“Really?” Penelope said. She felt confused, and a little drunk. Julie’s fingertips seemed suddenly burning hot.
Penelope was tall, one of the tallest girls at St. Lucy’s. And Julie was small. A slip of a thing, Penelope’s mother had said when she’d met her last fall. Julie stood now on tiptoe, and tilted her face upward, like a girl waiting to be kissed. Without hesitating—and that was what confused Penelope even more later—Penelope leaned down and kissed her, full on the mouth. She had never been anywhere so soft. She thought she might crawl into those lips forever. Use similes! She told herself. Like clouds. Like marshmallows. She heard herself gasp a little, at the softness. She couldn’t stop pressing her lips against Julie’s. All those Maxwell boys with their rough faces, their chapped lips, their boy tastes. Julie tasted like grapes. Like cotton candy. Now their lips parted and their tongues were touching, Julie’s soft like . . . like what? Penelope couldn’t think. She felt herself getting wet down there where Maxwell boys jammed their fingers in.
Then like an interrupted dream, Julie pulled away. “Remember that,” she said, her mouth wet with their spit, “when you’re kissing that Maxwell boy tonight. See?”
Penelope nodded stupidly and stumbled out of Julie’s suite. Some girls were sitting cross-legged in the common room and looked at her all funny.
“Did you hear?” one of them said. “Deborah Woodson slit her wrists. They’ve taken her to the hospital.”
“What?” Penelope said. She thought of Deborah dragging her finger across her throat.
“Don’t worry,” that little tight-ass Yvonne Mack said. “She did it in the library. Not in your room.”
Just then Julie’s door flew open. She had on the faded corduroy jacket she always wore, and a panicked look. Penelope ran to her. Julie grabbed her by the wrist, dragging her along.
THE GIRLS STILL RAN down the hill to meet the boys, even with Deborah in the ER and then up in the psych ward. They went down there and got stoned and took off their panties and let the boys finger them. They opened their mouths and the boys stuck their dicks in, pushing against their teeth, yanking on their hair. Don’t swallow! That was one of the rules. But Penelope always did. She’d read somewhere, maybe in Cosmopolitan magazine, that semen was a good source of protein. But that wasn’t why she did it. She did it because she earned it. All that work, her jaw sore for hours afterward. It didn’t taste bad either. Like saltwater. Like asparagus. Like the smell in chemistry lab.
But tonight, after Penelope and Julie got back to St. Lucy’s from the hospital, the calls made to Deborah’s parents to come first thing in the morning, Deborah locked up in the psych ward, Julie unlocked the door to Figg and said, “Boy, do I need a drink. You?”
And Penelope, knowing where all the girls were, knowing she would have to face her room alone, and see all of Deborah’s stuff there like nothing had happened, said yes.
“I just have to check something,” she told Julie. “I’ll be back in a flash.” She had never said I’ll be back in a flash before, and it sounded stupid.
Penelope went into her room and without turning on the overhead light because she did not want to see Deborah’s jean jacket tossed casually on the bed, or her Simon and Garfunkel album covers or anything Deborah, she retrieved the end of the joint and smoked it, every bit.
“I’m high as a kite,” she said out loud to the room. She was thinking and speaking in clichés. This had to stop.
Julie had left her door ajar and Penelope hesitated before pushing it open. The apartment looked different. An Indian blanket thrown over the lamp made the light diffused and tinted red. Julie was standing in the dark, drinking from a water glass full of wine.
“I didn’t think you were coming back,” she said.
Penelope shrugged. “My room is kind of creepy.”
Julie walked over to her and stroked her hair. “You poor baby,” she said softly.
Penelope stood still, stiff.
“I don’t need to practice kissing, you know,” she said. “I kiss boys all the time.”
“Do you fuck them?” Julie asked, her voice so soft that Penelope wasn’t sure she was hearing right.
“Sure,” she said. She was perfectly high, the way she liked most, when her body felt like it was being lifted up even though she wasn’t moving at all. A light breeze moved through her hair, tickled her neck, touched her collarbone. Penelope closed her eyes and enjoyed it.
“You went and got high, didn’t you?” Julie said. “I can smell pot in your hair.”
That’s when Penelope realized that it wasn’t a breeze; Julie was touching her with her fingertips. Goosebumps rose on her arms as Julie’s fingers moved, light, light, to her shirt, right at her nipples.