Confessions of a Not It Girl (16 page)

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The truth is, it's very hard not to think about someone.

For example, it had become my habit upon arriving in English to look for Josh. If he wasn't there, I would think,
Where's Josh?
But now I couldn't think,
Where's Josh?
because that would mean I was thinking about Josh. So instead of thinking,
Where's Josh?
I had to think,
I'm not going to wonder where Josh is.

But really that's kind of thinking about him, too. I mean, when you think about it.

On Wednesday night I actually managed to forget about Josh for two whole hours because Richie called to tell me Madame had taken advantage of my absence and assigned an essay on
L'Etranger.
Richie started reading me the essay questions over the phone, but I was in such a panic that finally he told me I should just buy
The Stranger
and he'd translate the questions for me on Thursday.

Thursday night my mom came into my room, where I was trying to decipher an essay Richie had xeroxed for me called "I'm a Stranger Here My/Self: (Post-)Colonial Algeria and the Phenomenon of Existentialism." He'd assured me the essay was the key that would unlock
L'Etranger,
but so far I couldn't find the key that would unlock the essay.

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"Listen, sweetie, we might have a little problem with your Amherst interview."

"What do you mean by 'little'?"

My mom and I have very different ideas about what constitutes a problem, so
a little problem with your Amherst interview
could mean she wanted to drive up to Massachusetts on 1-95 because of construction on 684, or it could mean the Amherst admissions office had burned down and they weren't taking applicants for next fall.

"Well," she said, sitting down on the edge of my bed, "I feel really terrible about this, and so does your dad."

"Yeah?" I kept my eyes on the essay. Sometimes it can take my mom a while to build up to her main point, and there's really no reason to pay attention to her introductory remarks.

"The thing is, your dad has a thesis defense scheduled for a week from tomorrow, so that means he won't be able to come up with us."

"Oh," I said. When my brother interviewed at Amherst, my parents made it this enormous deal, like they were the king and queen of a small central European nation returning home after fifty years in exile. I went up with them, and Rogier and I had to meet about ten million of their old professors and hear how they were both such
marvelous
students and such
marvelous
assets to the school and how we were undoubtedly such
marvelous
candidates since we had such a
marvelous
mother and such a
marvelous
father. Then everyone had to practically pass out about how much time had gone by since

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my parents graduated. It was pretty much the most annoying thing that ever happened to me or my brother.

Needless to say, I wasn't exactly heartbroken about not having the opportunity to relive the experience.

"I don't mind," I said, glancing up from the page.

My mom squeezed my hand. "Oh, sweetie, are you sure?"

I couldn't decide if I should express at least a little disappointment, since that would leave me well placed for a consolation prize if we happened to go shopping while we were up there. As I remembered, Amherst had some extremely cute stores, which might be worth at least a brief look. At the same time, too much disappointment might result in my dad's finding a way to reschedule his student's thesis defense, resulting in
Return of the Monarchy, Redux.
I decided not to risk it.

"Really, Mom, it's fine." I let her hug me tightly for a minute before shaking loose.

"Listen," she said at the door. "I was thinking of asking Pam if she wanted to go with us so I won't have to do all the driving." Pam is my mom's best friend.

"Sure," I said. "Whatever."

"Won't that be fun? Girls together!" She clapped.

"Mom, could you try not to be so lame?"

"Oh, you," she said, sticking her tongue out at me. Then she shut the door.

Sometimes I worry that, in fact, my mom
is
trying not to be lame, and what I see is the result of her best efforts.

Friday night I went over to Rebecca's. She lives in a

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beautiful old apartment building on Fifth Avenue two blocks north of Washington Square Park. There's a huge lobby with fresh flowers and wood paneling and about a million doormen in uniforms, and then there's an elevator that takes you up to her apartment. I mean, when you get off the elevator, you're actually
in
the apartment: there's no other apartment on that floor
or
the floor above it, which is also hers. And in addition to there being dozens of rooms, each of which her mom redecorates about once a month, there's a gigantic terrace that wraps around the entire apartment (providing Rebecca with breathtaking views
and
an ideal setting in which to seduce her father's colleagues).

Rebecca was in the living room with her mom and a bunch of women, who were all dressed in identical beige pantsuits. She stood up as soon as I got off the elevator and came racing over to me.

"Oh my God, this is the most boring thing ever," she whispered. She was wearing a long-sleeved dress with little black and blue checks all over it. The dress would have made me look like a piece of upholstered furniture, but of course Rebecca looked gorgeous in it. "We
have
to get out of here," she said.

I waved at Rebecca's mom and followed Rebecca upstairs to her room.

"Those women were just giving me a whole lecture on proper skin care. They kept saying how important it is to
exfoliate
while you're still young. I was afraid they were about to strap me down and give me a facial." Rebecca lay facedown on her bed.

