Big Girl Small (26 page)

I walked out of the circle and onto the main road, looked at a street sign: Beckinsdale Court. With no other choice I could think of, I called Chad. But it was 5:26 a.m., and he didn’t pick up. So I called Sarah. I knew she slept with the cell phone next to her bed, in case Eliot called, and sure enough, she answered. Her voice sounded horrible on the phone, all craggy and scratchy and asleep.

“Helllllllooo?”

“Sarah!” I whispered, “It’s Judy. I need your help. Can you come get me, please?”

She was instantly awake, the way you are when someone calls you with an emergency. I could hear her sitting up, scrambling around.

“Judy? Where are you?”

“Kyle Malanack’s.”

“Oh my god,” she said. “Okay. Um. Where is that?”

“Right off Huron Parkway—on Beckinsdale Court. Across from Huron High,” I said. I blinked at the light again, looked at the street sign and then down the road to the nearest intersection. I couldn’t see far enough to read that sign. “Turn left when you get to Bridge-way College.”

I could hear her opening her front door. “I know where that is. Don’t move. I’ll be there in ten minutes,” she said.

I sat down on the curb. “Stay on the phone with me, please,” I said.

“Oh, okay. Jesus, Judy. Are you okay? What the hell happened? What are you doing at Kyle Malanack’s house at five in the morning?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “I think I might still be drunk.”

“Okay,” Sarah said. “Okay. Um. Where’s Kyle?”

“I don’t know. Sleeping, I guess.”

“Um, okay, Judy. I have to hang up now so I can drive. Just wait for me there.” She hung up.

The light began to shift over the street, getting brighter. I started worrying that Alan or Chris or Kyle would wake up and come outside and find me, and whatever had happened would actually have happened. What if they drove out onto this main road, and saw me sitting here like an orphan? If I could just escape entirely before they got up, I thought, no one would ever know and then whatever it was might as well not have even taken place. I was grateful for the cold, even though it was hurting my eyes and nose. It froze the headache and nausea a little bit.

Years passed before Sarah pulled up. She did a dangerous, screeching U-turn and I opened the passenger door before the car had even stopped moving. I appreciated the turn because she was usually such a goody-goody about her safe driving. Her car radio said 5:48 a.m., and we tore down the street and took a right turn immediately. As soon as we weren’t on his street anymore, I felt a little bit of relief. We drove by Gallup Park; the Huron River was still lit with the kind of light that had just woken up, and all the houses and buildings we passed were still asleep. The world was in place. My head was beating so intensely I thought someone might climb out of my forehead, and I leaned forward in the car, took my seat belt off so I could rest against the dashboard.

“You okay, Judy?” Sarah asked again.

“I think so,” I said.

“What the hell happened?”

“I’m not sure, honestly.”

“Do you mean you’re not sure at all? Or you don’t want to tell me. Because either thing is okay, just tell me the truth.”

“I mean I literally don’t remember.”

“That’s not good.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Do you think you and Kyle, you know, hooked up for real, like—?”

“Yeah.”

“Have you before? I mean, other than the hand holding or whatever?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh.”

She was quiet, hurt, but I had bigger things to worry about.

“There’s something worse, though,” I said, figuring I’d make up for some of my silence with increased disclosure.

“What?”

“Some of his friends were there this morning.”

“Who?”

“Chris and Alan.”

“Were Kyle’s parents there?”

“Of course not.”

“So, so what about Chris and Alan being there?”

“So I think maybe something . . .” I trailed off.

“Something what?”

“I don’t know. I don’t feel well.” I leaned my head against the window, and when I looked through the cold glass, I saw my parents’ house with my dad’s car in the driveway, and realized it would make no sense if I arrived home at six in the morning.

“Wait, Sarah? Can we go to your house?” I asked. “I told my parents I was sleeping there.”

“Oh,” she said, “okay.” She put the car in reverse and drove out of my driveway, and I felt relieved again for some reason. Maybe because I knew that Kyle’s house and my house were two places I could never be again without having to admit that whatever had just happened—had actually happened.

“I have to be home by ten,” I said, thinking out loud. “Meghan’s coming today—remember? I have to go to the airport to get her with my mom.”

“Oh, right, cool. When am I going to get to meet her?”

“Tonight, if you want. Hey, Sarah?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks a lot for coming to get me. You really saved my ass.”

“No problem. Um—”

“I’ll tell you everything as soon as my head stops exploding.”

