I think the reason why so many of us love Dirk is that when he talks, it’s like we’re venting through him. Like we’re all in this together, feeling the same frustration and pain. It’s so weird how much I rely on him to get me through this freezing February and I don’t even know who he is. I wish there was a way that I could tell him how much he means to me in person. But he remains a mystery. Which bothers us, because everyone loves him and wants to know him for real.
Right at the dot of eleven, music blasts from my computer speakers. He’s on.
“What’s good, y’all?” Dirk says. “Hope you’re hanging right tonight. The communication is piling up here on All Talk, No Action, so let’s get to it.”
You can hear him clicking around on his keyboard. I wish I were sitting there with him, wherever he is, on the other side of the secret.
“‘Hey, Dirk,’” he reads. “‘I’m in love with this gorgeous boy, but I’m not sure if he likes me. I’ve thought about asking him out, but I don’t want to be pushy. We have a class together where he’s not doing so great (I saw his grade on the last paper we got back) and I’m good in that class, so I was thinking of asking him if he wants help with our next paper or something. Do you think I should tell him that I like him? Or should I just do something nice for him so he notices me? Love your show!’
“Dude. If I had a dollar for every time I got an e-mail like this I’d be one rich bastard. Living large in Aruba with my own personal hottie masseuse.
“Let me break this down for you. It’s really simple, once you understand the basics. Fact: Guys are not that complicated. We’re pretty simple animals. We like to sleep and eat and game. We like attention from the ladies, or from the dudes if you swing that way—it’s all good. But too much attention is a turnoff. No one wants to feel crowded. Think about it like this: Does a wild animal like to be trapped in a cage? Yeah, we’re tame. But we still have the same needs.”
Most boys in our class don’t know half this stuff. Or they might know it, but they would never admit it. But Dirk doesn’t care about looking cool or protecting his ego or any of that other insanity fueled by testosterone. He’s just telling it like it is. Reaching out to people who’ve been waiting to connect with someone who gets them.
“Listen. Guys and girls? We’re different. No joke. Just because we’re both types of human doesn’t mean we have much else in common. Which is why, for all the ladies out there in Listening Land, tonight is your lucky night. For one night and one night only, I’m going to expose the cold, hard truth about guys. If every girl could hear how guys really are, your lives would change like that.” He snaps so we can all hear how fast our lives would change. “You’ll save yourselves years of pain and torture if you know how we think. So let’s break it down, shall we?
“First off, girls put way too much effort into something that’s not even anything. They’ll like a guy. They’ll pick up on some clue that they stretch and twist until it magically means that he likes her. And then all of a sudden they’re fixated on this dude who doesn’t even know they exist.”
Okay. How does he know all this? Does he have five sisters or something?
“Simplify your lives, ladies. I’ll make it easy for you. I have here”—sounds of a paper being waved around—“a list of things every girl should know. And I want every girl out there to turn it up, call your friends, and pay attention. So let’s give everyone out there a minute to regroup.”
Something I don’t recognize blasts from the speakers. I didn’t realize I was so musically ignorant. I’ve never heard most of the songs Dirk plays.
“If you are female, this one’s for you. And if you’re the proud owner of additional appendages, feel free to disagree.
“How Guys Really Are, by Dirty Dirk. One. You can’t convince a guy to like you. We either feel it or we don’t. This is pretty self-explanatory. There’s no way you can change our minds. Basically, if we like you, you’ll know. And if you don’t—”
My cell rings. I really don’t want to pick up, but then I see that it’s Sterling.
“Hey,” I go.
“Are you listening?”
“Of course.”
“Where was this guy when I needed him?”
“Tell me about it.” I keep the phone pressed to one ear and listen to Dirk with the other.
“Two,” Dirk says. “We hate big emotional talks. We will do anything to avoid any type of serious talk, especially when the talk is ‘about the relationship.’
“Three. Just because a girl is feeling it all seriously on her end doesn’t mean the guy wants anything more than a casual hookup. Don’t assume interest means interest in anything beyond your body.”
“Ouch,” Sterling says. “That’s harsh.”
“I know.”
“I know that sounds harsh,” Dirk says, “but I’m giving it to you like it is. This isn’t sugarcoated so it goes down easier, people. This is the brutal reality all around you and it’s to your advantage to be informed.”
“Can he hear us?” I ask.
“Probably. He already knows everything else.”
“Four. If a girl starts out all casual with a guy and she doesn’t tell him that she wants a relationship, it will never become a relationship. If you give a guy the impression that casual is okay with you, that’s all he’ll ever want. Be straight with him from the start. If he gets scared and runs away, he wasn’t right for you.”
“Totally!” Sterling yells. “It’s all so basic! How could I not know this stuff?”
“Five. No guy wants to watch a girl cry. No guy wants to be yelled at for being an asshole. So when girls think we’re scum for dumping them or completely avoiding the breakup talk altogether, it’s actually that we’re preventing torture for everyone involved. We see it like this: By avoiding an emotionally traumatic confrontation, you’ll feel better and so will we. Which relates to item six. When a guy is dumping a girl, all he wants to do is say ‘it’s over,’ and then get the hell out of there. He doesn’t want the girl dragging it out for three hours.”
