As Josie led us through the front door and down the cavernous marble hallways that twisted and turned around impeccably decorated rooms, I felt totally out of place. It was like visiting a museum, not somebody’s house. And definitely not Josie’s house. How could she possibly be comfortable surrounded by chandeliers and fluted columns and intricate oil paintings? And that was just in the powder room we passed on the way to her room. It almost made me wonder if this was how Josie used to feel around Heywood before she traded in her scholarship money for a field named after her dad.
“Incredible, huh?” Lucy asked, grabbing my hand and pulling me around a corner before I could bump into a bubbling fountain of water in the center of the hall. “Come on, Josie’s room is this way.”
It was surreal. Here we were sitting on Josie’s bed just like we used to, only the bed had been upgraded from a twin to a queen, and instead of a hodgepodge of pictures Scotch taped to the wall, Josie’s black-and-white photographs were artfully displayed in frames like something out of a Pottery Barn catalog. I would have killed for a room like this when I was younger, but it was slightly overkill for a seventeen-year-old. I mean, there was a sheer white canopy covering the bed and a huge quilted headboard with a billion little pink rosebuds. It looked like something out of a feminine hygiene commercial. The only thing missing was the gentle breeze and the billowing curtains—and the voiceover of a woman talking about feeling fresh as a daisy.
No, this wasn’t the bedroom I remembered. In fact, Josie didn’t even have a bedroom anymore. She had what most people, like my mother, would refer to as a “suite.” There was the sleeping area, where we were sprawled out on the bed, and the sitting area, with a love seat and ottoman that looked as if they’d never been used. And then there were the panels of mirrors creating some sort of fun-house effect outside a walk-in closet that could have housed a family of four. Very comfortably.
“It’s called the ‘dressing area,’” Josie explained, without me having to ask. “It’s ridiculous, I know. But not nearly as ridiculous as the ass fountain in the bathroom.”
“She means the bidet,” Lucy told me.
Josie sighed. “The interior designer insisted.”
An interior designer, now that made sense. I knew there was no way Josie’s mom was responsible for the perfectly matched fabrics, impeccably placed furniture, and tastefully arranged throw pillows. Maybe if they’d been velour.
“So, give us your take on Heywood.” Lucy propped up a throw pillow behind her back, grabbed a catalog from the stack of magazines on Josie’s night table, and sat cross-legged while she waited for me to provide commentary on our school from an outsider’s perspective. Or, at least the perspective of a former insider coming back.
I gave them a preliminary rundown—Mandy Pinta looked way better than she used to even though I couldn’t figure out why, our headmaster had lost about forty pounds, and the new gym teacher reminded me a lot of our nurse. I intentionally left out any commentary on Luke, although he was probably the person who had changed the most.
They filled me in on a few details that made my observations make more sense—Mandy got a nose job last year for her birthday, Mr. Wesley joined Weight Watchers after he realized he could no longer button his headmaster blazer with the Heywood Academy crest, and the new gym teacher was Nurse Kelly’s brother.
I waited for them to go on, to continue talking about the people in our class, but instead they both sat there waiting for me to say something. Only I didn’t know what else they expected me to say.
And that’s when it happened. The awkward silence. The moment we ran out of things to talk about because, apart from sharing the same school, we really hadn’t shared anything else in way too long.
I knew it had been too easy.
My eyes darted around the room looking for something to comment on, something to talk about. All I could hear was the second hand on the grandfather clock in the corner of the room counting how long it would take for us to find something, anything, to say to one another. But, unless I wanted to bring up the pleated trim on the love seat in the sitting area, I couldn’t come up with anything.
Just as I was approaching a level of desperation so dire I almost considered asking to see the bidet, Josie finally broke the silence. “So, is Chicago as windy as they say?”
I explained how the Windy City actually referred to the long-winded politicians and not the weather. “Even though it can get pretty cold by Lake Michigan,” I conceded, beginning to get depressed by our conversation—or lack thereof.
