What Happens Next (18 page)

“You know Patrick Callahan? Pat?” she says, lighting her cigarette, looking out into the yard at nothing, her voice getting far away. She doesn’t wait for me to answer. She knows I know who she’s talking about.

“We started seeing each other right after the ski trip. For real seeing each other, not just a hookup like at his graduation party. He came home from OU one weekend for the annual Callahan Manly Man Meal at Bucca di Beppo.” And she uses air quotes on that last part, her cigarette flickering up and down between her fingers. “To celebrate all those XY chromosomes his Catholic daddy’s been pumping out over the years.”

She takes a long drag. Deep, like she invented smoking or something. I want to say:
Smoking, Kirsten? How very melodramatic.
But I don’t. I just continue staring a hole through her.

“Paige and I were there with Lindsey Rourke and Julianne Bell. You should have seen it—every Callahan boy and man crammed into that big V.I.P. booth.”

She laughs a tiny laugh. I don’t join in because all I’m thinking is how she just said,
You should have seen it
, and how I want to yell,
Well, no! I shouldn’t have seen it! I couldn’t have seen it, because you freaking dumped me, remember?

“Anyhow, he called me later that night and we went out the next night. Then the next weekend. And then the one after that. We finally did it on the fourth weekend, seventh date. He got us a hotel—flowers, wine, Jacuzzi—the works. Then about two weeks ago, the phone calls started dropping off and he didn’t come home to see me. Said he had to study.”

She takes another long drag off the cigarette.

“So in my infinite wisdom, and against everyone’s advice, I decided to drive down to OU Friday night and surprise him.”

She makes a self-loathing snicker-snort.

“Oh, he was surprised, all right. Real fucking surprised.” She turns to me in disbelief. “He’s had a girlfriend down there the whole time. Some bitch named Tierney from Nantucket. She’s on a music scholarship. A flautist.”

She chortles with more self-disgust and says, “He tells me he loves me, sleeps with me knowing he was my first, and then one month later, tells me he’s made a mistake and that he’s really in love with Tierney the flautist from Nantucket. And he actually said it like that, with a straight face, like he’s been saying Tierney-the-Flautist-from-Nantucket his whole goddamn life or something.”

She takes a final puff of her cigarette, blows out a long stream, and says, “God, I’m so stupid,” then leans down to crush out the butt on the concrete.

I still haven’t spoken yet. I don’t know what to say. I mean, I’m not glad she’s hurting. I’m not. She was a technical virgin and that was a shit thing for Pat to do, but it’s a little hard to feel sorry for her at the moment when… well… there’s myself to think about. I was getting to the point where I was almost forgetting what her voice sounded like, what her face looked like up close. I was getting to the point where I was almost done mourning the lost friendship with her and Paige, and now she’s back—and I can only assume that Paige isn’t far behind.

“Anyhow,” she says, looking at me hard, “point is, I came here to tell you that I get it now. How it feels to want someone. To want them to want you back. And how you’ll do just about anything to get them to want you back. I knew it was a bad idea to go to OU, but I went anyway, because I wanted Pat, and I didn’t care that I was ditching out on plans I’d made with Paige or that my parents might find out and take the car or that I might get down there and not like what I found. Nope, I just went out and bought a pink nighty from Victoria’s Secret, hopped in the clownmobile, and headed south. I thought, ‘If he just sees me in the nighty, he’ll want me again.’ ”

The wind picks up and she wraps her arms around her knees, tucking into herself tightly.

“So I came here to say that I’m sorry I judged you so harshly. The punishment didn’t fit the crime.”

Then she looks down and starts to rock a bit, resting her trembling chin on her knees. “I’m sorry, Sid,” she says. “I want my friend back. I need my best friend back.”

And her eyes are filling up now, spilling over.

