Sloppy Firsts (3 page)

What’s even more twisted is that I believe if I pray, acknowledging that I know it will never happen, it will somehow up the odds that this dream will come to fruition.

I am hopeless. (Ha. In more ways than one.)

But I don’t need demented daydreams to tell me that my obsession with Paul Parlipiano has gotten out of control. Today at track practice, I couldn’t take my eyes off him. He was jumping over hurdles. He was all smoothness and grace. He made it look easy—a sign of pure genius. OneTwoThreeAIR … OneTwoThreeAIR. I got so distracted by his poetry in motion that I wasn’t ready when my track teammate Carrie P. came at me in a full-on sprint to hand off the baton. She crashed into me and I dropped it. Coach Kiley was pissed. Thank God Kiley thinks he can’t scream at girls, otherwise Paul Parlipiano would have heard his embarrassingStop gawking at the guys!lecture.

Later, in the locker room, Carrie P. brought me back to reality in the straight-talking way that only she can.

"Jess, if you keep torturing yourself, I’m gonna kick your fucking ass."

I think maybe she should. Kick my fucking ass, that is. I am hopelessly in love with a guy I barely know. If this doesn’t qualify me for an ass-kicking, nothing does. As a senior, Carrie P. has seen this kind of lame behavior a bizillion times before. I suspect that she’s figured out how I feel about him even though I’ve never said a word about it to anyone but Hope. In accordance with alphabetical destiny, Paul Parlipiano and Carrie P. have sat by each other in nearly every class since seventh grade, so I can’t ever confirm her suspicions.

"I have no idea what you’re talking about," I said.

the eighteenth

I got in trouble today (technically,yesterday—but until I fall asleep, my day isn’t done). This was a big deal. I can remember every time I’ve been so much as reprimanded by a teacher.

1. First grade.I’m running back to Miss Moore’s class from my accelerated reading group. I’m in a hurry because it’s Thanksgiving and we’re making mini-turkeys out of apples, toothpicks, marshmallows, and gumdrops. I’m about halfway there when I’m stopped by Mr. Buxton, whose villainous handlebar mustache automatically makes him the meanest teacher in school. He tells me that running isn’t allowed and asks for my name. I can barely say it because the snickering sixth-graders are so grown-up and intimidating. He writes my name down on his calendar and tells me that if he stops me again before he turns the page, I will have to take the late bus home. (The late bus is a pretty hefty threat because it’s forbad kids .)

I cry all the way back to my classroom, where all the kids are making mini-turkeys and singing songs about Pilgrims and Indians. Miss Moore asks me what’s wrong and I tell her that I don’t like books anymore. For a while after that, I pretend to forget how to read so I won’t have to walk all the way to Mrs. Steinbeck’s third-grade class and miss out on all the fun my first-grade friends have with Miss Moore.

2. Fifth grade.Someone has writtenJess D. Is A Bitch in pencil on the door to the middle stall in the girls’ bathroom. This really upsets me. Bridget—who at this point in time is still my best friend and a very reliable source—tells me that it was written by Lisa Caputo. Lisa has been holding a grudge against me ever since I said that I don’t like sleeping over at her house because her father doesn’t wear any underwear underneath his bathrobe and sits with his legs spread wide apart at breakfast.

So it’s recess and my friends and I are hanging out by the backstop, playing the fortune-telling game MASH like we always do. I’ve just found out that I’m destined to marry Screech fromSaved by the Bell , have six kids, drive an olive-green golf cart, and live in a shack when Bridget suddenly grabs Lisa by the arms and says,Here’s your chance to get back at her! Kick her! I kick her. Lisa screams and then cries, which catches the attention of our teacher, Mrs. Cahill, who tries to get Lisa to tell her who kicked her. She tells her. Then I explain it was because she wrote the "B" word about me in the bathroom. Mrs. Cahill makes us both take the late bus. (The threat finally put into effect.)

My dad is still reconfiguring a network, or whatever he does with computers when he isn’t riding his bike. My mom is showing a newly minted Wall Street millionaire a wildly overpriced beachfront property that will bring her a sweet commission. I know I’ll get home before either one of them, so I don’t worry about their reaction. They never find out about it.

