“Nah, that’d be weird, he’s gotta ask.”
“Yeah.”
“And anyway, as much as I still think Rick is totally gorgeous, I don’t really care about the Spring Dance. It’s for juniors. It’s not like it’s our Spring Dance or the
prom,
you know?”
“I know,” I said, watching Julie toss her empty bag of chips into the garbage. “But what if I don’t have a boyfriend our junior year? When will I get a chance to go to a cool dance with a boy again?”
“Well, that’s not a reason to go, just ’cause you got asked. It’s sounds to me like if you’re wanting to go only if I go, then you don’t really want to go.” I thought about this for a second. She was right.
“Besides, Jule,” Julie said, looking me square in the eye. “Wouldn’t you rather get asked by a really
good
boyfriend? One who won’t pressure you about sex and then cheat on you? Let’s wait for really good ones.”
“Was Oliver a good boyfriend?” I asked.
“I guess not,” Julie sighed.
“What if neither of us has a date for our Spring Dance?” I asked.
“Then we’ll go together,” Julie said, brushing crumbs off the table into her hand. “Let’s make a pact on it!” she said, looking up like she had a lightbulb over her head.
She held out her pinky to me. I curled my pinky around hers and we pulled. It was official: if neither of us had boyfriends in June 1984—our junior year—we’d go to the dance together.
I managed to avoid Josh for a whole week before I worked up the guts to talk to him. I was kind of nervous about actually confronting him, but Julie told me, “You can do it,” and in my heart, I knew I could. But whenever I imagined talking to Josh, my heart started racing like I was stealing clothes or something. One Friday after school, a week before the dance, I found Josh alone by the front steps to P.A. Tons of kids were outside listening to their boom boxes and talking and stuff, but he didn’t seem to be with anybody.
“Hi,” I said, taking a deep breath.
“Hi,” he said, and I couldn’t tell if he was glad to see me or not.
“Listen . . .” I plunged right in. “I can’t, I don’t think I can go to the dance with you.” Josh thought for a second and kind of squinted at me ’cause the sun was in his face. I stood there adjusting my book bag, feeling totally self-conscious.
He nodded a little before he spoke. “Okay . . . how come?”
“Um . . .” I didn’t expect him to ask how come. I thought he’d just say, “Oh well, have a nice life, bye,” or something.
“I just don’t . . .” I started. I wasn’t sure how to put it. “I just don’t . . . feel right about it,” I said.
“’Cause of the whole Leah thing?” Josh said, sounding kind of pissed off.
“I don’t know, I guess that’s partly—”
“I told you, I don’t want to date her!” Josh said, interrupting.
“What are you getting pissed off for?” I said. Then I sort of said under my breath, “I mean,
you
cheated on
me
!”
“Excuse me? I didn’t exactly cheat on you! It’s not like we were girlfriend and boyfriend!” he said. Ouch.
“What?” I said. I felt a combination of wanting to kill him and my heart breaking.
Later, I would think of all the great things I should have said, like, “ANYWAY, I’D RATHER BE WITH SOMEONE TALLER!” or “I LIED ABOUT YOUR TEETH—GET BRACES, ASSHOLE!” or even just a simple “FUCK YOU!” and “EAT SHIT AND DIE!” But nothing even remotely like that came to mind.
“Well, anyway,” I said, as if it wasn’t clear, “I don’t think we should go out anymore. So obviously I’m not going to the Spring Dance with you.” And then I actually added, “Have a nice time!” I looked him in the eyes one last time and turned away to walk to the subway, resisting every impulse to look behind me to see if he was watching me walk away. I felt like an idiot for wishing him a nice time, I mean,
why
in God’s name did I say that? But it didn’t really matter ’cause I did it. I broke up with him.
“Julie Prodsky, you are just
too chill
!” Julie said when I told her everything later on the phone. I was a little depressed about Josh, but I also felt kind of relieved. I just couldn’t believe he turned into such an asshole after he seemed so nice. Maybe this whole ordeal would make me feel older somehow. I could chalk it up to one of life’s bittersweet experiences. You had to roll with the punches, or you weren’t really living a real life, right? Didn’t somebody important say that in a song or something?
