Girl by Blake Nelson

Chapter 21

Then I turned seventeen. It was so depressing. I couldn't even look at anyone. At school nobody cared because most of them had already turned. At home my mom made a cake and my dad was acting weird and trying to make eye contact. And all day I kept studying my face in the mirror and wondering if I would have jowls someday like Mrs. Schroeder. And everything old was bugging me like Lizzy Rosen's grandpa who went on these pathetic walks to the corner that took him half the day. That night I took my Coma tape and sat outside on the steps with Brad's Walkman and listened to it all the way through twice. And I knew my parents were wondering what my problem was and then my dad came out and stood over me and asked me what I was doing. I said nothing. He asked me if I was sad about my birthday or if it was something else and I couldn't answer and I couldn't look at him. So he sat down and said it was hard being my age and no matter what happened he still loved me. And mom too. And after a while he gave me a hug but even then he was holding back because I was seventeen and my breasts were touching him.

On Friday Cybil and Rebecca and I went to Monte Carlo. I was trying to be into it but mostly I just sat there in a daze. Then Matthew showed up and he flirted with Rebecca and later they went off somewhere to have sex. And then the next day Rebecca was being so aloof and she wouldn't tell what happened but Cybil told her Matthew had one-night stands all the time and that broke Rebecca down pretty quick. And then later we went to Taco Time for lunch and Jerry Kruger was there and he was throwing ketchup packets at us and we waited for him to stop or go away but he wouldn't and so we finally gave up and left.

After school I saw Richard in Mr. Perry's office. He was send- ing off for stuff from MIT and we talked and then we went for frozen yogurt at Sunset Mall. And Richard was being so nice and cheering me up but then he started saying how bad he wanted to get out of Hillside and away from Portland and go back east and I was like, "What about Cybil? What about Sins of Our Fathers?" And he shrugged and said it was fun and that's all a band was for and it didn't matter anyway because Matthew was taking over and Cybil could stay with him if she wanted to keep going. And I knew that he and Cybil weren't a couple in the traditional sense but the way he was talking made it sound like they weren't together at all. And I wanted to ask him about it but it didn't seem like it was any of my business which was weird because the whole fun of high school is that everything is supposed to be everybody's business.

The next day I had a meeting with Mr. Perry and we talked about where I could go. And poor Mr. Perry, because last year Camden got four people into Stanford and we didn't get any. And they had people that went to Harvard and Yale and we only had one person, Jim Dietz, who went there. So Mr. Perry wanted people to apply "early decision" and he said I should figure out  over the summer which one was my favorite and he suggested Berkeley or Brown or maybe Wellington which was a good small school. And I was relieved because I thought he was going to make me try for Stanford, which everybody said was all computer nerds and law school types

And I had written Todd another letter but I hadn't heard back from him and I went downtown to the library just about every day and I always looked for Carla to see if she had any news. And then one day Matthew came running up to Rebecca and me in the parking lot and he said Color Green was opening for the Astral Planes from England in a club in Seattle and we immediately started plotting ways to go.

And then one day in the cafeteria, Greg and Cybil and me and Matthew were sitting at a table and Jerry Kruger came up to Matthew and started picking a fight. Cybil just got up and walked away. Matthew told Jerry he was going to kick his ass and Jerry said he was going to kick Matthew's ass and Greg started to say something but everyone told him to shut up. And then Cybil came up behind them and she had a folding chair and everyone saw her except Jerry and she lifted the chair up and smashed him right on the head. And then Matthew tackled him and Cybil kicked him and Matthew kept punching him in the face until Mr. Angelo dragged him off. All of them got in trouble and they were going to be suspended but there had just been this big assembly about sexual harassment and everyone said how Jerry harassed Cybil and other girls and she was only defending herself. So Cybil got out of it and only Matthew and Jerry got suspended.

