Good Girls Part 6

Luke whistled at her , but she didn't wake up.

68 "Impressive," he said. "You guys are pretty good friends, right?"

"Yeah." Normally, I would have been self-conscious about my own non-personal-trainerenhanced body. My own a.s.sets include b.o.o.bs that could be bigger, a b.u.t.t that could be smaller, and abs that could be flatter. But then, at that party, I had a weird and totally uncharac- teristic thought: Oh, well, nothing you can do about it now. The breeze whipping through the open windows smelled a little like flowers, a little like gra.s.s, a little like rain. Everything that usually worried me seemed far away and not very important.

"Joelle and I met doing the plays. I'm not in the plays, though. I design the sets and stuff."

Luke smiled. "You act like I don't know who you are.

I know who you are."

For some reason that made me blush.

"You want to go outside for a while?" he said.

Some tiny part of me-the shadow part, the part that watched-shouted, Outside? Luke Freaking DeSalvio is asking you OUTSIDE? Is this a joke? What does it MEAN? What's he DOING? What will you SAY?

I said, "Sure. Let's go outside."

He opened the screen door and we stepped out onto the gra.s.s. Ash has a huge yard with a fence all around it, plus an enormous wooden swing set for her little brother , Bo.

69 "Sweet," Luke said. "How about I swing you?"

"No, thanks."

"You think I'm not strong enough?"

Before I had a second to swallow it back, I said, "Show me what you got, big man."

He pulled back the sleeve of his T-s.h.i.+rt and made a muscle for me. Not too big, not too small. I squeezed it, feeling like the teenage Goldilocks. The skin on the underside of his arm was surprisingly soft, smooth as my own cheek. I asked him to show me the other arm. Just to make sure he was up for the task, I added.

"Oh, I'm up for a lot of things," Luke said, which made me giggle idiotically.

We went over to the swing set and I sat down on one of the swings. While I launched with my feet, he gave me a small push.

"Come on, then," I said, my fake English accent making it safer to tease. "You can do better than that."

He grabbed ahold of both ends of the seat, but instead of pus.h.i.+ng, he walked backwards until I was nearly fac- ing the ground, nearly slipping off. Then he let go. When I swung back again, I felt the heat of his palms on the small of my back, where my s.h.i.+rt rode up. I leaned into them and thrust my legs straight into the sky, and then fell down through the air into his hands, catch and release, catch and release. Everything-the party, Luke, the whole night-seemed impossible and ridiculous, and 70 most likely a lemonade-induced hallucination. I got to thinking I could do anything: sing, dance, fly. I decided to jump the way I used to when I was a kid. I felt Luke's palms on my back and then the swift climb through the air. At the last minute, I shot off the swing. For one wonderful second I soared like a crazy bird, but then I dropped, landing funny and falling over sideways. I wasn't hurt, but I wondered how stupid it must have looked.

It was not the kind of night for dwelling, though. I was too giddy for that. Instead of getting to my feet, I rolled over to look up at the stars.

"Are you all right?" Luke asked, sinking to his knees beside me.

"I'm fine."

"What are you doing?"

I heard myself say, "I felt like being horizontal."

Luke plopped down next to me, our shoulders touch- ing. I felt my skin scorching the gra.s.s beneath me.

"Do you know the names of any of the stars?" he asked.

"No," I said.

"You don't? I thought you were some kind of genius."

"Do you know any of the names?"

"Let me see," he said, pointing up at the sky. "Okay.

Right there. That's the South Star ."

71 "You mean the North Star?"

"No, I mean the South Star. And that's the Big Dogpile. And that's the Little Dips.h.i.+t."

It was dumb, but I laughed anyway. As I laughed, he grabbed one of my hands, twining his fingers in mine.

He raised himself up on one elbow to look at me. I could almost feel the muscles in my eyes working to make my pupils bigger , so that I could take him all in.

His fingers tightened. "You're a good card player."

Out popped "I'm good at a lot of things."

"And that's good to know." Suddenly he was kissing me. He was soft and slow at first, nibbling and search- ing to the point where I wanted to grab him by the ears and make him kiss me like he meant it, already. And then he did, all hungry, as if the inside of my mouth and the whole of my tongue were made of strawberries or ice cream or something equally sweet and delicious. My head swam and I was grateful that I was already lying down. If I'd been standing, I'd have swooned like a char- acter from a Victorian novel.

After a while, he pulled away and touched my lips with his fingers. "What are you smiling at?"

"I'm smiling?" I said.

"You're smiling."

The late-August-evening magic-fairy nice dust made it easy to be honest. "I like kissing with the Little Dips.h.i.+t s.h.i.+ning down on us. Twinkle, twinkle."

72 He laughed, a short bark of surprise. "You're sort of a weird girl, aren't you?"

"So?"