I get up and walk to the sliding door; I can’t stand looking at her anymore. Part of me wants to reach out and slide open the door and go inside, leave her out here to freeze. But a bigger part of me pauses, looks at my reflection in the glass and feels the rusted barbed wire falling slack at my feet and the armor cracking wide open. I wish so much I could muster the resolve to scream,
Get Out! Go Home!
but my heart betrays me and blurts out what I’m really feeling.

“You really hurt me, Kirsten. I needed you, too. Back then. God, you have no idea how much I needed you. And you really, really hurt me, you and Paige.”

Then I reach out to slide open the door, but before I can get it even partway open, she’s out of her chair and rushing over, putting her hand out to stop me.

“Wait. Please,” she says. She leans her head on the cold glass, puts her hands back in her pockets. She looks at me sideways and is right up in my face when she really starts crying. I refuse to look at her full-on; I look into my house instead, but I can see her in my peripheral, right there, inches from my face, sobbing.

“I’m sorry, Sid. Please. I really am. I just want things to go back to the way they were. Can we try? Please?”

She’s all-out bawling now, which makes the iceberg that was my heart melt and flood upward, choking me in my throat. Then it just happens—I start crying, too, my head leaned forward on the glass. She wraps her arms around me and I can’t stop myself, I hug her back. And we both bawl. We say we’re sorry over and over and after a while, when we’re both cried out, we go inside. We make peanut butter and jelly on RITZ crackers and then call Paige to come over, too.

Paige and I get our sobbing and apologies out over the phone, so when she arrives at my house, she just throws her arms around me on the front porch. I hug her back and realize how much I’ve actually missed this little garden gnome. I forgot how truly tiny she is.

“So how did you convince Judge and Delores to let us be friends again?” I ask as we walk into the house.

“You don’t want to know.” Paige smirks as we head for my bedroom.

“What? Did you sneak out? Are you on the lam?” Kirsten says.

“No,” Paige says, laughing. “I’m here with parental blessings.”

And her face grows even smirkier.

“I used their Puritanism against them,” she says. “I read the story of Mary Magdalene to them out loud at the dinner table. Told them how they need to practice what they preach.
Forgive
.”

I scour my dusty brain for long-lost catechism lessons on Mary Magdalene.

“Wait a second,” I say. “You got them to let us be friends again by comparing me to a prostitute? Your parents think I’m the equivalent of a hooker?”

It’s almost funny, somehow. I can’t believe they think that little of me.

She bends down and fishes through her backpack like she’s looking for something specific.

“Actually, you’re worse than a hooker,” she says. “You’re a
Catholic
hooker. But, don’t worry. I’m here to save you from your heathen ways.”

“Oh, no,” Kirsten says. “If you pull out a Bible I’m gonna cry. I’m gonna leave.”

Paige looks up at us, grinning, then jumps up from the floor, shoving DVDs in our faces and growling, “
Rahrrr! Out Demons! I compel you!
”

I look at the DVDs.
The Exorcist
, one and two.

I grab one out of her hand and bonk her on the forehead with it. Then we head into my bedroom to eat junk food and watch Linda Blair’s rotting head spin. And it’s just like old times again.

18

It’s a Saturday,
the first week of April, and I need new clothes. Nothing, and I mean nothing, fits now. Kirsten and Paige wanted me to wait so we could all go together and make it an official “back together” event, but this is something I want to do alone. I don’t want anyone looking at me, complimenting me, commenting on me, asking how I lost so much weight in such a short time. I’d rather just slip in, buy a few things, and then slip out.

I take the bus to the mall and head directly to the juniors’ section at Macy’s. I start to browse, frustration growing with each item I pick up. Spring clothes are on sale, but everything seems so skimpy. I hold a few tops up to myself and eventually put every one back. I decide I can do without tops. It’s the pants that I can’t live without. I walk over to the jeans racks and everything is so low-cut and hip-huggingly revealing. The zippers are like two inches long on some of them. Another girl about my age is browsing, too. She has on a hot pink, super-tiny baby tee with a cartoon on it. She picks up a pair of jeans and heads toward the fitting room, her lacy red thong popping out the top of her pants. I shudder and keep browsing. I finally find some jeans that, while still low-rise, are not
super
low-rise, or, god forbid, super-
extra
low-rise—pube-grazers, yuck.

