Good Girls Part 17

He shakes his head. "Never mind. You're crazy."

He spins around to go back where he came from, the magical land of untouchable boys who flit around on their magical golden wings, wearing their magical kneesocks.

But he changes his mind and turns to me again.

"They all know it was me in the picture. Everyone knows. They knew as soon as they saw it."

"You think that makes a difference?" I say. "Were you dropped on your head as a baby? n.o.body cares whether it was you. n.o.body cares what you did.

Actually, it just makes you more popular ." I zip up my jacket. "It makes me a s.l.u.t."

"Come on," he says. "You're not a s.l.u.t."

"Great," I say, "I'll go home and inform my dad.

He's been a little confused since someone e-mailed him some p.o.r.n starring his only daughter ."

He has the grace to wince at the dad bit, I'll give him 195 that. "I'm sorry," he says. "But I didn't have anything to do with it."

I was tired before, and I'm getting more tired.

"Whatever," I say. "It doesn't matter. Most people have forgotten about it anyway."

"Except you," he says.

Except me, except Ms. G.o.dwin, except everyone. I can't imagine a day I'll ever be free of this stupid picture.

And I've had enough of the whole thing. I don't want to talk about it ever again, especially not with him. I pick up my backpack and swing it up on my shoulder. "I gotta go. I'm sure you've got places to be, games to play, girls to do."

"G.o.d! What is wrong with you? You dumped me, remember?"

I almost drop my backpack. "Dumped you? I didn't dump you."

He doesn't look mad, he looks furious. "Really? What was ' 'Bye, have a nice life' supposed to mean, then?"

"But. . ." I say. I'm totally baffled. I had dumped him, but I didn't know he would see it that way. You had to be going out for someone to dump you. Did he actually think. . . ???

"How could I dump you when we weren't even going out?" I say.

"We were doing something," he mumbles, almost under his breath.

196 I can't believe what I'm hearing; that's exactly what I said to Ash. "What?"

"Forget it," he says. "I'm out of here." He stalks away, his cleats clicking on the tiles.

"Wait," I say, running after him. I grab his arm. "If that's what you thought, that we were . . . doing some- thing, why didn't you say anything? Why were you with all those other girls?" I can't help it, my eyes start to tear up. I can finally understand how Ash has been so p.i.s.sed for so long.

He yanks his arm away from me. "What other girls?"

"All the other girls," I say. "I mean, every party we were at, you made sure you flirted with every stupid girl in the room."

"I'm friends with them."

"Right," I say.

"So I like to talk to people. So I like to talk to girls.

That doesn't mean I did anything with them, at least not after I knew."

"Not after you knew what?"

His breaths come short and hard, and he looks at the row of lockers as he answers. "Not after I knew that you might be into me. The pool party, when you followed me to my car . After that day, I always ended up with you."

He doesn't seem happy about telling me this.

I shake my head. "You never talked to me at school.

You barely even said 'hey' to me in the hallways. It 197 was like I didn't exist."

"I didn't talk to you because you didn't talk to me!

I'd say two words and you looked like you were going to puke. You couldn't sprint away fast enough. And at all those parties, I thought you were avoiding me. I thought you didn't want anything serious. What was I supposed to do, follow you around like that freak Chillman? Is that what you wanted?"

No, I couldn't have been so wrong. It's not possible.

I take a deep breath. "So what about Pam Markovitz?"

"What about her?"

"Why'd you screw her?"

"What?"

"You heard me."

"Now I know you're crazy. I didn't do Pam Markovitz."

"Liar," I say.

"Who told you that? Pam? Who knows how many guys she's-"

"Shut up about Pam," I say. "You don't know her.

And Pam wasn't the one who told me."

"Then who did?"

I don't say anything. I'm not seeing Luke and the empty hallway, I'm seeing Jessica Berger's bas.e.m.e.nt the way it was six months ago, two weeks before Halloween. I'm seeing Ash talking to Nardo, looking like she'd gnaw off her own arm to get away from him.

