Guyaholic (6 page)

“Yeah . . . she FedExed me this package, all these body scrubs and picture frames for my dorm room. She even sent a lava lamp. That’s nice, right?”

“I guess,” Mara says.

I’m sipping some water when I realize my temples are pounding. I tell Mara I’ll call her later and then gulp a few Advil and head upstairs to my room. I grab a marker off my desk, write
I HATE MYSELF
on the back of my hand, and crawl into bed. I attempt to fall asleep but no matter what, I can’t get “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” out of my head.

Sam is everywhere.

Over the next four days, I can’t step out of the house without seeing him trimming the shrubs across the street. Well, not him. But for a second, I think it’s him and my pulse starts racing and I wonder whether I should say hi. But then I realize it’s actually our neighbor, who also happens to be a middle-aged Korean woman, and I don’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed.

I see Sam as I’m driving to Pizza Hut. He’s taking a right onto State Street and, for some reason, behind the wheel of a mail truck.

I see Sam as I’m delivering a pan pizza to a table by the door. He’s hunched over the gumball machine, forcing in some coins. But then I look closer and discover it’s a prepubescent boy with braces and a botched crew cut.

I see Sam as I’m driving home from Pizza Hut. This time I swear it’s him, and I practically mow down two cars to catch up. But once I’m on his fender, I realize he’s got a pancake-size bald spot and a car seat in the back.

That’s pretty much all I’ve been doing. Driving to Pizza Hut, thinking I see Sam, waiting tables, thinking I see Sam, driving home, thinking I see Sam. During the hours I’m not working, my grandparents leave for their offices and I stay in bed for as long as possible and then watch TV for as many hours as possible and then, when I can’t stand it any longer, I check my phone for calls from Sam. Of course, there’s never anything, so I linger in front of the fridge for as long as possible and then stay in the shower until I’m as wrinkly as possible and then, when I can’t stand it any longer, I check my buddy list to see if Sam is online or, at the very least, if he’s posted some revealing away message. Of course, there’s never anything, so I climb back in bed or turn on the TV or graze in the fridge or paint my fingernails and then chip everything off and then paint them all over again.

On Friday evening, four days after what I now refer to as The Night I Fucked Everything Up, I’m just settling down on the couch when I hear my grandparents whispering in the kitchen. I have this telepathic sense they’re about to lasso me into a Family Meeting, so I grab my flip-flops, shout that I’m taking a walk, and hurry out the side door.

When I reach the end of the driveway, I consider turning right on Centennial, except that would send me in the direction of Sam’s house. I consider going straight down Chapel, except Sam’s friend Luca lives there and sometimes they go cycling together in the evenings. So I take a left and cross the intersection. I walk through the middle-school parking lot, over the track, past the grid of yellow buses, all the way to the high school.

There are three or four cars in the parking lot. Someone has propped open the pool door with a brick, probably a janitor on a smoke break. I hesitate for a second and then slip inside. As I wander the empty halls, littered with rusty apple cores and battered notebooks, I’m overwhelmed by the scent of chlorine and French fries and something else, probably hormones, but it doesn’t kick in the slightest trace of nostalgia. Not that I was expecting any. I went to Brockport High longer than anywhere else, but by the time I got here, I’d attended seventeen different schools. Some were longer, like when I did all of third grade in Seattle, but that was balanced out by the time Aimee moved us to Bangor, Maine, for twelve days. That was in seventh grade. We arrived in early December and were crashing in a motel while Aimee scouted for longer-term accommodations. But then, when she picked me up from school one Wednesday, she announced that Maine was too damn cold. We checked out of the motel the following morning, did Christmas with my grandparents and Mara, and then drove to South Carolina for the winter.