“Whoa,” I say.
“Seriously.”
“I’m not saying I think the way we are is right,” Dirk goes. “It’s actually pretty messed up. I know we’re slime. But it’s the way we are. So girls have two choices. They can either fight our natural tendencies, or they can go with the flow. And now you know.”
Music blasts again.
“He’s a freaking genius,” Sterling announces.
“It’s some scary stuff, but I’d rather know than not know.”
“Uhhh! Why does it have to be so complicated?”
“Seriously.”
“It’s killing me. If I didn’t have Paul, I don’t even know.”
I have no idea what to say about that. Paul is this new guy Sterling’s been talking to online. She’s spending so much time online these days it’s like she’s completely addicted. I want to be supportive and I definitely don’t want to get in a fight about how some sketchy online guy is preventing her from having a real boyfriend, but I can’t force myself to be okay with this. It’s just wrong.
“Are you there?” Sterling asks.
“Yeah.”
“You got quiet.”
“No, I’m just . . . do you know who this is?”
“It’s me, dude.”
“No, the music.”
“Oh. Yeah, I think it’s the Pixies.”
“Who’s that? I’ve never even heard of them.”
“It’s this . . . um . . . yeah, I don’t really know either.”
“Who do you think Dirk is?”
“Like I haven’t been trying to figure that out all year?”
“What grade do you think he’s in?”
“He’s probably a senior,” Sterling goes. “He’s way more mature than any of the chuckleheads in our grade. All I know is, this boy sounds like my ultimate fantasy.”
“Take a number.” I don’t know anyone who doesn’t listen to Dirk now. All the gir
ls are in love and the boys like how he rats out all the evildoers.
“I can’t believe no one knows who he is yet,” Sterling says.
“There’s got to be a way to find out.”
“Yeah, but how?”
“We haven’t thought of it yet. But we will.”
32
I’ve never seen Nash this upset. He’s so upset he can’t even tell me what’s wrong.
He came into Claire’s today. He didn’t even say hi or anything. He just came right up to the register and went, “What time do you get off?” His eyes were all red.
I said, “Uh . . . seven. I get off at seven.”
“Good. Can I come over?”
“Okay. What’s—”
“I can’t talk about it now,” Nash said. “See you later.”
He almost smacked into the glass door when he left, like he didn’t notice it was there. You could see him reach for the handle at the last second.
Nash still isn’t telling me what’s wrong. Which is why we’re just hanging out in my room with Colin Hay playing and nobody talking. Just when I’m getting worried that Nash is having some sort of mental breakdown, he goes, “Rachel broke up with me.”
“Shut up! Why?”
“She said I’m too intense.”
“But intense is good! Girls like intense!”
“Not Rachel.”
“How is intense a bad thing?”
“She said I get emotionally attached too soon. And she’s not ready for that.”
“So . . . then why can’t you just take things slower?”
“I don’t want to take things slower! I’m too intense, remember?”
Someone pounds on my door.
“What?” I yell.
“Your music’s too loud!” Sandra yells from the hall.
“I know!” I yell back.
“Turn it down!”
I turn it down. She stomps away and slams her door.
“It’s not even like I was moving that fast with anything,” Nash goes. “I just really like her and I thought she liked me, so . . .”
“What did she mean by ‘emotionally attached’?”
“No idea. Maybe like . . . something about how I’m too intrusive, like too interested in her life or something. But isn’t that how you get when you’re in a relationship?”
“Yeah,” I agree. But what do I know? My relationship’s technically still in that new euphoric stage where everything’s supposed to be awesome. Too bad I can’t figure out how to get to the awesome place.
“She likes me,” Nash says. “She said she likes me.”
“She obviously likes you. If she didn’t like you, she wouldn’t have gone out with you.”
“Yeah, but she said she thought I liked her more than she liked me. And how that wasn’t fair to me because I deserve to be with someone who likes me equally as much.”
Oooh, that’s gotta sting. That’s like saying I like you, but not really. Or I like you, but there’s a limit to how much. Because you suck. And if you didn’t suck so bad, then maybe I’d like you more.
“I wish there was something I could do,” I say.
“There is.”
“Name it.”
“Can I stay over tonight?”
“What?”
“I don’t want to be alone.”
“Isn’t your dad home?”
“Exactly. That’s where the ‘alone’ part comes in.”
“Oh. Totally, of course you can. There’s an air mattress in the hall closet.”
This is worse than I thought. Nash must have really liked Rachel. Maybe he even loved her. And still loves her. When someone rips your heart out, there’s nothing you can do to change how you feel about them. You just have to keep feeling that way until it goes away.
Unless it never does.