3. Eighth grade.Although I was pissed that we got caught, I never felt bad about anything Hope and I wrote in our Brutal Book. Thank God our English teacher only lectured us about using our hyperobservant brainpower for good, not evil. Whoo-boy! Imagine the shit that would’ve gone down if she’d read our character assassinations to the class.

I tended to exaggerate for effect. On Bridget:Did the orthodontist remove half her brain along with her braces? On Sara:She kisses up to Manda and Bridget so much they’re crapping strawberry LipSmacker . But Hope only spoke the ugly truth. On Manda:If Manda keeps thrusting her ta-tas in Mr. Cole’s face, she just might ace Algebra after all. Observations like that made it clear to me that Bridget ditching me for Burke was the best thing that could have happened to me. Hope was the friend I’d always wanted, but never had.

To add to this list, today’s misdemeanor. When I get bored in class, I write sad song lyrics all over my book covers. I’m currently in an eighties phase—no surprise there. My current favorite is featured inPretty in Pink , the third installment of the Molly Ringwald teen-queen trilogy (all of which I’ve enjoyed over and over again thanks to the programming execs at TNT, who seem to agree with my assertion that any John Hughes flick should be classified as a "new classic"):

Please, please, please … let me, let me, let me …

Let me get what I want this time.

The Smiths’ ode to yearning didn’t get me in trouble. In a less musical bad mood, I guess I scribbled:Life Sucks, Then You Die on the cover of my Chemistry book. I don’t even remember doing it. But it raised the unibrow of Mr. Scherzer, who quickly informed my guidance counselor, Mrs. Glick, who called me out of Trig to meet Brandi, the school’s pseudo shrink. Her nameplate says "Professional Counselor," which I figure means she’s a few credits short of a legit Ph.D. She probably couldn’t find enough evidence for her doctoral thesis to prove that hugs are indeed better than drugs.

Brandi ismean skinny, the kind that doesn’t come naturally and makes her face look all hollow and scary. She tries to make up for this with a bug-eyed bubble and gush that I know better than to trust. She—like me—is a fan of the eighties, but her devotion has tragic consequences: Kentucky-fried bangs and suntan panty hose.

Every inch of space on the counseling office walls is covered with posters that are supposed to stop us from driving drunk, doing drugs, having sex, and sticking our fingers down our throats. Most of them are totally corny:There once was a girl named Lydia, who had sex and got chlamydia …

Others aim to depress the hell out of you. The best/worst one had a blowup of a girl’s yearbook picture. Her name was Lindsey Greenbush and she was pretty in an unimaginative JC Penney catalog sort of way, like Bridget. Underneath her pic is a list of her activities: National Honor Society, Field Hockey, Soccer, Homecoming Committee, French Club. Then underneath that it says in bold print:Two weeks before her yearbook came out, Lindsey was killed when she got into a car with a drunk driver.

I have to admit that it made me think about what would happen if I got killed by a drunk driver. I can understand why the Weavers won’t fly Hope in for my Bitter Sixteen, but I assume they’d pay for a flight for my funeral. Who else would make sure that my mom buried me in my denim halter dress—especially if I died in winter? I could see my mom arguing that it isn’t warm enough for me to wear something sleeveless, you know, because it’s very important for dead people not to catch cold.

Plus, I’d want Hope to make the show-stopping speech, "The Jessica You Never Knew." She gave a similar speech at Heath’s Mass, so I know she can handle it.

I don’t knowhow she handled it, to tell you the truth. Heath’s death wentso public. The Weavers found themselves smack-dab in the middle of a local media feeding frenzy.Teen’s Death Exposes Town’s Secret Shame screamed the headlines of theOcean County Observer.Youth Overdoses, Shocked Locals Call For Crackdown shouted theAsbury Park Press. In death, Heath became emblematic of the "atypical" heroin user, which sparked a McCarthy-esque paranoia thatYour Child Could Be Next . See, Heath didn’t come from a "bad family." Mrs. Weaver was a nurse. Mr. Weaver was an elementary-school teacher and a eucharistic minister at Saint Bernadette’s, the Catholic church they attended as a family every Sunday. Both parents were active in the PTA and never missed a back-to-school night or ignored a bad report card. How could such a tragedy happen to such good people? Everyone wanted answers. And the only person who had one was dead.

