I think about you much more than any self-respecting man would like to admit, and I’m insanely jealous of Tucker—something I never thought I’d say. Moving on after you is impossible. No other girl can keep me on my toes the way you can. No one else makes me WANT to embarrass myself by writing sappy letters like this one.
Only you.
But I know that I’m right, too. I know you’re in love with me, even if you are dating Tucker. You can lie to yourself if you want, but reality is going to catch up with you. I’ll be waiting when it does… whether you like it or not.
Love,
Wesley
p.s.: I know you’re rolling your eyes right now, but I don’t care. Honestly, it’s always been kind of a turn-on.
I stared down at the letter for a long moment, finally understanding what Amy had been thanking me for. Wesley was trying to fix things… because of me. Because of what I’d said. I’d actually managed to get through that thick skull of his. That was absolutely shocking to me.
It took a second for the other surprises to sink in. Words like love and only leapt off the page at me. It was my first love letter—not that I’d ever wanted one, but still—and it wasn’t even from my boyfriend. The wrong guy had given it to me. The wrong guy wanted me. Wesley was the wrong guy.
Or was he exactly the right guy?
I was so consumed with my thoughts that I jumped when the phone rang, and I scurried across the linoleum in an effort to answer it. “Hello?”
“Hi, Bianca,” Toby said.
My heart sped up and pumped shame through my veins. Wesley’s letter, which I still held, burned the fingers of my right hand, but I managed to sound normal when I said, “Hey, Toby. Are you on your way over?”
“No,” he sighed. “Dad has errands for me to run, so I can’t come by this afternoon. I’m really sorry.”
“That’s okay.” I shouldn’t have felt relieved, but I was. Seeing Toby would have meant hiding the flowers and entering a potential web of lies, and we all know what a shitty liar I am. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Thanks for being so understanding. But I was really looking forward to spending a little time with you. We just don’t get much time together at school.” He paused. “Do you have plans tomorrow night?”
“Nope.”
“Then do you want to go on a date? A band is playing at the Nest, and I thought we could go. Of course your friends can come, too. Would you like that?”
“Sounds great.” See, little lies like that I could pull off. I hated live music, and I despised the Nest, but pretending the opposite would make Toby happy, and Casey would be thrilled to be invited along. So why not? White lies were easy enough, but anything bigger and I was screwed.
“Cool,” Toby said. “I’ll pick you up at eight.”
“Okay. Bye, Toby.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Bianca.”
I hung up the phone, but my feet refused to move. The letter still blazed against my skin, and I found myself staring down at the tempting words. Why wasn’t this easier? Why did Wesley have to come along and make me question everything? I felt like I was betraying Toby with every sentence I read. Like I was cheating on him.
But now I knew that every time I kissed Toby, I was hurting Wesley.
“Arrrrrgh!” With a scream that exploded in my chest and clawed its way through my lungs, I wadded the letter into a tight ball and hurled it across the room as hard as I could. It moved through the air slowly before bouncing delicately off the floral wallpaper and landing on the floor.
Finally, with my throat aching, I sank to the floor, buried my face in my hands, and—I admit it—cried. I cried out of frustration and confusion, but mostly for myself, for being caught in such a position, like the selfish little girl I was.
I thought of Cathy Earnshaw, the spoiled, selfish heroine in Wuthering Heights, and I remembered the passage I’d been reading before the doorbell rang. But when the words drifted through my brain, they were slightly different.
“My love for Toby is like the foliage in the woods. Time will change it, I’m well aware, as winter changes the trees—my love for Wesley resembles the eternal rocks beneath—a source of little visible delight, but necessary.”
My head shook back and forth feverishly. Like, I corrected myself. My like for Wesley is blah, blah, blah. I wiped my eyes and got to my feet, trying to calm my ragged breathing. Then I turned and walked back upstairs.
All of a sudden I wanted to know how the book ended.
