“Nothing. He’s really upset but won’t say why. He just told me that we all had to be here. What happened?”
Where to start? What to say?
“I think he’s mad because I did E last night,” I said.
Marcus’s eyes popped. “That would do it. Len is so straight edge that he won’t even take Tylenol when he has a headache.”
“Uh-huh. I know.” I couldn’t even look at him. I picked up the wrapper from Marcus’s straw and folded it like an accordion.
“So did you like it?”
“Well, you’ve done E, so you know what happens when you’re on it,” I responded, intentionally avoiding the question.
“It’s different for different people,” he said. “Did you like it?”
I shrugged. “I don’t like the fact that Len’s mad at me.” That was true.
“Good enough,” he said, taking his straw out of his soda. “But why am I here?”
“Uh . . . I . . . Uh . . .” I couldn’t talk to Marcus about this. I couldn’t tell him how close Len and I had come to having sex in the backseat of his Saturn last night. I couldn’t tell him that the only reason we didn’t have sex is that I let it slip that for the past year, I couldn’t picture losing my virginity to anyone but Marcus, who just happens to be his best friend.
As all these thoughts swirled inside my head, Marcus released a few drops from his straw on the paper I had just folded. The coil sprang to life, like a snake. I remember more lines from the infamous “Fall” poem:
I taunted and tempted
you
with my forbidden fruit
does that make
the serpent too?
Before I could answer that question for myself, Len arrived at the table.
“Hey,” said Marcus.
“Hey,” said Len.
“Uhohheyimsohappytoseeyou!” said I.
I jumped up to hug him. He kept his arms at his sides at first but then returned my embrace. He sat down next to me, which was a good sign, I thought.
Len cleared his throat. A-Heh-Heh-Heh-Hehmmmmmmm.
“Last night, under the influence of Ecstasty, a drug that is often referred to as a truth serum for its ability to weaken one’s defenses and reveal one’s innermost desires, Jessica said something that disturbed me a great deal . . .”
Len continued talking for a very, very long time. During which I couldn’t take my eyes off the snake.
“In conclusion, I need to know what happened between you two that made her say what she said. You are my best friend,” he said, glancing at Marcus. “You are my girlfriend,” he said, turning to me. “I should hope that you will extend me the courtesy of honesty.”
Marcus and I didn’t say anything because we weren’t sure if Len was finished or not. He wasn’t quite.
“So the question remains,” he said calmly. “What happened between you two?”
Now he was done. Marcus and I were still silent because neither of us had an answer for such a simple question. We looked at each other haplessly, helplessly.
Finally, Marcus stepped up.
“Nothing happened between us.”
Len coughed any remaining reservations right out of his larynx. Ahem! “Then what was she talking about?”
Marcus looked at me. “I’m going to tell him,” he said, very seriously.
“Uh . . .” I replied, not knowing what he was going to say.
“Last year, I tried to sleep with Jessica.”
The snake was just a soppy blob at this point.
“But she turned me down,” he said. “It was pretty humiliating, actually.”
Len put his hand on my arm. “Is that true?”
“Uh . . .” I replied.
“So nothing happened, Len,” Marcus said, sensing my hesitation. “Don’t worry about anything Jessica might have said under the influence. Take it from someone who knows. Drugs have a way of really fucking with your subconscious in a way that bears little resemblance to what’s real. It’s why people do drugs to begin with.”
This argument sounded so much like the one I had rehearsed in my head that I almost thought that I had presented it out loud. But I know I didn’t.
Len was now scrutinizing my face so intensely that I almost couldn’t handle it.
Ahem! “What about now, Flu?”
“What about now?”
“Do you still want to have sex with my girlfriend?”
Marcus took his lighter out of his pocket and flicked it open and shut. Marcus had stopped smoking, but he couldn’t stop his hands from reaching for the lighter when he was . . . what? Nervous?
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” he said. “But I never really wanted to have sex with your girlfriend. I just wanted to see if I could.”
