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By Root 442 0

his presence too often. But on these three occasions that I had the misfortune of sharing air with him, I couldn't understand why Jane would bother being friends with someone like him, let alone have sex with him. Jane is the reason for the existence of self-help books like Why Smart Chicks Pick Total Dicks. How she can be so observant when it comes to other people, yet totally blind to her own errors is beyond me. She's always making excuses for his obvious flaws—He's really shy! He's not comfortable around new people! He's different when it's just the two of us!—all of which sound exactly like the types of things people say about puppies and babies when they misbehave. If Jake (bleeech!) made a steamer on the rug right in front of me, Jane would sheepishly shrug her shoulders and say, “He isn't potty trained yet!”

I'm Jane's closest friend at Columbia, but I know that if it came down to choosing him or me, I'd come out the loser. Which is why all I can do is smile as tightly as I possibly can to keep the words from screaming out of my mouth: WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH THIS ASSHOLE!!!

So I'm excited to introduce Jane to Marcus.

“I can't wait,” Jane said.

Neither could I.

the tenth

With Jane here for only three days, I wanted to make them memorable. She'd already been to Sleazeside during the MTV Beach House summer, so the boardwalk didn't hold the cheesy allure that it usually does for out-of-town guests. I wasn't sure how we'd pass the time, until Jane ripped a page out of our newspaper at breakfast.

“We must do this!” she said. “Won't it be a riot?”

I read the torn piece of paper.

“The Glam Slam Metal Jam?” I asked, not really knowing if she was serious or not.

“Poison! Warrant! Quiet Riot! Six hours of glam rock glory!”

For the record, I'm into the eighties, but I've never been a fan of the hair bands. But I didn't want to be a buzzkill.

“We've only got eight hours to get our outfits together!” she said.

“Outfits?”

“The only way to get in the glamming, slamming, metal jamming spirit is to dress the part, right?”

“Sure!” I replied, trying to match Jane's enthusiasm

For inspiration, we consulted Bethany's high school yearbooks, as she very conveniently started high school in 1987. We marveled at the foot-high bangs and plastic earrings and saw that we had our work cut out for us. Because my sister's look back then was more Debbie Gibson than Lita Ford, we couldn't piece together an entire outfit from oldies-but-goodies from my parents' attic. However, there was one notable, notorious exception, one that my mother was all too thrilled to mention.

“You can finally wear The Jacket!” Mom exclaimed, pulling out a plastic dry-cleaning bag.

The Jacket, which cost $150 in 1987, was the most expensive piece of clothing my mother had ever bought Bethany. Made out of white leather, The Jacket had huge padded shoulders and long fringe running across the chest and back. When Bethany begged for it in ninth grade, she was inspired by Sloane Peterson, Ferris Bueller's very cool girlfriend, who wore a similar jacket in the movie. But not two months after she got The Jacket, NJ's own JBJ (that's Jon Bon Jovi to those of you in the other forty-nine states) wore a black leather version in his seminal “Livin' on a Prayer” video. Instantly, her beloved jacket was sought after by Pineville High School's headbangingest students, and she just couldn't wear it anymore. My mother has kept it in the closet ever since, as a reminder of what a spoiled brat Bethany was back then.

“The Jacket that was going to make your sister happy for the rest of her life!” my mother said, still annoyed sixteen years later.

“Well, everything we know about happiness is wrong,” I said.

“You can't really believe that,” Jane said. “It's too depressing.”

“It's true,” Marcus said, entering the room and the conversation.

“Marcus!” shouted Jane as she charged toward him. “I feel like I know you already!”

“His reputation precedes him,” my mother muttered, twisting her lips into more of a sneer than a smile as she retreated from my bedroom.

“So Marcus,