“Danny, did you come here with someone?”
He looks around. “Philip, but I don’t know where he is.”
Philip. One of the jerkiest guys in our class. It figures.
“How are you getting home?”
He grins. “I’m not ready to leave.” He swigs the rest of the beer. Only he kind of stumbles because he moves his arm too fast and falls against the wall.
“Danny, are you okay?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you feel sick?” I’m getting scared now. People can die from drinking too much. Only I don’t know what to do, and believe me, no one around is going to help me. They’re too busy yelling and singing and drinking.
Danny says, “I think I have to throw up.”
Oh, God, one of my least-favorite things in the world. I pound on the bathroom door. Someone yells back, “Wait a minute.” I do wait a minute, but nothing happens. There’s probably another bathroom somewhere, but I don’t know where it is, so I drag Danny into the kitchen. Yelling, “Out of the way, out of the way,” I push him up against the sink.
Where he immediately hurls.
Someone screams, “Oh, gross.” Everyone backs off, saying things like, “Give me a break.” “God, get him out of here.” “What a geek.”
A few people look at Danny like they might want to help, but they walk out like everybody else.
Someone has to get Danny home. I tell Danny to stay where he is, and I go to find Sari to tell her I’m leaving. After looking everywhere, I finally find her in Erica’s room. She’s sitting on the bed, yakking with a bunch of people: Kara Davis and Andy Richman and John Howard and … David Cole.
David’s sitting sort of next to her. But she’s on the bed, and he’s on the floor. So he’s sitting by her leg.
Right by her leg. Like, they’re touching.
If I were Thea, I would not like this scene at all.
I say, “Sari?” She doesn’t hear me right away, so I have to say again, “Sari?”
She looks up. “Oh, hey, where’d you go?”
Yeah, like you, Miss Don’t Leave Me, didn’t disappear. I would like very much to say this, but Danny’s probably puking on a priceless rug somewhere.
I tell her, “I’m leaving.”
“Why?”
“I have to take Danny home.”
This gets a big laugh. Particularly from Lord God David Cole.
“Danny?” Sari makes a face, playing it up for David.
“He’s sick.”
Kara says, “The geek who puked in the sink,” and Sari says, “Eeuuw.”
I don’t like Sari right now. I don’t like her at all. If this is who she’s going to be, I don’t want to know her.
“Well, anyway,” I say, “I’m leaving.”
For a second, Sari looks unsure. “Come back after.”
Yeah, I think, in case David Cole dumps you. Screw you, Sari.
I go back to the kitchen, but Danny isn’t there anymore. I ask a few people, but no one knows where he’s gone.
So I think, Screw Danny, and leave.
A half hour later, I’m home. It’s only 11:30. My parents are in the living room.
“How was it?” my mom calls when I pass by.
“Okay.” I stop but don’t sit down.
My dad asks, “Did Sari’s dream man show up?”
“Yeah, he showed up.”
I can tell they want all the details. But I just want to say good night and go to bed.
So that’s what I do.
The next morning, while I’m eating breakfast, I make my very first New Year’s resolutions:
I am never going to drink. Ever.
I am never speaking to Sari again.
I’ve crossed Danny off my list too. (Assuming he survived.) Which means I could end up spending the rest of my high school years totally alone.
That’s okay. Frankly, this morning, I’m not that hot on the human race.
After breakfast, I take Nobo for a long walk and let him play with a poodle named Lola. I think Nobo’s in love, but it’s never going to work out. Lola is way more glamorous than he is.
As we walk home, I tell him that love is very overrated. Particularly with beautiful, glamorous types like Lola.
That afternoon, I’m farting around on the Web when the phone rings. We have two phones, one in my room, one in the kitchen. You know how sometimes you just know who’s calling? And you sort of want to speak to them, and you also sort of don’t, so you leave the whole thing up to fate?
That’s what I do. I decide that if my mom or dad gets to the phone and it’s Sari, I’ll take the call. But if they don’t pick it up and she leaves a message on the machine, I won’t call back.
All of a sudden, the phone stops ringing. Either my parents or the machine has answered.
Then I hear my mom call, “Jess? Sari.”
I go to the phone and pick up. I say, “Okay, Ma,” into it, and wait for her to hang up. When she does, I say, “Hi.”
So much for New Year’s resolutions.
There’s a long silence at the other end. So, Sari feels a little weird calling. Good, she should feel weird. She should, in my opinion, be figuring out how to beg my forgiveness for abandoning me at that jerk-off party.
Finally, Sari says, “Hey, how are you?”
“I’m okay. How are you?”
“Good, I’m great.”
That’s not what I want to hear. Something more along the lines of, I’m miserable and feel like puking—that’s what I want to hear.
Except Sari doesn’t sound that great, if you know what I mean. She sounds like she knows I want her to be miserable and she’s saying, Screw you, I’m not. And even though I’m still pissed at her, I have to admit, a good friend doesn’t go around hoping you’re miserable because you got to hang with the man of your dreams.
I ask her, “How late did you stay?”
“Oh, God, like, till three, three thirty.”