26
After staying up all night to read—and folding my clothes at least ten times—I discovered that Wuthering Heights doesn’t have a happy ending. Because of stupid, spoiled, selfish Cathy (yeah, I have no room to talk, but still), everyone winds up miserable. Her choice ruins the lives of the people she cares most about. Because she picked propriety over passion. Head over heart. Linton over Heathcliff.
Toby over Wesley.
This, I decided as I dragged my tired ass to school the next morning, was not a good omen. Normally, I don’t believe in omens or signs or any of that destiny crap, but the similarities between my and Cathy Earnshaw’s situations were too eerie to ignore. I couldn’t help but wonder if the book was trying to tell me something.
I was dully aware that I was reading way too much into it, but my lack of sleep coupled with the stress of everything else made my mind go to some interesting places. Interesting, but not productive.
I was pretty much a zombie all day, but during the middle of calculus, something finally woke me up.
“Did you hear about Vikki McPhee?”
“About how she’s totally knocked up? Yep. Heard this morning.”
My head snapped up from the problem I was halfheartedly attempting to solve. Two girls sat side by side in the row ahead of me. I recognized one of them as a junior cheerleader.
“God, what a slut,” the cheerleader said. “No telling who the father is. She sleeps with everyone.”
I hate to admit it, but my first reaction to this was pure selfish fear. I thought of Wesley. Sure, he’d rejected Vikki in the hallway a few days ago, but what if something had changed? What if that letter had been a joke? A game to mess with my head? What if he and Vikki had…
I forced the thought away. Wesley was careful. He always used a condom. Besides, it was like that girl had said—Vikki slept with everyone. The chances of Wesley being the father were slim. And I didn’t have a right to worry about that, anyway. He wasn’t my boyfriend. Even if he had pretty much professed his love for me in a letter. I was with Toby, and whatever Wesley decided to do wasn’t any of my business.
My second thought was of Vikki. Seventeen, on the verge of graduation, and, if the rumors were true, pregnant. What a nightmare. And everyone knew. I could hear people buzzing about it in the hallway when I left calculus. In a school the size of Hamilton, it didn’t take long for gossip to spread. Vikki McPhee was the girl on everyone’s mind.
Including mine.
So when I walked out of a bathroom stall a few minutes before English and found Vikki standing at the sink, reapplying her dark pink lipstick, I had to make an effort to avert my eyes.
But I had to say something. I mean, we weren’t close or anything, but we did eat lunch together every day. “Hey,” I mumbled.
“Hey,” she replied, still tracing the lipstick across her lower lip.
I turned on the faucet and stared at my reflection in the mirror, trying hard not to sneak a peek at her. How far along was she? Had her parents found out yet?
“It’s not true, you know.”
“What?”
Vikki capped her lipstick and dropped it into her purse. She was watching me in the mirror, and I could see now that her eyes were a little red.
“I’m not pregnant,” she said. “I mean, I thought I was, but the test was negative. I took it two days ago. But I guess someone overheard me telling Jeanine and Angela and… whatever. But I’m not pregnant.”
“Oh. Well, that??
?s good.” Yeah, probably not exactly the right thing to say, but I was kind of caught off guard.
Vikki nodded and tugged at one of her strawberry-blond curls a little. “I was relieved. I don’t know how I would have told my parents. And the guy never would have made a good father.”
“Who?”
That was such a selfish question.
“Just this guy… Eric.”
Thank God, I thought. Then, of course, I felt incredibly guilty. This wasn’t the time to be thinking about myself.
“He’s just this stupid frat boy who gets a kick out of fucking high school girls.” She looked down, so I couldn’t see her eyes in the mirror anymore. “And I didn’t even give a shit. I just let him use me, and I never thought… even when the condom broke…” She trailed off, shaking her head. “Anyway, I’m glad it was negative.”
“Right.”
“It is scary, though,” she said. “I freaked out when I was waiting for the test. I just couldn’t believe I was in that situation, you know?”
