Notes from the Blender Page 2

  Though I thought I’d handled myself pretty well up until that moment, now I was this close to losing it. It’s not you, it’s me is such crap. It’s what people say when it really is you but they don’t have the balls to be honest about it.

  I quickly put out the distress signal to my BFF. Thumbs moving furiously, I texted 3rd fl bathroom. Bldg C. Now!!!

  She hit me up immediately, just like I knew she would. Coming. I could always count on Lulu to have my back.

  I made a beeline to the girls’ room and locked myself in a stall, fingers pressing hard against my temples. I waited until I felt positive I wasn’t going to cry, then flushed the toilet to make it seem like I’d been peeing the whole time, washed my hands, and splashed a little cold water on my face.

  “You okay, Neilly?” I looked up to find Suzy Melendez, wannabe Gossip Girl, peering at me in the mirror like maybe if she looked long enough, she could just skip the questions and go straight to reading my mind.

  I patted my face with one of those horribly scratchy brown paper towels that absorb nothing and gave her a fake smile. “Sure, fine. Just freshening up before class.”

  “Oh, good,” she said, sounding way more disappointed than happy. “I thought maybe you were upset about what happened Saturday night.”

  It obviously had something to do with Sam and what he’d been up to while I was out of town with my dad. Whatever it was, I didn’t want to give Suzy the satisfaction of being the one to tell me all the sordid details and then witness my sure-to-be-horrified reaction, so I bluffed my way out of it. “I know what happened this weekend,” I said. “It’s totally cool.”

  Suzy’s eyes got so big and round she ended up looking like an anime character. “Wow, that’s loyalty. I wish I had a friend as good as you.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest and leaned back against the sink—all casual, all cool, all the time. “Yup, that’s me. Loyal as hell.”

  Before Suzy could push it any further, Lulu came flying through the girls’ room door, her face all red and sweaty. I was touched she’d made such a humongous effort to get to me before the final bell, and I was just about to tell her so when Suzy started stirring things up again.

  “Hey, Lulu, you’re so lucky to have Neilly as a friend. I mean, she’s not even mad at you for kissing Sam at Crane’s party! I guess you guys really do share everything, huh?”

  I blinked hard. So my best friend and my boyfriend had hooked up while I was in San Fran? I’d only been gone for two days, for chrissakes! I knew high school guys were total horndogs, but couldn’t Sam have waited until I got home if he needed to make out with someone so badly?

  “I wouldn’t exactly say everything.” I could barely see Lulu through the narrow slits that had suddenly become my eyes.

  “Neilly, please. We need to talk,” Lulu said, like I hadn’t already figured that one out.

  Suzy just stood there, probably taking notes in her head to blab and blog about later. “I thought you already heard all about this?”

  “Oh, I’ve heard everything I need to hear,” I spat, taking off with Lulu hot on my trail and Suzy stalking right behind her like the paparazzi.

  “Neilly, will you please just stop and listen to what I have to say?”

  Um, no, Lulu. I didn’t want the entire universe to witness my complete and utter humiliation, so I picked up the pace. But just when I thought I was home free, Lu grabbed a hunk of my hoodie and stopped me dead in my tracks.

  “Neilly, it’s like this. Sam and I were just talking,” she began, then turned to Suzy. “Do you mind? We’d like a little privacy here.”

  Suzy reluctantly left us alone, but I still wasn’t about to let Lu get away with her lame-ass excuses. “The last I knew, talking and hooking up weren’t exactly the same thing.”

  Lu twisted a clump of auburn hair around her finger, a habit she tends to fall back on when she’s (a) nervous, (b) caught in a lie, or (c) both. I assumed it was “c” in this instance. “Please, Neilly, you have to believe me. It wasn’t like that at all.”

  “Then what was it like, Lu? What could you possibly say to make this okay?”

