at the end of this hall
that nobody uses anymore?” he says.
“Yeah, except I heard some couple used it plenty.”
“What a good idea.” He grins at me.
“Oh right, how romantic. Forget it. Don’t be gross.”
He drops it.
GLITCH?
We usually have plans together all the time these days.
I kind of count on it.
So when this Saturday came and went,
I wasn’t sure what was going on.
I called him on Sunday but he wasn’t home.
He still wasn’t back
when I called him Sunday night.
There’s that knot in my stomach.
MONDAY
“Hey, beautiful, how’s it going?”
He comes up behind me at my locker and kisses me
on the neck.
“Okay, I guess. Where have you been?”
“You remember, I told you I was going to hang out
with my brother for the weekend
up at UConn.”
He worships his older brother,
the BSOC (Big Stud on Campus).
Kristen, one of the jockettes,
gasps.
I don’t look over, like it’s no big deal.
Kristen’s two lockers away.
She turns to the girl next to her and says,
not as quietly as I’m sure she means to,
“I wonder if he saw Ashley.”
Yes, that Ashley.
She goes to UConn now.
“No, you never told me you were going there.”
“Sure I did, Viv.”
“Do you know that I hate being called Viv?”
“Sorry. I had plans, Aviva.
You must have forgotten.”
“Whatever.”
“Let’s do something after school.”
“All right,” I say.
My stomach unknots
a tiny bit,
even though he definitely didn’t tell me
he would be busy.
I’m still picking up a Don’t Get Too Comfortable vibe. I try to push it out of my head, along with thoughts of what he and the BSOC might have spent all weekend doing.
COURTYARD
Free period, so I grab my guitar from the music room and head to the courtyard.
I’m sitting on one of the picnic tables,
playing and softly singing Alanis’s
“That I would be good
even if I gained ten pounds,”
when I see him out of the corner of my eye.
He’s with one of his boys.
I don’t think they think I notice them.
“Very cool. Very sexy,” I hear him say.
I tingle, like when my foot’s asleep,
but all over.
“You got that right. You nail her yet?” his friend says.
I shudder.
“Shut up, man, she’ll hear you.”
“Ooh, sor-ry, didn’t know this one was different.”
There’s that storm warning alarm again.
“Yeah, well, maybe she is, and maybe she isn’t.”
My stomach doesn’t quite know what to make of that.
SURPRISE
I’m in study hall.
The door opens.
He grins at me and slips the teacher a note.
Then he slides into the seat next to me and kisses me
on the cheek.
We study as close together as we can.
Every time he whispers
“You’re so soft” or “I want you”
in my ear I almost jump out of my clothes.
I’m having trouble controlling myself lately.
It’s not like me.
NATURAL WOMAN
After study hall he walks me to my locker.
I never noticed how my jeans rub against my
thighs as I walk.
My shirt rubs against my chest too. Step, rub,
step, rub, making my
skin hot—on alert.
My face flushes like when I eat chili peppers.
All he does is look at me, and I’m so, I don’t know,
aware
of my body.
He puts his hand on that curve
right in the small of my back and I
He notices. Damn.
He smiles at me, sweet but crafty.
I feel so, so, so . . . charged up.
Energized.
Beautiful.
Just as the word enters my mind, he whispers,
“God, you’re beautiful,” like he’s in a church or
something.
A whole new surge of heat crackles through my body.
We stop at my locker and he puts his mouth on mine,
gentle and soft,
licks my lower lip with his tongue, not sloppy or gross,
just real light,
tugs on it with his teeth for a second.
I can barely stand.
He must sense me sinking into him, because I think
he’s holding me up a little.
He’s kissing me and kissing me and kissing me and on
the music sound track running through my mind,
Carole King is wailing, “You make me feel like a
nat-ur-al wo-man,” and I sooo get why it’s my mom’s
favorite song.
I DON’T THINK
I can wait another nanosecond.
I’m dying for his body on mine.
I want him to smother me with his weight.
Breathe him in.
I’m ready.
He’s coming over to study after school.
He can study me.
I take off my clothes in front of my mirror and look at
myself.
I’m tall, but not gangly tall.
