8:15 P.M. We drive to Sara’s house. On the way, I brag about how I’ve obviously won over his mother with my wholesome, overachieving charm. (More ironic foreshadowing.)
8:45 P.M. We arrive at Sara’s. The scene is very much like the one described in the Anti-Homecoming entry, only Pepe and Bridget aren’t there. (Bridget is in L.A. with her dad. Pepe is enigmatically MIA.) Not surprisingly, as this is a more exclusive party, Taryn and Paul are also absent.
9:30 P.M. Len kisses me, then leaves me to set up his guitar god gear. I look around for someone to talk to and don’t see anyone worth the effort. I feel very loserish and lonely, wondering how I could be a senior in high school and have so few people I can talk to.
9:35-ish P.M. An inebriated Scotty comes up to me and goes off on how my boyfriend’s band “ain’t shit no matter what Manda says,” and how he wants to “kick the livin’ shit out of that fuckin’ Dreg Marcus” for even thinking he has a shot with his “hot-piece-of-ass girlfriend.” I fear that there will be a brawl before the night is over.
10 P.M. Chaos Called Creation goes on. Len looks damn good. Damn good. I must say that I’m sort of psyched to be his girlfriend at that moment. Marcus’s T-shirt says OXYGEN. It takes me a few brain-banging minutes, but I eventually get the joke. 2002 = ’02 = O2 = the chemical symbol for oxygen. Very clever. Nothing about this or him reminds me of what I was doing on last New Year’s Eve. And yet I find myself thinking about my private tour of the Five Wonders of Pineville: the Champagne of Propane, the Augie’s Auto Parts Car-on-the-Roof, Der Wunder Wiener, the Purple Dinosaur, and finally, the Park That Time Forgot . . . but I cannot. (Ironic foresh— Oh, Christ. Forget it.)
10:30 P.M. Midway through the set, I spot Scotty, who is doing the heterosexual jock version of dancing, i.e., swaying his arms, shuffling his feet, and clapping at irregular intervals. He smiles serenely and sweats profusely. Tonight he has obviously added E to his andro stack.
11 P.M. Show over. I go to kiss and congratulate Len in a very girl-friendly fashion, but he and the rest of the band have to pack up their stuff. They are distracted by Hoochie Babies and older G-string groupies. Manda is among them, and I want to hurl. I can’t handle watching her shove her tits in Marcus’s face. I’m feeling very, very tense.
11:03 P.M. I look at my watch and all of sudden I remember something very significant: Hope moved to Tennessee exactly two years ago. Seven hundred and thirty days have gone by and I’m no better now than I was one minute after her car pulled out of the driveway. Wherever she is ringing in the New Year, she is surely having more fun than I am.
11:04 P.M. I am totally, completely, irreversibly alone. 11:05 P.M. I wander around the party—sticky with beer, sweat, and sexual tension—and somehow end up next to Scotty, who is ignoring his girlfriend’s hobagity display.
11:15-ish P.M. I ask Scotty how he’s doing and he responds by wrapping his arms around me and telling me that he loves me, and he loves everyone, even Marcus and the rest of the band, which he has decided doesn’t suck after all even though he really loves this Gorrilaz song that is now vibing through the speakers, spreading its happiness and gladness and sunshine-in-a-bagness. But what he would really, really love more than anything is if I danced with him. I ask him what he’s on, even though I already know. Only Ecstasy could reverse Scotty’s testosterrific rage in just under a half hour. I look over toward the stage and see Manda pushing up on Marcus while Len looks on. Scotty’s eyes are closed and his mouth is open as if to say, “Ahhhhhhh . . .” I want to feel as mellow and untroubled as he looks. I’ve never tried any illicit drugs before. What Would Jenn Do? I’m useless but not for long. This could be the night for my sole experimentation, the harmless one I get out of the way so I can say, “Yes, I’ve tried it, but I didn’t like it,” when asked next year at college. What Would Jenn Do? Trying something once does not make me Heath or Marcus or Robert Downey, Jr. It does not make me a bad person. It does not make me a weak-minded individual who gives into peer pressure to fit in, because I am not giving into peer pressure. I am giving into me-pressure, the only kind that can squeeze my brain like an orange juicer and leave nothing but a pulpy mess behind. What Would Jenn Do? E kills memory, and I sort of hope that it will help me forget about last New Year’s Eve, even though I know the memory loss is really more of a long-term effect and not a one-time-user effect. What Would Jenn Do? I ask Scotty if he has any more and he beams. I ask him if he is willing to share the love and his mouth explodes with pearly-white pleasure. He doesn’t balk, even though it’s me, Jessica Darling, textbook goody-goody and Class Brainiac asking him to help me do something very unlike the me everyone thinks I am, myself included. He hands me a pill with a Nike swoosh. Just Do It. And I do what Jenn would do. I wash it down with beer. I wait. The future is coming on . . .
