Boring Girls(20)

I moved through the kitchen and dining room. Everyone at that party looked like an *. From across the room I noticed Josephine chatting with her friends; she raised her eyebrows at me. You okay? I nodded. She raised her beer bottle at me questioningly. Did you get a drink? I held mine up so she could see it and tried to smile at her. She smiled back and resumed her conversation. I was fine. I was just fine.

I wandered down a hallway, past a couple of people making out, and saw the back door to the house was open. I wanted to go outside. Maybe I could even find a place to discretely dump out half my beer so it would look like I’d been drinking it.

When I stepped onto the back deck, it seemed like the night stopped.

There wasn’t too much snow left, and people were sitting on patio furniture, yapping away. Coloured lanterns and strings of lights hung across the deck and railings, so it looked very pretty. Beyond the deck, in the yard, a few people sat at a picnic table smoking cigarettes.

One of them was wearing a black blouse and tight jeans. She had long blonde hair past her shoulders, but it wasn’t bitch-blonde. Something about her made me stop and stare. She wasn’t notably gorgeous, but I could not take my eyes off her.

Of course she caught me looking at her, which made me freeze with horror. But immediately she smiled and waved at me.

I waved back and she gestured at me to join them.

I made my way across the deck and down the steps, then sat down. The girl was sitting with a guy and girl that I barely noticed.

“Hey, I’m Fern,” she said, warm and friendly. She introduced her two friends, but I didn’t hear their names.

Fern.





NINE


The four of us sat and talked. Fern and her two friends, Edgar and Yvonne, both went to school at Our Lady and were in my grade. I confirmed their suspicion that Glen Park was the “school of *s” — its reputation, apparently. I took more sips of beer, trying to control my reactions of disgust. Edgar and Yvonne soon went back inside the house, leaving me with Fern.

“So, can I ask you a question?” I said.

“Sure.”

“When I came out back, why did you wave to me?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess you looked familiar to me, or something.”

“We’ve totally never met before.”

“Yeah, I know.” She took a sip of her own beer. “So who do you know here?”

“I came with my friend Josephine. She’s in our grade.”

Fern nodded. “She was in a couple of my classes last year. I’m not, like, friends with her or anything, but she’s a nice chick.”

“Yeah she is.”

Fern lit a cigarette, offering me the pack. I declined. The beer was disgusting enough, I didn’t think I could handle that on top of it. “No thanks.”

She grinned. “The only reason I smoke is to get the taste of the beer out of my mouth. Then the smoke tastes so bad, I have to drink the beer to get rid of that taste. It’s stupid.”

“Why drink beer at all if you don’t like it?”

“I don’t know. Probably because everyone else here drinks it.” She inhaled and then blew a plume of smoke across the picnic table, politely directing it away from me. A burst of obnoxious laughter came from inside, and she rolled her eyes at me. “Lots of *s here.”

“Yeah.”

“I really like your dress,” she said. “It’s pretty cool.”

“Thanks! I got it at one of those thrift places downtown,” I said.

“Oh, I love going there. You find such cool stuff,” she said. “You and me should go sometime.”

“Yeah, we should,” I said. Was it really this easy to make a new friend?

“What else do you do for fun?” Fern asked.

“Not much, really. I kinda just like to stay home. I really like writing. I’m pretty into poetry and art,” I said.

“That’s cool. I’m trying to learn how to play guitar — it’s really fun. I’m no good at it, but I want to write my own music one day.”

“What bands do you like?”

“I’m into a band called DED,” she replied. “It’s, like, heavy music. They’re not on the radio or anything.”

I felt my stomach clench with excitement. “Oh, totally. Do you like Gurgol? They’re amazing too.”

“Oh, yeah!” Fern brightened. “Marie-Lise, their bass player? She’s amazing. I’m not too into Josh Galligan’s singing, though. Have you ever heard Surgical Carnage?”