WE’RE ON THE roof, the three of us, wearing jeans for the first time in months and sharing the last Coke from the fridge. The phone rings downstairs. None of us move.
Mags pokes me with her toe. “You know it’s for you.”
I grunt. After bringing Nell and me home, Libby handed me my phone messages, her face stony as Mount Katahdin. Jesse called three times while I was gone. And there was one hang-up, too, which must be my fault, apparently.
“Why don’t you want to talk to him?” Nell sits up on her elbow, her hair sliding over her shoulder.
“I just don’t.”
“But he defended your honor.” Mags and I snort. “Well, he did.” Nell sits forward, hugging her knees, wearing that look she gets whenever she drifts into one of her big-screen fantasies. “He came to your rescue, like a knight or Gregory Peck or somebody.”
I gulp the rest of the Coke without thinking. Mags sets the can on the windowsill, annoyed. “He got into it with Shea because it’s been a long time coming, that’s what I think.” It sure as hell wasn’t because he loves me; he made that pretty clear. I picture Jesse playing with his phone, waiting for me to call; why, I don’t know. I wonder what his bedroom looks like at his uncle’s place. I’m guessing medium-messy, a couple centerfolds on the wall. And books. I get the feeling he reads.
Mags takes her glasses off and rubs her face. “Darcy doesn’t need a knight, but if she did, I think she could do better than Jesse Bouchard.”
That reminds me of what she told me in the dressing room of Lehman’s. I turn to her. “He must’ve at least asked you, right?”
Mags stares at me. “Who?”
“Will. He asked you to have sex and you said no, right?”
She bursts into exasperated laughter. “What’s your issue? We talked about it sometimes. It just never happened. Not every guy pushes, you know. You do know that, right?”
“Duh,” I say, flustered, not knowing it at all. Except for Jesse. And when he didn’t push, I got mad at him. “So you’ve really never done it?”
“Well, considering the last boyfriend I had before Will was in sixth grade, no, I’ve never done it.” She looks at me blandly. “How many times have you?”
They’re both watching me, but I feel Nell’s gaze the strongest. I know she’s going to hold up whatever I say as some kind of lens to see herself through. I can’t lie. Not to her, not about this. “Four. I mean, with four guys, not four times.” There’s a silence. “It’s not that bad.”
“Did anybody say it was?”
I shrug. The bridge lights flash over the treetops. Scarlet, then blackness. If I’m ever going to tell them this, now’s the time. “You know who my first was?”
Mags looks surprised when I say Adam Morrow. “I didn’t even know you knew him.”
“I didn’t.” All I knew was he was beautiful. Beautiful on the soccer field, the red and white of his uniform bringing out the color in his cheeks on those fall afternoons when Rhiannon and I would sit on a blanket on the sidelines and scream for him. Beautiful at school, passing by the water fountain I’d stake out between periods every morning, just to catch a glimpse. It was one of those hopeless crushes that twist your insides because you love him so much, and you know it’ll never, ever happen. He’s perfect, and you’re nobody. “Rhiannon liked one of his friends. Having crushes on them was what we did. I mean, we talked about it all the time, what we’d do if they liked us back, how it’d be the best thing ever and totally change our lives.”
Mags watches my face, the wind stirring strands of her hair. I don’t look at Nell, because I can imagine her expression exactly: lips slightly parted, hanging on words that I should’ve told her a long time ago, before it was too late. “I never would’ve talked to him in a million years. Seriously, who does that, ask out their mega-crush like it’s nothing?”
“Rhiannon.” Mags’s voice is flat.
“Yeah. If she wanted something, she went for it. She didn’t even tell me first. She asked a friend of a friend to tell the guys that some sophomore girls liked them, and when they said they’d be down for hanging out with us on Halloween . . . she set it up.”
“Were you scared?” Nell sounds soft.
“I got really mad at her, at first. But I let her talk me into it, fill me up with how hot I must be, a senior wanting a hookup when he barely knew my name. We got Rhiannon’s mom to drop us off at the school gym for the dance. Soon as she drove off, we walked up to the soccer fields and met the boys.” Rhiannon and I almost ran up the hill, giggling crazily with nerves, our breath steaming in the cold air. Trojans in our pockets because we weren’t stupid, you know, we read Cosmo. “We made a pact. Said this was gonna be the night. We were gonna give it away, ’cause there couldn’t be anybody better to give it to, ever.”