11-whoknowswhat P.M. I am enamored with my sweater. I can’t stop stroking my arms, it feels so soft and warm and good. So good. I feel the music more than I hear it, each note singing and zinging through my body. My eyes feel fizzy like two flutes of champagne, yet colors are clearer and everything seems sharper, like the edges have been outlined in Magic Marker, then filled in with colored pencil. I look at Scotty and thank him for sharing this gift with me. He hugs me and his body is warm and so is mine and even his sweat smells clean, like nature and grass and fresh mud, and it mixes with my sweat and we’re now bonded on a molecular level and I think about how deep that is and he’s telling me that he loves me, he’s always loved me, and I place my hands on either side of his superhero jaw, then start stoking his sideburns and tell him I miss the friend he used to be to me and I say, “Oh Scotty,” even though no one calls him Scotty anymore, everyone calls him Scott because it’s more manly, but he says he likes hearing me say his name like that because it’s been such a long time since I’ve said anything to him and I almost want to cry I’m so happy to be there with him and I think about how the tears would mix with our sweat and how humans are 90 percent water and the earth is 90 percent water and how this may prove that God really does exist and . . .
Midnightish. Len’s face appears and Scotty fades away and Len’s hand is on mine and I feel like I’m immersed in a Jacuzzi all warm and bubbly and then we’re upstairs overlooking the crowd and even though I know it’s pure chaos, the party looks like a frame from a film, still and bright and overexposed, but then starting with “Ten!” the film moves in slow mo, then gets faster and faster and faster with each backward number, so when it reaches “One!” there’s an explosion of sound and motion that climaxes with Len kissing me, and his lips hit every erogenous zone, even ones I never knew I had, like my left nostril, and I look at Len and I love him, I love, love, love him and I don’t even think about Marcus or who he’s kissing as the ball drops . . .
??? Len and I are in his car parked on a dark indigo road in the woods where I hear each leaf shimmy against the bark as clearly as I hear Len’s breath and my own hums of pleasure coming up up up from deep inside me and my skin is searing and his mouth is wet and cold and everywhere and nowhere at once and it gives me chills it’s so good good good it’s all good and we’re together not quite here in the woods but somewhere else beyond Pineville beyond the globe even and it’s how I imagined it being like last year on the eve and I know it’s all connected last year this year it’s all connected not being with him last year was meant to be it’s all connected we’re all connected this is what the yoga book calls samadhi when you experience the entire universe as an interconnected whole and this is how it’s supposed to happen it’s my time to shed everything my clothes my inhibitions my regrets and just be with Len the way I’m supposed to be the way this is supposed to happen samadhi samadhi samadhi and as I’m thinking this in my head Len says something about how this is supposed to happen a question maybe waiting for an answer and I am euphoric because this is all the proof I need that Len and I really are connected we have shared a moment of cosmic telepathy and I think yes this is how it’s supposed to happen with Len
yes Len and not with Marcus as I have deeply believed to be an inevitability every single day for 365 days half the time that Hope has been away and even though I didn’t want to believe it even though I shredded all the pages that proved it I still believed in Marcus and me until now right now and as I finish that thought I’m suddenly hurtling through the air crashing out of the sky smashing into stars as I tumble toward earth until the ground reaches up not in an embrace but to smack me hit me slap me for thinking all of this because when I finally recover from my fall I look up and see the sad sad sad expression on Len’s face and I realize that I’ve been saying all of this out loud and he’s heard every word especially the ones I never wanted anyone else to hear.
