Firsts (17 page)

“Here goes nothing,” she says, passing one half to me.

We bite into them at the exact same time and stare at each other, both waiting for a reaction.

“They’re perfect,” Angela says, nodding repeatedly. “After all this time, we finally got it right.”

I manage a smile. We finally got it right.

Maybe I finally got it right, too.

21

“You’re wearing that? To the dance? How do you expect a guy to look at you, let alone want to see you again?” Kim cocks her hip and smirks. I stare at her, in her too-tight top and too-low jeans, and wish I could wring her too-lifted neck.

“What’s wrong with it?” I say, dropping my arms to my sides. I had hoped Kim would be home before I left, but now I’m really wishing she wasn’t.

“What’s wrong with it? You look like a tomboy. Those jeans are so … baggy.” She says
baggy
like it’s the most despicable word in the whole English language. To Kim, it probably is. Baggy pants, baggy eyes—anything baggy is the enemy.

“Maybe I am a tomboy,” I say, plucking a ChapStick from the pocket of my baggy pants and applying it. Kim hates ChapStick almost as much as baggy pants, because ChapStick does not make a statement.

“You have such a nice figure, honey. That no-carb diet really suits you.” She leans forward and smooths my hair down. “You should show it off.”

“Thanks for the tip, Kim,” I say, fighting the urge to tell her all about the giant plate of pasta I ate at Faye’s. To add to the look of sheer horror on her face, I grab a hoodie instead of my usual leather jacket and delight in the fact that her eyebrows move a fraction farther than I thought her Botox would allow.

“Don’t get too drunk,” she shouts after me. “Call me if you need a ride.”

“But it’s Friday night,” I holler back at her from the driveway. “Won’t you be drunk in an hour?”

Angela doesn’t say anything about my outfit when I show up at the dance, just like I knew she wouldn’t. Sweet, considerate Angela. I feel a swell of affection toward her.

“I got you a glass of punch,” she shouts over the music. “It’s not alcoholic. Don’t worry.”

“I’m more worried that it’s not,” I say, but she doesn’t hear me. She’s waving through the thickening crowd at somebody wearing all black with one of those ridiculous fedoras that everyone at Milton High has started donning lately.

It’s Charlie. When I see that it’s him, I’m glad I wore a hoodie and old jeans. Is it my imagination, or is he staring at me like he knows what I look like without clothes on? I guess he practically does. I raise my hand to my cheek, where he touched it yesterday. I suddenly want to tell Angela about that. But what would I say, that her boyfriend’s hand happened to graze my face? Maybe I made the whole thing up in my head.

“This DJ is sick,” is all he says. Angela nods excitedly. I don’t say anything because I think the DJ is terrible. I’m not thinking about the music anyway. I know Charlie and Angela have their big anniversary coming up, and mental pictures of Angela in the white negligee keep creeping into my head. Except in my mental pictures she is trying to hide.

Angela wants to dance. She has mastered that whole “dance like nobody’s watching” cliché, complete with overemphatic moves that aren’t at all in sync with the rhythm. I sway back and forth, focusing on my feet, very aware of all the people who might be in this crowded gym at this very moment, people I don’t want to make eye contact with. Particularly guys who came into my bedroom for their first time. When I started with the virgins, one of my rules was to not make appearances at student events, especially ones where alcohol may be involved. People get mouthy when they’re drunk and say things they regret the next morning. But I’m apparently breaking my own rules all over the place this week.

“I’m glad your horizontal moves are better than these,” a low voice says directly into my ear. Zach. My stomach does a little flip and I realize I’m glad he is here and I’m glad he is alone. I whip around so we’re face-to-face.

“Shut up,” I say. “I never said I was a good dancer.”

He reaches out like he wants to touch me but tucks his hands behind his back instead. “Look, there’s something I should tell you,” he begins, but whatever he is saying gets drowned out by the pulsating music.

I lean in to hear the rest, close enough to feel the sweat through his shirt. But he pushes me back. I cock my head in confusion. “What’s going on, Zach?” I yell.

He says one word. Only one syllable. I don’t hear it, but I see how his mouth forms it.

Faye
. And when I turn around, she’s behind me, dancing with her eyes closed, snaking her arms in the air. Yesterday by the water fountain, Zach wanted to tell me something and I wouldn’t listen.

