Principles of Love (17 page)

The first time I heard it, I thought I was hallucinating. The second time, I figured I was inserting my own paranoia into the dining hall chatter. Now, after the third time hearing “Puke-owski” I am fully aware that the rumor mill is churning full force and I am its subject of choice today.

I long to escape the memory of the stomach-meets-alcohol incident and free myself from the knowing glances (Colorado, Cordelia, Harriet Walters) and glares (Colorado after being informed some blue vomit stained her white shirt, Jacob in English at least I think it was a look of disdain but his hair is growing out over his eyes so it’s hard to tell, and goddamn Thompson in Math as if she knows what’s going on beyond the blackboard).

With my newly purchased air-cushioned Saucony sneakers on, I flee and find myself running a totally different route than ever before. I go past the health center, behind the faculty lot, and up into the woods near the end of the cross-country trail. When I hear footsteps crunching behind me at a similar pace, I pray it’s not a murderer, cursing the horror movies that take place in the woods for giving me the creeps on a perfectly pleasant jog — and am relieved, though very surprised to find Lila looking like Cameron Diaz — a mesh of glamour and sport.

We run alongside each other until I nearly knock myself out on a tree and we stop short.

“Sorry,” she says.

‘I’m okay,” I say and pat the oak.

“No — I mean, not about that. About, you know. The other stuff.” When I don’t say anything she keeps going, taking her hair out from its clasp and letting it fall to her shoulders. She loops the elastic around her middle finger and leaves it there. “You probably have figured it out by now, but I’m not pregnant.” She lifts her shirt to show me her tanned, flat belly for proof.

“That’s good, right?” I say. I lean up against the tree and stretch my legs.

“Sure — yeah. I guess I didn’t say anything before because — well, first I didn’t know and then I finally got my period and I felt so fucked up over it.”

I turn to her. “Of course you did — it’s a really big thing that you had hanging over your head.”

Lila shakes her head at me. “No, wait. I mean, what I want to say is that I never — Robinson and I never did it. We never had sex.”

“So it would have been immaculate conception?” I say, trying to make light or sense of this moment. They dated for nearly two years (a marriage in high school terms) and never consummated their deal…interesting. Unlikely, but interesting.

“I never felt ready with him. I wanted to — or I thought I did at certain points. Once at his parent’s house in the Hamptons. But I had too much wine. And then, what am I going to do, loose my virginity in a dorm? No thanks.”

“But so, why the pregnancy thing?” Is Lila crazy? One of those horribly misinformed women who don’t understand the mechanisms of female anatomy? Or is she secretly an attention-monger, longing for the drama a missed period can bring?

“Well, this is the thing, Love. Please don’t be mad. Okay?” I nod. Sure. Why not. “I’ve been sleeping with Channing for, like, almost three months.” I try to count backward to figure out when this started and Lila can see what I’m doing so she pre-empts my math. “Since after you and he kissed. A couple weeks after.”

“What if I’d wanted to go out with him?” I ask. It was entirely conceivable that Channing could have won me over with persistence and ardor and then where would I be?

“But you didn’t,” Lila sighs. “Anyway, I just hope you’re cool with it. And that it’s some consolation that Robinson was never a part of the EPT fiasco.”

I’m unsure why she’s going into all the details, but I’m glad to be her confidante. To have a running partner. We jog back and she tells me the Pukeowski debacle will fade in a couple of days as soon as someone else does something gross or brainless or typically teenagery.

“Want to go shopping on Newbury Street this weekend?” Lila asks.

“Sure,” I say. “There’s a really good place for lunch I went to with my aunt — near G-Spa.”

“Let’s go there. I need to find something for the V-Day Dance.” There’s a new boutique hotel in the old leather district (think less S&M more leather coats and belts) where the Hadley Hall Valentine’s Dance will be held. The tickets raise money for some fund or other and it’s supposed to be fun. If, say, you’re asked to go. But I haven’t been.

Lila deposits me at the front door and I head inside to procrastinate reading for English and History. I quickly do my Spanish homework; I write several whole paragraphs describing my house and my room (I live in a house yellow. My room, she is on the second floor and is having a green rug). Then I allow myself to check email.

Still no DrakeFan. Is it over? I write in my journal about our letters back and forth and read through some of the unfinished songs, including the one about Jacob and that night. The whole evening, all those hours and that sweet drink we made up, it all feels far away. Like it happened to someone else. Someone else in a movie. Pretty perfect, I guess. Maybe too much so.