the second
I am never doing drugs again.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not about to start making public-service announcements against the evils of drugs. I think my troubles have more to do with being me than doing E. Heath’s death certainly wasn’t the only reason I’d never experimented. Even before I knew he was using, I had a feeling that my body chemistry would not take well to any illicit substances. I mean, I’m not a very good drunk, so why would I do any better at getting high? I think some people are more successful experimenters than others. (Take Marcus, for example. He was able to kick all his habits no problem.)
I was never afraid of turning into a character from one of the hilarious videos that Brandi shows in HHS class—you know, the tweak freak who thinks she can fly and flings herself off the roof with wildly flapping wings, or the innocent girlfriend who goes from pothead to smackhead to crackhead in one long, druggy weekend with her bad-news boyfriend. No, my concerns were far less dramatic than that. I was worried that any drugs, any drug, would reveal things that I’d rather keep undercover.
And I was right.
The by-product of unburdening myself of B.S. has been one huge, hemorrhoidal pain in the ass that started with Scotty and shows no signs of clearing itself up.
Proving that her Len loyalty only goes so far, my mom waltzed Scotty right up to my bedroom yesterday even when I told her I was too exhausted from bonding with my peers to socialize with anyone until I went back to school.
“Look who it is, Jessie!” Mom stood in back of him so he couldn’t see her mimicking a bodybuilder and mouthing the words: HE’S STILL A CATCH.
“Jess, we’ve gotta talk about what happened last night,” he said when my mom shut the door behind him.
A lot had happened, yes. But nothing that could explain why Scotty was in my bedroom.
“We were getting pretty close last night. You know, dancing and hugging and stuff.”
“Is this about Manda?”
“Sorta.”
If my skull wasn’t being held together with Scotch tape and a prayer, I would’ve laughed. Manda had some nerve to be jealous. What about the way she was shoving her hooters in Marcus’s face?
“She of all people should never accuse anyone of flirting too much,” I replied.
Scotty laughed. “Oh, I don’t give a fuck about what she thinks. I know I’ve been pussywhipped, but not anymore.”
I had no idea where he was going with this. “So what’s this all about, then?”
He swooped down next to me on the bed. He smelled like Right Guard and the leather sleeves of his varsity jacket.
“I’m still into you.”
“Uh . . .” I picked up the shattered pieces of brain matter off the floor and put them back together again. “What?”
“I’m as serious as a motherfucker,” he said oh-so-poetically as he slipped his jacket off his shoulders. Scotty has muscles on top of muscles on top of muscles. He has subcategories of muscles scientists and personal trainers haven’t classified yet.
“Scott,” I began.
“Scotty,” he said, stretching his meaty arms over his head so his T-shirt scooched up and revealed his happy trail and the bottom third of his six-pack. “Call me Scotty like you did last night.”
“Uh, okay. Scotty . . .”
He flashed what my mom would call a winning smile, but to me it was too rehearsed, too cheesy—a game-show-host grin. He put one bulky limb around me and I lost track of what I was going to say.
“We connected last night, Jess. You felt it, too.”
True, Scotty and I had a moment. It was the first time since sophomore year that I had been able to look at his face and see the old Scotty, the sincere, sweet stud-in-the-bud with a crustache, bedhead, and boogers in his nose. That gawky little boy was far more appealing than His Royal Guyness.
“It was just some really potent stuff,” I said while sliding out from under his weight. “It wasn’t me, it was E.”
“I’ve done E a dozen times and it never made me feel like that.”
I saw what was going on. His “relationships” have been so devoid of any substance that he was mistaking our drug-induced bonding as something more than it really was. It was kind of pathetic, actually.
This is what I was mulling over when he grabbed my face with his hammy hands and tried to kiss me. I leapt across the room like a character crafted by Industrial Light and Magic.
“Scotty! What the hell?”
“Oh, that’s right,” he said dismissively. “You don’t want to cheat on Len.”
