Love Hurts

  I desperately wanted to have something to lose.

  Mostly we stayed in places that were public or possibly public – we’d move items from aisle to aisle in Target, trying to come up with the sickest combinations possible, like putting condoms next to the Barbie dolls or hemorrhoid cream with the toothpaste. We’d sneak into crap movies and try to find the characters’ crap lines for them. Then we’d make out in her car and hope nobody came by. We steamed up the windows so much that I could trace hearts in them afterward. Her initials looked good with mine.

  My mother couldn’t stand it. She needed me to drive her around and listen to her carry on about the sorry state of the world (which stretched about as far as the mall). All I’d told her was that I had a new friend. She said she wanted to meet this new friend. I told her the new friend wasn’t a boy, and she got less excited. She had no real advice to give about friendship because she’d never managed to keep a friend in her life. Not that she saw it that way. She felt she had plenty of friends. She just didn’t spend any time with them.

  I had no intention of introducing her to Ashley, or even of having Ashley in the house. But finally the time came when I wanted us to use a bed. Call me old-fashioned, but I was getting tired of having to do the pleasure thing with a seat belt pressing against my back. Ashley flat-out refused to bring me to her house, so I told her, fine, we’d go to mine. My mother’s one great indulgence was getting her hair done, so one afternoon after I dropped her off at the beauty parlor, I sped through a few lights and picked Ashley up to take her home.

  ‘This is such a Miss Lucy bedroom,’ she said when she saw it.

  ‘What does that mean?’ I asked her. For some reason, I didn’t think Miss Lucy would have black-painted walls.

  ‘You try so hard not to be frilly,’ she replied, like she was the queen of frill.

  I must’ve looked a little put out, because she said, ‘Now, don’t be hurt. You can’t be hurt, ’cuz I wasn’t meaning to hurt you.’

  She came over and started to cuddle me into her, and it was like my mind stopped having any other thoughts about her besides now now now.

  I was thirty minutes late picking my mother up.

  She took one look at me and said, ‘What happened to you?’

  Ashley, I wanted to tell her. Ashley’s happening to me.

  But instead I told her I’d gotten a flat.

  This was a stupid lie.

  ‘Where’s the old tire?’ she said when we got home.

  ‘The triple-A guy took it,’ I told her.

  ‘You’re a very bad liar,’ she said.

  ‘Your hair looks like a camel peed in it,’ I said back, then stormed to my room and called Ashley to tell her all about it.

  ‘A camel peed in it?’ Ashley said, laughing.

  Suddenly it didn’t seem as serious.

  ‘Well, that’s what it looked like,’ I said.

  Already the edge was gone. My life could be curvy again, and all it took was a laugh on her end of the phone.

  More weeks passed. I wanted something from her.

  I wanted the l-word.

  I wanted her to call me her girlfriend.

  I wanted to make her cry.

  I wanted to know I had the same effect on her that she had on me.

  I got careless.

  I tried holding her hand in school.

  ‘Slow down, Miss Lucy,’ she said. ‘Slow down.’

  I said I wanted to see her house.

  Her room.

  Her bed.

  She told me they weren’t worth seeing.

  I asked her if there’d been other girls before me.

  She laughed and said yes.

  I asked: ‘Am I the second? The seventh? The thirtieth?’

  But she didn’t tell me any more than that.

  I had told her about Lily White, and now whenever I didn’t want to do something she wanted me to do, she’d tease me about getting back together with Lily White, about how we’d be perfect together.

  ‘Lucy likes to lick Lily,’ she’d tease.

  ‘Don’t be mean to me,’ I’d say.

  ‘I’m not,’ she said. ‘It’s a joke.’

  Later, we’d be with each other and it would seem right – the perfect rhythm, the desire clouding us. Afterward, she’d hold me close – the perfect daze – and she’d say, ‘Miss Lucy, you and I are a pair, aren’t we?’

  But then she’d tell me not to be so attached.

  The more this happened, the deeper I fell in love with her.

