Charmed Thirds Read online

  “Why can't the four of us drive from New Jersey to California? Let's explore this great nation of ours. From the mountains to the prairies! From the land where my fathers died to the land of the pilgrims' pride! From sea to shining sea!” He sang the last parts, his hand patriotically thumping his chest.

  I did not share his excitement. I was getting tired of everyone thinking they knew what was best for me all the time.

  “How are Pepe and I supposed to get back home?”

  “Fly,” he said, as if it were merely a matter of flapping my wings.

  “Marcus, I didn't work all summer, remember? I've got no money. I'm barely keeping myself afloat . . .”

  He dropped his hand to his side, sensing defeat. “I'm sure you can get a cheap flight on the Internet. You don't start school for a few more weeks; you can be flexible.”

  Flexible was not how I felt. This is how I felt: My middle-school science teacher once did a demonstration to illustrate how physical properties are transformed by outside forces. He stretched a large rubber band into a cat's cradle between his hands. Then he released the rubber band and dipped it into a beaker of liquid hydrogen. After a few seconds, he removed the rubber band and banged it against the lab table, and it shattered into a bizillion pieces.

  “No, I can't,” I said.

  “Nothing is absolute,” he said, his voice calm. His voice was always calm lately, the result of hours and hours of solitary reflection, he tells me. “Everything can change . . .”

  Everything can change, I thought. Everything already had. Instead I said, “Why don't you just stay here and fly out when you had planned? Are you afraid to spend time with me?”

  “Jessica . . .” The sound of his voice saying my name soothed me, and it's all I wanted to hear him say. Just my name, over and over and over again in his buttery baritone. I wanted my name to be his mantra, the word he meditated on, his tool for finding calm in the world.

  But he kept on talking.

  “I just asked you to drive three thousand miles with me. How would that make me afraid to see you?”

  “You knew I probably wouldn't or couldn't do it.”

  “I thought you would say yes. We've talked about taking a cross-country trip ever since I decided to go to California.”

  “Yes, but I imagined us taking our time and taking a totally crazy, indirect route. We would camp out in the Grand Canyon. Hike in the Rocky Mountains. Swim in the Great Lakes. Try on wigs in Dollywood. Eat pretzels with the Amish. Whatever!”

  “We can still do that . . .”

  “And I imagined us being alone.”

  “I thought you'd enjoy spending time with Bridget and Percy,” he said.

  “I'd enjoy spending more time with you,” I said. “Alone.”

  “You're implying that I'm somehow trying to upset you here, which is not my intention, Jessica. So we'll jettison Bridget and Pepe. Does that make it a better proposition?”

  “It makes it a better proposition, but still not a possible one.”

  “Jessica,” Marcus repeated. And then he said some other stuff that I didn't really listen to because I was thinking about how Marcus is the only person who calls me Jessica. Everyone else calls me Jessie (my parents), Jess (anyone who knew me in high school), or J (anyone who met me in college). I was thinking about how if you say Jessica over and over again—jessicajessicajessica—it starts to sound like gajussgajussgajuss. And “gajuss” means nothing.

  “What are you afraid of?” Marcus asked, breaking through my thoughts.

  What am I afraid of? Why should I be afraid to spend uninterrupted time with my boyfriend? Is it because more time means more opportunities for him to change his mind about me, like he does about everything else?

  Or for me to change my mind about him . . . ?

  “Jessica?”

  “Nothing,” I replied. “Nothing at all.”

  the eighteenth

  So one happy couple is going on a cross-country adventure. But it isn't Marcus and me. And it isn't Pepe and Bridget, either.

  It's Marcus and Bridget.

  I am, apparently, the only one who sees anything sketchy about this. And my paranoia made me do something I'm not proud of. I went over to Bridget's house and interrogated her.

  “So . . . uh . . . are you and Marcus going to stay in the same hotel room together?” I fished.

  “Probably,” she said. “It's cheaper.”

  “Are twin beds cheaper than a queen?”

  “Jess, you're not serious, are you?” she asked. “Marcus is, like, totally not my type.”

