Ready or Not

8

My parents were uncharacteristically cool about the detention thing. As soon as they heard Kris Parks had been involved, they were just like, “Oh. Well, don’t do it again.”

Even Theresa went, “I’m proud of you, Sam, for not dumping the paint over her head.”

Which made me realize I really have made a lot of progress this year, growing as a human being. Because last year, I definitely would have done that. Dumped the paint over Kris’s head, not her shoes.

Nobody bothered to ask why I’d done it. Accidentally on purpose kick paint all over the gym floor, I mean. Nobody except Lucy, I mean, who came fluttering into my room after dinner, while I was scowling at my German assignment.

“So,” she said, flopping down next to Manet on my bed, without waiting to be invited to do so. “What’s up with you and David?”

“Nothing,” I said, feeling a spurt of annoyance toward her. Don’t even ask me why. I mean, she’d been nothing but nice to me, what with the condom/foam thing, and all.

Probably it wasn’t Lucy I was annoyed with. Probably, I was the one I was annoyed with. Because I still hadn’t called David back. I just…

I just had no idea what to say to him.

“Well,” Lucy said, rolling over and staring at my ceiling, “then why are you avoiding his calls?”

I stared at her. “Who says I’m avoiding his calls?”

“It’s only all over school,” Lucy said, in a bored voice. “Wasn’t that why you got so mad and spilled the paint? Because Kris commented on it?”

“No,” I lied.

“Oh,” Lucy said with a little laugh. “Okay. Whatever.”

But she didn’t leave. She just lay there, playing with the fringe of hair over Manet’s eyes. I knew she’d try to braid it or, worse, put it in tiny butterfly barrettes. I hate when she does that. Sheepdogs have hair in their face for a reason. Their eyes are very sensitive to light.

I looked at Lucy as she finger-combed Manet’s bangs into a fauxhawk. The thing is, Lucy does have some experience in the boy arena. There was a chance—just a slight one, but a chance all the same—that she might know how to help. After all, she’d been in my same shoes, once.

I swung my German book closed.

“It’s just,” I said, sitting up, “I don’t know. I mean, I want to Do It with him, and all. But what if…”

Lucy let go of Manet’s fur and shifted so that she was propping her head up on Manet’s side. Manet didn’t appear to notice. “What if…what?”

“What if, like…I don’t like it?”

“Well, have you been practicing?” Lucy asked.

I stared down at her. “Practicing? Practicing what?”

“Making love,” Lucy said. “Look, it’s easy. Get in the bathtub. Turn the water on. Scoot down to the end of the tub, until your you-know-what is under the running water. Then pretend the water is the guy, and let it—”

“OH MY GOD.”

Lucy blinked up at me. “What?” She looked totally surprised that I should be so shocked. “You haven’t tried it? Dude, it totally works.”

“LUCY!” I practically screamed. Loud enough, anyway, that Manet lifted his head and looked around sleepily.

“What?” Lucy asked, again. “There’s nothing wrong with it.”

“THAT is why you’re always in the bathtub so long?” I croaked.

“Sure,” Lucy said. “What’d you think I was doing in there?”

“Not THAT,” I said. “I thought you were…I don’t know. BATHING. And reading those romance novels of yours.”

“Well, that, too,” Lucy said. “They totally help, you know. Some of them are really descriptive. Although thinking about Orlando Bloom is supposed to help, too. While you’re letting the water do its work. Orlando doesn’t do it for me. But I hear he works for a lot of other girls.”

I couldn’t stop staring at her. “THIS is what you guys talk about at the popular table in the lunch room? Who you think about while you’re—under the faucet?”

“Not at the lunch table, silly,” Lucy said with a laugh. “I mean, there are guys there. Guys don’t want to hear that you think about anything but them. Believe me. But when there aren’t guys around, yeah, we talk about this kind of stuff. I think Tiffany Shore was the first one to figure it out. She read about it in Cosmo. She uses a handheld shower nozzle instead, though.”

