Jersey Angel (9 page)

Kipper Coleman plops down on the couch right next to me and pats my leg. “How about me and you go get a hamburger.” He has good breath, like he was just eating an apple.

“What’s open?”

He looks at his watch. “Shoot. Probably nothing. Not even the greasy spoon.”

“I could eat a hamburger,” I say.

“Oh, I wish I could make you a hamburger.” He looks at me longingly. “Let me check out the fridge and I’ll report back.” He leaps up and sprints into the kitchen and returns a minute later with an individually wrapped slice of yellow cheese and a dill pickle on a plate. “It was the best I could do.” I open the cheese and take a bite and hold it out to him but he shakes his head and says, “For you.” So I eat.

“Look,” Kipper says, scanning the room. “We’re the pity party people, the hangers-on who don’t know when to go home.”

“So what?” I say. I don’t want to go home yet. “Let’s fox-trot.”

In gym, they’re teaching us ballroom dancing. Who
knows why, but honestly, it’s kind of fun and interesting too. We get the fancy-schmancy handhold going, meaning your arms that aren’t around each other are held rigid out to the side. Very last-century.

“Slow, slow, quick, quick,” I say. “You’re a good dancer, you know that?”

“You smell like a pickle.”

“Sorry.”

“I don’t mind.” He leads us around the recliner and along the coffee table. “Rock back, forward, side, together. Hey, Angel, you think I’ll ever get laid?”

“Go get yourself a girlfriend.”

“It’s complicated,” he whispers. “The ones I like don’t like me and the ones I don’t like don’t like me either.”

“Come on. Alyssa?”

“She wants to be
friends
.”

“Marcie?”

“She wears Birkenstocks.”

I arch an eyebrow, which I note goes very well with this arm hold.

“Don’t give me that.
You
don’t wear Birkenstocks.” He has a point. “Am I really a good dancer?”

“Absolutely,” I say. I can easily follow what he leads, and we get a real rhythm going.

“How old were you when you did it?” he asks.

“Fourteen.”

“Crap. I’m so late to the game.” He falls on the couch.

I want to keep dancing, but it looks like he’s not moving, so I sit next to him.

He latches onto my arm. “What are the chances of you doing it with me?”

“Why me?” I shake him off.

“ ’Cause you’re so nice, Angel. And if I touch your boob I might die on the spot. And if I can’t get it up or last for like two seconds, I’m thinking you won’t blab it all over.” He chews on a nail. “What else could go wrong, by the way?”

“Those are the main ones, but there’s also, like, bad form.”

“Well, I don’t have any form. Not yet anyway.” He leans toward me. “I know you can’t tell by looking at me, but I’m actually sexy.”

“Do tell,” I say, plucking a cashew from the nut bowl.

“Naked,” he whispers. “I’m not so skinny, if you can believe it.”

I smile into the nut bowl and brush salt from my palms and stand up. “All right.”

His eyes tremble.

“I’ll make out with you,” I tell him.

“I’ll take it.”

“Don’t be so grateful. It’s not attractive.”

“Gotcha.” He leaps up and does a little hop.

“No hopping.” We walk out the front door into a foggy mist.

“Can I hold your hand?”

“Yeah, okay.”

“You’re so pretty, Angel.”

The cool, wet night swirls around us as I turn to him. “What do you like about me?”

He rakes his eyes over my face and takes about thirty seconds to answer. “It’s not any one thing in particular. It’s more the overall effect of your eyes, nose, mouth, and hair.” I’ll need to teach him something about romance. His hand is damp and warm in mine. “Let me know when we can start making out,” he says.

“You’re a nice guy, Kipper, but you totally need to relax.”

“Don’t I know it.”

Kipper hugs his books to his chest and stands by my locker. “I adore you.”

“No, you don’t.” I yank out my history book. He stands there staring at me, his face flushed like he has a tropical fever. “Listen,” I say low. “You just need to get laid fifty more times. You need some perspective.”

The bell rings, and I’m saved.

I didn’t mean to. I only meant to make out on my couch. But it wasn’t exactly comfy, the itchy fabric, the bad angles, and him so tall his legs hung over the edge. So I brought him upstairs and told him, “We’re not doing it. It’s just that I have a crick in my neck.”

We made ourselves comfy and old neurotic Kipper started to relax. It turns out he never felt a boob before, at least not a naked one, so he was full of glee and spent a long time looking and touching and burying his face between my boobage, which was a nice change of pace since most guys are quick to head south. And I have to agree
Kipper is sort of sexy in a super-skinny way,
sort of
being the key words. Sexy, I guess I mean, because he was sweetly game, his face happily flushed, laughing off his mis-pokes and asking how my clit worked. When the sun started to rise and he wouldn’t stop kissing my face, I finally had to throw him out.

In an Inggy-inspired moment, I take the SAT. She took it last spring and did well and she’s going to see if she can beat her score, which is kind of annoying no matter how you slice it. She calls early that morning to make sure I’m awake, then picks me up in her mom’s Infiniti. She’s not wearing any makeup, which make her pale lashes and brows disappear, but still, she looks good, her hair swinging in an energetic ponytail.

Cork’s sprawled out in the backseat, eyes closed, with a bowl of cereal on his chest. We head over to school and I’m thinking what’s the point, the community college is going to take me no matter what. They have no standards. Not to mention I only went to two of the study sessions. I give her a look as we pull into the school parking lot. It’s seven-forty-five a.m. on a Saturday. “Just take it,” she says.

“I am,” I snap.

•   •   •

I’m in with the first quarter of the alphabet and am sent upstairs to a large classroom along with Cork, who’s still eating out of his cereal bowl. Kipper gives me a sly little wave across the room. Soon enough, the proctor, one of our grubby subs, hands out the booklets and score sheets and we begin. Oh, help me.

