Good Girls Part 11

But Ash looks ashen. "Before that?" she says.

"Yeah," I say. "I didn't tell you because, well, I don't know why I didn't tell you. I couldn't."

"Why?"

"I just said, I don't know."

"No," Ash says. "Why did you do it?"

131 "What do you mean, why?" I say. "Why does any- one?"

"But you were just hooking up!"

Her dark eyes are blazing and I'm confused. "Isn't that what hooking up is?"

"You idiot," she says. "I knew it. You're totally in love with him, aren't you?"

"No," I say. "I mean, I don't think so. I don't know,"

I shake my head. "I'm not sure."

"So you're not sure if you love him, but you screwed him anyway?" She keeps her voice low, but she may as well be screaming at me. Her face is stiff and furious.

"Hey, Ash, lighten up," Joelle says.

"You were hooking up just as much as I was," I say.

"More."

"I wasn't s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g them all," she says. "What were you thinking?"

"So she got carried away," Joelle says. "Whatever. It happens. Chill out."

I feel tears pressing behind my eyes. I don't under- stand what's going on, why Ash is so mad at me. There's something she's not telling me. "You were with Jimmy,"

I say.

"I loved Jimmy." She spits the word loved. "We were going out for more than a year. It's different."

"Oh," I say. It's all I can say. I look down at the table.

In the surface, someone has carved a heart with an 132 arrow through it, but the initials inside the heart have worn away.

Ash sighs, and her voice loses its awful jagged edges.

"I worry about you. I don't want you to end up like that b.i.t.c.h Cherry. Or like them." She jerks her head at the back table, where Cindy Terlizzi and Pam Markovitz are splitting an enormous plate of cheese fries, dropping the fries into their mouths and licking their fingers.

"It sounds like you think I'm already like them,"

I say.

"No, I don't. But you have to be careful."

"I was trying."

"You need to try harder."

"Thanks for the advice," I say sarcastically. "How do you know what they're like, anyway?"

Ash folds her arms across her chest. "Now what are you talking about?"

"Pam. Cindy. How do we know who they've really been with, who they loved or didn't love? How do you know that Pam Markovitz didn't think she loved Jay Epstein when she gave him head at the movies?"

"That's stretching it," Joelle says.

"Maybe, maybe not." I look at Ash. "You're always saying that we should be like guys, act like guys. Does anyone ask them if they love every person they have s.e.x with? Does anyone even care?"

"Okay," says Joelle. "I think we need to talk about 133 something else now. Like maybe the Hamlet auditions tomorrow."

"Forget it," I say. It's bad enough that the entire school believes I'm some kind of wh.o.r.e, but Ash? Ash?

Who's known me since forever? Who came over after my first kiss with Albert Mendez because it was so dis- gusting and I couldn't stop crying and had convinced myself I must be a lesbian? Who called Chilly's mom and told her that her son was stalking me and that he needed therapy? Ash?

It's too much.

"You guys think I'm such a s.l.u.t, then I guess I should be sitting with the s.l.u.ts, shouldn't I? I wouldn't want you to get a reputation."

I grab my backpack, throw it up on my shoulder, and march over to the corner table. Cindy and Pam gape as I toss my pack to the floor , slip into one of the seats next to them, and pull a gooey fry from the greasy plate.

"Mind if I sit here?" I say to them before popping the fry into my mouth.

Cindy and Pam exchange looks.

"What?" I say.

Holding a pencil like a cigarette between her fingers, Pam considers me.

"What?" I say again.

"What, nothing," Pam says. She flicks her eyes at the plate and shrugs. "Your share's $1.25. Pay up."

134 Duck-Billed Salad Servers Ihave not talked to Ash in four days. Joelle is trying to help, but she's all distracted by the Hamlet auditions and subsequent rehearsals. She shouldn't have worried. She's the only one in the whole school who could handle this backwards, too-cool-for-school girl Hamlet: "To be or not to be-so not the question." A guy named Joe, a 135 tall, sort-of-hot junior we've never met before, is cast as O, the male version of Ophelia. When they have to read together and Joelle shouts "Get thee to a monastery!"

right up in his face, O/Joe looks more than a bit fright- ened, and more than a bit turned on.

Ms. G.o.dwin makes me chief set designer, no shock to me or anyone else. She doesn't want any Venetian ca.n.a.ls or medieval throne rooms, but she does want some sort of elaborate contemporary sets that we'll have to put on dollies. I thought that it might cheer me up, but it doesn't. I don't have any urge to start drawing up plans, and I don't feel like issuing any orders to my crew. All my usual set-design minions-geeky, pimpled boys, usu- ally in the lower grades, who have weird geeky crushes on me (worse now that there's that stupid picture float- ing around)-are disappointed. They want to know why I dyed my hair , they want to know why I don't under- stand that blondes have more fun or are at least more fun to look at, they want to know if I plan on cutting my hair off, and they threaten to quit if I do. Minions don't like change.

