Playing Nice (14 page)

"Matt Three-Last-Names? Be careful with him," Lil says, flicking her cigarette into the air.

I groan. "Not you, too. What's so wrong with me?"

"It's not you," she says, setting her eyes directly on me. "I just don't trust a guy who carries around a guitar."

Every day leading up the Hot Shot dance, I sit at my desk in my bedroom, doing homework and staring at the bag of decorations tucked under my bed. My mom's decorations. Red and pink and sparkles galore. All things I thought I liked. My eyes move around the room, and I wonder if my walls are pink because I love the color or because my mom does. Do I like scarves and croissants because I want to go to Paris or because my mom wants to go to Paris?

I can't get the Ramones out of my head.

"We'll meet in the gym tomorrow at 5 PM," Ms. Everley says at the end of the final WelCo meeting before the dance. "Marty, you bring the decorations and we'll get started. It's going to be great."

I look down at the paper where I was supposed to be taking notes.

I stopped there because the poem started to sound like a Dr. Seuss book and
life
and
right
really don't rhyme and the more I thought about the Ramones the more I missed Lil. And I felt guilty for not listening to Ms. Everley, who thinks I'm as good as Margaret Thatcher.

"Is everything all right, Marty?" Ms. Everley asks as I walk past her desk.

"Ms. Everley, how did you know you wanted to be an English teacher?"

Her eyebrows rise and she sets down her pen. "If it were up to my parents, I would have been a housewife." She pauses. "I knew that wasn't for me."

"How did you know?"

"Let's just say, some people like hot dogs. Some people prefer the bun," Ms. Everley says, shrugging. "My parents didn't get that. They still don't. But teaching always made sense to me."

Ms. Everley waits for me to respond, but I don't know what to say. What do hot dogs and buns have to do with anything?

"What if I'm different? What if who I thought I was isn't who I am?" I finally ask.

"Who do you think you are?"

"I don't know."

"Well, the good news is that you have time to figure it out."

"Do you know who you are now that you're older?" I ask.

"Some days I think I do. Others I don't."

"But you know you like the bun."

She nods and smiles, "Over a hot dog? Any day. Even if other people don't."

"Why wouldn't people like it?"

My phone buzzes as Ms. Everley opens her mouth to respond.

Lil:
Get ur ass out 2 the parking lot.

I smile. Just seeing her name on the screen settles my stomach and clears my vision.

"I better go," I say, slinging my backpack over my shoulder.

"I'll see you tomorrow." Ms. Everley smiles at me. Her shirt seems extra low today, cleavage popping out of the royal blue ruffles with extra bounce; as usual, she's got on makeup a drag queen would be proud of. But if Lil can wear combat boots and a skull ring, why can't Ms. Everley dress like a stripper? At least she knows who she is most days. I may dress pretty, but inside I'm a jumbled mess of a thousand colors running together until they turn a mushy stream of brown. Going by what Ms. Everley says, I do know one thing: I like hot dogs.

I mean, who would ever want to eat just a bun?

Lil's car is parked at the back of the lot, stereo blaring music that echoes off the brick walls of the school. She's reclined all the way back in her seat, red sunglasses over her eyes. It's cold today. Winter cold. I think it might snow, but for some reason the closer I get to the car, the warmer I feel. I knock on the windshield. Lil sits up quickly, a bright red lipstick smile on her face.

"Do you think I'm like Ms. Everley?" I ask.

"Do I think you probably get sloppy drunk on the weekends and have a college thong collection you can't seem to get rid of? No. Why?" Lil puts her sunglasses on her head.

"No reason."

"Well, don't stand out there all afternoon. Get in," she says.

I don't hesitate like I did that first day. I don't look for Sarah's approval. I know she won't get it. Instead, opening the door, I slide into the front seat that feels made for me. As I settle into the car, my mind clears.

"Where are we going?" I ask, just like that first day.

"Haven't you already learned that I'm not going to tell you?" Lil revs the engine and peels out of the parking lot.

