Testimony from Your Perfect Girl Read online

  “Private school?”

  “Yes.” I take a sip.

  “What do your parents do?”

  “None of your business,” I say.

  “Some of us,” he says, then takes a sip as if it’s a celebratory lap.

  I could have lied about it all, but his rapid-fire round pinned me.

  “And why would any of those things stop me from wanting to work hard, to have goals?”

  “I didn’t say anything about wanting to,” he says. “I’m talking about needing to.” He takes a sip, but keeps eye contact. “Why do you want to have more fun?”

  I look around at the revelers, all making faces like they’re wasted or shocked to hear something.

  Something about Brose makes it hard to lie, to pretend I’m someone else. If anything, his aggression makes me want to expose and defend myself. I lean against the counter, slowing my heartbeat. “Because I haven’t really had any before,” I say, which comes off as sort of sad. I look around for other company. He’s such a downer. “But cheers to you figuring it out. Us spoiled private school girls will never have to.” I tap his cup, which makes a bit of beer spill out on his shoe. “Sorry,” I say. “I’ll buy you some new ones. Easy.”

  Rickie comes up to us. “Yo,” she says. She pumps the keg, then takes the hose. “What’s up?” She registers our hostility, but interprets it as disappointment with the party. “No good?” She looks around the room. “Yea or nay?”

  “May as well hang out,” Brose says, taking his phone out of his pocket. “Forty minutes until midnight.”

  “Oh my god,” Rickie says. “Natty is totally fucking you right now.”

  I look down at my leg for some reason, then around the room.

  “Don’t look,” she says, “or look, whatever.”

  He’s across the room, talking to a few girls, but looking over at us, or me.

  “He’s fucking you with his eyes,” Rickie says.

  “What are you talking about?” I smile, but I’m looking at Nat, so he smiles back.

  “Oops, he just came,” Rickie says.

  “That would be my cue,” Brose says, walking past me. “Have fun.” He holds up his cup, and I hold mine up, too.

  “Have less,” I say.

  An old Britney Spears song comes on, and Rickie and I start to dance, and I laugh a bit too loudly, pretending I’m just here in the moment, even though I’m highly aware of Nat’s gaze, not knowing if it’s on me or not, but acting like it is. Every move from head to tail is for him. Nothing wasted. It’s New Year’s Eve, and I want to have so much fun behaving like the kind of girl I never thought I wanted to be. Rickie and I dance out of the kitchen toward the group of dancers in the living room. Beer sloshes on the carpet and on people’s shoes, but no one cares. We’re all so young, and we know it. Clap your hands.

  * * *

  • • •

  I rest against the railing outside, then lean back while holding on like I’m water-skiing. Someone grabs me by the waist, and for a moment I don’t turn, giving in to the mystery. It could only be one person, and I came out here specifically so that one person could catch me alone. The mystery pushes me back to the rail and clasps his hands around me. I turn my head, and there’s Nat. I feel warm where he’s touched me. I feel warm everywhere. He lets go and stands next to me.

  “I thought I should hug you before we kiss at midnight,” he says.

  “Oh, is that what we’re doing?” I keep looking ahead.

  “Well, you can’t kiss yourself,” he says. “I thought I’d do you a favor.”

  I shake my head. “Oh my god,” I say, pretending to be incredulous. I walk down the steps.

  “Come on,” he says, following me. “We have ten minutes. And I’m just kidding. We can hug at midnight, or talk, or do snow angels. Whatever.”

  “I’ll kiss you,” I say, feeling bold in the dark woods. I lean back against a tree, hoping I look sexy like Sadie always manages to do, even when she’s just standing still. He stands in front of me, looking at me lazily; his face is slack. He sways a bit, and I think I may be swaying too.

  “Should we practice?” he asks. He twists his mouth, then covers it with his hand. I like the way his jeans fit, the way he smells like smoke, and before I know it, I’m moving toward him and then his hand is behind my head and we’re kissing. Slowly, deeply, and my head spins a bit. I grab him around the waist to hold on. We continue to kiss, and it’s like we’re desperate for it, like we’re taking in something essential. It all feels set to music, arranged by experts. This is how people fall in love.

