Confessions of a Not It Girl (20 page)

"You both went to school there," said my grandmother, as if my parents might have forgotten where they went to college. Then she turned to me. "You're going to Amherst?" she asked.

"If I get in, Grandma," I said.

"It's very hard to get in there," she said.

Leave it to my grandmother to forget everything in the world except the Amherst admissions statistics.

I thought I would have to beg my parents to let me out of dinner at Les Trois Canards, but when I went up to their room to talk to them later that night they were shockingly cool about it.

My mom had
The New Yorker
on her lap and my dad had a book next to him, but somehow I got the feeling they hadn't been reading so much as recovering. At first when I asked not to go to dinner my mom started to say no, but then my dad said, "Elizabeth, come on. It's her vacation, too." Then he patted the bed next to him. I went and sat down.

"You're holding up like a champ," he said. "Your brother owes you big time." He took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

"I guess it can be tough to be around Grandma sometimes," my mom said finally.

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My dad took her hand. "Honey, you are a master of understatement." They both laughed.

"Okay, Jan," she said. "You can have the night off." My dad winked at me.

"Thanks," I said to her. "I owe you one."

As I was leaving, she said to my dad, "I hope I'm not like that when I get old."

I considered telling her she'd better be careful because she was already showing some irritating qualities, but then I thought that might not be the most diplomatic response. Plus my get-out-of-jail-free pass made me feel generous.

"Don't worry, Ma," I said. "You're
nothing
like Grandma."

"Phew," she said, wiping her forehead.

"Of course, you
could
try being a little more--"

"Watch it, kid," she said, aiming her magazine at me.

"I hear you," I said, mock bowing my way out the door. "I hear you, oh Great and Respected Mother of Mine."

"That's more like it."

After spending the entire next day failing to complete even one college essay, the last thing I was in the mood to do was listen to my parents explain to my grandmother that I wouldn't be joining them for dinner at her favorite restaurant (except she couldn't
remember
it was her favorite restaurant). I had seventy dollars of Hanukkah money burning a hole in my pocket, so I decided I'd do a little window shopping, rent a video, and then go by Szechuan Palace and pick up a cozy Chinese dinner for

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one. I was so grateful not to be spending the evening listening to my family scream banalities across a table at Les Trois Canards, I couldn't even be depressed about having nothing but Szechuan chicken and
She's the One
in my immediate future. I even decided to wear my new bra to celebrate my night of freedom.

There were no clothes worth trying on at Cutie Pie. At Sleeping Beauty, I tried on a sweater, but it had a strange zipper thing happening at the waist, so I just headed over to Video Express without any new purchases. There was a whole section of foreign new releases, and for a minute I considered renting a French movie. Perhaps just a few hours with Jean-Luc Godard were all it would take to turn me into a master of that elusive tongue. Then I thought about how hard I'd been working all day and decided to get
Sex and the City: The Complete Third Season Volume 1
instead. Maybe I didn't
have
an exciting, urbane social life, but at least I could enjoy one vicariously.

It was warm and cozy inside Szechuan Palace, and it smelled of garlic. I stood at the counter reading the takeout menu, trying to decide if I should stick with Szechuan chicken or expand my horizons. On the one hand, it's bad to get into a rut. On the other--

"Jan?" I turned around. Josh was sitting at a corner table. Sitting next to him was a beautiful girl I didn't recognize.

Across the table from them was someone I did.

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CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Josh was wearing his Brown sweatshirt and his hair was rumpled, as if he hadn't showered since he woke up. He didn't look especially glad to see me.

"Hey," I called. I didn't know if it was being inside in my heavy jacket or seeing Josh, but suddenly I was sweating.

A lot.

Henry waved, and I nodded in his general direction.

The beautiful girl beckoned me over.

I've heard that chickens, after you cut their heads off, continue to run around before they die. I guess it was the same physiology that enabled me to walk across the restaurant even though every one of my major organs had ceased to function.