We drive through town, the windows rolled down, freezing air coursing through the car. I put my hand out the window and let it curve through the breeze like a wave. Lil smokes cigarette after cigarette and pounds her fists on the steering wheel to the beat of the music. Everything lightens inside me, like this moment might be the best of my life. Like this is what living is supposed to be. Free, with music blaring, with the wind whipping my hair in my face and tangling its length into knots I don't want to brush out. I don't care if I like hot dogs or buns or pink or Paris. I like this, right here, right now.

My phone buzzes; a text message.

Sarah:
Come over right now! I hate my dress! Need damage control!

I want to throw the phone out the window. Instead I turn it off.

Lil drives until we hit the dirt road we took to get to the party at Lake Loraine. She turns down the path and parks in the exact spot where we parked that night.

"Why are we here?" I ask, a knot forming in my stomach. I thought the text message waterfall would go away. I thought people would ease up as time ticked on. But they haven't. Lil has fought through a barrage of words every day. W
hore
,
slut
,
trash
. Someone even printed the picture and taped it to her locker.

Why would she want to come back here?

"I need to do something." Lil gets out of the car. I follow, willing to do whatever she needs. We walk until we get to the edge of the lake. The exact spot where I found her with gross-out guy. "Why do men think mustaches are acceptable?" She asks me.

"I don't know," I say.

"Cops and circus ring leaders are the only professions that should allow facial hair."

"What about porn stars?"

Lil smiles at me and turns back to the water. Her eyes squint and turn dark, like she's looking past the surface to something below. "Sometimes I can still feel his stubble on my skin."

"Lil..." I start to say something, anything that might soothe what she's thinking, but she turns around and grabs a large rock off the ground. Running up to the edge of the water, her boots almost going in, she flings the rock high into the air and yells. A deep, throat-breaking yell that echoes back to us from the other side of the lake.

I let her stand there, watching the ripples from the drowning rock until they reach the shore and disappear. She lights a cigarette and exhales the smoke out into the air.

"So are you going to dance with Alexander the Great Big Boner tomorrow night or what?" Lil asks, sitting down in the sand. I sit next to her and shrug.

"I don't know." Picking up a stick, I start to draw on the ground, writing my name and then Lil's. "Can I ask you something?"

"Sure." Lil puts the cigarette out in the sand.

I take a deep breath. "What does it feel like?" Even in the cold my cheeks burn with embarrassment.

"What does what feel like?"

"Sex. What does it feel like?" I ask. I want to know so badly, and Lil is the only person I know who's done it. Maybe if I know, I won't be so anxious.

"It feels like falling on the bar of a bike a thousand times," Lil says, pulling her knees to her chest and resting her chin on them.

"That sounds horrible."

"It is."

Sarah and I have been planning what we want our first time to be like since junior high. We agreed that we want to lose our virginity the summer before college so it would be with someone we know from our hometown. I said I wanted rose petals on the bed and Sarah said she wanted Debussy's "Clair de Lune" playing in the background.

We also agreed that no matter what, whoever it was, we would be in love. Real love. Passionate love. We would stand in front of each other naked and look and I wouldn't be scared of his private parts because I was comfortable.

"Did you love him?" I ask.

"No," Lil says flatly. "I just wanted to do it. Like ripping off a Band-Aid or something."

"Have you done it with a lot of people?"

"A few." Lil looks at me and I wish I could live in her head for a day, to see the world in different colors or know what she does. "You shouldn't settle for anything less than love, Marty. A boy who will take his time and care about you. What it feels like physically doesn't matter. How it changes you in your heart does."

"Have you ever been in love?" I ask.

"Love?" Lil shakes her head. "There are people like you and there are people like me. There's Juliet and then there's Rosaline."

"I think you're a Juliet."

"And that, Pollyanna, is why she ends up dead at the end." Lil stands up and wipes the sand off the back of her black jeans. "Come on, I'll take you home."

