Firsts (31 page)

“The yard looks great,” he says, gesturing out the open window beside us. “You did something with that dirt garden. Those are beautiful roses.”

I swallow and bite the inside of my cheeks. My hand clenches around my fork like a weapon.

“Thanks,” Kim says, obviously loving his attention. “I hired a gardener. He goes to school with Mercedes.”

My dad nods appreciatively. I stare at my plate. The chicken breast sitting in a pool of gravy looks gray and blubbery and totally inedible.

“And how is school, Mercedes?” My dad asks. I push the chicken around on my plate and collect peas on each tine of my fork. I have a sudden flashback of doing this very thing with peas when I was a little kid.

“School’s fine,” I say. “Actually, I just got into MIT, so I’ll be moving away soon.” I give him a tight-lipped smile. It’s not like I can tell him the truth.
I lost my best friend last week because I slept with a good chunk of the senior class. My only two other friends just slept together. Now all I can do is think about what I could have done differently to change it. I can’t go back, but at least I get a fresh start.

“Wow,” he says. “Very impressive.” He pauses, and an awkward silence ensues. Which he breaks with an equally awkward question. “Any special men in your life?”

I shake my head.
No, the ones I used to have over aren’t special at all.

“What about the boy who brought you soup?” Kim says. “He seemed promising.”

“Zach,” I snap. “His name is Zach. And he’s not my boyfriend, Kim.”

My dad raises both eyebrows. He looks like he wants to say something but isn’t sure how to phrase it, so we eat in silence. Until I ask Kim to please pass the potatoes.

“Why do you call your mother that?” he asks.

“Call her Kim? Because it’s her name.” I spear a potato and cut it in half much more violently than I rightfully have to. I don’t even intend to eat it. I just want to slice into it.

“Okay,” my dad says. “But you don’t call me Roy. I mean, you could if you wanted to…” His voice trails off. He’s trying to be the cool dad, the one who doesn’t care what his daughter calls him, as long as she wants to call him something.

I shrug. “No, I’m fine with calling you Dad,” I say. Maybe this is more to hurt Kim than anything. My dad is the one who left, but Kim’s the real absentee parent. At least my dad up and left in body and mind. Kim pretends to be here, probably tells herself she’s doing a good job as a parent. She’s the biggest fraud of all.

Kim massages her fingers into her temples. My dad shoots her a sympathetic look. I roll my eyes. Kim is way too good at playing the victim. I might have inherited her cheekbones and green eyes, but I’m glad I didn’t inherit that quality.

We’re interrupted by the doorbell ringing. I know it must be Faye or Zach. I left my phone upstairs, and I’m sure they have both been trying to call me. I jump out of my seat and run down the hall before Kim can stop me to admonish my bad manners.

It’s Faye, leaning against the door much more nonchalantly than I would be in her position. Even though I have been waiting to hear from her, I’m not sure I can handle seeing her this close right now. I want to hug her as badly as I want to push her away. I’m angry with her, angry about her and Zach and their bodies pressed together.

“What happened?” I hiss, slipping onto the porch and closing the door behind me. Whatever she says, whatever I say, I don’t want Kim or my dad to overhear.

“They called Lydia, and Zach’s mom, too. Lydia’s working, so she won’t get the message until she gets home, and I’m sure I’ll have some explaining to do. Zach’s mom wasn’t too happy. He got two weeks of detention. I got suspended. Indefinitely.” She says all of this with a smile.

I clasp my hands together. “But why’d he get detention and you got suspended?”

“Because I told Goldfarb it was my idea. Which is totally true. I told him I did the whole thing, that Zach didn’t have a clue. I said Zach thought nobody else would ever see that video. God love that kid, but he’s a terrible liar. I don’t know if Goldfarb bought it, but Zach has such a good record, he didn’t have much of a choice.” She smiles. “I can be very persuasive.”

“I can’t believe you did this for me,” I say, pressing my palms together tightly to stop them from shaking, shaking from anger or fear or both. “I don’t see how you can be so okay with this. You got yourself in huge shit.”

Faye leans in so close that our noses are almost touching. “What did I tell you before this went down? I said there would be fallout. And I’m okay with that.”