I pass Sam’s locker and suddenly remember all those times we used to meet here between periods. I’m especially remembering last Thursday, when I was helping Sam clean out this very locker. We were returning from a trash run when we discovered a neon-pink Super Soaker someone had left behind. We filled it up in a water fountain and got into this huge war on our way to the student parking lot. Of course, we ended up having to go to his house to change and, of course, changing involves taking off your clothes, which I guess was the point in the first place.

I spin around, hurry back through the hallways, and push open the pool door. Just as I’m stepping onto the path, I trip, go flying, and smack down hard on the concrete, ripping the hell out of my right knee.

That fucking brick,
I think as the blood trickles down my shin. I limp over to the lawn area, wincing in pain. I stay there for a long time, watching the sky turn pink and orange. It would actually be beautiful if I weren’t slumped on the edge of a parking lot, wiping blood off my leg and smearing it onto the grass.

It doesn’t help that my grandparents are obsessed with the idea that I need therapy. It started on Tuesday evening, the day after The Night I Fucked Everything Up. It was obvious they’d been scheming all day because the second they saw me, they were like, “We know you’re upset about what happened with Aimee. We’ll get referrals for therapists, so just let us know if you’d feel more comfortable with a woman or a man. Younger or older? And are you okay driving into Rochester by yourself?”

Then, on Wednesday evening, they tag-teamed me again and asked about Sam and why weren’t they seeing him around. When I told them it was over, my grandpa shook his head and said, “This is
just
the sort of thing to explore in therapy.”

My grandpa touched my arm. “You know, sweetie, a woman probably makes sense, especially if you’ll be talking about . . . errr . . . romantic issues.”

On Thursday night I dragged Chastity and Trinity into Gates for a movie and then forced them to drink coffee with me at Common Grounds until it was well past the hour when my grandparents went to bed.

But on Friday night, when I returned home with that bloody knee, my grandparents were like, “Aaaah! Self-mutilation!”

“I tripped on a brick,” I said to them. “I just need some Band-Aids.”

Even as they hovered over my leg, squeezing on the Neosporin, they still acted suspicious, as if I had plunged to the pavement to act out repressed anger that I needed to address in therapy.

So this is why, as I’m sitting at the breakfast nook on Sunday morning, I have my headphones on. I just want to send that extra signal that I’m not available for conversation right now.

“V?” My grandpa presses his hands onto my shoulders. “Grandma and I would like to have a Family Meeting.”

“Huh?” I ask.

“FAMILY! MEETING!”

“Oh.”

“Now.”

My grandparents settle onto the couch. I sit in the comfy chair. They start by saying how things have gotten so much better since I arrived in Brockport and how they’re proud of my accomplishments, but they’ve suspected all along that I’ve got some issues from my past still haunting me, so when Aimee didn’t show up for graduation and they saw the effect it had on me, it made them think I’d benefit from a summer of therapy.

I have no idea where to even
begin
defending myself. When they’re done, I just say, “Things are actually okay with Aimee now. We talked on Tuesday and she sent me that package. Plus, she’s going to fly out here at the end of the summer and drive me to Boston.”

My grandparents stare at me.

“Aimee even said I could visit her in Texas this summer,” I quickly add.

My grandparents exchange this skeptical look, and then my grandpa says, “Do you really think Aimee will make it in August?”

“I hope so,” I say.

“How are you doing about Sam?” my grandma asks.

I gulp hard. Should I tell them how I’ve been imagining I see him everywhere? Should I tell them how, as I was tossing in bed this morning, I remembered what his skin smells like after he’s been in the sun? On Senior Ditch Day last month, a bunch of us went to this quarry and drank beer and swung on a rope into the chilly water. In the late afternoon, Sam and I cuddled on a blanket and he stretched his arm around me and I rested my head on his chest and oh, my God, his skin smelled salty and sweaty and just so . . . so
not
what I feel like telling my grandparents.

“We have the name of a wonderful therapist,” my grandma says. “Her name is Alana. She’s in Fairport, but it sounds like she’s worth the drive.”