I wonder if it would have stung any less.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” Faye says when she opens her eyes. She shimmies closer to me, until our faces are almost touching. “I hope you don’t mind. I was going to ask, but I didn’t see you yesterday.”

“Mind what?” I shout over the music that seems to be getting louder, the whole gym pulsating.

“That Zach asked me to the dance.”

I nod repeatedly, some sort of hybrid of nodding and bobbing my head to the beat. I glance over at Zach. He’s staring right at me with his hands tucked deep in his pockets, the one person not dancing. I think back to what he said on our last lunch date.
I can’t wait around for you forever.
I guess he meant it, but forever came a lot sooner than I thought.

“Why should I mind?” I yell, tearing my eyes away from him. “I don’t like Zach. Zach doesn’t like me. We’re not even friends.”

Suddenly she grabs my wrist, pulls me out of the circle of bodies, through other circles of bodies, until we’re out of the gym, where she pushes her hair off her forehead and fans her face with her hand.

“I needed a breather,” she says when we spill into the hall. “It’s way too hot in there.”

“You’re still yelling,” I say.

“Sorry,” she says, lowering her voice. “But yeah, Zach asked me after school. I said yes because nobody else asked me.” She leans over the water fountain, holding her hair in one hand. I squeeze my eyes shut.

I wonder if Zach knew he was going to ask Faye before I even turned him down. It’s hard to think of Faye as somebody’s consolation prize. I don’t know if I should be flattered or shocked, but I don’t feel either. I just want to leave, since it’s too late to rewind time to change my mind about coming in the first place. Or to rewind time and accept Zach’s offer. The thing is, I don’t know if I’m more upset about Zach wanting to go with Faye, or Faye wanting to go with Zach. It’s too confusing to think about in a place this full of people.

“Are you sure this is okay?” Faye says. Her hand is suddenly on my wrist, cool and steady. “Because you don’t look like it’s okay.”

I stare at her hand, her thin fingers encircled by chunky turquoise rings. I wonder what it would be like to hold that hand. “It’s fine,” I say, forcing my mouth into a smile. “But this dance kind of sucks.”

She wipes her mouth. “Kind of? This is hopping compared to my old school. The fact that you guys have actual punch at a dance is so retro. I thought that only happened in the movies.”

“That punch could definitely use some spiking,” I say, even though I wouldn’t drink the punch either way, alcoholic or not, knowing how many idiot freshmen have probably spit in it by now.

“Lucky for us, I brought provisions,” Faye says. “I did learn a thing or two from my old school.” She grabs my hand and marches me down the hallway to a girls’ bathroom, which is filled with freshmen jockeying for mirror space to apply lipstick and eyeliner. But Faye doesn’t want mirror space. She pulls me right into a stall with her, which probably garners some strange looks.

“Vodka behind the toilet,” she says as she unearths a flask and sits cross-legged on the floor. “Works every time. Nobody checks back there.”

“Shouldn’t you be with your date?” I say nervously, crouching down beside her. Faye takes a few calculated sips and holds the mickey out for me. I haven’t drunk hard liquor since my first year of high school, when it was my only distraction from everything going on. I used alcohol to center myself, because it was the only thing that worked back then. I suppose now’s as good a time as any to find out if it’ll still work.

I take the mickey and press it to my lips, then tilt it down my throat. It burns going down and almost makes me gag. I forgot how unpleasant taking shots is, especially when the vodka is cheap and hasn’t been chilled in the freezer. At least Kim taught me some important life lessons.

“Nah, I needed a break from him. He’s sweet but so touchy-feely. I don’t like that. You know?” She takes another sip of the vodka and puckers her lips.

I nod. I do know. I’ve told Zach multiple times that he needs to check his “affectionate tendencies” at the door. I lost track of the times he tried to wrap me in a hug behind my locker door or “accidentally” brush my hand during chemistry. But if anyone should be receptive of that kind of touching, it’s Faye, who always seems to have her hand on my wrist or her arm around my shoulder, and I have only known her for two weeks.

“I like this better,” she says, leaning against the wall and stretching her legs out.

“What? Hanging out in the bathroom with me?”

She shrugs and her mouth twitches into a little smile, which turns into a grimace when she takes another shot.