  She shrugged pathetically. “I don’t know.… I wasn’t feeling well so I was lying down…and then suddenly there was Sam, telling me how much he loved you…and how he was worried about going to your dad’s ceremony…and then …”

  Her story totally wasn’t working for me, so I made up a better ending. Too bad it was only make believe. “You pulled a tragic rock-star move, choked on your own puke, and he had to do mouth-to-mouth to save your life but everyone mistakenly assumed you were making out?”

  Lulu opened and closed her mouth several times before any words came out. “Not exactly, but—”

  “No buts, bitch. You’re officially dead to me.”

  I stormed away as Lu yelled, “Neilly, I’m sorry! I never meant for it to happen, and it will never happen again! I’d take it all back if I could!”

  It’s three miles to my house from school, I am currently carless, and I was wearing fashionable but uncomfortable moccasins at the time. None of that stopped me from running like hell to get home. I just wanted to crawl under a blanket and nurse my wounded pride with Wubster (my nearly-worn-through stuffed bunny), a few episodes of The Secret Life of the American Teenager (my drama is nothing compared to those kids), and a pint of Cherry Garcia (my absolute favorite comfort food).

  All of which was a great idea, except when I finally made it to my front door, I couldn’t find my key anywhere. I patted all my pockets, checked all over the ground, searched every inch of my backpack. Still nothing. So I limped around to the backyard—blisters had replaced the things formerly known as the backs of my heels—and retrieved the spare from its hiding place inside a fake rock. (Like robbers totally wouldn’t be able to tell the gray plastic thing was different than the other real brown rocks back there—but whatever, it makes my mother feel better knowing I won’t ever be locked out.)

  Gimping back up front, I turned the key in the lock. I wasn’t expecting my mom for another five hours or so—maybe even more, since she’d been working late and traveling on business a lot more in the past few months—and I was actually grateful to be alone in my misery. My plan was to wallow a bit, rage a bit, and then make my mom feel really sorry for me when she got home so she’d totally baby me.

  But a triple whammy hit me instead. I walked inside my house to find that not only was my mother already there but she was also making lunch in the kitchen wearing nothing but a towel. What’s worse, a nondescript middle-aged guy, dressed in the same appalling way, was chopping vegetables right next to her. And the final kicker: he was nibbling away at the red peppers and my mom’s ear.

  “What are you doing here?” my mom finally squeaked after she was done screaming and throwing a hand over her terrycloth-covered chest.

  “I’d ask you the same thing if it wasn’t so obvious.” The Secret Life marathon, ice-cream pity party, and TLC from Mommy Dearest clearly weren’t meant to be.

  “Neilly, we need to talk.”

  My mom—the one who had always prided herself on being so open with me, the one I told almost everything to and thought told everything to me—had just been revealed as a complete and utter fraud. I had no clue who the guy was, leading me to believe I didn’t know who my mother was anymore, either.

  “You’re a grown woman. You don’t have to ask my permission to get laid,” I shot back at her.

  My mom got that look on her face—the one where her top lip quivers right before the waterworks start. “No. But I would like your permission to get married,” she said softly.

  It was the final straw. After my dad announced he wanted a divorce in order to be with “Uncle” Roger—his new law partner who soon became his new life partner—my mom told me she’d sworn off men forever. I believe all the good ones are gay were her exact words. And now…this. Total shocker, and I don’t mean that in a good way.

  “Permission not granted!” I yel
led, and slammed right back out the front door.

  I quickly dialed my dad’s cell, but it went directly to voice mail. I didn’t even bother to leave a message, just started walking again. Eventually, I looked up and realized I had no clue what part of town I was in and no one to call to come get me anyway.

  The only thing that saved me from going completely insane was the cute little church at the end of the block. It was white clapboard with an old-fashioned steeple, and it had a sign out front that read ALL ARE WELCOME, ALWAYS. I figured that must include me.

  So I walked inside, looked around to see if anyone was there—it was completely empty—and plunked myself down on a worn wooden pew. And then I just sat there, staring from a stained-glass window of Jesus to the rainbow flags lining the walls to the statue of Buddha on the altar and back again, wondering what crazy kind of religion believed in all those things.