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Rebecca's room is very modern: it has modular furniture and modern art on the walls and everything is white except for a few red and yellow "accents," as her mother calls them. I'm always afraid I'm going to spill something on the rug, but Rebecca says it would make her mother happy if I did since then she'd have an excuse to redecorate.

"I'm definitely going to fail French," I said, flopping down on the white love seat by the window. "There is not one thing about that language I understand."

"Perhaps because it's the language of love," she suggested. I threw an accent pillow at her.

"I'm telling you," I said. "I've been taking French for five years and all I know how to say is,
'L'oiseau est au seuil de la fenêtre.'"

"Sounds racy." Rebecca sat up and rummaged around in her bag. She lit a cigarette and went over to open the glass door onto the terrace.

"It means 'The bird is on the windowsill,'" I said, checking my hair for split ends. A girl at summer camp showed me how if you find one you can snap it off and then the hair won't split all the way to the root. "Oh, and I can say, 'Hello, I'm Mr. Thibaut. Have you met my wife?'"

"Now, that's practical," said Rebecca.

"Tell me about it." I lay there thinking of all the other things I can say in French.
The boy has a red ball. I am an American. Today is Thursday.
There wasn't one witty observation in my repertoire. Even if Rebecca and I did take our European vacation together, how was I going to

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pick up sexy French guys if all I could say is, "Hello. Today is Thursday. Have you met my wife?"

"I'm thinking about having sex with Brian," Rebecca said suddenly.

"No way!"
I dropped the hair I was holding and tilted my head so I could just see Rebecca out of the corner of my eye. It was hard to read the expression on her face since she was upside down.

"Do you think it's a bad idea?"

"Bad in what sense?" After the fiasco that was our last conversation about this particular subject, I thought it wise to tread carefully.

"Bad, like, bad. Irresponsible. Foolish. Unwise." She stubbed out her cigarette and closed the door. "Bad in the sense of not good."

"Look, I'm the last person in the world you want to ask for advice," I said, sitting up. "All I know about relationships is how not to have them."

Rebecca climbed back onto the bed and pulled a blanket over her feet. "The thing is, I'm going to have to come up with some pretty inventive excuses if I want to keep not doing it."

"Well, I think--"

She cut me off before I could finish. "I really don't even see what the big deal is. I mean, it's crazy to get all worked up about it."

"It does seem crazy," I said. I felt even less convinced than I sounded, and I didn't sound very convinced.

"I mean, it's not really like it's all that different from other stuff," she pointed out.

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"Sure," I said.

"I mean, he's
really
cute," she pointed out.

"That he is."

"And we've done everything else," she said, answering my unasked question.

"Good point," I said. I'd been feeling bad for so long about being out of the loop that I couldn't understand how being
in
the loop was suddenly making me feel even worse.

"So it's not really a big deal." Rebecca seemed fine having this conversation with herself. She took a nail file out of her night table. For a minute the only sound was her filing her nails.

A few years ago my mom and my dad had this argument about about President Clinton's saying he didn't have sex with Monica Lewinsky. My dad felt like Clinton had out-and-out lied because he'd obviously had sex with her, but my mom said she thought it was more complicated than that. She said society draws a distinction between sexual intercourse and other kinds of sexual acts, like how adults tell teenagers they shouldn't have sex, but they don't mean they shouldn't make out or go to second base or stuff like that. She probably didn't say second base (I can't exactly remember how she put it), but that was her point.

My dad said Clinton wasn't a teenager, and for a grown man to deny that oral sex was sex was reprehensible. This whole conversation took place one night when these old college friends of theirs were over. Rogier and I were eating with them, but we weren't exactly

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participating in the discussion. I still remember when my dad said "oral sex," and Rogier and I looked up at the same time and made eye contact and then we looked right down at our plates. I must have been a freshman and Rogier was a junior, so it wasn't like we'd never heard of it before. Still, it was kind of weird to hear the words coming out of my dad's mouth. I think he realized what he'd said right at that moment, too, because the conversation pretty much stopped after that.

"I think it would be good to have sex for the first time with someone who's not a virgin," said Rebecca. I realized she had probably been waiting for me to say something, but I was afraid if I said the wrong thing she'd get mad at me again.

"Mmmm," is what I finally settled on.

"Don't you want to lose your virginity before college?" Rebecca got up and went over to her closet, which is roughly the size of Grand Central Station.

"Um, I think you probably need a guy to lose your virginity," I pointed out.

"Well, let's say a really cute guy wanted to have sex with you," she said. She took off her dress and pulled on a Brown sweatshirt.

"Oh, so this is one of those
complete
fantasies, like, 'If I had a million dollars.'"

Rebecca zipped up her jeans. "Let's say Josh."