Really, the weather? Was this what we’d been reduced to? Was it my turn now? Was I supposed to ask them about the average accumulated snowfall for the month of December? This entire scene reminded me of an exercise my mom would give her clients for a seminar on the art of small talk.
Lucy shifted uncomfortably and punched her throw pillow twice, like she was trying to buy time before having to come up with another topic and an insufficiently plump pillow was part of the problem. “We don’t want to inundate you with a bunch of questions, but there’s so much we don’t know. Like who your best friends were or even where you’re applying to college. Isn’t that crazy?”
“Yeah, it is,” I admitted, slightly relieved that she felt like I did. “But ask away, I’ll tell you anything you want to know. Where do you want me to start?”
“How about with your friends?”
So that’s what I did. I told them about Jackie and Lauren. “Jackie and Lauren? J and L? Do you see any sort of coincidence there?” Josie asked, and I realized for the first time that my best friends in Chicago and Boston shared the same first initials. I gave them the abridged version of my school in Evanston, including a brief description of the city and how we could go to the beach and still see the top of the Hancock Building in downtown Chicago. I told them about Sean, and how we’d broken up before I left for Boston, but I left out the part about it not being a mutual decision, and made it sound like a rational agreement between two people instead of an arbitrary decision by one. Instead of repeating the scene, instead of going through the gory details, I told Lucy and Josie the same thing Sean told me: It wasn’t like we’d be able to see each other anymore, so it just made sense.
Then I told them I was applying to Amherst, Swarthmore, Northwestern, Smith, and Bowdoin, but I didn’t tell them I’d been deferred at Brown. I just wasn’t ready to go there yet. I knew it was ridiculous. It wasn’t like I needed to impress them, but in a way I wanted to. Maybe not impress them exactly, but at least give them the Emily they remembered instead of the reality, which wasn’t a pretty picture. I didn’t want them to take a second look at me and realize I wasn’t the same person who’d moved away or that I wasn’t someone they still wanted to hang out with. My mom would call it “focusing on the positive.” I’d call it leaving out the mortifying details.
“I thought you always wanted to go to Brown,” Lucy commented, noticing I’d left it off my list. I didn’t know if it should make me feel good that she remembered, or make me feel even worse for not telling them in the first place. “Remember how, in sixth grade, you told Mrs. Fitch she couldn’t give you an A minus on your King Tut diorama because you had to get into Brown?”
Josie laughed. “You were obsessed.”
“Well, it was one kick-ass diorama, if you remember. I deserved better than an A minus.”
“Sure, but don’t you think asking for a second opinion was a little out of line?” Lucy asked.
“Maybe,” I admitted.
“Maybe?” Josie repeated. “You wanted her to call the freaking curator at the Museum of Fine Arts!”
I debated whether or not to tell them the truth about Brown, and decided to take the chance. It was either that or spend the next five months pretending that everything was rosy and fabulous. And I just didn’t have it in me anymore.
“I applied early and got deferred,” I finally admitted.
Lucy nodded as if she understood, but then I caught her giv
ing Josie a look. I recognized those raised eyebrows and the flat, knowing smile. It meant there was something else Lucy wanted to say. But she didn’t. Instead she reached for a Victoria’s Secret catalog—as if she’d ever trade in her boy shorts for a sequined thong.
And then the room fell silent again as Josie and Lucy pretended to be busy reading catalogs.
I had a hard time believing that pages filled with striped cotton pajamas were that exciting. So that meant one thing—I shouldn’t have told them the truth. “What’s wrong?”
“You could have just told us about Brown,” Lucy answered. “It’s not like we’d think you were a loser or anything.”
“I know,” I agreed, even though I wasn’t sure I did. “It’s just that I don’t really want to talk about it with anyone.”
“We’re not just anyone.” Lucy put down the catalog and looked right at me. “We’re your friends.”
“Or, at least, we used to be,” Josie added, looking more hurt than mad.
