Firsts (24 page)

I can’t fall to pieces. Angela is vulnerable, and we can’t both be vulnerable, so I have to be bold.

Angela. I have something to tell you.

But when I knock on her door, my whole rehearsed spiel goes out of my head. The words are stopped on their way out of my mouth because of who answers the door. Charlie. Something resembling panic flashes across his face, and I feel a brief surge of power that doesn’t last. He notices and knows the power is back to him. His panic turns to a smug smile, and I shrink into myself and have to talk myself into standing still when all I want to do is run as far away from him as I can get.

“Well?” he says, wrapping his hand around the doorknob. “If you’re here to tell Angela our little secret, you’re too late. It’s already done.”

“What?” I try to push past him into the house, not knowing what I would say to Angela if it’s true and not knowing what I would say if it wasn’t true. But Charlie blocks me with his body, puts his hands on my shoulders to shove me back out the door. When I reach up with my hand to pry myself out of his grip, he squeezes tighter, making me wince in pain.

“Don’t you think you’ve done enough damage?” he whispers. “Don’t make it worse.”

I’m about to knee him in the groin when Angela’s mom comes up behind him. I have met Angela’s mom several times during the course of our friendship, and my lasting impression of her is that she is the complete opposite of Kim. Meaning, she’s a typical mom, the kind who makes wholesome family dinners and wears skirts that don’t stop midthigh and doesn’t get drunk during the day. Basically, she’s Angela, thirty years from now.

“Mercedes,” she says. “How lovely to see you! We just started eating, if you want to join us.”

“Yes, join us,” Charlie says, his voice syrupy sweet. “I was just about to make a big announcement.”

I cock my head to the side in confusion and try to protest—as much as I need to tell Angela, I don’t need to tell her in front of her mom and her whole family—but Angela’s mom is already ushering me inside.

“We have missed having you around,” she says.

I feel even smaller than I did when I knocked on the door. She’s right. The night I dropped by to make cookies was the only time over the past couple months I have been here at all. I made the virgins my priority, gave a bunch of people I barely know more attention than my best friend.

I don’t know how I let that happen.

Angela is sitting at the table, twirling spaghetti around on her fork. She breaks into a big smile when she sees me.
Charlie lied. She doesn’t know.

“Mercy! Nobody told me you were coming.” She looks at Charlie. “Was this your idea?”

Charlie looks at me and winks, which makes my stomach lurch. “Of course,” he says. “I wanted everybody you love around when I say what I want to say.” He pulls out Angela’s mom’s chair for her and goes to do the same for me, but I back up against the wall.

“I’ll stand,” I say.

“Suit yourself. But you might want to be sitting for this.” He goes to his spot at the head of the table, across from Angela’s dad, who is basically Angela in male form, right down to the wispy blond hair and button nose.

Charlie picks up his glass, which looks like it’s filled with wine but is most likely apple juice.

“As you all know, Angela and I graduate from high school this year. I’m already eighteen, and our two-year anniversary is this weekend. Angela and I have been together long enough to know that we’re right for each other, and we want this to last forever.”

He rummages around in his back pocket. I put my hands against the wall to steady myself. The bastard is going to propose. Sure enough, he unearths a small black box.

“Angela, it’s not much, but we can upgrade it when I get a job and can provide for you. Which I fully intend to do.” He kneels beside her chair and puts one hand on her wrist.

“Angela, will you marry me?”

30

Angela drops her fork on her plate. The clattering it makes is the only sound in the room. I put one hand over my mouth to stop myself from throwing up and keep the other hand against the wall to make sure I don’t keel over. I look to Angela’s mom, expecting her to protest, expecting her to say something about the fact that high school students don’t just get engaged, even after two years together, even if they are prayer-group junkies.

But she doesn’t protest. She claps her hands together and makes an excited little noise somewhere between a squeal and a giggle. Angela’s dad even gets up and pats Charlie on the back and shakes his hand. The same hand that just dug into my collarbone minutes ago.

I slide down the wall, my head spinning. From the floor, I can see Angela’s hands clasped in her lap. She still hasn’t said anything. Maybe she will say no. Angela has always been practical. She knows she’s young and inexperienced.

