Read loose for Free Online

like I’m a crazy girl, like the one Chris talked about that night, one of the girls the boys stayed away from. I look back, chest tight, ashamed, horrified, wanting to say something. Something that will tell him he misunderstood. I’m not crazy. I just like him. Maybe a little too much. But he turns away and walks out of the room.
    Liz comes running to find me right after. Some guys are stealing boxes out of the kitchen. She says she and Chris are getting everyone out; the party needs to end. Soon the only people left are Chris, Liz, and me. Even Iggy has gone home, hearing a rumor of cops on their way. I didn’t see Brian leave.
    I look around the apartment. Beer cans and bottles are strewn around the floor and countertops, on top of the stereo and TV. A few have toppled, leaking beer into the carpet. I see two cigarette burns in the couch. I walk down the hallway to my room to find it ran-sacked, as is Tyler’s. Cigarette butts and cans are on every conceiv-able surface. The corner of Tyler’s Siouxsie and the Banshees poster is ripped. Apparently someone threw around her collection of fantasy books and figurines, and now they lay scattered about the room. I’m relieved to find none of them damaged. As Liz and I step through the mess, though, we find a used condom near Tyler’s bed.
    In the living room, one of the speakers has a long rip down the middle. Tiles are littered and broken on the terrace. The pile of new appliances is all but gone. And, when I look in my dad’s drawer, the drugs are gone and there’s no gun. I wish so much that I could remember if there was one in there before.
    We move through the rooms, filling trash bags and hauling them out to the garbage chute. Nobody says much. We work with calm

    •
31 •
    L o o s e G i r l
    diligence, sharp counterpoint to the panic inside. Liz vacuums and I wipe the countertops with Lysol, but the apartment still smells like someone poured beer over everything.
    Tyler comes home first, after staying at a friend’s for the night.
    “Nobody better have touched my stuff,” she tells me. She’s wearing black, as usual. Big, loose clothes that hide her body.
    “No one wanted to go into your stupid room,” I say. I don’t dare tell her about the condom.
    When she comes out later, she says, “You owe me a poster.”
    My dad arrives home soon after, and I’m in a lot of trouble. He’s facing two $3,000 lawsuits, one from the building because someone thought it would be fun to throw tiles off the deck, ripping the pool cover, and another from a person whose parked car was hit by tiles as well. Dad says nothing to me about the possibly missing gun or the drugs, but I’m sure he’s pretty fumed about that as well.
    He decides to move me to another private school and forbid me from seeing Liz. Liz and I say a tearful good-bye on the phone. We sob about how unfair life is, and how when we can, when all of this is in the past, we’ll find each other again. After I hang up, I lie back on my bed and look out the window, from which I can see the Manhattan skyline. My life is about to change yet again. I close my eyes, seeing how this feels, and I realize I don’t really mind.
    Change doesn’t scare me. I know about change. I may even like it.
    I’ll have a fresh start with new classmates and friends. Particularly, I’ll meet new boys. Boys who might see me as something more than just a friend. I definitely don’t want to see Brian or Iggy again. I exposed myself. This is my chance to renew who I am, try again to be the self-controlled, mysterious girl, the one who lives by the rules. It’s my first of many attempts to start from scratch in this way, to try again and again to swallow my desperation, claw my way up from under it.

    •
32 •
    3
    Gym is the most embarrassing of high school classes. We have to change in the locker room in front of one another, everything revealed—heavy breasts, thick hips, and unshaved legs. This is especially bad for the new