Firsts (10 page)

“I can’t get rid of you,” I say.

He grins. “That’s the point.”

12

In addition to prayer group and regular Sunday service, Angela and Charlie are part of a youth group that meets at church every weekend. I know this because she usually asks if I want to attend. Sometimes I go, just to maintain appearances. It’s too late now to tell her I’m an atheist, so I have to keep up the façade somehow. But today, I just can’t make myself sit in a circle while some kid gives a sermon on something I don’t believe in, surrounded by people who know those little hymnbooks front to back. I definitely can’t tell Angela that church feels like a cult to me. Today’s excuse is that I have to prepare for our study session this afternoon, which is partially true. I like to live up to my reputation as a chemistry superstar, and spending the other night with Juan Marco Antonio and yesterday after school with Zach didn’t help.

But I can’t seem to concentrate in my bedroom. My eyes keep drifting to the bed, and my mind keeps flashing to the things I have done in it. Usually I do everything in my bed. Besides sleeping and having sex, I also study in it, watch movies, read books. I have a desk but barely use it. Kim used to chastise my attachment to my bed. “Don’t become one of those fatties who lay around all day and end up with bedsores,” she said once, when I was holed up in my room, poring over my notes before finals. Now, when she’s around to see a new guy come in or leave, her eyes flash with something resembling pride. Better a slut than a fatty with bedsores.

So I take my books to our backyard with me and recline on a lounge chair beside our neglected swimming pool. I was full of excitement as a kid when we moved here and I found out there was a pool in the backyard, but Kim and my dad found it more of a hassle than anything else. As a result, it’s overgrown with algae and fallen leaves. Every so often I sit out here in my bathing suit and close my eyes and imagine I’m somewhere else, like I’m doing now, except I’m in a bra and underwear. I open my robe to let the sun warm my skin. Kim would undoubtedly tell me how terrible the sun is for causing premature wrinkles. But she’s not here. I’m completely alone, until a familiar but unexpected voice breaks the silence.

“Mercy.”

My eyes fly open and I pull my robe around my body as quickly as I can, almost launching myself off my lounge chair in the process. Charlie stands beside the gate, wearing dirty jeans and an amused expression.

“Charlie, what are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be at church?”
And not sneaking up on me at my house
, I want to add.

“I could say the same thing about you,” he says as he strides over. He’s dragging a shovel behind him and wearing grass-stained gloves.

“You’re not going to kill me and bury me with that thing, are you?” I laugh, but the sound is high pitched, not relaxed like I intended.

“Not unless you’ll make roses grow,” he says, putting the shovel down and crouching on the ground beside me. “Didn’t your mom tell you she hired me to do some gardening for her?”

I shake my head. Kim most definitely left that detail out. A glance around our backyard would let anybody with eyes know exactly how little Kim cares about things like plants and flowers. She hasn’t gone through a gardening phase in ages.

I suddenly feel like I’m going to be sick. It was almost four years ago exactly when Luke was our gardener. After that summer Kim lost interest in having somebody maintain our backyard, maybe because Luke just stopped showing up. I remember her bitching about “the unreliability of hired help” and me telling her she scares them away. Our rotating array of maids would prove that. But Kim wasn’t the reason Luke left. I was.

“You okay, Mercy? You’re a bit green.” Charlie takes a seat on the end of my lounger. His weight makes the chair dip slightly.

“You’re the one who’s green,” I say, attempting a gardener joke. But my voice sounds thin and weak, like the girl from four years ago has jumped back into my body and is trying to get comfortable.

“Nah. I just wanted the extra money. I’m saving up for kind of a big purchase.” He flashes a smile and looks down at his hands.

“Care to elaborate?” I say.

There’s something strange about this whole situation. Charlie comes from a family that’s just as rich as mine, probably richer because his parents are still together and his mom actually works, unlike Kim, who just shops off my dad’s monthly support checks. Charlie isn’t hard up for cash, and his parents could probably buy him anything he wanted.

“Nope,” he says, removing his gloves and stretching out his fingers. “We’re all allowed to have one little secret.” He puts a hand on my shoulder and squeezes.