  I also wondered what the hell to do next. I’d given up on church once I realized my dad wouldn’t be welcome anymore in the one we used to go to. And I’d also pretty much given up on any God that would condemn a person for falling in love with someone just because they were the “wrong” gender. So I couldn’t exactly sit there and pray, because if there was a God, he was probably just as pissed at me as I was at Him.

  So instead, I did the only thing I could think of—I put my head in my hands and cried like a baby. All alone, with no need to pretend I didn’t have feelings like I do all the time at school, my body was flooded with total relief.

  Until I realized I wasn’t alone at all.

  “I think I know exactly how you feel right now.”

  For a second, I thought maybe God, Jesus, or their mutual friend Buddha was making a private appearance. But then I saw through my tears that the voice had actually come from a scrawny, scraggly-haired guy in a black Opeth T-shirt. Though he looked like he’d never spent a single day in the sun—he was so pale I could’ve easily been convinced he was an honest-to-goodness vampire—and he clearly liked listening to music designed to make people want to kill themselves or each other, there was something about him that made me feel like maybe I could trust him. Which was a good thing, since I didn’t have much of a choice now, did I?

  “I am not crying,” I told him, wiping away those stupid tears. “And don’t you ever tell anyone I was, or I’ll have to kill you.”

  It was such a dumb thing to say in a church, especially to a guy who looked as if he’d more likely be the one to kill me, we both started cracking up like long-lost friends.

  CHAPTER THREE

  DECLAN

  I JUST WANT TO MAKE IT CLEAR THAT IT’S NOT LIKE I expected Dad to stay celibate for the rest of his life. I have no idea if the horniness that clouds my thinking at all times of the day and night is something that ever goes away. If not, it has probably been a really long six years for Dad since Mom died. And it’s bad enough that I have to endure this torture; I certainly wouldn’t wish it on anybody else.

  So, yes, it has occurred to me that my weekends at Sarah and Lisa’s house might serve the dual purpose of allowing Dad to discreetly get some without introducing the problem of my reaction to a new maternal figure. It was an arrangement that suited me fine. Dad has certainly been more patient and relaxed since I started spending Saturday nights away, and I do suspect this is not just because he’s content that I’m getting a weekly dose of Unitarian Universalism. And I never had to meet whoever the bimbo was and have the horrifying mental picture of my dad and this woman getting sweaty together storm the fortress of my mind.

  I mean, really, it was a perfect arrangement. Dad gets laid once a week, I get a more relaxed father, and I can still pretend my dad is an asexual bald guy who just happened to join a gym a year ago and has rock-hard man boobs.

  But Dad had to go and ruin it. “Her name is Carmen. Carmen Foster. Her daughter, Neilly, goes to your school,” Dad said, immediately after informing me that he was getting married.

  It was at that point that I ran up to my room and slammed the door. I felt kind of bad about that because I was sure Dad would interpret my behavior as an indication I was so upset by his revelation that I had to stomp off and be by myself.

  I did have to be by myself, but this was just because the knowledge that I would be living under the same roof as that hottie badass Neilly Foster completely shut down my brain. Neilly Foster was going to live in the same house with me. Which meant I might get to see her eat lots of Popsicles. Which meant her underwear would live here, too. Which meant she would, at least when she was in the shower, be naked in the same building as me.

  The whole thing had me so excited that I was done beating off before Dad even made it up the stairs. “Dec, come on,” he said, and if he hadn’t been my dad, I would have said, “Yeah, I did just come on—a tissue! Ha-ha!”

  In my excitement, I’d forgotten to lock the door, and Dad came walking right in. Fortunately, I had zipped up, but I still had the wadded-up tissue in my hand. It occurred to me to pretend to blow my nose in it just for cover, but I just threw it out instead.

  “I can’t have you running away from this conversation,” Dad said. “We need to talk about this.”

  “I’m sorry, Dad,” I said. “I was just so surprised.”

  “I know, and I’m sorry,” Dad said. “Believe me, I never wanted to spring something like this on you.”

  “So why did you?”

  Dad stopped and blushed and stammered. “Well, Dec, the thing is…I mean…Well…She’s, um…You’re going to have a little sibling.”