In other words: I didn’t miss you a bit, you loser.
Then she says, “You missed some funny stuff.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Chloe Friedlander stuck Erica’s mom’s fur coat in the toilet.”
This, I can totally believe. Chloe is an animal rights freak. Won’t dissect anything, starts crying in any movie with an animal in it, wears a big anti-fur button. I am not that into animal rights, but my respect for Chloe has suddenly gone up.
“How’d she get the whole coat in?”
“Well, not the whole thing, just the sleeve. But then she flushed it, to make it go down? And the toilet flooded. Water everywhere.” Sari laughs.
“Did Erica freak?”
“Completely.”
“I wish I’d seen that.”
After a moment, Sari says, “Yeah, why’d you leave?”
There are a lot of different answers to this question, and I’m not sure which one I want to give. Finally, I say, “I don’t know, the whole thing just got kind of intense for me.”
Which is, as they say, the truth, but not the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Call me a big fat wimp. I don’t feel like yelling at her.
And when Sari says, “Yeah, things did kind of get out of hand,” I feel like we’re friends again.
Since we’re friends, I have to ask her the thing I know she’s dying to tell me about. “So, what happened with David?”
“Uh, stuff happened.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, stuff definitely happened.”
Then Sari tells me what happened. What they did. Or rather, what she did.
I can’t believe my friend has done this. I don’t know everything Sari’s done, she doesn’t always tell me. But I know she’s never done this before. There are bases, aren’t there? Steps you take. You work your way up to this kind of thing. You don’t just do it to some boy in a bathroom with a hundred people standing on the other side of the door.
Even if the boy is David Cole. Even if you are m
adly, psychotically in love.
“He said I was really good at it,” Sari tells me. Then she tells me something I don’t want to know, a detail that proves, yes, she has really done this. That soon she will be having sex, and I will have to worry about her getting pregnant. I make a promise: I will not let Sari go to the clinic by herself. I will even lend her money if I have to.
I ask, “How do you feel?”
“Fine.” She sounds like it’s weird that I asked. “It’s no big deal.”
“So, are you guys going out now?”
“I don’t know. We didn’t really talk about it.”
Sari is still sounding very cool about it, but I can tell: She wanted to talk about it.
“He said he would call me.”
“Well … wow,” I say. Because I’m out of things to say.
“Yeah,” says Sari. Who, it seems, is also out of things to say.
7
—Hollow Planet: The Darkening Storm It was a time of judgment. Some would be found worthy. Others would not.
After I hang up the phone, I go and sit on my bed. I wrap my arms around my legs and fold up as tight as I can. I lean my chin on my knees, dig in hard, until I am one smooth, solid piece of stone.
I close my eyes, try to imagine being a rock. It would not be the worst thing. It happens to Thor in the second Hollow Planet book. He’s turned into a boulder, right near the ocean. He ends up making the sea an ally, and that’s how Rana and her army win … some battle, I don’t exactly remember.
I have this weird feeling that I just had my last conversation ever with Sari.
Which is stupid. I’m going to see her in school on Monday.
But I can’t help it. I keep feeling that something is over. That it’s just … gone, and there’s nothing I can do to get it back.
For a second I open my eyes and see my Hollow Planet drawings all over the wall. I hate them. They look sad and pathetic and childish. They make my room look like a five-year-old’s.
I wrap my arms even tighter around my legs, twist my hands together until the skin feels like it’s going to rip, slide right off the bone. I desperately want to destroy all the pictures.
But part of me knows that even if I hate them, they’re mine. And I can’t destroy them because of that.
I’m still staring at the pictures when my mom knocks on the door and calls me in for dinner. My dad’s at the library, so it’s just my mom and me tonight. And Nobo, waiting under the table for whatever drops.
I don’t really feel like eating, so I just shove my food around the plate. If my mom notices, she doesn’t say anything.
Instead she asks if I’m looking forward to going back to school.
I roll my eyes at her. “Okay,” she says, “forget school. How’s Sari doing?”
“Good. I guess. I don’t know.”
“Whatever happened with that guy?”
Now, I don’t know how to answer that one. I mean, I know what’s happened. I just don’t know how to put it in “Mom-speak.”
“You never really told us how the party went.”
“It sucked.”
My mom makes a face. She’s annoyed I thought the party sucked. My mom would like me to like things like parties. She would like me to be easy and popular. To have a million friends and never hate anyone or get pissed off.
I nudge my green beans to the left side of the plate. “Parties aren’t for people like me, Ma.”
“What does that mean?” She’s smiling at me like, What a doof of a daughter I have. But she doesn’t know. She doesn’t know anything about Eldridge. That’s why she thinks you can look forward to going back there.
“Parties are elitist gatherings for popular people.”
“And you’re not ‘popular.’” She’s still smiling.
“No, Ma. I hate to break it to you.”
“You have friends.”
I think: Do I?
“‘Friends’ isn’t popular,” I tell my mom. “Popular is like … really smart, or pretty, or hot. Like Sari. Sari could be popular.”
That’s as close as I’m going to get to discussing the whole Sari/David Cole thing with my mother.
