Like It Never Happened (8 page)

“We're happy you're home,” he repeated. “The house felt too quiet without you.”

T
he summer before
,
when Tess had found out I was a virgin—despite our whole school's belief in my sexual prowess—she had at first been shocked and then determined to get rid of it. Like my virginity had been a rash, or a parking ticket—something simply cured or dismissed. I had only needed to appeal to the right person.

Her parents had invited me to spend a week at their house in Seaside, and Tess had sworn it was the perfect opportunity. I had made the mistake of questioning her logic: Why leave the city—which was theoretically swarming with beddable boys—for a town with a population of six thousand? My options would be reduced by one hundred times. Tess had rolled her eyes.

“The point is for the guy to be a stranger,” she said. “You'll never have to see him again.”

“And that's a good thing?” I asked.

Tess nodded sagely. “Trust me, you won't want to see him again.”

“Why not?”

“Because it's going to be a disaster.”

That made sense. When I thought realistically about having sex with a person, I couldn't imagine it being anything short of disastrous. Maybe if my first attempt was with a stranger, I would be better prepared to do it with a boy I actually liked. The first time would be like a dress rehearsal, only without any costumes.

But the coast was having a cold summer and Seaside was pretty dead. Toward the end of the week, when Tess had almost lost hope, we finally located some boys. Their names were Jason and Connor and they were loitering outside the sweet shop. They both had mouths full of saltwater taffy—Jason's with green apple, Connor's with tutti-frutti.

I thought you could probably tell a lot about a boy based on his preferred flavor of taffy. Tess stepped closer to Jason.

The four of us wandered down the main drag of Seaside, lined with dingy arcades and ice-cream parlors and stuff that was allegedly exciting to people a hundred years ago. Peering through the window of the Thingamajigs Store was kind of like looking at old pictures of your parents—when your mom keeps insisting wooden clogs and red paisley dresses were the style, and you can't help but suspect she was kidding herself, even then.

The sun was high and the sky cloudless, but the wind kept biting at my neck. Outside of a clothing store, Connor felt up a mannequin. It was modeling a hoodie that said
I'VE GOT SEASIDE SWAGGER
. Jason hooted his approval so loudly the shopkeeper came outside to yell at us. The boys sprinted down the street, laughing like they had gotten away with something.

Riding the bumper cars was Tess's idea. She lifted her eyebrows as she made the suggestion, like bumper cars were common foreplay. We each gave four dollars to the boy at the gate. He was actually kind of cute, the gatekeeper. He had floppy hair and a mole like Marilyn Monroe's. I smiled at him as he helped me into a lime-green car.

We had the track to ourselves, because it was cold and hardly even fun. At first we just drifted around, Tess and I giggling self-consciously and the boys ramming into each other like goats. With a strange look on his face, Jason—who was supposed to like Tess best—crashed his car into mine as hard as he could. Then he looked at me expectantly, like how I reacted to the attack meant everything about what kind of girl I was. And I tried to be the right kind, by laughing and returning the crash with equal force.

“Ohhh,” said Jason, in a this-means-war kind of way. His tone attracted Connor, and soon they were both slamming against me to a sound track of Tess's giggles. I attempted to maneuver my car away from theirs, inspiring them to back me into a corner. They took turns rear-ending me, shouting “We win!” and “Game over!” and other things boys take so seriously.

I could hear Tess getting annoyed. Nobody was paying any attention to her. “Come on, guys,” she whined. “This is dumb.”

It was in fact dumb, so I said, “Knock it off,” and they did.

Bumper cars weren't so sexy after all.

On the sidewalk I reminded Tess we had to be back at the house for dinner. I was actually excited for dinner; we were having bouillabaisse.

Tess leaned close to Jason to whisper something in his ear, and whatever it was caused his eyebrows to leap and his lips to twist mischievously.

“What did you tell him?” I looked over my shoulder at the boys retreating, their heads ducked low.

“To meet us on the beach tonight,” said Tess. “We're sneaking out.”

The boys were likely already drunk when we arrived. They had built a campfire right on the sand and the flames were waist-high. The sky was black and the ocean, somehow, even darker.

Jason and Connor kept harping on a weird inside joke. It started when Jason touched Tess's hair and asked, “What kind of bird are you?”

“Huh?” Tess giggled. For someone who claimed to have once made out with David Bowie's nephew, she didn't seem that accustomed to having her hair touched.

“Probably a blue jay,” said Connor.

