Terra still has her fingers in her ears and is singing “Do-Re-Mi” to herself. Destiny rolls her eyes and says, “Everyone knows how Erica likes it on top.”
Erica shrugs. “It’s just better that way.” Then she looks at me. “Don’t you think so, Gwen?”
I nod ferociously, hoping we can change the subject before they realize that my being on top of anything is the quickest way to turn it into a pancake. “Oh. Yeah.”
“He has the nicest ass, too. You must just want to squeeze it all the time.” She makes a motion like she’s squeezing produce for freshness. I peer over at the notebook as she turns the pages. “Hottest. Sweetest. Nicest body. Most athletic.” She grins at me. “Your boyfriend is at the top of all of them. Well, not best dressed and nicest car. But everything else.”
“Really?” I can’t say anything else. I guess I’m waiting for one of them to pipe in with “But you, on the other hand …” But it never comes.
“Ever since he’s moved back, he’s been our Would You Rather champion,” Erica says instead.
“Champion?” I ask. I never thought there was any way to win at Would You Rather. Wish and I used to play it all the time. Eat someone else’s fingernail or walk fifty miles? Go to school naked or eat someone’s puke?
Terra sighs. “Not with me.” She looks at me and explains. “Would You Rather is where one person names two people, and you have to say which one you’d rather sleep with. Wish always wins.”
I should have known they’d find a way to turn even the most innocuous memory of my childhood into something sex-related. I bet when they play Monopoly, they pretend the little red hotels are brothels.
“He wins out over all the guys in school. Most of Hollywood, too,” Erica says.
I feel the banana I ate for breakfast trying to force its way up my throat. So Erica and Destiny would rather spend a night with Wish than with, say, a gazillionaire Hollywood actor that millions of teenage girls lust after on a nightly basis. And yet nobody’s looking at me and thinking there’s something wrong with me and Wish together. Well, maybe they are, but they’re not saying it.
“So, is his ass really as perfect out of those jeans as it is in them?” Erica asks, pressing me.
I don’t answer. I don’t know how to. I just smile dumbly. I’m not sure if I’m feeling uncomfortable because I don’t know (or care to know) the answer to that question right now, or because I’ve watched enough soap operas to know that girls like Erica don’t let a measly thing like a girlfriend stand in the way of getting what they want. And Erica obviously wants to treat my boyfriend’s backside like a cantaloupe.
“You must squeeze it constantly. I mean, how can you not want to squeeze that ass of his constantly?”
I shrug. “Um, I’m not really an ass girl,” I say, which is true. I read in Cosmo or Glamour that some guys are boob men, while other guys like legs. At the time, I wondered how hard it would be to find a guy who was a beer-gut man. Anyway, it must be the same for girls, right? There’s nothing wrong with not being an ass girl.
“Oh, you should just squeeze it a little, every day. I would.” Erica gives me a little playful pinch on the elbow. I jump, because I’m not expecting it, since people like Erica strike me as the type who would sooner touch doggie doo than unimportant people like me. “So, tell us more.”
I fight the overwhelming urge to run for the door. I’m still not convinced that this conversation—this day—can be happening to me. Maybe a little part of each of their brains did remember the goober Dough but then decided that it was a mathematical impossibility for the butt of all their jokes of previous years to be involved with Wish. So to deal with this new and impossible information, their brains simply created a new me. It’s a psychological coping mechanism. I hear the words of encouragement Christian gave me: Act confident until you are confident. I remember thinking that that philosophy was crazy, that people would see through it quicker than through cellophane.
Now he sounds like a genius.
So I put on my biggest, most confident smile, say, “What would you like to know?” and hope that Wish doesn’t find out about this conversation while I’m alive. Considering how fast my heart is beating, that might not be for long.
21
THE REST OF THE MORNING, two girls offer to share their notes with me, three tell me they love my outfit, and some dude picks up my pen for me when I accidentally drop it. This is a big step up from my previous status, which was the human equivalent of packing peanuts and three a.m. infomercials. You know, just taking up space.
Before I know it, it’s lunch. Time to see Wish again. As I navigate away from my locker, I see a row of couples engaged in PDA. This isn’t something I noticed before, maybe because I steered clear of that stuff. Now I can’t stop looking. Something tells me that if Erica were going out with Wish, she’d be all over him. Maybe I should run up to him and surprise him with a big first wet one, the stuff of movie legends, so romantic and heart-stopping that he pulls away from me, breathless, and says, “Wow. Gwen, never leave me.”
Instead, the first thing I do when I see him, standing at the A-list table with his Phillies cap on backward and a french fry crammed between his lips like a cigarette, is blush. Then he turns and notices me, and a slow smile spreads on his face as he sucks the last of the fry into his mouth. Somehow he manages to do this and still look sexy. So the heat on my cheeks, which was mild before, gets cranked up so high that I think steam starts coming off them. Everything in my line of vision gets fuzzy.
