Why Girls Are Weird (5 page)
Read Why Girls Are Weird Online
Authors: Pamela Ribon
My living room light was on. I thought I had turned that off.
I loved my tiny second-floor apartment in the Hyde Park neighborhood, even though the rent was too high, I didn't have central air, and every summer I thought I was going to die from the oppressive heat. I loved the Austin nightlife, the way there was always something new to do and the old things hadn't worn out their fun yet. I'd built up years of memories, and the town fit me like a favorite sweater.
When Ian and I first started dating, I always let him lead our life. He chose our evenings, decided where we went for vacations, and was the one planning how long we were going to live in Austin. I told Ian that if he felt the need to move I'd go with him, but deep down I didn't want to leave. Luckily he liked Austin as much as I did.
I felt a pull inside of me now, a yearning to find something new, and I wondered if it meant my time in Austin was running out now that my life with Ian had ended. As I stared at my apartment window, the shadows of the furniture just visible in the light, I imagined saying good-bye to all of this. I tried to picture what would happen to me next.
I realized Shannon had sat down next to me. She was wearing a shiny mauve dress with thin shoulder straps. Her hair was curled and I could see the hairspray straining against the weight of her pretty brown tendrils. She had glitter on her eyelids.
“Wrong kind of party,” she said to me. “I thought there'd be lots of dancing.”
“Dale's work friends aren't as fabulous as we are,” I told her.
She lit a cigarette and looked around.
“Did you drive here wearing that?” I asked her.
“No, I stopped at your apartment and changed.”
“That's why my light was on,” I said, turning back toward my place.
“You're the only person I know who watches her own house while at a party. Tomorrow we're having fun. I didn't drive all the way from Houston for nothing.”
“We'll have fun.”
“I'll stay through the holiday weekend, if that's okay.”
“Sure. That's cool.”
“I'll mostly be studying, but I thought it'd be nice to go down to Barton Creek and read in the sun.”
Dale's high-pitched panic voice doesn't normally startle me since he uses it all the time, but it shook me immediately out of my conversation when he screamed through his bedroom window, “Get in here!”
“I think you're in trouble,” Shannon whispered.
I ran into the bedroom to find Dale trembling. He was holding a shuffled bundle of pages, letting them fall from the space between his hands and his chest.
Before I could speak he grabbed me by the arm, pushed me into his bathroom, and shut the door.
“Get in the tub!” he said quickly.
“What?”
“I said, get in the tub!”
This certainly wasn't the reaction I had been expecting. I stood, my mouth opening and closing silently, ridiculously.
“Get in the fucking tub, Anna!”
I did what he said. My shoes slipped on the porcelain. I steadied myself by holding on to the soap dish. I took Dale's beer out of his hand and took a sip.
“I don't believe this,” he started.
“Do you want me to explain?” I asked.
“I want you to shut up.”
“Don't talk to me like that, Dale.” I could feel a fight starting. I only had to hold back and let him rant and I could avoid it completely, but something in me wanted to fight back instead of letting him run me down with his words.
“I don't want you to write about Ian.”
“I don't want you to tell me what to write!”
“This is unhealthy.”
I stood up, narrowly missing my head on the curtain rod. The shoes I was wearing made me taller than I was used to, and I was happy for the extra inches. “I did it for your birthday present, Dale. I don't need a lecture.”
“You did it to write about Ian.”
“That's not true,” I said indignantly.
“No? Then why do so many stories come back to being about him? You've written a webpage worthy of stalker status here.”
“I've written a webpage pretending to be some other girl who has a boyfriend that's based on Ian, but not really Ian.” My foot slipped, so I quickly squatted and grabbed the soap dish to steady myself again, this time slapping my right hand down on a damp and sticky bar of soap.
“There's no way you really believe that,” Dale said as I gently turned on the faucet and rinsed my hand in the cool water.
“This isn't about Ian,” I said.
“Everything is always about Ian, including when you deliberately do something that's supposed to not be about Ian. Don't you see that? You can't move on if you wallow around in him.”
“I'm not wallowing!”
“And writing about him isn't going to bring him back.”
“I don't want him back.”
“I'm sure.” He turned away from me and gripped the sides of his bathroom sink. The room seemed strangely quiet as Dale waited for me to come to some sort of realization. But he was wrong. I wasn't trying to win Ian back. Besides, none of it mattered because Ian was never going to find the site. And even if part of me was hoping Ian would somehow read it and it'd make him want to come back to me in some mushy, romantic, music-swelling way, it was only so I'd have a good story to tell my children someday. I didn't want the man; I wanted the vignette.
And the truth was I didn't want those children just as much as I didn't want their father. The father that didn't exist. Those children I didn't have. I'd even named the invisible kids that I didn't really want. Veronica and Clay. Veronica was older and Clay was really good in sports. I went to their make-believe soccer games and their fantasy piano recitals. I hung their nonexistent finger paintings on my unpurchased refrigerator in that house I didn't have with a husband I wasn't looking for. I didn't need a perfect ending; I just wanted to borrow the good moments. I wanted snippets of other people's lives. I didn't need the whole thing.
