Authors: Rachel Vail
SATURDAY NIGHT AND
there I was like a girl, staring at myself in the mirror as I tried different things with my hair. Zandra was sleeping over at Tru’s and they were watching the first season of
Gilmore Girls
on DVD instead of crashing a party. They were going to keep Tru’s cell phone with them in case I had to call them mid-date, for reasons good or bad. Some girl friendships get all strained when one of the girls gets a boyfriend, but as in most things, we are not typical. My friends were happy for me. Tru said I glowed; Zandra lent me an ankle bracelet for luck.
I was about to go to my room and put on my jeans but decided I should weigh myself first. Maybe I had lost some weight, which would boost my confidence. I went to my parents’ bathroom to use Mom’s scale; my fingers in my belly button the way the pediatrician makes me do it every year at my checkup, I watched the numbers tick up, up, up. I dropped the heavy towel and tried again.
A knock.
I grabbed my towel and wrapped it around me. “What?”
“What are you doing?” my father asked, coming into the bathroom holding the newspaper, which could only mean one thing.
“Weighing the possibilities,” I answered.
“In my bathroom?”
I kicked the scale under the vanity, then pulled all the hair off my face with my two hands. “Does my face show too much like this?”
My father looked at me briefly. “I’m not sure what that question means,” he said.
I whipped a ponytail holder around the hair and stared at him. “What do you think? Better like this?” I pulled the ponytail holder out. “Or like this?”
“Um,” he said. “I may not be qualified to say, Josie. Did you ask your mother?”
I grunted at him. “You are just taking up space here, Dad.”
“I know,” he said. “I made some dinner. Manicotti. Don’t tell Mom. You know, the dairy thing.”
“I’m not even lactose intolerant.”
“I know. She just . . . she worries about you.”
I pushed past him. “Do you think I need more eyeliner?” I asked on my way out of their room.
“No,” he said. “You’re beautiful without all that goop. Did you try the new shoes?”
I went to my room, pulled on my jeans and two long-sleeve T-shirts. A belt? No. Back to my own bathroom for more eyeliner. I was mentally saying all kinds of nasty stuff about my father, and my mother, too, who was at an event celebrating a drug that supposedly makes you fart less, her biggest account, and therefore not home to help her daughter get ready for her first real date like a good mother should—though even as I thought this I knew the last thing I actually wanted was my mother to be home, critiquing me at that point; at least my father thinks I’m beautiful, at least he says he does. I smudged on some lip gloss and immediately smeared it right off with some toilet paper. The truth is, for once it was not my mother’s fault, or my father’s. I was a wreck all on my own steam.
Breathe, Josie
. Just breathe. I’m not magically half of something; I’m still whole, wholly myself, just myself going on a date.
A date? Who goes on a date, is the thing? Maybe Grandma in the 1950s, in a poodle skirt. But me? There has obviously been a mistake. Something has been done wrong. Or something wrong has been done.
What?
Carson Gold, the gorgeous captain of the lacrosse team, starter on the basketball team, president of the senior class, accepted-early-at-Harvard boy, was about to pick me up in his cute white sports car, along with his hot best friend and his hot best friend’s gorgeous girlfriend, and we were all going to go see a movie. How was I supposed to concentrate on a movie? I love movies. But still, there was such a severe element of unreality in the circumstances that I was having trouble accepting the fact that this part wasn’t the movie I was watching, while crunching popcorn next to Michael and rolling our eyes at how unrealistic movies always are about teenagers: There is no way that odd, independent Josie Dondorff, who never found the smooth or stereotypical way through any part of life, totally non-cheerleader-beach-blanket-white-bread Josephine Dondorff, would end up as Carson Gold’s girlfriend. Even the word seemed like something from a few generations ago. Girlfriend?
Zandra and Tru kept shrieking all that afternoon: Carson Gold’s girlfriend!
And yet it was happening. Yes. I’m his girlfriend, I whispered to myself in the mirror. I am a songwriter, a clown, a friend, a klutz, a chocoholic,
and
a girlfriend. I shook my head at the giddy grin on my too-round, too-flat face. My jumble of hair still hid me somewhat but even down it couldn’t completely obliterate how dementedly happy I looked.
Where was my scowl?
I tried, failed, and finally gave myself a second just to smile at my own reflection. I like him. He likes me. He chose me, out of everybody; he looked around our whole high school and chose me. And I chose him right back. Well, of course. Why shouldn’t I? Anybody would choose him. He is smart, fun, funny, cute, and sweet.