I want to laugh it off, but my chest is constricted like somebody is sitting on it and not allowing me to breathe.
We’re all allowed to have one little secret
. Is he trying to tell me he knows mine?

“Fine. You got me.” He removes his hand from my shoulder and stands in front of me. “I’m saving up for something for Angela. I can’t tell you what, but I can tell you I’ll probably need your help, when the time comes.”

I let myself take a small sip of air. I feel my hands start to shake, so I press them together. I’m losing it. I’m starting to think everything is about me. When I started my sessions with the virgins, I told myself I wouldn’t get paranoid. Paranoia would eat away at me and drive me insane. But it has been growing inside me the whole time.

“Of course,” I say. “Anything I can do to help.” My voice sounds far more measured than I feel.

“Thanks, Mercy,” he says, picking the shovel off the ground. “Just pretend like I’m not here. I’ll be as quiet as I can.”

I make myself stay in the backyard, even though all I want to do is be alone. But that would look suspicious, so I start writing chemistry notes from my lounge chair, sneaking occasional glances at Charlie. I wonder where he learned that the bare-root roses have to be planted in a spot where they’ll receive at least six hours of sunlight, and how he knows that they need to be separated from competing trees or shrubs. Kim certainly didn’t tell him that. The weirdest part of all is that he plants around where the roses died the last time they were planted, the summer Luke taught me about gardening. That was when I started getting interested in chemistry. I loved how plants had to follow a formula, too.

By the time Charlie finishes his work, the air feels about ten degrees hotter. He wipes his sweaty forehead on his T-shirt.

“Do you want to come in for a drink?”

The words are out of my mouth before I even have time to think them through. I don’t actually want Charlie to come in for a drink. I want him to leave so that I don’t have to think about gardening or Luke anymore. With Charlie digging up the garden, it’s almost impossible to concentrate on things like equations and formulas and volumetric titrations. I’m hoping he will politely decline, make up some kind of excuse for having to leave. But instead he smiles broadly and follows me into the house.

I had almost forgotten about the fact that I’m wearing a bathrobe with only a bra and underwear on underneath. But in the kitchen, with my bare feet on the cold floor, it’s hard to ignore.

“We have water and some kind of green concoction,” I say, peering into the fridge. Kim must be on one of her juice cleanses this week.

“I’ll just have water. Thanks.”

I open the cabinet to retrieve a glass. When I turn around, Charlie is peeling his shirt off.

“What’re you doing?” I say, clenching the glass tightly in my hand. He balls his T-shirt in one of his hands. I can’t help but notice his ab muscles, the veins running down his biceps. Charlie never used to look like that. When did he get in such good shape?

“Sorry. I’m hot. And this shirt doesn’t smell so good.”

I pour water from a pitcher into the glass, spilling some on the counter in the process. I don’t know why being alone in the kitchen with Charlie is making me this flustered. It’s not like I haven’t hung out with him before. But our common denominator has always been Angela. Angela is what we have in common. I only know Charlie because of her, and that’s the only reason he knows me.

“Angela’s coming over to study later,” I say, gripping the countertop with my fingertips.

Charlie gulps down the water and cocks his head. “Do me a favor,” he says. “Don’t tell her I was here. You know that little secret I mentioned? Maybe it can be ours.”

I chew on my bottom lip, trying to keep the surprise off my face. I already have secrets from Angela. The whole atheist thing tops the list, followed closely by the virgins. Angela doesn’t know about Luke and what happened after he left. There are so many things I have kept hidden from my best friend. It’s not that I don’t want to share them with her. Sometimes when we’re having tea together after school or taking a long walk, I imagine what she would say if I were to unload everything on her. I never go through with it, because I know exactly what she would think.

But this is different. This is voluntarily keeping something from her that shouldn’t even be important. Charlie is our new gardener. I don’t know why he wants it kept secret. Maybe he’s embarrassed. Maybe he wants to avoid youth group on the weekend. Maybe he really is saving up his money.

“Deal,” I say. Charlie extends his hand and envelops mine in a sweaty handshake. My hand feels tiny in his, like his giant fingers could reduce my bones to dust.

