Jersey Angel (12 page)

She laughs. “Oh, you think so, do you? Just wait, kiddo. You’ll do dumb things too.”

“Not like that, I won’t.”

She peers at me over the tops of her glasses. “I’m sorry,” she snaps. “I’m sorry. What else can I say!”

On Halloween, Inggy and I sit in the loft of the lifeguard house, dangling our legs over the edge and watching the party below. Some of the girls are dressed up but none of the guys are. I’m wearing Mimi’s dirty white boa around my neck, and false eyelashes. Ing has a silk scarf wrapped around her head and an eye patch over one eye, and a hilarious skinny mustache drawn on with eyeliner.

“Beer run!” someone yells.

Ing and I dig through our bags and come up with a bunch of singles, which she runs downstairs. Her bag is spilled open, and as I put her lip gloss, wallet, and sunglasses back in, I take a quick peek at her text messages. Nothing from Cork, one from me, one from her mom, and one from Jeffrey. Who’s this Jeffrey? It says, “Hope you didn’t catch the communal cold.” Well, she definitely did, Jeffrey, and did she get it from you? Would Inggy cheat? More likely she caught it sitting in some egghead seminar
with germy Jeffrey. But why no mention of this Jeffrey guy? And why
Jeffrey
, not Jeff?

Through the glass doors I can see Cork sitting on the stoop outside, and I wonder what he’s thinking. His hood’s up and pointy. Sherry, huger than ever—she can’t even button her coat—slowly lowers herself between him and Tank-Top Tony.

Inggy climbs the stairs with a pumpkin bucket of candy corn, which she’s shoveling into her mouth. “So yummy,” she says. “I’m gonna rot my teeth out of my head.”

Kipper climbs halfway up the ladder. “Can I join you?”

“Only if you take this away from me.”

“Gimme,” he says, waving his hand. “What can I bring you instead? Name it.”

“How about a cupcake,” I say. “White bottom, chocolate top.”

“Chocolate bottom, white top for me,” Inggy says.

“And two beers,” I add.

“Coming right up,” he says, scurrying down the ladder.

Inggy giggles. “He’s gonna make a dancing girl happy someday.”

“I’ll tell you a secret.” I bump shoulders with her. “I did it with him.”

She laughs. “Yeah, right.”

“I did,” I whisper.

She flips up her eye patch and looks at me.

“It sorta happened.”

“How does that sorta happen?”

It does
, I want to explain.
It does sorta happen
. The thing is, Inggy knows about some of the guys I’ve been with, but I don’t tell her everything. It’s okay with me, though, if she knows this, so I give her a recap of the Kipper rendezvous.

“Oh my,” she says. “Kipper Coleman.”

I shrug.

“Was it … fun?”

“Sorta kinda. I think he’s finally gotten the hint that, you know, it’s not going anywhere.”

“Just once, then.”

“Just once.”

“I can’t believe you!” She laughs. “Well, dang. Kipper got laid! You made him a happy man, no doubt.”

“I did.”

“Sometimes you surprise me, Angel.”

“Why?”

She pulls off some cobweb from the railing and lets it float down into the living room. “You have to stop.”

I snap my head toward her. “Stop what?”

She puts her hand on my leg. “Could I be drunk on candy corn? Is that possible?” She lies back in the loft.

“It’s totally possible. I want to hear more about your weekend.”

“I told you.”

“Only the boring parts.”

“There were definitely boring parts.”

“Come on,” I say. “Did you make some friends?”

So then she tells me about two girls, one from Virginia, the other from Connecticut, Chrissy and Kate, and the life and death of the newspaper seminar, and journalism’s future, and she’s putting me to sleep. No mention of Jeffrey. I give her a poke. “What were the guys like?”

“Fine. A few overly earnest types.” She smiles and yawns. Is she not going to say, or is there really nothing to say?

“What do you mean I have to stop?”

She turns to me.
“Kipper?”

“You make him sound like head lice.”

She shakes her head. “I only mean that you don’t want him, so what were you doing?”

“But it wasn’t a big deal. It was friendly. You know. The worst part was him getting all moony afterwards.”

She sticks her finger in the hot wax of a candle and it hardens over her nail. “Sex is kind of a big deal, if you ask me.”

“Well, it depends. And you can lose the attitude.”

“Yeah, okay.” We’re quiet. She rolls the wax over her finger and into a ball. “Just be choosier, Angel. That’s all I’m saying.”

