The Girlfriend Stage

by Janci Patterson

  Is she really not going to be my roommate anymore?

  She’s been my roommate since the second month I lived here. I can’t imagine how empty this place will feel with her gone. Even the thought of all the extra shoe storage I’ll have doesn’t thrill me the way it should.

  “It is,” I assure her, and maybe myself. “I mean, it’s going to suck not being roommates. But you’ll be happy with Will. And it’s not like we won’t see each other all the time, right?”

  “Right,” she says, emphatically. Maybe too emphatically. “All the time.”

  But it won’t be the same, and we both know it.

  “When were you planning on moving out?” I ask.

  She squirms a little before answering. “I was going to start bringing over some stuff this week. But I’ll still be here when you get back! Like, for a few days, at least. Maybe we can have a Buffy the Vampire Slayer marathon.”

  I smile at her, though my chest feels empty. I wonder how much of her stuff will still be here when I get back from Wyoming. “We totally should.”

  There’s a beat where neither of us know what to say, and I’m about to fill it with some stupid joke about how I’ll fight her for Bertrude, when she looks at the clock on the kitchen wall and swears. Well, mildly swears. It is Gabby, after all. “I’ve gotta go,” she says, dropping the plate into the sink. “I’m working night shift tonight. But if I don’t see you before you leave, you’ll call me from the road, yeah?”

  “Of course, yes.”

  She grabs her purse, her hand on the doorknob and then wheels around. “Oh, and I know you, and I know that if you get this game tonight, you’ll be up all night playing it. Promise me you’ll get at least five hours of sleep before you get behind the wheel. Promise.”

  “I promise, Mom.”

  Gabby smiles, and gives me a hug, and I wish it didn’t feel so much like the end of something important. Then she’s gone, and I sit alone in the apartment, staring at the wine stain on the floor for long enough it becomes blurry. I consider calling Josh, but he’s probably getting ready for the premiere. Maybe even on the way to pick up his date.

  I decide to stop feeling sorry for myself and go buy my game. It’s time to shoot the hell out of a bunch of zombies.

  Three

  Anna-Marie

  I leave the Los Angeles area around noon in a rented Nissan that smells like dashboard wax with a faint whiff of cigarette smoke. I’m feeling awake enough on the promised five hours of sleep, and emotionally satisfied after a full night of zombie slaughter. Steeling myself for the road trip ahead—and mainly the dreaded destination—I crank up the first song that comes on the satellite radio’s pop station. It’s a sweet duet by one my fave new bands, Alec and Jenna. They’re a real-life couple, and to watch them perform, you’d think there never were two attractive people so attractively in love.

  Unfortunately for them, they’re bound to come up against the law of Hollywood sooner or later. It’s only a matter of time before he’s out banging groupies and she develops a prescription drug addiction and they release some plagiarized statement about an amicable breakup full of the utmost respect that everyone knows is a bald-faced lie. The more adorable they are now, the bigger the backlash is going to be.

  Why risk all that pain when you can just have fun instead?

  I sing along to the song anyway, and enjoy the swoony feeling the words about “forever love” make in my heart. I may not believe that exists in real life, but I don’t believe in vampires either and I still love watching Buffy.

  I drive for hours, singing to the radio, checking in with Gabby, rolling my eyes through a phone call with my dad’s sister, Patrice, who ostensibly has called to get my ETA, but proceeds to fill me in at length about the weather there, as if I’m not going to actually be experiencing it soon.

  I stop in St. George to stay the night, and as I curl up, I can’t help but check a website I know will be posting pics from the movie premiere I ditched.

  I’m curious who he ended up taking, is all.

  I scroll furiously down, through pics of celebrities whose choice of dress and date will be dissected at length on fashion and gossip sites, until—there he is. Josh Rios, looking every kind of gorgeous with his black hair slicked back and wearing a deep gray Tom Ford suit, grinning for the camera.

