Sloppy Firsts (10 page)

Still, no one missed me more than Pepe. I’ve forgiven him for that brief period when he was too busy basking in the post-talent-show glow to toss oneBonjour! my way. Today he couldn’t stop spinning around in his seat to smile at me. Madame Rogan got tired of shouting,"Tournez-vous, Pierre!" ("Turn around, Pierre!") and moved him a few rows away from me. He waved good-bye and dramatically said,"Je suis triste. Au revoir." ("I’m sad. Good-bye.") Everyone laughed, but not in a mean-spirited way because Pepe gets away with stuff like that. It was funny. But I felt like I was going to cry.

April 1st

Hope,

Just to reinforce the lessons learned in our last phone call: Sara is a skank. Bridget is still a virgin. Manda is too, but she might as well not be because—in my totally unsubstantiated opinion—oral is way more intimate than real sex.

Did I mention that Hy hasn’t done it either? It’s more than a little unbelievable, but why would she lie? I’ll take her word because knowing such a hip virgin makes me feel like less of a leper for being one too.

I like Hy. But she always refers to NYC as "the city," as if it were the only metropolis on earth. And to further show off her cosmopolitan superiority, she tries too hard to be both "street" and "elite." She doesn’t pull off either one. Hy was the poorest student at her private school, but she clearly picked up the POVs of her high-society schoolmates. She’s got an opinion on everything and she justhas to share them.

Pineville doesn’t have Latin classes? How do they expect you to rock the SAT verbal section without Latin? There’s no girl’s lacrosse team here? It doesn’t matter if there’s zero interest. Two words: Title IX. This year’s school musical isSouth Pacific?Damn. That’s wack. Last year we put on an original musical written and directed by a senior who’s now at Juilliard. It was calledRotten Appleand was about Lilith, you know, the first woman bounced out of Eden. You’ve never heard of Lilith?! Where do you think the name for Lilith Fair came from? You’ve really got to wise up to feminist theory …

No fear. Hy and I will never be more than casual confidants.

While I’m off the subject of virginities and lack thereof, how do you feel about me getting together with Scotty? I’ll let you decide whether that’s an April Fools’ joke.

Cryptically yours, J.

april

the sixth

Prom fever has already hit PHS with a vengeance. I will lose it if I hear one more chirpy voice say,It’s pink, and it’s cut down to here, with a layer of chiffon that starts about here, and goes just a squinch above the knee …

As a sophomore, I shouldn’t be forced to listen to this talk about the junior–senior prom. I certainly shouldn’t be forced to feel bad about it. But enough girls in honors are going with upperclassmen that I feel like a loser because no junior or senior boy wants to get me drunk off Boone’s Strawberry Hill so he can cop easy sex off me in the backseat of his parents’ SUV.

Jesus Christ. What’s wrong with me?

Rob asked Hy. She said yes, then took it back when she found out from Sara that he was suspended for jerking off into a Milky Way wrapper during study hall last year. Hy’s refusal shocked everyone but me. If anyone has the guts to dis the captain of the überjock triumvirate on account of his sexually deviant behavior, it’s Hy.

A few days later she was asked by a junior in her Economics class. Once she did a background check ("Okay. Has he waxed his jimmie in public?"), she surprisedall of us by saying yes. Especially me.

"Won’t Fly get jealous?" asked Bridget.

"Nah, he knows he’s more dope than any high-school shorty."

"What I really want to know," I said, "Is why an NYC club queen would want to go to Pineville’s lame-ass prom."

"I wanna see what a Pineville throw-down is like. Is that okay?" She sounded a wee bit annoyed.

"Hey. Fine by me," I shrugged. "But you’re the one always dissing Pineville’s social activities."

"That’s because I haven’t given them a chance yet." Hy slowly broke out into a smile. She has very white, very even, very perfect teeth. "Besides, I missed a lot of my friends’ Sweet Sixteens and need to do some flossin’. I wanna rock a new dress."

The Clueless Crew loved that one because it’s exactly the type of thing they would say, minus vocab cribbed fromThe Source . It was very weird. Is this what promaganda does to people? Makes them think it’s perfectly normal to wear a corsage or acrinoline ?