198 I see Cindy Terlizzi and Joelle and Ray Dale and all the usuals, but I don't see Luke, and I don't see Pam Markovitz. I start to panic. He's talking to her, he's with her, she knows what to do, she's not afraid, she likes it, she's better than me, she's done it lots of times before.

And then I hear Chilly whispering in my ear: Looking for your boyfriend? He's a little busy right now. Guess who he's with? You'll never, ever guess, or maybe you will. Just wait, any minute now, they'll come down together. And then they do. Pam Markovitz first, and Luke right after her. She flips her hair and says some- thing to him and he smiles, his teeth flashing. I see myself putting my drink on the table and walking right out of the house and all the way home.

Luke's dropped his mitt to the floor and he's gripping my shoulders. "Hey," he says, "who told you that I was with Pam? Who?" He shakes me just a little and my shoulders curl in toward my heart.

I look down at the tile, where his cleats have left clots of reddish dirt. "Chilly."

He lets go of me. "Chillman told you."

I nod.

"The guy who took that picture of us and sent it around to every cell phone in the country."

I nod again.

"And you believed him?"

I feel the imprint of his hands on my arms. If I have 199 to nod once more, I think my neck will break.

Luke reaches down, scoops up his glove, slips his left hand inside it. "So you bought what your psycho ex- boyfriend told you without even asking me if it was true." He punches his glove with his fist. "Now who's the one who's been dropped on her head?" He pushes past me and leaves me standing there alone.

200 Sinner, Repent It's one of those fiercely sunny late-April days that make you think it's warmer than it really is. I huddle in the pew in the short-sleeve shirt I thought would be perfect today but totally isn't and watch the light shoot through the stained-gla.s.s windows. Blazing and bright, the church looks like G.o.d herself decided to drop in 201 and decorate the place, like she's letting me know that maybe, just maybe, she might forgive me for being the biggest, most horrible, gullible self-involved moron that ever lived.

I think it's kind of nice that she'd send the sun as a signal, nice that she'd consider forgiving me.

Also handy, because I don't plan on forgiving myself anytime soon.

My mother pats my hand. "We're so proud of you,"

she says. For a minute, I don't know what she's talking about. And then I remember. The acceptance letters. I've gotten two, one from Columbia and one from Cooper Union-my two top choices. Just like that, I know where I'm going to be for the next four years. Studying archi- tecture in New York City. All I have to do is choose one school or the other .

I should be happier .

Pastor Narcolepsy steps up to the pulpit. Something's different about him-he's all spry, even twitchy. At first I think that he's finally discovered the virtues of coffee.

But it turns out that he's been doing some thinking.

About s.e.x. And, for the first time in forever, he's actually awake.

"I was watching a television program the other day, a program interrupted by a commercial for a video. The only point of this video, it seemed, was to show young women exposing themselves at parties and on vacation 202 in exotic places. The girls were all smiling and looked like they were having a wonderful time. And of course, the young men in the video seemed to be having even more fun than the girls were.

"It occurred to me that this is happening all too often in our culture today. Young women seem to subscribe to the 'less is more' theory of fashion, which these videos take to the extreme, and young men seem to be in no hurry to denounce the trend. Not that the latter is sur- prising."

We laugh, not because the joke is so funny but because we're all in shock. Pastor N.? Awake? And talk- ing about topless girls on spring break in Cancun? What the heck is going on? My dad is sitting so still that he could be a cat. My mom sneaks glances at me.

"My point is that young women are being increas- ingly objectified in movies, TV, games, and music videos.

We are so used to seeing these images that I don't think we really register them anymore. But in our culture, women are becoming less than people worthy of respect and more simply objects to be admired, or even used and abused. They are things. And things, as we all know, are disposable. What these girls don't understand, and what young men don't seem to understand, is that this is demeaning to both the user and the used."

Pastor Narcolepsy scans the audience as if he can tell who's been used and who's been doing some using just 203 by looking at us. I feel like he's looking right at me, and I slip down lower in the pew. I'm colder than I was before; the skin on my arms is rough and yellowish, like a plucked chicken's.