Just like me! I am all those things, too. Absolutely. Just because not everybody has noticed all that about me does not mean it’s not true: I am smart, funny, fun, cute, and sweet. I am the catch of all catches. If I weren’t me I might want to go out with me, too. I may be falling in love with my own self!
I tried a ponytail again. Really? He likes how that looks? He can’t possibly. It is just such a large face. I let my hair down again and shook it out around my face, pressed my hands against my thighs. Are they too big?
Youch! Whose thoughts are these? Not mine. Some boring girl somewhere must have been shocked to find herself thinking about whether there is such a thing as objective morality.
I tried to concentrate on objective morality instead. Are some things just wrong, or does context always matter? Is anything real or is it all an illusion? What if . . .
What if he really likes me?
He likes ME. He has seen my thighs, he has seen my hair. He not only chose me, he pursued me. He sang “The Farmer in the Dell” to me, for goodness’ sake. Maybe Carson Gold, ironically, actually
is
someone deep and open-minded, creative and individualistic, and he’s just been judged shallow and predictable by all of us because of how beautiful he looks. Maybe he recognized me immediately as his kindred spirit, and he sensed that I am the one who can set that part of him free. Maybe we really are meant for each other. As weird as that would be.
I closed my eyes and buried my nose in the rose Carson had given me, in its little glass vase on my bathroom counter. Mmm. It still smelled rosy, despite turning slightly black at the petals’ edges. My rose.
The doorbell rang. Dad said, “I’ll get it!”
“No!” I almost tripped over the orthotic shoes my father had left outside the bathroom door for me to wear, running to answer it. Sorry, Dad. Not wearing old lady shoes on my first high school date; too bad. I stomped into my black work boots and whipped open the door for my boyfriend.
FRANKIE AND MARGO
were in the backseat. I sat up front, next to Carson. He leaned over and kissed me on the lips before he turned the car on.
On the way to the movies, I sang along with the radio, but quieter than when it’s just me and Carson. Margo leaned forward and said something to Carson, something that sounded like “Remember the nuts?” He nodded and smiled, and in the back Frankie started laughing. Since I had no idea what that meant I just kept singing, a little softer. I couldn’t help wondering how many inside jokes there were going to be that I could not possibly understand, as the new girl, and also how many other girls Frankie and Margo have met tucked under Carson’s big arm. It made me feel anonymous and peculiar at the same time.
Frankie pulled Margo back toward him and they started making out. I know because I turned around to smile gamely, to show I wasn’t intimidated by her obnoxious assertion of prior knowledge. His hand was touching her cheek as he kissed her mouth, and her hand was against his jacket. Her long reddish-brown hair was tucked behind her ear, which had a small gold hoop in it. No makeup, but then she didn’t need any; she was just naturally beautiful. So was Frankie, in a different way: he was about the same height as Margo, shorter than Carson, and his black hair curled up where it hit his collar. His eyes were so dark you couldn’t see the pupils. Maybe it’s because I was still wondering what he had said about me to Carson, but I felt like there was something a little subversive about him, a little more dark and risky than either Carson or Margo, who were both bright sunlight.
And me? How did I fit into this scene? I took a pen out of my back pocket and wrote
OK
on the palm of my hand, to remind myself that I was fine, low stress, this was just a night among thousands in my life; if it sucked completely, I’d have a funny story to tell Michael tomorrow for his birthday, during a bathroom break.
We pulled into the parking lot down the hill from the movie theater. I turned around again and said to the kissing couple, “So! You psyched for the movie? Who wants popcorn?”
They pulled their mouths out of each other’s and looked at me. Carson yanked up the emergency brake. “I do,” he said. When we all got out of the car, he threw his arm across my shoulder. I fit perfectly. It felt good in there. We walked up the hill ahead of Margo and Frankie.
“Your money’s no good here,” Carson told me, pushing my wallet away and paying for my movie ticket himself.
“Let’s go get popcorn,” Margo suggested to me.
I followed her over there.
“Larges?” she asked.
“Extra larges,” I said and, to my surprise, she grinned.
“Yeah.” She turned to the guy behind the counter. “Two extra larges.”
“Two?” he asked her. “You sure? They’re very big.”
“We’re big women,” Margo said.
When he passed the two huge, overflowing buckets across the counter, I asked him, “Don’t you have anything bigger than this?”
Margo cracked up. I liked her completely. I felt myself begin to relax. We paid for our troughs of popcorn and turned around. “Uh-oh,” Margo said.
“What?”