Being the Blog-spy that I am (and what other reason to have a Blog if not for people to find it and read it. Antithetical, by the way, as to my own journal-keeping reasons) I check JC Hall’s and find out that…dum-da-dum…JC/Robinson is going to ask me to the dance.

I head to the mat after dinner and find him there in the dark. The weight of Lila and guilt are lifted and it makes me more nervous than ever — no excuses. But Robinson’s there and smiling.

I’m immediately embarrassed by my mind-Polaroid of puking on him and I try to excuse my actions. “Look,” I say, teeth slightly chattering, more from nerves than cold. “I’m so — I am really, just really sorry about…”

But Robinson, God that he is, doesn’t make me finish my crawl through shame village. Instead, he says, “Don’t worry about it, seriously.” And gives me a hug. We stay like that, on our knees hugging on the cushion, until my hands are frigid.

“Want to come to the V-dance with me?” he asks, whispering it into my ear and not looking at me. At first, I keep waiting for him to mention the Pukeowski incident. Everyone else has and my actions affected him the most, probably. But he doesn’t.

I can’t speak. I think if I do I will scream. Or puke. Wait — I did that already. So I just nod into his chest. And then I pull back to see his face and he puts his fingers on my lips, not shushing me, just feeling my mouth. It’s the sexiest thing I’ve ever had done to me and he moves his hand down the side of my face and neck, resting it on my collarbone. I wait for him to make a move. He doesn’t.

So, plenty of fodder for bedtime thoughts. No kiss, but an invite to the dance. I never really betrayed Lila and more than she did to me — I kept my principles somewhat in tact. No worries about being compared to Lila in the sack should it ever come to that (which would be impressive since there has been no lip to lip contact). And in my head, words that could be lyrics or could by nothing. Possibilities. Principles. Potential.

The next morning on the way out the door, the phone rings. We still have one of those old yellow ones that’s fastened to the kitchen wall, it’s cord a tangled and loopy mess. Dad runs in to get it and charges past me, which I find abnormal since I’m the daughter (daughter = phone answerer in the dictionary of family).

“Oh, hi,” he says into the receiver, his tone dipping. “It’s Mable.” His arm extends the phone to me and I take note as his let down — who’d he expect?

“Listen,” Mable says with the whir of the milk frother in the background. “Want to host an open mike night together? Just as a way of, you know, doing something fun.” As opposed to drunken lectures, feelings of abandonment, and diamond ring ogling.

“Definitely,” I say. Then, when my dad points to his watch and heads outside I say, “Guess what? Radio Love Gods guy, Robinson? He asked me to the Valentine’s Dance.”

“I always knew RLG would tell you the truth,” she says. “Just let them see the real you and the rest is history.” True, if the real me constitutes a massive hurlage session.

“I’ll go to the art room tonight and get supplies for posters,” I say.

“Use glitter,” Mable instructs. She’s a sucker for all things shiny — and this way, the posters will match her high heeled silver glitter boots from the first time flares were in fashion.

“Nice butt crack,” Lila says to Cordelia, who takes the low-rise fashion a bit too much to one extreme.

Cordelia hikes her black pants up and shoots back with, “Cleavage much?”

They look to me for reassurance. “Your ass is great,” I say smiling to Cordelia and to Lila, “Babies and upperclassmen alike will fall at your feet. I mean breasts.”

Lila does a mock push-up bra by squeezing her arms together. “Better?” she asks.

“No,” I say. We swivel on our snack bar stools to see who’s just come into the student center. Freshman. Back to us. It’s funny how time has slipped past and I’m one of the watchers instead of just the watchee.

“I’m thinking I might get a tux for the dance,” Lila says.

“How Annie Hall of you,” Cordelia says.

“Very andro,” I say and then, “If anyone can pull that off, it’s you.”

Lila does her best Melissa and Joan Rivers Red Carpet interview, “And who does Love have on tonight?”

“Well, even though Zac Posen and Armani both sent great dresses, I went with this smart little number,” I stand up and pirouette, smoothing my imaginary gown, “I ended up going with an antique Dior.”

“Oh, retro. Very cool,” Cordelia nods as if I’m really in some fantastic beaded number.