“I’m not,” I say, and my voice is high and shrill. “I’m not okay with you being suspended, and I’m not okay with you and Zach having sex.” I cross my arms, wanting to push her away and pull her in but doing neither.

She moves in even closer so that she’s almost speaking into my mouth. “We didn’t,” she says. “But it looks like we did. Everyone thinks we did.”

The backs of my legs and arms start to quiver slightly. I realize they’re quivering with relief. Immense relief, like even though so many terrible things have happened, everything could possibly be okay again. Faye didn’t sleep with Zach. There really isn’t anything going on. She smiles at me like she can read my mind, and I shift uncomfortably.

The door opens behind me. At first I don’t register the sound of it, but Faye pulls back and her eyes leave my face.

“Mercedes, what’s going on?” Kim says. “Oh. Hello,” she says, noticing Faye.

“I’m Faye,” she says, stretching out her hand, which Kim takes. “Sorry to interrupt. You guys must have been eating dinner.”

“Would you like to join us?” I say before Kim can stop me. “It’s a family dinner. My dad’s here, too. We have lots of food.”

Faye’s eyes widen slightly. She knows my dad being here is a big deal. And she knows it’s a big deal that I want her here for this.

“Dinner sounds great,” she says. “I’m actually famished.”

I don’t get a chance to tell Faye thank you, but it doesn’t matter. Dinner gets a hundred times less awkward when she sits down. She has my dad laughing, and even Kim breaks into a smile. You would never guess that this girl, the one helping herself to seconds of chicken and potatoes and telling my dad how to properly barbeque a steak, is the same girl who just voluntarily showed the whole school her naked body on a giant screen and got suspended as a result.

“I hope we see a lot more of you,” Kim says when I get up to walk Faye to her car.

“You will,” Faye says. “Thanks for dinner.” She turns to my dad. “And nice meeting you, Mr. Ayres. If you’re in town again, we’ll have to try that steak house I told you about. Best filet mignon you ever had.”

“Please, call me Roy,” he says. “And it was my pleasure. Any friend of Mercy’s who knows her way around a steak is a friend of mine.”

I walk Faye out to the driveway, expecting to get no farther than her car. But instead of opening her door and getting in, she walks around and opens the passenger door instead.

“Take a drive with me,” she says. “There’s somewhere we need to go.”

37

We drive in silence, which is something Faye and I haven’t had much of since we met. It seems to me like she has always been talking or laughing or singing or doing something to make sure silence doesn’t happen. I took her for the type who has to drive accompanied by the car stereo, but she doesn’t make a move to turn it on, so I don’t, either.

I have zero control.

“Where are we going?” I finally ask.

“You’ll see,” is all she says. Another cryptic answer.

We end up in an empty parking lot near the beach, but Faye makes no move to get out. Instead, she pushes a button and the top of her convertible folds down. She reclines in her chair and looks at me expectantly until I do the same.

“Now look up,” Faye says, tipping her face up to the sky. And when I do look up, all I see is stars. I guess I never realized how much the city lights block them out.

“They look different horizontal,” I say. The whole sky looks more panoramic, like it really does stretch on forever.

“Lots of things look different horizontal,” Faye says. “That’s why sex is so honest.”

“Funny how I wasn’t honest at all,” I say with a bitter laugh. “Not with the people who mattered.”

“Speaking of honesty,” Faye says, pressing her cheek against the seat and facing me. “You have to know that what Zach and I did, it was for you and also for me. Because that’s the real reason I left my old school.”

“What happened?” I say slowly. “If you want to tell me.”

“You’re the one person I want to tell.” She pushes her hair back from her forehead. “I was dating a guy at the start of this year. I really liked him. I thought he really liked me. But one night we both got drunk at a party and hooked up in one of the bedrooms. I remember not wanting to do it there, but he really wanted to, so I gave in.” Her voice is airy and the words are coming out in fast-forward, almost like she swallowed helium. I can tell I’m the first person she told this story to in a long time. Maybe ever.

“Anyway, his friend was in the room with us. I was sort of out of it, but his friend videotaped us. The one thing I distinctly remember is telling his friend to leave. And my boyfriend said no. He wanted a tape, said we were the only people who would ever see it. Turns out, my boyfriend had another girlfriend, and I guess he was trying to make her jealous. By Monday, the whole school had seen that tape.”

