Where It Began

Especially if you love him.

And I say to myself in half-crazed affirmation, Gabby, you are just so secure and mature and wonderful. You don’t need him to tell you what you already (kind of) know. You are just the most secure and mature and wonderful girl since Coke in a glass bottle, so if you want to keep this going, you’d better just back the hell off.

Because: Everybody knows that no matter how much you need to talk to Gorgeous Hot Boy, if you phone him fourteen times between ten and ten thirty p.m., by the time he gets to the third message, he’ll hate you, and by message number fourteen, his mother will have a restraining order taken out against you and you’ll be in court-ordered Stalker Recovery Twelve Step before you even have time to make call number fifteen.

So I don’t call him. I don’t even try to cuddle. Not even.

So I don’t presume to follow Billy around or hang out next to him on Monday at school, curved into his side, hooking my fingers through his empty belt loops. Not me. I stumble around watching for him, longing for him. All I can think about is how his body feels, smooth and naked and a little bit damp, pressed up against me. And when he passes me, when I am close to him, the faintly salty smell of him fills me up.

“Hey, Gabs,” he says in the cafeteria the Tuesday after that Sunday in the beach house. “Don’t you like me anymore?”

I am shaking. I am afraid I’m going to drop my tray.

“What do you think, Nash?” I say as casually as possible under the circumstances. “You think you own me now or something?” Thinking: Own me own me own me.

Billy reaches over and he put his fingers through the hair behind my ear. “Yeah,” he says into my ear. “Oh yeah, I own you now.”

XVIII

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SECRETLY, CONSTANTLY wanting Billy to own me and Billy taking actual possession is that now he just assumes I’ll be there, like his wallet and the keys in his front pocket.

It feels safe in there, like I am some indispensable but ordinary thing he can’t do without, because who doesn’t need pocket change and their school library Xerox card and gum? Who doesn’t miss that ordinary, indispensable stuff if they can’t find it? He would look up and there I would be, the everyday, always-there girlfriend.

I am Billy Nash’s girlfriend and even when he doesn’t have his hands on me, I am still her.

It’s perfect.

In my psychology elective, which is a lot less interesting than you’d expect, we are studying the minds of babies, how when you put their toy behind a barrier so they can’t see it, they supposedly forget all about it and don’t even know it exists anymore. By Thanksgiving, though, I am pretty sure that even when Billy is at the Four Seasons in Maui and I am sitting at my Aunt Adrie

I have my cell phone in my lap under the table and he texts me and says so.

Billy: If I can’t get out of this room and onto a

surfboard soon I’m going to throw a coconut

Gabs: Isn’t it like 7 a.m. there? Y r u up?

Billy: Forced family bonding. Caitlyn wants to

teach for America. Grandfather thinks she’s a

commie whore

Gabs: Isn’t Agnes a big democrat?

Billy: Don’t tell grandfather that. Ok Caitlyn’s about to

throw tropical fruit

Gabs: Does throwing things run in ur family?

Billy: Yeah well I’m the one with the arm

Gabs: Ur Thanksgiving sounds a lot more

entertaining than mine

Billy: This isn’t Thanksgiving. This is breakfast.

Gotta get out of here before they move on to me

Gabs:?

Billy: Commie whore’s not on probation. I am.

Jesus here it comes

Gabs: Duck

Billy: Ag says teach for America looks good for law

school. This should b good for 10 more minutes

Gabs: Can’t u stretch out T for A until they finish

eating and bounce?

Billy: Can’t open mouth except to eat.

Instructions from on high. Have to shut up

and eat until Monday

Gabs: Yowza.

Billy: That’s my line G. Wish u and me were on the

beach. Need gf fix.

Gabs: Me too.

Billy: What r u wearing?

Gabs: Jesus nash it’s family Thanksgiving. I’m wearing

a silk dress and pearls.

Billy: A boy can always hope

Gabs: xx

Billy: U know it

By the middle of December, I know which Christmas parties we are going to, and where we are going to be on New Year’s Eve. (At Andy Kaplan’s father’s party with Hell’s Gate providing the music and Andy’s latest stepmother wearing a dress held on by denture cream.)

There we are, on the terrace by Andy’s pool, dancing to Hell’s Gate and wondering how much punishment the denture cream can take.

“Andy, that is so not nice to say!” Andie says. “That dress is by Helen Chang. It’s pretty, don’t you think?”

“Too bad part of it went missing,” Andy says. “Maybe Helen freaking Chang gave her a discount on a partial dress.”

“Come on, Kaps,” Billy says. “The woman will be gone by summer. I give her six months on the outside. They’ll be in court by Labor Day.”

“Well, at least she won’t have much to pack,” I say.

Andy is laughing so hard he snorts vodka out his nostrils and puts his arm around me.

“I praise the day Benitez jerked off Hank Peterson,” he says.

“What?”

Billy says, “Shut up, Andy.” But Andy is too drunk to shut up.

“When Benitez got friendly with Hank Peterson at Hibbert’s party and Billy broke up with the bitch and we got you.”

Billy says, “Will you shut up?”

Andie, seeing the possibility of impending drama, says, “All he’s saying is that Gabby’s really nice. That’s all. Gabs is a really nice girlfriend.”

Billy shakes his head and takes Andy’s arm off my shoulder which results in Andy, who is not only too drunk to shut up but apparently also too drunk to stand up without assistance, being held up by Andie and a Doric column that is just poking up out of the pool deck looking decorative, and takes me into the pool house. Billy looks righteously pissed off.

“I am a really nice girlfriend,” I say, leaning my face into his tight, pissed-off neck.

“I know, Baby,” he says. “You don’t need to listen to that shit.”

I don’t know what to say, but fortunately, it isn’t necessary to say much, and even though I had been really looking forward to kissing him exactly at midnight, I don’t even notice when midnight comes.

So here I lie, in the land of infinite gray space, hooked up to tubes of liquid and whirring machinery in a hospital gown, and who owns me now?

part two

XIX

AN ORDINARY MIDNIGHT IN THE HOSPITAL IS LESS festive and a lot less eventful. The fluorescent light is still on when the hands on the green, glowing clock over the door click together for a moment until, quivering, the second hand sweeps by.