Kipper climbs the ladder, carefully balancing two plastic cups of beer and two cupcakes. “Am I good or am I good?” he says.

“You’re good,” Inggy says with the littlest smirk, and I totally regret telling her.

That’s when the party stops being fun. At the end of the night Inggy’s on one side of the couch and Cork’s on the other and their legs are tangled together. I catch Cork’s eye and he looks away, which pisses me off, because if anyone’s gonna look away it’s gonna be me. Sherry’s in the recliner, holding her belly and drinking Diet Coke, and Carmella’s sitting on the arm of the chair eating Mallomars and wearing bunny ears. I wander into the kitchen and pick up a cupcake and lick at the blue icing.

Cork comes in pretty buzzed and leans against the sink and watches. I chuck the bald cupcake into the trash.

“Hey, you,” he says.

“Shut it, Cork.”

“Come on,” he whispers. “Come on, Angel.” I give him the finger and walk out.

Everybody’s yawning, but no one wants to leave yet. Why is that? It’s late, the conversation’s thin, the beer’s drunk, the cupcakes are picked over, but still, no one wants to pack it in. Joey, Kipper, Tony, and I play darts, and I win by a hair. When no one’s looking Joey slaps me on the butt. We play another round, and then Carmella says, “Joe, let’s hit it.” We all head out into the night. The wind roars.

I’m feeling a little philosophical. There’s Inggy, my best friend, with her hand in Cork’s. And there’s Joey, my Joey,
with his hand in Carmella’s. It’s very complicated, which is what life is, and here’s the living proof. I huddle in my jacket, wishing for a hand to hold. I catch up to Sherry and nudge her. “How you feeling?”

“I seriously have gas.” Well, what is a person to say?

“Christ,” Tony says. I hold the door open while she heaves herself behind the wheel and Tony gets in the other side and slams his door.

Inggy looks back as a big gust whips her hair over her head. “Hurry, Angel,” she laughs as she and Cork run to her dad’s car. But I walk over to Kipper, who’s behind the wheel of his mom’s lime-green Fiesta. I knock on the window. “Can I have a ride?”

“Sure.”

I wave in Inggy’s direction and climb in the Kippermobile, which smells like cough drops.

“So this is just a ride home, right? ’Cause I’m no good at innuendo. So if this is more you should let me know so that I’m not going to be tortured with anticipation.”

“It takes five minutes to drive me home. You’re going to be tortured for five minutes?”

“I will.”

“Oh, Kipper. I just want a ride.” I watch his face crumple like a kid’s. I squeeze his arm. “I’m really not available, you know.”

“Come on, you are so.”

“I do have a life beyond high school,” I tell him.

“See, that’s so cool, because I totally don’t. How do you manage that?”

I smile. “
Innuendo
. What a good word. I’m going to find a way to work that into conversation.”

“I’ll remind you.”

Kipper’s quiet and drives like an old lady. Even though there isn’t much traffic he comes to a full stop at a stop sign and looks both ways before moving ahead.

“Safety first,” I joke, and he gives me a quick smile.

He pulls in front of my house and looks at me sweetly, shyly. “Here you are.”

“S’okay. This isn’t innuendo. You wanna come up? Just this time?”

That Friday, Cork’s parents are off to Atlantic City for the night. When Ing calls to tell me that the plan is to hang out at his place, I say I have a stomachache.

“We’re just going to hang out on the couch. Come.”

“I don’t think so.”

“You’re not mad at me, are you?” I’m surprised she asks; we’ve avoided talking about Kipper all week.

“That wasn’t too nice, Ing.”

“Telling you to be choosier?”

“Yeah.”

“I can’t tell my best friend to be choosier?”

“Do I tell you what to do?”

“Why can’t I tell you what I think?”

“Why are you judging me? Okay, so you wouldn’t sleep with Kipper Coleman. You made that crystal-clear. But just because you wouldn’t—”

“Whoa there. For the record, I think Kipper’s cute in an indescribably goofy way.”

“In an indescribably goofy super-skinny way.” We laugh.

“Right,” she says. “But—”

“But what?”

“You’re not gonna date him.”

“So what?”

“It’s just disingenuous, that’s all. I mean, why bother? Why not sleep with someone you care about?”

“Disingenuous?”

“Well, sorta,” she says, her voice getting high.

“There’s no one I’m interested in at the moment.”

“Okay. Just come to Cork’s. Come have your stomachache over here.”

“I don’t think so. I’ll call you tomorrow.” I hang up.