Jason looked aghast and said, “Nuh-uh, pure robin.”

Connor jerked his thumb in my direction. “This one's the robin.”

“I can be a robin.” Tess pouted. “They have pretty red chests.”

Her cheeks burned; she had not meant to reference her own chest. Still, Jason couldn't hold out another second before attaching his lips to hers.

Perched on the end of a log, Connor was clutching a Heineken, staring at me like I was a poster on the wall of his science classroom, or his toothbrush. I sat down next to him—because what else was there to do, really? He slid his hand beneath my tank top, pressing against the small of my back. I had not realized that a stranger's hand against my skin could feel like such a good idea.

It was my first kiss ever and it was not good. Connor's mouth was all weak and wet and redundant. As we made out, my mind was occupied with the horrifying realization that kissing was terrible, it was humiliating.

It was mostly spit.

I wanted to revisit the simple pressure of his hand, which had felt so promising. But I couldn't think of a polite way to request he eject his tongue from my mouth, so I just kept going.

Jason
unzipped
his
backpack
to
produce
more
Heineken. He held out a beer for me to take. I stared at the bottle glistening in the firelight, slick and green like kelp.

Abruptly, and without a word of explanation, I ran. I didn't slow down until I was over the grassy dunes and out of their sight. The road to Tess's house was gravel and, of course, I had left my shoes on the beach.

I managed to get inside and into bed without waking any of the Dunhams. About an hour later I heard Tess push through the window of the room next to mine. Judging by the noise, she wasn't alone. It was fairly bold of her to bring Jason back to the house containing all of her sleeping relatives. But I was soon distracted by the door handle turning in my own room, the boy-shaped shadow appearing in the frame.

The door clicked into place behind him and he loomed wordlessly over my bed.

“Feeling better?” he asked, kneeling on the mattress. Connor wasn't wearing a shirt. It made no sense. The ocean was freezing. They couldn't have gone swimming.

“No.” I raised my knees, defensive.

“I'll make you feel better,” he said, simultaneously drunk and matter-of-fact.

“No.” My fear was not the slow-creeping anxiety induced by horror movies. It was immediate and paralyzing. I was a rabbit, cornered. My heart beat in my throat.

I had this idea that I wouldn't be able to stop him. He had the advantage of size, and drunkenness. And probably Tess had promised him I wanted it.

His mouth tasted like metal and blood and something organic. I kept saying, “No,” like even if it happened, at least it would happen to a sound track of no. I would never be able to convince myself I had said anything but no, the first time.

I said no to his hands on my thighs, and I said no when he pulled my tank top straps down over my shoulders. I said it so many times that the word turned soft in the middle, like a tender piece of steak.

He grabbed the front of my pajama pants, and with a fistful of material he assessed the situation, which was nothing but cotton and elastic. I felt his smile grow against my neck, like the elastic meant yes. And I whispered my last no.

Thrusting my knee between his legs, I hissed, “If you don't get off me, I will scream so fucking loud.”

There were a lot of people in that house: Tess's parents, her aunts and uncles and cousins and grown brothers. Connor respected the command, like a blade against his throat. He peeled his body from mine, never re-touching the places he vacated. He left through the window and I rose from the bed only to lock the door. It felt very important to lock that door.

Through the wall, I could hear Tess with Jason. I was still trying to determine if she was laughing or crying when I fell asleep. My brain shut down without warning, like the old computers in the school library. The next thing I knew—some number of minutes or hours later—the locked door was rattling. In my half consciousness, I saw Tess's face in the doorknob: two screws for her flooded eyes, a sad keyhole of a mouth.

Deep down, I knew it was wrong to feel so mad at her. I had never told Tess I didn't want to have sex. Before we met Jason and Connor, when sex was just an idea, it had seemed like a reasonable plan. Like a sure way of eliminating a painful moment in the future: me stuttering beneath a boy I liked, confessing, “My first time.”

But I only liked Connor when he was an abstraction. Once I saw him with his flat-billed cap and those basketball shorts—which, from certain angles, revealed the contours of certain organs—I knew I couldn't sleep with him. The idea was kind of laughable, like doing it with a refrigerator.

Listening to Tess cry in the hallway, it had occurred to me that she was a virgin too. Or at least that she had been, moments earlier. And I should have felt sorry for her then, because I was okay and she wasn't—because I had changed my mind, and she couldn't. But instead I had fallen asleep, half believing her sobs belonged to my dreams. Later, after she had stopped speaking to me, I had wanted to blame my brain for malfunctioning.

