Best Friends Forever Part 16

Jordan sat in Valerie's seat, took a deep breath of what he guessed was Valerie's scent, and tapped the touch pad of the computer. The screen bloomed to life. The in-box was closed and pa.s.sword-coded. Jordan didn't even try. Instead, he sat at her chair, inhaled hairspray and perfume, and inspected her desk. There was a blue gla.s.s cup filled with pens, a calendar filled with cursive notations for Hair and Facial and Trainer and News meeting. Beside the computer was a makeup mirror surrounded by miniature lightbulbs and a rolling caddy filled with more photographs, each one sheathed in plastic. Jordan twirled the wheel slowly. There were pictures of Val shaking hands with the mayor and Val dancing with the governor, before he'd been removed from office, at what looked like a black-tie fund-raiser (the governor wore a tuxedo, Val wore a dress that seemed to be missing its back). Finally, there was a shot of Valerie in shorts and a bikini top, posed in front of the very same dolphin sculpture from the snapshot on her boss's shelf. On the back of the picture was written Key West/Valentine's Day/2007. Sometimes, Jordan thought, slipping the picture in his pocket, being a detective didn't require much actual detection at all.

THIRTY-SEVEN.

By the time I was a senior, I'd spent hours thinking about Dan Swansea, but I'd never actually spoken to him. In real life, as opposed to my daydreams, Dan was part of the larger, amorphous pack of guys who ignored me. Maybe he'd made meep-meep-meep backing-up noises at me in the hallway. Maybe he'd written Addie Downs stinks on a desk or a wall, but he'd never been mean to my face (or directly behind my back, where I could hear it). He'd existed on a different plane, the one reserved for handsome athletes, or beautiful girls like Valerie, and even though in my head we had lengthy, sparkling conversations that were frequently interrupted by torrid make-out sessions, in real life, I don't think we'd ever even said hi.

One Friday afternoon in October, Val bounced over to our workstation in chemistry cla.s.s. It was a game-day weekend, so she wore her cheerleader uniform: a short, pleated maroon-and-cream skirt, a matching sweater-vest. Her legs were still tan from summer, set off by white socks and white sneakers. "Hey, Addie. Want to hang out tonight?"

I stared at her from my seat, which I'd jammed against the wall, trying to make myself as small as I could be in my leggings and loose knitted vest. I didn't want to say yes too eagerly, and I wondered what had motivated this request. Val and I still sat together at lunch a few days a week-or, rather, I sat next to her silently at the cheerleaders' table while Val chattered and giggled and sipped her Diet c.o.ke. We still waited for our rides together in the morning (I'd take the bus, even though Val insisted that her friends would be happy to drive me), but she had another life by now, one where she stayed out late on the weekends and got dropped off by cars with music blaring and laughter drifting from the windows-I knew this because sometimes I'd watch her from my bedroom. Before I could ask why she wanted to spend her Friday night with me, Valerie leaned close enough that I could smell her shampoo and Certs. "Listen," she whispered. "There's a party at Pete Preston's house tonight. I'm grounded, but I know my mom will let me go over to your house. We'll tell your parents we're going to the movies, and we can both go to the party!"

My heart sank, knowing that I was just a convenience. It sank even farther when I realized that I wouldn't say no, that I'd take whatever I could get of my best friend's time, no matter what the circ.u.mstances.

"We'll have so much fun!" she said, all cheerleader-bouncy.

"Okay," I said as Mr. Newsome slammed the door, set his briefcase on his desk, and bellowed, "Attention!" which was how he typically began cla.s.s. Val zipped back to her desk. I opened up my backpack, sighing. In my darkest moments-usually the ones in the middle of the night, when I'd wake up sick to my stomach and queasy with regret about what I'd eaten-I would think that Val bothered with me only because she liked the idea of herself as a good person. You're so loyal, the cheerleaders would say, and Val would tell them, Well, I've known Addie for a long time. I can't just turn my back on her. Poor thing.