Click. Click. Click. Like bullets spinning in the barrel of a gun. Click. Click.
“That was back when I was still using,” he said, casting his gaze at me. “I didn’t know you then like I know you now.”
And I was thinking, Oh, now that you know me, you would never sleep with me?
“I didn’t know that you and I would become friends, Len, or that you two would be so right for each other. So please know that whatever Jessica said about me has nothing to do with what’s real, and how she feels about you. I happen to know for a fact that she’s into you. Isn’t that right, Jessica?”
His question caught me by surprise. Marcus was right, wasn’t he? It was right, me and Len. We were right.
Right?
I looked at Len’s pale, china-smooth skin, eyes as green as Heineken bottle sea glass, and delicate, guitar string–callused fingers. Geek cute to the bizillionth degree. If Len were going out with anyone but me, I would be madly, passionately in love with him. Or, at the very least, madly, passionately obsessed with him to the point where I’d fill, then flambé, a journal devoted to him and only him. I just know it.
“Right,” I replied, hoping to make it so.
Len leaned over and kissed me for a little bit, which was rare for us because we are against PDAs.
Len is against them because he feels it is an inappropriate breech of etiquette to let your hormones and emotions get the better of you in a public setting. I am against them because I usually can’t handle seeing anyone I know get physical with anyone else I know. I get all skeeved out. So why should I be any exception?
I’d like to think Len kissed me in front of Marcus because he was moved by the power of our reconciliation. Most likely, he did it to mark his territory—me. And it worked, I guess, because when my eyes flickered open, I caught a glimpse of Marcus watching us with what I swear, I swear, I swear, I swear was a moist glint in his right eye. A tear.
A tear?
One that was gone a few seconds later when Len and I broke away. One that I’ve since decided must have been a figment of my imagination, a drug-induced flashback hallucination maybe, and was never, ever there at all. Just another one of my delusions.
I live a lie. I really do. The pathetic thing is that I thought I’d been doing a pretty good job at being real ever since I wrote that editorial “Hyacinth Anastasia Wallace: Just Another Poseur” last year. After all, I stopped being friends with the Clueless Two, quit the cross-country team and the bogus newspaper, applied to my number-one school even though I know my parents won’t approve, etc. But my E-scapade revealed that when it comes to love, I’ve been as big a bullshitter as ever.
Since the summit, I’ve been devoting as much energy as I can toward this relationship, to really give Len a chance. If I open myself up and let Len in emotionally—the way I haven’t allowed myself, the way I let Marcus in when I didn’t know better—there won’t be a need to white-lie about the depth of my feelings anymore. I’ll really be feeling them.
Right?
the fifteenth
Suicide Tuesday” is the term used to describe the malaise that kicks in a few days after a weekend E spree. For me, it’s turning into “Suicide January.”
I?
??ve been vaguely concerned about what would happen when the next edition of Pinevile Low hit in-boxes. After all, it was the first time that the Mystery Muckraker had Darling dirt to dig up.
Scotty assured me that he was keeping quiet about it so as not to get Manda’s tits in a snit.
“Oh, I’ll keep doing her until you come around,” he said in a rare moment when Manda wasn’t on his lap or in his mouth or otherwise attached to him. “You can’t deny what we have.” Scotty said that last sentence in what I know he thinks is his “sexy voice.” Ack.
I was pretty positive that Marcus wouldn’t say anything, if only out of respect for his best friend. Though when it comes to Marcus, I never seem to know anything.
When I casually mentioned to Len that I didn’t think anyone else was privy to my idiocy, he, well . . . let’s just let the conversation speak for itself.
“Um. My mom knows.”
“WHAT?!”
“Um. I told her about it.”
“WHAT?! WHY?!”
“I tell my mom everything. Um. Almost.”
Then he cleared his throat and delivered a sermon about the importance of respecting one’s elders, especially those who brought us into the world and have fed us and clothed us and provided shelter for us, so it behooves us to be fine, upstanding members of the household, and in order to do that, we need to be truthful.