Quite frankly, I think the reason Heath got high was because he was bored out of his mind. He was a really smart guy, and really smart people in Pineville have it rough. There’snothing to do here. His death really made me sad (still does) and not only because it ripped me apart to see Hope cry and wonderWhy? like everyone else. I had always fantasized that when we got older, Heath would see me as more than his little sister’s playmate. Not that I had a crush on him or anything. He seemed like someone who would understand me. I was looking forward to being his equal. His friend.

However, I can’t seem to get out of the anger stage of my grief. I can’t help but feel like Heath ruinedeverything , not just between us, but between Hope and me.

It was kind of ironic that I was thinking about all this when Brandi told me about what Scherzer saw on my book cover and asked me if I’ve thought about suicide.

Deep down, I wanted to tell her that I’ve considered killing myself no more than the average almost-sixteen-year-old honor student with no best friend or boyfriend and bigger bumps on her face than in her bra. But there’s no way that Brandi would understand.

Brandi graduated from PHS about fifteen years ago—a fact unearthed by Sara via an uncle who used to "bang" her. (Sara’s verb choice.) We found the yearbook from that year in the library and saw firsthand that our Professional Counselor had swept the most crucial Class Character categories: Best Dressed, Best Looking, and Most Popular. She was Upper Crust all the way—or whatever they called the U.C. then.

I wasn’t about to confide in her because there’s nothing more annoying than an adult who tells me that I will look back on all this and laugh—especially when it comes from an adult who heartily tee-heed all along. This is why I also refuse advice from my mother and my sister.

So I told her that this was all a misunderstanding. "Life Sucks, Then You Die" is not my personal philosophy, no, no, no. Life Sucks, Then You Die (L.S.T.Y.D.) is the name of an indie funk band that I just love, love,love . She not only totally bought it, but started acting like she’sheard of them because she couldn’t stand the idea of not being clued in anymore.

"They had one song that got some airplay," I said.

"Right! They did, didn’t they? What was the name again?" Her peepers were popping right out of her head at this point.

"’Tongue-Kissing Cousins.’"

"Right!" Brandi starts nearly every sentence with that exclamation. It’s a method of positively affirming her mixed-up counselees, something she learned in one of her Professional Counselor classes no doubt. "’Tongue-Kissing Cousins.’ That song rocks."

"It’s a slow jam."

"That’s right! A slow jam."

And so continued our bonding for a minute or two until she deemed me stable enough to let me go with nary a mark on my permanent record.

Then a kind of weird thing happened.

I walked out of her office and nearly tripped over two bare legs covered in scars and scabs. Marcus Flutie was slumped in a chair, stretching his long limbs right in front of the door. Marcus is what we at PHS categorize as a "Dreg." I think he was waiting to meet with his parole officer. Last spring, he got busted for buying or selling or using—I don’t know for sure—as part of the town’s War on Drugs effort that followed Heath’s death. Marcus was four years younger than Heath and his burnout buds, so they made him their marijuana-smoking mascot. (He’s a year older than Hope and me, but he’s on our grade level because he got left back in elementary school for doing God only knows what.) Of course, marijuana being the gateway drug and all, they moved on to bigger and better mind-altering substances: acid, E, ’shrooms, Special K, heroin, etc.

The other thing about Marcus is that crackheaded girls who don’t know any better think he’s sexy. I don’t see it. He’s got dusty reddish dreads that a girl could never run her hands through. His eyes are always half-shut. His lips are usually curled into a semi-smile, like he’s in on a big joke that’s being played on you but you don’t know it yet. Healways has a girlfriend and healways cheats on her. Thus, Marcus is widely known by the moniker "Krispy Kreme" because he’s always "burnt to a crisp" and is rumored to have "bought three boxes of donuts." (In PHS lingo, that means he’s slept with at least thirty-six girls. A dozen donuts per box—get it?)

In short, Marcus Flutie is precisely the type of "unsavory character" that the Weavers wanted to get Hope away from. This really wasn’t necessary because Hope hates Marcus and the rest of Heath’s former friends almost as much as she hates drugs and alcohol. She would be profoundly disappointed if I associated with him or his vices, so I walked right past him. My hand was on the doorknob when he called out to me.