out before the bell rang. I was wearing black pants with suspenders. I was skinny from dieting all summer. I was starving. When I turned around he kept walking, his back to me, his arm out as he slapped hands with Pete Keller. I glanced in my locker mirror. No way. I knew that Charlie and Aurelia Sparks had broken up over the summer, but still. They’d been together since seventh grade.
In geometry the teacher asked us to pick homework partners. He passed me a note that said to pick him because my last name came before his in the alphabet and she was going to call on me first. When she got to me and I said Charlie Porter, the whole class turned around to look at me. Aurelia had a pinched-up expression on her face. She had worn her hair in the same glossy golden ringlet curls since we were little girls. I could feel my face burning. Charlie said, “Okay,” like it was no big deal, like thirty pens weren’t suddenly flying across thirty pieces of loose-leaf paper, penning notes to be distributed via the hallways of Ventura High as soon as nutrition break was under way.
I went up the street to his house after school and banged on the door. He answered it, eating a piece of toast with lots of peanut butter slathered on top. I could hear the TV in the background, the characters from Charles in Charge trapped inside of a rerun. I asked him what the hell was going on and felt my face burning again. He told me to relax about it, then threw his toast over my shoulder and pulled me up against him. We kissed and I could taste peanut butter and the faint sweetness of orange candy rolling around on his tongue. He said I could come in after that and I said I had to go home. I almost fell walking back down the hill. My mother made my favorite dinner that night, chicken and pasta with mushrooms in cream sauce, and I couldn’t even eat it. She laughed and said the first day at school will do that to you. Later that night I wrote Charlie’s name next to First Kiss in my diary.
He held my hand the next day walking into geometry. I thought Aurelia’s eyes were going to pop out of her head. When I had tried out for cheerleading she had been one of the judges. I knew she had voted against me even though I had practiced my routines for weeks and was definitely the best choice. I heard her talking about me in the bathroom after class, as she and Liz Major stood in front of the mirror in their cheerleading get-ups, putting more and more drugstore makeup on and spritzing themselves with Le Jardin. She said, “He’s only into her now because her boobs have gotten so fucking huge.” Liz said, “No kidding. Remember how fucking fat she used to be?”
I knew I wasn’t “fucking fat” anymore. But even when you’re not fucking fat anymore, you sometimes think and act like you still are. You see the same person in the mirror. You’re surprised that the most popular guy in school suddenly likes you. A real dream come true.
“Fuck those stupid bitches,” my best friend Lily Lovejoy told me at lunch. We shared a bag of carrot sticks and a half pint of chocolate milk. “Aurelia’s a piece of trash and Liz is just debris. You know you’re not fat anymore. And you weren’t even fat, you were just a little chubby. There’s a difference. So fuck those cheap whores.”
Lily always had her own way of putting it all into perspective. She taught me a lot about life. She taught me almost everything. This is Lily Lorraine Lovejoy and you goddamn better believe it. Her motto then, her motto now.
“Lily is totally right,” Daisy Kiplinger agreed. My other best friend, she was eating frosted Hostess treats and outfitted in various forms of surfer-girl wear. I knew she was ditching fifth and sixth period to go to the beach even though it was only the second day of school. “I’d like to see that bitch choke on her pom-poms and for Liz to O.D.”
Everyone started saying Charlie and I were “going out.” Everyone acted like I had never been forgotten, like those dumpy in-between years had never happened, like I had been important forever. Now I joined Lily and Daisy talking shit about all the bitches who were always hanging around our boys. I still remembered how our boys had called me names, but now they referred to me as one of their “girls” with pride. I still remembered how the bitches had looked at me in the shower in P.E. as if I was a gruesome creature from a Tobe Hooper movie, but now they couldn’t stop talking about how cute my clothes were and how we should all ditch and go to the Busy Bee Café and how I just had to go to this party and that party. At football games, Aurelia bounced around with the other cheerleaders, her hair bouncing with her, throwing hard looks my way. Everybody said she was jealous because she still liked Charlie. Liz Major came up during a break once and gave me half her Coke and asked if I had any cigarettes. We smoked together up behind the snack bar, her in her cheerleading get-up and me in my Guess jeans and an oversize Stussy sweatshirt that belonged to Charlie. She said now that I was with Charlie, everything was cool. She said now that I was with Charlie, I was cool. I told her that was very gracious of her, but that I had always been cool. I said it was only stupid people like her that had made everybody else think otherwise.
Charlie waited a grand total of six weeks before asking, “Can we do it?” one afternoon when we were in his room fooling around and listening to The Cure. “C’mon, Peaches,” he said. “It’ll be fun.” I thought about it. Lily’s virginity was long gone. I wasn’t sure that Daisy had ever been a virgin.
“I guess,” I told him. “I mean, you love me, right?”
“Yeah. I totally do.”
“Okay, then. We can.”
His naked skin was clammy and his pillowcase smelled like greasy hair. He was insistent and bold and I was surprised when it touched me. I closed my eyes as he dug his chin into my chest, making a bruise. My head kept hitting the Bible that was behind me on the bookcase. The Bible was on top of a book called Naked Lunch. After what felt like an eternity he tensed and collapsed and I felt sticky hot wetness running out of me and down onto the faded Scooby-Doo sheets.
I rode my bike home afterward with “Lovesong” running through my head and an uncomfortable dampness in my underwear. When I went to the bathroom it was all red and brown and weird in there and I didn’t want my mom to see it when she did the laundry. It hurt like fire to pee and I had to squeeze my eyes shut and hold on to the roll of toilet paper as I did it.
My mom gave me a cookie as I got a can of Diet Pepsi from the fridge and told me I was getting too skinny. She said she was making fried chicken for dinner and she wanted me to eat a whole plate. I pictured great big bones of some dead chicken, covered in globs of greasy fried flour and oil, and a mountainous mass of mashed potatoes erupting and overflowing with salty gravy. Suddenly everything sounded horrible.
I asked Charlie to the Sadie Hawkins Dance the next day. He said he was going with Aurelia.
I was so wrapped up in the loss-of-virginity round table that I forgot to call Karen with the message that her lunch appointment had been changed to Thursday. Oops. When she got back from Barney Greengrass she yelled at me to get behind the eight ball and start thinking outside of the box. She said I had to step up to the plate and take ownership.
And I thought I could get by on the ability to multitask with attention to detail in a fast-paced environment.
“You’ll never be promoted if you can’t even remember the smallest details,” she told me with a frown.
I nodded.
“You’ll never convince me that you want a future here if you can’t even keep on top of the things you do now.”
I nodded.
“Now, try to get me the things I asked for by the end of the day, could you?”
I nodded.
“Your first priority is straightening out that catering mess at the Hyatt!” she yelled. “Tell them we are paying bulk for lunch or we’re