Disingenuous?
I think that means “not real.” I go over to the House and get the Webster’s off the shelf, and sure enough, it means “insincere.” Sitting on the floor, I think about that. I’m pretty sure Kipper wouldn’t say I’m disingenuous.

I deep-condition my mop with my mom’s fancy-schmancy conditioning oil and sit with a plastic bag on my head to keep the heat in as I channel flip. Mom’s out with the banker and the kids are with TB, so it’s me and the TV. As I rinse the conditioner out, I think about maybe drying my hair and riding over to Cork’s, but instead I stay up late watching TV and snacking. Then I go to my house, put on
my leopard-print nightie, and lie on my bed wide awake. Around one o’clock I get dressed and bike over to 7-Eleven for a hot chocolate. While I’m fiddling with the chocolate packet, this guy named Danny walks in. He graduated a couple of years ago and goes to the community college and works in the deli at the A & P. He owns a small Grady-White and fills his tank at the marina.

“You’re up late,” he says, tearing open a package of Ring Dings with his teeth.

“Hey,” I say. “You too.” He’s a pretty quiet guy, but cute in a look-twice kind of way, meaning the more you look the better he becomes, which is really an interesting phenomenon if you think about it.

“You need a ride?”

“My bike,” I say, pointing outside. I stir in hot water and add a splash of milk. “How’ve you been?”

We talk for a minute and then he says, “We should have pizza sometime.”

“I like pizza.”

“Okay then.” He takes my number and pays for his Ring Dings and leaves.

That could be fun. I sit on the curb out front and sip my drink. It’s good and hot and the air is chilly without being too cold. Then I get the idea to visit Joey. He might be up, depending on when he got back from Cork’s. I walk the couple of blocks to his house, sipping my drink and missing
him again. I don’t think Joey would call me disingenuous either.

I walk to the back of the house to his window, which is cracked, and call, “Hey, Joey, you up?” The window raises and there stands Carmella with tousled hair, wearing a football jersey.

“Oh,” I blurt.

She tilts her head. “Hey.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you guys.” I cringe.

“I was up.” She thumbs toward the bed. “But this guy is sound asleep.”

“Yeah.” I look into the half darkness at Joe stretched on the bed under a sheet. “Anyway, I’m not stalking. I swear. Just couldn’t sleep. I’ll get going.”

“Stay.” She shrugs, grabs her bag, and lights up a cigarette. “He hates when I smoke.” She blows a stream out the window. “You used to smoke, right? A long time ago?”

“A really long time ago. Like four years. But I got the patch.”

She nods. “Maybe I should try. You don’t crave one?”

“I like watching. I’ll watch you smoke.” I grab the wobbly stool from behind the shed and carry it over. And it is nice watching her take a drag and shoot the cool stream into the night air. “Did you guys go to Cork’s?”

She shakes her head. “We saw a movie, went to Fat Sal’s for a slice, and came back here and went at it for like seven
whole minutes before he falls straight asleep. We’re like an old married couple, I swear.” She takes a deep drag on her cigarette. “Why can’t you sleep?”

I shrug. “Sometimes I just can’t.”

“High school bores the crap out of me.”

“I’m not bored, exactly.”

She leans on the sill and cups her chin in her hand, the cigarette jutting from her fingers glamorously. “Isn’t it funny how some guys are such shits? They can totally live without you and let you know like every second. Then there are guys who glom on. Joey’s a bit of a glommer.”

I nod.

“You can’t win.”

I wave a finger between her and sleeping Joey. “Are you—”

“Am I gonna break up with him?” She stubs out her cigarette and looks at me coolly. “Probably not. I want a date to the prom. You have to plan ahead, and it’s so lame to drag a college boy. Like they want to go. Plus, he’s a nice guy, Joe.” She yawns. “And a glommer’s better than a shit.”

“It’s true.”

“I’m in a funk. I went to see my grandma today in the nursing home. She’s lost it. Oh, my poor granny!” She digs in her bag for a tissue. “So we sit out in the garden and she mostly doesn’t have a clue what’s going on, but she’s still sorta herself. She still likes Fritos.” She blows into the tissue. “And there’s this old man on his little motor cart and
he just rides in a circle, making loop after loop. Loop after loop. The whole time we’re sitting there I thought I’d have to kill myself.” She takes a package of Starbursts out of her bag and offers me one.

I laugh.

“What? That was funny?”

“You have the most amazing bag.” I pinch out a cherry one and unwrap it.