Indecent Page 4

  I imagined us sitting together in the waiting room, perhaps for hours. I was already feeling regretful about offering my friendship—what else might I thoughtlessly promise him in that time? “I need to get back to campus,” I said. “I’m sorry.” Clarence looked as though he might cry. The EMT called me a cab. As I rode back to Vandenberg, I wondered how it was that, being around a bunch of high school boys, I felt younger than ever.

  * * *

  Chapin spent most of her nights out. I’d never joined her—of course, I’d never been asked to—but I desperately wanted to know where she went. Sometimes she brought guys back; I would hear her headboard beat steadily again the wall, her breathless screeching—“Oh, god! Oh, Christ!” When I’d pass by her open bedroom door the next day, she’d smile blithely from her bed, where she’d be reading a magazine or watching TV on her laptop. “Hello, Imogene,” she’d sigh, not caring, and perhaps not even wondering, if I had heard her the night before.

  On one of these nights, the Sunday after the Clarence Howell fiasco, I felt a pang in my stomach, a punch to the gut, which I recognized as agonizing loneliness. All that first week, ReeAnn, Babs, and the Woods twins tried to include me: “Imogene, I baked some brownies, do you want one?” “Hey, Imogene, we’re doing facemasks and having a movie marathon tonight, you in?” It wasn’t that I didn’t want to join; it was that, from the very beginning—even though they were strangers to one another as much as I was to them—I felt left out. It was as though a secret meeting had taken place without me, one during which the other girls had compared interests and traded stories and created inside jokes, all the things that happen naturally over time but seem to happen without my notice in the course of a week. Even on the third night—when we skipped the dining hall and made pasta together and Meggy took one of the almost-cooked strands of linguine and dangled it between her legs and the other girls laughed like it was the funniest thing they’d ever seen—even then I didn’t belong. Of course, it was impossible to say whether the pasta bit was a previously established joke, or if I just didn’t find it funny like they did.

  I wasn’t comfortable, like they were, hanging out in the living room braless under a T-shirt and scrubbed free of makeup. It didn’t matter that they were all doing it—that the Woods twins had perpetually hard nipples under their sheer tank tops and that Babs would even wear her retainer to watch TV at night. I wasn’t ready to expose my spotted face and pointy breasts to them—to anyone—and knew that to join them at night still made up and fully dressed would only invite more scrutiny.

  With Chapin they had never bothered; girls like Chapin didn’t need an invitation and wouldn’t join in even if she had one.

  Downstairs, ReeAnn and Babs and the Woods twins were watching that show they liked, the one about the mismatched couples and the puppies.

  “Oh my god, did you see that?” I heard ReeAnn shriek. “The dog just peed everywhere!”

  I tried to open a book and distract myself—Old School by Tobias Wolff, one of my favorites. “You felt a depth of ease in certain boys,” I read, “their innate, affable assurance that they would not have to struggle for a place in the world; that is already reserved for them.” The pang grew worse, radiating down my legs and shooting out through my fingertips until I felt I would burst out of my skin.

  The door opened and closed downstairs. A voice greeted the others—a male voice. It was Raj. I heard the clink of a bottle on a table, a cheer from the girls. A cabinet creaked open in the kitchen and glasses were passed around—wine glasses, I could tell. “Let’s play a game!” one of the Woods yelped. (I couldn’t yet tell their voices apart.)

  “Where’s Imogene?” Raj asked. He knew better than to inquire about Chapin’s whereabouts.

  Babs gave a response I couldn’t hear. I opened up my bedroom door. Perhaps it was the novelty of Raj being around—he rarely hung out at the Hovel—or the lure of intoxication to placate the anxiety I felt in these sorts of situations, but I found myself creeping down the steps and suddenly standing before the others in the kitchen.

  “Imogene!” ReeAnn cried, as though I were back from the dead. I was relieved to see that she wasn’t yet in her pajamas. She retrieved an extra glass for me, and I joined them at the table. The others smiled at me, and the smooth dry smell of Merlot wafted to my nostrils. “Did you know that ‘Merlot’ translates to ‘young blackbird’ in French?” Raj volunteered as he handed me my full glass, and I thought, maybe I was wrong. Maybe I did belong here.

