I shouldn’t be keeping track of how many days it’s been. I shouldn’t care if he ever speaks to me again or not. It was just sex, and I shouldn’t even be writing about him. But I—
I keep thinking about him. His skin. His voice. The way—listen to me! It’s like I’m in some freaking romance novel. It. Was. Just. Sex. What is wrong with me?
I have spoken to Mel. It was just once, two days afterward. The last time I wrote to you.
He came up to me after English and said, “You know why I asked you all those questions, right? And why 234
I brought Patrick to the movies?” an odd note in his voice.
“What?” I said, and looked around for Patrick before I could stop myself. He wasn’t with Mel. In class, he’d sat at his desk (all the way across the room, now that our group project is over) staring at the door. He never looked at me, not once.
“Patrick,” Mel said. “He’s my friend, he likes you, and I thought that if I talked to you, asked all the questions I knew he wanted to, that maybe he’d get to the point where he’d talk to you himself. But—look, I don’t know what happened, but I saw you two talking after our presentation, and whatever you said to him, you need to do something about it, take it back or whatever, because he’s acting really strange now.”
I walked away. What else could I do? What could I say? “Well, actually, Mel, I did more than talk to him. We had sex. And I can’t really take that back, can I?”
This is insanity. A couple of minutes of someone grunt-ing over you is just that and nothing more. You thought you were supposed to have feelings about it, about the guy.
You couldn’t see sex for what it is, a random moment with someone, a moment that has meaning only if you let it.
I can’t believe that’s what I used to say to you. That I said it whenever you were upset about a guy. I said it a lot 235
to you about Kevin, didn’t I? “This is insanity,” and “it has meaning only if you let it.” No wonder you always rolled your eyes and said I didn’t understand.
I thought I did, but I didn’t. I so didn’t. Even though Kevin was a total ass because he cheated on you and lied about it (badly), he still meant something to you. When you were with him, it was always more than a random moment to you, and meaning wasn’t something you could put there if you wanted to. It was just there, and you felt it.
I wish I’d gotten that before now. You don’t know how much I wish it.
236
T W E N T Y - O N E
THIS AFTERNOON I went to Caro’s after school, and her sister came over to show her a picture of the bridesmaid dresses. They were hideous, a weird orange-pink with ruffles everywhere. Plus there were matching hats.
I bit my lip so I wouldn’t laugh, and Caro said,
“Please tell me the hat has ruffles on it too, Jane. I don’t think I can be in your wedding looking like a diseased piece of citrus fruit if I don’t have a hat with ruffl es to wear.”
“I like the hats,” Jane said. “And no, they don’t have ruffles. Yet.” She smiled at me, and then said, “And Caro, I love your hair,” as she left.
“See?” I said, and Caro rolled her eyes at me, but she was smiling too. The other day I’d dragged her to the 237
drugstore to get some temporary hair color because she’d mentioned it like eight hundred times.
It turned out pretty good—I made her get purple—
and this morning I heard Beth telling her how great it looked in the bathroom. Of course, it was a Beth compliment because she said, “Caro, your hair actually looks really nice for once!” Caro just smiled, but as they were walking out, she glanced at me and whispered, “Is it wrong that I want to jam a fork in her face?”
When we were waiting for the hair dye to process, I told Caro what Patrick had told me in the library, about Beth and the things she’d said to Mel. I thought she’d be surprised but she wasn’t. She just sighed and said, “I know.”
“You know?”
“Well, not exactly know, but it figures,” Caro said.
“See, back in September, right after school started, I got really drunk at a party and ran into Mel. We went outside and were standing around, just the two of us, and he looked so good that before I knew it, I told him I liked him. Then I ran off and threw up. I thought—
he was drunk too, so I figured he didn’t remember. I mean, he never said anything. But I was still so 238
embarrassed I couldn’t even look at him until we ended up in that group in English. And then it was like . . .
I don’t know. The way he talked to me, I thought maybe he liked me too. But then Beth said she liked him, and—”
“And that meant you couldn’t.”
“Yeah,” Caro said. “But . . . okay. If I tell you something, will you be honest with me? I mean, will you tell me what you really think?”
“Yes. Beth’s a complete shit.”