“Oh,” she says. “Because Sari’s ‘hot.’”
Okay, discussing “hot” with my mother is ten out of ten on a scale of bizarreness.
I shrug. “Kind of.”
“You know,” she says, “that kind of thing isn’t all that important. It doesn’t usually last very long.”
“It lasts,” I say, getting all defensive, like it’s in my interest that hot people keep their power. “What are you saying, that older women aren’t attractive?” I want to say “sexy,” but you know how it is. Around your parents, those words jam up in your throat. Hey, Ma, I think that’s sexy…. Gag Wretch.
“I’m not saying that at all. I’m just saying the kind of thing you’re talking about doesn’t last because it’s usually about being young and … not knowing.”
“Actually, I think it’s more about … knowing. If you know what I mean.”
My mom smiles. “You think that because you’re young.”
Okay, yes, true, but wrong. Because the fact is, I am right and my mother is not. As with all inborn advantages, hotness gives you that essential self-confidence and sense of power that you can rely on forever. Maybe you’re not always going to look as amazing as you do now, but hotness isn’t even about looks. It’s about confidence and … knowing. That’s the only way I can describe it. And once you got it, you can always flaunt it.
That’s how I see it, anyway.
I can tell from the way my mom is looking at me that she doesn’t see it that way at all. But like I said, there’s a lot she doesn’t know about how things are. She likes to think that life is like it is in catalogs: these perfect scenes of happiness, where everything’s clean and everyone’s thin and smiling.
The problem is, I definitely do not live in that world.
Another problem: I’m not sure what world I do live in.
The next morning, I am on the bus. On my way back to Eldridge.
I remember how, on the first day of high school, Sari and I made this very specific plan to meet. Where, what time, everything.
I guess today we just see each other when we see each other.
I wonder if anyone else knows what happened at Erica’s party. I wonder if Thea knows.
Maybe David told her. When she came back from seeing her grandparents, maybe he said, It’s all over between us. I found my true love. She is Sari Aaronsohn. My passion for her shall never die.
That’s definitely what Sari’s hoping.
The bus rolls into a tunnel, and I try to think what it will be like if David and Sari become the new Official Eldridge Couple.
Everyone will think they are amazing and cool.
And Sari will never speak to me again.
My Nice Self says that will never happen.
My Rotten Self says it will.
The bus halts, sighs, like all the air is going out of its tires, and sinks so people can get off. I push the back door hard; they always close it on you too fast.
As I walk toward the school, I tell myself I have to be happy for Sari. I have to pretend that this is this great thing, and that she’s so lucky, and that David’s the most amazing guy in the world.
A lot of people are hanging out on the steps of the school. I look for Sari, but I don’t see her.
Then I see something else and stop dead, right where I am.
I think: It’s funny how once you know one little thing about a person, you can never see them the same way again.
For example, knowing what David Cole did with Sari in the bathroom at Erica Trager’s party … well, it just gives me a whole new perspective on the sight of David and Thea making out on the Eldridge steps.
For what seems like minutes, I just stare. I can’t believe this. I mean, tongues are going here. Saliva is definitely being exchanged.
If I were the person I would
like to be, I would walk straight up to David, pull him off Thea, and say, Hi, there. Remember me? I’m Sari’s friend. Remember Sari?
But I’m not that person yet, so I just run up the stairs and into the building.
Okay, the absolute last thing that can happen now is that I run into Sari. Even if I don’t say a word, I feel like what I just saw is all over my face, like chicken pox.
I can’t stop staring. I’ve been inside for two, three minutes, and my eyes are still wide open.
I blink a few times, to get my eyes to look normal. I have to think this through. In private, somewhere I won’t run into Sari. Everyone is headed upstairs, so I go downstairs to the lunchroom. This time in the morning, no one will be there. I sneak inside, go sit at one of the tables in the corner … and think and think and think.
I don’t get it. I totally don’t get it. What are David and Thea doing in a passionate embrace? Why hasn’t he told her it’s all over between them?
He wasn’t kissing her to be nice, either. You could tell he was into it. And it was cold out—but not that cold.
How could he do that? After what happened with Sari?
Maybe he’s sorry it happened. Maybe he feels horribly guilty for doing that to Thea.
But what about what he’s doing to Sari? It’s so unfair.
I have to tell her.
She will absolutely freak.
I should practice. Decide what I’m going to say. Taking a deep breath, I start.
Sari …
She’s going to be really upset. I should make sure we’re someplace alone. Not in the hall, where everyone can see.
Okay, stop stalling.
Sari, I saw David and Thea. They were kissing.
Gag. I can’t say that. It sounds totally infantile: Ooh, they were kissing.
Maybe I should just ask her if she’s seen David. Maybe she already knows.
I’ll say that I saw them. And then I’ll let her ask me how they looked. And then I can say something like, Well, pretty friendly.
Sari will say, Friendly how?
Then I’ll have to say, They were kissing.
But she might want specific details. She could say something like, How were they kissing? Like sad? On the cheek … or was Thea kissing him?
The True Meaning of Cleavage Page 7