  “Well, wiry black guys weren't your type before you hooked up with Percy.”

  “Need I remind you how, like, upset I was when Manda slept with my boyfriend?”

  I slumped to the pink carpet, beat down by it all. “I'm sorry, Bridget. I'm just . . .”

  “Jealous,” Bridget said, finishing my thought.

  “I'm not jealous of you!” I protested weakly, not even bothering to get up off the floor. “You can't date someone with his history and get jealous all the time.” I conveniently neglected to mention the Sierra episode. And also that I was a dirty liar.

  Bridget set down the straightening iron she was about to put in her suitcase. “You're not jealous of me, but the chance to go with him.”

  And I responded by drawing my legs up to my chest and resting my head between my knees. She was right. By going on this trip—one that I turned down—Bridget would be spending more uninterrupted alone time with Marcus than I ever had.

  What was wrong with me?

  “Look, if it upsets you that much, I'll fly out to California. I wanted to drive so I could save money—I need new headshots—but if it's going to hurt you, I won't do it.”

  Girls want to hate Bridget because she's so goddamn gorgeous. Hell, I used to hate her for it. But she is the most trustworthy person I know. I attribute this to the fact that she wasn't always so stunning; I mean, she'd always been cute, but she didn't blossom into an eye-popping beauty until the summer before seventh grade, when the removal of orthodontia miraculously coincided with the addition of boobage. She had more than a decade to actually develop a soul, unlike girls who are born beautiful and never bother because they don't have to. But how do I reward her loyalty? By ignoring her. Doubting her. Accusing her of the worst.

  “Bridget, I'm so sorry we didn't really hang out this summer,” I said.

  She twirled a strand of hair around her finger. “I know you were busy, with Marcus and your big-time magazine job and everything,” she said.

  And for some inexplicable reason, I heard the rumble in my head and felt the burn in my throat that serves as a warning that I'm about to cry.

  “It's okay,” Bridget said.

  “No,” I croaked. “It's not.”

  She rushed to my side and threw her arm around me. “Look, Jess,” she said. “As long as my mom lives across the street from your parents, we will be friends.”

  Bridget always smells like a day at the beach, not unlike the coconut-scented palm tree deodorizer hanging from Marcus's rearview mirror. She'll fit right in.

  “One bad summer can't change everything,” she said with confidence.

  I sighed and repeated her words back at her.

  “One bad summer can't change everything . . .”

  Never before have I needed Bridget to be so right.

  the twenty-first

  I haven't seen much of Marcus in the last three days. He's been packing and mapping. I've been doing a lot of melodramatic moping. This is something I do: avoidance. I did the same thing right before Hope moved. I didn't spend time with her because I knew she'd be gone soon anyway. Then after she left, I regretted the last talks, the last jokes, the last cries we missed out on.

  “Are you okay?” Marcus asked as he put his battered guitar case in the backseat of the Caddie.

  “I'm fine,” I said, kicking the SEXY GRANDPA bumper sticker, a faded relic from the previous owner.


  “Are you sure?” he said, reaching for my hand.

  He was really asking me about last night. We'd gotten together at his house for a carefree farewell fuck that was anything but. It was intense. Too intense, actually. I cried as I came. And then I couldn't stop.

  “I'm just sad that you're leaving,” I said, stroking his calloused fingertips. “I feel like we hardly had any time together this summer. There were always all these other things in the way.”

  To his credit, Marcus didn't mention how I effectively chose not to take this trip. In fact, he didn't say anything. Instead, he glanced over at Bridget and Pepe, who were swing dancing to music only they could hear. They, too, wouldn't see each other for months, yet didn't seem all that traumatized by it.

  “There will always be other things,” Marcus said quietly. “That's life.”

  I thought about how I've never danced with Marcus. Anywhere. Ever.

  Marcus asked Bridget if she was ready to go.

  “Whoo-hoo!” Bridget whooped. “Let's hit the road!”

  “I love you, Jessica,” Marcus said.

  “I know,” I replied.

  My eyes were dry as I watched the Caddie round the corner and drive out of sight.