They were right. They were my friends, years ago. And if they were going to be my friends again I couldn’t be afraid to come clean, swallow my pride, and admit the truth. I wanted Josie and Lucy to think of me as the girl who had the perfect life. The girl who would never get dumped by her boyfriend as soon as the moving truck pulled up in front of her house. Someone who was smart enough to get into Brown early decision. I wanted to be the same girl who was voted Most Likely to Be Nice in eighth grade.
I took a deep breath and then let it out. “I didn’t break up with Sean. He broke up with me.”
“Why? When? I just talked to you a few months ago and everything was fine.” Josie sat up and waited for my answer.
“When I asked him to come over to my house and say goodbye one last time.”
“The night before you left?”
“Actually, the morning. While the cab was parked in our driveway waiting to take us to the airport.”
Josie let out a painful moan. “Ugh. I bet you wanted to smack him. I’d want to smack him.”
“Smack him, have the taxi run him over, let an icicle fall from the gutter and spear him through the chest. Any one of those would have done just fine.” I tried to laugh as if I was joking, but instead it came out sounding like I had something caught in my throat.
“So go on,” Josie encouraged. “That can’t be the whole story. There has to be more to it than that.”
“Well,” I began, but then stopped, realizing how pathetic I was about to sound.
“Keep going,” Lucy encouraged, reaching over and squeezing my knee. “We’re listening.”
And so I told them everything. I repeated every mortifying minute in detail, and when I finished the story both Josie and Lucy groaned.
“Oh my God, that’s just too cliché,” Josie exclaimed. “It’s like something from a made-for-TV movie.”
“Really? Who would play me?” I asked, even though I knew it was slightly off-topic. I wanted to hear what they’d say.
“Maybe Sarah Michelle Gellar from her Buffy days?” Lucy suggested, and I loved her for it. And I loved the idea that I could slay Sean like an evil demon. It seemed highly appropriate, given the circumstances.
“That is such bullshit.” Josie turned to me, then reached out and touched my arm. “Not that Sarah could play you, of course, but that Sean would pull such a dick move right before you’re supposed to leave.”
“Total bullshit,” Lucy agreed.
“The least he could have done is brought you going-away flowers or something.”
“I’m really sorry.” Lucy reached over and squeezed my hand. “But, hey, look at it this way: You’re here and he’s there, and while he’s probably sitting around talking to his idiot friends about who’s going to win the Super Bowl, you’re here with us.”
“Were you sleeping together? Do you have a picture of him we could see? Did you love him?” Josie asked.
I shook my head, but didn’t bother answering any question specifically.
“So, that’s everything,” I told them, even though there was still the small matter of my parents’ separation. But I didn’t bring it up, maybe because I was hoping my dad would still show up on our doorstep and say it was all a mistake. Or maybe because I still wasn’t ready to think about what would happen if he didn’t.
Josie gave me a reassuring smile, one that said they still loved me, screwed-up life and all. “See, aren’t you glad you told us? Don’t you feel better?”
I wouldn’t say I was all that psyched about having even more people know about how messed up my life was, but I did feel a little better. Maybe even slightly relieved that I didn’t have to hold it all in anymore.
Lucy suddenly clapped her hands against her thigh like she always did before she ran onto the soccer field. “Okay, no more talk of him. We hate him.”
Josie pretended to wipe her hands clean of the subject. “As far as we’re concerned, the boyfriend-formerly-known-as-Sean no longer exists.” She tossed the Abercrombie catalog on the floor. “Thank God I didn’t sleep with Luke.”
“You didn’t?” I didn’t bother hiding the surprise in my voice. For some reason I guess I’d assumed Josie slept with Luke, probably because I couldn’t imagine she’d be that angry to discover Luke cheating on her. Josie had gone out with cute guys before, and, even though they weren’t as hot as Luke, when things went bad she’d just moved on and never looked back. Josie went through boyfriends like my mother goes through antibacterial hand wipes. I couldn’t think of a single guy who actually mattered to Josie the way Sean had mattered to me. I guess I figured sex had to be the one thing that made this time different for her.