To be honest, Len was the furthest thing from my mind. I was just reflexively repelled by the idea of re-creating the nasty kiss that sounded the death knell for our eleven-day eighth-grade relationship. But I used his excuse, as it was less likely to piss him off.
“Right! I can’t cheat on Len. My boyfriend.”
“That’s why I’m here,” he said, too busy watching himself flex his pecs in the mirror to look at me. “Now that you know how I feel, you can do something about Len.”
“What do you mean ‘do something about Len’?”
“Break up with that choad,” he said.
Break up. All day I had been debating that very course of action, yet hearing it from Scotty made it sound like the least desirable thing on earth.
“You think I’m going to break up with him just because you’ve offered yourself to me?”
Scotty’s look of self-admiration in the mirror didn’t change.
King Scotty thought I would drop Len in half a heartbeat to go out with him. Christ, it really pisses me off that someone like Scotty feels so superior to someone like Len, and that his delusions of grandeur are perpetuated by all the morons at school. If only Haviland had published my “Sycophants, Suck-Ups, and Scrubs” editorial, maybe this would’ve never happened. But no, since all Pineville High has gotten down on their knees to pay homage (or hummage, as the case may be) to the Grand Poo-bah of the Upper Crust, he has no reason to believe that there are dissenters in the kingdom. When he walks down the hall, into the classroom, or onto the court, all eyes are on him, his own included. Scotty has a steroidal case of self-love, and God help me if I was going to pump him up even more.
“I’m not breaking up with Len,” I replied, suddenly appreciating his awkwardness in the presence of such balls-out machismo. I hadn’t talked to Len since he dropped me off at my house, and now it was the only thing I really wanted to do. I wanted to set things straight, but I had to get this meatballer out of my room first. I got up and opened the door to show Scotty out.
He chuckled as he got up from the bed. “Okay, Jess, play hard to get,” he said. “But you can’t deny what we have.”
Oh, Christ. What we have is a jock jacked on his own delusions of grandeur, and a girl who has been a fool to take her lovely, sensitive boyfriend for granted. As I dialed Len’s digits, I wanted to kick myself for not having tried to talk to him sooner. His mom answered.
“Hi, Mrs. Levy,” I said, trying my best to muster wholesome overachieverness.
“Oh, it’s you,” she said dryly.
“May I speak to Len please?”
She smacked her lips together. “Well, if it were up to me, I’d say no,” she said. “But Len is an adult and can make his o
wn decisions, so I’ll let him decide whether or not he wants to talk to you. Heh-heh-heh.”
Her laughter was cheerless and eerie. She must have been joking because I couldn’t imagine any parent saying that to me and really meaning it. So I laughed weakly, too.
After about two minutes of waiting, Len finally got on the phone. I have never been so happy to hear his voice.
“Len!”
“Jess,” he replied, his voice as fixed and chilly as an uncracked tray of ice cubes.
“Uh . . . I . . .”
“We need to talk about last night,” he said without stammering.
“Uh . . . that’s why I called . . .”
“Let’s meet at Helga’s Diner at six.”
“Oh. Okay. I thought we could—”
“Helga’s at six,” he said, cutting me off. “See you.”
I knew Len would arrive exactly on time, so I got there ten minutes early to compose myself. I had my excuse in my head: I didn’t remember what I said. I remembered what I did—what we did, or rather, what we almost did—but not what I said. A white lie, for the sake of saving the relationship, which I really wanted to save. Really. Len wasn’t an asshole or a player. He was an honest, upright guy, which is hard to find at Pineville High, or anywhere for that matter. I was lucky enough to have him and I wanted to keep him. As for what I said about Marcus, I would explain how I didn’t remember saying it, and that drugs are unpredictable and unreliable and have nothing to do with reality, which is why people take them, but I apologize for taking them, and he can rest easy knowing I’ll never do it again, and what I said about Marcus was nothing, nothing at all . . .
Little did I know that there would be a third party in this summit and that he would already be seated at a booth when I arrived.
“What did you do last night?” Marcus asked, genuinely baffled.
“Oh, shit.” I slumped into the banquette across the table from him. “What did Len say?”