Laura Ruby - Good Girls

Ash is getting annoyed with all that I don’t know. “Yes, you did. Isn’t that why you were all weirded out with the friends-with-benefits thing? Weren’t you jealous of all those other girls? Didn’t you want to go out with him?” She eats another spoonful of mashed potatoes.

I want to tell her the whole story. I should tell her. She’s my best friend and I need her to understand. But I’m not sure if she will. After Jimmy, I’m not sure if she can. So I agree with her. Yes, I was weirded out. Yes, I was jealous. I don’t know what else I was—insane? obsessed?—but I think if I say “I don’t know” one more time, she’ll kill me.

Luckily, or unluckily, she decides to let me live. Sixth period, and I’ve gotten through most of my classes and even managed to eat two bites of Ash’s potatoes at lunch. Even though I’ve got my eyes pinned to the floor, I see Luke walking down the hallway as I’m trying to get to history. It’s not the blond hair that catches me, it’s the movement—the rolling, easy walk, the walk that says he could run very very fast if there were ever any need to. He’s alone this time, no gaggle of rockheads shoving phones at him. Then he sees me. He never said much more than “hey” to me in public before, but this is a new low. His face stiffens and his eyes narrow, and his lip curls up as if he’s disgusted, as if he can’t even bear to look. He speeds up, passes me and keeps on rolling, like a wave that jumps the beach and takes you out at the knees.

The first time was Ash’s party, a back-to-school barbecue without any of the actual barbecuing. There must have been a shortage of parties that weekend, because the entire senior class showed up to mourn the end of the summer. Ash’s parents had taken her little brother out of town, stupidly trusting Ash not to do anything stupid (like, say, throw a party for the entire senior class). But there we were, in Ash’s house, with everyone packed inside and spilling outside, a blur of shorts and halter tops and precancerous brown skin, all of us hugging our friends and hugging total strangers and loving the world. Even Chilly seemed less Chilly somehow—less obnoxious, less angry—maybe because there were chicks there who’d never met him before and were willing to give him a shot. I remember looking out the open window to the back yard and seeing a girl run by wearing only her underwear, but moving too fast for me to see her face. I could hear her, though. She was giggling like a maniac.

Once in a while, Ash would announce that the drunk and otherwise hammered would have their keys and maybe even their cars confiscated to guard against possible injuries and subsequent lawsuits (her dad is a lawyer), but as these things go, the party was tame. Something was in the air, some late-August-evening magic-fairy nice dust that made us all mostly friendly and sort of giddy and not too destructive. It seemed that we all understood that this was our last summer together, that next year at this time most of us would already be gone—off to start the rest of our lives.

Even I wasn’t exactly me. School hadn’t started yet and I had nothing in particular to hyperventilate over. I’d already taken all my entrance exams, and my college applications weren’t due for months. I felt so strange—untethered from myself, like I was watching myself from a distance. Like I was my own shadow.

It felt kind of good. A relief.

Being me is tiring.

The only problem was the late arrival of Jimmy and his ho girlfriend. I guess he figured that since he and Ash had broken up six months before and there wasn’t another party in the whole town, he could show up and blend in without getting Ash too crazy. Right. Like Jimmy could blend in anywhere with a chick named Cherry , the very same chick that he dumped Ash for. Since they’d broken up, Ash had serious radar for Jimmy. I think she could spot him a mile away. She could sense him. She could smell

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