This Will Only Hurt a Little(13)
I had a few crushes on boys, but nothing had ever happened, like, physically with any of them. By the end of eighth grade, Lacey and Kendra couldn’t believe I’d never kissed a guy, and they became determined to make it happen for me. One Friday night, Lacey and I went to the bowling alley. There was a kid working there, probably sixteen or seventeen, tall and skinny with long hair. He kind of looked like an extra from the movie Singles and his name tag said ADAM. Lacey decided he should be my first kiss. He laughed at us as we kept coming over to the counter to flirt with him while he was spraying disinfectant into the bowling shoes.
“What time do you get off work?” Lacey asked him, and I rolled my eyes at her. I couldn’t believe she was doing this to me, even though I did think he was cute.
“Uhhhh, like eleven.”
Lacey’s parents were supposed to pick us up at ten. We walked away, dejected.
“Wait. I have an idea,” she said. “I’ll just call my parents and tell them that your mom is picking us up and we’re sleeping at your house. And then when we’re done hanging out with him, we can call my parents and tell them there was a mix-up!”
I wasn’t so sure about it, but I did want to make out with someone. Lacey handled the phone call and gave me a thumbs-up. And then we spent the next four hours doing nothing, waiting for this kid to get off work. Finally, he was ready to take off. The three of us wandered around the parking lot, which was emptying out by this point, and then decided to keep walking, over to a darkened office park. After what felt like forever, Lacey said, oh so casually, “I’m gonna be over here! You guys have fun!!!”
And she raced away. I sat down on a curb and Adam sat next to me. And then his mouth was on my mouth and there was so much spit and tongue that I was slightly horrified. I tried my best to figure my way into it, but it was just so weird.
As we leaned back, I saw Lacey running over to us.
“Busy!!!” she yelled, breathing hard. “YOUR MOM IS HERE! SHE’S ACROSS THE STREET AT THE BOWLING—!”
Before she could even finish her sentence, my mom’s Audi screeched into the empty lot, her windows down.
“GODDAMMIT, ELIZABETH, WHERE IN GOD’S NAME HAVE YOU TWO BEEN?! I’VE BEEN LOOKING FOR YOU FOR AN HOUR! WE WERE ABOUT TO CALL THE POLICE!!!”
“JESUS! MOM!” I said, mortified. “WE WERE JUST HANGING OUT!!!!”
I glanced at my would-be suitor, my disgusting make-out partner, my first kiss, whose name wasn’t even Adam, but it doesn’t matter because I don’t remember his name. He shrugged and half waved before walking away.
“GET IN THE CAR!” my mom yelled. “NOW! YOU, TOO, LACEY. YOU CAN CALL YOUR PARENTS FROM MY PHONE.”
After dropping Lacey off, we rode home in silence.
“I’m sorry, Mom,” I said eventually. And I truly was. That kiss wasn’t worth it. (By the way, so few are.)
“I don’t want to hear it, Elizabeth. What is wrong with you??”
I don’t know if anything was “wrong” with me. But I knew that if I wanted things to happen, I needed to make them happen for myself. A few weeks later, in humanities, Julie Morgan—who everyone knew smoked pot and had probably already had sex—looked at me after I said something and wryly noted, “You’re funny.”
It felt unbelievably validating. But I didn’t know how to repeat it. I was too self-conscious to actually be funny. She asked me if I wanted to come over that weekend and hang out.
My mom dropped me off and commented about the size of Julie’s house in Paradise Valley.
“Well, these people sure have money.”
We hung out in “her wing,” as she called it. She had her own entrance to her room that went to an outside courtyard. There were a few kids hanging out, and Julie asked if we all wanted to walk to the Paradise Valley Mall and go to the Vans store. But first, she said—as it if were obvious—we should get high.
I had never smoked pot and was freaked out but also very excited and curious. I would occasionally steal the little airplane bottles of alcohol my parents kept above the refrigerator and take little sips with my friends at sleepovers, but I don’t think we ever got anywhere near drunk. And Emily BB and I once tried to smoke oregano when I was in seventh grade.
But this was different. It clearly wasn’t Julie’s first rodeo, and her parents obviously didn’t mind, because we did it right there in her room. I took a few hits off the joint as they talked me through it. I didn’t want to overdo it. I thought I was stoned, but who knows now? We walked to the mall and hung out at the Vans store. I was trying so hard to feel this pot, you know? I grabbed a Baja pullover in the requisite red, green, and yellow and was feeling the fabric, really trying to focus in on my stonedness, when Julie came over and yanked the sleeve out of my hand, rolling her eyes. “Maybe, like, don’t try so hard.”
Doug Lisowski and Josh Ableman snickered. I was mortified.
“I’m not! I’m—”
“It’s fine, dude. It’s just, you’re not that high.”
I tried my best not to try so hard for the rest of the afternoon, until my mom picked me up before dinner. But I never really hung out with Julie again.
Not too long after that, Lacey and Kendra met some skater boys at the mall who went to another high school. They were so cute, so obviously we decided we had to make them our boyfriends. The three of us started to spend every free moment we had at the mall. We’d share fries at Johnny Rockets and wait for the older skater boys to show up. There was a group of probably six or so, but Lacey and Kendra had already decided which three we should go out with.