Me, one side is straight from the shtetl, as my mother likes to say. Her family is a mix of Eastern European Jews. Great-grandparents from very poor villages. Poland. Czechoslovakia (before it was divided up into two different countries). Lithuania. Austria. A little of this, a little of that. Then to the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where all the other Jews went when they escaped the Nazis. My father’s family, Swedish royalty.
People comment on the two of us together. On the color of our skin. Our hair. Me, a blond. Donnie, with the black curls. Last year, a few assholes at a frat party Donnie’s sister dragged us to screamed, “I want to Oreo Cookie the two of you girls in bed.” Racist and drunk.
I pull off my boots and toss them over by the door—hoping they clunk against the wall so she’ll wake up. But no. They just hit her thick, white shag carpet, practically bouncing as they land.
I crawl into bed and inch next to her, wrapping my arm around her waist. She’s wearing a loose white T-shirt, her thin gold chains pooling at her neck and shoulder crease. Her silver cuff around her wrist. I whisper in her ear, “Donnieeeee . . .”
She flips her head around. Whips off her eye mask.
“Your wake-up call, lover,” I say to her.
“Jensen? What the fuck are you doing here?”
I smell it as she speaks. Her breath is rancid.
“Seriously, I had two hours of sleep. Was puking all night.”
“Ugh,” I turn away. “I can smell it. I beg you to brush.”
She winces and hops out of bed to the bathroom, where I hear her brushing her teeth.
I wiggle my jeans off so I can feel the silky sheets across my thighs.
Donnie climbs into bed next to me. She pets my hair, scratching at my scalp a little. Caressing me how I like it.
“Stop petting me like a dog, Don.” I squeeze a pillow between my knees. “Something happened last night. Something big. Like, too much.”
“Something big. Ooooh? Why so cryptic, Jensen? It’s not like you.”
So I tell her about Sean. I tell her about how I was glad to see Ali terrified outside of the bathroom, because I knew that look. I was all too familiar with that look.
“Part of me wanted her to be hurt. Isn’t that just awful? Aren’t I awful?”
She rubs her eyes, scratches her head a few times.
“No, it just makes you human. Because you’ll always be in love with Sean, and you’ll always be jealous of whoever he’s with.”
“Get out of here. I’m not in love with Sean. I spend a lot of time with him because of Dev.”
Of course she’s right. Of course I like Sean. I like his aura. Of course I feel special around him. That I’m the girl he goes to for advice. When the other girls get tossed, I’m there in the wings. I’m his steady best friend, along with Dev. And it feels good to have that power. It has nothing to do with lust. But Donnie. She stirs shit up. She’s been on this kick for a while. My secret crush on Nessel, she says.
“Changing the subject,” I say. “I feel sorry for Ali. She doesn’t know what happened to her. I’m sure of that.” Ali. Her face a deer in headlights.
“But you seem to know.” Donnie widens her eyes.
I don’t want to say too much. Especially after Sean broke down last night. I have loyalty toward Sean, even though Donnie, I know, would never pass this on to anyone.
“He was whimpering in the car about me needing to help him.”
“So he really hurt her, then?”
“His jacket was rolled up in a ball. Blood was all over it, he said.” I shudder.
“Did you see the jacket?”
I shake my head.
“Broken cherry.”
“You can’t go back after you split that cherry. That’s forever.”
“I don’t know why you feel so bad for Sean,” Donnie says, and turns away. She’s not wrong—but Donnie doesn’t understand.
I think about last night and how he was crying on my shoulder—I’ve never seen a guy cry before like that. And I just wanted to hold him and fix it for him.
I tell Donnie about my plan to become friends with Ali Greenleaf. That I’m going to just manage the whole thing. Make sure she’s okay.
“Sean wants me to look out for her. You have to give him credit for that.”
“I sense a social media assassination,” Donnie says, and pulls the covers over her head. Then she wraps her arms around my shoulders and spoons me, nudging my hips so they lock in with hers. I’m safe in this cocoon of Donnie’s silk sheets.
And I’ll show empathy for Ali. Help her get over those shitty feelings. I can relate. I’ll tell her how it hurts for a while. How you keep playing the same scene over and over again in your mind.
That’s how it was for me, at least, after the Initiation.
The Initiation is an unspoken tradition in my school. You get chosen for it as a freshman girl. And once you’re chosen, you’re expected to follow through. A senior girl walks you through the part that’s To Be Expected. My senior was Amanda Shire.
“At some point in high school, you’re going to give a blow job,” she said. “You do it with a guy you think is down with you. But then he spreads the word. It goes viral. You feel used. You’re tagged a slut. But in this situation, you’re protected. You’re not going to get any shame. You’re going to do it and it’ll be callous. It’s not about pleasure; it’s not about bonding. This is about your future. It’s about your safety. The girls who set this up, before you even came into this world, before you even bothered to ask your mother if you could shave your nasty leg hair—they set it up because girls were getting raped. Girls were getting pushed into this without controlling it. Now there’s no curiosity. Now there’s no shame. You do it on them. They’re your practice and then it’s over.”
This is what Amanda Shire told us.
I could have said no. But no one says no. Donnie and I got on our knees that night. Suki and Cate weren’t asked. We held hands for the first half, which the guys liked. They’re not supposed to talk. But ours did. They whispered. Things I couldn’t hear. There were soft moans. Amanda Shire told us to expect this. “They’re just human,” she said.
I kept my eyes closed. Otherwise you risk looking at their hairy, thick thighs. I sang a song in my head. To this day I can’t even listen to that song without hating myself.
They don’t expect you to swallow; they tell you to pull back. But some gets on your face. It drips on the floor. I’ll give Amanda Shire this: It’s a robotic experience. Except for their faces after. Their smiles. The way I had to wipe my mouth and then look at them, look at the guy I was paired with. Alex Kramer. After, still sitting on that cold floor as the guys filed out, wanting to cry. Donnie saw my hatred, how I was about to weep or puke or both. “Keep it together, Jensen. Don’t fold, Jensen,” she said, whispering.