  But I’m not falling in love—my mind is too busy, thinking ahead, planning what to do, what not to do, wondering if I’m doing anything right. He presses himself against me, and I press back, and in the distance I hear voices, people counting: ten, nine, eight . . . I move my hands under his shirt to feel the skin on his back, and he shivers a bit, then does the same to me, except up the front of my shirt, his hand under my bra.

  “God, your body,” he says.

  Well fueled and sculpted, I know, and not in a conceited way. Skating will do that to you.

  I don’t know what road I’m on, whose house I’m at. My parents are so far in the distance somewhere. I can’t imagine their voices. How did I get here, doing what I’m doing? It’s so unexpected, such a thrill to get off track and be lost. For a second I open my eyes to see where I am: trees pointing toward infinity and a spray of vivid stars. I think of Sadie again, what she said to my brother when we were leaving the house, something like: “I’d go down on you if your sister wasn’t here,” and I think, This isn’t me standing here, anyway. This is Annie Town, some other girl in some other place. A wild girl, a free girl, a crazy, cool girl. A girl Brose has no right to judge. Stop thinking about Brose, I think to myself. He’s no fun. And he has a stupid name.

  “Happy New Year’s,” Nat says, and I come back to him. I hear everyone in the distance cheering, and the sound of fireworks.

  “Very happy,” I say, and we kiss again, and then, for the first time ever, because I want to, because I can—I make my way down.

  12

  I leave with Rickie at around one. I’m glad everyone else got their own rides and it’s just us. We’re both too tired to talk, and I’m relieved. There’s a slow song on the radio, and it’s making everything that just happened seem more distant and abstract. The guitar, strings, and vocals are a soundtrack to a random montage. I’m a character in a—

  “Did you hook up with Nat?” Rickie asks.

  The scene I was creating blackens. I look ahead at the swath of road lit in the headlights, making it seem like we’re going into a tunnel.

  “Kind of,” I say.

  “Kind of,” she says, and smirks.

  “You?” I ask, to take the attention away. “Kiss anyone at midnight?” I roll my eyes at myself.

  “I kissed Tam at midnight, but . . . nothing new there.”

  Rickie looks over at me, gauging my response. I try to keep my expression unreadable, but I’m surprised, I guess, and feel kind of shy and naive. Does she mean kissing Tamara is nothing new and that she’s gay, or did she just randomly kiss a girl as girls sometimes do, usually in front of others? Max and Brodhi—two senior guys at my school—are clearly gay and out about it, but there are no out girls that I know of. Especially no one like Rickie. I stare at her full lips, imagining them kissing Tamara.

  “She was jealous,” she says.

  “Of what?” I ask.

  Rickie tilts her head toward me.

  “Me?”

  “She gets jealous of every girl I hang out with. And then I had to take you home.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say.

  “No, I wanted to go home,” she says. “I’m a home girl. She can stay out till breakfast.”

  “She has nothing to be jealous of,�
� I say.

  “I know,” Rickie says, and even though she’s just confirming what I said, it stings a little.

  She stops in front of the house, the Santa on the Harley like a beacon. Seeing it makes me sad all of a sudden, nostalgic for a childhood I never really had, one with silly and vulgar toys. I put a stick of gum in my mouth, and when I get out of the car, the mint and the cold feel like a breeze in my face.

  “Nighty night,” Rickie says through a yawn.

  “Happy New Year,” I say.

  “Happy New Year,” she says, and blows me a kiss. “Fresh start.”

  “I hope so,” I say.

  I open the front door slowly to a dark room with a soft glow of auburn light. I don’t want to see Jay right now. I feel like a different sister, a disappointing, slutty one. A weaker one.

  I hear a cough and freeze, but then I don’t hear anything, so I close the door behind me and look around the empty room. I take off my coat and hear more coughing and see smoke rising from the kitchen counter and then Nicole stands up, revealing herself and the joint in her hand.