On Friday night, I came home from babysitting to find Val sitting on our front step with a zippered nylon case full of makeup in her lap instead of an Encyclopedia Brown book, and a jelly jar full of vodka tucked into her pocket where her red rubber bouncy ball used to be. I had let her paint my face, let her dress me in black tights and a black, ruffly skirt that fell to the tops of my knees, with a scoop-necked black bodysuit underneath and a denim jacket on top. "You've got the best b.o.o.bs," she'd said, pinning one of her rhinestone pins to the jacket's lapel, and I'd blushed and said, "They're big, anyhow," and Val had said, "Big is good!"

We'd said goodbye to my parents, and I'd followed Val out into the mild, smoky-smelling autumn night and walked with her to Pete Preston's street... but once we were there, I lingered at the curb, my mouth dry, my hands sweating.

"Come on," said Val. She took my arm and tried to pull me across the street, but I was bigger than she was, and I wasn't moving. The Prestons' front door was open, and kids were streaming inside. All of the lights were on, and I could hear a Will Smith rap song blaring through the open windows. Val's eyes were bright as she shook her shoulders to the beat.

"I don't think this is a good idea."

"Of course it's a good idea. We're going to have so much fun!"

I shook my head again. Pete was the football team's captain. His parents had gone to London for the week and decided that Pete was old enough to be left home alone, with the car keys and forty dollars for food and incidentals. Pete, delighted, had invited all of his friends to a party, and now it looked as though more than half the school was there. "I don't know anyone," I said as a pack of girls in lace-up Chuck Taylors and pouffy hair bounded through the front door.

"Yes you do." Val pointed at a group of boys in varsity jackets standing in the front yard, laughing. "See?" I watched as Dan Swansea high-fived one of his teammates and walked through the door. "It'll be fine."

Reluctantly, I let her lead me across the street into Pete Preston's house, into the heat and the noise of the crowded kitchen. A battered metal keg stood on the kitchen table, next to a stack of blue plastic cups. At the counter, four red-faced boys were hooting and laughing as they tried to flip quarters into their cups. Girls stood behind them, chattering and clapping when one of the quarters found its mark. We went upstairs to dump our coats on a bed, then came back to the kitchen, where I edged into a corner.

"Here." Val handed me a cup of beer. She wore a short pink skirt, white tights, and a striped rugby shirt. Her hair was in a French braid. Dainty gold hoops hung from her earlobes. She was so pretty. It gave me a pang that was both pride and regret.

I took a sip and winced. I'd never had beer before, and it was terrible-watery and sour. "Now go say hi to Dan," Val said.

I shook my head. I wasn't going to say hi to anyone. I wasn't going to talk to anyone, I wasn't going to look at anyone, I wasn't going to do anything but stand in a corner, next to a shelf filled with Mrs. Preston's collection of dusty Hummel figurines, and drink my beer and wait. Making the first move was not part of my fantasy. In my dreams. Dan noticed me first. That could still happen. Maybe he'd see me, standing in the corner. Maybe he'd get sick, or get in a fight, and I'd help him. I'd put an ice pack on his nose or something, and he'd look at me with his groggy eyes (groggy was good, I'd determined, dizzy was excellent, and pa.s.sing out, then waking up with his head in my lap would be best of all). He'd look at me, blinking, and slur, You're beautiful.

"I'm okay. You go."

"Fine." She pumped herself another beer and marched away. I put my cup down next to a china shepherdess and shoved my hands in my pockets. Time pa.s.sed. The boys tossing change into their cups got louder. As I watched, one of them pulled one of the girls into his lap. "Ry-an! I swear," she said, before he closed her mouth with a kiss. I picked up my beer and sipped it slowly, just to have something to do with my hands. When it was gone I spent twenty minutes edging my way through the five feet to the keg, and pumped myself a refill. "Ry-an, I swear!" I whispered to myself, and went back to my corner. When my cup was empty, I went looking for Valerie.

