STEP TWO: When the beautiful boy leaves for college, try not to cringe when his remaining lacrosse teammates call you by his name in the hallways. Cut your hair. Start sitting at the lunch table with the girls who hang out with boys in college. Avoid your friends on the swim team; they don’t understand you any more.
Go to a party with girls from the new lunch table; their older brothers from college are throwing it. Believe that the beautiful boy will be there, or at least one of his friends. Think that maybe if he knows how much you’ve changed, that you can now drink beer and smoke cigarettes and take bong rips without coughing, he will take you back and make you feel the way he did when he took you to the playground near his old house in Arlington. It will be just like that scene from Grease, where Sandy reappears in all black and puts out her cigarette in Danny’s face.
Hide your disappointment when neither the beautiful boy nor his friends are at the party. Accomplish this by drinking too many beers for the first time. Practice flirting with a random stranger, probably someone’s brother. Recall lessons from older girls at the pool; review STEP ONE. Characteristics of said stranger: not too tall; not too thin; definitely too old; definitely does not smell like soap and citrus and cigarettes like the beautiful boy.
When he asks you to go upstairs, go. It’s a good idea to make out with older boys, and also to do what other people want you to do. Pay no mind that his friend is following you up the McMansion’s carpeted steps too. Continue to ignore the stranger and his friend as they watch you urinate in the upstairs bathroom. Don’t check your hair as you leave the bathroom. Remember how embarrassed you felt after your dad yelled at you for making faces in the mirror while he read you a bedtime story; he said you were too vain.
There’s no point in screaming when they hold you down; you’re two floors away from the basement party and the bass line is too deep. If you feel the need to scream anyway, do so, despite knowing the aforesaid.
When your friend asks you after English class on Monday if you’re okay, because she heard something “weird” happened at the party on Saturday, say something, anything, in as bitchy a voice as you’ve learned, and walk away as quickly as possible. You should not speak of this again for three years.
You’ve made progress when you’ve fucked every single boy on the lacrosse team. You no longer have feelings. You no longer like food.
This is called building character. Alternatively, hardening the heart.
Ed. note: This is part 2 of a serial essay. Read part 1. And stay tuned!
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