“Yes,” B. J. says. “You look just like Britney.” He reaches up and pokes me in the stomach. “Except for her abs. You don’t have her abs.” His face falls. All right then.
“Um, Britney’s had kids,” I say. “And so her abs, I’m sure, are shot.” He considers this, nods, and then licks my leg. Gross.
“Okay, you need to knock that off.” I stick my leg out and try to shake him off, but it’s harder than it looks. Even though he’s dressed like a midget, and has been walking around on his knees all night, B. J. is six-foot-four and probably weighs close to two hundred pounds. He’s heavy. I look around for Jocelyn, but I can’t find her anywhere. Typical. She begs me to come to this party, and then leaves me right at the crucial moment, i.e., when I have a midget-leprechaun attached to my leg. “Stop!” I command, wondering if I can stick the heel of my shoe into his stomach without really hurting him.
“Why?” he asks. “I’m helping you with your midget fetish.” He licks my leg again. Oh, eww.
“I do NOT have a midget fetish!” I say, louder this time, hoping that my change of volume will help him get the message.
“Not yet.” He grins up at me, and I’m about to stick my heel right into his stomach, not caring if it causes permanent damage or not, when Jordan Richman appears out of the crowd and picks B. J. up by his elbows.
“All right, Lucky,” he says, removing B. J. from my leg, swinging him around, and placing him a safe few feet away. Oh, thank God. Jordan must be really strong to be able to pick up B. J. like that. Although, once he set him down, B.J. went limp and fell to the ground, so maybe he was so drunk that it didn’t matter how big he was Kind of like when you’re in water, your weight doesn’t matter. Maybe it’s the same when you’re drunk. “I think that’s enough.”
“Whaddup, kid?” B. J. asks Jordan. He grins at him and readjusts the green beanie on his head.
“Nothing,” Jordan says, looking slightly amused, “but you can’t just go around humping people’s legs.” He rolls his eyes.
“I wasn’t humping her!” B. J. says, offended. “I’m a midget.”
“You’re not a midget,” I say, before I can stop myself. “You’re dressed like a leprechaun. And they don’t call them midgets anymore, they call them ‘little people.’” Jordan grins at me.
“I’m a little person, then,” he says, sounding cheerful. “But, really, who cares? I’m so wasted it doesn’t matter.”
“It’s not a costume party,” I point out.
“I know,” B. J. says sadly. “But Madison said she might wear her cheerleading uniform.”
“But she didn’t,” Jordan says.
I don’t understand what Madison’s cheerleading uniform has to do with it being a costume party, but I know enough to realize they’re talking about Madison Allesio. It figures Jordan would be friends with her. There’s this rumor going around that she likes to do this oral sex thing with Kool-Aid. Something to do with, uh, different flavors for different guys. Totally disgusting, which seems kind of like Jordan’s type. Not that I know him all that well. We’re in the same math class, and that’s about it. But one time I heard him in the hall before class, arguing with a girl. Something about how she needed to stop following him around. And then she said he shouldn’t have hooked up with her if he didn’t want a girlfriend. It was actually kind of a math class scandal, because the whole class could hear everything that was going on. Finally, I think he just walked into the classroom while she was screaming. I couldn’t see the girl, but later on I found out it was this freshman named Katie Shaw, and then I really didn’t feel so bad about the whole thing, because I know for a fact she messes around with a lot of guys—including Lloyd, who she went to third base with in a movie theater. Anyway, the point is, I’m not surprised Jordan’s friends with Madison. He apparently likes girls who thrive on hookups and drama.
“I don’t give a shit.” B. J. shrugs. “I’m a leprechaun. And leprechauns. Get. Lucky.” He pumps his hands in the air in a “raise the roof” gesture. “Besides,” he continues, grinning, “Britney liked it.” He grins at me again and then waddles off on his knees.
“Sorry about that,” Jordan says, smiling sheepishly. “He gets crazy when he’s drunk. But he wouldn’t have done anything.”
“It’s okay,” I say, feeling stupid.