She pointed with her chin. “Emelina Lee.” I looked across toward the front door. There she was, Carson’s famous ex-girlfriend, in all her glory, crossing the red-carpeted lobby hand in hand with a gorgeous, slightly older-looking guy, who was sophisticatedly wearing a gray flannel scarf and a coat instead of a ski jacket. Emelina’s long black hair was back in a French braid, which just made her high cheekbones look that much more stunning. People stopped their conversations as she passed. She was wearing a black turtleneck, black pants, black high-heeled boots, and a red leather jacket.
Margo sighed.
“She sure has good posture,” I pointed out.
Turning to smile at me, Margo said, “Yes. Perfect.”
“Matches the rest of her,” I added.
“Meow,” Margo whispered.
My mouth dropped open to protest, but what could I say? She was right, I needed a saucer of milk to go with my attitude.
Margo smiled at Emelina, who had stopped right in front of us. “Hi, Emelina.”
“Hi, Margo,” Emelina said. “How are you?”
“Great,” Margo said. “You playing first singles again?”
“Yeah,” Emelina said. “Getting psyched. We should be good this year. This is Daniel. He’s in for the weekend.”
“Hi, Daniel,” Margo said.
“Margo is on the tennis team with me,” Emelina explained to Daniel. “She’s a junior.”
“Ah,” said Daniel. “Tough year.”
Margo smiled and nodded.
Carson and Frankie had made their way over and Emelina introduced Daniel to them. He and Carson gripped each other’s hands super hard, like they were trying to see who could crush whose bones.
To break the tension, and maybe also to remind myself that I hadn’t gone home yet, despite nobody’s seeming to have noticed, I said, “I’m Josie.”
They all turned to look at me, considering this news. Emelina held out her hand and said, “Hi, Josie.”
I took her hand and squished hard, jumping to the offensive since I figured if she was a star tennis player she could take me on pure strength. She gave me a small pulse of a squeeze and let go. When it took me a second to realize we were done with that, she raised one arched eyebrow at me.
“You look familiar,” Emelina said, retrieving her hand. “You don’t go to school with us, do you?”
“Yup,” I said. “Sure do. But I don’t play tennis. I wanted to, but then I heard a rumor that there’s some running around and sweating involved, so . . .”
Emelina smiled slightly, acknowledging her understanding that I was kidding around, although in fact I wasn’t. I spread my feet a little farther apart, imitating Carson’s squared-off stance. If Emelina and Daniel challenged us to a fistfight, all I can say is it’s a good thing Carson is strong. But I didn’t want to let down our side ahead of time by hiding behind Carson. Well, I did, actually, but I resisted. A few popcorns tumbled out of my vat, onto the floor. Emelina and Dan I guess didn’t want any popcorn.
“Hmm,” Emelina said, looking down at the mess I had made. “Anyway, we should get seats . . .”
Everybody nodded at that, but nobody budged.
“This is fun, huh?” I said. I shoved a handful of popcorn into my mouth and started to chew, loudly.
Carson, evidently remembering who his date was, took two steps toward me, and slung his arm protectively across my shoulders. Emelina’s face changed only slightly, briefly, and then she smiled at Carson.
“Hey,” Carson said. “You guys want to come over tomorrow for the Eagles game?”
Emelina glanced up at Daniel. “Carson is famous for his Eagles parties.”
“You want to go?” Daniel asked her.
Emelina waited a second, then another, before answering. “Sure,” she said. “It’s been awhile.”
“We’ll be there, then,” Daniel said. “What can we bring?”
“Nothing,” said Carson, squeezing my shoulders. “We’ll see you there.”
Emelina blinked her eyes twice at Carson, then started toward the door of the movie. We all watched her go. I felt Carson deflate a little.
“Who was that?” Frankie asked. “Daniel?”
“He’s a sophomore at Princeton,” Carson answered, looking at the space Emelina had been in. “She met him that weekend she went up in the fall, after she got in early.”
“Oh,” said Frankie. “That’s him?”
“Yeah,” Margo whispered, grabbing his hand. “Let’s sit at the back. Come on.”
As we followed Margo and Frankie in, I asked Carson, “You okay?”
“Fine,” he said, and stopped. He yanked me toward him and kissed me hard on my mouth. I was a little squashed so I tried to pull back a bit, but he was holding me tight. When he finally let go, I looked up at him. He pushed my hair away from my face and tucked it behind my ear. “You’re beautiful.”
He was staring at me, with that devouring look in his eyes.
“No,” I whispered. “You’re thinking of . . .”
“Of you.” He kissed me lightly, then again. “Only you.”