It’s not like I didn’t know he was beautiful and hot and something that the girls would go crazy for. But now that I’ve seen him topping every one of Erica’s lists, the whole “acting confident until you are” I’ve been trying to do seems pretty freaking impossible. It’s one thing to talk sex with Erica and the girls, but another thing entirely to perform. If I ran up to kiss him, we’d most likely end up bonking heads.
“Hey,” he says as I near him. “You want something up at the line? My treat.”
Food is the last thing on my mind, obviously, because I can’t get the conversation with the girls out of my head. What, exactly, makes Wish’s butt the object of such enthusiasm? He’s half turned toward me, so I have to crane my neck at a rather unnatural angle to see it, and then, suddenly—
“Hello?” My eyes trail upward, to Wish’s questioning face. “What are you doing?”
I shrug, innocent.
“Want something at the line?”
I shake my head, and I see Erica throw her books down on the table beside me. I wonder what she would do at a moment like this, but it doesn’t take long to know the answer. Wish starts digging into his pockets for change. He’s close to me, thus so is his backside. Now would be the perfect time to do it. Now. Right now. And it’s like I can’t control myself. As if I’m having an out-of-body experience, I see my hand, shaped like a crab claw, going in for the kill.…
“Whoa!” Wish jumps and stares at me, clearly astonished. As do half the people in the cafeteria.
“Um. Hurry back, now,” I say, giving him my most seductive, pouty gaze, which
I think probably looks like I pressed my face up against a window, from the way he recoils in horror. Okay, totally not the reaction I was aiming for.
Instead of going up to the line, he walks over to the windows. “Is it supposed to rain today?”
The day started out brilliantly sunny, but now clouds are moving in. And it doesn’t just look like an afternoon thunderstorm, which are common during hot days in Jersey. It looks like we’re in for a good dousing. “Um, I think. But it’s supposed to end by early evening.”
He nods thoughtfully. “Okay,” he says, then heads off toward the line.
I can still feel the denim of his jeans and the firm flesh beneath them on my fingertips. Nice, I guess, but I don’t really have anything to compare it to. I have to clasp my other hand over my fingers to keep them from trembling. When I look up at Erica, she’s giving me a satisfied smile. Like she’s proud of me.
22
WHEN SCHOOL ENDS, I expect Wish to show up at my locker, wielding the keys to his truck and nipping at my heels like a puppy. Since I’ve acted totally outside my comfort zone all day, I can’t wait to get home. I spend a few minutes straightening my locker, but he doesn’t come. I peer down the hallway and finally see him trudging toward me, head down. “Hi,” I say to him, as brightly as possible.
Maybe it’s just that the rain has been falling and the hallway is dark, but his eyes look black-rimmed, troubled. “Hey.”
Okay, wait. When I wanted to run in the other direction, he was practically all over me. Now that I’m being all friendly, he’s the one running away? Guys can bite. And by the time they do, you’re the one wearing the dog collar. “Everything okay?” I ask, trying to sound nonchalant, even though my palms are sweating.
He nods. “Yeah. Ready?” he says, as if there’s an appointment he’s late for. He doesn’t bother to look at me, just continues cruising down the hallway. I follow at his heels, like his butt boil again.
Well, I think as we head off toward the parking lot, I knew this was bound to happen eventually. Even a wardrobe designed by Marc What’s-his-face couldn’t postpone the inevitable. If I’m lucky, he’ll break things off before the party tonight, and I can spend my Friday in bed with Ben & Jerry instead of stressing over whether anyone can see the mongo zit I felt blossoming on my chin last period.
When we get outside, the storm has dissolved to a drizzle. Wish bites his tongue and stares at the clouds. “You said clear skies tonight?”
I nod, wondering why the intense interest in the weather. It’s not like Terra’s party is outside or anything.
Still the gentleman, he pulls me to his side and tents his big nylon jacket over us. I try not to pay attention to the spicy smell of his aftershave or the hard curve of his ribs brushing against my fleshy arm … but of course, trying not to pay attention means that that’s all I pay attention to, so I nearly trip on the curb when we get to his truck. And then, on the ride home, he’s quiet. I keep waiting for him to open up his mouth and for “It’s just not working …” to break the silence. Instead, he just sits there, rubbing his shoulder blade every once in a while.
When we pull up to the bakery, he turns to me, still rubbing his shoulder, and I think, This is it. But he says, “So, is nine okay?”
I sit there, speechless, perched on the edge of his leather seat, which I’d heretofore been expecting my backside never to come in contact with again. Nine. Nine what? Nine is a perfectly okay number, I guess.
He must see my brain working overtime. “To pick you up? For the party?”
I exhale so deeply I bet he can smell on my breath the one Dorito I allowed myself to eat at lunch today. “Uh, yeah.”
He looks at the ground. “Hey, listen, I wanted to talk to you about something.”
“I know,” I say. The moment I’ve been waiting for. “I know what it is.”
“You don’t have to do that,” he says. “Okay?”
I squint at him. “Do what?”
“Act like those girls, or whatever. Just be Gwen. Be you. All right?”
