you were so cold a minute ago!” I yelled after her. I groaned and then followed her.
The singer’s eyes locked on hers, and he smiled as he sang the next few lines directly to her. She smiled coyly back, looking from his puppy-dog eyes to his khakis and back again. Good ol’ Brooke. She turned and gave me an excited shrug. She pulled a twenty from her purse and tossed it into his battered guitar case before walking demurely back to me. What I would give to have a twenty-dollar bill I didn’t mind tossing to the wind.
“He’s really hot, isn’t he?”
I looked at him. He was cute. But it was cuter that she thought he was superhot. Something about him wasn’t mainstream attractive.
“Come on, Miss Casanova,” I said, looping my arm through hers. Brooke was, as my dad put it, “boy crazy.”
“Thank you, you’re gorgeous!” he shouted after us—well, after Brooke—as we made our way down the street face-first into a gust of chilly, wintry wind.
“Do you think I was meant to meet him? Like fate and all that?”
“Him? My God, Brooke.” I laughed. “No, no, no. Let’s go get our food.”
“Fine. But he was really cute. And so good!”
“Yes, he was practically Paul McCartney.”
She sighed, her attention and gaze already moving on to another subject. “I want to be twenty-one.” She gestured at the people sitting in a nearby bar. “Look at them all—drinking and hanging out, not a care in the world. No school.”
My ADD best friend. She wanted one thing badly, then wanted another even worse two seconds later.
“Uh-huh. Because as everyone knows, drinking is the universal sign for not having any troubles.”
“Whoa,” she said, halting completely. “Is that...Reed in there?”
We both stepped closer and peered through the window. “God.” I shook my head. “I can’t think of someone to better demonstrate my point.”
James Reed was our local bad boy. There was something about him that made seemingly sane girls lose their minds. He was good-looking and extremely charming when he wanted to be. But he was also an obnoxious and contemptuous, self-obsessed douche bag. Here are the top things said about James Reed:
1. “I thought he really liked me!”
2. “One minute everything was fine, and then I never heard from him again!”
3. “Fuck him! No seriously, fuck Reed.”
4. “What a jerk. I wonder if he likes me.”
Here are the top things said to James Reed:
1. “I hate you, do not ever talk to me again.”
2. “You’re an asshole.”
3. “Fine, one more time, but that’s it.”
It could be argued that I was biased, since I might have been one of those seemingly sane girls that fell for a charming line and a boyish dimple. I’m a smart girl, but I wasn’t smart enough fast enough to escape his grasp unscathed.
“Look at him, leaning on the bar, surrounded by dumb girls,” said Brooke. “Of course he’s doing that. Of course he is.”
She bit her lip, shaking her head but still staring at him.
I sometimes feared that she was one bad choice away from becoming another girl burned by him. I didn’t object on a jealous level, just because I had hooked up with him. Once I was away from him, I never again was able to see why I had been fooled by his whole shtick. I cared because he would burn Brooke, and she would be humiliated. And then I would probably have to kill him.
“How did he even...like, does he have a fake ID or...”
“Probably,” I said. “Whatever, it’s his felony.”
“I bet we could get in. I look like I could be twenty-one, don’t I?” She adjusted her clothes. “We should try.”
“I am in leggings and a sweatshirt, and I’m wearing my glasses. For one thing.”
“Exactly! You’re being...ironic. And you’re wearing thick-rimmed tortoiseshells! You will blend right in with all the hipsters! You’ll snag some guy who would probably be cute if he didn’t have a handlebar mustache, and I’ll kick Reed in the balls for you. It’ll be fun!”
“I’m wearing these so I can see, not so I can look trendy. And no need to kick him in the balls. I’m pretty sure someone else will do that for us tonight. Come on, let’s go order our food.”
She let me lead her away, her focus stuck back on me.
“I think I’ve got something here, though. That’s who you need—a slightly older guy who can understand your love of the Mamas and the Papas and who will watch your Hitchcock movies with you. That—” she pointed back at the hipster bar “—is where those guys are! Them, and a couple of skeezeballs like Reed, who somehow finagled their way in.”
“I don’t need a guy to do those things with!”
She threw her head back and groaned. “Okay, you’re right. You don’t need a guy who can necessarily do that. But you need a boyfriend, Nat. Or a boy toy at least. You are seventeen and hot, and you haven’t done, like, anything.”
“Shh!” I looked around.
“Exactly! It’s embarrassing. You should be embarrassed.”
“I’m not a virgin, Brooke,” I whispered.
“Basically you are. Because it was James ‘the Dickwad’ Reed, and I’m pretty sure anyone who hooks up with him is entitled to be in denial about doing so.”
“Truth. But still. I’m not looking for someone to hook up with. And even if I was, I am not going to meet him at a Bethesda bar. Plus it’s creepy. If a guy is old enough to drink legally and wants to hook up with me, he’s weird already. I’m not into pedophiles.”
“Oh, really, you’re not into—Natalie, come on. This is a three-to four-year difference I’m talking about here!”
“Eh. Still.”
“Look, I know you’re into being all independent and everything, with your reading and listening to records while you knit scarves or whatever you do instead of having a social life—”
“I don’t knit. I just can knit.”
“In an argument where you’re trying to say that you don’t need to be more social, do you really think the sentence ‘I just can knit’ is going to win?”
“I am social! I’m out right now!”
“Nat...you know I don’t count. It was only about a month ago that I invited you to a party
