“No!” she exclaims.“I’ve been avoiding him all weekend. I told him I was going to see my sister in Philadelphia.”
“Why?”
“Don’t you get it?” She sighs dramatically. “Peter.”
“Peter?” I repeat, slightly appalled.
“I had sex with him.”
“What?” My legs are all tangled up in the Swedish sitting device and I bounce so hard the whole thing falls over, taking me with it.
“Shhhhh!” Maggie says.
“I don’t get it,” I say, trying to detach myself from the stool. “You had sex with Peter?”
“I had intercourse with him.”
And another one bites the dust.
“When?” I ask, once I manage to get off the floor.
“Last night. In the woods behind my house.” She nods. “You remember? The night we painted the barn? He was all over me. Then he called yesterday morning and said he had to see me. He said he’d secretly been in love with me for, like, three years but was afraid to talk to me because he thought I was so gorgeous I wouldn’t talk to him. Then we went for a walk, and we immediately started making out.”
“And then what? You just did it? Right in the woods?”
“Don’t act so surprised.” Maggie sounds slightly hurt and superior at the same time. “Just because you haven’t done it.”
“How do you know I haven’t?”
“Have you?”
“Not yet.”
“Well then.”
“So you just did it. On top of the leaves? What about sticks? You could have gotten a stick stuck in your butt.”
“Believe me, when you’re doing it, you don’t notice things like sticks.”
“Is that so?” I have to admit, I’m immensely curious. “What did it feel like?”
“It was amazing.” She sighs. “I don’t know exactly how to describe it, but it was the best feeling I’ve ever had. It’s the kind of thing that once you do it, all you want is to do it again and again. And”—she pauses for effect—“I think I had an orgasm.”
My mouth hangs open. “That’s incredible.”
“I know. Peter says girls almost never have orgasms their first time. He said I must be highly sexed.”
“Has Peter done it before?” If he has, I’m going to shoot myself.
“Apparently,” Maggie says smugly.
For a minute, neither one of us speaks. Maggie picks dreamily at a thread on her bedspread while I look out the window, wondering how I got so left behind. Suddenly, the world seems divided into two kinds of people—those who have done it and those who haven’t.
“Well,” I say finally. “Does this mean you and Peter are dating?”
“I don’t know,” she whispers. “I think I’m in love with him.”
“But what about Walt? I thought you were in love with Walt.”
“No.” She shakes her head. “I thought I was in love with Walt two years ago. But lately, he’s been more like a friend.”
“I see.”
“We used to go to third base. But then Walt never wanted to go any further. And it made me think. Maybe Walt didn’t really love me after all. We were together for two years. You’d think a guy would want to do it after two years.”
I want to point out that maybe he’s saving himself, but the truth is, it is pretty strange. “So you were willing and he wasn’t?” I ask just to clarify.
“I wanted to do it on my birthday, and he wouldn’t.”
“Weird,” I say. “Definitely weird.”
“And that really tells you something.”
Not necessarily. But I don’t have the energy to contradict her.
All of a sudden, even though I know this isn’t really about me, I feel a thundering sense of loss. Maggie and Walt and I were a unit. For the past couple of years, we went everywhere together. We’d sneak into the country club at night and steal golf carts, and cooling off a six-pack of beer in a stream, we’d talk and talk and talk about everything from quarks to who Jen P was dating. What’s going to happen to the three of us now? Because somehow I can’t imagine Peter taking Walt’s place in our corny adventures.
“I guess I have to break up with Walt,” Maggie says. “But I don’t know how. I mean, what am I supposed to say?”
“You could try telling him the truth.”
“Carrie?” she asks in a wheedling tone. “I was wondering if maybe you could—”
“What? Break up with him? You want me to break up with Walt for you?”
“Just kind of prepare him,” Maggie says.
Maggie and Peter? I can’t think of two people who belong together less. Maggie is so flighty and emotional. And Peter is so serious. But maybe their personalities cancel each other out.
I pull into the parking lot of the Hamburger Shack, turn off the car, and think, Poor Walt.
The Hamburger Shack is one of the few restaurants in town, known for its hamburgers topped with grilled onions and peppers. That’s pretty much considered the height of cuisine around here. People in Castlebury are mad for grilled onions and peppers, and while I do love the smell, Walt, who has to man the onion and pepper grill, says the stench makes him sick. It gets into his skin and even when he’s sleeping, all he dreams about are onions and peppers.
I spot Walt behind the counter by the grill. The only other customers are three teenage girls with hair dyed in multiple hues of pink, blue, and green. I nearly walk past them when suddenly I realize that one of these punks is my sister.
Dorrit is eating an onion ring as if everything is perfectly normal. “Hi, Carrie,” she says. Not even a “Do you like my hair?” She picks up her milk shake and drains the glass with a loud slurp.
“Dad’s going to kill you,” I say. Dorrit shrugs. I look at her friends, who are equally apathetic. “Get out to the car. I’ll deal with you in a minute.”
“I’m not done with my onion rings,” she says with equanimity. I hate the way my sister won’t listen to authority, especially my authority.
“Get in the car,” I insist, and walk away.
“Where are you going?”
“I have to talk to Walt.”
Walt’s wearing a stained apron and there’s sweat on his hairline. “I hate this job,” he says, lighting up a cigarette in the parking lot.
“But the hamburgers are good.”
“When I get out of here, I never want to see another hamburger in my life.”
“Walt,” I say. “Maggie—”
He cuts me off.“She didn’t go to her sister’s in Philadelphia.”
“How do you know?”
“Number one, how many times does she visit her sister? Once a year? And number two, I know Maggie well enough to know when she’s lying.”
I wonder if he knows about Peter, as well. “What are you going to do?”
“Nothing,