My face burns when I realize what he’s talking about. Someone must have let him in on the sex conversation. Or maybe he’s talking about the disastrous Operation Butt Grab. “Uh. Okay,” I say. I scramble out of his truck in a daze, barely feeling the raindrops as they fall on me. I can’t help thinking that Wish must have been too much of a wuss to call it quits. Because that’s obviously what he wanted, right? I’m so busy replaying the whole scene in my mind that I almost slam the screen door on Wish, who has followed me. He catches the door with his foot and hands me my vocab book. “You left this in the truck,” he says.
“Oh, uh, thanks,” I say, wondering if that’s wuss code for “we need to break up.”
“Hey, man.” Wish nods toward the bread rack, and that’s when I notice Christian.
I do not want to introduce them, but Wish is standing there expectantly. “Wish, Christian, Christian, Wish,” I mumble, waving my hand in the appropriate directions.
“Hey, man,” Wish repeats, and stops rubbing his shoulder to extend his hand. They shake. Christian mutters some pleasantries that don’t sound very pleasant the way he says them. There’s a moment of silence while they just stand there, sizing each other up as if they’re about to do battle, like all guys do when they meet. It’s completely awkward.
“See you tonight,” Wish says to me, breaking the silence. Then he jogs off to his truck.
The first thing I catch when I turn away from the display window is Christian’s smug expression, big enough to fill the store. He starts to sing “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” from The Lion King in this horrible falsetto, using a hoagie roll as a microphone.
I glare at him.
“Well, at least you ditched the stay-at-home-mom look,” he says.
“Shut up.”
“It’s an improvement.”
“Could you please drop dead?”
“And leave you alone to take care of all this?”
I’m fishing for some witty retort, but nothing comes to mind.
“Scumbling screwfinger?” he offers.
I gnash my teeth so hard they hurt. “Whatever.”
“Hey, where did you say he was from?” he asks.
I am not in the mood to discuss Wish with Christian. “What does it matter where a person is from,” I say, putting on my best Christian bad-boy hiss, “when they’re never going back?”
He shrugs. “No. Seriously.”
“I am being serious.” But he’s still staring at me, so I give up. I need to get upstairs, anyway, and start prepping for tonight, which will likely take me every minute of the six hours I have left. “L.A.”
He nods slowly. “Thought so.”
I wait for him to say more. He doesn’t. “Well, aren’t you Mr. All-Knowing?”
He grins. “Tell me. Does he make you feel warm and kind of all hot and bothered whenever you see him? Do you feel a little delirious whenever he’s around?”
I scowl at him. As if I would dignify that with a response. And anyway, it’s not delirious so much as wanting to pee my pants.
“You do, don’t you?” His grin widens. “Thought so.”
Now I feel myself blushing. I need to run upstairs, stat, but for some reason I can’t. I’m just dying to prove him wrong, to wipe that smug expression off his face. “And what else do you know about him?” I ask.
He scratches his chin. “He used to live here a few years ago, right? Well, I bet before he left, he wasn’t all that, was he? He was just a regular old Joe, right?”
I don’t say anything.
“And almost overnight, he’s this gorgeous god, right? Everyone wants him. Am I right?”
I roll my eyes. “Wow, you have it all figured out, don’t you? You should invest in a tent on the boardwalk and a deck of tarot cards.”
He shakes his head. “Joke about it all you want. But the bottom line is, your boyfriend is trouble.”
I’m reaching for a jelly donut and suddenly stop.
“What do you mean?”
“It means that your boyfriend might have picked up a little more than a tan when he was out west. That he might be exerting a little influence upon you.”
I squint at him. “Influence?”
“He’s playing with powers he can’t control,” he says.
I squint even more. Does he know how goofy he sounds? “Um, like Lex Luthor?”
He waves a hand in my direction. “Fine, don’t believe me. But these things never end well.”
“Alrighty,” I say, backing away carefully. Powers he can’t control? We’re talking about Philip Wishman, a guy who had an imaginary dog friend named Ruffy as a kid and could eat his weight in pinwheel cookies, not some diabolical evil genius. Wish couldn’t harm a fly. And as this week has shown, he’s so mild-mannered he couldn’t even break the local fat girl’s heart by calling it quits with her.
When I get upstairs, I’m not even in my bedroom before I’m tearing off my designer ensemble. My mom is in the kitchen, staring down the sink drain, but she whips her head up as I come barreling through the apartment like Tornado Gwendolyn. “Oh! You look wonderful. What a lovely out—” she begins, but I have the blouse half over my head and am struggling like a headless chicken to get it off, because I forgot to undo one of the buttons.
“I’ve got to take a shower,” I mumble through the silky fabric, bumping into the wall before pulling aside the curtain to my bedroom.
“Oh. Actually. You can’t.” By now I’ve freed myself from the blouse and am staring at her. She points to the sink. “No water pressure. I’ve called the repairman.”
“What?” I shriek. Sure, things go wrong on a daily basis in an apartment that’s as old as George Washington, but not the water! Water is one of those things I’ve come to take for granted, like death and bad caf food. So for this to happen today, the single most important day I’ve known thus far, is just … another chapter in the story of my screwy life.