  “Hey,” she says, then coughs some more, but with a closed mouth. “I’m screwed,” she says. “Too much . . . I’m sorry you had to see this. Pot is bad . . . very, very bad. But you don’t cough, you don’t get off.”

  I’ve smoked weed with Jay and thought it was okay. It made watching movies kind of fun—but I couldn’t focus on the stories. My mind would keep opening new doors. Because of these weird circumstances and because I feel alive but sad and icky, I walk over to her and reach for the joint.

  She backs up. “Oh no, you don’t.”

  “Come on,” I say. “I’ve had a bad night and a good night.”

  “I don’t care,” she says. “You’re . . . a young person.”

  “It’s legal,” I say.

  “For me,” she says, but a smile is kind of breaking through her face. I try again, and she holds it up, but I jump and get it because I’m a cat. I inhale. She watches me, flabbergasted.

  “Shit, you really wanted that,” she says.

  I smile, cough once.

  “Why was your night bad?” she asks. She hops up to sit on the counter, and I do the same.

  “It wasn’t bad bad,” I say, thinking about it. “I just wasn’t myself, and it . . . left me with a bad taste in my mouth.” I stop chewing my gum and try to look at her out of the corner of my eye. That was just foul. “Aren’t you trying to get pregnant?” I ask. “What if you’re pregnant right now?”

  “God, you sound just like Skip,” she says. “We’ve been trying for, like, ten years. So what, I just stop living my life? I sacrifice my hobbies?”

  “Smoking weed is your hobby?”

  “No,” she says, and sounds like a teenager. “But it seriously can’t be worse than the drugs you have to take to get you fertile. I mean, that makes you shit-bat crazy. I take breaks from them so I don’t bash Skip’s head in.” She smiles a little, maybe testing. “Sorry. Too much information. TMI.”

  “You don’t need to abbreviate,” I say. “I actually like to say all the words. Oh my god.”

  We are quiet for a while, both kicking the counter. I can’t believe I just smoked with my aunt.

  “Isn’t it batshit crazy?” I ask. “Not shit-bat.” I smile to myself at the way it sounds.

  “I like to mix things up.”

  “I guess I’ll go to bed,” I say.

  “This will not happen again, okay?” she says, searching my face. “You will never tell your mom about this ever. And we will not chill like homies. This isn’t a thing.”

  I smile, and she concentrates on keeping a straight face. “Your loss,” I say, and she holds back a laugh like it’s a cough.

  “From now on, when you’re here, I’m your . . . I’m your mom,” she says.

  You’re nothing like my mom, I almost say, but she’s not saying she is, and saying it aloud would sound like an insult. She’s nothing like my mom in that my mom wouldn’t see me coming in late. Our house is too big. My mom would never smoke pot. She’s always in control. Even her Chardonnay buzz seems like something she’s putting on. My mom isn’t funny or weird. I love her, but she’s like this beautiful thing with an impenetrable surface, like there’s an unripe skin on her. Then I realize that people probably think the exact same thing about me. That I’m impenetrable. Unreal.

  “Where’s Jay?” Nicole asks.

  “No clue,” I say. “Maybe back in Genesee, or his boys all came to him.”

  “I know it’s New Year’s Eve, but you kids need to realize that—that we’re, like, the adults.”

  I look her over. She doesn’t look like an adult and seems unconvinced of the role. The extinguished joint is on the counter. She sees me looking at it.

  “Let’s say we get a hall pass tonight.” She touches her stomach, something I’ve noticed her doing a lot, like a nervous twitch. I like the idea of the hall pass. We’re all excused and can resume tomorrow, free and clear. That’s kind of what staying with them has been like. We can do things we regret, things out of character, then reemerge free and clear. Except this won’t last once we return to our real lives.

  “Want to watch a little TV?” she asks.

  “Okay.”

  We sit on opposite corners of the couch, watching a reality show about people addicted to plastic surgery. It’s like watching a show about walking carp. Sometimes we laugh at the same time, which is cool and awkward. I don’t know what I’m paying attention to more: the show or her sitting next to me. I’m aware of my breath and every time I shift on the couch.

