I opened the car door.
Tommy stopped me, saying, “Deanna? If I really did all that . . . I mean, I know I did, but if all that was true about how you felt and everything . . . and, you know, how I talked about it, I’m sorry.” He stared straight ahead, running his hands around the steering wheel.
“Me, too.”
I woke up to an empty house, which normally I wouldn’t mind. Normally, that would be my preferred method of entry into any given day.
But nothing was normal.
Tommy is over.
I don’t feel different.
Because: now what?
My life is a question mark.
I stared at the page. Maybe I should go back to the girl on the waves. At least I had some control over
her
life. If I could have taken a deep breath, thrown back the covers, and said, “Today I’m starting over,” maybe then things could be different. Like in a musical: la la la, I’ll never be the same again, whatever. But when
I
took a deep breath and threw back the covers, I was still me.
The only good thing about the day ahead was Jason. We were supposed to go to the mall, like normal teenagers on summer vacation. I knew how to be a normal teenager: You make sarcastic comments, you act goofy and annoying. You buy stuff. You eat.
The phone rang; I let it ring a bunch of times before thinking it might be Darren. I got up and ran to answer it. It was my mom.
“I thought maybe you’d heard something,” she said.
“No.”
“Did you make it home from work all right?”
“Yeah.” At first I thought,
No thanks to you, Mom,
then I remembered her hand on my face there in the kitchen, the look in her eyes.
Have you been crying?
She’d offered me something, at least.
“I might work some overtime tonight,” she said.
“Aren’t they cutting hours?”
“Well, a lot of people quit over that and now they’re in a jam.” She lowered her voice. “Typical corporate screwup, right? If you want to throw dinner together for your father, I think we have all the ingredients for tuna casserole . . .”
“I have to work tonight.”
“Again? Well, I’ll see you when I see you, huh?”
I pressed the phone to my cheek, imagining her hand there again. “Yeah, Mom. Okay.”
After hanging up, I got my morning can of root beer from the fridge and stepped into the backyard. It was hot out already, no sign of the fog from the night before. I should have stayed outside and let the sun and warmth soak into my skin and my mind, but instead I went back in and flopped onto the couch with the TV remote. I surfed through the talk shows and pictured my dad on the screen.
Today’s topic: My Daughter Is a Slut
. Tommy could go on, too, and tell the story to an international audience. Then maybe they’d get in a fight and some skinhead would break a chair over Tommy’s head or give my dad a bloody nose.
No,
I thought,
that’s over
.
The front door opened and I jumped up, startled and ready to run. A redheaded woman was in my living room. When my brain caught up with my eyes, I realized it was Stacy.
“Hey,” she said quietly. “I figured everyone would be at work. Except you. I knew you’d probably be home.” She stood just inside the door, wearing the clothes she’d left in. “Can I come in?”
“Yeah.” I stared, still startled by her dark hair. “Is Darren with you?”
Stacy frowned. “No. Isn’t he at work?”
“He went looking for you. At that place in Pescadero, you know, the youth hostel?”
“What youth hostel?”
“The lighthouse,” I said, getting impatient. “The one you stayed at that time? The poster is over April’s crib?”
“Oh.” She stepped into the room little by little, still looking like a guest or a stranger. “Why there?”
“He thought it was . . . never mind. Where
were
you?”
She hesitated, switching her purse from right shoulder to left. “At Kim’s. Remember Corvette Kim?”
“Yeaahhh,” I said slowly. “I didn’t know you guys were still friends.”
“She came to Safeway for a case of beer.” Stacy touched her hair, like she was feeling for the color. “There was a party. She invited me. I went.”
“You went to a
party
?”
“It’s not like it sounds.”
“For two days?”
She studied the floor. “I’m back now, okay?”
“You could have at least called.” I thought about how she looked that night in the bathroom mirror, her hair wet and dark and no makeup on her face. Like she belonged somewhere else, not in a shitty basement with this screwed-up family. Now she was tired and sorry and I knew she was going to catch enough hell from Darren, not to mention my dad, so I left her alone. “April’s with Darren,” I said.
She nodded. “I’m gonna go downstairs.”
When I heard the basement door close, I considered my options: call Darren or not call Darren. Calling to let him know Stacy was home could be, like, a peace offering. Something to let him know it was okay, I understood why he had to do what he did. Not calling him would be the opposite, maybe. The thing was that I didn’t know if I was ready to have it either way.
