This Will Only Hurt a Little(15)
“How old are you?” one of them asked, giving me an appraising look.
I was thirteen. My fourteenth birthday was in a week.
“Fourteen.”
“Oh. You look like a baby.”
She was right, in retrospect. I did look like a baby. I desperately didn’t want to be one though. That’s why I was there.
At a certain point, I realized we had to go back or my mom would come get us and we wouldn’t be there. There was a discussion as to who was the least fucked up and could drive us back and it was decided that Jacob would take Charlie’s car to drop us off. He and Kendra ended up making out, which of course made me so jealous. That should have been me and Charlie! If only my stupid knee wasn’t all messed up!
The rest of the summer, we had the same routine. Sleepovers at each other’s houses. Watching so much MTV (it was the summer that both “Everybody Hurts” by R.E.M. and “Black Hole Sun” by Soundgarden came out and were on heavy rotation). Calling the skater boys and taking turns talking to them. Waiting at the mall for hours for them to show up. Feeling so dejected when they didn’t. Planning how to make out with them. Charlie seemed less interested in me than the other two boys were interested in Lacey and Kendra, and it bummed me out. I wasn’t sure why he didn’t like me. Was I not hot enough? Maybe not. I was kind of awkward and weird, I guess. And maybe what Julie said was true. Maybe I tried too hard. I needed to relax.
In August, my sister was leaving for college in Nebraska and my parents were going to drive her out there. It was decided I could stay at home and their friend’s daughter, Nicole, who was twenty-one could stay with me. I hugged my sister goodbye and waved as they drove away in my dad’s Audi. As soon as they were gone, Nicole turned to me. “I assume you want to have people over. That’s fine. I’ll stay at my parents’, but call me if you need anything.”
What’s so crazy is I don’t think it had really occurred to me. But of course! A party! I called Kendra and Lacey and we called the boys. That night, they came over and brought a ton of beer and vodka we got super drunk. I didn’t have a bed in my room, because my parents had agreed to buy me a new one (from Z Gallerie!) and the frame hadn’t come yet, so I just had a queen mattress on the floor.
At some point, Charlie and I were sitting on the mattress on the floor and Kendra came in and turned off the lights in my bedroom. Finally, the moment I had been waiting for! We started kissing and messing around. I reached into his pants, ’cause that’s what I thought I was supposed to do, but I had no idea what to do with my hand once it was in there, so I took it out again. Then Charlie put his hand down my pants and shoved his fingers inside me. It didn’t feel great. Just, like, fingers inside my vagina, not really doing much there. He pushed them around a little and then pulled his hand out and wiped it on his jeans. Then Kendra and Lacey burst into the room and jumped on the mattress with Jacob and Trey.
“ARE YOU GUYS HAVING FUNNNNNN??”
I don’t remember much after that ’cause I was so drunk and everything started spinning, but at some point Charlie got up and left, and I felt so rejected. I had obviously done everything wrong. Jacob started kissing me and lifting up my shirt, and I let him, even though I thought it was gross and I was pretty sure Kendra would be pissed. She wasn’t. She was laughing hysterically and thought it was all so funny. At some point Charlie came back in and told the other boys it was time to leave. They took off and Kendra, Lacey, and I passed out.
I woke up the next morning to the sound of bottles and cans and someone mumbling.
“Jesus. Busy! I said you could have some people over! I didn’t think you would trash the house!”
Nicole had come back over to check on me and was furiously picking up empty bottles and cans and throwing them away. I wandered out into the living room, super hungover. It was trashed. I helped her clean up while trying to process my hangover and what was essentially my first real sexual experience, even though I was so drunk it was hard to remember what had happened the night before, who I had even hooked up with. Maybe I should like Jacob? He seemed more into me than Charlie did. For God’s sake, I just wanted someone to want to kiss me.
It wasn’t long before school would start, and Lacey—who was going to a different high school—told me and Kendra she was going to have to focus on making friends, which we thought was rude but whatever. We stopped going to the mall to see the boys. I tried calling Charlie a few times but he basically blew me off.
A few weeks into September, my phone rang. It was Trey, the skater boy that Lacey had called dibs on. Weird. I asked him if he had seen Lacey, since she was at the same school as him. He said he’d seen her around a little but he wasn’t really into her.
“Yeah,” I said. “We haven’t really talked to her much since school started. She’s got new friends there, I guess.”
He told me she was hanging out with the cheerleader girls, which made sense. Then he said, “Well, we should hang out sometime.”
What? This was so strange. Trey had never showed any interest in me whatsoever. I was thoroughly baffled but also obviously flattered. I hadn’t ever really considered him before—he was basically like last on my list, but I guess he was pretty cute? I mean, he seemed a whole lot cuter now that he was showing some sort of interest in me.
I told Kendra about it at school the next day.