  The more she made me want it, the more I wanted it.

  ‘Open your eyes,’ Teddy told me, one of the few times I talked to him.

  But that wasn’t the problem.

  My eyes were wide open.

  Seeing her.

  All our conversations in our relationship started to be about our relationship.

  I was always the one who brought it up.

  ‘What am I to you?’ I would ask.

  ‘Oh Lord,’ she’d groan. ‘Not again.’

  ‘Are we girlfriends? Lovers? Nothing at all? What?’

  ‘I’m Ashley and you’re Miss Lucy. Isn’t that enough?’

  ‘No, it’s not enough!’ I’d protest, not even sure what I was defending.

  ‘I don’t need this, Miss Lucy. Really.’

  Miss Lucy had a steamboat

  The steamboat had a bell

  Miss Lucy went to heaven

  and the steamboat went to

  ‘What are you mumbling?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘C’mon.’

  ‘I love you.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I do.’

  Hello, operator

  Please give me number nine

  And if you disconnect me

  I’ll chop off your

  The kissing was supposed to be the escape. The kissing was supposed to be the moment when nothing in the world mattered but us. The kissing was supposed to take me away from all the problems. All the thoughts. All the doubts.

  But now when I kissed her, I was always measuring how much of her was there. And I was wondering how much of me was left.

  Behind the ’frigerator

  There was a piece of glass

  Miss Lucy sat upon it

  And it went right up her

  It was, I thought, a simple equation:

  You find the right person.

  You do the right things.

  And from that, everything goes right.

  Like you have a contract with the universe, and these are the terms.

  I had no doubt Ashley was the right person.

  I had to hope I was doing the right things.

  But everything wasn’t going right.

  Some things were.

  But not everything.

  Ask me no more questions

  And I’ll tell you no more lies

  The boys are in the bathroom

  Zipping up their

  Miss Lucy disappears from her own story.

  Flies are in the belfry

  Bees are in the park

  And the boys and girls are kissing

  In the D-A-R-K

  I felt I was disappearing from my own story.

  D-A-R-K

  I had no control over my own story.

  D-A-R-K

  It was hers.

  DARK DARK DARK

  I had to take my SATs a third time.

  Ashley knew this. I’d told her.

  Before I went in, I texted her:

  WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO TONIGHT?

  It was a Saturday, and I thought we’d made plans. After a few months of going out, this was pretty routine.

  Of course, I forgot to turn off my phone. So ten minutes into the SATs, my bag starts to chirp, and it will not shut up. Now, I knew I wasn’t supposed to take out my phone during the SATs, and I swear to this day that my intention was just to silence it until I was done penciling in those stupid bubbles. But as I went to hit the off button,
I happened to look at the message on the screen:

  WE HAVE TO TALK.

  The test proctor was immediately yelling at me, asking what the hell did I think I was doing, as if I’d been about to call some math expert for help. I threw the phone back in my bag, but I couldn’t get rid of the message as easily. It was like every problem on the SATs became my problem.

  5. WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO

  TONIGHT?: WE HAVE TO TALK::

  ASHLEY, I CARE ABOUT YOU:

  a) LUCY, I CARE ABOUT YOU, TOO

  b) LUCY, WE’RE SO COMPLETELY OVER, IT’S NOT FUNNY

  c) LUCY, YOU’RE THE LOVE OF MY LIFE

  d) STEAMBOAT, I CARE ABOUT YOU, TOO

  6. Which of the following phrases does not belong with the others?

  a) WE HAVE TO SEE MORE OF EACH OTHER

  b) WE HAVE TO TALK

  c) WE HAVE TO REMEMBER TO PICK UP A MOVIE

  d) WE HAVE TO BE TOGETHER ALWAYS

  12. If the diameter of a cone is doubled, its volume:

  a) WILL QUADRUPLE

  b) WILL NOT BE ENOUGH TO SAVE YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH ASHLEY

  c) WILL HALVE

  d) WILL STAY THE SAME

  Of course, all the right answers were (b).

