Dancing with Molly - Lena Horowitz Page 0,1

freaking quarterback of the football team. Ashley and my mom talked nonstop about this the entire meal like they were in seventh grade at a slumber party. It sort of made my stomach hurt, but I choked down my salmon and salad and then just sat there staring at them while Ashley squealed on and on about Reid and how handsome he is and how he’s got all of these football scholarship prospects and how she wasn’t sure if he even knew her name before today.

Finally, she took a breath, and my dad looked over at me and said, How was your day at school, and I shrugged and said, Well, we found out that the band is going to the Macy’s parade this fall. Even Ashley was excited by this—which is one of the reasons I can’t hate her, even as much as I want to sometimes. She started squealing again and jumped up and gave me a hug and my dad was really excited and asked about all the details. Mom, of course, stayed quiet, just munching her baby spinach and smiling and nodding. Dad was trying to encourage her to get more excited for me, which I appreciate but have learned is a losing battle. He looked over and said, Isn’t that EXCITING, Kathleen? And Mom nodded again and said, Oh yes. It’s great. I just looked at her and said, Well, it’s not a prom date or anything.

There was this awkward pause and I got up and was carrying my plate to the sink when mercifully the phone rang and it was Jess saying I should come over. I had no idea what she was planning. I didn’t even know that there were other people coming. I certainly didn’t think I’d be doing a tab of ecstasy. Jesus. Who am I?

This is not to say that I am a prude or something. I have a cosmo every now and then when I’m at Jess’s house. She likes to make them when she forces me to watch complete seasons of Sex and the City. Not a couple episodes—Complete. Seasons. And her mom doesn’t really care if we have a drink or two as long as we don’t drive. Her mom would TOTALLY care if she knew we were also smoking weed, but we only do that when our friend Brandon is around. He and Jess used to have this weird crush thing going in junior high, but that was before Jess became the big girl in our class the summer after eighth grade. She got boobs and a lot of curves that summer and sort of never looked back.

I drove over to Jess’s place in my crappy little car. I guess I should be grateful for it, but I wish I drove something besides an eight-year-old hatchback. It’s just like one more thing—you know? One more way that I’m a little less cool than the other girls in my class. I feel like there are all these ways that I don’t measure up, starting with my weird curly brown hair and small rack and big hips. I mean—none of these things are things I have control over. I can dress it up and I used to try really hard, but after a while it just became exhausting. All the hair straightening and eyelash curling in the world just doesn’t matter when you show up in a Fiesta with a dent in the side. At a certain point, I just decided I couldn’t give a shit anymore. But still, sometimes I wonder what it would be like to look like Ashley and step out of a cool car and turn heads in the parking lot. Instead I’m just this girl that nobody notices. At least when I stopped with the makeup and the outfits, the cool girls stopped making fun of me. They just ignored me instead. I was just one more band geek in jeans and a hoodie.

Is it better to be mocked because people feel threatened, or just ignored because you don’t even register? Am I not even worth making snide remarks about anymore? And why do I care so much?

Jeez. I have to go get some more Advil.

Sunday, April 27

Oh my god. I feel so much better this morning than I did yesterday. My head still feels a tiny bit cloudy, but it doesn’t hurt. And the muscles in my jaw and neck feel a lot better.

So, yesterday I wrote the facts about what happened