I don't like change, either. My dad usually helps me with my drawings, usually takes me to pick up materi- als. I don't even want to ask him. He's so weird around me now, like a feral cat or something, all jumpy and ready to spit. He works even more, if that's possible, and when he's not working at the store, he's working at 136 home, doing paperwork or housework or stupid projects that keep him from having to see me. When I find him building a bookcase in the bas.e.m.e.nt, I offer to tack it for him-that is, dust it with a tack cloth before he applies the finish. Gruffly, he says, "No, no, I'm fine. Don't want you to get all dirty." I've gone from being his hon- orary son-the fill-in for Henry, the real boy that should have lived to stand by his dad's side-to this funky GIRL who does icky GIRL things that men-okay, fathers- can't deal with. And I can't deal with it, either.

"When is Dad going to start treating me like a person again?" I ask my mom on the way to the dreaded gyne- cologist's appointment. I ask because I want to know, and also because I want to distract myself from the Ash disaster and from the stupid appointment. My stomach is hiding in my esophagus, and all of my other organs have switched places. I hate doctors, every kind of doc- tor. I hate their white coats and weird smiles and rubber gloves and sticks and needles and blank faces. I decide that if I ever have to give birth, I'm going to squat in a field like my ancestors did.

"You have to give Dad a little more time, Audrey,"

my mom says. "He wasn't prepared for this."

"He must have a.s.sumed that I would have a boyfriend at some point in my life."

"Yes," says my mom, with a glance at me, "but no one a.s.sumed that you would be photographed in a 137 compromising position with said boyfriend when you were only sixteen years old."

"I'll be seventeen soon."

"And," she continues, "no one a.s.sumed that the compromising photograph would be spread around cell phones and on the Internet." She's breathing sharply through her nose, so I can tell she's annoyed and upset with me for being all ha-ha about it. "At least you can't see your face. It seems like this photograph won't haunt you forever."

"That doesn't seem to make Dad feel any better."

"To tell you the truth, it doesn't make me feel much better , either , and I'm not sure if you should feel better.

What's going on with you today?"

"Nothing," I say. "I just don't want to think about it the rest of my life. I don't think that's such a bad thing."

This is not the way I really feel about it, but I'm trying.

I change the subject. "How's the new book coming?"

"Fine," she says. Another sideways glance. "I've just introduced a new character , a delinquent teenage girl who drives everyone crazy. She chokes on an oatmeal- raisin m.u.f.fin and has to be given the Heimlich."

"Great."

The doctor's office looks like all doctor's offices: that is, it's got the white walls, the bad art, and the People magazines everywhere. I have to spend forever filling out endless medical history forms with questions 138 about whether my great-great-great-great-great-great- grandmother ever had a stroke, or maybe a hangnail.

Finally some nurse comes to get me. After I get weighed and blood-pressured, I have to get naked, put on this little paper cape that ties in the front and a teeny paper blankie over my lap, and sit shivering in a freezing office. Who thinks this stuff up?

There's a knock on the door, and the doctor marches in. He's followed by the nurse who took my blood pres- sure, a grumpy woman who looks like a giant potato with legs.

"h.e.l.lo, Audrey. I'm Dr. Warren," he says. "You already met Nurse Thrane."

"Hi," I say. He shakes my hand and I check him out.

Dark, balding dad type. I decide that this is better than a blond, not-balding hot type, at least when it comes to gynecologists.

He pulls up a black stool and sits. "So it looks like we're going to do a general exam today."

"Great!" I say, weirdly. "I mean, fine."

"Looks like your blood pressure is good. Any trouble with headaches?"

I shrug. "Not really. If I haven't had enough sleep or if I have a cold or whatever , sometimes my head hurts a little."

"Have you ever had a migraine? A severe headache?"

"No. Never ."

139 "Any relatives with migraines?"

"I don't think so."

"Problems with menstrual pain? Cramps? Back - aches?"

"No."

He scribbles something in a file folder .

"Any problems with your b.r.e.a.s.t.s?"

Like what? Having them sneak out at night? "No."

"Are you s.e.xually active, Audrey?"

Sigh. "I was."

He doesn't look up from the chart. "And when was that?"

"About a month ago."

"This is intercourse? About a month ago?"

"Yes," I say.

"Birth control?"

"I . . . he . . . we used a condom."

"Have you ever been pregnant, or are you concerned that you're pregnant now?"

To quote Ash: Jesus! "No," I say.

"When was your last period?"

"Uh . . ." I mentally count the days. "Two weeks ago?"

"And how many s.e.xual partners have you had?"

Oh, thousands. "One."

"Okay." He stands and goes to the sink to wash his hands. While he's lathering up, he says, "I'm going to 140 check your b.r.e.a.s.t.s first." He dries his hands and then slaps them together, rubbing them, I suppose, to warm them up. Then he slips underneath the paper thingy I'm wearing with his scratchy fingers, and presses all around my b.o.o.bs-quite possibly the strangest medical thing that's ever been done to me. The nurse watches, yawning.

"Everything's the way it's supposed to be," he says.