"Would it surprise you to hear that human s.e.xuality is a holy thing, a gift given to us by G.o.d? In Genesis, we learn that Adam and Eve came together 'naked and unashamed' because they experienced s.e.x as a spiritual as well as a physical communion. A meeting of soul mates. In contrast to this deeply spiritual and a physical communion, this profoundly joyous experience, s.e.x that is a product of mere l.u.s.t can't even begin to reach the same heights. This is why Jesus condemned it. He thought that l.u.s.t made s.e.x less than it ought to be- sacramental. Holy."

Great, my l.u.s.t has condemned me. My l.u.s.t has made me cheap. Bring me a scarlet letter and I'll wear it on my forehead. "S" for s.l.u.t. "S" for stupid. "S" for sin, for smash, for splinter .

"Why do we often feel so lost and guilty when we've had l.u.s.tful thoughts or had meaningless s.e.xual encoun- ters?" says the pastor .

I don't know, maybe when you a.s.sume someone thought you were just a piece of a.s.s and then you turned around and treated him like one?

"It's because we have desensitized ourselves, we have reduced s.e.x to a cheap hormonal response. We have for- 204 gotten the holiness of this sacred act. s.e.x was not given to us to create intimacy; s.e.x was given to us so that we can express intimacy, the intimacy that already exists with our spouses. It is the ultimate fulfillment of the marriage vow."

Interesting message. Teenagers, s.e.x is AMAZING.

And you can't have any.

Pastor Narcolepsy is on such a roll that he gets chummy with the congregation. "Listen, guys, s.e.x is so important and so vital a gift that it is simply not an act to take cheaply or lightly."

I can feel my dad tense up next to me; I can feel how much he wants to grab me and start screaming, ARE YOU LISTENING TO THIS? ARE YOU HEARING.

THIS? I wonder if he slipped the pastor a request and a few dollars, like you do when you want the DJ to play that special song. I suppose this is a do-as-I-say-and-not- as-I-do situation.

My mom reaches out and pats my leg. Pat, pat, pat.

"P" for pat!

"I work with a youth ministry, and some of the kids I counsel can tell you stories that would make your hair curl! One boy, a thoughtful, delightful teenager , has recently renounced his s.e.xual past and now tries to live life anew. 'Pastor,' he tells me, 'I'm a born-again virgin.'

Of course no one can turn back the clock and regain one's virginity, but one can turn away from one's 205 mistakes and let G.o.d help us forge a new path."

Pastor's got lots more to say about s.e.x and about Jesus and about G.o.d and about those crazy "young peo- ple" who don't understand how they're cheapening themselves and each other . He goes on and on and on. I start to tune out. I get it, I get it-he might as well be cracking me on the head with a frying pan-but I'm all confused anyway. Maybe-because I am the most repul- sive, disgusting, loathsome sinner, one of those crazy, l.u.s.tful young people destined to appear in a "Girls Gone Wild" video-maybe G.o.d will suck back her bright and cheerful spring light and never ever ever forgive me, but all that talk about touching bodies and touching souls makes me think about Luke, about the one and only time we actually did it (the one time we had cheap and mean- ingless physical-and totally unspiritual-intercourse as the result of mere hormonal responses).

But that's the problem-it didn't feel that way. Not cheap. Not meaningless.

Which is probably why the whole thing got me into so much trouble.

206 Love Hammer Early October, late on a Sat.u.r.day night. I got a message.

Instant Message with "salvs42"

Last message received at: 11:32:07 PM salvs42: doin anything tomorrow?

audball13: not much salvs42: having peple over wanna come?

audball13: K what time salvs42: 2 audball13: sounds good 207 I sat at my computer for a long time. Luke had never IM'd me before. I'd never seen his house before. Was it just another party? Did it mean anything? Ash would say no. Ash would say that he was just trying to get some.

Ash was right. And she was wrong, too. Because Luke wasn't the only one.

Sunday, I told my mom I was going to Ash's, Ash that I was going to Joelle's, Joelle that I was studying, and walked the ten blocks to Luke's house. I was the only "people" to show up. Luke and a very small, very excited cotton ball met me at the door. The cotton ball danced all around my shoes, sniffing and yipping as Luke let me inside.