  I might as well have used that number-two pencil to fill in the hollow dots that my eyes, my ears, my mouth, and my heart had become. Not only had I not seen it coming, but I had seen its opposite coming instead.

  Doofus, I said to myself. Idiot.

  I started crying in the middle of my third try at the SATs and I couldn’t stop. I had to leave, and there was no way to explain to the proctor how a single sentence had stumped me more than any test question ever would.

  All I needed was the confirmation. And all I needed for the confirmation was a simple two-letter word spoken in her voice. I called her as soon as I got to the parking lot. I knew she’d see my number on her phone, so when she answered, she’d be answering me. So the way she said that first word – hi – made the landslide complete. Her hi wasn’t high at all – no, this hi was lowwwwwwwww. The kind of hi that says I’ve already scattered the ashes of our relationship somewhere over the land of yesterday. All in two letters.

  I began to cry again, and she told me she’d known I was going to be this way. I cried some more. She mentioned something about me still being her best friend in town. Not her best friend, mind you – her best friend in town. I wiped some snot with my sleeve. She asked me wasn’t I supposed to be in the SATs right now? I just lost it and took that phone and threw it right at my car. Which is how I managed to lose a girlfriend, break a phone, and crack a windshield all at the same time.

  And then I drove over to her house.

  I didn’t make it past the front door.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked, stepping onto the porch and pulling the door shut behind her. ‘And what the hell happened to your car?’

  ‘What do you think I’m doing here?’ I said, the tears already coming.

  ‘It doesn’t have to be like this,’ she said, completely bored with the whole thing.

  ‘Really? What can it be like? Tell me. I’d really like to know.’

  ‘You see, this is why it was never going to work.’

  ‘Because I’m upset that you’re dumping me? That’s why it was never going to work?’

  ‘You were always too into it.’

  ‘But you said we were a pair! You were into it, too.’

  ‘Yeah, but not like you. And I wasn’t always telling the truth.’

  It had never occurred to me that a person could know all the right things to say and deploy them to get what she wanted, without having to mean any of it.

  Dear Lord, I staggered then. Staggered back. Staggered away from her. Staggered to my car and cried for a good five minutes before I could get my key in the ignition. When I got home, I staggered past my mother, who called out, asking what was wrong. My breathing was staggered. My memory was staggered. And there was no way to get it right again.

  I was waiting for her to call and say she’d made a mistake.

  That was my own mistake.

  I didn’t want to go to school, but when my mother threatened to stay home with me if I didn’t go, I knew I didn’t have a choice.

  ‘Is it some boy?’ she asked, unable to keep the hope out of her voice.

  ‘No, I’m just garden-variety suicidal,’ I told her.

  ‘Fine,’ she replied, annoyed. ‘Be that way.’

  I tried to shut myself down completely, put up my best screen-saver personality to coast through the day. I didn’t want to see her. I was desperate to see her. I wanted to hold it together. I wanted to melt down right at her feet and scream, Look what you’ve done to me.

  I was going to skip lunch entirely, but Teddy found me and steered me toward his table.

  ‘Spill,’ he said.

  ‘I can’t,’ I told him.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because if I start, I might not stop.’

  That’s what it felt like – that if I let a little of the hurt out, it would keep pouring out until I was a deflated balloon of a person, with a big monster of hurt in front of me.

  ‘You know what?’ I said. ‘I’m not Miss Lucy at all. I’m the goddamn steamboat.’

  ‘Come again?’ Teddy said with his usual shoulder-tilt pout.

  ‘Let’s just say this is not heaven,’ I said with a sigh.

  Heron, of course, knew exactly what I was talking about.

  ‘It’s just that Mercury’s in retrograde,’ she said.

  ‘This has nothing to do with a fucking planet,’ I groaned.

  ‘Down, girl,’ Teddy sassed. ‘Down.’

  I put my head in my hands and took a deep breath, hearing the air suck against my palms.

  I felt Teddy pat my back, then start to rub it. Mmmmmm.