Now I blamed my survival instincts.

“A
re you and Charlie still close friends?
”

My mother attempted to ask this question very casually. I had been home from camp for approximately twenty-four hours. We were eating dinner on the patio.

I looked up from my plate. “Yup.”

“Just good friends, or special friends?”

Charlie still hadn't called, but I had spent the last day thinking about his hand sliding down my shorts, so I guess he qualified as a special friend. I knew there was a chance Charlie would pretend we hadn't hooked up—and I knew that, in a way, it was our best option. I missed the Essential Five and did not particularly want to suffer the consequences of breaking the pact.

But my mother's professionally plucked eyebrows were raised, all hopeful. It wasn't often that I had the opportunity to make her happy.

“Somewhat special,” I answered, already cursing myself.

A grin stretched across her face. My mother looked thrilled, like until this moment she had fully expected me to die alone.

After dinner I walked toward Sixteenth Avenue, past sprinklers hissing and people drinking beers on porch steps. I lacked a clear plan. Guilt was threatening to displace the food in my stomach—but I didn't exactly intend to confess, and I didn't exactly intend to lie.

At Liane's house, a diminutive, sundress-clad version of Liane answered the door. The kid gave me a wide-eyed stare and said nothing.

“Uh.” I peered into the house, hoping to be rescued. “I guess I'm looking for your sister.”

Shrugging her bony shoulders, the kid said, “Liane's probably in her tree house.”

“Yeah?”

“I was supposed to inherit the tree house.” She sighed and kind of collapsed against the door frame. “But Liane's always in it.”

“Where exactly is the tree house?” I asked.

Liane's sister gestured for me to follow her through the living room, to a screen door off of the kitchen. An ancient tree took up most of the backyard, its roots warping the surrounding earth. Gracelessly I ascended the ladder and heaved myself into Liane's hideout.

She was hunched over, frantically trying to put out a cigarette. Jean shorts exposed her long legs and a new haircut emphasized the spherical tendency of her curls.

“Jesus!” she cried, relief washing over her face. “I thought you were Danielle.”

‘This is amazing,” I said, looking around. “I've never been in a tree house.” Beanbag chairs sat in each corner and two Coleman lanterns dangled from the ceiling. I stepped closer to a wall plastered with posters: Avril Lavigne, a shirtless man torn from the pages of
Cosmo,
a bear cub looking posed and pained.

“Middle school?” I summarized.

“Essentially,” said Liane.

I sank beside her and issued a one-armed hug. “Hi.”

“Hi.” She squeezed me tight before producing a pack of cigarettes. “Want one?”

I accepted. Over the past year, my smoking skills had improved considerably. In the winter I had purchased a pack from the Lucky Stars Mart and practiced in the alley behind my house.

“So,” said Liane, expertly harboring smoke in her lungs, “how was camp?” She emphasized each word, as if bracing herself.

“Awful,” I said. “I'm going to have to shower for about a year straight to get the campfire smell out of my hair.”

Liane lifted my braid and sniffed it. She wrinkled her nose.

“And whoever thought to make a musical out of the collected works of Dr. Seuss should maybe be arrested,” I added.

Liane nodded knowingly. “Well, you didn't miss much here.”

“Not true. I read your e-mails. I missed pancakes and movie nights.”

“You missed pancakes and movie nights,” Liane allowed. “But it wasn't really the same without you and Charlie.”

Hearing his name kind of gutted me. Maybe I could tell Liane about us if I said it fast, like ripping off a Band-Aid. “Charlie and I—”

“He was weird, right?”

My heart pounded against my ribs. “What do you mean?”

“He's always weird around new people.” Liane tapped her cigarette. “It's like this tic he has. He becomes whatever they want him to be.”

I remembered Charlie splashing into the lake, instant leader of the wild-boy counselors.

“When we were kids,” she continued, “my parents let him come to our family reunion in Burns and Charlie spent the entire week sucking up to my cousins. He mastered
Magic: The Gathering
overnight, I swear. They still ask me about him.”

I laughed a little and, taking a breath, told her all about Camp Charlie—how he had concealed the evidence of his overachieving, theater nerd self to become champion of the midnight canoe races.

“Yeah.” Liane made her voice flat. “That's Charlie.”