“OH MY GOD!” I yelled, again.

Lucy looked surprised at my outburst. “Well,” she said, “girls aren’t like guys. We aren’t born knowing how to Do It. And you can’t leave it up to the guy. Most of them couldn’t care less about whether or not YOU get anything out of it. It’s really every girl for herself out there. That’s why practice is so important. Also, getting into the right mindset. That’s why I usually think about that guy from The Count of Monte Cristo—”

“Jim Caviezel?” I interrupted, more horrified than ever.

“Yeah. He’s so hot.”

I could not believe I was even having this conversation.

My incredulity must have shown on my face, since Lucy added, “Come on, Sam. You can’t expect a guy to know what to do to make you have an orgasm. You have to do it yourself. At least until you can teach him how.”

This was all news to me.

“Did you teach Jack?” I wanted to know. Because I couldn’t believe Jack had ever let anyone teach him anything. Even Lucy. I mean, he basically thinks he knows it all.

“Jack?” Lucy got a funny look on her face all of a sudden. Funny like she was going to cry.

Really. Just like that. Just from hearing his name.

And then, next thing I knew, she’d buried her face in Manet’s thick gray and white fur.

“Lucy?” Alarmed, I reached out and touched her shoulder. “Are you okay? Are you…are you sick, or something?”

“Yes, I’m sick,” Lucy said, into Manet’s hipbone. “Sick of that name.”

I blinked down at her. Name? What name? Jack’s name?

“Did something happen?” I asked her worriedly. “Between you and Jack?”

Even as the words were coming out of my mouth, I realized how stupid they sounded. Obviously something had happened between her and Jack. Had he found some other girl, some college girl?

Of course not. Jack was besotted with Lucy. He would never cheat on her! So what was wrong?

I gasped, remembering what Dad had said in the living room the other night. What if Mom had finally let Dad have his way, and he’d forbidden Lucy from seeing Jack? And what if Lucy was planning on running away with him, tonight, on the back of his motorcycle, like Daryl Hannah and Aidan Quinn in that movie Reckless I saw on the Romance Channel? Oh my God, Lucy’s even a cheerleader, like that character Daryl played! And Jack has a leather jacket, just like the guy Aidan played!

But where are they going to live if they run off together? They have no money. Lucy doesn’t even have her job at Bare Essentials anymore! They’ll have to live—

IN A TRAILER PARK.

LIKE DARYL AND SHARONA.

“Lucy,” I said, tightening my grip on her shoulder, “you can’t run off with Jack. You can’t live in a trailer park. They get hit by tornadoes all the time.”

Lucy lifted her face from Manet’s fur and squinted at me through tear-swollen eyes. “Run off with Jack? I’m not going to run off with Jack. I’m not even going out with him anymore. I Instant Messaged him last week that we were over.”

My mouth fell open. “WHAT?”

“You heard me.” Lucy finally sat up, and I saw the gleaming tracks her tears had made down her cheeks. Not so amazingly, she still looked pretty, even with random strands of dog hair stuck to the tear tracks on her face.

There really is no justice in the world.

“You broke up with Jack?” I felt as if my brain were melting. “Through Instant Messaging?”

“Yeah,” Lucy said, picking fur from her face. “So what?”

“Well, I mean, isn’t that…” How could she not know this? “Isn’t that kind of…cold?”

“I don’t care,” Lucy said with a sniffle. “I couldn’t take his pathetic whining a second longer. He was suffocating me. I mean, he’s in college. You think he’d get a life, instead of wanting to come back here all the time and bug me.”

“Um,” I said. “Well, Jack really loves you, you know. He can’t help missing you.”

“Yeah, but he could help being a controlling freak, couldn’t he? God, it’s good to have him off my back. ‘I can’t believe you’re going to the game instead of spending time with me,’” she said, in a surprisingly dead-on imitation of her former boyfriend. “‘Sometimes I think you care more about your stupid squad than you do for me.’ Like my wanting to have fun with my friends was some kind of personal insult to him!”