“School dances have such a forced festive feeling, like everyone has to act a certain way. When you’re in the bathroom, that’s when shit gets real.”

I sputter on my next shot of vodka and almost spit it out. “Shit gets real. Literally.” I start to laugh, harder than I have laughed in a very long time. At first, Faye looks at me with a bewildered expression, then starts to laugh, too, and the whole bathroom is filled with our laughter, my regular one and her seal-bark one.

“You cackle like a hyena,” she says, which just makes me laugh harder, until there are tears in my eyes.

“You’re drunk,” she says after I regain my composure enough to have another shot.

“I’m so not,” I say, wiping a tear off my cheek. “I’m just happy, you know?”

She tilts her head and peers at me intently, like she’s seeing me for the first time. Her smile turns into a full-lipped frown, but even her frown is beautiful.

“You’re not, though,” she says. “Happy. Maybe you’re drunk happy, but it’s not the same.”

“Why did you really transfer to our school?” I ask. Drinking makes me blunt, a fact I suddenly remember.

“Who were you lingerie shopping for?” she asks, equally as blunt.

By the time I get to my feet in the stall, I’m having more than a little bit of trouble standing, but I don’t know if it’s just the booze or the restlessness creeping through every inch of me. “This place is too small for me,” I say, attempting to swirl my arms around but smacking them into the metal door instead.

Faye stands up, too, and puts her hands on my shoulders. “We’re in a bathroom stall,” she says. “Of course it’s too small, silly.”

“Not the stall,” I say. “This whole place. School. The city. California.”

She curls her bottom lip into a pout. “California’s too small for you? That’s too bad, because I was just starting to like it here.”

“I’m getting out,” I say. “I’m going to MIT. I’m going to wear a parka in the winter. I might even make a snow angel. I’ll be just another number.” I sing the last part, expecting it to sound better out loud than it does.

Faye closes the inch between us. “Snow angels are vastly overrated,” she says. “And you could never be just a number.” I’m close enough to smell her lip gloss, something fruity and sweet. My heart slams against my ribs. She’s going to kiss me, right here in the bathroom. I was right. I wasn’t making it all up in my head. She likes me. She wants me.

I pull away, my head spinning. The scene is all too familiar, and I suddenly realize this is the very stall where I tucked my Cons up onto the toilet seat and eavesdropped on Jillian talking to Annalise.

I fumble with the latch and step out of the stall, and that’s where the night starts to get fuzzy for me. I got jostled through a crowd, through a forest of sweaty hands and fingers. I danced, but I don’t know who I danced with. Somebody asked my name. Somebody else asked for my number. Somebody picked me up, gripping my waist tightly. Hands, hot hands, under my shirt. But when I wake up in a bed that isn’t mine under an unfamiliar blue duvet in a strange room with no idea what time it is, I realize that I don’t remember much at all.

22

“You,” Zach says, handing me a glass of clear liquid that I sure hope isn’t vodka, “are the cheapest drunk I have ever seen.”

I strain to crack my eyes open. The contact lenses I left in are more or less congealed to my eyelids. Zach, wearing an expression somewhere between amused and concerned, is standing in front of ugly plaid curtains.

“Where am I?” As soon as I open my mouth, I regret it. I can taste the unmistakable musk of puke, puke mixed with something acidic that can only be vodka.

“You’re at my house,” he says, putting two Advil in my hand. “Sorry about the mess. I wasn’t expecting to have a girl over. Much less the dancing queen of Milton High.”

Fear washes over me, along with a new wave of nausea. “What do you mean, dancing queen? I don’t even dance.”

He sits on the edge of the bed. I turn away from him so he won’t smell my horrendous breath.

“You danced last night,” he says. “You wouldn’t stop. Not even when I tried to get you to leave.”

I flop back down on the pillow. “Oh. My. God. Please tell me nobody saw.” I clap my hand over my mouth as I remember a more important question to ask. “Who was I dancing with?”

He raises an eyebrow. “Not me, if that’s what you mean.”

I rub my mouth with my hand. “Who?” I say, but it comes out muffled.

“There was one guy who kept trying to spin you around. But he wasn’t around for too long. Then Charlie tried to pick you up.” He narrows his eyes.

“What do you mean Charlie tried to pick me up?”