Offense or defense, Lizzie found nothing at all approaching pleasure in the sex. It was a chore, like slogging through Vanity Fair had been the previous year. Dull and boring and hard to figure out why anyone would choose to read Thackeray’s novel, let alone name it as one of their favorite books of all time, as Mrs. Syllagi, her English teacher, told the class it was. She just knew, in both cases, that she had to get through it, check it off her to-do list. Chapter 17 done, done, done. Dusty Devins, done, done, done. On to the next. With every chapter read or player screwed, that much closer to the end. And she’d actually finished the assignments, although you couldn’t say triumphantly, in both cases.
The Great Game officially ended on March 30, 1991, at 11:38 p.m., when Lizzie whispered good-bye to Leo deSica, strong safety, closed the front door behind him, and began walking back upstairs to her bedroom. Leo was generally regarded as the best-looking player on the team, and he didn’t lack for brains. He was the kind of football player that college coaches drool over, and was courted by all the schools whose teams perennially ranked in the top twenty. But in addition to all those qualities, Leo was a thoroughly nice guy. Rumors abounded that he and his longtime girlfriend Gaby had never actually done it, and Lizzie had hoped that this was true, so that Leo would be extra interested in sex with her. She told herself that she deserved to have the Great Game end with a big bang. (This was a pun that George would have really appreciated, but of course there was no way that Lizzie would ever be able to share it with him.)
In light of her sizable hopes for the grand finale, Lizzie decided that they’d end the evening in her bedroom. Mendel and Lydia tended to go to sleep early, so it would be no problem to take Leo up to her room without their knowing. All this went according to plan. But once Lizzie steered him into her bed and they’d gotten down to business, it turned out not to matter how good-looking or smart or sexy Leo was, all Lizzie could think about while he was kissing her—with great expertise, it must be said—was what a mistake this all had been and that Maverick, not to mention Andrea, was right all along. This realization, which made her want to cry, came out instead as a loud and bitter laugh.
Leo, confused, immediately stopped what he was doing. “What’s the matter? What’s funny?”
“Nothing. It’s nothing,” Lizzie assured him. “Everything’s fine. Don’t stop.” She was tempted to tell him that the joke had turned out to be on her, but decided that would confuse him even more than the laugh had, and she just needed this to be finished so that she could start trying to forget about it. And then, finally, Leo was done. The Great Game was over. Hallelujah.
As Lizzie walked Leo down to the front door, they were unexpectedly met by Lydia, who was on her way up the stairs. Mendel followed her, holding two mugs of the strong herbal tea they favored. Nobody spoke, although it was possible that Mendel nodded at them before continuing up. When Lizzie locked the door behind Leo, she wondered if she’d just imagined the meeting on the stairs. It was pretty much every teen’s worst nightmare, wasn’t it, to be discovered by your parents more or less in flagrante delicto?
Upstairs, she went into the bathroom and undressed for the second time that night. She turned on the shower to the hottest water that she could stand and stood there until the spray became lukewarm, and then reluctantly turned off the taps and got out. The mirror was so steamed up that she could see only the faintest outline of her body. It might have been anyone, actually, which Lizzie thought was a good thing. She didn’t really want to look too closely at herself. Not because of what she imagined that she might see—maybe a scarlet A above her breast, the word “wanton” incised on her forehead, things like that—but because she was afraid she’d see no difference in herself at all. Aside from probably now resembling a boiled lobster, she knew that any stranger looking at her body would never be able to guess how she’d spent twenty-three Friday nights since September. But, oh, Lizzie knew, with a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, that everything had changed for her since she’d embarked on the Great Game.
The next morning, rather than ask her parents if she could use their car, Lizzie took the bus out to the mall and bought eight packages of the whitest and cheapest cotton underpants she could find. Size XL. She might have gotten the L’s, but she didn’t see them and was too embarrassed to ask a saleswoman. Two dozen pairs of humongous and ugly undies; they lasted Lizzie for decades. When she got home she changed into a pair, enjoying the fact that they barely touched her body. She put on her loosest and rattiest jeans and a T-shirt that Maverick gave her when they were dating. The front proclaimed, “This is Dick. Dick is an Ohio State Fan . . .” while the back said “Don’t be a Dick.” This outfit was basically what she wore for the rest of the spring and all through the summer.
On Sundays Mendel and Lydia generally went into campus for only a few hours, instead spending most of the day at home reading the papers and journals of psychology that piled up around the house. Lizzie ventured out of her room only twice, once to put her sheets in the washing machine and then again when she transferred them to the dryer. Unless she’d invented the incident on the stairs, she was pretty sure that her parents would have something to say to her, although she couldn’t imagine what that would be. She found out at dinner.
Lizzie, who wasn’t hungry, pushed a grayish piece of meat loaf around her plate and wished they had a dog she could surreptitiously slip the food to. Just as she was about to ask to be excused from the table, Mendel said, “So, I take it that was your boyfriend?”
Lizzie tried to think of what to say. She was certainly prepared to lie; she’d spent a good deal of her life lying to her parents. But if she agreed that Leo was, indeed, her boyfriend, would there be any follow-up questions? Maybe. Lizzie didn’t think she had the energy to make up much more of a story and decided to tell the truth.
“Well, actually, no. He’s not my boyfriend,” she began. “He was part of an extracurricular assignment I’ve been involved in since school began, which was to have sex with a lot of guys on the football team. He was the last one, and now I’m done. There were twenty-three altogether. Andrea was supposed to do it with me, eleven each, with one extra that we’d flip a coin for. We thought it would be fun, but she changed her mind. So I went ahead and did it myself. That’s why he was here.”
Neither of her parents responded for what seemed like a long time to Lizzie, then Lydia said in an encouraging sort of tone, “Goodness. That’s pretty adventurous of you. How did you come up with that idea?”
“Andrea did,” Lizzie said shortly, already regretting her honesty. She was staring at her plate, which looked even less appetizing than it had before, but out of the corner of her eye she saw her mother pick up the pen and pad of paper that were never far from either of her parents. “Don’t write that down,” she screamed at her mother. “Don’t write anything about it down. Just don’t.”
“Of course we won’t, Lizzie,” Mendel said soothingly.
“I was just going to make a few notes about a paper I’m working on. Nothing to do with you,” her mother said. And Lizzie chose to believe her.
*?Lydia and Mendel?*