Chapter 10

Sarah and Rebekah returned from sailing looking sunburned and tired. We decided to get pizza for lunch and hang out in Sarah’s room. I brought my boom box along and put on Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys.

“I am in love with your dog,” Rebekah said, petting Bozack’s head.

“I think the feeling’s mutual.” I laughed as Bozack licked her feet.

Sarah stretched out her legs. “All we need is some Commander Salamander catalogs, WMNF’s Radical Noise Show on the radio and it’d feel like junior high.”

“Except back then we didn’t have the beer or the dog.” Julia patted Bozack’s belly.

“Or the stretch marks,” Rebekah said.

“You know what I’ve missed out on?” I sipped my Diet Coke. “Normal high school and college memories. I’d watch Sixteen Candles and wonder if that’s what being a teenager is all about.”

“Hardly,” Sarah said. “Although more on target than Porky’s, John Hughes’ movies were still more interesting in two hours than four years of high school combined.”

Julia licked pizza sauce off her fingers. “I don’t remember anyone looking like Emilio Estevez.”

“Or Judd Nelson,” Rebekah said.

I looked around. “What was it like?”

“High school?” Sarah asked.

“Proms, dating, college prep classes.” I laughed. “The whole nine yards.”

“The classes were easy,” Rebekah shrugged. “But teachers were unmotivated and kids were mean.”

“Oh, come on.” Julia threw her napkin at Rebekah. “We had some good times. Remember when we lip-synched Rock Lobster for the Sophomore Talent Show? And not all the teachers sucked. Our school shrink, Mr. Alvarez, was pretty cool. He let me hang out in his office when I skipped class so I wouldn’t get into trouble.”

“Mr. A was great.” Rebekah nodded. “High school wasn’t terrible or fantastic. It was necessary.”

“Give me a break,” Julia said. “You were binging and purging in Milan while the rest of us were concerned with pimples and prom dates. What the hell do you know? And Sarah wasn’t normal either. She would attend all-night parties and then get up early the next morning to walk to confession. It’s not like you could confess anything, you never even had a guy’s tongue in your mouth.”

I looked at Sarah. “Did you date at all?”

Julia pretended to choke on a slice of pizza. “Guys weren’t interested in Sarah. She was odd.”

Rebekah laughed and clapped her hands. “Sarah once accidentally shaved her head because she was trying to shave the sides and got carried away. Ended up almost bald.”

“She came to school looking like Sinead O’Connor before it was cool,” Julia said.

“Was that ever cool?” I asked.

Sarah just smiled good-naturedly and shrugged her shoulders. “I was ahead of my time.”

“To save her,” Julia continued, “I spread it around that she got drunk at a fraternity party, passed out, and the guys shaved her head as a joke.”

Sarah wrinkled her nose. “Because that sounds so much better than the truth?”

“I made you cool.” Julia winked.

“There was that phase where you refused to wear make-up,” Rebekah said.

“You always have been unique.” Julia hugged Sarah. “By the beginning of junior year, you looked normal again.”

“Yeah,” Rebekah said, “but by then she had the smart thing going combined with the future nun reputation so no one really wanted to date her.”

Sarah smoothed out her sundress. “I had one date in high school. I met Charlie Boons at a church social. We danced to a Mister Mister song and went out the following weekend. Charlie picked me up at McDonald’s after I was done with my shift because I didn’t want my parents to know.”

Rebekah covered her ears. “I still can’t believe you worked at McDonald’s.”

“Why didn’t you want your parents to know?” I asked.

“I didn’t want my mother to get her hopes up,” Sarah explained. “I didn’t want her to think I was changing my mind and she’d get grandchildren one day. Charlie and I went to see Gung Ho. He called me a few times after that, but we never went out again. It wasn’t a love connection.”

“What if you had met the right guy?” Rebekah poked Sarah in the knee. “Would you have given up the nun gig for the right guy?”

“This wasn’t Plan B, Rebekah.” Sarah giggled. “My life is exactly the way I want it and I wouldn’t have given this up for anyone.”

Julia sat up straight. “I remember Sarah having this huge crush on an English sailor.”

“For about five minutes.” Sarah turned red.

“One night,” Julia continued, “we went to Harbor Island because I wanted to flirt with the fudge guy.”