“Here,” he says, pulling a tissue out of his pocket and handing it to me.
“Thanks.” I wipe B. J.’s saliva off my leg and check my skin to make sure it’s not broken, all the while scanning my brain for diseases that can be transferred by bites. I can’t think of any. Lyme disease, maybe? But I don’t think you can get that from other people, just from ticks. They should totally concentrate on communicable bite diseases in health class, since apparently I have more of a chance of getting bitten than I do of losing my virginity.
“Anyway, it’s Courtney, right?”
“Yeah,” I say, surprised that he’s asking. He should know my name. We’ve been in the same advanced math class for four years.
He smiles at me, his eyes shining. “Sorry, that was lame. I know your name. I was just trying to be smooth.”
I laugh and so does he.
“Are you here by yourself?” he asks, looking around.
“No,” I say quickly, so he doesn’t think I’m a total loser. “My friend Jocelyn is here somewhere, but I lost track of her.”
“Yeah,” he says. “I try to keep an eye on B. J. when he starts drinking, but it’s hard with this many people here.”
“I can imagine,” I say, trying to think of something cool to say. Not that I’m interested in him or anything. I mean, he’s cute enough, but that’s not why I can’t think of anything cool to say. I just have a hard time with small talk. My friend Jocelyn says I’m too quiet. But I’m really not quiet. I just tend to come across that way to new people because I don’t like to talk first. What if the other person doesn’t want to be bothered? I wonder if I should ask Jordan if he knows what kind of diseases can be transmitted through saliva.
“Anyway, you wanna dance?” he asks, gesturing to one side of the party, where everyone is dancing to a top forty remix.
“Oh, no thanks,” I say, trying not to look horrified. There’s no way I’m dancing at this party. If he’d ever seen me dance, he would know why. I am not a good dancer. I like to dance, I’m just not very good at it. I like to keep my dancing confined to my room, where I can pretend to be Christina or Rhianna without anyone watching.
“Oh,” he says, looking confused. Probably no girls have ever turned him down to dance before. He looks at me, and I realize he’s waiting for an explanation, some kind of reason why I can’t dance.
“I would,” I say quickly, hoping he doesn’t think I’m a dork and/or leave. It’s not that I’m loving talking to him or anything, but I don’t want to be the only loser at the party talking to no one. That’s how I got accosted by a leprechaun. “But my leg kind of hurts.” This is a total lie. Besides the fact that every time I think of what just happened, my leg feels kind of slimy, I actually feel fine. I mean, B. J. didn’t bite me or anything. He just sort of slobbered on me. Which was, you know, unpleasant and everything, but didn’t hurt.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Jordan says, looking genuinely concerned. Which makes me feel bad. But I would much rather deal with the guilt of lying about a medical condition than the humiliation of having to dance in front of everyone here. “Do you think you need to go to the doctor or anything?”
“Oh, no, I don’t think it’s that bad,” I say, “but I probably shouldn’t, uh, dance on it or anything.”
“Okay,” he agrees. He keeps looking over his shoulder for something (someone? B. J.?), which is kind of distracting.
There’s a pause, and I take a sip of my soda in an effort to appear busy. I finally spot Jocelyn across the room, where she’s sitting on an oversized leather couch, talking to a different guy than the one she originally left me for. She gives me a look and raises her eyebrows, like,
“What’s the deal?” I try to telegraph back, “Absolutely nothing!” But she gives me a “Yeah, right” look back. I know she’s thinking about Lloyd.
“Hey,” Jordan says, looking around again. What is he looking for? Maybe he lost something. Or maybe someone stole something from him, and now he’s looking for whoever took it. Or maybe he wants to make sure his midget friend is okay. “How does your leg feel now?”
“Fine, thanks,” I say without thinking. “Much better.”
“Great,” he says. “Miraculous recovery.” He takes the drink I’m holding out of my hand and sets it down on the table next to us. “Then you can dance.”