  Raj pulled out a deck of cards and said we would play a game he invented called “Give a Question, Take a Question.” If the player selected a black card, he or she would pose a question to the group. If the player selected a red card, anyone in the group could ask that player a question—“The dirtier the better,” said Raj. The girls giggled, and I considered Raj, trying to decide if he was cute. The idea of him having sexual experience made him unexpectedly alluring.

  Twenty minutes and nine rounds later, we were all on our second glass of wine except for Babs, who drank water (“I don’t drink,” she announced piously; none of us were surprised). We’d learned that ReeAnn once gave a hand job in the back row of a movie theater, that Babs kissed two girls one summer at Bible camp (“But I’m not gay!”), and that the craziest place Raj had ever had sex was in a Starbucks bathroom. My head felt light and fizzy, a balloon barely tethered by its string. Though I’d drunk in college, I’d never been able to hold my liquor; after a strong drink or two I often found myself smiling for no reason and paying compliments to strangers, one time even dancing with my eyes closed in the corner of the party with my cup held triumphantly above my head, entranced by the music.

  Sometimes it scared me how much I enjoyed drinking, how much I enjoyed feeling more myself and less myself at once. Sometimes, when I started drinking, I feared I’d never want to stop.

  I looked around the table at my fellow apprentices and felt sure, in that moment, that I loved them all. Several times Raj turned and smiled right at me, and I smiled back. He was cute, I decided. I wondered what the girl he’d had sex with at Starbucks looked like.

  Maggie Woods selected a black card and smiled devilishly. “Have you ever had anal sex and, if not, would you?” she asked the group.

  Babs squealed in disgust. ReeAnn shrugged and said, “I haven’t, but I’d be open to it.” Meggy Woods said, “One time, but he promised it was an accident.” By the time Raj said, “I don’t know, are we talking about me giving or receiving here?,” my teeth chattered I was laughing so hard. Why had I never realized how funny they all were?

  “What about you, Imogene?” Maggie asked, and everyone turned towards me. I hesitated. “I haven’t,” I said finally, “but if the guy really wanted to, I’d probably let him.”

  I’d meant to make them laugh, but no one did. Maggie refilled her glass and nudged me. “Your turn, Imogene.”

  I picked the card on top of the deck, hoping it was a black card so I could ask something funny and redeem myself from whatever I had said before that was wrong. It was red.

  “Ooh, Imogene!” everyone howled. I knew I wasn’t the only one who was drunk.

  “I have a question for you,” Raj said. The sureness of his voice made us turn to him in curiosity. “Have you ever hooked up with a guy of color?”

  My face felt hot. The others eyed me expectantly. I felt certain this time that there was only one way to answer this question.

  “Yes, in high school. I dated a guy named Jared Hoffman who was black. He’s at Johns Hopkins for med school now.” I brought my glass to my lips to keep from grinning. My pulse raced. I was never a good liar.

  Raj’s foot grazed against mine under the table. It was bare, I could tell, but I didn’t feel disgust; I felt a bit giddy.

  Raj picked a card. “Red again,” he said, slapping the card upright on the table.

  If I had been someone else, or perhaps if I had drunk a few more glasses of wine, I could have asked what I wanted to: “Would you e
ver hook up with me?” And maybe he would smile, and take my hand, and the girls would clap and howl like a TV audience as Raj and I made our way upstairs to my bedroom, where we would lie down in my bed and he’d slip his tongue between my lips and his hand between my legs—

  “Do you think you and your girlfriend are going to get married?” Babs asked this.

  Raj shrugged. “Honestly, I think I just might be with the girl I’m going to spend the rest of my life with.”

  The girls sighed happily, and I clutched the edge of the table. The room was spinning. He had a girlfriend. A girlfriend he was probably going to marry.

  “You okay, Imogene?” ReeAnn asked.

  I realized then that I was standing. “Yeah. I just realized—um, I need to call my mom, I think.”

  Everyone stared at me. I wondered if I was wrong, and no one else was drunk, because it seemed to me that I was the only one who didn’t know what was going on.

