“Ali, are you drunk?”
“John, I don’t mind leaving,” I hear Sheila the She Woman say. She’s got a super-low voice, like a weird old cow.
“No, no. Just hold on a sec.”
I’m dying to turn around to get another glimpse of her, except I don’t want my father to study my face. I’ve still got traces of eyeliner smudges, I’m sure. There are other things he might notice too. That I’ve been crying. That I’ve been kissed—hard. That a boy strapped his hand across my mouth. My dad is perceptive that way. He’s clued in to my emotions.
I want to blab about the whole night, but what would I say?
Hey, Dad. I got drunk. Oh, and Sean Nessel popped my cherry. We were swigging straight vodka from airplane bottles because I’m absolutely stupid. We lied to Sammi’s parents. And Sammi—she doesn’t even know where I am! Use protection? Ha! What protection?
All those years of my father and his excruciatingly painful monologues about how important it is to protect yourself from HIV, herpes, pregnancy . . . all out the window in one traumatic night with Sean Nessel.
Oh, I’m totally going straight to hell on a roller coaster. I’m, like, on the Space Mountain express to the earth’s flaming pit.
“Can I just please, please, go upstairs and go to bed if I promise to talk to you in the morning?” I say. “It’s been the worst night, and I feel like I’m going to throw up.”
Fine, he tells me. But he’s not letting me off the hook, he says. He wants to know what’s going on. He wants to know why I smell like a brewery. Oh, and he makes me apologize to Sheila the She Woman. I oblige.
* * *
In my room, I crawl into bed. My legs are sore and my inner thighs hurt as I pull my knees up to my chest. No matter how badly I want to, I can’t take a shower now. Besides my father questioning why I’m taking a shower at eleven o’clock at night, any residue on my body is the only evidence that this night happened. I want my body to feel this experience. Feel the cracked blood around my vagina, feel my sore back, feel the imprint of Sean Nessel’s hand on my shoulder. This is what being an adult is, right? This is how people become mature. They suffer and move on.
I’ll make a conscious effort not to look different or walk funny in the morning. Because, after tonight, I plan to erase this.
I try to imagine my mother, playing with my hair or tickling my back. But tonight my mother is far away in New Mexico, under the stars, because that’s where she decided to move when I was twelve years old to clean up her act. To sober up. To live in a little low-pressure community in the desert. To take life One Day at a Time, her favorite sober catchphrase, as she always reminds me before we hang up the phone. Little does she know what happened to her baby girl tonight.
I wish she was here to rub the knot out of my spine. Do X Marks the Spot. What would she have said?
Nothing. Nothing that my father can’t say.
That is, if I’d bother to tell him.
And I don’t even know where to begin.
So I curl up in bed, hold my legs tight, and scrunch the cool sheet between my thighs. Alone. I know I’ll stop crying once this night is over. I know I’ll be stronger once I can pull myself together. But in this moment, I want my mother.
5
BLYTHE
After we drop Sean off, after all those tears that he spilled as we practically carried him to his front steps, Dev and I drive home in silence.
“Do you believe him? I think he’s just beyond wasted,” I say when we park.
But I don’t want to know.
Dev and Sean have been tied together since kindergarten. Dev’s always been Sean’s head cheerleader. His hype man. The guy who makes Sean look better than he actually is. Because Dev truly sees Sean as a sweet, vulnerable guy, who, despite the rotation of girls, can still get his heart broken. A guy who still wants to know how to act. Sometimes he asks Dev about sex. What it’s like between us.
“Are her legs supposed to shake like that after?” Sean asked him just two weeks ago.
“Oh my God, what did you tell him?” I said.
“I told him the truth because he looks up to us, B,” Dev said. “‘Yeah, bro, they should shake.’”
It seemed sweet. Like he cared.
I’m no one’s hype man. I have my own team to do that for me. The Core Four. They would lay everything on the line for me. Have I talked to girls for Sean, reassured them, coddled them? Sure. What kind of monster would I be if I just left these girls crying after he decided they weren’t worth his time? But for Sean to beg me to talk to someone like he did tonight? This is new.
Dev places his hand on my thigh, nothing more. He’s as stupefied as I am.
The truth is that I have no memories of my life before Sean Nessel was in it. There was my father always commenting how he handled the soccer ball. We’d watch him from the top of my street when he lived near me, before his parents got divorced. My father would say things like, “Kid has a natural talent.” Or “Kid has a great foot.” We’d walk up there—this was in fourth grade—just so my