  ‘A little better now?’ he asked.

  I nodded a little and he moved to my neck.

  ‘Let it go,’ he said. ‘Let it go.’

  I tried to. I wanted to block it out.

  Miss Lucy had a steamboat. Miss Lucy had a steamboat.

  ‘What are you saying?’ Teddy whispered in my ear.

  I lifted my head and told him. Then Heron and I explained what it meant.

  ‘So you’ve sat on the glass,’ Teddy said.

  ‘Repeatedly.’

  ‘And, let me get this straight, the boys are in the bathroom—’

  ‘The boys don’t really matter right now.’

  ‘There will be other girls,’ Heron comforted.

  ‘I don’t want other girls!’ I cried.

  What I meant then: I only want Ashley.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about her. My body missed her. My mind reeled at her absence. I was a fucking wreck. It wasn’t pretty, and as much as I wanted to believe she was doing it to me, I had to begin to admit that I was doing it to myself, too.

  Why is self-preservation so much more of a bitch when it’s your mental health that’s involved? I mean, if there really was a piece of glass on my chair, I’d damn well make sure that I didn’t sit on it twice. If a steamboat was sinking, I’d know enough to head to the lifeboat. But a broken heart? At first I gave in to the temptation to think, nah, there was nothing I could do about it. I’d have to keep sitting on glass until someone was nice enough to take the glass away from my seat.

  Then I thought, To hell with that. I actually had to think of it in terms of sitting on glass for it to work.

  ‘What’s up with the whole couple thing anyway?’ I asked Teddy and Heron at lunch a week or so after Ashley had dumped me.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Teddy asked back.

  ‘I mean, why is everyone so brainwashed into believing that they have to be in a relationship with one other person? Look at us, Teddy. If anyone were to tell us that the whole girl-boy thing was natural and anything else was unnatural, we’d know they were completely wrong. But have them tell us that every person needs to be with another person i
n order to be happy, and we nod along like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. But there’s no reason for it, is there? It’s not a proven truth. It’s just some thing that our culture has come to spin itself around, mostly so we’ll procreate, and we’re the dupes who fall for it over and over and over again.’

  ‘I thought you were over the breakup,’ Teddy said hesitantly.

  ‘I am,’ I insisted. ‘Can’t you see that this is more than that?’

  Teddy clearly couldn’t see, because he was looking at me like I was fifty-eight varieties of crazy all at once.

  Heron, however, surprised me.

  ‘You’re totally right,’ she said. ‘And I’m tired of it, too.’

  When I realized I was into girls, it was scary to let go of all the things I was supposed to be and all the things I was supposed to want. It’s like you’re a character in this book that everyone around you is writing, and suddenly you have to say, I’m sorry, but this role isn’t right for me. And you have to start writing your own life and doing your own thing. That was hard enough. But that was nothing – nothing, I tell you – compared to the idea that I could let go of the desire to have a girlfriend. Maybe not forever. Maybe forever. Certainly for now. Talk about something that had been ingrained. I wasn’t letting go of love or sex or the idea of companionship. I was just rejecting the package in which it was being sold to me. I was going to say it was okay to be alone, when it felt like everyone in the world was saying that it wasn’t okay to be alone, that I had to always want someone else, that the desire had to fuel me.

  I didn’t want to feel like I needed it anymore. Because I didn’t. Really, I didn’t.

  Ashley started fooling around with Lily White. She didn’t tell me this, but I could figure it out easily enough. Lily White was more scared of me than ever. And she’d started to smell a little like Ashley’s shampoo.

  Betrayal. Lust. Secrecy. Devotion. I think we do these things to feel more alive. When the truth is that alive is alive – you can feel it in anything, if you give it a chance.

  I thought more about Miss Lucy.

  I’d never pictured her with anybody else, just her steamboat and her bell. Trying to keep things together, even when the world was constantly throwing glass under her ass.

  ‘Do you think there was a real Miss Lucy?’ I asked Heron.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said.