“SO YOU TOLD HER THAT I GOT HIGH AND ALMOST HAD SEX WITH YOU IN HER CAR?” I said this a lot louder than one should say something that one wants to keep a secret.
“Um. Yes.”
No wonder Mrs. Levy has been treating me like a drug-addled skank who wants to deflower her fine, upstanding son. BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT I AM. AND SHE KNOWS IT. I am going to have to launch into wholesome, overachieving overdrive if I want to win her over, which I do, mostly because every parent who has ever met me has loved me, and I just can’t stand the idea of Len’s mom not loving me, especially since I’m the person dating her son.
As disturbing as this is, it doesn’t explain how the Mystery Muckraker found out about New Year’s Eve. This morning, in Times New Roman glory, my misdeeds were made public.
WHAT NEVER-DO-WRONG BRAINIACS DELAYED THEIR DOUBLE DEFLOWERING AFTER HE FOUND OUT THAT SHE HAD GOTTEN HIGH WITH THE MOST POPULAR, BEST LOOKING ATHLETE?
My decided course of action: Deny, deny, deny! I never considered for one second that I’d be issuing denials of an entirely different sort.
“Omigod!” Sara wailed, clutching the e-mail in one hand and pointing a plump finger with the other. “It’s totally you!”
I had anticipated this, but that didn’t stop me from gnawing on my lip. “What is it totally me?”
“This proves that you are totally behind Pinevile Low!”
“What?”
“Omigod! You are so totally the one writing all this stuff! I swear I am going to hire a detective! I swear it!”
“How does this prove that it’s me?” I asked, perplexed by her logic.
“Because you know we’re on to you! So you posted items about yourself!”
“Why would I want to damage my reputation like that?”
“Puh-leeze!”
Manda had emancipated herself from her homeroom for this confrontation.
“Puh-leeze, what?”
“No one would ever believe that Pineville’s very own virgin queen would ever do anything illegal or immoral! Miss Perfect! Miss I Don’t Do Anything Wrong!”
Manda’s strident hysterics revived Rico Suave from his pre-coffee coma. “Miss Powers, where are you supposed to be right now?”
Manda was not about to be silenced. “But if you think I’m just going to let you boost your ego with false claims about my boyfriend, you are sadly mistaken.” And she marched off, leaving Rico Suave and the rest of the class to wonder what the hell had just happened.
When the bell rang, Marcus came up to me and said, “Told you so.”
He had, you know. Told me so. Only I didn’t write about it when it happened because I felt like it conflicted with my efforts to focus all my energy on Len. But now it seems sort of necessary.
I felt like I had to thank Marcus for how he handled himself at Helga’s. His version of our history wasn’t the full truth, but it wasn’t exactly a lie, either. Quite frankly, I don’t know how I would describe what happened between us if I was hooked up to a polygraph.
Not to get all philosophical, but what is reality anyway, when no two people can ever see the same thing in the same exact way? Reality is a lot more subjective than people like to think it is. People like Len want to believe that there are definitive answers to everything because it gives the illusion of order in what is really just a crazy, chaotic, messed-up world. When it comes down to it, isn’t reality just a matter of one person’s opinion versus another’s?
That said, Marcus’s version of our history, in my opinion, is as good as any, only better because it managed to salvage my relationship with Len.
I was paranoid about Pinevile Low, and had given up any hope of conducting any conversation of substance at school. So this past weekend, I showed up at Silver Meadows when I knew he’d be there.
“Well, well, well,” Gladdie yowled. “Lookie who we’ve got here!”
“Hey, Gladdie,” I replied, looking around the crowded rec room. It was almost time for bingo.
“Who ya lookin’ for, J.D.?” she asked in a too-innocent tone that betrayed her knowledge of the answer.
“No one,” I lied. “I’m here to see you!”