  “These people are idiots,” she says. “But what does that make us?”

  “Truth seekers,” I say, and she kind of smiles, as if unsure how to read this weirdo that is me.

  “Want to watch a Western?” I ask.

  “Sure,” she says.

  I go to the room and grab A Fistful of Dollars, a Clint Eastwood movie about a wandering gunfighter messing with the heads of two rival families. I love the hats in this one and the way he rocks the blanket poncho. I have one just like it that I wear with my brown boots.

  We watch for a long time, and I’m kind of impressed with her stamina and relieved by it, too. Nothing’s worse than sharing something with someone and having them return it without even trying it on.

  “I can’t put you together,” she says at one point, and I don’t bother to answer. In a way, it’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me. It makes me happy.

  When I see she’s asleep, I turn the TV off and go back to my room. I wonder what Nat is thinking. We left off walking back to the party. We held hands until we reached the top of the porch steps and then he let go. I’ve tried not to overthink it—the way he never talked to me afterward. It was my choice, after all.

  13

  Nat was off yesterday. I was disappointed, but then kind of relieved. I don’t know why I did what I did, but I’m glad I got it over with, I guess. At least now I know what to do. He’s supposed to be working today and could walk in at any moment, so I’ve been aware of myself like I’m onstage.

  “Last one,” Ren says, talking about the shrimp. “You are fast,” he says.

  “What should I do now?” I wipe my hands on my apron.

  He nods toward Brose. “You can help him.”

  Great. I walk over to his counter to see if he has a chore for me. “Can I do anything?” I ask.

  He’s massaging a hamburger patty, pressing the edges into little walls.

  “You look like you really care about that patty,” I say.

  “I do,” he says. “Getting it ready to go out into the world.”

  He takes his glove off, then dips a carrot into a white, creamy sauce, takes a bite, and looks at me like he can’t figure it out.

  “Taste,” he says, holding the dipped carrot
in front of my face.

  I hesitate, then bite. It’s tangy and garlicky, delicious. “Needs more salt.”

  “You always say that,” he says.

  Agreed. Yesterday when he fed me a bite of buffalo, I said it, and with the mushrooms I said it, too. “It’s always the answer.” I hold his gaze. “It brings out the best of what’s already there.” I feel shy all of a sudden. “Anyway, can I help?”

  “Do you really want to? Get your hands dirty?”

  “Gloves,” I say. I put on a pair, snapping one when I’m done.

  “You can help,” he says. “But you have to take my direction. I’m a patty perfectionist.”

  “I’m kind of a perfectionist myself.”

  He looks me up and down, and I’m aware of my hair in a low bun, my clean Marc Jacobs booties, totally kitchen inappropriate. I wore jeans, at least.

  “I gathered that,” he says, then looks down at his work.

  “And I know how to make patties,” I say.

  “But do you?” he asks. “It’s all in the thumbs. Actually, there’s more to it than that. If you really want to know how to make the best hamburgers, it involves more than thumbs.”

  I’m about to ask what else is involved because it’s interesting and not my specialty, but then I hear “You guys miss me?” and Nat walks in through the swinging doors. I straighten up, look down at my awful plastic apron, my kitchen-gloved hands submersed in raw meat.

  Pablo and Ren exchange looks at Nat’s bluster. I think I detected some eye rolling.

  “What’s up, dishwasher?” he says.

  I don’t answer, because he’s moved on, greeting everyone, though no one seems to greet him back as heartily. I have a feeling no one back here really likes Nat. He’s like me, I realize, though no one here knows the exact extent of this—he’s clean-cut, temporary, having—but not needing—a job. After asking Freddie about the specials—caribou and trout—he turns to go, but before he leaves, I say, “Hey, Natty?”

  “Yo,” he says, looking up from his phone, impatiently, like I’m bothering him, like he’s never kissed me before. I know guys can be assholes. I’m not some babe in the woods, but just logically, I did something pretty cool with him, for him, and as a guy, wouldn’t he want me to do that cool something again? Not that I would or want to really, but still. It’s in his best interest to be kind.