"I'm sorry, I don't believe I know anyone by that name."

She gave me her exasperated face. "Hypothetically, let's say you and Josh fell in love and he wanted to have sex with you."

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"Hypothetically?"

"Yeah."

I lay back down and started looking at my split ends again.

"So hypothetically this so-called Josh person breaks up with his girlfriend, asks me out, I say yes even though I hate him, we start going out, we fall in love without my ever speaking to him, and he wants to have sex with me."

Rebecca went into her bathroom and started applying eyeliner.

I couldn't actually see her, but I could see her reflection in the mirror. "You're being really mature about this, you know?" she said.

"I'll have you know," I pointed out, "I am breaking a
major
vow by even talking about him, much less contemplating having sex with him."

"Well, I really appreciate that," she said.

Normally I would have gotten up and followed Rebecca into the bathroom, but I needed to digest her announcement. Even though Rebecca had always been at least a base ahead of me, this was different.

I guess I agree with Bill Clinton: there's everything else, and then there's sex.

I got up and went into the bathroom.

"I guess you should go for it," I told her. "I mean, if you want to."

"I guess." She shrugged. I was ready to continue the conversation, but Rebecca was obviously ready to end it.

"Here," she said, handing over a lipstick. "Try this. I liked it at first, but it's too dark for me."

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I started putting it on. It was a much redder color than I would normally wear.

"This is good," I said, looking at myself. "I look very sexy with this."

She looked at my reflection and smiled her thousand-watt smile.

"You look awesome," she said. "I knew you would." I couldn't stop admiring myself.

"You look like a French Natalie Portman," she said.

"You
think?
" I pulled my hair back from my face and sucked in my cheeks.
"Ah, oui!
I
do
look kind of like Natalie Portman."

"I told you."

"You're letting me have this lipstick. You know that, don't you?"

"Oh, I know," she said. She looked at her reflection again. "Do you think I should grow my hair out?"

I looked at her critically. "Well, I liked it short, but it's kind of sexy now that it's a little longer."

"That's what I thought. Brian says he likes it this length, too."

Brian says he likes it this length, too?

"Are you turning into one of those girls?"

"What girls?"

"You know." I put on a high, girlish voice. "Oh, Brian says this. Oh, Brian says that. Oh, I couldn't possibly do anything until I ask Brian about it."

"I am so psyched for you to have a boyfriend you talk about constantly," she said, taking the lipstick from me.

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"You have no idea how mercilessly I am going to mock you."

"Don't hold your breath," I said, carefully blotting my lips with a tissue. "Because it's never going to happen."

"I wouldn't be so sure about that." She went back into her bedroom and dropped the lipstick in my bag.

I couldn't help wishing Rebecca had never said, "Hypothetically, let's say you and Josh fell in love and he wanted to have sex with you." If only she had said, "Imagine you meet a really handsome Frenchman...." Because the thing is, once you start imagining someone falling in love with you, it's kind of hard to stop. In English Monday, half of me ignored Josh, and the other half thought about what it would be like if he fell in love with me. On the train home Tuesday, half of me thought about how arrogant Josh is, and the other half thought about what it would be like to have him be my boyfriend. At Starbucks Wednesday, half of me listened to Rebecca describe everything she and Brian had and had not done in bed, and the other half thought about what it would be like to do all of those things with Josh. Wednesday night I finally came up with circumstances under which I could go out with Josh but not forgive him for the fight we'd had in English.

Scene:
New York City, a suite at the Plaza Hotel. Jan sits on a sofa by the fireplace, which has a fire going.

Setting:
After a nuclear explosion.

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JOSH:
(Enters wearing a tuxedo and carrying a bottle
of champagne.) Jan! I can't believe we were spared when everyone else in the city died a fiery death.

JAN:
(Trying to storm past him.)
I don't care if we are the last survivors in all of New York City. I hate you, Josh Gardner, and I always will.

JOSH:
(Grabs her by the wrist.)
Don't be foolish, Jan. We need each other now more than ever. I'm not going to let you go.
(He kisses her. She resists at first, then gives in.)

CURTAIN

It was daydreams like these that caused me to pay less attention than I should have to my mom's attempt to find someone to share the driving to Amherst. First Pam couldn't go because she was out of town on business for the week. Then my aunt Carol couldn't go because she had some big party Friday night. Then it looked like my dad
could
go after all because some professor on the committee was sick. Then the professor got better. The whole time my mom kept asking me to tell her who I wanted to drive with, but why would I bother to have preferences in the real world when my fantasy life demanded so much attention?

Which meant I, caught up in my increasingly detailed Josh-falls-in-love-with-Jan-who-continues-to-hate-him-but-not-totally scenarios, somehow managed to miss the key conversation that engendered the final turn of events.

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