“Oh, no,” I say, panicked. “I don’t think I’m ready for that.” Putting on a Destiny’s Child iTunes mix and rocking out in your room while pretending to be Beyoncé is one thing. Actually dancing in front of people from school is another thing. Plus, what if I get all sweaty or fall or something? And then later, Lloyd is like, “You know what, Courtney? I would have gone out with you, except since tonight I saw you looking like a sweaty, clumsy mess. I’m going to have to pass.” I don’t think I’m ready to risk my chance of happiness with Lloyd over one dance.
“Come on,” Jordan says, taking my hand. “You’ll be fine.” He looks at me and smiles, and I hesitate.
“I don’t dance,” I admit, going for the truth.
“I’ll be gentle,” he promises, and before I can protest, he’s dragging me out onto the dance floor.
the trip courtney
Day One, 9:12 a.m.
“So,” I say, putting on my seat belt and settling in to the car. “Now that we’re completely late and are going to miss orientation…” I trail off, hoping he realizes the error of his ways. The error of his ways being, you know, that we’ll miss orientation and end up failing out of college because of it. Who knows what could happen if we don’t get oriented? It could be bad. We could end up lost and out of it for four years, wrecking our future because we missed some vital information that was given out exclusively during orientation.
“We’re not going to miss orientation,” he says, pulling down the rearview mirror and checking his reflection.
“Hello? Could you spend less time grooming yourself and more time, like, actually driving?” His hair is a mess. Rumpled, like he just got out of bed. It’s actually kind of cute. But I’m not going to miss college just because he didn’t have time to do his hair. Or because he’s cute. I’ve lost enough of my self-respect.
“Like, okay,” he says, doing a pretty good impression of my voice. He smiles and pulls the sunglasses on his head back down over his eyes. He starts the car. It sputters and stops, and I look at him in alarm.
“Just kidding,” he says. He winks and starts the car. Ugh. What an ass. How can he joke at a time like this? I mean, even if he’s not concerned about the fact that we’re going to miss our orientation, he should still be upset that we’re going on this trip and are broken up.
There’s silence for a few minutes as he pulls out of my driveway. I reach into my bag and pull out my book, determined to ignore him. I’m reading The Catcher in the Rye for the millionth time, figuring it’s
funny
about a kid who goes crazy, so I won’t feel so bad about myself, and
I won’t have to worry about comprehending it, since I’ve already read it a million times.
I reach down and push my seat back.
“Whatcha readin’?” Jordan asks politely.
“Like you care.” I snort. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Jordan pick up a book in his life. I reach over and turn down the car CD player, which is playing some kind of ridiculous rap music. “I can’t concentrate on my book.”
He shrugs.
“Hey,” I say, realizing he’s not headed the right way. “You’re not going the right way.”
“Oh,” he says. “Yeah, I know. I thought we could grab some breakfast.” He says this like he doesn’t know it will upset me, which upsets me even more than if he had been apologetic.
“But I have a schedule,” I say, trying not to start a fight this early in the game. The last thing I want is to set him off. “And we’re already behind.”
“But I’m hungry.”
“Well, you should have eaten before you left,” I say. If he wasn’t eating breakfast, then what was he doing?
“I told you,” he says, “I was packing my stuff.”
“Well, whatever,” I say. “You should have planned properly.”
“Look, we can stop really quick at Johni’s Diner,” he says. “We can pick up the highway right there, and it won’t be that much out of our way.”
“Yes, but we’re already behind schedule,” I say, waving the itinerary in front of his face. “So we should actually be trying to make up time, not get further behind.”
“Look, if we don’t stop now, we’re just going to have to—” The sound of his cell phone rings, cutting him off. He has it programmed to play Sir Mix-a-Lot’s “Baby Got Back,” which is so corny, because that song is so 1999. And he doesn’t even like big butts. I don’t think. Unless I have a huge ass and don’t know it.
He checks the caller ID briefly and then slides the phone open. He has one of those phones that’s also a mini computer and plays MP3s. Of course. His parents buy him everything.
“Hey,” he says into the headpiece, glancing at me out of the corner of his eye. He catches me looking at him, and I turn away, reaching into the backseat. I rummage around in one of my bags for the CD I burned last night.