I wave through the window when he leaves, sauntering to his truck with his shirt still off.

Now I’m not just keeping my own secrets anymore.

13

“I don’t get it,” Angela says, slumping over my carefully constructed diagram. “I’m just meant to fail this class, I guess.”

She really doesn’t get it. Every time I start to explain something, she zones out. I can tell she’s pretending to pay attention, but her mind is wandering, just like her eyes are doing around my room. Angela hasn’t ever been the easiest person to help, but today she seems more distracted than usual, from the second she walked in the door and commented that something “smells different.” I immediately thought she knew about Charlie, that our handshake had created some kind of scent giveaway, but then she sniffed my arm and said it was my perfume.

“I think it’s obvious,” Faye says. She’s lying on the floor of my bedroom with her laptop open on her stomach, her hair splayed out behind her.

“You might think it’s obvious, but Angela doesn’t.” I cast an irritated glance at her. Generally, Faye’s bluntness would be a characteristic I admire, but the last thing I want is for Angela to feel even less confident about chemistry than she already does.

“No, it’s not that. You keep trying to explain it to her. And you’re a good teacher. But she’s thinking about something else.”

I look from Faye to Angela, who is trying to avoid my eyes.

“I bet I know what she’s thinking about,” Faye says, her mouth twitching into a smirk. “It’s a boy.”

I snap my fingers in front of Angela’s face. “Earth to Angela,” I say. “Is she right?”

Angela covers her face with her hands. “I can’t concentrate on anything lately. I’m having one of those midlife crisis things.”

“At seventeen? I don’t think so.” I soften my voice.

“I’m just, you know, so conflicted.”

“About what?” I say gently. Angela sounds like she might be on the brink of tears. I have only seen Angela cry once over the course of our friendship, and that was because a teacher chewed her out for reading from cue cards during an oral presentation.

“About Charlie.”

Faye plucks her computer off her stomach and rolls over. “I knew it! It’s always about a boy. Boys are the source of all the pain and all the pleasure. Especially the good ones.” Her voice drops into something barely louder than a whisper. My eyes flicker to her involuntarily, and she gives me a tiny smile, almost like she was testing my attention.

I tear my eyes away from her and look at Angela, who is staring at her hands. “What’s up with Charlie?”

Angela spins the promise ring Charlie gave her on their anniversary around her finger, something she does when she’s nervous. Or scared.

“I love Charlie. Charlie loves me. Lately, I’ve been having these feelings.” She sighs. “You know.”

“I don’t know, Ange.”

“I know,” Faye says. “You want to spread the love around. Be with other guys. You’re bored with this Charlie dude. Right?”

Angela furrows her brow. “Not right,” she says. “I only want to be with Charlie. But that’s the problem. I think Charlie wants to
be
with me, if you know what I mean.”

I reach my hand out and grab Angela’s. “He wants to sleep with you?”

Faye interjects. “Wait, you haven’t slept with him yet? How long have you guys been together?”

“Two years,” Angela says. “But we were going to wait until we got married. Still are. I don’t know.” She covers her face with her hands.

Faye’s laugh sounds like a bark. A seal—that’s the animal she sounds like. One of those barking seals at the zoo that never shut up. “He must be the last of a dying breed. Nowadays if you don’t give it up till date three, you’re going to find yourself single.”

She looks directly at me when she says it, and for a second I’m afraid she knows everything, even though that would be impossible. But her gaze is completely disarming. It’s full of confidence, full of certainty. It says,
I want what I want when I say I want it
. I bet most guys can’t stand up to that gaze. I can just imagine Zach crumbling underneath it.

But whatever is going on with Faye has to wait. I can probably count the times Angela has gone into the details of her relationship with Charlie on one hand, including this time, and having a third person around is making this even more awkward. Especially a third person like Faye, who is distracting
me
.

“So what made you change your mind?” I say, squeezing Angela’s hand softly. “About waiting until marriage. Is Charlie pushing you to sleep with him?”

Angela shrugs and fiddles with her shirtsleeves, which are way too long for her arms. Angela has never been like most girls in our grade, who wear short skirts and tank tops. She never buys clothes that fit right.