Bridget is going with Burke. Yes, they’re still together, uniting daily before Chem for a pre-third-period dry-hump against Burke’s locker.

I can’t believe they haven’t had sex yet. But I’ve known Bridget since birth, and she hasnever told a lie. Whenever we committed a kiddie caper—like plucking all the American Beauties off old Miss Weinmaker’s prized rosebushes, or scarfing a box of Thin Mints that we were supposed to deliver to the Girl Scouts supporter who rightfully bought it—she always copped to the truth before I could even begin to launch into our (false) alibi. I’m not kidding. I think lying would complicate things too much for Bridget. She wouldn’t be able to keep her stories straight.

Anyway, because the prom is a special occasion, Manda is breaking her "Seniors Only" rule by agreeing to go with Vinnie Carvello, a junior who just happens to be P.J.’s older brother. This nearly drove the younger Carvello to commit hari-kari with a bottle opener. ("Oh,now she decides to freely give out hummers?") Manda is also going to Eastland’s senior prom with some guy she’s "known forever," which probably means she let him feel her up under the boardwalk last summer. Manda is a pathological prom goer. These will be her fourth and fifth. Promming for her is like low-level prostitution. She gets all dressed up. They pay for everything. She gets them off.

EvenScotty is going to the prom. He was asked by Kelsey Barney. She’s a senior, the manager of the baseball team. Scotty said she’s going to some small college in North Carolina that I’ve never heard of. I don’t think she’s too smart. She’s got big crunchy hair. Borderline Hoochie. In my unbiased opinion, he could do so much better.

Sara and I are the only ones with nothing to do on prom night. Fortunately, right now she’s so heartbroken about hearing nada from her Kappa Sigma soulmate that she can’t even muster enough sorrow to get depressed about the prom. So I have some time before I need to come up with some excuse as to why we can’t wallow in our loneliness together.

the tenth

A day of high highs and low lows.

I had a track meet this afternoon. It started almost an hour and a half late because the visitors’ bus broke down or something. I easily won my first two races, but that’s not important to this story.

Because their away meet started on time, the boys’ team returned to the school just as the 4 × 400 relay—the last event—was getting under way. Now, in a tense meet situation, I wouldn’t run this event because I’d have to do the Triple Threat: 800 meters, 1600 meters, and 3200 meters. But since we had already scored twenty points more than we needed to lock in the win, Coach decided not to kill me today and put me in the relay to help me build up my sprinting strength. (A strategy wholeheartedly supported by my unofficial coach in the bleachers.)

The point is, under normal circumstances, Paul Parlipiano would not have been there to see me run. And not only did he see me run, he actually cheered me on.Me! As I came around the far turn by the flagpole I heard him yell, "Go Pineville! You’re kicking her butt!" Which I was. And I was going so fast that I didn’t even see him. I just heard that voice and knew. Once I passed the baton, I looked back just to confirm that I hadn’t made up the moment. He was still there, leaning on the fence. It really was him.

Thanks to my enormous lead, the next three runners would’ve had to have been struck down by polio to blow the race. It was a totally insignificant victory in the grand scheme of things, but for me, it was one of the greatest triumphs of my life. Paul Parlipiano had noticed me, and I hadn’t totally blown it by collapsing at the sound of his voice. I was positively flying.

A half hour later, I came crashing down.

I was getting my stuff out of the locker room while a group of juniors and seniors were talking about (what else?) the prom. I heard Carrie P. mention Paul Parlipiano’s name. I could hear his name if it were whispered in a football stadium filled with 10,000 screaming fans. I was feeling gutsier than usual, so I asked, "What about Paul Parlipiano?"

"He’s taking Monica Jennings. They’re sitting at our table."

From blue skies tosplat! Just like that.

"You’re not gonna get all fucking depressed now, are you?"

"No," I lied.

Monica Jennings isn’t that blond, big-boobed bitch you love to hate in the movies. She’s sometimes pretty, sometimes plain. She’s in Honors, but isn’t ranked in the top five in her class. She’s on the tennis team, but isn’t the captain. She’s friends with members of the Upper Crust, but isn’t invited to all their private parties. She’s a totally normal girl.