"So," he said. He gathered a handful of my hair and brought it to his nose. "Princess hair ," he murmured.

"Smells like honey." He combed through it with his fin- gers, twirling and twisting the strands. Then he pressed his lips to my ear . "You like the whole kissing thing, huh?"

I dared to slide my hand up the underside of his arm, to feel that soft skin. "Yes."

"What's that saying that actors have when they rehea.r.s.e a scene? Something about doing it again with emotion, or whatever?"

I thought a minute. "'Once more, with feeling'?"

"That's it," he said. In one smooth motion he was on top of me, settling in like a puzzle piece. He kissed me again with so much feeling it would have brought a dead girl back to life.

73 I Am Hamlet It's Wednesday after school at the Drama Club. I am trying to keep my mind blank by repeating the word "black" over and over again in my head. It doesn't work. People are surprised to see me sitting in the auditorium like it was any other day. I get some smirks from some of the freshmen and soph.o.m.ores who don't really 74 know me, but my friends say things like "Um!" "Oh!"

"Hey!" or "Hi!" "Umohheyhi": Native American for "How the h.e.l.l can you show your face in public????"

To me, the auditorium isn't public, it's like home. A huge, echoey home with squeaky old seats that are about as comfortable as lava rock and a moth-eaten blue velvet curtain pulled back to expose the naked, strangely sad- looking stage. There's a small stack of papers sitting right at the edge. People point to the stack of papers and whis- per to one another, but no one moves to take a peek.

Joelle sits in the seat next to me. Her eyes are red from crying. For me. "Dirtbags," she whispers.

"Who?" I say.

"The dirtbags who took that picture," she says. "Of my friend. At my party. If I ever find out who did it, I.

Will. Kill. Them. I will personally shove my purple boot down their throats." She extends one of her long legs and displays the purple suede boot, which has a four- inch spike heel a drag queen would envy. If it were any- one else talking, anyone else crying, I would think it's an act. But this is Joelle. She means everything she says. At least at the moment she says it.

A geeky little freshman with carroty hair glances back at us. "What are you looking at?" Joelle snaps. She pokes me in the arm. "I wonder which of these skinny children are here to try out for the play? I'm sure we're doing Antigone. Ms. G.o.dwin does Antigone every four 75 years. I don't have to tell you that the part belongs to me. No one here can do a better Antigone, I don't care what color their hair is!"

"You're right about that," I say. I'm not here for the tryouts, I just want to know what play we're doing so that I can think about the set. I've worked on every set since I was thirteen years old and too shy to audition for a part. Sometimes I have a big job, and sometimes it's a small one. Today I'm hoping for an opera set in medieval Venice so that I'm forced to figure out how to build a bunch of working ca.n.a.ls, so that I don't have a single brain cell free to think about anything else. Not one synapse firing off a teeny tiny replica of a b.l.o.w. .j.o.b over and over again. Not one stray neuron pulsing about Luke DeSalvio and how he's a hero and I'm a wh.o.r.e.

Joelle reaches into her bag and pulls out a list. "Here are some more names I came up with." Joelle's last name is Lips.h.i.+tz, which, she says, is unacceptable for a human being, let alone an actress. She's been trying to come up with something glam and different, something she will adopt when she gets out of high school and runs off to New York City to become famous (or when her dad drives her to and from the city to become famous).

I look at the paper. She's written: Joelle Paris Joelle Roma Joelle Asia 76 Joelle Nepal Joelle Geneva Joelle St. Petersburg Joelle Quebec "What do you think?" she says.

"I'm sensing a theme," I tell her.

"Any favorites?"

"You forgot Joelle Boise. Or Joelle Long Island."

She whips the paper from my hand. "You are totally too traumatized to take me seriously right now. I swear I'm going to kill whoever did this to you. I'm going to shove this boot down their throats."

"You already said that."

"Then I'm going to run them over with my car."

"You mean your dad's car."

The carroty redhead in front of us risks another glance, and Joelle shrieks, "You, too, if you don't stop staring at my friend! She is not a zoo exhibit!"

Of course, everyone turns around and stares at me as if I were a zoo exhibit. Joelle tells them all to STOP STARING!! JUST STOP!! Just then the side door swings open and Ms. G.o.dwin marches into the auditorium. Ms.

G.o.dwin is aptly named, tall as a G.o.ddess, with a low oboe voice that sounds as if she's talking through a tube of wrapping paper. She is wearing what she always wears, a long, flowing top and skirt and sharp-heeled character shoes that snap when she walks.

77 "What I would like," she says as she moves to stand in front of the stage, "is for you to stop shrieking, Ms.

Lips.h.i.+tz. They can hear you in Sri Lanka."

Everyone settles down-including Joelle-and waits for Ms. G.o.dwin to tell us which play we'll be doing, and thus what our lives will be like for the next two months.