I couldn’t believe this. Lucy and Jack, broken up? Really broken up, from the way it sounded, not just one of their many fights. Could it really be over between the two of them? That was it?

“But you went out with him for years and years,” I said. “You guys were voted couple most likely to get married.”

“Yeah,” Lucy said. “Well, it didn’t work out, did it?”

“But he was your first,” I exclaimed.

“My first what?” Lucy asked.

“Hello,” I said. “Your first LOVE.”

Lucy made a face. “Tell me about it. If I’d known better, I wouldn’t have picked anybody so moody. And so needy. If I’d have known better, I’d have picked someone more like—”

I stared at her. “Like who?”

“No one,” Lucy said quickly. “Never mind.”

“No, I mean it,” I said. “Who? You can tell me, Luce. I want to know. And I won’t tell.”

David, I thought. She’s going to say David. Of course she wants a boyfriend like David. David made up white-trash names for us. She and Jack never had white-trash names for each other.

And she knows when David calls me, it’s never to make sure I’m not out with some other guy, but because he genuinely cares about how I’m doing, and wants to hear how my day went.

And she sees how David walks me to the door every time he brings me home. And okay, this is also sometimes the only opportunity we have to make out, which might contribute a little to David’s motivation.

But whatever. Lucy doesn’t have to know that. Jack never walked Lucy to the door.

She wants a boyfriend more like mine. She has to.

And I can’t say that I blame her. God. Now that I think about it, David is like the perfect boyfriend.

So why am I being so mean to him?

“It’s just,” Lucy said, with a sudden, hiccupy sob. “It’s just that…he’s so smart!”

Poor Lucy. David certainly is much smarter than Jack. There’s no denying that. It’s true Jack’s a gifted artist, but that doesn’t necessarily make him smart. I remember he once insisted Picasso invented fauvism. Seriously.

“Yes,” I said sympathetically. “Yes, he is, isn’t he?”

“I mean, there’s something very attractive about a guy who knows…well, everything,” Lucy went on, starting to sound close to tears again. “Jack just THINKS he knows everything.”

“Yes,” I said, thinking Poor Lucy. If only David had a brother. “Yes, he did, didn’t he?”

“I mean, all that time he was going on about being an urban rebel…how much of a rebel can you be if your parents are paying for everything?”

“True,” I said. “Very true.”

“The thing is, Jack was just a poser,” Lucy said, still teary-eyed.

“Yes,” I said. You could never call David a poser. He is always, solidly, exactly who he is, and no one else. “He was a bit of one, wasn’t he?”

“I don’t want to go out with a poser,” Lucy said. “I want the real thing. I want a real man.”

Like David. Well, you could hardly blame her.

“You’ll find him,” I assured her. “Someday.”

“I already have,” Lucy said. “Found him.”

Causing me to go, “Wait. What?”

“I found him,” she said with a sob. “B-but he doesn’t want me!”

Then she buried her head, with a wail, into my lap.

“Wait.” I looked down uncomprehendingly at the red-gold puddle of silk spread out across my thighs. “You found him? WHERE?”

“At s-school,” Lucy wept.

And, even though I’d known, deep down, that she wasn’t talking about David, this was still something of a relief. That it wasn’t my boyfriend she was pining for.

“Well, that’s great, Luce,” I said, still feeling confused. “I mean, that you found someone so soon—”

“Aren’t you even listening to me?” Lucy demanded, sitting up and glaring at me with red-rimmed eyes. “I said, he d-doesn’t want me!”

“He doesn’t?” I stared at her. “But why? Does he already have a girlfriend?”

“No,” Lucy said, shaking her head. “Not that I know of.”

“Well, is he…I mean, is he gay?” Because that was the only reason I could think of for a guy not liking my sister, if he wasn’t already in love with some other girl, like David.

“No,” she said. “I don’t think so.”