She wasn't in the dining room, where more boys sat around the table, playing a drinking game that involved singing in a language that might have been French and moving their cups and bottles back and forth, faster and faster. She wasn't in the TV room, which was thick with loud conversation and with cigarette smoke. n.o.body was in the living room. Pete stood at the door with a hockey stick. "Don't even think about it," he growled as I tried to peek past him, and I murmured, "Sorry," and hurried away before he could ask what fat Addie was doing at his party.

I walked through the laundry room, then the kitchen, then past the powder room, where, from the sounds coming through the door, someone was throwing up. I pulled the biggest book I could find-a collection of Ray Bradbury short stories-off the bookcase in the TV room, went to the screened-in porch that was a twin of the one at my house, and checked the Swatch I'd bought with my babysitting money. It was ten-fifteen. I was giving Valerie until eleven, and then, with or without her, I was going home.

At eleven, I stomped through the house, glaring into each of the rooms. No Val. I went outside, letting the door slam shut behind me, when I heard familiar laughter and saw a flash of blond.

In the backyard, four boys stood in a semicircle around a tree with their hands stuck in their jacket pockets or holding bottles of beer. Valerie was sitting on the ground, her back against the tree trunk, giggling. A cup of beer had spilled next to her, soaking the ground, and there was a lit cigarette burning between her fingers.

I pushed through the boys and looked down at my friend. "Val? What's going on?"

"We're playing spin the bottle," said one of the boys.

"Let her play, too," said Val. There was something funny about her voice. She sounded like a tape being played on a Walkman when the batteries were dying.

One of the boys looked me up and down, then shook his head. "We don't need her."

I swallowed hard. Valerie was trying to push herself upright. Her rugby shirt was rolled up, exposing a crescent of pale belly. Dan Swansea leaned down beside her, and I felt my heart twist. Were they together now? Was he her boyfriend? Val giggled, shaking her head as Dan leaned close, whispering something in her ear. I felt like I was going to throw up. Val knew how I felt about Dan; she was the only one who knew.

As I watched, Val reached down the front of her shirt, pulled her lacy pink bra out from underneath her shirt, and stuffed it in her pocket. "Oops." She giggled, then burped against the back of her hand and tugged the hem of her shirt down.

"Val," I said. "I want to go home."

"I'm having fun," she said. "Aren't you having a good time?"

I looked down at her. She was drunk, I decided. "Actually, no."

"Look, just go inside and wait for me. I'll come get you when we're done."

"Okay." My face was burning, my head echoing with the words We don't need her. Of course they didn't need me. I wasn't what boys wanted. Valerie was.

"Give me twenty minutes!" Val called. I didn't answer. I went upstairs for our coats, then sat on the porch, holding my book tightly, reading the same page over and over until the words quit making sense. It was twenty-seven minutes, according to the glow-in-the-dark hands of my Swatch, before I felt my friend's hand on my shoulder.

"Let's go."

I jumped to my feet and pulled on my coat. As soon as we got out of the house, I was going to ask why she'd even bothered bringing me. I was going to tell her that she'd used me for the very last time. I was... I turned and got my first look at Val by the light of the moon. Half of her hair hung in tendrils around her cheeks. Her eyes were red and puffy, and there were pine needles stuck in her braid. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," she said, her voice cracking. It took her two tries to put her hands in the right sleeves and get her coat zipped. She yanked a knitted hat over her hair. "Let's go."

"Where were you?"

She paused for so long that I'd given up on getting an answer when she said, "In the woods."

We were halfway down the street before I got up the nerve to ask another question. "Did something happen?"

She gave a short laugh, then wiped underneath her nose with the back of her hand. I followed her through the Biancos' backyard and climbed over the low rock wall of the field that ran behind Main Street. We were walking home. "Are you..." I had to proceed carefully or she'd forget who she was really mad at and be mad at me instead. "Are you okay?"

"I told you, I'm fine." She kept her head down and kept walking.