We sank into an awkward silence. I watched a buildup of ash fall from Liane's cigarette to the floorboards and I wondered if she suspected anything. Without even being here, Charlie had managed to dominate our conversation. I hated him for that.

“Of all my friends,” said Liane evenly, “you are the only one who's been up here.”

“Really?” I looked around, appreciative.

“Except for Charlie,” she added.

“Charlie,” I echoed.

“Not in years,” she clarified.

“Oh.” I tried to seem normal, like nothing about this conversation hurt me. “What was he like when he was younger?” I asked, hoping Liane would take the opportunity to assure me she had never, ever pined for him.

Liane shrugged. “Same as now. Exciting, exasperating. He was my first kiss.”

Repressing a cough made my eyes leak.

“We were ten,” she continued. “It was kind of a joke, or an experiment. We wanted to know what it felt like.”

Wading deeper into the murkiest subject, I asked, “So, what did it feel like?”

“It was okay. It didn't feel like much. We were still little kids.” Squinting at the ceiling, she spoke faster. “The weird thing is that I still get really jealous, like whenever he has a girlfriend, or tells me about hooking up with someone. I mean, I don't even want to be his girlfriend. I just don't want anybody else to be either.”

I concentrated on smoking, taking increasingly deep breaths. There was a prickly sort of niceness to hearing someone else obsess over Charlie. Like it allowed me to take a break from the job.

“But we don't really
know
each other. Charlie might think he knows me, because there are pictures of us on the swing set together, and I once puked all over him at Oaks Park. But we've changed so much. He's been so intense about getting into Harvard. He used to be completely different.”

“Different how?”

She didn't answer, but she shook out her shoulders and arms, as if to demonstrate a looser person.

“So what was it like for you?” she asked.

“What, my first kiss?”

“No.” She smiled. “Kissing Charlie onstage.”

Liquefying,
I thought, combining that memory with more recent kisses: by the lake, and as we watched our campers take their bows, and for the last time on the bus. Out loud I said, “It was nothing. It was like kissing my hand.”

“Huh.” Liane ground her cigarette into a floorboard. Clearly she didn't believe me.

Tentatively, I asked, “Do you think you'll ever kiss Charlie again?”

She rolled her eyes. “He wouldn't kiss me again if his life depended on it.”

“Why not?”

“Look at me.” She fluttered her hand over her face, her body. “And look at him.”

I had never been particularly versed in the language of girls. I didn't really know if I was allowed to look her in the eye and say, “You're beautiful.” Liane was a lot bigger than me. Meaning she had broad shoulders and wide hips. When she walked, she kept her spine perfectly straight.

“That's stupid,” I said finally. “Charlie's not as hot as he thinks he is.”

Of course, Charlie was precisely as hot as he suspected, but that wasn't the point. If my obsession with him was a disease, talking to Liane was the closest I'd found to a cure. Being with her put all former friendships into perspective—like they had been insurance plans against social destitution, nothing more. Liane was bold and careful and mysterious.

After a long silence, she said, “Hey, can I ask you something?”

“Sure.” I steeled myself. If she asked me outright,
Did you hook up with
Charlie?
I would tell the truth. Liane would have to determine the degree of my offense—whether I had broken the pact, or something more important.

“Do you have a problem with Tess?”

Not the question I had expected. For half a second, I hesitated. It might have felt good to admit that Tess and I had been friends before the Essential Five. At least one secret would be out in the open. Instead, I formed my most innocent face. “Of course not. Did she say I have a problem with her?”

“She might have said that you ignore her,” admitted Liane.

“I like Tess,” I said. “But sometimes she makes me uncomfortable. Like, I know that she enjoys being a seductress, or whatever—”

“She's
liberated,
” said Liane.

“Well, when people call me
liberated,
I hate it.”

“What's that about, anyway?” Liane and I had gone to different middle schools, and apparently nobody had told her about the incident.

“Oh, I wore a leopard-print thong to the seventh-grade sleepover.”

Liane kind of choked. “Excuse me?”

“Jenna Farley thought I might be cool because I was on TV. She took me underwear shopping.”

“And then . . .” Liane motioned for me to explain.

“My pants fell down.”

She threw back her head and laughed. “Do you want to know a secret?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said quickly. I would have paid money for her secrets.

“You're my favorite.”

I felt a dumb smile stretch across my face and dimple my cheeks. “Blasphemy,” I said.

Liane closed her lips around her cigarette. Her eyes drifted toward her middle school wall of shame. “Truth,” she said.