"Um, Lil?"

"Please don't ask me about blow jobs." I laugh and squirm at the same time, and then point to her cigarette butt still stuck in the sand. She picks it up and we walk away from Lake Loraine.

***

When all the decorations are hung and the gym is covered in red and pink bulls-eyes and cupids holding rifles, I step back and look at my work. A banner hangs over my head. "Shot Through the Heart" . I wish Lil was coming tonight, so she could make the pit in my stomach go away. As I walked around directing the WelCo kids about where to hang everything, I couldn't stop thinking that I have no business telling them what to do. I can't get my own brain straight. It's a mess of words and music and sex and the desire to see Matt tonight. Who am I to tell someone else how to decorate?

As I stare at the words I painted on the paper, the theme my mom came up with, all I notice is that I painted outside of the lines. Little bits of red and pink run past the letter shapes I drew, making the banner imperfect. And the girl inside of me, the one that wants to see the world as a bunch of jumbled, curved lines, is happy. But the outward girl, who's wearing a hunter green dress that falls right above the knee and cinches at the waist so my boobs look just the right size, a small C cup, is mad I was so sloppy.

"Let's all give Marty a big round of applause for her great work," Ms. Everley yells to all the WelCo kids. "This place looks great. You should be proud of yourself, Marty!"

"Thanks," I say and force a smile.
Proud of myself
. I don't know what that is anymore. A few weeks ago, proud of myself would have meant making sure everything for this dance was perfect. The kind of perfect people remember and talk about. Now, I'm not sure what to be proud of. Proud I've spent years hiding the person locked inside me? Tonight, she wants to scream at the top of her lungs:
this is a dance that celebrates the killing of innocent animals! I can cover the entire place in glitter, but Bambi still hates us!
Or proud that she's coming out now and I didn't die with her locked inside of me, drowning on unwritten, unsaid words?

In the bathroom, I fix my makeup and reapply pink lip gloss. Matt's black jelly bracelet is still on my wrist. Anxious energy rumbles in my stomach, so I text Lil.

Marty:
Please come 2 the dance
.

I wait for a response, but it doesn't happen. The DJ stars to play music that vibrates the walls of the bathroom. People are shuffling in, girls doing the same thing I am before heading into the gym-turned-meat-market to grind with boys in an acceptable arena.

I walk out and wait for Sarah at our designated meeting spot outside of the gymnasium.
I'm not walking in there alone. I don't care if you're in charge of the dance
, she said to me earlier this week.

She walks through the doors, a red pea coat covering up her pink dress. Makeup is applied expertly to her face, not a brushstroke out of place, and her hair is pulled half back, red curls falling around her shoulders.

"You look great," I say.

"No thanks to you." She takes off her coat and hands it to the freshman coat checker.

"What?" I ask.

"My text message. You never came over." She purses her lips at me, hands on her hips.

Shit
. "Sorry, I got carried away with the dance."

"When did you become a liar, Marty? Pippa saw you leave with Lil yesterday. What are you thinking?" Sarah grabs my arm and pulls me into a corner. Her tight fingers hurt my skin. "Are you trying to completely slaughter your reputation?"

"I'm being nice."

Sarah laughs, a condescending sound that comes through her teeth. "Marty. Lil is trash. Pippa told me she lives in a trailer. A trailer! Let alone what her mom did."

"What
did
her mom do?" I ask.

Sarah steps back, arms crossed over her pink dress, a wicked grin on her face. "She didn't tell you? And you're willing to let it all go for a girl you barely know."

I stare at Sarah, at the vacant look in her eyes, at the clutch that matches her dress that matches the clip in her hair.

A sophomore girl walks by and says, "Shot through the heart. What a lame theme."

The air gets tight, like all of a sudden I've been placed on a planet where I can't breathe and everyone is an alien. I want to tear down the decorations and burn them. I look around, trying to find a place to catch my breath, and see Alex walk through the door. I race over to him.