The boys, parked at opposite ends of the lot, car engines running. Rhiannon smiling at me, looking way more fearless than I felt, saying, Have fun. Disappearing into the Mustang.
Then I was inside the Explorer, with the smell of his cologne and the heater and a pine air freshener just out of the package. Being this close to him lit a fire in me, smoking and crackling away. I must be beautiful. I must be something. He’d showed up. “I was scared, but he didn’t make me do it or anything. I mean, it was my choice.” Pulling his weight down on me, dragging his lip between my teeth, letting my body take over to block out the confused, crazy messages my brain was sending. “I’m saying it wasn’t horrible or anything. But when it was over, he was like, ‘This was your first time?’ and he sounded, like, shocked. Because you’ve gotta figure any girl who goes after a guy the way I did must have some mileage on her, right? Even if she’s only fifteen.”
There’s the softest sound of Mags drawing breath through her teeth. I can’t stand her feeling sorry for me. That’s not why I’m telling them this. “He tried to make it nice. He’d laid out blankets in the back, and I could smell that he’d washed them. It wasn’t like this awful thing.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Because I know how you are. You’ll waste all this time hating him and there’s no point. I mean, he doesn’t even matter, really. It was totally awkward after and neither of us could think of anything to say. Finally I said see ya and got out.”
Into the freezing dark, walking faster and faster, ditching the girl who’d gotten into the backseat of that Explorer twenty minutes ago because I didn’t want to know her anymore. “The other car was gone, and Rhiannon was standing under the streetlight, shivering like she’d been out there for a while. All she wanted to do was go back to the dance, so we went.” In the girls’ room, watching her run hot water over her hands, trying to get the feeling back, her face pinched and frowning in the mirror, me asking, Are you okay?
“Was she okay?” Nell’s voice is hushed.
I bite my lip, literally counting to ten before I speak. My words still come out tightly. “She didn’t do it. She changed her mind.”
“What?” Mags.
“She got into the car and changed her mind. The guy must’ve been pissed, because he kicked her out and left.” I can still feel how the whole room seemed to fall away, leaving us together in a pocket of sickening silence, even with the bass pounding on the other side of the wall and girls coming and going. Rhiannon’s quick, sharp little movements, like she was disgusted with me.
“I was like, ‘You were the one who set the whole thing up,’ and she was like, ‘I didn’t make you do anything.’ That was when I walked away. She was right. She didn’t make me. But she still let me put myself out there alone after we’d agreed to do it together and everything. I mean, not that I wanted her to sleep with somebody, I just . . . hated feeling tricked. So I borrowed somebody’s phone and called Mom, said I was sick and wanted to come home.”
Mags watches my face. “You never told anybody what happened?”
“What could I say?” I brush at some dirt on my pants. “I thought Rhiannon would call and say she was sorry, but she didn’t. We didn’t talk at school on Monday, either. Or the rest of the week. By then everybody was whispering about what happened on Halloween, except nobody was talking about Rhiannon being part of it. So I figured she was the one who ran her mouth, and made herself look good.”
“That bitch.” Mags sits very straight and stiff. Rhiannon’s lucky she’s missing, because my sister’s mad enough to come down on her like a 185-pound landslide right now. “She’s embarrassed about punking out, so she trashes you.”
“And I heard her talking about me one time. Saying how easy I was.” I shrug. “So now you guys know.”
“I always wondered why you stopped being friends.” Nell jumps when Mags brings her heel down against the shingles. “Shhh!”
“Damn it, I never liked her.” Mags simmers for a few seconds, then says in a rough voice, “Sorry, Darce. Really. That sucks.”
“It’s done.” I tuck my chin into the collar of my fleece. My words speed up, because I want to get this out while I’ve still got Nell’s ear. “The point is, your dream guy is just a guy, and he can stomp all over your heart. But then you got to move on, because he’s sure not wasting any time worrying about you. You got to protect yourself, or somebody worse will come along and smell blood in the water and they’ll come at you, too, and it won’t ever end.” As I say it, it hits me, what Shea really did, on the Fourth and today. I reach for the bruises, stop, and force my hand back down. “You got to be smart. You know? Smart.”
Even in the dark, I know Nell’s eyes are wet, and she’s checking out her shoes. When it’s time to go inside, she climbs off the roof without saying good night, and I see her wipe her face with the back of her hand. Guess I hurt her. Good.
Maybe she learned something.