But Charlie talks for her. “Of course, it’ll be a long engagement,” he says to her dad. “We’re in no rush. We’re both committed to our postsecondary education plans. But I want Angela, and both of you, to know how serious I am about her.”

I watch Charlie take Angela’s hand from her lap. Angela’s mom puts her hands to her mouth. The misty look in her eyes tells me that Charlie must have slipped the ring on Angela’s finger.

And just like that, my best friend is engaged at seventeen, to the guy who tried to make me have sex with him last night. It’s like one of those weird dreams where I’m watching a completely insane scene unfold and I’m the only one who knows what’s really going on. I’m an intruder on what would be a memorable family scene, something everyone in the room would want to remember for years to come. Would, if the guy who popped the question wasn’t a demented sociopath disguised as a Bible-thumper.

I don’t so much announce that I’m leaving as I just get up and walk out the door. I can fake a lot of things, but I can’t fake happy for Angela, and I can’t be in the same room with all these people stuck in Charlie’s lies. Mostly I just can’t be around Charlie. He won. It’s like he wanted me here, to prove it to me. I unknowingly made his night exactly what he wanted.

“Mercy, what’s the matter?” Angela calls from the porch when I’m halfway down the driveway. My hood is pulled over my head, and I was hoping in all her excitement that she wouldn’t notice me leave. No such luck. Angela is just too good of a friend. A good enough friend to stick with me for years without actually knowing anything about me.

A huge part of me wishes I didn’t have to tell her anything. I wish I could let her enjoy her moment. I wish Charlie wasn’t the kind of guy who tries to blackmail a girl’s best friend. But Angela is a good friend, and for once I’ll be a good friend, too.

She catches up to me at the end of the driveway. Her face is full of concern. When Angela gets concerned, she wears it all above her eyebrows, where two tiny dimples always appear. It’s the same face she makes when she can’t figure out a formula in chemistry and the same face she makes when somebody (usually me) takes the Lord’s name in vain. Except this is a bigger problem, and I’m pretty sure those dimples are going to turn into craters.

“You’re crying,” she says, and I guess she’s right, although I hadn’t given much thought to it. “You never cry. And you never wear sweatpants out in public. Whatever it is, you can tell me.”

I wipe my eyes with the sleeve of my sweatshirt. “Angela, this is something you really don’t want to hear, especially not tonight.”

“I don’t care. Tell me anyway. That’s what best friends do.” Her lower lip is trembling, like she wants to cry, too.

It really sucks that I love her more than ever right now. We have never actually said to each other that we’re best friends. It’s one of those things that has never been formally acknowledged, because it just is. Some people don’t need to put a label on relationships. As best friends, Angela and I were those people. Until tonight.

“It’s about Charlie,” I say, fixating on the ground.

“What about Charlie?” she says. “You knew about this?”

I shake my head and wrap my arms around myself. “No, I didn’t know about this. It’s about Charlie last night.”

“What happened last night?” Angela bounces back and forth, from one foot to the other.

I shoot a cursory glance at the front door, which Angela left a crack open. I half expect to see Charlie’s face peeping through, with that evil expression that is permanently etched into my head. The sinister look he gave me as he pushed me against the wall. But through the window I can see he is occupied with Angela’s parents. A happy little scene around the dining room table, like a Hallmark card. Except I don’t think Hallmark makes a congratulatory engagement card for people like Charlie.

“Charlie came over to my house last night.”

“Oh. Why?”

I force myself to look her in the eye. “Well, you know that surprise I was telling you about before? The one he asked for my help with?”

She nods repeatedly, to the point where she starts to resemble a bobblehead. “Yeah, it was definitely a surprise,” she says with a small laugh.

You hate surprises
, I want to say.

“He never said anything about this,” I say instead. “It was something else. For your anniversary.” I press my sleeve-covered hands together. “God. That’s not important.”

“Don’t say ‘God,’” Angela says.

I start to laugh, even though tears are still trickling out the sides of my eyes. “God, Angela, I’ll try not to, but there’s really no easy way to tell you that Charlie tried to make me have sex with him.”

