Girls in White Dresses - JENNIFER CLOSE [47]
What did she know about dating, anyway? Nothing. She thought back to the sixth-grade sex-ed class they’d had at St. Anthony’s. The girls were put in a room with the school nurse and forced to read scenarios out of an old pamphlet. “Kate and Michael have been going steady for a month,” the book read. “Michael wants Kate to try heavy petting, but Kate doesn’t feel ready. What do you think she should do?”
The nurse cleared her throat, blushed, and addressed the girls. “So, does anyone have a thought on what Kate should do?” The room was silent. Finally someone asked, “What’s heavy petting?”
In the other room, the boys told them later, a priest had drawn a large dome on the blackboard. “Do you know what this is?” he asked them. He sounded angry and annoyed. He put a dot on top of it. “That’s a penis,” he said.
That was her education? How was she prepared for this? There was no scenario in that book about starting a new relationship with a Harrison. There were no tips on whether or not to go on a trip so early in a relationship. (Or if there were, they never got to them. Because once they found out what heavy petting was, they laughed for a week and a half.)
“You should go,” her friends all said. The fact that she hadn’t skied in years and didn’t really miss it wasn’t something they were concerned with. The drive up there would take almost five hours. What would they talk about? They had never been in a car alone that long. What if it was just silence? After sleepless nights and countless conversations, she agreed to go. Immediately after, she felt sick.
The ski house was built to sleep as many people as possible. Most rooms had two sets of bunk beds and stairs that led to another room with a futon. When they got there, it was already dark and she could hear laughing as they stood outside the door. It was so cold that Isabella could feel the inside of her nose freeze when she breathed. The night seemed darker after coming from the city, and it made Isabella shiver. More than anything at that moment, she wanted not to be there. What had she been thinking coming up here? She didn’t know these people.
Isabella let Harrison walk in front of her and she walked behind him, pretending to look for something in her purse. There were about a dozen people in the kitchen and living room, sitting around, drinking and laughing. There was a football game on the TV, which no one was watching.
Everyone smiled and there were shouts of “Hey” and “What’s up?” Isabella waited for Harrison to introduce her and then stood there while he pointed to everyone and said their names. She didn’t remember any of them.
Harrison grabbed her bag to take it upstairs and she followed him. They peeked in the rooms, looking for an empty one, but there were bags on all of the double beds. The only thing free was a set of bunk beds in the corner of one of the rooms.
“Looks like this is us,” Harrison said. “Do you want the top or the bottom?”
Isabella wasn’t sure. If she slept on the bottom, she would be eye level with the other couple staying in the room. If she took the top, she ran the risk of falling out of bed and paralyzing herself while waking the whole house up.
“Um, the bottom, I guess.”
“Okay.”
Harrison threw the bags on top of the beds and turned to her. “You ready for a drink?” he asked. She nodded and followed him downstairs silently.
That weekend, Isabella sat close to Harrison, holding his hand and resting her head against his shoulder, which she never did. When he left the room for more than two minutes she started to panic at the thought that she was stuck with these strangers. She acted like a different girl than she was. Harrison didn’t seem to notice.
The first night there, Isabella was cornered by one of Harrison’s friends from college. Her name was Jocelyn. She was drunk and a close talker.
“I don’t really know my dad,” she confided to Isabella. “He never really wanted a daughter and I’m not sure he ever loved me.”
She was leaning in so close that her giant boob was resting on Isabella’s arm and her