I threw on some clothes against the cool spring night, locked the door behind me, and dashed out to her. I was so happy to see her that I almost hugged her across the front seat of the car, but I didn’t dare ruin our friendship with a blatant show of my affection. Our bond had started with our mutual respect for each other’s toughness, sense of humor, and utter lack of sentimentality, and that’s how it would stay. I said, “Hey, bitch.”
“My God. You disgust me. You look like you just rolled out of bed, and I swear you’re prettier than me even with all my swagga.” She ran her hand down her side and out, presenting some part of her outfit—the low-cut top, maybe, or the miniskirt, or the platform shoes. She was no prettier and no less pretty than any rich girl at our high school.
I said, “I think it’s my hair.”
“You always think it’s your hair.” She looked over her shoulder to back the car across my yard and didn’t flinch when the bumper hit one of the plastic chairs, tipping it over. She turned forward again and tore out of the trailer park at fifty miles an hour.
“Good concert?” I asked.
“Please. I couldn’t wait to ditch those silly chicks I went with. I’ve been dying to tell you. At breakfast I finally connected with the coolest guy at the café!”
“If he’s so cool, why are you with me instead of him?”
“Smart-ass. I had the concert. You know I never break a commitment. And he’s working early tomorrow.” She stomped the brakes at the entrance to the highway and looked both ways before pulling into traffic, at least. “But tell me what you need to tell me first.”
“No, you go ahead.”
She stomped the accelerator and the car hissed toward town at top speed, which luckily wasn’t very fast or we both would have been dead when she first got her driver’s license. Then she glanced at me. “No, you go ahead. Something big’s happened. You look like you’re about to pass out.”
I told her everything that had happened with Grayson, and with Mark, and with Grayson again, leaving out the Chinese food, because that would sound like begging. Molly wasn’t allowed in the trailer, and she’d never opened the usually empty refrigerator.
She interjected a lot of “Wait a minute. You mean your friend Mr. Hall’s sons? Twins are so sexy!” and “He wants you to do what?” and “That ass!” which referred to both Mark and Grayson. Though I should have been accustomed to it by now, it was pretty strange to hear filthy language coming from her lips. She was naturally sunny and rich and innocent looking—a lot like Alec, actually—and she’d worn very heavy, glittery eye makeup to her concert, which she thought made her look older but actually made her look about twelve, with huge eyes like a cartoon character.
“I know,” I said. “I don’t understand how Grayson did it. I went into our talk thinking of myself as a pilot. Somehow I came out as the airport whore.”
Molly laughed so hard that I thought she would run off the road because I had said “whore.” Molly was easily amused by smut. Therefore, our conversations tended to be very dirty. I liked to hear her laugh.
When her giggles died down, I said, “You know I’m not a whore.” I was double-checking, actually. I had a bad rep around school, but that’s because the new girl at school was an easy target. After three and a half years here, I was still considered the new girl. Molly hadn’t lived here as long, but she’d blended in better. The new girl who lived in a trailer park was a sitting duck.
Molly cut her eyes sideways at me. “I know you’re not a practicing whore. But Mark Simon living with you? Even for just a week? I’m so glad you got rid of him.”
“Me too,” I said.
“Did you end up doing it?”
“No.”
“Gah!” Molly exclaimed. “I’m so relieved. I tried to be glad you were finally going to get some, but Mark Simon is not the crazy I would have picked out for you. Girls were talking about you. I mean, more than usual. That was out there, living with a guy when you’re only eighteen and you haven’t even graduated yet.”
It wasn’t like that, I almost told her. But I’d said this to her all week: It’s not like that. I sounded like my mother trying to explain a few of her military boyfriends to me. Why do you stay with him when he hits you, Mama? You don’t understand. It’s not like that.
“Do you think I gave Mark the wrong idea without meaning to?” I asked. “I never meant that I would do him in exchange for a job. Do you think Grayson is right, that I’ll look at Alec and he’ll fall at my feet?” What I wanted to ask was whether Mr. Hall had befriended me for the wrong reasons, like Grayson had said a year ago in the hangar, which seemed like a lifetime ago now. But I didn’t ask that. I didn’t want to know the answer.
She took a long breath, considering. “I do think you turn on a very sexy act around men when you need something, and you may not realize you’re doing it. Obviously you don’t realize it if you’re asking me about it.”
“Give me an example.”
“Ryan.” Ryan was the boyfriend Molly and I had argued about when we first met.
I hated it when she brought Ryan up. She didn’t know the whole truth about what had happened. The fact that I’d hidden it from her made my stomach twist even now. But my fib had landed me this beautiful friend. I wouldn’t let her go. So I continued with the tough act she loved so much. I said, “Oh, I realized I was seducing Ryan all right.”
She cackled at our oldest joke. “Okay, another example. You’ve gotten in one million fights at school, and you’ve been called to the principal’s office one million times, but you’ve never been suspended.”
“That’s because I don’t start the fights,” I said self-righteously.
“Maybe not,” Molly said, “but that’s not what those other girls and their friends are telling the principal, yet they’re getting suspended and you’re not.”
“So you do think I’m a whore,” I said grimly.
“No. You’re not doing the principal. The rumors about you aren’t true. But they’re not random, either. Think about it. Do you own a T-shirt that doesn’t show your cle**age?”
I put both hands over the deepest part of my V-neck.
“And then there’s Mark living with you,” she said. “You’re not a whore. You’re a chick who hasn’t exactly grown up with every advantage, and you’ve learned to use what you’ve got. You don’t do it on purpose. It’s second nature. You act girly and helpless and make men think you’re harmless.”