Where It Began(60)

What was Andie going to do if I just broke down and went for it, drum me out of Cute World?

Get me on the Slutmuffins’ blacklist?

“I don’t blame you if you’re mad at me,” she says, scratching her right calf with the toe of her left Chanel ballet slipper, proving the utility of really expensive shoes in times of trouble.

“For godsake, Andie,” I say, wanting to be mean but the cute little foot in the cute little shoe is just getting to me and realizing that it isn’t her cute little butt I want to kick. “It’s not like you could have done anything about it. I wasn’t exactly looking for a designated driver at the time. It’s not like you did anything to me.”

Andie says, “It’s not?” She bites her lower lip and sniffles. “You are so nice. I never even realized how nice you are. You’re like . . .” (Try to imagine Andie struggling with deep thought.) “Joan of Arc or something. What you’re doing is totally amazing.”

No, what I’m doing is trying to live through the day so I can come back for more tomorrow. This is probably more stupid than amazing. Or amazingly stupid.

Andie is yammering on and on, goo-goo eyed. She thought she was loyal but I’m the most loyal person ever. I’m like a golden retriever, like her golden retriever Duchess who died but she was really a good dog, like a guy in the army who throws himself on a—what do you call it?—hand grenade for you.

This girl is so sweet and so without brains, it’s pathetic.

Because, truth be told, I am the hand grenade and not the person who throws herself on it. Because if Billy comes near me, his probation will blow up, the shrapnel will rip through his life, and he’ll be in Juvie Hell.

I’m not back at Winston School to grow and change like some sort of life-embracing, leafy vegetation turning toward Ponytail’s imaginary sun. It’s a total fraud.

I’m back because I want everything to stay the same.

My everything being Billy.

Me and Billy.

Because even though I get it, I understand, I’m not brainless, still, my heart does not understand. My body does not understand in the least. Skin, eyelids, fingertips. I want him to play with my hair and the hell with Princeton. Would Romeo give up Juliet for a really good shot at the Ivies? I don’t care if Billy blowing in my ear is some form of felony. I want it and it seems to me as if, if I just hang in there and he sees me and my ear is right there in his face, then he’ll want it too. He did at the castle, so why not at Winston, every day, just like before?

Because I am the grenade is why.

Because if I get too close to him, I’ll mess him up.

I am the grenade and I just have to roll away down the hill and stay away and somehow get by not talking to him or brushing arms with him or holding hands or sitting with him for three more weeks of junior year.





XLVII


BY THE TIME THE BUS DROPS ME OFF ON ESTRADA, I am feeling too much like a person who just crashed a car to drag my backpack home.

It makes you wonder if maybe I wasn’t emotionally ready to go to Winston, not that I thought anybody ever was, and Ponytail Doc, big surprise, missed the boat on my actual condition. Or maybe, like Billy says, my parents really are paying all these happy helpers to do what I say I want them to do without regard to whether it makes sense, such as sending me back to Winston so I can watch Billy paw my favorite Slutmuffin whenever I look up.

Dragging myself and all the books and the notebooks and the Xeroxed readers I need to make up all the work I missed up the hill to home feels like doing some pointless task on a chain gang in a really boring but disturbing movie just before the jailbreak, dragging giant rocks around for no apparent reason with a sadistic sheriff waving his rifle at me to make me keep trudging uphill. And I’m thinking, What is the point of this? What am I even doing there?

And then I get home, into the quiet house, empty except for John, barely there behind the closed door of the den, into my room, and onto the laptop, and there he is, there is his screen name on my screen, and that is the point.





pologuy: u looked hot today





So what were you doing with your hand in Aliza Benitez’s pocket? I so cannot come out and ask him, but what was that? All right, it proves to all the world that he isn’t still with me, but it’s not as if his probation officer is creeping around Winston School with a hidden camera, analyzing the footage to make sure that Billy gets not being with me right.





gabs123: forbidden fruit. want some?



pologuy: duh. only look what happened to adam



gabs123: if adam had ur lawyer, he’d still b running around paradise and eve would still b naked eating apple sauce.



pologuy: ur lawyer is fine. ag says. just don’t say anything that anyone could use against u. don’t talk to anyone. thought u were going to do ur garbo i vant to be alone don’t talk to me thing today but u were miss popular with the freaks. is this wise miss fruit?



gabs123: strange day. i’m the new patron saint of freaks.





And what were you doing with your hand in Aliza Benitez’s pocket? I am so waiting for an opening on this one. And so trying to get myself to back off and not say anything and not care.