Gladdie laughed heartily at that one. “What are ya gonna do next? Try to sell me the Brooklyn Bridge?”
“Huh?”
“You shyster, you,” Moe said.
“Why don’tcha just fess up that you’re here to see Tutti Flutie?”
“Uh . . .”
“He was just here, ya know. But he cleared out when he saw you pulling into the parking lot.”
“He did?”
“He said he was respecting your privacy.”
“He did?”
“Yes he did, didn’t he, Moe?”
Moe nodded vigorously. “He sure did.”
“Where is he?”
“Well . . .” Gladdie said, scratching her head, or rather, the beret on her head. Only then did I notice that it was orange and her pantsuit was green. I glanced at her walker. Purple ribbons. Not even close to her trademark color coordination. I briefly wondered how long this had been going on.
“He’s downstairs,” she said, breaking out into a full-dentured smile. “In the library.”
“Thank you.”
“Oh, no, J.D.,” she said. “Thank you. Now get on with you!”
I went downstairs, and sure enough, Marcus was in the library, reading to a small group of old biddies. He looked up at me when I entered the dark, woody room. He never stopped the narration, but a fireplace crackled and illuminated the surprise on his face. I sat down in a leather armchair and listened.
“ ‘As the brawny stable boy approached the Countess, she felt a quickening in her loins. Stephano’s urgent, turgid love could not wait a moment longer . . .’ ”
Ack! Paperback soft porn!
“ ‘They tumbled onto the hay, clawing at each others’ garments and grunting like animals . . .’ ”
Marcus was certainly giving them their geriatric jollies. As for me, well, I’ve got a boyfriend who won’t give up the goods. At this point, I get damp from reading the back of a box of Cap’n Crunch. Almost.
Anyway, when the chapter was finished, he shut the book. “To be continued,” he said with a sly grin. The old biddies groaned in protest.
“Sorry, ladies,” he said, pointing in my direction. “I have to talk to a friend.”
The gray and white and, in one case, blue, heads turned to look at me, the competition. They were not impressed. As they shuffled out, I heard them tut-tutting about my jeans and my Chucks and my utter lack of regard for personal grooming.
“Would it do her any ha
rm to set her hair before she leaves the house?”
“Or apply a touch of cheek rouge?”
“Honestly. These girls today don’t know how to present themselves.”
They were almost as bad as my own mother. Almost.
“Hey,” I said. “Nice reading.”
“I do my best with the material that’s given,” he replied, and sat down on the hearth opposite my chair. “I’m surprised to see you here.”
“Yeah, uh. Well, I just wanted to tha—”
“Look, you don’t have to thank me,” he cut me off. “Len’s my friend and I want to see you guys happy together. I said what I had to say.”
“Well, I appreciate it.”
“Don’t worry about anyone finding out about what really happened, the drug stuff and everything else,” he said, being mercifully vague. “No one would ever believe it. Just like no one would ever believe Taryn if she told everyone you were the one who pissed in the cup, not her.”
An instantaneous full-body clench undid all the good that I’ve achieved through three months of yoga. “What do you mean? Does she know the truth? Has she asked you to tell her?”
“Not exactly,” he said. “It’s just . . .”
“What?”
“She approached me one day in study hall, and it was the first time we had ever talked. I’m looking at her and she seems so innocuous and harmless, and I just can’t help but sort of feel sorry for her.”
“Right,” I said.
“I think she wanted to look sad and pathetic so I’d let my guard down. Maybe I would apologize for what happened to her. Maybe I would explain what happened. The truth.”
“But you didn’t?”
“Of course not. I promised I wouldn’t narc on you and I never renege on a promise. Besides, as I said, no one would ever believe that you would do anything so baaaad.” He mocked the last word, of course.
I just hope he’s right. But when has Marcus been wrong about anything?
Except me.
the nineteenth
A SPECIAL BIRTHDAY SONG
(SUNG TO THE MELODY OF THE TRADITIONAL BIRTHDAY SONG)