Confessions Of An Angry Girl

“Stealing from H&M is not a felony.”

“You mean stealing from H&M twice is not a felony.”

“Sure, that, too.”

Robert has a crappy life, and sometimes he does bad things, like steal and lie. He lives with not one but two stepparents. His mother bailed and his father got remarried. Then his father bailed, and his stepmother remarried, and Robert ended up with her and her new husband. Is that even legal? I have no idea. But it definitely seems crappy to me. As annoying as Robert can be, even he doesn’t deserve that.

He makes another big show of inhaling and exhaling, blowing the smoke through his nose. “Forta likes you.”

“I am not the kind of girl he likes. He likes the Regina Deladdos of the world.”

“Tracy said he carried your horn and opened the car door for you that time.”

“Maybe he was raised well.”

“He doesn’t look like it. He wears the same clothes to school every day.”

“That’s the kind of thing a girl would say.”

“Tracy said it,” he admitted.

“She would notice.”

“Robert and Rosie sounds better than Jamie and Rosie.”

I look at him for a second, this guy I’ve known since I was eleven, and he looks hurt. To be honest, I like the sound of Jamie and Rosie. Robert and Rosie is too much alliteration for me. But I’m not going to say that. I’ve already been mean enough for one day, and it’s only seven-fifteen. Besides, I don’t feel like reminding him what alliteration is.

“I’ve always aspired to select my relationships based on how they’ll sound inscribed on the wall in the lavatory,” I say.

“Stop talking like that, AP English.” He grabs my coat to make me stop walking. “Will you go to homecoming with me?”

I knew this was coming. And even though homecoming is two months away, I’m kind of surprised it took him this long, considering he’s been suspicious of Jamie since the first week of school, and also considering that everyone we know has already decided who they’re going with. Tracy’s going with Matt, who still isn’t speaking to me, which is fine, because I’m not speaking to him, either. Stephanie is going with the swim-team thug that Tracy and Matt set her up with this summer, Mike Darren. Everyone knows who they’re going with except me. And Robert.

To be honest, I don’t want to go. I’m not in the mood for dancing these days—go figure. But I have to, or I’ll never hear the end of it from Tracy. Or my mother, for that matter. My mother expects me to go on living as if everything were still completely normal. She seems incapable of understanding why I might not feel like going to a dance right now. She seems incapable of understanding me in general.

I look at Robert. “Do you promise not to lie to me ever again?” I ask, knowing full well that this is not a promise he’ll be able to keep.

“I didn’t lie about anything!”

“You told me Jamie Forta asked you to find out if I was going.”

“That wasn’t a lie, that was a tactic.”

“It was a lie.”

He drops his cigarette and concentrates hard on putting it out with his thrift-store Doc Martens. I wonder if he paid for those boots or if he acquired them on one of his “excursions.”

“Sorry,” he mumbles. “But I was only using it as a tactic. It wasn’t going to stay a lie.”

I’m not entirely sure what that means, but I get the gist. I start walking again. He follows me.

“Do I have to wear a dress?” I say.

“It would be nice.”

“Do I have to wear makeup?”

“I don’t care.”

“High heels?”

“Rosie!”

“Okay, I’ll go.”

“Don’t sound so excited,” he says.

“I don’t like dances.”

“What are you talking about? You love dancing!”

“Dances and dancing are two separate things.”

He rolls his eyes. “But you’ll go?”

“Yes, Robert. I’ll go.”

“Okay,” he says, looking so happy it makes me regret saying yes.

envenom (verb): to make bitter, to fill with bad feeling

(see also: Regina’s specialty)

6

TRACY'S HALLOWEEN PARTY already sucks and it hasn’t even started. She decided to throw the thing as soon as she made cheerleading last month because apparently it’s important for the new girls to kiss up to the older girls. She doesn’t put it that way, though—she says the younger girls have to pay their dues by hosting parties and things like that.

She keeps talking about how pretty the cheerleaders on “the squad” are, like being pretty is the most important thing in the world. When I roll my eyes, she just shakes her head like I couldn’t possibly understand how important all this stuff is. And she’s right—I don’t. I don’t think we should still have cheerleaders that prance around in short skirts repeating stupid rhymes, flashing their underwear to cheer on boys without doing so much as a cartwheel. It’s the twenty-first century—shouldn’t we be more evolved than this?

If Tracy weren’t my best friend, I wouldn’t be here hanging decorations for a “cheer party” while she and Stephanie finish putting on their costumes and looking for the key to Tracy’s parents’ liquor cabinet. I’d be home, probably, secretly wishing I were still allowed to go trick-or-treating and watching something on HBO without permission while my mom was locked away in her office writing up her notes on all the crazy kids she listened to that week. Or I’d be… I don’t know where else I’d be. I spend all my time with Tracy, so it’s kind of hard to know what I’d be doing if she weren’t my best friend.

This is the first time Tracy’s parents have ever left her home alone, and I know it will be the last. I tried to tell her that this party is a bad idea and could get her into serious trouble, but I don’t think she actually hears me when words come out of my mouth anymore. Her house is beautiful and her parents collect antiques. Like, real antiques, shipped over from England and Portugal. When I mention this to Trace, she just says, “That’s why we’re having the party in the basement! There’s nothing valuable down there.”

I refrain from asking her if she’s going to lock everyone in, making them come and go through the little windows that are high up near the ceiling.

Something tells me that the two of us are not going to have an easy year.

We had a big fight earlier, when we were making chocolate-chip freezer cookies for the party. She told me that she and Matt were going to do it tonight. I told her that I had finally decided that fifteen is too young. She didn’t like that at all. She changed the subject, saying that I need to find an activity, or a group, or something so that people will know who I am. “Like, you know, I’m known as a cheerleader now,” she said. “What are they going to say about you? And don’t say, ‘She plays French horn in the orchestra’ because, I’m sorry, but that’s just lame.” I shoved some candy in my mouth to stop myself from saying, At least playing French horn takes some talent. Instead I said, “I’m a runner” to which she replied, “Not on a team, you’re not,” to which I replied, “Well at least running is a real sport, not like cheerleading,” to which she replied, “It’s good enough for Regina and she’s Jamie’s girlfriend.”