How to Be Brave(26)
I nod, and I believe her, though my heart is still lodged somewhere near my appendix. I want to be happy for Liss, but it’s hard when she spends all her time with Gregg.
And then I realize, she still hasn’t told me how this all connects to her having sex. “Wait, so are you going to do it at the party?”
Liss leans back and smiles. “No! Ew! That would be gross and unladylike. However, it just so happens Gregg’s parents are also going to be out of town—a conference or something—that very same weekend. And so, we’ll have the entire house to ourselves, including, ahem, his bedroom.”
“And so, you’re going to leave me alone at a frat party with Chloe Hollins and Avery Trenholm so you can go canoodle with Gregg at his place?”
“Canoodle? What are you, eighty?” Liss teases. She grabs the bottle of polish to finish her nails. “And, well, yes, I guess. But maybe Daniel will be there.…”
“Really? Do you think so? But why would he? He doesn’t hang around Chloe and Avery at all.”
“No. But he knows Gregg. And, he and I have been chatting a bit at the Belize meetings, so I could probably get him in too.”
“Wait, what? He’s going to Belize too?”
“Yeah, didn’t you know? He wants to major in bioengineering, I guess. Champaign is his top choice.”
Huh. So this is very good news. Liss and I are both applying to the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign, which is only two hours south of Chicago—far enough to be away from home, close enough to be not too far away from home. Liss says she wants to major in biology or something like that (though she should study fashion—she’s that good), and I wrote “Undeclared—Liberal Arts” as my prospective major. My dad doesn’t even know that I’m applying to Champaign, but I’ll tell him about it in the spring, if/when I get in. So far, he hasn’t really even mentioned college. I think he assumes that I’m going to go to Chicago City College, where my mom taught, before I transfer to a university. I don’t have the heart to break it to him yet. That can wait until spring.
So Daniel Antell might be at the party, too. A Positive Thought indeed.
But then again.
Liss is going to be with Daniel in Belize.
Huh.
It shouldn’t bother me, but for some reason, it does. Maybe because she hasn’t mentioned anything about it until just this moment.
I wave my fingers to help dry them, and I try to pretend like nothing’s wrong. “How many people are going from your class?”
“Four, I think. Marcus Garcia, Pete Hammell, Daniel, and me.”
Daniel and me. Why does that last part bother me so much?
Okay, Georgia. Don’t make this about you. Liss is telling you that she might very well have sex with Gregg. That’s big news. That’s her news. Focus on that. She has absolutely no interest in Daniel.
“Anyway, you’ll come to the party?” Liss goes back to the original point of the conversation. “I figure we can cover for each other. I’ll just tell my mom I’m sleeping here, and you can tell your dad that you’re at my place.”
“Yeah, sure.” I shrug. Be nice, Georgia. Don’t be a bitch. “Thanks for making it a point to include me.”
“Of course! Are you kidding? Anyway, I’ll need you there for emotional support after. I mean, it’s my big night, right?”
Our nails dry and we spend some time online searching for answers to some of Liss’s more graphic questions about s-e-x that were either glossed over in health or that were so irrelevant to our experiences that we didn’t pay close enough attention to remember the answers. Thanks to Cosmopolitan.com and Yourtango.com I learn quite a bit, but Liss still has all these questions about lubrication and positions that I have no idea about. It all still seems so unbelievable to me. And frankly, it all seems sort of frightening. I’m nowhere near even thinking about anything like what Liss is about to experience. Daniel Antell is a definite maybe, which could mean something or it could mean a whole lot of nothing. Maybe he was just being nice. Maybe he actually just blew me off. I mean, we didn’t really set a date. I don’t say this to Liss—this is the exact opposite of a positive thought—but I can’t help but wonder.
We finally pass out sometime around three A.M., Nina Simone on repeat, our nails perfect, and everything else a big unanswered question.
7
Turkey Day. Oak Lawn, Illinois. South Side, Chicago. The Middle of Nowhere, Land of Lawns and Driveways. Ah, the suburbs. I hate them. Even though we’re sort of what my mom used to call “isolated” since we’re downtown, away from my dad’s many cousins and nieces and nephews, I like it better that way. I like the city with its congestion and grime. I like not being involved in the family drama, the politics of it all. I like seeing these people, whose faces I only sort of recognize in my own, only four times per year at baptisms and weddings and funerals. But they’re strangers, mostly. I certainly don’t speak the same language: Greek mixed with an obsession with all things White Sox and Chicago Bears, sprinkled with a dash of conservative politics and minimalls.
We’ve been driving for over an hour to get here. Traffic sucked and conversation was pretty much awkward and stilted and weird during that whole hour, since my dad and I have nothing to say to each other. Dad finds the street (I don’t know how, since they all look the same) and parks the Buick in the driveway. Before he gets out, he takes a deep breath and looks at me with a long, deep, serious expression. I’m expecting him to say something about Mom or about the family or about how much holidays suck when someone you loved so much has died, but instead he exhales and says, “You can carry the pies?”