Chapter 1 #4
The next time he said hi to her in the hallway, she averted her gaze, and after a few days of trying to say hi, he gave up.
She told Katie that she just wasn’t feeling it anymore, and Katie didn’t press it.
She changed her screen name back to feversandmirrors, a Bright Eyes reference, and started wearing her regular clothes again, though sometimes she did miss having a reason to dress so boyishly.
Still, she very much felt that he owned the trademark of his style, and unless she was pursuing him, it was no longer hers to appropriate.
“Susan, I have to tell you something,” Katie said one day, leaning against Susan’s locker. “Kyle is telling everyone that you’re a slut.”
Susan felt all the blood rush out of her face. “He called me a slut because … I didn’t hook up with him?”
“I think you can work this to your advantage,” Katie said, ever the optimist. “Your new reputation can be, like, slutty music snob. That’s kind of hot. Don’t you think?”
Susan considered it. There was another benefit to the allegations, one she wasn’t ready to articulate even to Katie: If people thought Susan was someone who fucked boys, they wouldn’t know how desperately she didn’t want to fuck boys.
She resolved not to defend herself, and for the next two years, she sat back and let the rumors circulate.
Susan and Katie look at each other. I’m so sorry, Katie mouths. Susan clenches her jaw. She can do this. She can hang out with Kyle.
She puts the car back in drive.
Jake has never paid attention to rumors and gossip; it’s part of his charm, one of the reasons Susan approves of him for Katie. So she can forgive him for bringing Kyle. She has to at least try.
She makes two lefts and a right, pulling up to the house she’s seen countless times.
Jake unbuckles his seat belt. “Don’t worry, Susan. Kyle knows you’re coming and didn’t say anything about it, so I think it’s all good.”
Before she can reply, he bounds out of the car and up the front steps.
Susan feels her stomach twisting. “I want to die,” she says, and for a moment she rests her head on the steering wheel, wondering if this is a nightmare she can force herself to wake up from.
Katie puts a hand on her arm and squeezes.
Not a nightmare, then.
Susan lifts her head as she hears Jake and Kyle approaching. And then they’re in the back seat.
Kyle looks a little beefier than the last time she saw him, but his hair is still in a blond swoop and he’s wearing a Thursday T-shirt that she recognizes.
Their eyes meet in the rearview mirror and Susan starts to sweat.
The last time they’d spoken in person was in his car by the lake; she assumes he thinks she’s the weirdest person on the planet.
He wouldn’t be wrong, she thinks. She wonders why she can’t just be normal and like boys the way Katie does.
Katie would have been thrilled to have her hand perched on the lumpy crotch of her crush, not repulsed.
“Hi,” she forces herself to say.
“Oh, hey, Susan,” he says. Casual. Cool. Like this is normal.
Susan’s face has never felt so red. She can’t believe she’s been ambushed like this. “So you guys are in school together?” she says. Kyle and Jake were in different friend groups in high school. Different social classes, really. “But, Kyle, aren’t you at…”
“Columbia,” Jake says, interrupting her. “There was, like, a party. In his dorm. I actually can’t remember how I ended up there.”
“Love at first sight,” says Kyle, and they begin pushing each other and laughing.
Katie looks just as surprised as Susan is. “When you told me about your new friend Kyle, I didn’t realize you meant … Kyle Kyle,” she says.
“Kyle Kyle!” Jake chants in response. “That should be your new name.”
Kyle laughs.
“Cool,” Susan says. “Okay, seat belts.” She’s going to put on a smile and get through this.
“Wait,” Kyle says. “Do you mind if we give one more person a ride?”
Susan looks sideways at Katie, who mouths, I don’t fucking know.
“Sure, Kyle Kyle,” Susan says, trying to push through her growing sense of dread and give in to whatever this night is turning into: something beyond her control.
Besides, the last thing she needs is Kyle thinking she’s even more of a wet blanket than he probably already does. “Just tell me where to go.”
“It’s one town over. It’s on the way, actually.”
With both boys in the back seat, the smell of Axe body spray is overwhelming.
Susan rolls down the windows as she gets on the Long Island Expressway.
Katie turns the stereo on. A Yo La Tengo song is next on the mix CD, and Susan raises the volume as loud as it’ll go.
For a moment, she can forget that there’s anyone else in the car, and it’s just her and Katie and you in your autumn sweater.
Then Kyle is telling her to get off at the next exit and her reverie ends. She turns the volume down so she can hear him. He directs her through a quiet neighborhood and to a split-level house with a well-manicured lawn.
“You can just honk,” he says, and she does, even though she knows it’s impolite.