"Hi," she said when I got to the table. "I'm Leslie."

"I'm Jan," I said, thinking,
Of course you are.
Josh toyed with his fork and looked past my shoulder, staring at nothing.

I wanted to be staring at nothing, too, but that would have meant I'd have to stop staring at Leslie, which was clearly impossible. I'd been wrong about her being blond, but every other fear I'd had turned out to be one hundred percent correct. She was dressed the way I'd been dressed

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the night I baby-sat Hannah, only where I had been pseudo-nature girl, Leslie was the real thing. The faded T-shirt she was wearing was clearly faded from use, not courtesy of Old Navy, and it was tight enough to show her boobs didn't need any help from Victoria's Secret. She had creamy skin, the kind that's just a tiny bit rosy even without blush, and brownish-red hair that was parted in the middle and hung down past her shoulders. Needless to say, it was straight.

For a second I thought I might actually faint. At first I was
afraid
that I would, then I hoped I would. After all, what could have been a faster ticket out of this nightmare than losing consciousness? But of course I didn't.

You never faint when you want to.

"Why don't you join us?" asked Leslie. Her teeth were white and shiny. I wiped my forehead and my hand came away damp, just as I'd feared.

Josh still wasn't looking at me, which I couldn't really be too sad about considering my face was producing more oil than Saudi Arabia.

"Um, okay." I pulled out the chair next to Henry and sat down across from Leslie.

"Hey," said Henry.

"Hey," I said. He looked exactly the way I remembered him looking except instead of wearing a suit he was wearing a T-shirt of Josh's. I don't know if he'd worn it because he had run out of clothes or because he thought it looked cool, but whatever his motivation the effect was grotesque. He looked like a little boy playing dress-up in his dad's clothing.

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A greasy, acne-ridden, squeaking little boy playing dress-up in his dad's clothing.

"Don't you want to take your coat off?" asked Leslie.

"Oh, yeah. Sure." I was a little worried about how obvious my new bra would be in just a T-shirt, but since neither Henry nor Josh was looking my way the concern seemed moot.

Leslie smiled across the table at me from her seat next to Josh.

"It's so nice to finally meet you," she said. "Josh talks about you all the time." Only a girl who looked like Leslie could utter that sentence without a trace of jealousy. It was like she was saying,
Josh talks about you all the time, but I don't care because I look the way I look and you look the way you look.

"Yeah," I managed to choke out. "It's nice to finally meet
you."
I wanted to add,
Josh rarely mentions you,
but I refrained.

I considered fake fainting. I could just collapse and then say something about how I had forgotten to take my medication and needed to get home immediately.

"Are you hungry?" asked Leslie.

"What?" I asked, even though I had heard her.

"Do you want some of this? I can never eat a whole one." She pointed at the egg roll on her plate.

"Oh, no thanks." Who can't eat a whole egg roll?

"You should eat with us. That would be 50-0-0 fun. You could tell me what Josh is like in New York." She jokingly punched Josh on the arm and giggled. Was it my imagination or were we getting into Mandy Johnson

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territory? "Josh hardly tells me
anything
about his life." She looked at Henry. "And Henry doesn't have
any
gossip for me. It's
so-o-o
boring."

Henry shrugged. Josh started rolling the paper from his straw into a little ball. I thought of our lunch at Panda East the day of my Amherst interview.

"Oh, I can't stay. I, ah, actually have to pick up dinner for my family. They're, um, waiting for me at home."

"That's such a
hummer"
Leslie said.

"Yeah," I said. Neither Josh nor Henry seemed too bummed.

"Well, why don't you order and then sit with us until it's ready?"

"Oh, I--" But I couldn't come up with a reason I needed to sit right by the door until the food was ready. "I don't think they'll let--"

Leslie stood up. "I'll be right back," she said.