  “Okay,” she said, with the wariness you use when you’re humoring someone who’s drunker than you.

  I grabbed my coat off the hook, opened the back door, and tumbled into the night.

  * * *

  I thought about walking around Silver Lake. It felt cinematic, romantic even—a girl walking along the edge of the water on a warm September night, hair blowing, hands in her jacket pockets, head turned to the sky above. I imagined the boys high up in dorm rooms looking out their windows into the night and seeing me, wondering, Who’s that? Where is she going?

  But the lake was two and a half miles around, and I was tired and, though considerably sobered up now that I was walking, still a little drunk. In the distance, I heard the uninhibited laughter of boys who had never known failure and probably never would. I followed it. Between Slone House, a third-years’ dorm, and Perkins Hall for fourth years, a rope was strung a foot above the ground between two trees. Around it stood three boys, their shirts untucked and sleeves rolled up and impish grins on their faces.

  “Dude, try it again,” said one, a gruff redhead with thick forearms that bulged through his shirtsleeves.

  The boy beside him—super thin and Asian—snorted. “Pussy’s going to blow it.”

  “Prepare to be amazed, gentlemen.”

  I couldn’t see the source of the last voice, but it was clear and light, the voice of someone delivering a speech. I crouched in the shadow of Perkins and peeked around the corner.

  He was neither tall nor short, with skinny limbs and a messy mop of inky black hair, trimmed enough to be within Vandenberg regulations, but long enough to demonstrate that he kept it so reluctantly. His face was coated in a thick layer of stubble, and he had unbuttoned the first few buttons on his shirt, revealing a shock of wiry black hair on his chest. As his friends and I looked on, he stepped up onto the rope, using the tree trunk for support. Then, ever so carefully, he released the tree, spread his slender arms, and began to make his way to the other side.

  He bit his lip, eyes glued to his feet. His friends watched in reverent silence. He wobbled once, and I gasped aloud, but he regained his balance and continued on. Once he got close, he reached his arms in front of him for the opposite tree, a wobbly child reaching for his mother. Once his hands touched the tree, he wrapped one arm around it and pumped his other fist in the air. “Fuck yeah!” He pointed at the Asian guy. “In your face, Park!”

  His friends applauded. I released my breath.

  “Well done, dickhole.” Park reached into his pocket and pulled out a beer—my heart seized at the sight of it, the alarm in my head blaring: Alcohol! In the hands of minors!—which he tossed to his friend. The friend caught it in one hand and lifted the pull-tab with a hiss. After a long chug, the leader belched a response:

  “FuckyouguysIrock.”

  It was gross, but unapologetic in its grossness; the noisy release of gas—rude or embarrassing or immature in any other circumstance—was made cool, funny, because it came from him. I liked watching him, I realized; there was something about the way he held himself and the way the other boys regarded him that made me unable to look away. It was clear he was the chosen one, the leader, the one who made the rules. The one who got the girls and charmed the teachers and would never be wanting for friends. To me, there was nothing quite as attractive as being able to trick other people into believing you were.

  “Shit, dude, it’s late.” The redhead held up his watch. “We still need to study for trig.”

  “Alright, Skeat. Don’t get your thong in a bunch.” The leader brought his beer to his lips, downed the rest in two chugs, and tossed the empty can into the bushes. “Let’s go.”

  After the three of them disappeared through the back door of Perkins, I snuck out from behind the dorm and went around scooping up the empty cans. I felt somehow that I would get in trouble if I didn’t, that this was my responsibility.

  “Need help?”

  I jumped. It was Raj, approaching from the direction of the Hovel.

  “What are you doing here?”

  He gestured to the building. “I live here.”

  “Right.” I deposited the cans into the trash barrel beside Perkins. I scrambled to think of a reasonable excuse for why I was there, but he didn’t seem to need one.

  “Tonight was fun.”

  “Yeah, it was a lot of fun. Thanks for coming over.”

  “I’m just glad you joined us.” He looked up at the sky. “A lot less stars out here than at home,” he said, speaking more to the sky than to me. “It’s due to light pollution, you know. It’s a direct cause of wasting our light sources.”