I started out of the living room, away from the phone, then thought about April. I went back and called Darren’s cell.
“She’s here,” I said.
“What?” “Stacy’s here.” I knew he’d find out anyway, so I spilled it: “She was at Corvette Kim’s.” I could hear the sound of cars on the highway. “You want to talk to her?”
“No. Tell her to get out of my house.”
“Darren.”
“Tell her.”
“I’m not going to tell her that,” I said. “Just come home. And hurry up. I don’t want Dad to get here first.”
I hung up and immediately called Jason to remind him we were going to Serramonte. Given everything that was about to go down, it seemed stupid to stay around the house any longer than I had to.
“Dude,” Jason said when he answered the phone, “I just woke up.”
“Be at the bus stop in half an hour.”
Jason came running down the hill just as the bus pulled up. He grinned as we climbed on board. “I got eighteen more minutes of sleep after you called,” he said.
“You must be proud.”
There were only three other passengers so we took the big seat across the back; me in one corner and him in the middle. Even with the space between us I could smell the clean scent of him, fresh out of the shower. His damp hair curled around the base of his neck in a way that made me want to touch it. I told myself to stop thinking like that — stop thinking about how Lee was out of town and how I’d known Jason longer, stop thinking about how Jason wanted to sleep with her and she probably wouldn’t. I reminded myself that I was the New Deanna. I’d dealt with Tommy. Things had changed.
“It’s so freakin’ hot,” Jason said. There was no sign — nothing in his voice or the way he looked at me — that Lee had said anything about our fight.
“I know,” I said. “Which is why today is all about an air-conditioned mall.” The bus rolled out of Pacifica and past the ugly rows of pastel stucco houses in Daly City. “So Stacy showed up today,” I said.
“Told you she would.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. Darren is going to freak.” He already freaked, I thought, but didn’t want to turn our mall trip into a bummer so I kept things light: “Guess where she was?” I paused for the full effect. “Partying with Corvette Kim.”
He leaned his head back on the seat and laughed. “No shit?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, that’s Stacy. Darren knew she was kind of crazy when he first hooked up with her.”
“Hopefully he’ll remember that.”
We walked into Serramonte through New York & Company. Serramonte is no Stonestown. No marble floors, no grand piano, no gleaming railings. Just a dirty, tiled fountain with a whole lot of loose change lying on the bottom, and enough Tagalog spoken by shoppers that the mall was sometimes called Little Manila.
We went straight to the ATM. “How much do you want?” I asked, punching in my PIN. “Sixty bucks? Eighty?”
“I didn’t know I was hanging with Paris Hilton. Why not make it an even hundred?”
“Good idea,” I said, but hesitated before selecting the amount of withdrawal. What if Darren changed his mind? Maybe he’d still need me. I hadn’t even gotten my first paycheck yet. This was just old birthday money. I felt Jason watching over my shoulder and decided on eighty.
“I thought you were saving up to move out,” Jason said, his eyes settling on me when I turned around. My face got hot.
“You know I made that crap up, right?” I stuffed the cash into my wallet. “I mean, obviously my parents would never let me go.”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. It could happen.”
“Yeah, well. Not in my world.” I started walking, my way of saying the subject was closed. “Where to?”
“Let’s get some grub.”
“I want to look at clothes first. It’s always better to try on clothes before you eat.”
“If you say so.”
I dragged him into Express and pulled a bunch of clothes off the racks. When I got to the dressing room I looked at the clothes and I looked at me. Most of what I’d grabbed was pretty and trendy; clothes for the New Deanna. I stripped off my jeans and tank top and put on a pair of white capris and a fitted black T-shirt. I looked nice. Like a nice girl. Maybe if my dad saw me like that he’d change his mind about me. Maybe Jay would think differently, too. He’d see I could be a buddy and also girlfriend material. And when Lee got back and told him about what I’d said to her, he wouldn’t take her side. He’d open his eyes and realize I had it all. He’d choose me.
I called through the dressing room door. “Are you out there?”
“Where else would I be?”
I straightened my hair, twisted it up into a bun, and stepped out of the dressing room with what I hoped was a sweet smile. “Hey, check me out.”
Jason grinned. “That looks cute.”
