Big Girl Small (21 page)

“Lists of what?”

“Stuff I need from Mom and Dad.”

“What’s the project?”

“Science. Do you want to know my hypothesis?”

“Of course.”

“That if Earth were a different shape, then the effect of climate change would be different.”

“How’d you come up with that?”

“I was just thinking, you know, how we could fix the whole problem. I don’t just mean, like, recycling or whatever. I mean a bigger solution.” He looked up at me with round brown eyes, blinked. “And then I realized, what if we could do something magical, like change the shape of the planet? I mean, that would be so much better.”

“Why, though? Why would that help?”

“I don’t know yet. I have to figure out what shape would make it better.”

“So what stuff do you need?” I asked. I peered over his shoulder at the list on the screen: milk cartons, baking soda, balloons, newspaper, paste, paper, cardboard, glue, weather map, ruler, globe, re-writable DVD, laptop. I thought of Kyle’s neck and my stomach flipped.

“What are the milk cartons and balloons for?”

“I’m going to build different-shaped Earths out of those. For the square Earth, I’ll use the bottoms of milk cartons. The round one I have to do out of papier- mâché.”

“Why do you need a globe?”

“So I can draw the right places on the Earths.”

“Why do you need baking soda?” I hoped there were going to be volcanoes.

“To put with water and soak the milk containers. And then when I’ve built the Earths, I’m going to shine light on them to see how the sun would shine on Earths that aren’t round. The cubical Earth will be cold, right? Because it’ll only have light on one side? And the round Earth will be warm, which is better for plants, but worse, too.”

“Can I help?”

“You want to?” He looked at me happily.

“Of course.”

“You can help me draw the maps and then write up the results.”

“Who taught you to say ‘write up’ like that?”

“Mr. Frank,” he said, proudly.

“You’re a true scientist,” I said. “I’ll go get you the milk cartons and baking soda from the kitchen. And you should add poster board to that list, so we can do a big write-up of the results, with digital pictures of the Earths.”

“But we’ll have the actual Earths there too, and a digital slide show.”

“We should hang the Earths from poster board anyway, so they’re there in three-D. We’ll build a diorama with the Earths and then put the poster board behind them, explaining how the project worked, with pictures of where the light shone on each of the Earths. You can put it next to the projector.”

He beamed.

I went to the kitchen to fetch his things, and my mom kissed me on the head.

“Do you want pasta, honey?” my dad asked. He was cooking.

“Sure,” I said, even though I was too giddy to be hungry.

An old woman sitting at the counter drinking Lipton tea saw me come out of the kitchen carrying crayons and pasteboard.

“Are you working on a project for school, cutie?” she asked me. My dad and I grinned at each other.

“Yup,” I said.

“Well, I’m sure you’ll do a great job. I bet your teacher loves you!” she said as I disappeared back into the office to find Sam.

The next day was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, so we had no school. Kyle didn’t call, but I knew he was going to Grosse Pointe with Alan, so I pretended that it was okay. I had no appetite the entire weekend and was wasting into a primordial version of myself, even though I usually love Thanksgiving and hang out endlessly at the Grill, gobbling my parents’ food. At Thanksgiving dinner, the bird glistened on the table like it had been shellacked for a week. It reminded me so much of Cletus the Fetus that I didn’t even pretend I was going to eat a single bite. And I kept getting up to check compulsively whether Kyle had changed his status on Facebook from “single” to “in a relationship” (which of course he hadn’t, and neither had I). I also called Meghan a few times, thinking I would tell her what had happened and that she would be even more thrilled than I was. I knew what she’d say, things like, “I knew he’d fall in love with you—you’re so gorgeous and brilliant and I knew everything would work out and you’re like the homecoming queen at your acting school” and blah blah.

But each time I heard her voice on the phone, I changed my mind about telling her. I mean, she knew I had a crush on Kyle, but I didn’t want to tell her I’d lost it. Not on the phone, I told myself. She was begging her parents for a ticket to come see me in February when
Runaways
went up, so I’d wait and tell her then, when I saw her. Maybe we’d be in love by then.