“Well, then, why—”

“I don’t KNOW why,” Lucy said. “I TOLD you that. I’ve done EVERYTHING I could to make him notice me. I wore my shortest mini last time I saw him—the one Theresa threatened to put in the trash if I wore it outside the house ever again? I spent two hours on my makeup. I even wore lip liner. And what did I get for it?” She pounded a perfectly manicured fist against the mattress. “NOTHING. He still doesn’t know I’m alive. I asked him, you know, if he wanted to go to the movies this weekend—to the new Adam Sandler—and he said…he said…he said he HAD OTHER PLANS!”

She grabbed a pillow and clutched it to her face as she wailed into it.

“Well,” I said, blinking uncomprehendingly, “maybe he did. Have other plans, I mean.”

“He didn’t,” Lucy sobbed. “I could tell he didn’t.”

“Well…maybe he doesn’t like Adam Sandler. Lots of people don’t.”

“That’s not it,” Lucy said. “It’s me. He just doesn’t like ME.”

“Lucy,” I said, “everybody likes you. Okay? Every guy who isn’t taken or likes guys and not girls likes you. It has to be something else. Who is this guy, anyway?”

But Lucy just shook her head and wailed, “What does it matter? What does any of it matter when he doesn’t even know I’m alive?”

Lucy flopped back across the bed, weeping stormily. I stared down at her prone figure, trying to make sense of what I’d just heard. My sister—the cheerleader; the Bare Essentials salesgirl; the titian-haired goddess; the most popular girl at Adams Prep—was in love with some guy who didn’t like her back.

No. No, that was just all wrong. That did not compute.

I sat there, trying to digest all this. It didn’t make any sense. What kind of boy, asked out by the prettiest girl in school, said NO? She had said he was smart…well, how smart could he be if he turned down my sister? Unless he—

Suddenly, I gasped, as the full horror of what she was trying to tell me sank in.

“Lucy!” I cried. “Is it HAROLD? You like HAROLD MINSKY?”

Her only response to this was to weep harder.

And I knew. I knew it all.

“Oh, Lucy,” I said, trying not to laugh. I knew I shouldn’t have found the situation funny. I mean, after all, Lucy was genuinely upset. But my sister and Harold Minsky? “You know, Harold probably isn’t all that used to girls asking him out. Maybe you, you know. Surprised him. And that’s why he said he had other plans. I mean, maybe he just said the first thing he thought of.”

This made her raise her head and blink at me tearfully.

“What do you mean, he isn’t used to girls asking him out?” she wanted to know. “Harold’s so smart. Girls must ask him out all the time.”

Now it was REALLY hard not to laugh.

“Um, Luce,” I said, not quite believing I was having to explain this to my older sister—the girl who had just informed me of an alternative use for the bathtub faucet, “not all girls are attracted to boys like Harold. I mean, a lot of girls like boys for their, um, bodies and personalities, and not so much for their minds.”

Lucy threw me an outraged look. “What are you talking about? Harold has a great body. Underneath those floppy shirts. I know, he spilled some of Theresa’s paella on one and he had to take it off for her to put in the wash and I saw him in just his undershirt.”

Whoa. Harold must have been working out or something in his basement, because if he had a good bod, it certainly wasn’t from playing on any of Adams Prep’s sports teams.

“It’s just,” she went on, “I mean, I watched Hellboy. I told him I watched Hellboy. And we had, you know, a nice conversation about how difficult it must be to defend others against the forces of darkness when you yourself are the prince of darkness. I would have thought, from that, that he would have realized—”

When her voice trailed off, I asked gently, “Realized what, Luce?”

“Well, that he shouldn’t judge ME by the way I look,” she said, her eyes very blue and indignant. “I mean, I can’t help looking like this any more than Hellboy can help looking the way he does. I may look like a stuck-up popular girl, but I’m not. Why can’t Harold see that? WHY? I mean, Liz saw past Hellboy’s horns.”