Dale put his hands over his face. “I can't believe this is on the Internet,” he moaned. He looked embarrassed for me, just as I'd been dreading.
I tried to brush it off by sounding casual. “It's just a webpage. There are millions of them. Look, don't tell Shannon, okay?” If Dale was reacting this badly, Shannon's teasing would be much worse.
Dale was still pacing, his arms crossed firmly at his chest. “But what if Ian finds it? What if someone he knows reads it? How are you going to start seeing someone new if you're writing every day about your last boyfriend as if he's your current boyfriend?”
I hadn't heard the words put in that order before.
“They're just stories,” I explained calmly. “Some of the stories are about Ian and some aren't. I'm not pining or wallowing. I'm just writing.”
My hands were trembling, and somehow I had picked up a washcloth from the edge of the tub. I was wringing it in my hands, watching Dale watch me. Seeing the range of emotions in his eyes. Confusion. Love. Pity. It was that last emotion I wanted to erase.
“I wasn't going to tell you,” he started, “but I saw him the other day.”
“I don't care, Dale.”
“Fine. Then I won't say anything else.” His entire body language shifted as he said deliberately, “Oh, man. My mouth tastes like a sock.”
Dale grabbed his toothbrush and turned on the cold-water faucet. I was exhausted at the thought of playing this game with him. Instead of being coy, pretending what Dale had to say meant nothing to me, I decided to just come right out and take it.
“Where did you see him?” I asked.
“I don't know what you're talking about.” Apparently Dale was still interested in the game.
I sighed. “Ian. You saw him. Where did you see him?”
“I don't want to bore you with things you don't want to hear about. You're right. You're past all of this bullshit.” As he brushed his teeth he stared at himself in the mirror. I watched his blue eyes widen as he rotated his head, checking his skin for blemishes. He never had any.
I stood up and stepped out of the tub. Taking a step toward him, I tugged the ends of his hair in my right hand. “You wouldn't be bothering me if what you were going to say was really good, like he was crying in the middle of a field or something.”
Dale spit the toothpaste in the sink and rinsed his mouth out with his beer. He stood up straight, inches from me, both of us facing the mirror. “Why would I be walking through a field, exactly?” he asked.
“You know what you just did is the grossest thing you've ever done, right?”
“You only think that because you've never dated me.”
And then it was quiet. Dale and I stared at each other through the mirror. I knew he could wait much longer than I could. Besides, it was his birthday.
“Spill it.”
“He's still dating Susan, you know.” The words came tumbling out of his mouth with a touch of glee.
“I know.” Ian began dating my friend Susan pretty soon after we split, and since then it had been too difficult for all of us to hang out. I could see Ian by himself, but I couldn't face Susan anymore. Every time she spoke I saw Ian's dick in her mouth. Crude, but the truth.
“He came up to me at the bookstore, acting like I would want to talk to him. I chose your side and I think I made that pretty clear. Actually, I think he came up to me because he knew I chose you and I wouldn't feed him any bullshit.”
“You have told me absolutely nothing. This is not your story, you know. I don't want to know about your trip to the bookstore. What did he want?”
Dale's voice seemed lower as he said calmly, “He wanted to know if you were still around. He said you hadn't been calling.”
“Like he can't call me!” My face instantly flushed hot and I found myself marching back into the tub. My fancy shoe slipped on the porcelain. I held on to the tiled wall with both hands, bracing myself against the wave of anger as I hissed, “Asshole!” I knew I was playing into Dale's trap, but my emotions had taken over. “He could call me. Why is it me that always has to call him?”
Dale jumped up and pointed at me. “You see? There! Right there! That's why this is dangerous. Let him go.”
“I am letting him go.” I slumped down into the tub until my knees were at my chest. I held my stomach, opened my legs, leaned forward, and rested my chin on the edge of the porcelain. It was cool and I could feel the blood receding from my face. I hated how much Ian got to me. I hated how I always wanted to be one step ahead of him and how I never, ever was.
(Song for a New Kid)
04 JULY
I once knew a girl that would huff Scotch Guard in class. In the sixth grade. She was hardcore, yo. I wonder what happened to those girlsâthe ones who didn't talk to me. The ones who pushed past me. The ones who never saw me but who I studied, wondering how they got there. How did they get so cool? How did they decide one day that heavy black eyeliner was the way to go? I was fascinated with the ones who knew how to fray a denim jacket, who knew how to French-kiss when I hadn't even held a hand yet. I studied them because they knew how to make someone look at them. They knew how to draw attention.
I also studied the Pure Girls. The Pure Girls only looked pure, but actually wanted to lose as much innocence as they could on a Wednesday afternoon between the bus ride home and curfew. They were the ones who looked good smoking cigarettes, who hated doing homework. Was I the freak for liking homework? I didn't tell anyone that on summer vacations I gave myself assignments. My mother would buy me college textbooks in biology and English and I'd teach myself mitosis and molecular structures because I thought the more you knew, the sexier you were. How misled I was. How none of that helped that first terrible year of high school when I had no idea who I was or who these people were and they didn't care who the fuck I was. I was in a small town with people who had known each other for years and I was on the outside looking in.