Of course my mom sensed that something was up with me, so the whole time she was scooping oranges out of their peels and refilling them with mashed sweet potatoes and cranberries that would burst in the oven to form red polka dots, she kept asking, “Do you have news for us, sweetie? About the play, or school, or senior voice? What’s happening with you?” And I just said things were good and that was it. The truth is, I ignored my family that weekend, wasn’t grateful for any of the best things in my life, and couldn’t wait for D’Arts, American lit, rehearsal, the first sight of Kyle’s sleepy face.

But he missed class the first Monday back. When I got to rehearsal I was trying not to hyperventilate while Goth Sarah told me about Thanksgiving with her grandparents in Minnesota. And then there he was, leaning against a wall, super casual as always, talking to Kim and Kelly Barksper and Ms. Minogue. He looked up when I came in, saw me. He nodded in my direction, even gave a tiny smile, and then went back to talking. Eventually Rachael Collins came over to me with some small talk about AP bio and I couldn’t watch him in peace anymore. But I was also relieved to have something to occupy me. Maybe that smile was an invitation. Maybe he agreed that now we had both shown restraint, it was time to talk. To hang out again. That’s what I took it to mean.

After we were done blocking, Ms. Minogue gave us notes. She didn’t have any for me, but she told Goth Sarah that she was upstaging me as my interpreter, and that she should try to be more “understated.” Sarah grinned in my direction. As soon as notes ended, I hung around in the hallway, looking at a plaque on the wall commemorating two seniors who had died in a freak car accident four years before. I had seen the plaque and the photo next to it before, but had never spent that much time looking at it. I felt kind of guilty doing it now, just so I could wait for Kyle to come out and see if he wanted to leave with me, but I couldn’t help it. The thing was gold, and it said in carved letters, “In Loving Memory of Mindy O’Grady and Samantha Robinson.”

I had been twelve when they died, but knew about it then because Chad was in high school at the same time they were, and anyway it was on the news. Mindy was driving, and it was hailing and they skidded around an icy curve and crashed into the half-frozen river. Chad told me he heard that by the time the divers and paramedics got there, the car had sunk and they had to get under the ice, and they couldn’t find the car, and the girls drowned. I remember he was crying when he told me, and he kept saying maybe if it hadn’t been so cold, or if the car had spun out of control somewhere else, or if they’d been found sooner, or if it had been a four-wheel-drive car, or if any small detail had been different—then maybe they’d still be alive. Chad cried again later, too, while we were all watching the 11:00 news. He hadn’t known them personally, but every kid in the city cried, because it could have been any of us, and because on some level we knew that their parents’ lives were over, and because our parents were so upset that no one even knew how to pretend it was going to be okay. There’s nothing okay about two teenagers being dead forever. In the photo next to the plaque on the wall at D’Arts, Mindy and Sam are on the lawn, smiling into the camera like they’re immortal. Of course. Because they’re young. I don’t know who made up that saying about “youth is wasted on the young,” but I don’t agree. It isn’t wasted on me, for example, because I’m enjoying it, and because I can feel it going by.

And this is really shallow, but I was still looking at their picture when Kyle walked by with Kim Barksper and they left, and I could hear myself wishing I were dead and then I reminded myself that some people actually were dead and I promised never to have another thought like that again. And every time those thoughts bubble up, even now, I think of Chad crying when those girls died, and how my mom sat there silently, with her arm around him, letting him cry and not even saying anything to make it better, and I know that what happened to me is different, because maybe it won’t be eternal.

Kyle left rehearsal early the next day with Chris and Alan, and on Wednesday, we didn’t talk at all. So it was never going to happen again, had been a fluke, or so terrible that he not only didn’t want to be in love with me, he never even wanted to say hello to me again for the rest of our lives.

The days were a miserable, thick slog, until Thursday, when, after rehearsal, he nonchalantly was like, “You want a ride?” I wished I were the kind of person who could have been like, “I’d love one, but I have other plans,” but I’m not and I couldn’t; I said yes, called the Grill, and left a message saying I’d be a little late, because I was hanging out with a friend.

Then I went back to Kyle’s cold, silent palace. This time we didn’t even get popcorn or fake that we were going to watch HBO, just climbed onto the bed. I noticed that the framed picture of the girl was gone. His camera was sitting on the nightstand instead. When he got up to go pee, I crawled across the bed to look at his tidy desk. There was something weird about an oasis of clean in his room. The dated mini-DVDs were still stacked immaculately. To the right, on a shelf above the desk, was one by itself, labeled “Claire.” It was the only one with anything other than dates on it. I heard Kyle coming back down the hall toward his room and I leapt to the other side of the bed and pretended to have been staring out the window.