Then in Writing Concepts we practiced writing college essays because all the teachers said how stupid we were and how bad the essays were last year. Mr. Boswell told us to write about a role model so I wrote about Cybil but he didn't mean like that, he meant a real role model, someone like Mrs. Katz. So I wrote about Rita at summer camp and even put in a little about Brad, not the sex but just how their life was up in Harper's Ferry being close to nature and dealing with tourists and all that. But it was boring so I made Rita Hispanic, which might have been true since she had a dark complexion. Then I put in some stuff about how she was from Honduras and her brother was in the army and her family were chicken farmers and had escaped to America blah blah and Mr. Boswell thought it was so brilliant he read it out loud in class and I was so embarrassed I practically crawled under my desk. And after class everyone was laughing and Betsy Warren told me what a great bullshit artist I was. And it was the first time I ever talked to her and she seemed pretty nice but then she asked me if I wanted to buy some LSD and I was like, no thanks!

Meanwhile, we figured out how to see Color Green in Seattle. We told our parents we were going to the University of Washington to visit the campus. We made up some friends of Matthew's that went there and we were set. It was me, Cybil, Rebecca, and Matthew. And Friday after school we went to Matthew's and his mom gave us cookies and we got in his car and got on the freeway and it was so exciting! And Matthew played Color Green tapes and me and Cybil bopped around in the back seat. And after a while we settled down and talked about stuff and Cybil said Richard would probably get into MIT and the way she talked it was like he was already out of the band.

Then Matthew wanted to check out a truck stop so we stopped at one and sat at the counter and had coffee and all the truckers talked to us and asked us if we were flower children because I had my cow dress on and Cybil was wearing her Pax T-shirt with the big peace sign on the front. And the waitress was being mean and filling our cups too full and you could tell she was jealous. And then outside the sun was going down and the sky seemed so big and beautiful and we skipped around the trucks and they were like these huge hissing monsters. Me and Cybil climbed up on one but there was a man sleeping inside and he got all pissed until he saw we were girls and then he was like, "Hey! Come back!"

Back in the car we talked about the new image of Sins of Our Fathers and the new songs and were they switching to a more anger thing instead of peace-and-love type stuff? Cybil just shrugged. She didn't know. But Matthew did and he told us the new philosophy of the band and it sort of bugged me that Cybil was letting him take over. And Rebecca was agreeing with everything Matthew said and being the biggest kiss-ass. And all the time nobody mentioned Todd but I kept thinking about him and what I would say to him and how I'd act like we were just friends which was probably all we would be, if even that.

Seattle was so cool. And we were pissing our pants and looking around at everyone and it was Friday night and there were people with leather pants and skanky heavy-metal girls and about ten million bums. And we were freaking out because Seattle was so much wilder than Portland and would people think we were just a bunch of dumb high school kids? And then we got lost and even Matthew was losing his cool and he finally stopped and asked this couple where the club was but they were tourists from Germany and they didn't know anything. So we drove around and looked for someone to ask but we couldn't find anyone and then we saw the Germans again and we gave them a ride because they were students and they wanted to go too. So we drove around some more and found some yuppies and they gave us directions and we finally found it. We parked but then the Germans had pot and Matthew wanted to smoke some so we had to walk around and find a place and it was totally scary because if we got in trouble our parents would kill us. They found this little park and I kept looking around and the Germans were smoking their pipe and handing it to Matthew and being so casual and saying, "It is good bud, yes?"

So then we went back to the club and got our money ready and got in line and I knew something was wrong. First of all, people were being really pushy and rude and Rebecca had to push this guy and the Germans yelled at him with their accents and that saved us. But then when we got to the front the bouncers were like, "Where do you think you're going?" They said it was over twenty-one only and we were like no way and they said yes way. And people behind us were pushing and calling us jailbait and Cybil stomped on somebody's foot and then the bouncers told us to leave. So we ran back to the car and looked in the news- paper we had and it said all ages and we ran back and tried to show the bouncers but they just pushed us away. And then it was sold out and all these other people were shouting and arguing and we couldn't believe it. We were in shock. And the bouncers told everyone to clear the sidewalk and we walked away and the streets were dark and it was starting to drizzle and all these bums and drug dealers were lurking around and we all turned to Matthew like what should we do but he was totally stoned on pot and he couldn't even remember where the car was.