“We talked with her yesterday,” my grandpa adds, “told her a little about your situation. She’s expecting to hear from you soon.”

I spring to my feet. “What?”

“We said you’d call her this weekend or early next week,” my grandma says.

“But I don’t want to see a therapist. I know you think that’d be good for me, but I —”

“We saw,” my grandpa says.

My grandma nods solemnly.

What are they talking about?
They saw the condom stash in the back of my makeup drawer? They installed a microscopic camera in my brain and saw me with Amos at that party?

My grandpa sighs heavily and then explains how on Tuesday afternoon he drove home to see if I wanted to have lunch, but he couldn’t find me anywhere so he came up to my room and saw me sleeping and there was that i hate myself written on my hand. They were planning to address it with me that night, but by the time they got home, I’d washed it off and they didn’t want it to seem like they were invading my privacy, but since I’m refusing to consider therapy, they feel they must express their concerns.

“I’ve got to get out of here,” I say, grabbing my phone and storming out the door.

My immediate reaction is to call Sam. That’s what I think as I sink into an Adirondack chair in the backyard. Of course, that’s out of the question, so I consider trying Chastity, but then I remember that she and Trinity are on a plane to Daytona Beach for a monthlong volleyball program.

I hug my thighs to my chest. Things are seriously sucking right now. At this point I just want my old self back. It’s not like everything was perfect before I met Sam, but I wasn’t this miserable, either.

I open my phone and dial Amos. We didn’t have the smoothest good-bye at that party, but I have a feeling he won’t mind hearing from me.

“Hello?”

“Amos . . . it’s V.”

“What’s up, V? It’s Henry.”

“Henry?”

“Amos’s brother.”

“Oh,” I say, remembering that time in March when Amos and I were fooling around in his bedroom and his brother kept inventing reasons to knock on the door until Amos threatened to beat the shit out of him if he didn’t stay away. He was younger, like ninth grade, and hadn’t yet learned that if you stare unblinkingly at a girl’s boobs, you look like a pervert.

“What’s up?” Henry asks.

“Didn’t I call Amos’s phone?”

“Yeah . . . but he’s camping, so he loaned it to me.”

“When’s he getting back?”

“You’re the girl who got hit by the hockey puck, right?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s sexy.”

“Sexy?”

“All that blood and —”

“When’s Amos getting back?”

“Next week.” Henry says. “But I’m —”

“Okay,” I say. “Well, thanks.”

“Now that I have your number, can I —”

“Bye!” I shout, quickly pressing the end button.

After I hang up, I scroll through my phone book until I find Brandon Parker. He’s that guy I smoked up with at school last spring. We haven’t talked since then because while I got suspended, he got expelled. It wasn’t the first time he’d been caught, not to mention he was one of the major suppliers of drugs to the youth of western New York.

Brandon’s mom answers the phone. When I ask for him, she says, “Didn’t you know?”

“Know what?” I ask. I’m imagining prison or rehab.

“Brandon joined the army. He’s in the Middle East. Would you like a yellow ribbon?”

“A yellow ribbon?”

“To show support for Brandon. Or a pin with his picture on it? Whatever you want. Just tell me where you live, and I’ll drop everything off in an hour.”

I have to say yes. I have to give her my address. When her minivan pulls into our driveway, I have to hug her and make a big display of stroking the yellow ribbon and pinning Brandon’s face on my chest.

As soon as she’s gone, I chuck everything into the kitchen trash, right on top of a coffee filter. But then I start worrying about karma and how mine is already in the negative numbers, so I dig out the pin, rinse off the coffee grounds, and vow to wear it on my shirt for the rest of the day.

“Who’s that soldier?” the new dishwasher asks as he stabs an oily finger toward my boob. His name is Russell, and he’s been checking me out since he started here in May.

It’s Sunday evening. We’ve just gotten through the dinner rush, and I’m leaning against the door to the freezer, chugging watery fountain soda.