And that makes this hard for me to take. It means that there’s no reason whyI couldn’t go to the prom with Paul Parlipiano—other than the fact that to him I’m just another girl in a Pineville uniform, one who has never said as much asBonjour, mon ami to him.

the twelfth

Marcus and his latest ho-bagity Hoochie girlfriend were kissing each other by his locker this morning. I don’t know her name. I saw her from behind, so I don’t know what she looks like exactly. But like most Hoochies, she has over-dyed, over-everythinged hair. She’s also a size twelve who thinks she’s a size six.

I had to walk past them to get to homeroom and I was trying to avert my eyes. Just as I got within a few feet of the couple, Marcus took his hands off her big ol’ Lycra/spandexed butt and waved at me. His eyes were on mine, but his mouth never stopped moving in and out and around hers.

When he passed my desk two minutes later, I didn’t exist.

This has got to stop.

the sixteenth

It was 4:20A.M. and I was buzzing as usual. It was really warm out. Practically 50 degrees. I started thinking about how stupid it was that I was stuck in my room, 100 percent awake, waiting for the sun to come up to start my day. Why can’t I start my day when it’s still dark out?

I decided to listen to the message my twitchy muscles were trying to tell me:Let’s go running. Right then. My dad was guaranteed not to follow me. I threw on shorts and a T-shirt and laced up my shoes. I crept to the kitchen and wrote a note:I Couldn’t Sleep. I Went Running. 4 A.M. Don’t Get Mad. Jess.

I tiptoed out the back door and stretched on the patio. The air smelled like wet grass. Crickets chirped. Leaves rustled in the breeze. The moon was a sliver short of being full, so I didn’t have to worry about lunatics.

I ran.

Everything was different in the dark. My neighborhood’s bi-level, split-level, bi-level, split-level scheme seemed so safe and predictable in daylight. But at night, these same houses were secret and mysterious. Especially the ones that had a single light on. All the nights that I’ve been alone and awake in my bedroom, I never stopped to think about all the other people who might be tossing and turning too.

After I don’t know how many miles, I stopped thinking. I know this sounds all Oprah–Chopra, but everything got in synch: the beat of my breath, the flow of my feet, the rhythm of the road, the bursts of color blurring by. I was running so effortlessly that I didn’t stop when I finished my loop. I kept right on running, as though my body made the decision before my brain had a chance to shoot it down.

By the time I got back to the house, the sun was coming up all pink and orange over the horizon. It was a little past5:45 A.M . I had run for a little over an hour, and for some strange reason, I wasn’t the least bit tired. More important, my mind had kept quiet for the first time in a long while. For more than an hour, I didn’t think about prom, or Paul Parlipiano, or my non-period, or anything.

And that includes Marcus Flutie.

My heart was pumping and I was intensely aware of being alive. Amazing. I wish life could be like that all the time, or that I could will it that way whenever I wanted. When my worries shut up, everything just feels right.

I was feeling so optimistic that I made a vow to myself then and there:I will be normal. I will accept that Hope is gone. I will not be afraid of being friends with Hy. I will face up to the fact that Paul Parlipiano will not devirginize me. I will stop thinking that Marcus Flutie is trying to corrupt me.I will be normal.

The first logical step in becoming a normal high school sophomore?

Asking Scotty to my sister’s wedding.

It made perfect sense. Scotty is normal. Scotty has fun. Scotty can sleep at night. I’ve been in public school too long to totally buy into Hy’s theory of revolution, but maybe she’s partly right. If I hang with him, some of his positive vibes might rub off on me. Maybe I can be normal—perhaps evenpopular —without losing myself in the process. I’ll never know unless I try.

Just so I wouldn’t lose my nerve, I biked to Scotty’s house to ask him in person, as soon as I cleaned myself up after my cathartic run.

When I arrived, there was an unfamiliar car parked in the driveway. By the time I figured out who it belonged to and had the impulse to hop on my bike and ride home, it was already too late. I’d been spotted by Scotty and his cradle-robbing prom date.