33
There’s a sub in geometry. You have to give him credit for trying. He’s attempting to give us directions for some worksheet he’s passing out, but nobody’s listening. Because nobody’s going to finish it. Some of us won’t even look at it. We all know it’s just busywork that’s never going to be graded, no matter what the sub tells us.
Sub in math + bogus worksheet = free time.
Except you still have to look like you’re doing the work or you could get in trouble. So groups of three or four move their desks together. We huddle over our worksheets for a minute, writing our names at the top. Exhausted after this physical exertion, the gossip begins. I tune everything out. I saw Derek and Sierra in the hall again yesterday and it looked even worse than the first time I saw them talking. I was up all night replaying their flirty little interlude until I wanted to scrape the memory part of my brain right out of my head.
I need to analyze this with Sterling. So after school, I go to her locker.
“I need to talk to you,” I say.
“What’s up?”
“The whole Derek/Sierra thing. I can’t stop thinking about it.”
“Didn’t we go over this last night?”
She’s right. We IMed for like two hours, figuring out what I should do. Our conclusion was that I can’t worry about things I have no control over. And that Derek is my boyfriend, not Sierra’s. And that I have to chill. I want to be that person. The confident girlfriend person who isn’t jealous or annoying and doesn’t care who her boyfriend talks to.
So I got in bed and tried to relax. But it didn’t work. All I could think about is if Derek and Sierra were talking those two times, how many other times have they talked without me knowing about it? And what’s with all the touching? And why does Derek want to be around someone who dumped him?
Sterling slams her locker.
“Yeah,” I tell her. “But it didn’t help.”
“Thanks a lot!”
“No, I mean, of course you helped. It just keeps bothering me.”
“You want to come over? I’m making cupcakes.”
“Sweet.”
We walk out together. Sterling’s telling me about something that happened in gym, and I’m looking around for Derek. I feel really guilty about this, but I’d rather be with Derek than Sterling right now. Isn’t that horrible?
He’s waiting for me at our spot. When he sees us walking across the lawn, he smiles and waves. I wave back. Sterling is still talking and doesn’t notice him.
But then she does.
She’s like, “Oh. Is he waiting for you?”
“Yeah, sort of.”
“Either he is or he isn’t,” Sterling snaps.
“He is. I’m sorry. I totally forgot we’re supposed to hang out today.”
“You forgot?”
Derek was walking toward us, but now he stops when he sees Sterling. It’s like he can sense her anger from over there.
“Do you even want to come over?” Sterling accuses.
“Yes! It’s just . . . I don’t think I can.”
“Because you’d rather be with Derek.”
“No!” I don’t even know what to say to her. I’ve never seen Sterling like this. She knows how long I’ve wanted a boyfriend and now I have one. So why is she acting like I’m doing something to offend her?
Sterling’s all, “You’re doing what we said we’d never do when we got boyfriends and I’m not feeling it.”
“What am I doing?”
“You’re dumping me for him. And we—”
“That is not true!”
“—promised we would never do that to each other.”
I don’t know what to say to make her stop being offended. Anyway, it’s not like she can talk. She’s online with random guys almost all the time now.
Derek is still waiting.
No one moves.
And then Sterling says, “Whatever. It’s no big deal.”
“Really?”
“Totally. I don’t know what my problem is.”
“Can I come over tomorrow?”
“You’d better!” She passes by Derek and says hey. I’m relieved
that Sterling’s not mad at me, but that was close. I’ve got that shaky adrenaline rush you get when a friend is all severe with you.
Derek comes over and goes, “Are you okay?”
“No.” I hug him. “Hug me harder.”
He squeezes me tight.
“Harder,” I tell him.
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
I pull away a little to look at him. “Promise you’ll never hurt me,” I say.
Derek laughs. “Of course I’ll never hurt you.”
“It’s not funny.”
He quits laughing. “Sorry.”
“I’m kind of sensitive.”
“Yeah, I know. You still want to come over?”
I nod. This is just what I need. Some quality time with my amazing boyfriend. My amazing boyfriend who is going to make me feel better, make me forget how much life can suck when you least expect it.
34
Mom’s like, “We need to talk.” I’m on my bed reading Twisted. More specifically, I’m reading a paragraph. It’s the same paragraph I’ve read seven times already. Every time I start over, I tell myself that I have to focus because if I don’t I’m going to be spending all of my time trying to read the same stupid paragraph.
“Maybe later?” I go. “I’m trying to read this.”
“I’d rather talk now,” Mom says.
“But this is a really good part.”
“Marisa.”
I look up from the book.
Mom says, “Your father’s downstairs. We need to talk to you and Sandra.”
“About what?”
“You’ll see. It’s important.”
The last person I want to be is the difficult kid. I’d much rather be the balanced kid. And I don’t want to give Mom a hard time forever. I just can’t help still being mad at her.
Dad’s sitting on the couch. Only he’s not all sprawled out with his feet hanging over the edge, the way he used to be. He looks uncomfortable, like he’s sitting on a couch that’s not his. So he has the polite couch posture you have when you’re over at a stranger’s house.