“She was planning to surprise him on New Year’s Eve after she got home from the Bahamas,” Lucy explained. “But then she walked in on the sophomore.”
“At least he didn’t know what I had planned.” Josie pulled her legs up to her chin and hugged her knees. “That would have sucked even worse.”
“Forget about them,” Lucy suggested. “We have to talk about the time capsule.”
I frowned. “I can’t even believe they’re still doing the time capsule.”
“Believe it. Every senior class talks about how stupid it is, but we all do it.”
“Can’t we come up with anything better than a few CDs and an Abercrombie catalog?” I asked. “Isn’t there something more useful? Something the class of 2017 would really be glad to find?”
Lucy shrugged. “Who even knows what the class of 2017 will be like?”
“One thing I can guarantee,” Josie declared. “The guys in the class of 2017 will be pulling the same crap the guys in the class of 2007 have pulled on us.”
Boy, was that the truth.
Lucy nodded. “It’s too bad the girls can’t learn from our experiences. They’d be so much better off.”
“Maybe they can,” I ventured. “Maybe we can help them out so they have it easier.”
“What, you want to give them our old exams?” Lucy asked.
I shook my head. “No, something even better.”
“The essays we’re using for college applications?” Lucy tried again.
“I mean something that they can really use.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know, like a handbook for guys.” The minute I said it, I knew a handbook was exactly what we had to do. It was perfect. “Something that could spare a future generation of Heywood girls from all the garbage we’ve had to put up with, like an instruction manual that teaches guys how to treat girls, something that they can use as a reference guide to avoid all the glaring ‘guy don’ts’ the guys in our class seem to have mastered.”
Josie made a little hmm sound, rubbing her chin as she considered my idea. “And does this manual of yours have a title?” she wanted to know.
I thought for a minute. “The Guy’s Guide to Girls—A Handbook for the Clueless.”
Josie and Lucy stared at me silently, their eyes wide and unbelieving.
?
??You hate it?”
“Hate it?” Josie cried. “We love it!”
Lucy agreed. “We have got to do it. It’s perfect.”
Josie hopped up onto her knees and leaned forward. “I mean, really, how do they learn about girls? From one another. It’s the blind leading the blind. They have no idea what to do, and the cycle keeps repeating itself. They have no clue about relationships, no less relationships with girls. We’re looking at guys who have no problem pulling their dicks out in front each other at a urinal, but they don’t even know their best friends’ birthdays.”
“Or their middle names,” Lucy added. The middle name thing was always a sore subject for Lucy, whose own middle name was Agnes-Georgina after her two grandmothers.
“The fact is, they don’t know any better,” Josie rationalized. “And that’s where we come in. We can teach them. It’s just like what your mom does in her articles and books, right?”
Josie was right. It was pretty much exactly what my mom does. Only my mom gets paid for it, and she’s always nice. Too nice. “Wait a minute, this can’t be some watered-down ‘gee, it would be great if you acted like this’ guide,” I said. “It has to call guys out on all the crappy things they do. We’re not here to coddle their ego. We’re here to straighten them out, not play Miss Manners.”
Josie looked at Lucy and they both seemed a little shocked by my response. I don’t think they expected me to be the one to suggest we shouldn’t be anything other than kind.
“I’m not doing this to be nice,” I continued. “I’m tired of being nice. Now it’s their turn.”
Lucy nodded. “We couldn’t agree with you more.”
“Do you think Mr. Wesley will go for the idea?” I asked.
“He doesn’t have to go for it, as long as we adhere to the guidelines—no sexually explicit content, nothing valued at more than one hundred dollars, and no drug paraphernalia—they added that after the roach clip thing. So as long as we’re not offering sex tips, which, granted, a lot of guys could use, we should be fine.”