I thought of what else I should ask her, thinking back to health cla.s.s, to the What's Happening to Me? book my mother had bought me. "Did you and Dan..." I swallowed. "Did he use something? A condom or something?"

"I told him no," she said. Her voice was thin and bleak. I looked at my friend and saw that she was crying. "He said not to be a p.r.i.c.k tease. He said I showed him my..." She wiped her eyes, then waved her hand in front of her chest. "We were playing Four Minutes in Heaven. We were just fooling around, and that part was okay, but then he... he..."

I swallowed hard. "Was it your first time?"

Valerie made an unpleasant sound, half snort, half sob. "Are you kidding me? You thought I was a virgin?" She gave the word a nasty, sarcastic spin.

"Guess not," I said softly. She gave another choked sob and wiped her eyes again, and I wondered if it occurred to her that I was a virgin.

I felt the balance shifting, the fulcrum tipping, as if she were the hurt child and I the capable grown-up, the one who would take care of things. "We have to tell someone," I said.

Her head jerked up. "No! No we don't!"

"Yes, we do, Val. He raped you."

She bent her head. "It wasn't like that."

"If you told him no, and he didn't stop? That's exactly what it's like!"

"It wasn't like that," she repeated, her voice a whisper.

"How much beer did you drink?" I asked. "Did you take anything else? Did he give you something?

"I just had beer. Not that much. A few cups. Addie, listen, it's okay. It's fine. What happened... it was no big deal, and if we tell someone, then everyone's going to know."

"But he raped you," I said.

"It was my fault," she said. "I shouldn't have gone with him. I shouldn't have played... Addie, please," she said, and grabbed my hand. "Don't tell anyone. It's okay. It's no big deal. Really."

"He can't just get away with this," I said. At that moment, I could feel the cloak of responsible adulthood falling over my shoulders, making me brave in a way I never had been before. "I'll tell my parents. They'll know what to-"

"Don't say anything. I mean it. Don't." We walked through Mrs. Ba.s.s's backyard, Val half running, me struggling to keep up. When we reached Crescent Drive, Val stood at the base of my driveway, as I walked to the front door, into my warm, lit living room. My mother was out on the porch with her notebook and her tea. My father was in the bas.e.m.e.nt-I could hear the hum of something, a drill or a sander. Jon sat at the kitchen table, working on a puzzle. I waited, breathing in the smells of home, until my mother came into the living room and saw me. "Addie? Are you all right?"

I looked through the window and saw Valerie standing at the base of the driveway.

"Something happened to Valerie," I said. I'm doing this for her, I thought as my mother looked at me, waiting for me to say more. I know better than she does. I know what she needs.

THIRTY-EIGHT.

Valerie and I spent Sat.u.r.day night at the Four Seasons in St. Louis. On Sunday we stayed at the Ritz-Carlton in Atlanta's Buckhead neighborhood. My friend, I discovered, had developed a taste for five-star hotels in the years since I'd known her. "Let me do the talking," she said in Atlanta after we'd handed off the car to the valet guys (they'd had the good manners not to wince at the sight of it) and gone inside. I stood back, awaiting a repeat of the previous night's performance, wondering what the clerk would make of her, with her head swaddled in a fringed scarf, her eyes hidden behind enormous sungla.s.ses, and half a dozen shopping bags from Saks and Neiman Marcus in her hands. Probably he'd think that she was a rich lady who'd had a face-lift, I decided. I probably looked like her nurse.

I caught a word here and there as Val leaned close, her hand on the clerk's forearm: "public figure" and "discretion" and "pay in cash" were a few of them. A moment later, after the exchange of a significant stack of bills, she had the room keys in her hands. "Do you need to be validated?" the clerk called after her, and Val grinned and said, "You could tell me I look pretty."

I rolled my eyes as Val approached. "I got them to give us a room without a credit card. I registered as Betty Rubble," she said, heels clicking over the marble floor.

"Wow," I said. "Nice improvement." In St. Louis she'd been Tinker Bell.

