Where It Began

“It sounds as if you have to work to interpret what he does and says, but just talking things out with him is off-limits,” she says.

As if this were some amazing revelation.

As if there were a universe of teenage girls out there going: Hey, boyfriend of my dreams, how do you really really REALLY feel about me and are you totally enraptured about being my boyfriend?

And all these boyfriends going: Hey, insecure whack job of a girl who I’m about to dump, I’m glad you asked because I long to yap about how I feel about you day and night. Why don’t we share our feelings more often, perhaps instead of fooling around, because being interrogated by a clingy cow is more fun than sex on a stick.

As if.

“You’ve lost a lot of things very quickly,” she says, as if she thinks rubbing it in is going to help.

“You think I’ve lost him?”

“Well, what you’re telling me is that you’ve lost the ability to be with him openly and the possibility of intimacy.”

“You mean sex?” Which is an interesting point coming from someone who looks to be living in some strange, buttoned-up world in which people don’t care one way or the other.

Well, it is definitely lost, and I miss it all the time, even more when it looks like Aliza Benitez is getting what I want and I have to sit around and watch her get it.

The point is: I feel like another person when he touches me, and I miss being her.

XLIX

THE SECOND DAY BACK, ANITA AND LISA CORNER me and haul me off to a bench behind the ninth grade lockers where nobody ever hangs out because it’s 100% visible from the teachers’ office windows and faces the teachers’ parking lot, which, compared to the students’ parking lot that closely resembles a commercial for European Motor Cars of Beverly Hills, is not a pretty sight.

“Did Billy Nash break up with you?” Lisa says. “We didn’t even look for you at lunch yesterday and then it turned out you weren’t with him. You were eating with Huey.”

“And the stick girls,” Anita says. “If you can call what they do eating. And I swear if you say no to this, I’ll never mention it again, but you didn’t get this thin by purging, did you? Because I can explain the physiology of it to you, and it could kill you.”

“So true,” Lisa says. “It’s better to be fat. Not that you were ever fat.”

“No!” I say. “Ew. And I don’t see how you call this thin when I’ve been eating Dottie’s cupcakes twice a week.”

“Ew to Billy or ew to an eating disorder?” Lisa says.

“Bulimia, thank you. Like I would stick my fingers down my throat. Ew.”

Lisa puts her hands on her hips. “Did Billy Nash break up with you or not?” she says. Acknowledging, of course, that the notion I might break up with Billy Nash isn’t even worth considering.

“I really do not want to talk about it,” I say.

“All right,” Anita sighs. “Are you available for lunch?”

“Yeah.”

“He broke up with you!” Lisa yells. She looks as if her head is going to explode.

“Okay,” I say. “I seriously do not want to talk about this, okay, but sorta yes and sorta no, only you can’t say anything to anyone, okay?”

They are just standing there, steaming and speechless.

“Okay,” I say. “It’s not what it looks like. If he hangs around with me, it violates his probation. So we can’t be together or he could get his probation revoked and end up in jail somewhere out of state. He could spend the rest of high school in a prison rehab ward, okay?”

“Billy Nash in rehab,” Anita says. “No! What a concept.” But at least she remains slightly rational. “That sucks,” she says. “That really sucks, and frankly, I don’t see why you’re going along with it.”

“Hello. Because he could end up in prison.”

“I just don’t believe this!” Lisa says. “I just don’t believe what’s happening.” She looks like she’s about to cry.

“Could we please never talk about this again?” I say. “I just want to live through this, so could you just be like my friends and shut up? I feel bad enough, okay?”

Unfortunately, after this, nothing can prevail on Lisa and Anita to stop glowering at Billy. You would think they were pla

gabs123: really, it’s nothing. they’re just pissed off we aren’t the 2nd coming of the andies.

pologuy: we were never the 2nd coming of the andies

gabs123: thanks a lot nash. bite me.

pologuy: that’s not how i meant it. and here i thought u were biting into 2½ pounds of belgian chocolate—to think i bought that crap about expressing my undying love with candy! was i supposed to tie it with a bow or something?

His undying WHAT?

And I go, Breathe, Gabriella. It’s a joke. LOL. Hahaha. Get a grip. But he said it. You would think, if he said it, it had to be on his mind, on the tip of his brain, to just slip out like that. And I go, Gabriella, if you spill, if you give even the slightest hint you’re taking this as even slightly meaningful or slightly slightly serious, you are a literal moo cow. An intellectually challenged cow that can’t figure out how to chew grass.

Undying love undying love undying love . . .

And I go, Gabriella: Get. A. Grip.

gabs123: r u kidding me? nash it was perfect. not that i would mind if u showed up tied with a bow. or even completely unwrapped.

pologuy: i wish. just b glad i’m up the street. if it wouldn’t screw up my transcript for the Big P i’d be in a bunk bed with my cousin henry going to public school in santa barbara right now and i’d never get to c u

gabs123: well that would suck. no me and public school. boo hoo hoo nash.

pologuy: not fu

gabs123: not bitches. bff’s. i just keep telling them i don’t want to talk about it. they get it.

pologuy: good. maybe u should put them on hiatus. u don’t need to listen to their estrogen crap

I can tell how pissy he’s getting, but I totally don’t care.

I am the one with the Undying Love candy, and every time his screen name shows up on my screen, which is happening with reassuring regularity, it’s like an electronic aphrodisiac demonstrating for all eternity why porn sites gross more than mediumsized countries. And my Billy sightings at school make my heart pound like Cheesy Railroad Girl, and I don’t mean in a metaphorical, heart-nailed-by-Cupid’s-dinky-arrow kind of way. It is actual weird tachycardia (SAT word) and I feel like some ditz who is going to keel over with a mere glance at Perfect Hot Boy.

It isn’t clear if I’m going to live through the rest of chemistry with him in the same room ignoring me. That’s how bad it is.

That and the less-than-pleasant daydreams. For example:

Agnes won’t let him out of the house after six p.m. so I know he isn’t taking Aliza Benitez out for Baby Blues ribs and sweet potato pie on Lincoln Boulevard, listening to Joh