Nice nose, a smile that’s big and never fake.
I like my body, I like the curve of my belly.
I’m definitely not fat, and I’m not skinny, either.
I like my body, how cool is that?
I know plenty of girls whose bodies look like mine
and they think they’re fat, when they’re so not.
I wish they liked their bodies too.
I pull out a clip and my hair falls down.
It reaches the small of my back.
I’ve always loved my hair. It’s brown, but not
mousey brown.
And it’s wavy without being too curly or frizzy.
I move my head from side to side, letting my loose
hair tickle my skin.
I think I’ll leave my necklace on—it’s a silver figure of Venus with her toes pointing downward, and she’s holding a sleek round garnet in her hands. It looks sexy with nothing else on.
He’ll be here any minute.
My parents won’t be home until after dinner.
Perfect.
Joni Mitchell’s Court and Spark keeps me company.
I play my guitar along with her.
Soothing sounds.
Doorbell rings.
Heart pounds.
I left the door open.
I hear his footsteps on the stairs.
“Viv?”
I still hate being called Viv, but not when it’s him
saying it.
“Up here.”
He opens my bedroom door.
“Look at you.”
READY OR NOT
He walks over to the bed.
I am sitting on the edge,
completely naked
my guitar
strategically placed.
“Hi,” I whisper.
He sits down next to me,
doesn’t say a word,
doesn’t take his eyes off mine while he
gently takes my guitar away,
and lays me down.
He traces my lips with his fingers,
brushes the hair off my forehead.
Neither one of us is smiling,
I’m trembling and in that second I realize that
even though I’m dying for him, I’m scared, too.
I’m grateful that he hasn’t started ripping off his
clothes or anything.
In fact, it’s like the whole world
just went into slow motion,
like one of those old silent movies.
Joni Mitchell’s words are coming out warbled and low, her big toothy mouth opening and closing in my mind.
“It’s okay,” I hear him say, as I fast-forward back
into the present.
He takes a condom out of his back pocket.
Is this really happening?
Why is he so prepared?
Does he always keep one in his pocket?
How many times has he done this?
Ugh, I’m killing my own mood.
I’m giving myself a stomachache.
I look into his eyes.
Oh god, is this really about to happen?
He smiles at me.
“You’re sure you’re ready?”
“Uh-huh,” I mumble, “just kiss me.”
I don’t want to talk, to think, to reason,
I’ve already made my decision.
“Please, just kiss me.”
FOREVER
His hands are big and they’re everywhere,
stroking, squeezing
my body seems like one big blur,
I’m sure this is supposed to be making me hot and wild,
but I’m just feeling kind of groped.
Maybe this isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
I guess I’m not participating all that much, because he
takes my hand
and puts it on his crotch.
I can feel him through his jeans.
I pull my hand back.
“What’s the matter? Doesn’t that feel good?” he says. “Yes,” I manage to say, and let him put my hand back where he wants it.
“Mmm,” he mumbles.
“You’re so soft. You feel so good.”
Making him feel good makes me feel good.
I want more of that.
Pretty soon I have what I wanted.
The full weight of his body lying on top of mine.
Breathing him in.
This feels right.
His face presses into my neck, our bodies press
together,
in this split second it’s like I’ve known him forever,
like we’re connected, linked up.
I’ll remember this feeling
forever.
Then he starts to move and I feel poked at again.
A mix of pain and pleasure
curls through my body.
The smell of him, the weight of him,
the sounds of him, all fill some kind of
ancient longing in me I never knew existed.
And then it is over.
Just like that.
Shouldn’t an ancient void being filled
feel more profound?
I open my mouth and say the only words that seem
appropriate:
“I love you.”
But I don’t think he hears me, because a minute later he is snoring.
555-3142
He went home a little while ago.
He left his T-shirt here and his smell is all over it.
I keep taking deep sniffs. It smells so, so, so good.
I want to call him,
hear his voice.
Well, I want him to call me, actually.
But he isn’t calling me.
I should just call him.
555-
No, I’ll wait for him to call me.
The waiting is making me crazy.
555-31
NO.
Wait a minute, why should I have to wait for him
to call me? I’m not playing any games here.