"You don't have to--" But she was already walking away. Her legs were so long and thin she could have been in a jeans ad, and her butt was as perfect as I'd imagined. Before I could say anything to Josh or Henry, she was back at the table with a takeout menu.

"Here you go," she said. "The guy said you could totally sit with us." I looked up at the man behind the counter and he waved at me, smiling.

Why couldn't I live in a country where the customer
isn't
always right?

Given that my brain was on autopilot, I didn't exactly think now was the time to start experimenting with new culinary combinations. I'd circled Szechuan chicken and

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was about to stand up and bring the sheet to the smiling man when I remembered I was supposed to be ordering dinner for my entire family.

What were the odds four people would be satisfied with one entree and a complimentary container of steamed rice?

I glanced up at Leslie. She was picking individual strands of cabbage out of her egg roll and eating them. At the rate she was going, she'd finish her meal around the time I graduated from college.

"So, what are you going to get?" she asked. Neither Henry nor Josh had said a word to me besides "Hey" since I'd walked in.

"Well, I don't think anyone's
that
hungry," I said. I looked at the prices. How had I never noticed how expensive Chinese food is?

"Don't you find that people always end up eating more than they say they will?"

"Mmmm," I said, adding up numbers in my head. Leslie grabbed the Video Express bag I'd put on the table and peeked inside.

"Oh,
Sex and the City.
I
love
that show. Is that, like, totally what New York single life is like? Maybe I
should
go to NYU."

"NYU?" I asked. Hadn't Henry said she'd applied early to Brown?

"Yeah, I had an interview this morning--that's why I'm in New York. I totally loved Greenwich Village." She laughed. "I mean
the
Village. That's what you're supposed to call it, right?"

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"I guess." I couldn't help asking my next question. "So, is NYU where you're going?"

"Maybe," she said. She looked over at Josh, who was studying his empty teacup. "Or Brown."

When she said that, Josh looked up at me. Our eyes met for a second, and then he looked away.

I couldn't stand this anymore. Without even looking at what I was circling, I marked up the menu. "Excuse me," I said. I brought the sheet over to the smiling man.

"You join your friends," he said, still smiling at me. "It's okay." He gestured for me to go back to the table. "We bring it to you."

As I walked back to the table as slowly as possible, Leslie was whispering something in Josh's ear. I sat down just as Josh said, "What?" and turned to her.

"Um, could you excuse us a minute?" she asked me and Henry. Before we could answer she had pulled Josh to his feet. "We'll be right back," she added, and then she practically dragged Josh across the restaurant.

Henry and I sat next to each other not saying anything.

"Well, this is a funny coincidence," said Henry finally, "you showing up here." I was staring at the bowl of duck sauce, so there was no way to know if he was looking at me or not.

"Yeah," I said, though
funny
wasn't exactly the word that came to mind.

I revisited my fake-fainting scenario. But what if Henry knew CPR? The last thing I wanted was to come up with a plan to avoid talking to Henry that provided him with

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a legitimate excuse to massage my chest, put his lips on mine, and breathe into my mouth.

Without turning my head, I snuck a look over at him. Both of his hands were on his lap and his body was stiff.

"Jan?"

"Yeah?" I asked. My heart was beating very fast. Was he about to ask me out? I snuck another look at him. He didn't exactly have a beard, but there was a little growth of something on his chin.

"The thing is"--he didn't take his eyes off his plate-- "I kind of have a girlfriend now."

"What?" I was so shocked I couldn't even try to hide it.
Henry the Horrible had a girlfriend?

He finally looked at me. "Yeah. I just wanted you to know in case you were thinking...anything." Clearly all that studying for his SATs hadn't provided Henry with the vocabulary he needed for this conversation. "I mean, we just started going out. No one really knows. I mean, some people know. Josh and Leslie don't know. But I wanted you to know because I know I asked Josh to kind of ask you if...but then I kind of..." He shrugged at how inarticulate he was being. "Well, you know."