“Too bad I can’t afford it, huh? Just the pants are, like, seventy.”
He studied me and shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s not really you.”
I forced myself to laugh. “Yeah.” Back in the dressing room, I took my hair down, changed, and kicked the pants and shirt into a pile on the floor. I was still me, still stuck in my skin and the reality of my life. Pretty soon everything I had left would be gone: Darren and Stacy would either break up or move out without me, and Jason would pick Lee when he heard how shitty I’d been to her. I didn’t even know if I’d be able to stay at Picasso’s after what had happened with Tommy. Even if I did stay, a crappy pizza place job being the best thing in my life was pretty sad.
I put on my game face and came out of the dressing room. “Let’s go eat.”
“I wish I had a food court in my house,” Jason said, scanning our options.
“What do you want to eat?”
“Sbarro?”
“God no, please not pizza,” I said. “Let’s do Chinese.”
We got in line at Panda Express and were checking out the menu when a voice behind us said, “Hey, Lambert, you want to go out with me? I’ve got two tickets to the parking lot behind Target.”
It was Bruce Cowell, with Tucker Bradford tagging along like the second-string ass he was.
“I thought that was a special place just for you and your boyfriend,” Jason said, pointing at Tucker.
Tucker stepped up. “I
know
I didn’t hear that.”
A couple of people in front of us turned around, pasty-looking office people whose lunch breaks we were about to ruin, or make exciting, depending how you looked at it.
I thought of a bunch of stuff I could say back to Bruce, but I was tired of it, tired of sticking up for myself and acting tough when all I wanted to do was disappear. I stared at the menu with my arms crossed and Jason turned his back on Tucker and Bruce. We got up to the counter. I ordered chow mein; Jason ordered a rice bowl. Suddenly Bruce’s voice was right in my ear, whispering, “I guess this is a self-serve thing,” and he put his hand between my legs from behind.
I spun around and pushed him as hard as I could, shouting, “Don’t
ever
fucking touch me again!”
He ended up on the floor and just lay there, laughing. The office people looked away. Not one of them said
Hey, knock it off. What’s your name? I’m going to call your parents
. They were afraid of us, scared we’d pull a gun on them and do some kind of mass murder in the mall.
Bruce kept laughing. Tucker danced around Jason, fists up like a boxer, going, “Right now, punk! Right now!”
A security guard came toward us fast. I grabbed Jason’s shirt. “Let’s
go
.” We ran through the lunch crowd and into an elevator just before the doors closed. A mom with a stroller smiled at us, probably thinking we were just two crazy teenagers on a crazy teenage adventure. We all got out on the second floor; Jason and I went into Macy’s, checking behind us for the rent-a-cop.
I kept it together, I did, until we got to the formal wear section, which was empty and quiet. Once I knew we were alone, I lost it. I sat on a pedestal at the feet of a mannequin in a tux, and cried.
Jason sat down next to me. “They’re assholes,” he said. “Forget them.”
“He grabbed me,” I said. “I’m not public property.”
“Like I said. Assholes.”
I couldn’t believe I was crying
again,
more tears in two days than I’d cried in the last two years. I covered my face with one hand. “I was with Tommy last night.”
“Tommy Webber?”
I nodded. “He works at Picasso’s.”
“Since when?”
“Since I started.” I took my hand off my face and looked at Jason. I couldn’t tell if he was disappointed or worried or jealous or what. “He gave me a ride home,” I said, the tears slowing down to a trickle. “Nothing happened, really.”
“Sorry, but I’m thinking
something
happened.” Jason’s voice was low. “Or else you wouldn’t even be telling me this.”
“Tommy was Tommy,” I said. “I was me.”
“That’s not who you are, Deanna.”
“We talked. Tommy and me, we talked about what happened . . . back then. I thought I felt better, but now . . .” Bruce’s hand between my legs, right in front of a crowd of strangers, and worse, in front of Jason — it made a declaration about me: Deanna Lambert, you are just a skanky piece of ass. The tears started up again.
Jason stood. I thought he was going to walk away, which would pretty much seal it as my worst day ever. Instead, he did the most perfect thing, like we were in a movie: he took the handkerchief out of the mannequin’s tux pocket and handed it to me. “You’re not what Tommy says or what Bruce and Tucker say. Or what your dad says.”