“Tough one,” she said as she straightened out my smeared eye black. I looked up at the scoreboard: Millburn: 0 Visitor: 29. My dad yelled at the “box” last time for leaving the score up after the game was over.
“Yeah… they outplayed us. We couldn’t get anything… ehh, fuck it.” I could still hear the hootin’ and hollerin’ of the victorious Irvington High School Blue Knights football team getting onto their buses.
When we kissed it felt like a dream; not in the euphoric, ever-longing-to-have-you kind of way, but the kind of way where something once comfortable feels foreign and strange.
Her hand was cold from the crisp October air and it took a moment for our fingers to interlock the way they’re supposed to.
The sex was a display of teenage awkwardness and cringe, as if our entire sexual past had been erased. Maria lay on her back on the couch as I crawled atop her like some grunting, aching beast—I was fifteen again, thrusting at Diana like I was punching in the dark.
“You’re still not in.”
“Just flip over.”
“No, we start with you on top, like always. Now kiss me here.” She tilted her face to the side, exposing her neck. As I kissed her, my conditioned hips, like one of Pavlov’s dogs, realigned and I hit the bull’s-eye. “Not so wet, Victor.”
But that short October break became nothing but a blur of fighting and fucking and ended so quickly it felt like SWAT had busted in through my basement windows and pulled Maria out from under me—phlunk!—and airlifted her back to Arizona: “We’ve got her. Go! Go! Go!”
The time-zone variations didn’t do us any favors either. When I’d be wrapping up a round of video games with Karl before bed, Maria would just be getting ready to “go out”—an insidious term you never wanted to see in a text message. And this was supposed to be the easier season, because Arizona, little rebel that it is, refused to observe daylight savings like the rest of us, so when spring came along, Maria and I were three hours apart instead of two, and I was awake in bed waiting for that reassuring buzz.
Text from Maria <3 <3: We are pregaming and then going out
Naturally I fired off a string of WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN, and WHY texts like I was judge and she my clerk; she answered them all without any inconsistencies.
Text to Maria <3 <3: Have fun.
Text from Maria <3 <3: Sarcasm?
But I wasn’t the only one who engaged in such suffocating, self-destructive behavior:
Text to Maria <3 <3: Rosenblatt is having a party. Going with Silas.
Text from Maria <3 <3: Girls?
My darling’s concern was a complete focus on the WHOs. I’d rattle off the same handful of names, leaving off the ones I had accidentally disclosed were “hot.”
Text to Maria <3 <3: Julie, Jenna, Jessie, Julie, Julie, Jen, and Carly
Text from Maria <3 <3: What about Stephanie Hinkle?
Stephanie had arrived fashionably late, and because of this, I had thought I would be in the clear, never having received instructions to include an addendum.
Text to Maria <3 <3: She just got here. No point in lying, Facebook reveals all—Maria accessed the forbidden fruit through her cousin’s Facebook page, ostensibly to stay connected with family, actually to monitor my whereabouts and possible transgressions.
Text from Maria <3 <3: OK GREAT.
Text from Maria <3 <3: HAVE FUN.
Text from Maria <3 <3: …
My phone rang.
“Hey babe.”
“How many of them did you date, Victor?”
“What? That was like, in middle school.”
“Well, if Michaela Silves is there, she can suck your dick again!” Click. The first rule of getting blowjobs in Tank’s bathroom is you don’t talk about getting blowjobs in Tank’s bathroom.
Text from Maria <3 <3: WHY DON’T YOU JUST FUCK THE WHOLE SLUT LIST???
Ahh, yes, the text-immediately-after-hanging-up tactic—one we both used extensively.
Text to Maria <3 <3: No No the girls here created…
Delete. Delete. Delete.
I refrained from explaining to Maria that the girls in my class weren’t on this year’s slut list but, in fact, wrote this year’s slut list, as they were now seniors. The discrepancy would’ve been lost on her during this particular fight. The only reason she brought up the list was because one of the seniors had been negligent with its distribution and it ended up falling into the hands of an AP Lit teacher.
Uproar.
And then the administration.
Uproar.
And then the New York Times…
Uproar!
I had seen the list, and it wasn’t even that imaginative, at least not for the graduating class of the top school in the state. I mean, Get me pregnant so I don’t have to go to Syracuse? How many times has that one been recycled since the ’90s? And I knew at least three of the seniors were already headed up to that desolate stretch of land next year.
The principal had brought in a bunch of the freshmen and a bunch of the Julies, but like inmates, no one said a word.
“What the… the hell… what the heck are these girls thinking, Vito?” my father said, standing at the kitchen counter as he pulled the mooligue (translation: nonessential bread that takes up space) out from the crust and tossed it to the side to enable maximum sausage-and-peppers capacity for his sandwich.
“They’ve been making that list for years.”
“Years?!?” The muffled shout sent oil cascading onto the counter.
“Yeah, since, like, the ’90s.”
“Oh, Madonne!” (Translation: Oh God! Oh Hell! Oh Jeez! Literally: Mother of God, Holy Mother, Holy Mary Mother of Christ, Jesus.)
Text from Maria <3 <3: Oh okay don’t respond. Have fun with the sluts!
And on it went until both of us were lying—white lyin’ by omission, I suppose—about our evening plans and acting as if the hordes of the opposite sex showed up unexpectedly and completely uninvited. Girls’ movie night ended up meeting baseball players at