She gave me an indulgent look, carried her bags into the elevator, and hit the b.u.t.ton for the sixth floor. On the way down the hall, she swiped a handful of chocolates and two extra bottles of conditioner from the maid's cart. Once we were inside, she kicked off her shoes, dropped her bags, and flopped down on one of the double beds, closing her eyes and sighing.

We'd driven all the way to St. Louis on Sat.u.r.day and spent the afternoon at a fancy mall with a fancy name: Plaza Frontenac. Val, who'd elected herself custodian of our cash, had purchased "a few necessities," including but not limited to a beaded Tory Burch tunic, a La Perla bra, a pair of two-hundred-dollar jeans, and Chanel eye cream that she swore she couldn't go even a single night without, while I spent thirty dollars on deodorant and dental floss and a pair of nightshirts from the Gap's clearance rack.

We'd gone for dinner at a restaurant in the mall, a big, bustling steak place full of men in suits, with booming voices and, I presumed, expense accounts to cover the forty-dollar hunks of meat. I'd had my usual salad and grilled fish, to make up for the early-morning doughnuts. I hadn't expected much, but the sea ba.s.s was delicious, seared crisp on top and tasting of ginger and lemongra.s.s. Val had ordered a thirty-six-ounce Delmonico, b.l.o.o.d.y rare, with a baked potato and a side of creamed spinach, and then, working steadily with a fork and a heavy German steel knife, proceeded to devour every morsel. I watched in awe and made a mental note to buy Tums as she walked me through her employment history: the small TV station outside of L.A. where she'd worked right out of college as an intern, gofer, girl Friday, and eventually, subst.i.tute weekend anchor; then the mediumsized station in Lexington, Kentucky, where she'd done the weather and, it emerged, her coanchor. She'd made stops in Dallas and Boston before she'd landed back in Chicago.

"How do you eat like this?" I finally asked after she'd pushed her empty plate away and then, unable to decide between the cheesecake and the creme brlee, ordered both.

"Oh, well, normally I don't."

"Normally you don't eat like this?"

"No, normally I don't really eat. At all," she explained. "I have protein shakes, and soup sometimes. Oh, and sushi."

"That's it?"

"Oatmeal." She sighed. "With almond milk and blueberries. And salmon."

"On the oatmeal?"

"No, no, I have that for lunch. There's this service I use that delivers my meals..."

"I didn't hear anything in there that sounds like a meal."

"This is the life I have chosen," she said, and looked up, beaming, as the waiter brought her desserts.

"Yeah, about that," I said. "Weather? I never remember you caring that much."

"News flash," she said, forking cheesecake into her mouth. "n.o.body really cares that much about the weather. It's a means to an end. What I care about is the anchor's job."

I snagged a spoonful of her creme brlee. "You want Austen Severson's job?"

"Old," she said, still eating. "He's old and in my way."

I winced. Austen Severson was a Chicago inst.i.tution, a trim, silver-haired grandfatherly type with twinkly blue eyes and a rea.s.suring manner who'd been reading the news since the 1970s. "Is he going to retire?"

She smiled sweetly, patting her lips with her napkin. "Yes indeed," she said. "He just doesn't know it yet."

Back in the hotel room, I pulled the nightshirts out of the shopping bag, handed one to Valerie, and went to the bathroom to wash my face, brush my teeth, and change. When I came back she was still lying on the bed, barefoot in her new jeans and silk halter top, staring at the ceiling.

"Are you all right?" I ventured. She gave a tiny nod. "Want your eye cream?" She shrugged. "Pillow chocolate?" I threw her one. She batted it away.

"We should get some pot," she said to the ceiling. "Maybe I'll see if one of the valet guys can hook us up."

I sat cross-legged on my bed, sinking into the down-filled duvet. "I think that we should maybe try not to break any more laws."

Valerie ignored me. "Did I ever tell you about my mother's don't-do-drugs speech?"

I shook my head.