“So you do remember what happened?”

“Not last night, but I’ll tell you the stuff before. I wish—”

What I meant was, if I had just told you, then maybe you would have warned me and I would have listened. Maybe none of whatever happened last night, whatever horror it was, would have happened. But even as I said it, I was thinking, I still haven’t told Sarah or Molly or Meghan anything, so maybe if I keep on that path, and continue to say nothing, we can all just pretend nothing happened. Hell, since I didn’t even know what had happened, it would almost be true.

Sarah’s parents were still asleep, so we went to her room and pulled out the trundle bed. I collapsed onto it and slept until 9:30. When I woke up, light was coming in sideways through the row of horizontal windows along Sarah’s ceiling, blinding me and then lodging deep in my forehead.

“Sarah?” I heard her come down the stairs. She peeked her head around the corner into her room, looking oddly unlike herself. She had a headband pulling her hair back, and no makeup on. Maybe she had been washing her face or something. She looked very pretty and clean, like a young picture of her mom.

“You feeling any better?” she asked. I shielded my eyes from the light.

“I think I’m going to die,” I said.

“Let me get you some Excedrin—those really work,” she said, and she turned back into the hallway. I heard her in the bathroom next to Josh’s room, opening drawers and turning on the sink, thought what a good friend she was. She came back in carrying two Excedrin in the palm of one hand, and an orange plastic cup in the other. I propped myself up on some pillows, feeling like I might throw up again, and swallowed the pills down with the water.

“Lie down for ten more minutes,” she said, “and that will kick in. Then I’ll take you home so you can meet your mom in time to get Meghan.”

I wished I were Sarah, without wishing she were me. How nice would it have been not to have been me that morning, or any of the mornings that followed it? Someday I want to be the one taking care of my friend, rather than the basket case getting cared for. That said, I wouldn’t wish what happened to me on the evilest villain in the universe, so maybe I’ll never have a chance like Sarah had.

When she dropped me at my house, with the rest of her Excedrin bottle in my jacket pocket, I gave her an impulsive hug before staggering out into the driveway.

“We’ll get through this,” she said, and I knew right away that I would always remember that she said “we’ll” instead of “you’ll.”

I managed to say thank you as I walked up toward the house. When I got inside, I was relieved to find it empty, and a note from my mom saying they were at the Grill and that she’d come get me at eleven so we could pick up Meghan.

I took four more Excedrin, not realizing you’re not supposed to take more than eight in twenty-four hours, and put my head back down on the pillow. When the pills finally hid my headache under a numb bag of sand, I struggled up, took another shower, put on clean corduroy jeans and a sweater, and picked up my phone to call my mom. I had nine missed calls from Sarah and seven from Molly. So Sarah had told Molly. I couldn’t blame her. But I couldn’t bring myself to call them back, even after listening to their messages. Sarah’s were like, “Let us take you out tonight and cheer you up,” and Molly’s were all, “Dying to see you guys this weekend—call me!” because she didn’t want me to know for sure yet that Sarah had told her.

I went into my mom’s bathroom and used all her makeup. By the time she got home at eleven, I looked like I was wearing stage makeup, and felt slightly better.

“Wow,” she said, “you got dressed up for Meghan!”

I nodded. We drove out to the Detroit airport, small-talking. I used my best professional acting talent to hide everything until I left her in the car and went into the baggage claim to collect Meghan.

But my mom was suspicious. She kept casting glances at me sideways and asking if everything was all right. And my phone vibrated so nonstop in my purse that it was as if the bag were a living animal throbbing on my lap. I glanced each time to make sure it wasn’t Meghan, but it was just Molly and Sarah, over and over. I thought they were probably together, calling on a rotation.

“Why aren’t you picking up your phone?”

“Because you and I are in the car together, talking.” Even I could hear how unconvincing this was.

“Did something happen with you and Sarah?”

“No, Mom, everything’s fine.”

“What did you guys do last night?”

“We just hung out, okay?”

“Okay. Was Molly there?”

“No, she had to babysit her sister.”

“Are you sure you’re okay, Judy? You look—I don’t know, tired, maybe.”

“I was up late.”

