Chapter 11
Mike Bale threw a big party every year on the last day of spring exams at his parents’ cottage on Cedar Lake.
It was usually reserved for athletes and hot people, but there was a small intersection with Cool Arts Kids, which we, as newly minted Drama Club Royalty, were adjacent to.
We weren’t invited until the grade-twelve party, and we spent a lot of time discussing our outfits.
Theo went for jeans and green hoodie. I wore a royal-blue satin halter top with lace trim, as was the rage, and jeans.
I put gold glitter on my eyelids and twisted my hair into a tight, spiky bun.
When Theo picked me up, he clutched his heart, pretending to swoon.
“You’re the most beautiful girl in the world,” he said, and I believed him. I felt cool. Upon arrival, I realized that I’d gotten it half right: The girls were all in strappy, stringy handkerchief tops, but I’d overshot it with the glitter.
“Going to prom?” asked Carissa, a girl in my science class, looking me up and down.
“Oh!” I said. “Uh, yeah, maybe?”
She walked away laughing, and I quickly dipped into the bathroom, where I wiped off the eye shadow and pulled my hair out of the bun. It fell loose and wavy around my face in a way that was suddenly pretty.
Theo was waiting in the hall and handed me a Smirnoff Ice. I took a large gulp. “This tastes like candy,” I said. He grinned.
“You changed your hair,” he said. I shrugged. “I like it.” He squeezed my hand.
We did intentional laps around the party, pretending to be looking for people we knew, or pretending to be heading somewhere, all the while taking it all in. At one point, someone handed me another drink. It turned out they relaxed me.
I had five. I think. I lost count.
Somewhere, later in my blur, Kelsie clapped her hands.
“Spin the bottle!” she announced. “Everyone sit in a circle.” A few people shuffled out of the room awkwardly. Theo glanced at me and reached for my hand.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said, but Kelsie grabbed us both and pushed us into the circle. I giggled, too drunk to notice that Theo had gone very quiet.
We sat. It was a strange group, mostly the hockey team, a few hot nerds, and even fewer artsy kids.
I did a quick scan of the group: The boys were all people I recognized but certainly never spoke to.
I sat up as straight as I could. Even in my stupor, I recognized a social opportunity.
If the role called for it, sure, I would kiss any of these idiots.
I looked across the circle at Theo, my beautiful, handsome Theo, who was so much more appealing than any of them.
I smiled at him, and he smiled back tightly.
Was he mad at me, that I was so willing to kiss these other boys?
I searched his face for a clue, but he was staring at the bottle.
Kelsie spun first. It landed on Mike Bale, our host, the coolest guy in our grade, by conventional standards.
Rumor had it they were already sleeping together.
“Fixed!” whooped a hockey player named Jake something. “Go again!” Kelsie smirked and crawled over to Mike and stuck her tongue down his throat for about five minutes, much longer than was comfortable to watch.
“I hope that’s not the precedent,” I said quietly to no one in particular.
“That’s Mike,” said a drunk girl next to me. “He’s not the president. It’s Canada, duh.” She looked at me like I was completely stupid.
Mike spun next and got Carissa, which made Kelsie sulk, especially since he didn’t exactly hold back. Carissa spun hard. The bottle did about five full rotations before slowing in front of Brittany, a girl who sat behind me in math and never stopped talking.
“Oops, I’ll go again!” said Carissa, but the hockey boys were already chanting “Kiss her! Kiss her!” Carissa looked at Brittany, who gave a bored shrug. She crossed the circle hesitantly, leaned down, and kissed Brittany quickly on the lips. She pulled away, laughing awkwardly.
“Hey!” boomed Mike. “Too short! It has to be ten seconds!”
“Says who?” snapped Kelsie.
“New rule,” he said casually and the boys high-fived. Carissa rolled her eyes. She leaned in and pressed her mouth to Brittany’s closed mouth, hands on her hips, while the boys counted down from ten, whooping.
“Are you happy?” Kelsie asked Mike. She was truly pissed off by this point.
“Very!” He laughed. “Brittany, go!”
Brittany sighed but spun the bottle. The boys were fully riled up by now, their guttural grunts somehow adding momentum to the bottle.
It stopped in front of Theo. I scowled, but he caught my eye from across the circle and winked at me.
He jumped up and met Brittany in the middle of the circle, put one arm around her, flung the other across his neck, dipped her dramatically, and gave her a big, emphatic smack on the lips, and nine more little ones on alternating cheeks while the boys counted down.
When Theo stood her back up, Brittany, who I had never seen crack a smile, was belly laughing.
She hugged Theo, and everyone clapped. He glanced across the circle at me, and I joined the applause.
My sweet, silly boyfriend: He knew how to put on a show.
He was saving his real kisses for me. My heart surged with love.
“Nice one, Raymond,” said Jake. “Your go!” Theo shrugged, emboldened by his success, probably already planning his next performance. He spun with aplomb.
It landed on Mike.
“Whoa, whoa!” Mike held up his hands. “Go again.” The hockey players grunted in agreement.
“No!” Kelsie jumped up. “You made the rules.” She smirked, looking around the circle for support, but all eyes were on Theo. He looked at Mike, questioning, but Mike just stared at him hard, dead-eyed.
Theo slowly made his way over, not breaking eye contact. It felt like we all leaned in to see what would happen. Theo stopped a hair away from Mike’s mouth, then dipped his mouth forward.
