Sloppy Firsts_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [82]
"So sex and drugs are a way of living life?"
"Yeah," he said. "Isn’t that what being young is all about? These are our prime years for experimentation, for exploration. I thought I’d experiment and explore to the extreme."
"That’s so … jackassinine," I said.
"Yeah, it’s jackassinine," he said. "But that’s what made it fun."
This was making me really angry. How could he be so blasé and blatantly self-destructive? Especially when one of his best friends died because of all of it. Not to mention that as a result of that death, my best friend was taken away from me. But I opted not to directly confront him about Heath. His guilty confession should come naturally or not at all.
"If it’s so much fun, why don’t you do it anymore? Why not give Middlebury the finger and just go back to your old ways?"
"Because it’s been done," he said. "About the only thing I hadn’t done was go straight-edge, all the way."
Of course. After his teenybopper T-shirt experiments last year, Marcus must’ve known that making himself into the model student would be the ultimate method for messing with everyone’s minds.
"Besides, I’ve found other things to do with my time," he said.
"Like what?"
"Like playing Nirvana songs on my guitar, writing in my journal, talking to the fogues. I use my wisdom to help Len get laid. And I’m having my first completely nonsexual relationship with a female."
"Wait," I said, totally confused. "So you’re not having sex with Mia?"
Marcus laughed harder than I’ve ever heard anyone laugh in my life. A stereophonic, surround-sound laugh. It was the kind of laugh that squeezes all the air out of your belly and leaves you gasping for oxygen. It was the kind of laugh that could leave you with permanent brain damage, which is what I must have in order to have said what I did in the first place.
"You’re too funny," he said. "Good night, Cuz."
Marcus finds me completely nonsexual. No tension to complicate our whatever relationship. I should be relieved. Right?
the fifteenth
Today my second editorial came out: "Homecoming King and Queen: Democracy at Its Dumbest." It got the expected reaction: The people who already hate me still do. The people who don’t hate me still don’t—and thanked me for my visionary remarks.
"Students care more about the homecoming elections than they do about the presidential controversy," I said. "They should just eliminate the whole homecoming court because it gives popular people power and prestige that goes right to their heads."
"So I take it you’re boycotting the homecoming dance," he said.
"Of course I’m boycotting." My moral crusade was a very convenient way of dealing with the fact that no one had asked me.
"Too bad."
"Why too bad?"
"Mjdfuwx bv nlkhr’po ydrhext," he said, muffling his mouth with his hand.
"I must have wax buildup," I said. "Could you repeat that?"
"Because we could have doubled," he said.
"You’re going to homecoming?"
"Yes," he said.
"You’re going to homecoming?"
"Yes."
"You, Marcus Flutie, are going to homecoming."
"I think we’ve adequately covered the fact that I am going to the homecoming dance."
"You want to go to homecoming?"
"I could live without it," he said. "But Mia really wants to go."
It’s very easy to forget Marcus even has a girlfriend, so infrequently does he mention her. It’s only at times like this, or when I catch them tonguing down in the halls, that I remember this fact: I am his first nonsexual female friend.
"That’s so hypocritical!" I cried. "You’re totally selling out. You’re turning into exactly the type of homecoming-going, goody-goody honors student the administration wants you to be."
Marcus chuckled.
"Selling out? I’m not the one who wrote the anti-homecoming editorial."
"But you agree with it."
"I’ve never been to homecoming, so I don’t know whether I agree with it or not."
This