  “What? What?”

  “It was just…It was late at night, and we’d had some wine, and we just weren’t thinking, you know, we’d been very careful for months, but then we just…I mean, at our ages …”

  Here’s the part I still feel bad about. The whole situation was so completely absurd, so completely backasswards, with my dad shyly revealing that he’d knocked up his girlfriend because he’d ridden bareback while wasted, that I just started laughing. I mean, that was something I was supposed to spring on him, right? It was funny, right?

  I mean, I was cracking up, just thinking about the birds-and-bees lecture he’d given me and the Our Whole Lives sexuality-education class he’d made me take at church, where we put condoms on bananas and learned about the responsible use of the divine gift that was our sexuality. Whenever he’d awkwardly raised the subject of sex, he’d always stressed that when I was ready, I had to make sure I was careful. And he’d gotten wasted and knocked up his girlfriend.

  It was hilarious. But Dad apparently didn’t think so. Which is why his eyes started filling with tears. “You know, I didn’t expect you to make this easy, but you’re just being cruel. We’ll talk later.”

  He walked out and I fell on my bed laughing, knowing at the time that I should stop, that I should go apologize, that it really wasn’t funny. Except that it was.

  But then it got less funny almost immediately.

  I put on some songs that some guy in Denmark had sent me by a German band called, I shit you not, Sins of Our Fathers.

  It was interesting stuff—mostly about how they wanted to dig up their Nazi grandfathers so they could kill them again and feed their entrails to the demons they worshipped. I guess it was a little confused, but in its anti-Nazi content, it was actually remarkably positive for death metal.

  As Sins of Our Fathers assaulted me with waves of gut-churning guitar hellfire, I started thinking. There were too many screwed-up parts of this to think about, but here’s the one that really got me. I didn’t want Dad to spend the rest of his life alone or anything, but having a kid—that was something special that he only did with Mom. Now Neilly Foster’s mom was going to be, like, on an equal plane with Mom, and that wasn’t right.

  And it didn’t take much of a psychologist to figure out what was going on here. He was starting over. I’d be out of the house in two years, and then he’d have his new little family, and he wouldn’t have to look at me all the time and be remi
nded of the tragedy that had marred his life. He’d have a new kid and a new wife and a new life. Dad was starting over.

  It got worse. Because why would he need to start over? Because he needed to have a kid he didn’t hate for killing his wife.

  I went to therapy. I know bad shit just happens, and it’s not supposed to be my fault, but the fact is that if I hadn’t forgotten my shin pads and run back into the house to get them, Mom and I would have cruised through that intersection and the drunken dildo would have killed somebody else. Or maybe there wouldn’t have been a car in his way and he would have plowed into a tree and killed himself instead. And then everything would be fine.

  So you can tell me that bad stuff just happens, but I know in my heart that it was my fault because it was. And every time I had cried to Dad, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, it’s all my fault,” and he’d held me in his arms and said, “No, buddy, it’s not your fault, it’s the other driver’s fault—I never want you to hold yourself responsible for this,” he’d been lying.

  I guess it was good that he had told me what I needed to hear, but I really wish he’d actually believed it.

  So that’s how my laughter turned to tears and I started punching my bed and why I stopped talking to Dad.

  He called me for dinner on Sunday night, and I ignored him. He called good night to me through my bedroom door, and I ignored him. In the morning, I sat in front of the TV and ate a bowl of Frosted Organic Lemur Flakes or whatever pseudo-healthy cereal Dad had bought while he made pancakes in the kitchen, and I got on my bike and rode to school without saying good-bye to him.

  I got through lunch, but then I felt like I just had to bail on this day. It wasn’t like I learned a ton on the best of days, and today I couldn’t focus on anything. All I could do was sit there and think about how my dad hated me. Well, that and how I was going to work things so I could see Neilly Foster naked.

  I’d like to say I’m such a sensitive lad that the only thing on my mind was my relationship with my father. But my mind kept coming back to Neilly Foster in the shower.