  Pepe suggested that we cheer ourselves up over coffee and high carbs at Helga's diner. I didn't have the energy to tell him that this wasn't the best cheer-upper locale, as it was the first place Marcus and I ever went together in public. A nondate, I called it, because I couldn't bring myself to acknowledge that what was happening between Marcus and me was genuine. We were spotted there by the Clueless Crew, who made salacious accusations that it would take another year and a half to make good on. On that first night, the farthest we got was Marcus's gentle nibble on my bottom lip.

  To this day, I still wonder whether that lip nip counts as our first kiss.

  And now, as back on the nondate night, I walked through Helga's front doors and straight in to the innermost circle of high school hell: Manda, Len, Scotty, and an anonymous hobag were clustered by the cash register. I had nearly made it through the summer without seeing or being seen by them. This is why I don't like to leave the safety of my bedroom. Or Marcus's. To bump into them today of all days was just . . . so . . . me.

  Pepe, of course, was unfazed.

  “It's like a high school reunion here tonight!”

  And Manda, whose breasts are larger and realer than any on display in the Homemade Bikini Contest, said, “Jess! It's soooo great to see you! Where's Marcus? We wanted to hang out with you guys all summer! You're still together, right? Right?! Wait, are you two together?!”

  Len shuffled his feet and said, “Um.”

  The giant Thanksgiving Day parade balloon affixed to Scotty's neck said, “Mutherfucker.”

  And I said, “JESUS CHRIST! HAVEN'T YOU PEOPLE EVOLVED AT ALL?”

  Actually, I didn't. I did what I always do in situations like this. I made the kind of polite small talk that I hate, just to get it over with as quickly as possible. So I very calmly explained that no, Pepe and I weren't a couple because I was still with Marcus and he was still with Bridget and that we had just said good-bye to them because they were driving to California in the Caddie.

  Then Manda, who has never met another girl's boyfriend she didn't blow, said, “Wow, you must really trust them.”

  And Len looked up through his overgrown bangs and apologetically said, “Um.”

  And the dirigible asked, “Is Bridget still smokin' hot?”

  And the whole thing was so excruciating that I wanted to grab the minispoon out of the complimentary mint dish and stab myself in the eyes.

  Fortunately, they were on the way out. The fearsome foursome hadn't arrived together, but had simultaneously arrived at the cash register to pay their respective checks. Now they were all considering heading out to the Bamboo Bar for happy hour.

  “For old times' sake,” Manda said, which was a strange thing to say considering the old times included Len cheating on me with Manda, Manda cheating on Scotty with Len, and Scotty suggesting that we get back at both of them by banging each other.

  “I think we'll pass on the Boo,” Pepe said, saving me.

  “Your loss,” said the helium-headed beast. “Twenty-five-cent drafts.”

  “We have to get together before we go back to school,” Manda said, hugging me as tightly as one can with elephantine tits. “Oh, and your hair looks soooo cute, by the way.”

  My hair. DAMMIT.

  Len held out his hand all formal-like and said, “Um. It was really good to see you, Jess.”

  I shook it and said, “You too, Len.”

  And I sort of meant it, though it would have been nice to talk to him solo and find out about his first year at Cornell. But such opportunities aren't afforded to The Ex-Girlfriend Who Has Moved On. What Len lost in points for his questionable choice in companionship, he made up for in his choice of attire—a totally sincere Cornell T-shirt. This makes him the only other college-aged male besides Marcus who hasn't succumbed to the tyranny of the ironic T-shirt. To make my point, Scotty was wearing the worst of its kind: the fake homemade ironic T-shirt, the likes of which are often seen on the Ryan Seacrests of the world. This particular version was Astroturf green and silk-screened with the name of a nonexistent fitness club, but the print was faded and reversed, to create the illusion of being worn inside out, a lame trick confirmed by the location of the 95 percent cotton, 5 percent Lycra tag sewn on the inside of the shirt, rubbing up against Scotty's neck fat, and not on the outside of the shirt, which is where it would be if it were truly being worn inside out. But the hallmark of this fake homemade ironic T-shirt was the iron-on-like letters spelling MOST ATHLETIC across Scotty's double-barreled chest, as if he had come up with the fashion innovation all by himself. Gee, this secondhand shirt is really cool. But it would be really, really cool if I turned it inside out, and applied some iron-on irony. I'm gonna heat up the good ol' Proctor-Silex right now! And furthermore, this isn't even a smart choice for an ironic T-shirt because Scotty was indeed voted MOST ATHLETIC in our yearbook superlatives, which just goes to show you how irony has become so misused, abused, and confused in these early years of the twenty-first century.