I glance over toward the misses’ section, where the more conservative, mom-style jeans are sold. It’s pleated, plain-pocket, nine-inch-zipper town over there. I’ll try on the low-rise pair and see how they fit before I go that depressing route.

The dressing room is cold and my booth is already packed with piles and piles of jeans from other customers. I take my sweats off and pull on the jeans. I am expecting them to be snug but am surprised when they slide up effortlessly. A little
too
effortlessly. I button and zip them and then turn to look in the mirror; they’re way too big. It must be a forgiving cut. Designers do that. They cut everything bigger and put smaller sizes on them so people will think they’re skinnier than they really are and buy more clothes.

I look around in the piles of jeans strewn around the fitting room until I find another pair, a size smaller. I try them on, but this time, they’re even more loose. I try on four more pairs. The last pair fits perfectly, and it’s three sizes smaller than my old, pre–ski trip jeans. I look into the mirror with astonishment.

“Three sizes,” I whisper to myself, turning around to look at my butt. While it’s still big, it’s not
huge
big, like it was. A grin spreads across my face. I get dressed and go back out to the main floor, where I blow every babysitting dime I’ve made in the last six months on new clothes.

When I get home, my mom has dinner all ready and waiting so I’m forced to sit and eat meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and yams. I look at the food and think about how yams are just orange potatoes, so I’m stuck eating two mountains of starchy overblown carbs, one drenched in a small pond of gravy, the other in a sludge of cinnamon butter. I eat it, though, because my mom is watching every move I make, every spoonful that goes onto my plate, and every forkful that goes into my mouth, all the while trying to look like she’s not. I scoop out big portions like
Lah-dee-dee, lah-dee-dah, looks good, Ma! Yum!
and play my part in our ridiculous little dinner theater. When I’m done, she asks if Liam and I would like dessert, because, well, wouldn’t you just know it, she has an apple pie and even bought real whipped cream to go with it, which is sooooo much better than the fake stuff, hooray!

I want to say,
Dessert, huh? So, tell me Ma, when did the notion of a Murphy dessert go from Chips Ahoy with milk to baking entire fruit pies in the oven? Relax, Katherine, I ate the fucking yams
.

I don’t say any of this. I keep my best game face on and smile through dinner like it is Thanksgiving Day and I am just one hungry-ass pilgrim come to feast with the Indians.

Finally, after we do the dishes, she takes off for a few hours to get her hair cut. She’s decided to cut it shorter, into a bob, so that clients will take her more seriously. I try to talk her out of it, but she says, “Sid, I haven’t sold a house in two months. I’m pulling out all the stops here.”

So I am stuck babysitting again. I shouldn’t say stuck, because I don’t mind. Liam’s in his room playing the Wii that his grandma got him for Easter. I open my bedroom window. The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and the trees are budding. I take a deep breath of springtime air and think about how nice it will be to run in this weather. As soon as Katherine gets back, I’ll take off, and that monstrosity of a meal will be nothing more than a distant memory. Those starchy yam carbs that are currently riding a river of gravy straight toward my ass—they won’t know what hit ’em. I put on some music and get down to the business of cleaning out my closet. I’m going to make it into a sparkling, shiny showcase for my new clothes.

I put on an old song that I love called “Downtown” by Petula Clark. It’s perky and upbeat and has that happy, girly feel that goes along with my happy, girly mood. Even Petula’s name sounds perky and girly. I start pulling all my old jeans and tops off the hangers, throwing them into a pile on my bed. I start bobbing my head, dancing a little, and singing along. Quietly and to myself because my scratchy voice is a stark contrast to Petula’s pure, angelic one, and I’d rather hear her than me.