I almost laugh, but he appears to be serious. Several responses run through my head, and finally I settle on: “Excuse me, but aren’t you on a date with someone else?”
“Who says it’s a date? She’s a girl I met at a party.”
“Sure looks like a date to me.”
“We’re having fun,” he says. “For the moment. You still live in the same house?”
“I guess so—”
“Good. I’ll come by and see you sometime.”And he walks away.
This is one of the oddest and most intriguing things that has ever happened to me. And despite the bad-movie-ish quality to the scene, I’m actually hoping he meant what he said.
I go back to the table, full of excitement, but the atmosphere has changed. The Mouse looks bored talking to Lali, and Walt appears glum, while Peter impatiently shakes the ice cubes in his glass. Maggie suddenly decides she wants to leave. “I guess that means I’m going,” Walt says with a sigh.
“I’ll drop you first,” Maggie says. “I’m going to drive Peter home, too. He lives near me.”
We get into our respective vehicles. I’m dying to tell Lali about my encounter with the notorious Sebastian Kydd, but before I can say a word, Lali announces that she’s “kind of mad at The Mouse.”
“Why?”
“Because of what she said. About that guy, Sebastian Kydd. Dancing with you and not me. Couldn’t she see he was dancing with both of us?”
Rule number five: Always agree with your friends, even if it’s at your own expense, so they won’t be upset. “I know,” I say, hating myself. “He was dancing with both of us.”
“And why would he dance with you, anyway?” Lali asks. “Especially when he was with Donna LaDonna?”
“I have no idea.” But then I remember what The Mouse said. Why shouldn’t Sebastian dance with me? Am I so bad? I don’t think so. Maybe he thinks I’m kind of smart and interesting and quirky. Like Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice.
I dig around in my bag and find one of Maggie’s cigarettes. I light up, inhale briefly, and whoosh the smoke out the window.
“Ha,” I say aloud, for no particular reason.
I’ve had boyfriends before, and frankly, each one was a disappointment.
There was nothing horribly wrong with these boys. It was my fault. I’m kind of a snob when it comes to guys.
So far, the biggest problem with the boys I’ve dated is that they weren’t too smart. And eventually I ended up hating myself for being with them. It scared me, trying to pretend I was something I wasn’t. I could see how easily it could be done, and it made me realize that was what most of the other girls were doing as well—pretending. If you were a girl, you could start pretending in high school and go on pretending your whole life, until, I suppose, you imploded and had a nervous breakdown, which is something that’s happened to a few of the mothers around here. All of a sudden, one day something snaps and they don’t get out of bed for three years.
But I digress. Boyfriends. I’ve had two major ones: Sam, who was a stoner, and Doug, who was on the basketball team. Of the two I liked Sam better. I might have even loved him, but I knew it couldn’t last. Sam was beautiful but dumb. He took woodworking classes, which I had no idea existed until he gave me a wooden box he’d made for Valentine’s Day. Despite his lack of intelligence—or perhaps, more disturbingly, because of it—when I was around him I found him so attractive I thought my head would explode. I’d go by his house after school and we’d hang in the basement with his older brothers, listening to Dark Side of the Moon while they passed around a bong. Then Sam and I would go up to his room and make out for hours. Half the time, I worried I shouldn’t be there, that I was wasting precious time engaging in an activity that wouldn’t lead to anything (in other words, I wasn’t using my time “constructively,” as my father would say). But on the other hand, it felt so good I couldn’t leave. My mind would be telling me to get up, go home, study, write stories, advance my life, but my body was like a boneless sea creature incapable of movement on land. I can’t remember ever having a conversation with Sam. It was only endless kissing and touching in a bubble of time that seemed to have no connection with real life.
Then my father took me and my sisters away for two weeks on an educational cruise to Alaska and I met Ryan, who was tall and smooth like polished wood and was going to Duke, and I fell in love with him. When I got back to Castlebury, I could barely look at Sam. He kept asking if I’d met someone else. I was a coward and said no, which was partly true because Ryan lived in Colorado and I knew I’d never see him again. Still, the Sam bubble had been punctured by Ryan, and then Sam was like a little smear of wet soap. That’s all bubbles are anyway—a bit of air and soap. So much for the wonders of good chemistry.
With bad chemistry, though, you don’t even get a bubble. Me and Doug? Bad chemistry.
Doug was a year older, a senior when I was a junior. He was one of the jocks, a basketball player, friends with Tommy Brewster and Donna LaDonna and the rest of the Pod crowd. Doug wasn’t too bright, either. On the other hand, he wasn’t so good-looking that a lot of other girls wanted him, but he was good-looking enough. The only thing that was really bad about him was the zits. He didn’t have a lot of them, just one or two that always seemed to be in the middle of their life cycle. But I knew I wasn’t perfect either. If I wanted a boyfriend, I figured I would have to overlook a blemish or two.
Jen P introduced us. And sure enough, at the end of the week, he came shuffling around my locker and asked if I wanted to go to the dance.
That was all right. Doug picked me up in a small white car that belonged to his mother. I could picture his mother from the car: a nervous woman with pale skin and tight curls who was an embarrassment to her son. It made me kind of depressed, but I told myself I had to complete this experiment. At the dance, I hung around with the Jens and Donna LaDonna and some older girls, who all stood with one leg out to the side, and I stood the same way and pretended I wasn’t intimidated.
“There’s a great view at the top of Mott Street,” Doug said, after the dance.
“Isn’t that the place next to the haunted house?”
“You believe in ghosts?”
“Sure. Don’t you?”
“Naw,” he said.“I don’t even believe in God. That’s girl stuff.”
I vowed to be less like a girl.
It was a good view at the top of Mott Street. You could see clear across the apple orchards to the lights of Hartford. Doug kept the radio on; then he put his hand under my chin, turned my head, and kissed me.
It wasn’t horrible, but there was no passion behind it. When he said, “You’re a good kisser,” I was surprised. “I guess you do this a lot,” he said.
“No. I hardly do it at all.”
“Really?” he said.
“Really,” I said.
“Because I don’t want to go out with a girl who every other guy has been with.”
“I haven’t been with anyone.” I thought he must be crazy. Didn’t he know a thing about me?
More cars pulled in around us, and we kept making out. The evening began to depress me. This was it, huh? This was dating, Pod-style. Sitting in a car surrounded by a bunch of other cars where everyone