“I’m sure,” I said, but I didn’t find it all that surprising. It was Vikki, after all. Hadn’t she been setting herself up for that kind of thing for a while? Sleeping with people she didn’t care about. Forgetting about the consequences.
Just like I did…
Okay, so it hadn’t been people. Wesley was the only guy. And I did care about him… now, after I’d stopped sleeping with him. But that was just… well, I didn’t know what you’d call it. Not quite luck. Maybe coincidence? Either way, I was smart enough to know that it didn’t happen often.
But I had forgotten about the consequences. And it suddenly hit me how easily Vikki and I could trade places. I could have been the girl everyone was talking about. I could have had a pregnancy scare. Or worse. I mean, I was on birth control, and Wesley and I were always safe, but these things fail sometimes. It could easily have failed for us. And yet there I was, judging Vikki for pretty much the same thing. I was a hell of a hypocrite.
“You are not a whore.” I had a sudden flash of Wesley that last night in his bedroom, telling me exactly who I was. Telling me that the rest of the world was just as confused as me. That I wasn’t a whore, and I wasn’t alone.
I didn’t know Vikki that well. I didn’t know what her home life was like or anything that personal aside from her boy issues. And standing there in the bathroom, listening as she told me her story, I couldn’t help but wonder if she’d been running away from something, too. If I’d been judging her, thinking of her as a slut all this time when, in reality, we were living scarily similar lives.
Calling Vikki a slut or a whore was just like calling someone the Duff. It was insulting and hurtful, and it was one of those titles that just fed off of an inner fear every girl must have from time to time. Slut, bitch, prude, tease, ditz. They were all the same. Every girl felt like one of these sexist labels described her at some point.
So, maybe, every girl felt like the Duff, too?
“God, I’m late,” Vikki said as the tardy bell rang. “I should go.”
I watched as she gathered her purse and textbooks off the counter, wondering what was going through her head. Had all of this made her realize the consequences of her choices?
Our choices.
“See you around, Bianca,” she said, moving toward the door.
“Bye,” I said. Then, without meaning to, I added, “And, Vikki… I’m sorry. It’s really messed up the way people are talking about you. Just remember that what they say doesn’t matter.” Again, I thought of Wesley and what he’d said to me in his bedroom. “The people who call you names are just trying to make themselves feel better. They’ve fucked up before, too. You’re not the only one.”
Vikki looked surprised. “Thanks,” she said. She opened her mouth like she might say something else, but then closed it again. Without another word, she left the bathroom.
For all I knew, Vikki might go out and hook up with another guy that same night. She might not have learned anything from this experience. Or maybe she’d change her behavior altogether—at the very least, she might be more careful. I might never know. That was her choice. Her life. And it wasn’t my place to judge.
It was never my place to judge.
And as I walked down the hall, five minutes late for English, I decided that I’d think twice before calling Vikki—or anyone else for that matter—a whore again.
Because she was just like me.
Just like everyone else.
That was something we all had in common. We were all sluts or bitches or prudes or Duffs.
I was the Duff. And that was a good thing. Because anyone who didn’t feel like the Duff must not have friends. Every girl feels unattractive sometimes. Why had it taken me so long to figure that out? Why had I been stressing over that dumb word for so long when it was so simple? I should be proud to be the Duff. Proud to have great friends who, in their minds, were my Duffs.
“Bianca,” Mrs. Perkins greeted me as I walked into the classroom and took my seat. “Well, better late than never, I suppose.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Sorry it took me so long.”
When I got home that afternoon, I was too exhausted to climb the stairs, so I collapsed on the couch and fell into a nice doze. I’d forgotten how good it felt to take a nap in the middle of the day. I mean, Europeans have the right idea with their siestas. Americans should consider adding them to their daily schedule because they’re incredibly refreshing, especially after a dramatic day like I’d had.
It was almost seven when I woke up, which didn’t give me much time to get ready for my date. My hair, which looked like a haystack after snoozing on the couch, would take almost the entire hour to repair. Just great.