“I’m sorry,” I say, wanting to reach for her hand but not moving.

“I was sorry, too,” she says. “I was very angry. The guy I thought was my boyfriend dropped me like I was worth nothing. And his girlfriend made it her mission to make my life hell. Going to school was torture. Lydia saw what I was going through, and she wasn’t happy in Nevada anyway.”

“You must have had a hard time trusting people again,” I say, finding her shoulder and squeezing it with my fingertips.

“I thought I would,” she says, turning to face me. “But I trusted you right away.”

I don’t know what to say. I can’t think of anything I could say that would equal that.

“I just wanted you to know,” Faye says, propping herself up on her elbow. “I wanted to tell you where nobody else could overhear.” She smiles and bites her lip. “I didn’t just bring you to an empty parking lot to make out with you.”

My eyes widen. “I didn’t think that,” I stammer, even though it’s exactly what crossed my mind when we rolled in here.

“Why? Don’t you want to make out with me?” she says, placing her hand on my leg and rolling over on her stomach.

I stare at her hand and then at her chest, which is moving up and down rhythmically with each breath she takes. I think about the night of the dance, when we almost kissed in the bathroom. I think back to all the little touches, the way her hair smelled when she hugged me. I think about her naked body on display on-screen.

I think about what it would be like to kiss her. It would be easy, to press my lips against hers and figure out if I was making those feelings up in my head. If I’m really attracted to Faye, or if I just like her because she’s not a guy. Nobody would ever know about it. None of the people at school who want to see me make a fool of myself. Not Charlie, who thinks he ruined my life. Not Angela. Not Zach.

But that’s when it hits me. I don’t want to kiss Faye. I want to
be
Faye. I want to be fearless like her, bold like her. I want to figure out a way to be unapologetically myself, just like she has. Kissing Faye wouldn’t make anything better. If anything, I know that it would make me feel guilty.

“You’re perfect,” I whisper. “But I can’t make out with you.”

I expect her to be disappointed, but instead her face breaks into a smile. “I thought so,” she says, sitting up and doing up her seat belt.

“Are you mad?” I say, wrapping my arms across my chest.

“Of course not, silly,” she says, starting the car. “I know exactly where you need to be right now, and I’m taking you there.”

My heart sinks when we end up on my street. For a horrifying second I think she’s taking me back to my house. Maybe she thinks I need to hash it out with Kim, find a way to forgive her and reconcile my fucked-up family life. And I don’t want to disappoint her, but there’s no Band-Aid big enough to put over that mess.

But we pass my house and keep driving. We keep driving until Faye pulls into Zach’s driveway and stops the car.

“Why are we here?” I say, aware that my heart is pounding erratically.

Faye leans over me and raises her eyebrow. “You’re a smart girl,” she says, reaching over and unbuckling my seat belt. “You’ll figure it out.”

She makes no motion to get out of the car. When it’s obvious she isn’t going to, I do. I shut the car door slowly and watch her drive away. When her car disappears from view, I smooth down the front of my skirt and walk slowly to Zach’s porch.

I ring the bell with shaking fingers. Nervous sweat is forming under my armpits, and I almost feel like I’m going to pass out. My mind flashes back to Evan Brown, how obvious his fright for being in a girl’s bedroom was. It was so foreign to me, the concept that people could be so terrified of sex.

But here I am, just as nervous to stand at a boy’s door.

Part of me doesn’t want Zach to be home. When he doesn’t answer the first ring, I almost turn and walk away. But then I think about Faye, about how I want to be more like her. Faye wouldn’t run from this. Faye would embrace it.

Zach opens the door in flannel pajamas, the same ones he was wearing when he took care of me after the dance. They look soft and harmless, and all I want to do is wrap myself up in him.

His eyes go big and he smiles. It’s his surprised smile, the one that reminds me of a hyper kid on Christmas morning, which means he had no idea I was coming over. I guess Faye has kept some secrets from him after all.

He reaches out to touch my face. “Hey.”

I know what I want to say, but the words get caught in my throat and suddenly I feel more naked and exposed than I did when Charlie leaked the video to the whole school. Like I have been stripped raw and hollowed out. I can’t even
think
it. If I had my notebook, I would call myself so many names.
Weakling. Idiot
. I’d rate myself a zero.