Laura Ruby - Good Girls

It takes a while to find a parking spot, because everyone goes to Joelle’s Halloween parties. She’s had them every year since the seventh grade. Only strangers or losers show up without costumes, because they’ll be forced to wear one of Joelle’s tutus from her dancing days. When Ash and I walk in the door, I see only one guy with a tutu, a big fluffy pink one. He looks totally stupid, but that’s the point.

Joelle runs up to us, almost tripping over her long white dress. “Look at you guys!” Joelle shrieks.

“You’re so scary!” Joelle is dressed up as a goddess or whatever, with the gauzy dress and the gold armbands, shimmer powder on her face and these long curls in front of her ears. Ash says that Joelle always wears something that will make her look pretty rather than freaky. Joelle would never dress up as a mummy or a monster, or even a Goth chick. Joelle likes to look like Joelle, only more sparkly.

“So who are you?” Ash says.

“What do you mean, who am I?” Joelle shrieks. She’s a shrieker, especially when there’s a crowd. “I’m that tragic Greek heroine, Antigone!”

“Anti what?” says Ash.

Joelle puts her hands on her hips and stamps her foot. “Antigone!”

“Antifreeze?” says Ash.

“Antacid,” I say. “Ant spray.”

“Get thee to a theatre,” Joelle says. Joelle wants to be an actress. Joelle is an actress. Her mother has already pulled her out of school a bunch of times to do commercials, an off-off-off Broadway play and a spot on Law & Order .

Ash raises eyebrows that we’d darkened with pencil. “You guys spend enough time at the theatre, OK? Besides, you don’t look like a tragic Greek heroine as much as you look like an extra from Lord of the Rings .”

“You suck,” says Joelle, punching her in the arm.

“Who sucks?” Luke says. He walks over to where we’re standing in the hallway. He’s wearing black pants and a black shirt with a white paper collar. I suddenly feel like there’s not enough oxygen to go around.

“What’s up, Father?” I say.

He puts a hand on the top of my head. “My child, you are a sinner.”

Ash snorts. “You should know.”

“Hey,” says Luke. “I’m not a priest, I’m a pastor. Pastors are allowed.”

“Allowed what?” I say. Luke grins and my face goes hot. I’m glad that it’s dark and that I’m wearing the white make-up. But Luke can tell anyway. He grins even wider before he drifts off into the crowd again. My head feels warm where his hand was, like he’s excited my hair follicles. This is how I am around him. My brains dribble right out of my ear and I’m left with nothing but a body I can barely control. I’m actually a little surprised when my legs don’t scuttle after him and fling me at his feet. It’s happened before.

“He’s so cute,” says Joelle. “You guys are still, like, hanging out, right?”

“Depends,” I say. I watch as Luke starts talking to Pam Markovitz, who is dressed up like some kind of junkyard cat, chewed-looking ears and whiskers and everything. Luke reaches out and yanks her bedraggled tail. Again my dumb, brainless body reacts: hands contract to fists, stomach clenches as if around bad chicken.

Joelle sees where I’m looking. “Slut.”

“I heard that Pam gave Jay Epstein head at the movies the other night,” Ash says.

“Really?” I say. “Who said that?”

“Jay Epstein.”

“There’s a reputable source,” I say.

“Still,” says Joelle. “Everyone knows she’s been with, like, the entire planet.”

“What an unpleasant visual,” says Ash. “Gotta love how the leotard rides up her butt.”

“Luke doesn’t seem to mind,” says Joelle. She catches my face. “I mean, he’s really really hot, but it’s a good thing you guys aren’t boyfriend/girlfriend and all that.”

“Oh, please. Who needs a boyfriend?” says Ash. “It’s not like we’re gonna get married anytime soon. Anyway, like Audrey keeps saying, college is right around the corner.”

It’s not supposed to bug me that Luke’s such a player; everything’s supposed to be casual. But in our friends-with-benefits arrangement, it seems like he’s the one who gets all the benefits. “Any other hot guys here?” I ask.

“I hope so,” Ash says. “I haven’t hooked up in weeks.”

Joelle runs off to get us some “soda”, which means that there’s beer that we’ll have to hide from Joelle’s dad, who probably won’t come out of his office over the garage long enough to see anything anyway. Me and Ash follow Joelle into the den. All the usuals are there: tramps, witches, devils, football players dressed like cheerleaders, cheerleaders dressed like football players. “So original,” says Ash. There is a guy wearing a plaid jacket with a fish tank on his head. When we ask, he says, “I’m swimming with the fishies”. Red plastic fish are glued to the walls of the tank. His teeth make a white piano in his blue-painted face.

Almost immediately, Ash starts dragging me over to every reasonably cute guy who doesn’t already know us from school. Joelle runs around taking bad pictures with her digital camera. Luke goes from girl to girl, stealing witch hats and pretending to poke people with a pitchfork he’s stolen from one of the devils. As if it’s my fault that everyone thinks she’s a slut, Pam Markovitz huddles with Cindy Terlizzi on the couch, Cindy shooting dirty looks and Pam smirking at me. I ignore them, talking to this person and that person, trying to relax and have a good time, but I feel like I’m far away and watching everything on a TV screen. Ash is getting sick of me being so gloomy, so she flirts big-time with Fish Tank, looking to hook up. At random intervals, cell phones ring and jingle and sing, and people go all yellular, shouting over the music, “What? WHAT?”

I down the rest of my beer and go over to the cooler for another one. I don’t even like beer.

“Awwww. Why so sad? Where’s Mr Popularity?”

I turn and see Chilly. He’s wearing baggy jeans, high-tops and a T-shirt that says “Insert Lame Costume Here”. Apparently it was good enough for Joelle, because he’s not wearing a tutu.

“Who?” I say.

“You know who,” he says.

“I don’t,” I say. Chilly gives me the creeps. He has eyes like radioactive algae and a wormy mouth. We learned a word for wormy in biology. Anneloid .

“I’m surprised to see you here,” he says. “Don’t you have a few thousand tests to study for? Another foreign language to learn?”

“Croatian,” I say. “But I can do that tomorrow.”

“You are such a good, good girl. Doesn’t it kill you that you aren’t graduating number one?”

As of the end of last year, I was number four in our class and had to work my butt off to get that much. A lot of people think that I’m some kind of genius because I skipped a grade, but I don’t think I’m much smarter than anyone else. I’m just weirder.

“There’s eight months to graduation,” I say. “Anything can happen.”

“Nah,” he says. He takes a sip of his drink, not beer but ginger ale. “You’ll never catch up with Ron. He’s got everyone beat. And Kimberly would rather commit ritual suicide than let anyone take her number two. I forget who’s number three, but whoever it is, you won’t budge them.”

“You sleep through all your classes. What do you care?”

“I don’t care at all. My test scores will get me where I want to go.”

“Oh, I’m sure they will,” I say. I resist the urge to puke on his shoes. I cannot believe that I ever went out with him. I want to jam my finger into my ear and scratch the memory out of my brain.