Since I’d started dating Toby, I’d been paying more attention to how I looked. Not that he cared about that kind of thing. The guy probably would have said I was pretty in a clown suit—rainbow wig and all. But I felt this constant need to impress him. So I straightened my hair and pulled it into a high ponytail, put on a pair of silver clip-on earrings (I’m too chicken to get any piercings), and found the shirt Casey had given me for my seventeenth birthday. The silky material was white patterned with intricate silver designs, and it fit me tight in the chest, which made my itty-bitty boobies appear somewhat bigger.
It was almost eight o’clock by the time I struggled down the stairs in my platform wedge sandals, risking my safety for the sake of looking taller. I was careful to avert my eyes when I walked past the kitchen because Dad, obviously thinking the roses were from Toby, had put the bouquet in an antique vase on the dining table last night. It was a sweet gesture, but seeing the bright red flowers only brought back the annoying questions. So I stumbled into the living room and plopped down on the couch to wait for my date, promising myself that I’d figure out my romantic mess sometime over the weekend.
For lack of anything better to do, I picked up the copy of TV Guide that was lying on the coffee table and began scanning the program schedule. A yellow Post-it note wedged between the pages caught my attention, and I flipped to the section it was marking. Dad had highlighted a Family Ties marathon for the following Sunday night, using the little slip of paper as a bookmark. I smiled and pulled a pen out of my purse, scribbling, “I’ll make popcorn,” on the Post-it. Dad would see it when he got home from his meeting.
Just when I put the magazine back on the table, the doorbell rang. I stood up as quickly as I could without falling and walked over to the door, expecting to be greeted by a big undeserved Toby smile. But the smile that flashed in front of me, while sparkly and white, belonged to someone quite different.
“Mom?” I practically gasped the word, sounding like some chick in a soap opera who’s just learned her evil twin is still alive or something. Embarrassed, I cleared my throat and said, “What are you doing here? I thought you were in Tennessee.”
“I was, but I came to visit you, of course,” my mother replied, cocking her head to the side in her movie-star fas
hion. Her platinum blond hair was pulled into a neat clip at the back of her head, and she was wearing a red-and-black knee-length dress. Typical Mom.
“But it’s, like, a seven-hour drive,” I said.
“Oh, believe me, I know.” She sighed dramatically. “Seven and a half in bad traffic. So… are you going to invite me in or not?” I could tell by the way her hands twisted around the strap of her handbag that she was nervous to be back in this house.
“Um, yeah,” I said, stepping aside. “Come in. Sorry. But, uh, Dad’s not here.”
“I know.” She was looking around the living room in a way that made me feel anxious for her. She eyed the armchair and couch that had once belonged to her as if debating whether she was allowed to sit there now. “He has his AA meetings on Fridays. He told me.”
“You talked to him?” This was news to me. As far as I’d known, my parents had been avoiding contact since Mom’s reappearance last month.
“We’ve spoken on the phone twice.” She pulled her eyes away from the furniture and focused them on me. They felt like heavy weights on my shoulders. “Bianca, sweetie…” Her voice was soft and sad. Painful to hear. “Why didn’t you tell me he was drinking again?”
I shifted, trying to slide out from under her gaze. “I don’t know,” I mumbled. “I guess I just hoped it would pass. I didn’t want to worry you over nothing.”
“I understand, but Bianca, this is a serious issue,” she said. “You know that now, I hope. If it ever happens again, you don’t get to keep it to yourself. You have to tell me. Do you understand?”
I nodded.
“Good.” She sighed, looking immensely relieved. “Anyway, that’s not why I’m here.”
“Why are you here?”
“Because your dad also told me something else,” she teased. “Something about a boy named Toby Tucker.”
“You drove seven and a half hours because I have a date?”
“I have other reasons to be in Hamilton,” she said. “But this is the most important. So, is it true my baby has a boyfriend?”