Girl by Blake Nelson

Chapter 5

In  the  cafeteria  on  Monday  Darcy  and  I  argued about sleep. She thought it was bad to get too much because it made you tired and gave you zits. But I said it kept your skin young because it was less time being awake and dealing with stress and getting old. Then Greg walked by and we both looked away super fast and prayed he wouldn't come over. We watched him go past and he didn't have anyone to sit with and you could tell how embarrassed he was. That's how lunch was at Hillside. Totally brutal. Like if you didn't have any friends there was nowhere to hide. Fortunately Scott Haskell and Brian Babbit came over and sat with us. Then Mark Pierce came and Renee Hatfield. Renee sat right across from me which was sort of scary because she was a junior and popular and a total gossip. And Mark was talking about how he almost got in a fight at baseball practice and Renee was scoffing and then Scott grabbed Brian's orange and wouldn't give it back. And Renee was teasing Mark and then Scott tried to make a basket with Brian's orange and accidentally hit a freshman girl in the head. And then Mr. Angelo lifted Scott up by his hair and marched him to the principal's office and as soon as they were gone Mark threw Scott's sandwich at some sophomores but they wouldn't throw anything back and everyone complained how boring the sophomores were this year.

And it was weird because from that day on it was like we were this little clique of Mark, Scott, Brian, Renee, Darcy, and me. It was nice to have someplace definite to go at lunch but it also made you feel stuck. Like you always had to sit with them no matter what. I mean, Cybil and Richard didn't even come to the cafeteria. They'd eat outside or sneak across the street to Taco Time or sometimes they would go on fasts or eat trail mix or weird vegetarian stuff that Richard would bring. And everyone thought I was Mark Pierce's girlfriend now and all the sopho-more and junior boys started looking at me differently, with a new respect. And I suppose I should have felt lucky but mostly I felt restless and like I didn't want to sit in the exact same place every day listening to Mark's jock stories or Renee's gossip or watching Scott blow bubbles in his milk.

I guess I was lonely for Cybil. So one day at lunch I snuck over to Cybil's locker and went to Taco Time with her and Richard. I hadn't hung out with them in weeks and it was awk-ward because Richard was wearing this strange coat, it was like a woman's raincoat and he had on these black leather shoes and Cybil wore her mole hat and they looked totally bizarre. And

they were bizarre. At Taco Time they went through this whole routine of ordering veggie burritos and one of them had to get the value meal and the other had to get a certain size pop so they could get the Scooby Doo glass. It was very complicated and they were obviously deeply entwined in each other's lives but the thing was, they weren't in love. I mean, it didn't seem like they were. They didn't even seem like boyfriend and girlfriend. They were like two crazy people in a park or two eccentric inventors and sometimes even the words they used were like nonsense, like their own special slang and you didn't know what they said but they understood perfectly.

We sat at a booth and Cybil ate her burrito and Richard told me all the news about their band. He asked me if there were any other songs that stuck in my head and which types of songs did I like. I said I was just a boring high school girl and who cared what I thought? But he said that was exactly the point, it was demo-graphics and I was a perfect test market. That sounded insulting but I didn't say anything. Instead I asked Cybil what happened to Todd Sparrow. She said he was in Seattle and Richard said, "Yeah, but he's coming back." So then we talked about Todd Sparrow and his band, Color Green, and how cool they were and how Thriftstore Apocalypse should play a show with them. Richard said there was a whole youth movement coming up and it was like a revolution and all the old hate bands were fading off the scene. Punk was over. Bands like Pax and Color Green and even Thriftstore Apocalypse were taking over. Then Cybil said she wanted to change their name and Richard said, "We already discussed it." But Cybil said she thought Thriftstore Apocalypse was dumb and Richard said, "But people are starting to know it." And Cybil said, "So what, it's still stupid." And then she sipped her Coke and Richard talked to me and Cybil just stared out the window at the cars going by.

After fifth period I ran to Darcy's locker. I told her that Todd Sparrow's band was called Color Green and Thriftstore Apocalypse was going to play with them and there was a youth revolution and all the new bands were taking over and wasn't it exciting? Darcy didn't think so. She wanted to know where I was at lunch. I said I went to Taco Time with Cybil and Richard. She said Mark was making jokes about me. I said, "What kind of jokes?" She said, "Jokes about how you're a virgin." But then she said that Renee actually started it and she was making fun of Mark and it wasn't really Mark's fault. I told Darcy that I hated Renee and her stupid gossip and I didn't care about Mark or Renee or any of them. And Darcy was being so mean and just putting her books in her locker and not answering me. Then I said, "If you have sex with Scott Haskell you will always regret it because he'll just use you and he'll tell everyone." And then I walked away and I was shaking because in the last forty minutes I had realized that Cybil and Richard were too weird to be my friends and Darcy was too fake to be my friend and Mark was too much of a jerk and suddenly I was standing dangerously close to the edge of the cliff of not having any friends.

But when I saw Mark Pierce after school I did not worry about not having friends. I stomped past him and he just stood there scratching his head. And when I got home I went straight to my room and put in a punk tape Cybil gave me and turned it up full blast. Richard was right, there was a new generation and I wasn't going to let some dumb Hillside people like Mark Pierce or Renee Hatfield or even Darcy hold me down with their stupid games. And I put on my thriftstore dress but when I tried to zip it up the zipper got stuck and it ripped. And I tried to pin it but it still didn't fit right and anyway I looked all wrong with my boring hair and no makeup. So I went into my mom's room and put on some lip-stick and then I looked even stupider and I pushed my hair up under a baseball cap and that looked worse. But all the time I kept watching the mirror because I was seeing something I hadn't seen before. I hadn't really grown in the last year but something was different about my body. Like I was more coordinated or more graceful or maybe less graceful. It was hard to describe and it was bugging me and I pulled off the baseball cap and shook out my hair and then I saw what it was, I was getting sexy.

At school the next day Darcy came straight to my locker and apologized. She said that her loyalty was with me because she knew that Renee was always going to put us down but that Mark really did like me and she really liked Scott Haskell and couldn't I just stay with Mark for a little while longer? "How long?" I said, "Long enough for you to have sex with Scott?" And she said no and that I shouldn't talk like that and didn't I know that Cindy and Dave had sex every day after school? Or that Terri Ferguson had sex with a boy from Central Catholic? And then she said it was almost summer and we were almost juniors and if you liked a boy you were crazy not to at least try it, and as long as you used a condom and everything, why not? I could think of some reasons why not but I didn't say them. And I couldn't believe Cindy and Dave did it because Cindy was so ugly in junior high and people used to wonder if she'd ever get a boyfriend and now, not only did she have one, she was having sex with him. Darcy said they went to Cindy's every day after school and did it on her brother's waterbed and Dave told all his friends and Cindy bragged at lunch and showed her diaphragm and we both said how disgusting diaphragms were and how you had to be fitted.