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“You said you didn’t love me,” Char said quietly, looking at his computer screen, not me.
“When?”
“Last week. When Pippa asked you. You said no. You almost laughed, and you said no.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. And then I said, “No—I’m not sorry. You don’t love me either. You never said you did. You never once called me, or hung out with me in daylight. How could you love me? Do you?”
My body tensed. Part of me hoped that he might say yes. That he would say, “Yes, I love you, and that’s why I’m breaking up with you—because it kills me that you don’t feel the same.”
Because that would be it, then. The ultimate proof that I was lovable.
But what Char actually said was, “That’s not the point.”
“How the hell is it not the point?” I was almost screaming by now.
“You don’t need me,” Char said. “That is the point.”
He put his headphones back on.
When do you want me to take over? I wrote on a Post-it and stuck it to his computer screen.
The corner of Char’s mouth twitched, and he pulled my note off his monitor. “Don’t worry about it,” he said, crumpling the paper in his fist. “You have a full night of DJing ahead of you next Friday. You deserve to take tonight off.”
It took me a minute more of standing there before I realized that I’d been dismissed. Before I realized that a relationship can end just like that.
Dazed, I left the booth and walked outside. I would have kept walking, too, I would have walked forever, except that Vicky, Harry, and Mel were standing right there.
“Hi, Elise!” Harry said. “Look, I’m here!” He went on to explain, “My parents are on a business trip, so Vicky’s quote-unquote ‘in charge.’”
I pasted a smile on my face and joined their circle. I don’t know why I bothered to act like everything was okay. Start is small, and news travels fast. Soon enough they were all going to find out that Char had dumped me. But I wanted, for as long as I could, to pretend like he hadn’t. I wanted not to be there when they heard the news and said, Well, of course he did. Boyfriends are for pretty girls, normal girls, girls who know what they’re doing. Everybody knows that.
nobody likes me, and i deserve it.
Shut up, Elise.
“The Beatles,” Vicky was saying to Mel.
“All quit,” Mel replied.
“Not John,” Vicky countered.
“Right, because he was murdered before he had the chance.”
“George never quit either,” Vicky said.
“And then he died from lung cancer,” Mel said.
“But when he was, like, sixty. I’ll quit before I’m sixty.”
“Sixty comes sooner than you think, honey,” Mel countered.
“We’re taking a poll,” Harry explained to me, “on whether or not Vicky should quit smoking. So far it’s two for quitting, one against. You want to even out the score?”
“No,” I said.
“Oh, come on,” Vicky whined. “This isn’t a majority-rule situation. It’s my body.”
Mel cleared his throat. “Well, maybe—”
“Hey,” I interrupted. “Were you guys popular in high school?”
They all stopped talking and stared at me.
“You know,” I said. “Friends. Did you have them? If so, how many?”
“Well, now,” Mel rubbed his bald head. “You’re asking me to remember back pretty far.”
“Oh my God, Mel,” Vicky said. “You are, like, one-eighth as old as you pretend to be.”
Mel scowled at her. Then he said to me, “Honey, I was a gay black teenager in Arkansas. How popular do you think I was?”
I tried to picture a younger Mel getting bullied by his own versions of Chuck Boening and Jordan DiCecca. But it didn’t work. If they had tried to steal his iPod, he would have stood up to them. He was Mel. Standing up to people was his job.
“I’m definitely very popular among the Dungeons & Dragons players at my school,” confided Harry. “Also, I rule at Settlers of Catan, and that has won me a devoted fan base of at least two or three classmates. Oh, and I shred on the drums. The girls go wild for that.”
“You can’t shred on drums, dipshit,” Vicky told him. “Only guitarists shred.”
Harry winked at me, then screwed up his face and mimed a very intense drum set. He stopped after a few seconds, when he noticed that I still wasn’t smiling.
“I don’t believe that anyone who is a legitimately interesting person can be popular as a teenager,” Mel went on. “Or ever, maybe. Popularity rewards the uninteresting.”
“I take offense,” Vicky cried, throwing her cigarette butt to the ground. “I am at least a somewhat interesting person, and I was popular in high school.”
Mel and I both gaped at her. I felt betrayed. “You were?” Mel asked.
“You don’t have to sound so shocked about it.” Vicky shook out her thick, wavy hair.
Mel said, “I just can’t picture you as a blond cheerleading girlfriend of the class president, that’s all.”
Vicky snorted. “Exactly how many teen movies have you watched? You know that’s a huge stereotype, right?”
Mel shrugged. “I’m a John Hughes fan.”
“Well, I was never blond, but I was a cheerleader sophomore year, and I never dated the class president, but I did once make out with the quarterback at a party.”
“And the wide receiver,” Harry added.
“And him,” Vicky conceded.
“And the tight end,” said Harry.
“I did not.”
Harry nodded at me and mouthed, She did.
“Anyway,” Vicky said, “I was popular. Well, for the first half of high school. I was a very popular fifteen-year-old.”
“Then what happened?” I asked.
“Well…” Vicky’s eyebrows knit together. “Don’t laugh or anything, but I used to be ski
She paused, her face red.
“Why would we laugh at that?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Vicky said. “Like, maybe you’d think it’s ridiculous that someone like me could have ever possibly been ski
“You’re not fat now,” I said.
“I’m fat enough,” Vicky said. “But when I started high school, I was ski
“At the end of tenth grade, my parents made me start seeing a therapist, and she literally changed my life. After a few months of therapy, I stopped making myself throw up so often, and then I did it less and less, until I never did it at all. So naturally I gained weight. There were actual calories in my body for the first time since I was twelve. And so my friends, who were, by the way, huge bitches, just ditched me.”
“That’s crazy.” I tried to imagine, as I looked at Vicky, not wanting to be friends with her. I couldn’t do it.
“That’s actually why I started smoking,” Vicky said. “Because it’s supposed to be an appetite suppressant. As you can see, it doesn’t work as well as all that.” She lit another cigarette and arched her eyebrows at Mel, as if daring him to tell her not to. He didn’t say a word.
“To be fair to my high school friends,” Vicky went on, “it wasn’t just that I didn’t look like I used to. It was like this spell had been broken, and all sorts of things that used to seem important to me now just seemed stupid. So I quit cheerleading. And student council. My so-called friends could not figure out what was going on.”
Vicky giggled and added, “My parents weren’t that thrilled either. Their plan had been for me to give up vomiting, not for me to give up everything. They even fired my therapist, as if it was all her fault that I had decided that I wanted to be myself.”
“And it meant that I never got a therapist either,” Harry added. He sighed. “Yet more proof that Vicky is their favorite. So unfair.”
“But then,” Vicky said, “I made friends with these other kids at my school—you know, the ‘uncool’ ones. And one of them turned out to be really into music. She and I started writing songs together. Eventually we formed my first-ever band. She played guitar, I played keyboards and sang. We never performed anywhere, but we recorded a bunch on our computers. And that”—Vicky flung her arms out to the sides—“is how I discovered who I am. And that is why I’m here tonight, hanging out with you.”