“No, we’re on our way,” Jordan says, sounding strained. It’s probably his MySpace girl. I don’t exactly know her name, or anything about her, but that’s not from lack of trying. I searched his MySpace profile obsessively but I couldn’t find anything. You’d think she would have left him a comment or something, right? But then I thought maybe he figured I would have searched, so he told her not to. Or deleted them. And then, just when I was starting to really obsess, he switched the age of his profile to “14” so that no one could look at it. MySpace has this rule where if you’re fourteen or younger, your profile automatically gets set to private, and only the people you have friended can view it. So Jordan switched his age and then took me off his friends list! Which was really a horrible thing to do when you think about it, because it was, like, an actual act of aggression. I mean, it’s one thing to dump me for another girl, but to actually block me on MySpace? That’s just rude. He blocked me on instant messenger, too. And I couldn’t even go through and make up a fake screen name, because he had everyone who wasn’t on his buddy list blocked.
But I know she’s from Tampa (the new girl, I mean), and that she’s going to Boston College. Which is supposedly how she found him. She was searching MySpace profiles for people who were going to college in Boston. I’m surprised he didn’t offer her a ride.
How I imagine Jordan’s new girlfriend (A Psychotic Delusion by Courtney Elizabeth McSweeney):
She’s blonde. I have dark hair and fair skin. (Even though I live in Florida, I tend to burn when I sit out in the sun, which sucks, because everyone at school is always tan. At least in Boston, I won’t have to worry about that.) She also has blue eyes and dark skin. She looks like one of those girls on Laguna Beach. I have no idea why I think this, because one time we were watching Laguna Beach together, and Jordan told me he thought all the girls on that show looked alike. I guess it’s because I figure he would leave me for someone who was completely my opposite, and that includes physically.
She has a tattoo of a butterfly or some sort of pink design on her lower back. She wears lots of low-rise jeans.
She likes pop music, and she loves to go dancing. In my deluded fantasies, her and Jordan are always going clubbing. She’s also one of the worst kind of girls, the kind that all the guys want and drool all over, but is completely trustworthy and never does anything behind her boyfriend’s back.
She’s rich.
She’s not a virgin, and her and Jordan do i
t all over the place. In fact, she wants to do it so much that Jordan can’t even keep up with her. He’s tired all the time. She’s always tearing off her clothes and throwing herself at him.
I find the CD in my bag and rustle around some more, trying to make it out like I’m looking for something else. The last thing I want is for him to think I’m listening to his conversation with Mercedes (that’s what I imagine her name to be), even though that’s totally what I’m doing.
“Okay, cool,” he says. He snaps the phone shut and drops it onto the console between our seats. I rustle around some more, wondering what a good amount of time is to come back up without being obvious. At least he didn’t say “I love you” when they hung up. Although maybe they usually do, but he didn’t want to say it in front of me, since he was afraid I’d go psychotic on him or something. Which I wouldn’t have done. Gone psychotic, I mean. At least not out loud.
“What are you looking for?” he asks. Although it may be a little too early for them to be saying “I love you” to each other, right? I mean, they’ve only been together two weeks. The thought of Jordan saying “I love you” to another girl makes me feel like I want to throw up. I sit back up quickly, holding the CD.
“This,” I tell him.
Then my phone starts ringing, and I ignore it, because:
I think it’s rude to talk on cell phones when you’re in the car with someone, and since I want to reserve the right to give Jordan shit about it in the future, I don’t think I should be hypocritical now.
It’s probably Jocelyn, calling to ask me if I’m okay, and she’s going to ask a million questions, and I won’t be able to really talk to her, because I’ll only be able to give one-word answers, like “yes” and “no” and Jordan will obviously know that we’re talking about him, otherwise why would I be giving one-word answers?
“I Will Survive” by Gloria Gaynor comes from my phone, and I curse myself for not changing my ringtone before this trip. How ridiculously lame. I search through my bag, looking for the phone, but by the time I find it, it stops ringing. And then starts again.