“What are you doing tomorrow?” Julie asked. Tomorrow was Saturday.
“Nothing . . .” I started to say.
“Good! ’Cause we’re going shopping!”
“What? No, Jule—” I got scared that she meant we were going
getting
.
“C’mon, c’mon, you can’t refuse. We need to celebrate! Let’s go down to the Village!”
“All right,” I said, feeling unsure.
“Am I your best friend?” Julie wanted to know.
“Yeah. . . .” I said.
“And do you trust me?” she asked. I’d never heard such determination in her voice.
“Yeah....”
“Okay, then, meet me at the subway at eleven in the morning.”
Saturday morning I showered, scrunched my hair with mousse, got dressed, and took a twenty-dollar bill I kept in my undies-and-sock drawer that I had been saving for a special occasion. Today seemed like the perfect day to buy myself a present. I went into my parents’ bedroom to tell them I was going out. My dad had gone to the roof of our building to sit in the sun, and Mom was sitting at her vanity, putting foundation on her face.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hi, pussy cat,” Mom said. “You look nice; where are you off to?”
“Julie and I are going down to the Village to go shopping.”
“Have fun,” she said, looking in her mirror at her eyelids; then she turned and looked at me. “Shopping, hmm? You’re not—”
“No, I don’t do that anymore Mom,” I said, lowering my voice, sitting on the end of the bed. “I promise.”
Mom squinted at me like she was trying to decide if I was telling the truth.
“Really?” she said.
“Yes,” I said, looking her in the eyes. “I swear.” I crossed my heart.
“All right,” she said skeptically. I changed the subject.
“I do have to tell you something,” I said, taking a deep breath. “Josh and I broke up.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, sweetie,” she said, frowning. “What happened?”
“He just turned out to be a total jerk, so I’m not going to the dance with him.”
“Well that’s all right, there’ll be other dances,” Mom said.
“That’s what Julie said,” I said.
“Julie’s right. Now you know what you have to do, right?” Mom said.
“What?” I said.
“You just have to open the front door and shout ‘Next!’” We both kind of laughed.
“Oh,
Mom
,” I said, getting up and walking out the doorway, “you’re so weird. If only your advice was, like, for people on this
planet
!”
Sometimes, like maybe once a year or something, my mom wasn’t all bad.
Sitting in the red vinyl booth at the Greene Street Diner, Julie and I ate our grilled-cheese sandwiches, and I had such mixed feelings. I was happy to be hanging out with her again and to be in the Village, my favorite place in New York City, but I was also kind of nervous about what she was gonna do once we got in a clothing store. A part of me wished we could go back to last fall, before she taught me how to steal, to before I knew how she got all those jeans. But that was impossible and anyway, I’d never want to go back to knowing Julie less than I did now. In a way, our whole stupid fight had made us closer.
Our waiter came over to the table. He was a short older man with smiling eyes and a big belly.
“How are you pretty girls?” he said with a Greek accent.
“Fine,” Julie said, and looked at me.
“Yeah, can we have the check please?” I said. The waiter took out his pad and flipped through a few pages till he found our order.
“You girls sisters?” he said, not looking up. Julie and I laughed, like,
He’s kidding, right?
“No,” I said, and then not knowing why, I just blurted out, “I’m Julie.” The waiter looked at me and smiled.
“And I’m Julie, also,” Julie said.
“Ah!” the waiter said. “Oh! Two Julies!” He laughed a hearty, throaty laugh as he put our check on the table.
It felt like ages since I’d been to Reminiscence. I had always wanted a pair of the purple painters pants with the dark blue stripes, the same pair Julie had.
“Try them on anyway,” Julie said, even though I said I couldn’t afford them. “Don’t you want to see how they look on you?”
“Okay.” I shrugged. We went to the dressing rooms in the back with a few shirts and pairs of pants each, and I was thinking how this totally felt like old times. But some other part of me just knew I wasn’t going to steal anything. What Julie was gonna do, I wasn’t so sure about.
Julie stepped out of her dressing room wearing a can vasy kind of lavender jacket with big white buttons and looked in the full-length mirror. I came out as she was pushing up the sleeves. I put my hands in the pockets of the painters pants.
