“You need to get laid,” Brandon Fitzsimmons said from the couch where he was drinking his fourth beer. For a second I remember the first time we did it in my room during winter break of tenth grade. Even now I remember everything cute about him. How he was so cut, clear-skinned, clear-eyed, with that perfect jock attitude that I love. Like he could win the Super Bowl and make out with me for hours in the same day.
“What the hell do you know about getting laid?” some dumb sophomore football player said, walking into the room with no shirt on and fat free Reddi-wip sprayed all over his bare chest in the shape of a penis. I mean he had honest to God squirted on balls and a big dick right there on his chest. (Weight Watchers points for fat free Reddi-wip = 0!)
“Oh my God,” my friend Maggie said, hiding under a throw pillow, but you could tell she was loving it just like everyone at the party.
As for me, I had a couple of beers—enough that I was buzzed but not wasted, having fun but not totally out of control. I wandered from kitchen to living room to backyard deck, talking to people and getting the latest gossip and going to get another beer, etc. At one point I spotted Alice Franklin in the corner with Brandon. She was sitting on his lap and laughing. I mean, honestly. Sitting on his lap? For a split second I remembered the eighth grade dance when Brandon and I had been on again and I’d found out the two of them were fooling around in the coat closet. Tonight she was wearing a tight raspberry T-shirt that made her raspberry lips look brighter and her perfect boobs look bigger. Alice was just as pretty as she had been in eighth grade. Prettier, actually.
I wanted to smack her.
I pushed her and Brandon out of my mind and drank another beer. I followed Maggie out to the porch and took a drag of someone’s cigarette. It was getting late when I decided I should try to keep an eye on what was going on upstairs. It was actually turning into a pretty crowded party even if it wasn’t approaching teen movie party status, and I was freaking out that people would end up having sex in my parents’ bedroom. Before everyone arrived, I’d shut the door and taped a sign on it that said “STAY OUT OR YOU’LL NEVER GET INVITED TO ANOTHER PARTY,” but signs don’t always work with drunk people.
Upstairs was cool and quiet compared to the level of noise downstairs. The floorboards squeaked under the new carpet my parents had put in all the bedrooms at the beginning of the summer. The chemical smell was still hanging in the air. I knocked on my parents’ bedroom door and then slowly opened it. Empty and dark. Their bed was made up nice and neat, and the hall light shone onto my mom’s stack of O magazines sitting carefully on her nightstand.
Then I heard voices coming from my room. I headed down the hall and opened it without knocking this time, and I saw Brandon Fitzsimmons sitting on my bed. Standing next to the bed was Alice Franklin. She had this weird, uncomfortable look on her face.
“Hey, Elaine,” she said with this little gasp, like she was wishing I hadn’t just walked in on her.
Then I noticed Brandon was holding a notebook open on his lap, and he was reading from it with a smirk on his face.
“When I had to start wearing a bra in fifth grade, my mom told me it was a blessing,” he read out loud in a sing-song voice, like he was trying to sound like a girl. “My butt is pretty round, I know, but I think I look good in clothes.” Then he looked up from the book to my face. “Damn, girl, I know that’s true. But you look good without them, too.”
Brandon was reading from my diary—the black-and-white composition book I keep under the mattress. Usually. Only I must have left it out or he found it or something because he was reading from it. Out loud. In front of Alice. In front of me.
My off-again, on-again, off-again guy—the guy I had lost my virginity to—was reading about my fat butt.
Brandon continued, “I’ve gotten naked in front of the mirror and really looked at myself, and I don’t think I look bad that way either.”
Oh my God.
“Give me that!” I screamed, and I reached for it, but Brandon grabbed my wrist and wrestled me to the bed. He was so strong he could hold me down with one hand and still keep the open book in the other.
“I know I have big boobs but so do all the women in our family, including my mom,” he read, his eyebrows popping. “Your mom has big tits? I’ll have to look next time!” He was laughing that big, loud, so-sure-of-himself jock laugh that I normally loved but right then made me sick. He tossed the book aside and pinned me down, his hands on my wrists, his knees pressing up along my outer thighs. I couldn’t move if I tried. I’d done it with him here, on this very bed, and that had been nice. Sweet even. But this Brandon was scary as hell.
“Let me check out your big tits,” he said, gasping for air. “You know I’ve seen ’em before.” He was totally, ridiculously drunk. His face was super red, and little drops of sweat were seeping out around his hairline. And Alice Franklin was just standing there next to us like she’d paid to watch a show or something.
Finally she said, “Brandon, let’s just go.” Her voice sounded really small and embarrassed.
Brandon looked me in the eyes, and for the tiniest, weirdest second they were just … empty. Like there was nothing there. No emotion, no feeling, nothing. And then a second after that it was like he’d decided I’d bored him or something. He pushed off of me and stood up, the bed bouncing under me once or twice, the coils of my mattress squeaking like mice.
“Come on, Elaine,” he said, his trademark cute football player face returning. “You know I love you, sweetheart.”
“Elaine, I’m sorry,” Alice said, and she leaned over and picked up my notebook which Brandon threw on the floor.
“What is this?” I said, taking the notebook and motioning at the two of them with disgust. “Eighth grade part two?” Brandon stumbled out of the room, taking Alice’s hand, and she followed him.
I stayed in my room for what felt like forever, completely and totally too embarrassed to go downstairs. What if Brandon and Alice told everybody what I’d written? I took my diary and jammed it in my closet on the top shelf, hiding it under the box of report cards and school projects my mom had made me keep. I never wanted to see it again.
I kept waiting for someone to come up and find me, but not even any of my best girlfriends did. I must have nodded off or something because suddenly I woke up and looked at the clock: 12:45 a.m. Shit. I said a quick little prayer that the downstairs wasn’t trashed.