As soon as we pulled up outside the baggage claim, I bolted from the car. Inside the airport, I had a rush of the thought that I could leave. I could just board a plane and fly to some other land far away and never return. Or at least not return until a hundred years from now, when no one would care about whatever had happened last night. I’d be like Rip Van Winkle. Or Sleeping Beauty. Except the mere thought of Sleeping Beauty getting kissed reminded me of Kyle and the floor started melting under me. I was like this, in chaos, when Meghan shouted my name from across the room.

I looked up and she was clomping toward me in huge, illicit heels, waving. She threw her arms around my neck and kissed all over my face, definitely leaving lipstick marks everywhere. She looked fantastic, all tan and wearing a tight yellow sweater and jeans with her high-heeled boots. Under any circumstances other than the ones I was now under, I would have asked right away how she had talked her mother into them; they were definitely not orthopedic.

“Oh my god! Judy! I’m so happy to see you!”

“Me, too,” I said.

She backed up and took a look at me. “Oh my god. What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

“I’m really glad you’re here,” I said. “I’m fine, just super hung-over.”

“Wow, hungover, really? I guess your life has gotten exciting, huh? You’ll have to tell me.” She grabbed a black roller bag with a pink ribbon tied to its handle and heaved it off the conveyer belt. “That’s it,” she said. “Your folks outside?”

“My mom,” I said.

She looked at me. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

I gave up on my keeping-it-secret-forever plan instantly. I wished I had told her about Kyle from the very beginning, so she would have background, could help more.

“I think something bad might have happened last night,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t actually know.”

“Well,” she said, sounding concerned but happy, “we have five whole days to talk about it. And your play! I can’t believe I finally get to see you act.” She started moving toward the door, yanking the bag along.

“I know. Thank you so much for coming.”

Something in my voice made her turn and stop. “Was it something really bad last night?”

“I can’t remember.”

“Did you
do it
?”

“Yeah, but—”

“But what? You lost it
last night
?”

“No, before. A few weeks ago, with the guy whose house I was at, though.”

“No way! You lost it!? Was it the guy you told me about? The peeing-at-the-party guy? I can’t believe you didn’t tell me—I thought we had a pact! You bitch!”

She slapped me on the arm, delightedly, but when I didn’t respond she sobered up. “So if you’d already lost it to him, what was so bad about last night?”

“His friends were there, and they’re not cool at all.”

“Are you guys, like, dating? Hanging out with his friends and everything?”

“Not really, that’s the thing.”

She waited.

“I think something crazy might have happened.”

“Like what?”

“I woke up naked, not with Kyle.”

“Oh. With—?”

“Meghan?”

“Yeah?”

“What if I—?”

“What if you what?”

“You know—fooled around with this other guy?”

“Did you wake up with one of his friends?”

“Only sort of, I mean, I was alone, but he was kind of right there—he was—”

“Was he naked, too?”

“He had on boxers.”

“Where was Kyle?”

“I don’t know. I ran.”

“You ran?”

“I mean, I didn’t literally
run
, but I left quickly.”

“How’d you get home?”

“I called that girl I was telling you about—Goth Sarah? And she came to get me. I didn’t look for Kyle.”

“Maybe that’s all good, though, right? Maybe you were just too drunk, so Kyle put you to bed somewhere else because he didn’t want to, you know, when you were too drunk to be into it. I mean, this other guy wasn’t, like, with you when you woke up, right? Maybe—”

“I don’t think it was all good,” I said.

I stopped there, because I couldn’t bring myself to say out loud to anyone, even Meghan, why: that I felt unlike myself, that I hadn’t been able to find my underpants, that I remembered
something
, a kind of hazy picture of Alan near me. I didn’t say Chris had been there too, and that I’d known exactly the way his body moved, in the instant I saw it upstairs on the living room couch, even though I couldn’t remember why or how that was true. None of this was possible to say, even to Meghan. I knew I had seen a puzzle of Alan parts too, and I knew it because they were different from Chris’s and Kyle’s; Alan stomach, hips, legs. I didn’t think I was imagining any of it—how could I have seen that stuff so clearly in my mind? And Kyle had been there. The worst part was that I thought I remembered laughing. Had Kyle been laughing? And if so, at what? Had I been laughing too? Maybe we had all just been joking around, having a good time. Or maybe I was just going crazy now, and none of it was real. I hoped so. Meghan and I walked outside the terminal, where my mom was circling. As soon as she came back around, she waved from the front seat of her car. Meghan waved back before lowering her voice and saying to me, “Why don’t you call Kyle and ask what happened?” We walked toward my mom.