“Those look great on you!” Julie said. “Look at how great your butt looks!” I turned my butt toward the mirror to see my profile—not bad.
“Very nice,” this girl who worked there said, from the ladder she was sitting on above us. She was refolding this enormous pile of different colored balloon pants.
“Dontcha think?” Julie looked up to the girl.
“Oh, yeah,” the girl said. “And I swear, if something doesn’t look good, I don’t say anything at all.”
“I don’t think this jacket is really me,” Julie was saying back to the mirror.
“I like it,” I said. “Cool buttons.”
“It’s more you; you try it on,” Julie said, and she was totally right. I loved the jacket; it
was
so me. It had no collar and these big plastic buttons, kind of like an old-fashioned railroad worker’s jacket.
“That’s on sale,” the salesgirl called down. “I think it’s only ten dollars.”
Ten dollars was still kind of a lot. But I couldn’t take the jacket off. The sleeves looked so good pushed up, I kept turning in front of the mirror to see the different sides. I went back in my dressing room to change, unable to decide whether to buy the jacket. Julie, I realized, was in some other part of the store. I peeked into the dressing room she had been in to see if she had left anything in there, and it was empty. I started to feel nervous. I handed my painters pants up to the lady on the ladder.
“Thanks,” she said with a pen in her mouth, and went back to refolding. Julie was at the front of the store, looking through the Hawaiian shirts. She had a few articles of clothing flung over her arm.
“What are you doing, Jule?” I said under my breath.
“You don’t need to talk like that,” she said, though she was whispering back. “You trust me, remember?” I sighed.
“I think I’m ready to go,” I said.
“Okay, just give me a few more minutes.” She looked at the jacket still over my arm. “You should buy that,” she said. I held it out in front of myself one more time. I really did love it.
Don’t think too much,
I told myself, and I went right up to the front counter to pay.
The girl at the front wrote “painters jacket” on the receipt. She put my jacket in a plastic Reminiscence shopping bag with pink-and-black leopard spots and handed me my change. It felt cool in my hand. As I put my money back in my wallet and took the bag, I couldn’t stop smiling. For some reason I thought about Ellie and that I was excited to show her my new jacket. Ellie had gotten into the Rhode Island School of Design, and she had gotten a half-scholarship, which was enough for Dad to relax.
I looked around for Julie and suddenly she was right behind me with the painters pants I had tried on over her arm and her wallet out. She was smiling. I looked at her, a little confused.
“Jule, you’re buying those?” I said. “You already have that exact same pair.”
“Duh!” she said. “They’re for you, silly!”
“What? You’re kidding!” I didn’t know what to say.
“Cash or charge?” the salesgirl said.
“Cash,” she said proudly to the salesgirl, who wrote and cranked out her receipt like she did mine.
“You didn’t
get
anything?” I whispered as we walked out of the store. Julie shook her head and held her arms up.
“You can search me!” she said. She handed me the Reminiscence bag with the pants in it. I noticed how different new pants looked with the tags still on.
“Julie, it’s too much,” I said, but I held the pants to my chest.
“Oh shush, it’s no biggie,” she said. “Hey, you’re sleeping over tonight, right?”
“Of course,” I said. We had a huge hug. “Thank you so much. I can’t believe you got, I mean,
bought
me those painters pants!”
“You’re welcome. Ooh! Let’s go into Capezio—I gotta show you this new lipstick!” Julie said. “It’s called Dew-berry Pink. Ruby has it and I tried it on at her house—it’s amazing!” Capezio was right next door to Reminiscence.
As I watched Julie skip up the three white steps to Capezio, the image of seeing her on the top step of P.A. the first day of school flashed in my mind. It seemed so long ago now, like that was a different Julie. I was a different Julie now, too—I wasn’t the Julie who was so scared of not finding a friend. And I was no longer Julie Also. I remembered our first after-school subway ride, the first time I saw Julie’s closet, sitting at her kitchen table laughing so hard we had tears running down our cheeks. Now we even had battle scars—we’d had our first fight and survived. Somewhere deep inside of me I had this really strong feeling: I will know Julie Braverman forever.