  And next to him, a tall blond woman in a sleek navy blue gown cut practically down to her belly button. Not Asia Phillips, but an up-and-coming actress named Macy Mayfield he signed last month. She’s around my age, early twenties, and is the kind of beautiful often described as statuesque—like she stepped straight from the set of some Jane Austen period film, but somehow lost the top half of her gown along the way. His hand is on her lower back, and it’s like I’m suddenly aware of the absence of it against mine.

  “Josh Rios and Macy Mayfield: agent and client, or much more?” reads the caption on this one. I think of him just yesterday morning, so close to me I could feel the warmth of his skin, telling me how agents sleep with their clients all the time. It’s not a big deal.

  And it’s not. We’re not exclusive. We’re having fun, and he’s free to do that with whoever he wants.

  I pull the covers up and as I try to go to sleep, I wish they hadn’t given me a king-sized bed. All that extra space just feels vast and cold and empty. Just how I remember Wyoming.

  The next day, I’m up fairly early, and after picking through the few relatively healthy choices I could scrounge from the hotel’s shoddy excuse for a continental breakfast, I’m on the road. I blast the radio and cruise down the long stretches of scrubby desert that comprises most of this drive, and I definitely don’t look for more pics of the movie premiere when I stop for gas.

  Eight hours later, I pass the faded wooden sign that announces “Everett, Wyoming: Home of Friendly People and Cattle.” Some teenager has turned the ‘y’ in Friendly into a penis with permanent marker. It’s not as artistically rendered—or generous—as the one Shane and I drew there one bored night our junior year, but I’m glad traditions are being kept up.

  The sight makes me smile, despite the fact that I’m driving into town and not fleeing quickly from it. It’s nice to remember that I did actually have some good times here.

  I head down main street, which has gotten a new stoplight in the years I’ve been gone, bringing the total number of stoplights in the town to a whopping two. I pass Bleeker’s auto-parts shop, the bank, Sheila’s Bakery, and the lone grocery store, half of which is actually another auto-parts shop (why two would be needed in a town with fewer cars than cattle is a mystery I’ve never solved). I get waves from the same old ladies who have been sitting outside the post office ever since I can remember, knitting what appears to be the same scarf over and over.

  Two streets down and a left, and there it is: the Halsey family home. It’s a two-story that is actually not terrible looking, thanks to it being older than the cheap vinyl siding most of the houses in Everett seem made of. It has a nice wrap-around porch, and it looks like Dad has put a fresh coat of lemon yellow paint on it at some point in the last few years.

  It would, however, look better were it not for the handful of pickup trucks parked haphazardly on the front lawn like giant redneck lawn ornaments. I crunch my Nissan up onto the gravel of the actual driveway and take a deep breath.

  Showtime, Anna-Marie.

  I ready myself with a TV-worthy smile and step out of the car.

  Right into a large pile of shit.

  I make an undignified squeal, and then swear, loudly and emphatically. These ankle boots are suede!

  A little girl’s giggle sounds from behind me and I whirl around to see two kids I don’t know watching me. One, the source of the giggle, is a small girl tugging at her long honey-blond braid and wearing overalls with sparkly ballet flats. She’s grinning at me. The other is a gangly teenage boy with the sam
e round face and blond hair, only he’s watching me with wide brown eyes, looking more startled than anything else. He tugs at one of his earlobes nervously.

  “Sorry,” I say, looking around, confused. Did I forget some important information, like that my dad moved since I was here last? “I probably shouldn’t have said that word in front of . . .” I pause. “Who are you?”

  The girl bounces up to me. “I’m Ginnie. And this is my brother Byron. We’ve seen you on your show. Mom says you’re famous.”

  Ginnie and Byron. Right. Tanya’s kids. Honestly, I had kind of forgotten about them, which seems horrible, given that they’ll eventually be my stepsiblings. But I’ve learned over the years that stepsiblings, like stepmoms, have a tendency of coming and going pretty quickly.

  Still, the girl clearly knows how to get on my good side. I smile at her, even as I’m scraping the poop off onto the grass. “I don’t know about famous, but thanks,” I say. “It’s nice to meet you. So did my dad start letting the neighbors park their cows on our driveway?” I gesture to the giant shit patty.