He came and sat on the bed next to me, put an arm over my shoulder, and leaned in to kiss me. This time the kissing was quite soft, his mouth sleepy like the rest of him, but he also pushed me down onto the bed, and I thought how odd the contrast was between his kissing and his, I don’t know what, pushing. It kind of made me think maybe there was a fight happening between his personality and his body, because even though his mouth was kind of soft, the rest of him was pressing against me so hard it hurt. I peeked to see what he was doing or thinking, but his eyes were closed, so I closed mine, too. Then he jerked up suddenly and took his T-shirt off. One of his knees was between my legs, and he used it to push them apart and then he lay down on top of me and put his hand first under my shirt and then under the striped skirt I was wearing, and then he took both off and suddenly I was naked for the second time in Kyle Malanack’s bed, and I kept thinking, “It’s the second time, which makes it even more real. Enjoy this, absorb this—this is actually happening,” but I couldn’t enjoy it, because even then I knew it was too good to be true and there must be something weird and wrong. It was more uncomfortable even than the first time. And here’s the funny thing: when he put it in and it hurt and I put my hand over my mouth so I wouldn’t say “ow” or something unsexy, he took my hand off my mouth, and even as he was going faster and then doing his creepy slumping thing, he was like, “Is that okay? Are you okay?” and I was glad the lights were on. I said I was fine.

And that’s when he rolled off me and flicked the light switch next to his bed. The room was dark, and we were lying there silently for a minute, and then I was like, “Kyle?” and there was no answer, and I realized he was asleep. So maybe he was actually just really sleepy all the time. Because I don’t think I’ve ever fallen asleep that instantaneously, especially at a moment like that. So I lay there, bionically awake, watching his clock click its red digits, wondering whether it was weird that right when I thought how glad I was for the light, he had decided to turn the lamp off. And then I forced myself not to be a superstitious idiot, and shifted my mind back to the fact that I actually, formally wasn’t a virgin anymore. I mean, the first time was so quick and surprising that I wasn’t sure it had counted, but now we’d done it twice and even though the second time had been quick too, there was no doubt that the boy I had lost it to was Kyle Malanack. And even though it was as dark as a cave in his room and he was sleeping and I felt a little scared, I still knew if I’d been able to choose anyone in the entire universe, it would have been him. And I had faith that it would feel good later, once I wasn’t such a virgin anymore. I mean, I had hated kissing the first time I’d kissed a guy, and now I liked that. I hoped that sex would get fun, the same way kissing had, although I wasn’t sure how many practice sessions that would take, and I was kind of worried either way. I mean, I didn’t really want to have sex with Kyle all the time if it was going to be like this, but I also didn’t want not to, if that would mean we weren’t in love. Maybe we’d be more comfortable with each other soon, and we’d be able to talk about things, although I hadn’t even asked him why he hadn’t called me. I mean, it had only been a week, and it wasn’t like we’d said we were boy- and girlfriend. I didn’t want to push it. But when I woke him up forty-five minutes later (after I’d gotten dressed and climbed up onto his sink to wash my face and put on new lipstick and use his toothbrush to brush my teeth) and asked him if he’d drive me home, he was all cute and groggy. He said sure, of course, and stretched out and then sat up. He apologized for “falling asleep like that” and asked me if I would be willing to do him a favor.

I’m tempted to lie about what I said, because it’s so sickening and stupid and revealing, but today I confessed it to Bill at the Manor Motel, word for word. And he just nodded like, okay, that’s what some people say, even when they don’t know what the favor is going to be. So I’ll admit it here, too. What I said was, “Anything. I’ll do anything for you.”

10
I smoked pot again at a party the Friday after Thanksgiving, this time with a bunch of people on the deck at Kim and Kelly Barksper’s house. Which is funny, because if I were someone other than me, and didn’t know the story from the inside out, I can see how I’d be like, wow, she started smoking pot and having sex, no wonder her life fell apart! But it wasn’t like that—I mean, I smoked twice, and it never had any effect, and the sex was supposed to be because I was in love, so it was just a coincidence. This is one of the reasons that adults are stupid. Because they create these nonsense propaganda narratives out of what’s actually just our lives when we’re teenagers.