“Oh.” Rebekah leaned back and closed her eyes. “I remember the fudge guy.”

“One of the few men in the Tampa Bay area who didn’t receive one of your legendary blow jobs,” Julia said.

“The poor son of a bitch.” Rebekah shook her head.

“The ship was docked outside,” Julia said, “and I talked Sarah into sneaking on board with me.”

Sarah looked away. “A moment of weakness.”

“We hopped the gate and climbed in, sneaking into the recreation area where about a dozen sailors were hanging out. It never even occurred to us that we could be in a dangerous situation. We just opened the door and walked in, introducing ourselves and wandering around.”

I looked at Sarah in shock. “What happened?”

“Absolutely nothing. I met a boy named Jeff who was terribly homesick and cried on my shoulder all night while Julia made out with a sailor who had bad teeth.”

“Ewww.” Rebekah squirmed.

“The accent held some kind of mystique that allowed me to overlook certain abnormalities,” Julia explained, “abnormalities that I would otherwise find unattractive. Did I mention we were drunk?”

“Sarah got drunk?” I acted astonished.

“The one and only time,” Sarah said. “It was this odd concoction: beer and lemonade.”

“Yuck.” Rebekah pretended to throw up.

“One of my favorites,” I said. “Good for you, Sister Sarah.”

“Are you kidding?” Julia threw out her shoulders. “At sixteen, we thought we were hot shots.”

“Did you keep in touch with these sailors?” I asked.

“No,” Sarah replied. “Just as Jeff was giving me my first kiss, my only kiss, some high-ranking guy walked in and caught us. He threw us out before we could exchange addresses or phone numbers.”

“I was quickly over the whole thing,” Julia sighed, “yet Sarah sulked for a week.”

“I carried a torch for about ten days and then it left me,” Sarah said. “I was a regular teenager after all.”

“Not quite.” Rebekah sat up and played with her hair.

Julia looked at Rebekah and me. “I shouldn’t even be speaking to you two.”

“Why?” Rebekah almost choked on her water.

“Where were you in my time of need? Thanks to both of you, I had to go through the majority of my adolescence with someone whose idea of a good time included rosaries and holy water. I missed out on so much fun.”

“There wasn’t much you didn’t do.” Sarah waved her hands at Julie. “Your exploits are well documented in most of the bathrooms back at Plant High. Besides, we grew up in the eighties so everything was either overdone, illegal, or could give you AIDS.”

“Think of it this way,” Rebekah said, “you have less to regret.”

“Do any of you ever make it back to Tampa?” I asked.

Sarah nodded. “I go there all the time to see my parents.”

“Me too,” Julia said. “My practice is in Sarasota so I’m there constantly.”

Rebekah shook her head. “I haven’t been back in a while. After Dad died, Mom moved to Miami to be closer to us.”

Sarah poked me in the shoulder. “What about you, Liv?”

“Who do I have to visit in Tampa?”

“Do you ever visit your parents’ graves?” Rebekah asked.

“Never.”

Rebekah opened a beer, as if it gave her the courage she needed. “What did you do once you were let out of Creep Home?”

“You are such a busybody-yenta.” Julia hit Rebekah with a pillow. “Fight the cliché?”

Rebekah threw the pillow back. “Julia, you’re curious, too.”

“It’s for your own good that you don’t know much about what I do,” I said. “It’s not that I don’t trust you; I’m trying to protect you.”

Rebekah met my gaze. “Can you tell us anything?”

I thought about it for a moment. “What do you want to know?”

Rebekah leaned forward. “Do you work for the government?”

“No, although sometimes I work for people who have government jobs.”

“Who is Frank Williams?” Julia blurted out.

I looked at her as I slowly sipped my beer.

“Wasn’t he killed up near Pensacola around the time you left Creep Home?” Rebekah asked.

Julia moved closer to me. “You were investigated for his murder, but they dropped it, didn’t they?”

Avery would tell me to keep quiet; he would tell me to make something up. But I trusted my girlfriends. I knew I could tell them anything. I thought about how it might feel to talk about my life with some real people, someone other than Avery. It would feel good to talk without worrying about tapped phone lines or hidden agendas. It would feel good to just talk.

“I’ll tell you about Frank Williams.”