I had never heard Lucy speak so passionately about anything. Not even cheerleading. Not even Bonne Bell Lip Smackers. Not even Bare Essentials’ new fall line of bikini briefs.

It didn’t seem possible, but…she might actually really be in love with Harold. I mean…really in love with him.

I wondered if Harold has the slightest idea of the feelings he’s awakened in my sister’s 34C demi-cup underwire.

“Maybe,” I said carefully, since a cheerleader—even an ex-cheerleader—in love is a volatile thing, “you should give Harold the benefit of the doubt. I mean, maybe he does see the real you, under your, um, horns, and just can’t believe someone as…horny as you would ever like him back.”

That didn’t come out at all right, and Lucy’s wide-eyed glance told me I’d screwed it up, big time.

So I said, “Look, maybe you should just ask him out again for this coming weekend, and see what he says.”

“You think?” Lucy peered at me through swollen—but still beautiful—eyes. “You think he might just be…shy or something?”

“It’s possible,” I said. Although shy wasn’t the word for it. Oblivious, maybe. Or possibly afraid Lucy had only asked him out as a joke. “You never know.”

“Because I was thinking it might be because…because I’m so stupid.”

“Lucy!” I looked down at her, my heart swelling with pity for her. Pity! For Lucy! The girl who had always gotten everything she ever wanted…until now, apparently.

Because the thing was…well, there’s a really good chance she’s right. About Harold not liking her because she isn’t exactly class valedictorian. I mean, what do the two of them even have in common? Lucy is all about capped sleeves and Juicy Couture jeans. Harold’s all about…well, megabytes.

“That can’t be true,” I said, even though, of course, a part of me thought there was a pretty good chance it could be. “I mean, you aren’t, you know, book smart, like Harold. But you know a lot of stuff I bet he doesn’t know. Like about…um—”

But the only thing I could think of that Lucy might know about that Harold wouldn’t was, well, birth control.

“I memorized all those stupid vocabulary words he gave me,” she said bitterly. “Estuary and plinth. Hoping it would make him realize, you know, that I’m really trying. I mean, I want to be smart like him. I do. Just like Hellboy wants to be good. But Harold barely even noticed. He was just like, Good. Now memorize these other words.”

“Oh, Luce,” I said. “You know…you really should ask him out again. It may never have occurred to him that you like him…you know. The way you do. He may just think you like him as a friend.” I hoped.

Lucy gazed unseeingly at my giant poster of Gwen in her wedding gown—taken from Us Weekly and blown up on the White House color copier—and sighed. “Well. All right. I guess I could ask him out again. God.”

“God, what?”

“Well, I mean…” Lucy looked thoughtful. “Now I know how all those girls in school must feel.”

“What girls?”

“The ones who ask guys out,” she said. “And the guys always say no. I had no idea it felt like this.”

“Rejection?” I tried not to look too amused. “Yeah. It can really suck.”

“Tell me about it.” She looked at the clock. “God. I have to do like ten more pages of vocab before I can even think about bed. Thanks for the pep talk, but I gotta motor.”

I stopped her in the doorway, though. “Lucy?”

She paused and looked over her shoulder, her face impossibly beautiful, in spite of the tears and the pieces of Manet’s fur she hadn’t picked off yet. “Yeah?”

“I’m glad you and Jack broke up,” I said. “You deserve better. Even if he was, you know. Your first.”

“My first,” Lucy said. “But hopefully not my last.”

“He won’t be,” I said. “And Lucy?”

“Mmm?” she said.

“You do realize,” I added awkwardly, “that the same guy who played the Count of Monte Cristo played Jesus in that movie Mel Gibson directed.”

It was finally Lucy’s turn to look shocked. “He did not!”

“Um, yeah, he did. So, in a way, all those times in the bathtub, you’ve been—”

“DON’T SAY IT!” Lucy said. And then ran for her room.

I can’t say I blamed her, either, really. For slamming the door so hard behind her, I mean.