Then she and Lila stop talking and nudge me. “Someone wants you,” they say. Lila blushes a little and waves. Robinson, of course.

He walks me to English and, in the long corridor near Chaucer’s room says, “Listen — I have a plan.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Meet me tonight.”

I put on my shocked face, hand over the mouth, “You mean, at the bat cave?”

“Sort of,” he grins. We’re in that John Hughes high school position with me leaning back against the wall and him propping himself up on one hand, tilting down to me. “Come to Whitcomb tonight.”

“Oooohhh… parietals.” Everyone jokes about how non-illicit the parietal hours are; seven o’clock exactly until eight forty-five. Not one minute later. Not exactly the witching hour, nor the after-midnight and letting it all hang out kind of situation. But it’s better than nothing, I guess.

“Not exactly.” He tells me to sneak in through the upstairs bathroom window, one of those full-length ones that opens onto the flat section of roof seniors use in the spring for sunbathing and listening to music. All at once I am flustered and flattered and flummoxed. Yes? No? Maybe? I feel like I need one of those kid’s games (one potato, two potato, for example) to help me decide if I’m in or out.

“Maybe,” I say. I know I sound coy and perhaps cooler than I really am, which is fine, but the real reason behind my hesitation is that four letter word starting with ‘F’ no, not THAT — FEAR. “What if I get caught.”

“You know how many people do this ALL the time?” he asks. “Tons. And you know how many disciplinary actions there’ve been for sneaking in? One in the four years I’ve been here.”

“And what happened then?”

“A stupid mistake. First two weeks of school this girl Juniper — a Fruckner House boarder — the kind of it girl that year — climbed up into her boyfriend’s bed and got through the whole night without incident.”

“So how’d she get caught?”

“Overslept. Classic. The trick is you’ve got to be up and out by four-thirty, especially since they make a snow day call at five. Four-thirty totally covers all asses.” He smiles at me and traces my cheek with the side of his finger. “Anyway, with Juniper, dorm parents wound up doing a bed check thinking someone was sick or something when the attendance office reported back. And the rest is
you’re frucked
history.”

“That sucks.”

“But what I’m saying is — be smart and we won’t get caught.”

I spend the first seven-eighths of English class pretending to focus on symbolism and gender references while really wanting to crap myself (no, not literally — if I did that, between the Shiney Hiney and the puking, I’d be done for) out of excitement and FEAR.

The bell rings and Jacob, for the first time in ages, comes up to me.

“Hey,” he says. How is it that guys can make single words come laced with innuendo and meaning? Or is that just my female interpretation? In my mind, the “hey” is a truce or, more aptly, a retraction for his distance.

“Hey,” I say back and am sure it comes out just as mere salutation. I flash forward to climbing in through a window and into Robinson’s arms. Then I flash back to laughing my ass off with Jacob in the kitchen at Slave to the Grind. “I’m hosting another open night mike.” I stutter. Blush. “Mike night, I mean.”

Jacob does a nod and tiny smile. “What’s your point?”

I put on faux-bravado. “My point is, that if a certain someone had real talent and wanted to display it, that someone could make an appearance.”

“Point taken,” he says. The second bell rings and Jacob and I become cattle, part of the bovine herds that clutter the hallway. Just as we’re about to get separated by throngs of underclassmen (selves included), I tell him that I’m making posters in the art room tonight. I don’t phrase this like a question as in would he want to join me, but it’s out there — I’m out there. Or my future whereabouts are (until midnight when who knows). He nods and gives an over-the-head wave.

“I’m going to the art room,” I inform Dad as he’s spooning rum raisin Haagen-Dazs from the pint and watching two old guys in suits spar about the current state of economic affairs. In the mode of think globally act locally, I’m more concerned with my own affairs — or lack thereof.

“Paint well,” Dad says, even though I’ve told him twelve times I’m making posters — most likely not with paints. He looks up and gives me a wink. “And by paint I mean glue and glitter well.” He knows me too well. And to think I could pull one by him.

I turn on only one of the rows of lights so that the massive art space resembles the kind of New York loft apartments depicted in architectural magazines; metal chairs and drawing boards, a gorgeous wall mural somewhere between Monet and O’Keefe — flowers and swirls of mauves and blues, the very clear lily right in the center. I plant myself across from the white bloom and lay out the supplies. Then I decide I need tunes to make it through kindergarten paste and plan 101.