  Okay, let's just get this out of the way: The reason I'm so annoyed by the pervasiveness of the fake homemade ironic T-shirt is that they ruin the purity of Marcus's genuine homemade ironic T-shirts of yore. There, I said it.

  By the time Pepe and I sat down at our table, I was thoroughly exhausted. I didn't feel like talking anymore, so while Pepe went on and on about how amped he was about starting at NYU, I pretended to take great care in picking songs from the minijukebox in our booth. And I was doing pretty well with not thinking about Marcus and the long stretch of highway ahead until later in the meal, when, in between mouthfuls of cheese fries, Pepe asked, “Isn't it funny how Marcus and Bridget are both in California, and you and I are both in New York?”

  “Yeah,” I replied. “It's a laugh riot. I'm in stitches. My gut, it's busting.”

  “Seriously, maybe Manda is on to something,” he said.

  “How so?”

  “Maybe we're in the wrong relationships,” he said, laughing.

  He meant it as a joke. And I even admired how secure he was in his love for Bridget to make it at all. But again, as before, my relationship with Marcus wasn't something I found humorous in any way.

  And now, as I'm lying alone in my own bed, I keep thinking about writhing against him last night, naked and vulnerable. Even after we'd both risen and fallen, peaked and plummeted, even after Marcus was physically shrinking from inside me, I couldn't stop clutching, crying, trying. Trying to pull him deeper, deeper, deeper within.

  Trying to make him more a part of me than I am myself.

  * * *

  December 15th

  Dear Hope,

  I'm on the bus home for winter break. Consider this letter a Christmas miracle. I apologize for being so distant last semester. You've heard my excu
ses before and I don't know what else I can say, except maybe this:

  Flash back ten years to Christmas 1993, and my first TV appearance in the Pineville Elementary School winter concert. This was during my short-lived career as a clarinet player, and I actually had a solo in the Beauty and the Beast part of the Disney medley. The show was only broadcast on the local cable station, but my family captured this legendary moment on video. It wasn't my performance that was so noteworthy—oh no!—but the appearance of my very first pimple. Not a bashful blemish, the scarlet starlet on my chin had so much personality that it practically upstaged me. My family dubbed our act “Notso & Friend,” my solo made into a duet.

  Throughout adolescence, other humiliations followed, including The First Day of School Furuncle, The Maid-of-Honor Nodule, and The Senior Portrait Pustule. My dermatologist prescribed an array of antibiotics and topical treatments, including a sulfur-based ointment that smelled like rotten eggs and gave my skin an Oompa Loompa hue. As each one failed to work, I learned to adapt to my acne. Like you'd mix paints on a palette, I taught myself to combine half a dozen shades of foundation to achieve the perfect camouflaging color. But no matter how much makeup I used or how often I reapplied it, my zits would inevitably shine through, being the attention-starved abscesses that they were (and still are).

  And finally, after nearly a decade, I was prescribed Accutane.

  On the back of each Accutane pill compartment there's a tiny drawing of a woman who appears to be at least eighteen months pregnant. A red JUST SAY NO diagonal slashes her distended belly. When I punch through the perforations to get to the pills, the little oval pictures come off in my hand. The pregnant-lady petals always end up on the carpet, often surrounding my bed. An offering to the goddess of Anti-Fertility. As if such measures were necessary. It's Dr. Rosen's duty to ask whether I'm using birth control, and I assume asking me about my sex life must be the highlight of a day primarily occupied by lancing boils. I disappoint him every month: “My method is abstinence.” The next time I see him, I hope to give him a thrill. “CONDOMS! I USE CONDOMS!”