  “There are a lot of stars in India?”

  He looked at me, confused. “No. Indiana.”

  “Oh.”

  He opened the front door, stuck half his body inside. My head was still a bit foggy, and I thought for a moment that he might be inviting me to his room.

  “My grandparents are from Pakistan,” he said.

  “Oh,” I said again.

  “Goodnight, Imogene.” He gave me a sad sort of smile and closed the door behind him.

  * * *

  By the time I returned to the Hovel, everyone was in bed. Our dirty glasses sat in the sink, and I washed them each by hand and put them away as a sort of apology, though for what I wasn’t exactly sure. Upstairs, Chapin’s door was ajar, her bed empty. I felt the sense of missing out on something better, and I realized then why I never wanted to hang out with the other girls: Chapin had rejected them, so I was, too. I couldn’t decide if I would rather be lumped with them in Chapin’s mind—one of the boring girls, the plain girls—or considered separate, yet still alone.

  In my room, I opened my laptop and I looked up Raj’s profile page. We weren’t friends on the site yet, but it felt awkward to send a friend request now—the window of opportunity for sending one had already closed. His girlfriend was lanky and freckle-faced, with dirty blonde hair and a small gap between her front teeth. Besides the gap in her teeth, and the few inches of height she appeared to have on Raj judging from his photos, she actually looked a bit like me. But I’m prettier, I thought, startling myself; I’d always considered myself cute enough, but unexceptional. Never pretty. It must have been the wine.

  After perusing his profile a bit more, I looked up the Vandenberg School roster. The roster was divided by dormitory, and I clicked on the link for Perkins Hall. I found Maxwell Park first. The accompanying photo showed him smirking at the camera, looking as though he knew something dirty about the photographer’s wife. Samuel Keating I spotted next, his red hair combed back in neat grooves and his mouth set in a small O-shape, the look of being caught off guard. With little to go off of, the leader was the hardest to find, but once I spotted his photo I couldn’t believe I had missed it before. He was unmistakable. His suit jacket was wrinkled, his face scruffy, and he was laughing, his mouth wide open and eyes nearly closed. Adam Kipling, the text beneath the photo read.

  I thought of the rope, still suspended between the two trees. If they had lef
t it hanging there, it meant that they planned to return.

  THREE

  Soon after the beginning of my boarding school obsession and a week before my fourteenth birthday, I heard the rumor about Stephanie and the blowjob. I had only the vaguest idea of what a blowjob was; I pictured a girl inflating a guy’s penis with her mouth and then, like the balloon man who sometimes came to my youth group meetings at the rec center when I was a kid, bending and twisting it into all sorts of shapes—a dog! A snake! A flower! What I did know was that, according to Jaylen, Stephanie had given one to Jason Stern’s older brother Keith in her basement the weekend before.

  Jaylen and Stephanie had been my best friends since third grade. When I got my period at the mall and the sanitary napkin dispenser in the restroom was out of order, Jaylen and Stephanie sat outside the bathroom stall to help me guide in my first tampon. When Stephanie’s hamster died, Jaylen decorated a tiny wooden box from the craft store for Chip’s coffin, and I played my recorder for Chip’s backyard funeral (a slow, sad rendition of Hot Cross Buns, the only song I could play). At almost fourteen, I hadn’t even yet kissed a boy (I’d lied when I told my friends I kissed Bobby McCoy in the teachers’ lounge), and now Stephanie supposedly had done stuff, things I couldn’t even describe or imagine or understand, with someone three years older.

  “Is it true?” I asked her after school one day. I remember crying. Stephanie thought I was jealous. I didn’t have the words to explain what I really felt: a profound sense of betrayal.

  She was getting books out of her locker, and she turned to look at me. “Is what true?” She’d recently started wearing eyeliner; it looked like thick black rings around her eyes.

  The TV shows I’d watched growing up made me believe that best friends were bound by unspoken understanding, a telekinetic power mysterious to outsiders. “You know.”

  Stephanie stared at me blankly. My therapist would later suggest that TV had made my expectations unrealistic, but then, and even after, I would believe that my friendships had failed to live up to my expectations.