I didn’t tell anybody, but I did bad on the PSAT. Like moron bad. What I told Inggy was that I didn’t do so hot and left it at that. The thing about that stupid PSAT is that it was demoralizing. After a lot of guesses I just lost heart and could barely pay attention. I hated it, and when I hate something I just can’t do it.

“Maybe standardized tests don’t work for you,” the old guidance counselor had said to me, glancing at my scores and my transcript littered with Cs. She took off her glasses and looked at me with ancient eyes, eyes like a turtle’s. “What do you want to do with yourself, Angel?”

“I don’t know.”

She nodded.

“I don’t love school, you know. I really can’t imagine four more years.”

“Maybe that’s right, and maybe you’ll return years later. Some do.”

“You know, I don’t think a job is everything. I think my
life is everything, and the job is one thing. It might be sort of interesting to be a receptionist. I’m friendly. I like people, and I like the phone. I’d like to sit at a desk and buzz people in and be the first person you see. I’m not saying I’d love it or anything, but I’d be good at it.”

She focused those ancient reptilian eyes on me. “I wonder if you’d like it, but there’s only one way to know. It’s a start, right?”

“Right.”

“Off you go,” she said, patting my hand.

I sat there. “I guess no matter what plan you have life will spring surprises. I read that in a book once, about life springing its surprises. I like that. My life definitely springs things on me.”

“That’s true, my dear, but it doesn’t mean you should wait around for what’ll happen. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t spring yourself.”

“Right,” I said, annoyed with her little maneuver, at how her words sounded better than mine.

“You’ll do fine, Angel.”

I nodded. “How do you think I should spring myself?”

“Hmm,” she said, taking a deep breath. “Start thinking about what you want. Down the road. What matters to you.”

“It’s not like there’s anything wrong with being a receptionist.”

“Of course not. Now, off you go, because I must skedaddle to a very boring meeting.” She sighed and patted my arm. “You’re a lovely girl.”

I’ve never told anyone else my receptionist plan. Not even my mom, ’cause she would say that it pays crap. Everything pays crap in her book. And it probably would on the island, but maybe I’ll move to the city. I could. Though I don’t know.

I stare at words, feeling myself grow damp. No, Larry is not a prevaricator. I’m certain. It must be this
raconteur
. I fill in the circle and with a pen I dig out of my bag I write both words on my hand because I’m pretty annoyed.

Then it happens. I lose heart. I fold up my answer sheet, stick it in my bag, and sit there for a while, head down, telling myself this is one small moment in my otherwise interesting life.

I get up eventually and walk out, quietly closing the door behind me, and look in through the little window at the back of the sub’s head where her hairdo is crushed from sleeping on it. She’s bent over a novel and everyone is
hunched over their booklets. I have Cork in my line of vision, and finally he looks up and sees me. In a few seconds he lifts himself out of his seat, and I wait for him by the water fountain.

“I’m bailing,” I say.

He takes my fingers and we run down two flights to the gym, so fast we’re practically flying, and push through the doors. It’s dark and the air is sweaty and close, and we run through the big gym into the little gym where all the mats are stacked. Cork throws me down and kisses me hard and I grab his hair and we roll around, exhilarated. I flip off my shoes, and he pushes off my jeans and underwear and my ass is on the rubber mat and we do it really hard and much too fast. I feel slammed. The best part was tearing down the stairs, flying through the gym.

“You ever do it in the gym?” he asks.

“Nope.”

“Now you have.”

“You?”

“Now I have.” I can feel him smile. He jumps up and pulls on his jeans. It takes me longer to get everything on. “Wait,” I say, but he’s rushing out. “Don’t go back. I can’t find my sneak. Cork, my sneaker.” I laugh, feeling around in the dark. He has the door open, a ray of light slivering in, but he runs back and joins my groping. “Here,” he says, shoving it at me.

“I’m bailing,” I say.

“You told me.”

“Let’s go to the beach.” He takes off again, and I don’t have time to put my sneaker on, so I run alongside him, one shoe on, one off, my bag bumping my hip. “Why you going back?” I say.

“Look, if you don’t want to take it, don’t.” And he’s pushing through the doors and taking the steps two at a time.

Well then. I walk out into the sunshine and take off my sneaker and walk barefoot across the street to the beach. Bye-bye, SATs. I roll up my jeans and walk near the waterline, where the wind whips my hair all around. I have to pull it back in an elastic, and while I’m in my bag I take out the score sheet. Less than a quarter filled in. How is it that this sheet can tell you how smart you are? I stare at all the hollow circles, the perfect orderly rows. And I realize there
is
an order. You start out in school and pay attention. You don’t allow your mind to wander over to the window. You read what you’re supposed to and write what you’re supposed to and take your homework home and do it. Before a test, you study. One grade leads to the next, and step by step you learn what you need to learn. By the time you get to the SAT you naturally know what a prevaricator is because you’ve done things in order. I crumple up the score sheet and drop it in a garbage can on top of a potato chip bag. Sayonara.

I sit in the sand and look at the waves. God, Cork, you
could have taken a few more minutes. It wouldn’t have killed you. The grubby sub was so tuned out she wouldn’t have noticed how long he was gone. The sky darkens and the water changes from bluish-green to metallic gray. The wind kicks up, and the waves become foamier. Then the clouds break open, a hard rain falls, and I run like mad off the beach and across the street to the library. It’s a tiny branch, and in the bathroom I wipe myself off with paper towels until I’m just damp but not soaking. I sit down in the main room to wait it out.

What is it about libraries? There’s a plastic-bag lady. Lots of plastic bags filled with God knows what. She mutters and checks her watch every few seconds. There’s Band-Aid man. He’s got one on his chin and one on his forehead.