But first we have to get through her customary "wel- come" speech. I mouth the words with her: "h.e.l.lo. I am Victoria G.o.dwin, Ms. G.o.dwin to you.

Ms., not Miss, not Mrs., G.o.dwin. For those of you who are new to the school or perhaps new to this program, I am the drama teacher . Which means that I am the queen of this auditorium. What I say goes. You don't have a vote and you don't have influence. When I select some- one for a part, it is that person's part. If I select you for the set design team, then the set design team is where you belong. Begging me will not change any of my deci- sions, nor will flattery, tantrums, gifts, or flowers. You will attend every rehearsal you need to attend. You will perform every task you need to perform. I will not police you, I will not scream at you, I will not call your parents, I will not ask for hall pa.s.ses, I will not demand proof of your citizens.h.i.+p. Why? Because I don't care. However, if you show up for a rehearsal and you don't know your lines, you're out. If you're on the crew and you don't pull your weight, you're out. If it is your job to place props during rehearsals and we find you behind the 78 curtains making out with your boyfriend instead, then you're out."

Someone giggles, and Ms. G.o.dwin stares stonily.

"Have I said something funny?"

The giggles stop.

"Now, I realize that some of you may be expecting your typical high school drama, but I want to do some- thing different this season."

Next to me, Joelle inhales sharply.

"I have a friend, a playwright, who has graciously allowed me to license a wonderful, humorous piece of work based on Shakespeare's Hamlet."

"Great," murmurs Joelle. "Ophelia. She's such a wimp. I hate playing wimps."

"The play is called I Am Hamlet, and it turns Shakespeare on his angst-y little head. In this play, Hamlet is a woman. Of course, the weight of the play will fall on Hamlet's shoulders. I'm going to need a very strong actress to carry this." Ms. G.o.dwin's eyes briefly flick toward Joelle. I don't have to turn my head to feel Joelle's grin. "But do not despair. There are a number of juicy roles for both men and women in this production, and I will need all of you." Ms. G.o.dwin whirls around and taps the pile of stapled packets stacked neatly on the edge of the stage. "This packet contains a summary of the play and a description of each role and key scenes.

Auditions will take place next Tuesday, promptly at 79 three thirty p.m. No excuses. No sob stories. No whin- ing." She smiles tightly, gathers her fluttery, feathery, flowy clothes around her , and proceeds right up the aisle past us, shoes clicking clicking clicking till she reaches the very back of the house. After the door slams behind her , everyone crowds the stage, grabbing for a packet.

Joelle comes back with two: one for her and one for me. "Hamlet!" she says. "This is so cool!"

"Yeah," I say. "As long as she's doesn't want me to do some minimalist thing. Like the stage is set with one coffee table and a telephone or whatever ."

"Who cares?" she says, flipping through the pages of the packet and scanning the lines. "You never minded before."

"I need something to build. Venetian ca.n.a.ls. Castles.

Throne rooms. The Vatican. I need to be distracted, Joelle."

"b.a.s.t.a.r.ds," Joelle murmurs, and squeezes my arm, but her heart's not in it. Her heart's with Hamlet, brood- ing somewhere in Denmark. She turns a page in Ms.

G.o.dwin's packet. "To be or not to be," she says, her voice soft. "That is the question."

I sigh. "One of them, anyway."

After Drama Club I start to walk home, but I'm stricken with the thought that my mom might be waiting to talk to me about s.e.x and how beautiful 80 it is with the right people. She's bound to have a speech ready by now. Maybe even some websites she wants me to visit, the name of a gynecologist she's made an appointment with, or a few "intriguing"

books-s.e.x in the City: Maintaining Your Selfhood in a Corrupt Culture; Things My Mother Never Told Me; Sugar and Spice: Teenage Girls Talk about Life, Love, and s.e.x.

My mom. My dad. Books by PhD's. Doctors with gloved fingers and neutral expressions and why-don't- you-tell-me-about-it's.

I turn around and walk instead to the strip mall down the road from the school. There's not much there: a card store, an ice cream store, an electronics store, a beauty supply store, and one of those places that sells Christmas trees and ornaments in the winter and lawn furniture and Frisbees in the summer . We used to come here a lot in sixth grade to hang out at the Carvel ice cream store and make fun of the names on the cakes, which sounded vaguely p.o.r.n-ish to us easily amused pre- teens. The Hug Me the Bear cake. The Fudgie the Whale cake. And our favorite, Cookie Puss, which was some unidentifiable mystery alien creature with an ice cream cone for a nose. Cookie Puss! Cookie Puss! we'd growl over and over again, until the ice cream guy chased us out of the store.

I'm not in the mood for ice cream. Instead, I decide to 81 wander up and down the aisles of the Christmas place, poking at the fake trees and the lighted candy canes.

They have an entire section devoted to Nativity scenes of all sizes and shapes, and I go there to check them out.