  Ginnie giggles again. “No, that’s from our dog, Buckley. He’s staying here with us, too.”

  Of course he is. And from the green, grassy quality of this shit, there must be something seriously wrong with that dog.

  “I play football,” Byron blurts out, mostly to my chest.

  I don’t know what to say to that, but suddenly I’m wishing I were wearing a less tight t-shirt.

  “Ginnie! Byron!” a woman’s voice calls, sparing me from further conversation about dog poop and being ogled by my teenage future stepbrother. “Your mom says you should come inside and eat, before the food gets—Anna-Marie! You’ve made it!”

  My aunt Patrice jogs down the porch steps in her usual outdated pant-suit, her dyed-brown hair in the stiff bouffant she’s had ever since I’ve been alive. She thinks it makes her look like Liz Taylor, but really it just looks like she needs a new stylist who isn’t a hundred years old. Patrice’s arms are stretched wide for a hug, even though she’s still several yards away. I meet her halfway and am enveloped in the scent of grilled burgers and some epically strong perfume that I can only imagine is named “Lilacs and Even More Lilacs: In Case You Missed It the First Time.”

  Slightly dizzying, but I imagine it’s better than what I smell like after two days in the car and with dog crap on my shoes.

  Patrice squeezes me hard enough I grunt, and then pulls back. “So good to see our little star! Such a shame you were trapped in the limelight for Aunt Ida’s funeral.”

  She gives me a look that tells me she suspects that this was entirely my choice, which, to be fair, it was. As she continues, I find that’s not a decision I regret.

  “We talk about you all the time, you know. Your hair has some red in it now! That’s for your show, I assume? Lily says it looks like they feed you well on set, but you’re still slim as a reed! Guess the camera really does add ten pounds.”

  I’m sure my smile is more of a grimace, but Patrice doesn’t seem to notice. She’s right about the red tint to my normally medium-brown hair, at least—my on-set stylist keeps it dyed for my character. But I really could have done without the signature Aunt Patrice backhanded compliment.

  The world in general could do without those, but it’s never going to stop Patrice.

  She’s got her arm linked tightly in mine, guiding me up the stairs like I’m a blind flight risk. “Speaking of weight,” she says, “did you hear that Sheila over at the bakery had the gastric bypass? I told her she looks like a new woman, you know, and she does. A much smaller woman. I think she’s got a real chance of landing a husband now, especially since she’s started taping down all those skin flaps . . .”

  There’s more, but my brain remembers its atrophying defense mechanism of Tuning Out Patrice, or simply TOP, as my dad and I call it.

  I enter the house, and there’s Patrice’s daughter, my cousin Lily, sitting at the kitchen table filing her nails while her father, my uncle Joe, can be seen outside through the screen door swearing at the grill. They live a whopping twenty minutes out of town where Joe manages a cattle ranch, but as per reunion tradition, we all pile into Dad’s house anyway, him being the one with a residence “in town.”

  Lily looks me up and down when I enter and narrows her eyes, but doesn’t bother getting up. “Anna-Marie,” she says, as if my arrival is the most tedious part of her glamour-filled life.

  “Lily,” I respond in kind.

  We’ve never been friends, and that’s clearly not about to start now. She’s been jealous of me since we were in fourth grade and the boy she liked, Jimmy Sears, asked me if I would kiss him at recess. Which I did, and was put off enough by the whole experience that I didn’t kiss a boy again until freshman year of high school. (And soon thereafter learned that Jimmy Sears wasn’t representative of the kissing experience as a whole.)

  But with that gross kiss that involved a surprising amount of tongue and tasted like onion rings, the gauntlet had apparently been thrown down. Lily made it her goal to kiss every boy in school that liked me, or that I had a crush on. It started going further than kissing at some point in high school, and though I’m hardly one to judge anyone for an active sex life, it’s not a reach to say that Lily’s vagina became one of Everett’s most-visited attractions.

  None of which would have actually bothered me all that much if she hadn’t tried so blatantly to sleep with Shane. She never succeeded—as far as I know—but I could only endure my cousin having wardrobe malfunctions in front of my first (and only) serious boyfriend so many times before I broke into her house one night and shaved her eyebrows off while she was sleeping.