I didn’t expect it all to come out like that, like vomit after a night of drinking that you have to expel from your body. As soon as I say it, silence hangs in the air. Nothing moves, not even Angela’s nodding head.

I open my mouth to elaborate, but she beats me to it. “Excuse me? What the hell are you talking about?”

Angela has never said
hell
, not as long as I have known her and probably not before that, either. This is bad.

“Charlie came to my house last night,” I say, panic rising in my throat. “He wanted me to have sex with him. We were alone in my bedroom, and he threatened me.”

It’s the first time I have said what happened out loud, and the gravity of it makes it hard to breathe. And if I’m having a hard time breathing, Angela is, too. She puts her hands on her knees and tucks her head down, like we were taught to do in home economics if we ever felt like we were going to faint.

I glance at the window, where Charlie is now staring back at me. He knows what’s going on, and that means I have less than a minute left to tell Angela everything.

“Look, I wanted to tell you earlier today. I wanted to tell you right after it happened, but I was in shock. I don’t know what to do, but he wanted to have sex with you on your anniversary, and I couldn’t let that happen because you need to know what a disgusting sack of shit he really is.”

The words pour out of my mouth in an upward crescendo, starting fast and ending loud and angry. I didn’t plan on getting that angry, but that’s how it happens. My hands ball into fists, fists I desperately want to punch Charlie with.

Angela blinks repeatedly. “But why would he do that?” Her voice is shaking.

I take a deep breath. Now my throat is closing up, and I’m running out of time because Charlie is sprinting down the driveway.

“What did you do to her?” he says, wrapping his arm around Angela’s bent-over body. He looks incensed. I take a step back even though I want to stand my ground.

“It’s not what I did to her. It’s what you wanted to do with me. Now she knows all about it.” I wipe my cheek with my sleeve and try to appear more defiant than I feel.

I expect Charlie to play dumb, since it’s not like he can punch me in the face with Angela standing here. But he surprises me.

“Mercedes, I wasn’t going to say anything. I didn’t want to ruin your friendship with Angela.”

“What the hell are you talking about? She knows everything, Charlie. It’s over.”

Charlie whispers something in Angela’s ear, something I can’t hear. She covers her face with her hands and cries. Then she does something I really didn’t want to see her do. She cries into his shoulder.

“I think we both agree that Angela deserves to know the truth,” he says. “I wanted to tell her sooner, but like I said, I didn’t want to ruin her opinion of you. She always thought so highly of you.”

I throw my hands in the air. “Stop fucking around. Give it up. You’re a disgusting pig, Charlie.”

He kisses the top of Angela’s head and gives me a sickeningly smug little half smile that she can’t see.

“Now that you’ve given me no choice, I have to tell her.” He unfolds Angela from his arms and stoops down to her height so that he’s level with her eyes. He even wipes away her tears.

“Your best friend Mercedes here isn’t exactly who she says she is.”

Angela doesn’t say anything. Her eyes dart from Charlie to me, and back to Charlie, until he cups her face in his hands and forces her to focus on him.

“You deserve so much better than her, Angie. I don’t think you know much about Mercedes at all.”

Angela is still looking at Charlie but speaks to me. “What’s he talking about, Mercy?”

Charlie answers. “I’m talking about what goes on in Mercy’s bedroom.”

I grit my teeth. “Don’t call me that.”

“What? Mercy?” he says. “That’s what you asked me to call you last night. You were begging for me to say your name. Asked me to pretend you were Angela.”

He can’t think she’s going to doubt me. She can’t believe him, now that the truth is out. She can’t look into his eyes and believe him.
Can she?

I take a deep breath. “Before or after you came onto me? Because I didn’t have time to say much of anything.”

Angela is crying silently. I want to reach out and hold her, but Charlie blocks me with his body. “Sweet Angie, it seems that Mercy here has been keeping a secret from you. Mercy has made the rounds of the student population, and last night she tried to seduce me. Even wore a slutty outfit for the occasion. Of course, I didn’t let her have me. I’m saving me for you.”