If I want to call him, I’m going to call him!
555-314
555-3142—quick, hang up!
Damn—he probably has caller ID so now he’ll know I called anyway.
I’ll just call back and leave a message.
555-3142
“Hi, it’s me. Give me a call when you get this.”
The phone doesn’t ring.
DRIVE-BY
When my Mom has to go out and do an errand later, I ask if I can go.
I ask her to take a shortcut to the store that just happens to cut down his street.
I slink down in my seat as we pass his driveway.
His bedroom light is on. I can see him working
at his desk.
He’s home. He’s just not calling.
THE NEXT DAY
When I get to school, I go by his locker.
“Hi, Viv,” he says.
I can’t really get a read on him since he’s being sort of
friendly
but not normal. He doesn’t kiss me hello.
“You never called me back last night.”
“Oh sorry, I got home too late. I went out with my parents,” he says.
“Oh.”
“I’ll see you at lunch, okay?” he says.
“Okay.”
I walk away, nothing seems to be too wrong,
but nothing seems to be too right, either.
Did I do something?
Was I not really actually supposed to sleep
with him?
I want to throw up,
but I make it through my classes.
I wait for lunch.
LUNCH
There’s a seat saved for me at his table, so it can’t be too bad.
He smiles at me a couple of times, but never really looks at me or talks to me.
A canyon between us.
I look at Kristen.
I must look pretty bad, so she takes my arm and says,
“Come on, come with me.”
We walk to the bathrooms and I’m starting to shake. “What’s going on?” I start to cry.
“Don’t cry, Viv, what happened between you two?” I tell her a short version of yesterday.
“You told him you loved him?” she says. “No wonder.”
“No wonder what?” I say. “I don’t even think
he heard me, he fell
asleep.”
“Oh, he definitely heard you. If he’s acting weird like this, he definitely heard you.”
“What, it’s a sin to tell a guy how you feel?” I’m really crying now.
“No, of course not, but you really should wait for him to say it first,” she says.
“Why? That’s so stupid! And I don’t even know if I meant it, it’s just—how do you make love and then not say ‘I love you’?” I blubber.
“Sweetie, we call it making love, they don’t,” she says.
The phrase “nail her” flashes
like a huge neon sign in my brain.
I definitely think I’m going to throw up.
LAST WORDS
The last words he said to me when he was in my bed,
right before he left, were
“You’re beautiful.
I’ll call you tomorrow.”
He said he’d call me dozens of other times
and he usually did.
I kept going over and over those last words
to make sure I didn’t leave anything out, or miss
some hidden meaning
that would have let me in on
what was going on now.
But I really don’t have a clue.
THE TALK
Kristen arranged it. She says we should talk. I don’t know if he has anything to say. But I meet him after school like she says.
He’s waiting for me on our bench. I sit down
next to him. He’s looking at his sneakers.
“What’s going on?” I say.
“I don’t know,” he says. “Maybe things just got too serious.”
“I don’t understand. You were the one
who wanted
to sleep together.
You were the one
who wanted
things to get more serious.”
“But saying ‘I love you’ is too serious, Viv,” he says.
“Stop calling me Viv!”
“Maybe we should just slow things down,” he says.
But I know he doesn’t mean it.
Nobody ever
means
that.
A coward’s way out.
I can’t remember ever being this kind of seething mad
in my life.
Like I could smash him right in his
golden-boy face.
“You’re a chickenshit coward,
you know that!” I yell.
“You push and you push, and tell me how beautiful I am, and how special, and how much you want me, and I finally serve myself to you on a goddamn silver platter, and now you tell me you didn’t really want to get serious and that we should slow things down!
“God, you make me sick. My first time should have
been so great,
it shouldn’t have been, it shouldn’t have been . . .
Oh, get the hell away from me,
you make me sick.”
I am sobbing.
He just sits there.
I wish I could stop crying long enough
to quote some kick-ass lyrics.
Like Ani DiFranco. I hear her snarl in my head.
“Someday you might find you’re starving,
and eating all of the words you said.”
But I can’t get the words out between sobs.
“I’m sorry, Vi—