Within minutes the rear door opens and a girl slides in.
“Hi!” the girl says, buckling her seat belt.
“Hey, you,” Kyle says, and puts an arm around her.
Katie rests a hand on Susan’s knee. She mouths, I’m so sorry. Susan ignores her. She’s too stressed. This is all so much at once.
But more than anything, she wants to seem like she’s cool with whatever, so she turns around and faces her new passenger. “I’m Susan,” she says.
“Eliza,” the girl says.
Looking her up and down, Susan’s first thought is that Eliza is deeply out of place in her beat-up Volvo.
She’s wearing flared black yoga pants folded over at the waist with a white spaghetti-strap tank top, her black bra straps showing, and a chunky silver choker.
Susan can tell from her limited knowledge of jewelry that it’s real, probably the one from Tiffany.
She has a few inches of dark roots but otherwise her hair is butter blond and falls limply around her face, which is slightly orange, like fake tanner or the wrong shade of foundation.
She’s pretty anyway, though, clearly popular.
She’s holding herself with the confidence of someone who is used to being well liked, admired.
She looks like someone who would have bullied Susan and Katie in middle school and is definitely too pretty to be hanging out with this crowd of misfits.
But that was always the thing about Kyle Fishman; the boundaries of cliques do not apply to him. So maybe it does make sense.
Susan squints. “You look really familiar,” she says.
“I get that a lot,” Eliza says, and next to her, Kyle is smirking, as though there’s a joke Susan doesn’t get.
Katie finally turns around, her face full of judgment. “Hi,” she says, clearly pissed. “Oh, wait,” she says, brightening. “You do look familiar! What year are you?”
“I’m about to be a junior. You guys don’t look familiar to me at all,” Eliza says.
“Do you go to our school?” Katie says.
“Nope,” Eliza says, and by the way she says it Susan can tell they need to drop it.
“Okay,” Susan says. “Sorry. Everyone ready?”
“I remember when we were juniors,” Katie says, faux wistfully, and Susan laughs.
“A hundred and one years ago,” she says.
“Oh, come on!” Jake shouts from the back. “You guys don’t even know. Just wait.”
Susan gets back on the LIE, wondering what Kyle is doing hanging out with someone so much younger. Two years is one thing, but three is a world of difference. As she merges, she meets Eliza’s green eyes in the rearview mirror.
“Yes?” Eliza says.
Susan is a little bit scared of Eliza and how direct she is. “Sorry,” Susan says, looking back at the road. “You just don’t look like someone who would go to a What-What show.”
Eliza tilts her head to the left. “A what now?”
Susan feigns surprise. “Uh, the band we’re seeing tonight?”
Eliza starts to laugh. “That’s how you pronounce it?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Susan says, trying hard to keep a straight face as she teases Eliza. “Two question marks in a row are obviously pronounced What-What.”
“I’ve been saying question mark, question mark,” Eliza says.
Susan finally breaks, erupting into giggles.
Eliza looks quietly out the window, as though embarrassed. Susan immediately feels bad, and silently vows to be nicer.
“So,” Katie interjects, “how long have you guys been going out for?”
Kyle says, “Since the summer began.”
At the same time, Eliza says, flatly, “We’re not.”
“Uh-oh,” Katie says.
“Kyle wishes,” Eliza clarifies. “I’m still thinking about it.”
Susan wonders what there even is to consider. They look right together, squeezed into the back seat. More right than Susan would have ever looked with him.
Out of the corner of the rearview mirror, Susan sees Jake fishing around in his jacket pocket but has to look where she’s going and misses what he’s produced until he hands it to Katie and she takes a swig.
“Ew,” Katie says. “What is this, nail polish remover?”
“Sorry, but can you guys not drink in my car?” Susan says.
“What?” Kyle says, laughing. “Drinking and driving refers to the driver.”
“I heard that if you get pulled over and there are underage people drinking in your car, it’s on you,” Susan says. “I mean, that’s what my parents said.” She’s getting nervous.
“That’s stupid,” Kyle says.
“Maybe you guys should just do what she says,” Eliza pipes up. “She’s giving you a ride, after all.”
Kyle pulls his arm back from where it’s been around Eliza’s shoulders. “You don’t have to be a bitch about it,” he says.
Susan chooses to ignore this. “Thank you,” she says to Eliza.
Jake puts the flask away. “We can wait until we get there,” he says, clearly trying to keep the peace. “Sorry, Susan.”
At the next stop sign, Katie puts a hand on Susan’s arm. Are you okay, she mouths.
Susan nods, forcing a shaky smile.