Hi, new kid. Welcome to loneliness.
You always end up getting invited to sit somewhere at lunch the first day. You sit down and quickly realize that you were asked to sit with the other outsiders. You hear your mother in your head telling you to be nice and make friends with these kids because they're just as lonely and sad as you are and they really want friends and they're probably nice, but you really, really want to be popular this time. You've never been popular and you're starting over for the tenth time in another school and you thought maybe this time you'd get it right, but instead you're sitting with kids who never have plans on the weekend and they know all of the television lineups from Friday to Sunday. They ask you if you need help with your algebra. You watch the popular kids when you look up from your hot-lunch plate and you realize that you have two choices: You can suddenly get all cool and tell these losers that you'll smell them later, storm over to the popular table, declare a place, and say that you're lucky you got out without a pocket protector tattoo. Or you can sit there like your mother would want you to and be good, be a nice girl, and meet these kids but still stay distant enough that you don't
really
like them. It's easier to not make friends. You're going to be leaving soon anyway. You always do. Don't get attached.
You keep feeling like you're going to be sick. You sit in class and wonder if anyone will know it's your birthday. You watch the birthday girl with the balloons tied to the back of her chair and realize you won't have that because you haven't had these friends for years. They've all got history. You'll be the one without valentines again. No one will ask if you're going to the dances. You will only be talked to when you forget to put on one of your socks, or if you accidentally make the chair fart when you lean over to get your pencil. You miss every school you ever went to, even when you hated those schools so much you'd cry yourself to sleep every single night.
The sound of a school bus will forever make your stomach drop. The smell of a pencil brings a lump to your throat. Line leaders. Fire drills. The tardy bell.
Then there's that moment when you stop watching everyone else play Boys Chase Girls and decide to go inside and read instead. That moment when there is someone else inside reading, and you start talking to her about Ramona Quimby and Beezus. You suggest books for each other and at the end of the day you find out she rides your bus. Not only that, but she lives down the street! Suddenly you have a new friend and your mom is happy for you. (She stops asking when you're going to make friends. She stops looking at you like you're a broken child.) Everything is so much fun as you spend the night at each other's houses watching scary movies and eating too much and talking about movies and music and you've finally found someone who understands you. She's got some friends and she lets you in and suddenly you are a part of a group. You belong. You've got friends and you like the school and you can't remember ever hating it, and then you go home one day and it's time to move again.
You're moving again and you have to pack up everything in your bedroom. Quickly. Again. There were things you hadn't even unpacked yet. It's happening again. That feeling again. You say good-bye again to your new friend who won't remember you in three months when you are still wishing desperately to see her every day. You will remember her name long after you've become a faded memory to her.
You can't sleep that last night in your room, when it's all boxed up and dark and you don't know where you're going and you don't know anyone where you're going and you don't know what to expect. You get mad at yourself. You promised you wouldn't get attached to this place, and then you did. You went ahead and got attached, and now you have to go through all of that sad again. More sad again. Being new all over again.
Maybe next time you'll be popular. Maybe people will think you're pretty, or that you have the coolest clothes. Maybe they'll have horses. Your friend Becky loved horses. You miss Becky. She never writes anymore. Maybe they'll have braces. You like braces. You've never had them. Maybe they will love you immediately and take you right in. Or maybe they will hate you and make you sit at the fat-kid table again. Maybe they'll have other boys pretend to like you and ask you out and wait until you say yes and then all start laughing in the cafeteria, and even the lunch lady laughs because there's no way that boy was really asking you out and she has a sad and lonely life and her only entertainment now is watching young children be horrible to each other.
You can pretend to be blind in the new school. Or deaf. Pretend you don't understand English. Or you can be British. Or in a wheelchair. Find some reason that they don't have to talk to you, and even if they want to talk to you, you'll act very noble and say you can't talk to them. You're too busy, or too important, or too British.
Maybe the new school will burn down on your first day and you'll never have to go there again and you can sit at home with your college textbooks, apply to Harvard, get in, and be the youngest kid ever in college. People will throw words at you like “genius” and “charming.” You won't have to remember that time everyone in class got a thesaurus and had to write words about you they had never learned before on a paper plate with your name on it. And since they didn't know what they were saying and you did, your heart broke when you got your paper plate back and it said, “precocious,” “abnormal,” “freak,” “pretentious,” and “egotistic.” You turn to the kid in front of you as he studies his plate and asks you what
corpulent
means. You realize that maybe he's better off not knowing. You hate everyone there and you hate the stupid teacher for giving such a dangerous assignment.
You're going to start over and over and over. It's always the same, but the faces are different. The names are different. The pain and the fear are the same.
Hey, new kid. Don't get too attached.
Love until later,
Anna K