“Ten! Nine! Eight!” Jake started to shout, but no one joined him. They were silent. They were watching what looked like a pretty real kiss. Between boys.
It lasted maybe three seconds before Mike grabbed Theo by the shoulders and pushed him.
“What the fuck, dude!” He jumped back as if Theo had bitten him. Theo fell to the ground.
Everyone was staring at Theo. He stood up and shrugged. “You made the rules, dude,” he said with surprising bravado, staring evenly at Mike.
“Fucking homo.” Mike said it so quietly that for a moment I thought I had misheard him. I looked at Theo and knew instantly that I had heard right. He stepped back out of the circle and left the room. We all looked at Mike.
“Beer pong!” he yelled, jumping up, and his lemmings fist punched the air in support. The circle broke up quickly, and I ran out of the room after Theo.
He was in a bedroom, sitting on the bed, head in his hands. I closed the door quietly behind me.
“That really just happened?” His voice was low and dull. I’d never heard that tone before.
“Um, I mean, yes,” I said. “But everyone is really drunk, like, you know what, they will probably all forget about it by Monday.”
Theo looked up at me. There were tears in his eyes. “No, Mira. They won’t.”
I sat next to him. I pulled him toward me. “Who cares what they say. You’re with me. You have a girlfriend.” He looked at me blankly.
“Mira.”
“Kiss me!” I said. “No one kissed me. I want you to kiss me. Everything is okay.” I kissed him hard, too hard to know if he was kissing me back. I slid my hand between his legs. I’d never done that before.
“What are you doing?” He pulled back, his eyes wide.
“I want . . . I want to be with you,” I said. “We don’t do anything. I want . . .” I felt wild, emboldened by the alcohol. “I want to have sex.”
Theo sighed. “You don’t get it . . .”
“I do! I do!” I jumped up. “You’re nervous.
You respect me. You wanted to wait.” All these months, these were the refrains.
All this time, I had felt treasured, exalted, beyond objectification.
But now I was drunk, and confused. I reached behind my neck and untied my top.
It flapped down to my waist, exposing my breasts.
Theo looked at them, alarmed. I leaned in to kiss him again.
I grabbed his hands and placed them on my chest. He jumped back, his hands up like he was guilty.
“Mira, stop!” He stood up, his back against the wall, looking at me wide-eyed. “You’re ruining everything!”
I pulled my hands to cover myself. “I’m your girlfriend! I—I love you!”
Theo slid down the wall. “No, you don’t.”
I stood up over him. “I do. I always have.” This was not how this moment was supposed to go.
“I . . . You’re my best friend.” His voice was strained. “But we need to break up.”
It felt like he had punched me in the throat. I looked at him, incredulous, but couldn’t speak.
“I-I’m . . . I think I need to figure out . . . I think I’m . . .” He looked at me helplessly.
“Are you . . . gay?” I whispered, the thought barely in my head before it was out of my mouth.
He was quiet for a minute. “Maybe,” he said softly. “Yeah.” He looked up at me again, his magic brown eyes searching my face. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I do love you too . . . just . . .”
I was drunk. I was seventeen. And I was fucking heartbroken.
“Figure that shit out on your own, Theodore Raymond,” I snapped. “I’m done with you. God, I’m such an idiot!”
I stormed out of the room, nearly knocking over Kelsie and Carissa, who were pressed up against the door, listening. “I told you he was gay . . .” I heard Kelsie murmur to her friend as I brushed past, tears streaming.
The party was back in full swing. I looked around wildly.
I grabbed a half-full glass that had been abandoned on an end table and chugged it.
Tequila. I coughed, sputtering, but downed the rest. I charged across the room and out to the deck, where a few of the hockey boys were pouring beer down each other’s throats.
“Somebody, kiss me,” I demanded. They stopped and stared at me.
“What are you saying, Drama Girl?”
“I need to kiss someone. Right now.” I glared at them. A couple shook their heads, laughing.
“Crazy bitch,” one muttered. But a tall blond guy named Cole laughed, finished his beer, grabbed my face, and kissed me.
He tasted like beer and smoke, and his tongue felt large and muscly in an unappealing way, but he went for it in a way Theo never had, his hands roaming down my body.
We came up for air, and his friends whooped.
“Much obliged,” I said pertly, and turned to leave.
“Hey, wait.” He grabbed my hand. “That was weird. And hot. You’re weird.”
“And hot,” I said.
“You wanna go somewhere?” he asked. I shrugged, mostly because I didn’t know what he meant.
He meant we should go find an empty bedroom, and, failing that, Mike’s dad’s boat, which was parked in the driveway.
He meant he should fumble around with my halter top tie before giving up, unzipping his fly, and pushing my head down.
I never even saw my first penis before it was in my mouth. I threw up on it. He left me there.
Theo and I didn’t speak for two weeks. It nearly killed me. It was a welcome relief when I came home from school one day and found a bouquet of daisies and a note.
Mirabel,
I’m so sorry I hurt you. I’m sorry I can’t love you the way you want me to. But I do love you. So, so much. Please forgive me. You’re my best friend.
Love, Theo
I sniffed the daisies. He was right: They didn’t smell very good. But they were still lovely. I went inside and phoned him.
“Tempest is doing Romeo and Juliet this summer,” I blurted out before he even had a chance to speak. My parents had told me over dinner two nights before, and it had killed me not to tell Theo immediately. “I think we should audition.”