  I’d like to say I wasn’t proud of my actions, that I regretted it the next morning when she came to school with brown marker lines drawn above her eyes. But that would be a lie.

  Lily’s eyebrows have long since grown back, and hopefully both of us are past that sort of thing. But judging by the glare she gives me, I’m definitely locking the door to my room while I sleep.

  “Pumpkin!” my dad’s booming voice rings out from down the hall, and soon he’s there, hugging me. Dad’s got the same blue eyes I have and hair the same chestnut brown as my natural color—though his is graying at the edges and thinning at the top. He’s a handsome man for his age, though he’s gotten a bit thicker around the middle since I last saw him. Or maybe it’s just that the v-neck shirt he’s wearing is a size too small, and dear god, are those—?

  “Skinny jeans,” my dad says, seeing my horrified gaze at his legs. He doesn’t appear nearly as abashed as a man his age should be for wearing those things, no matter how good looking he is. Especially tucked as they are into cowboy boots. “Tanya likes the way they make my ass look. And what Tanya likes . . .” He trails off with a suggestive waggle of his eyebrows.

  I heroically hold in a gag.

  “Bill, I was just telling Anna-Marie about Sheila’s gastric bypass,” Patrice says, sweeping by us with a thick cloud of lilac scent. “You should tell her how good Sheila looks now. Oh! And tell her about the nice Muslim family that moved down the street! They are the sweetest people, and . . . wait. Maybe they’re Indian. Well, sweet all the same, and—Dad!” she calls down to the basement, to where my Grandpa is likely sleeping in his favorite chair in front of the TV. “Dad! Anna-Marie is here and dinner is ready and . . . is that dog sleeping on the couch?” Her voice trails off as she heads downstairs, and Dad grins at me.

  “Activating TOP systems?” he asks.

  “TOP systems are go,” I say, smiling back.

  “So have you met Ginnie and Byron yet?” He looks over my shoulder. I turn to see the two of them in the front doorway, Ginnie beaming at me and Byron with his hands shoved in his jeans pockets and staring at the floor.

  “Yes, just outside.” I try to think of anything I can say to make it seem like I actually inves
ted energy in getting to know them. “Ginnie has really fabulous taste in shoes”—the girl’s smile stretches even wider, and she shifts in her sparkly ballet flats so that the sunlight catches the sequins—“and Byron plays football.”

  My dad raises an eyebrow. “Oh?”

  Byron’s face flushes crimson. “I mean, I have played football,” he mumbles. “With friends.”

  Dad nods. “Well, Byron, why don’t you get Anna-Marie’s suitcase from the car and bring it in for her.”

  Byron runs back outside like he’s fleeing a crime scene. I realize that I never shut the door to my car, let alone locked it, but I suppose that doesn’t matter. This is Everett, not Los Angeles. I could leave the car totally open and running all week and the worst I’d have to fear would be a dead battery and some raccoons nesting in the front seat.

  “And while he’s doing that,” Dad continues, “I’ll go find Tanya so you ladies can finally meet.”

  “Don’t bother, I’m here,” a voice calls from upstairs, and a woman quickly bounds down the steps. “Anna-Marie,” she says, when she’s nearing the bottom, “I’m so excited to finally meet you.”

  I try to say the same, but I’m having trouble forming words that aren’t “Oh my god, are you younger than me?” So I just smile like an idiot in return.

  Tanya is really pretty, with the same honey-blond hair as her kids, cut in a face-framing bob. She’s wearing frayed jean shorts and a t-shirt that says “A woman’s place is in the House and the Senate,” and feather earrings that dangle down to brush her shoulders.

  I know Dad said she’s a bookkeeper from Evanston but she looks like she could be a co-ed at the University of Wyoming. I know she can’t actually be as young as she looks, given that she has a teenage son. But it’s super disconcerting.

  “Tanya loves your show,” my dad says. “She didn’t watch many soaps before, but you should hear her go on about who Maeve should end up with.”