Lost Stars Read Free Page B

held my hand for a minute, gave it a squeeze. A consolation prize. Greta got love and sex. I got a hand squeeze. Ginny would never have anything again.
    When I got out of the car, Greta handed me the flask.
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    Now I picked out records to play: Sam Cooke, Hüsker Dü, R.E.M., the Ramones, and, what the heck, Nina Simone’s cover of the Bee Gees:
You don’t know what it’s like,
she sang,
to love somebody like I love you.
That feeling of one tune connecting to the other, making a story out of a series of songs, of being hit right in the chest when the music gets it right—​it was the best.
    â€œGood mix,” Tommy said, nodding his head, hand stroking his stubbly chin like he was appreciating Van Gogh’s
The Starry Night
(as if Tommy would know what that was). Apparently Tommy was talking to me again. “Except that Hüsker Dü shit is totally screwed up.” The song was “Don’t Want to Know If You Are Lonely.”
    â€œI’m known all over town for my screwed-up-ness,” I said. Which, sadly, was true. I could feel Tommy looking at me, now that he was drunk and swaying. “And, Tommy, Hüsker Dü is rad.”
    We all drank and drank and drank and then we smoked and smoked and smoked. For a long time, I put my head on the back of the couch and looked at the drop ceiling, all those little pockmarks like some kind of constellation that I couldn’t quite figure out, a map I couldn’t read. Every time I looked down from the ceiling, people were making out—​Soo and Justin, Tiger and Greta. Tommy studied the record covers in faux oblivion. Tommy. So not my type. Short hair, thick wrestler’s body, not so smart, too into Rush. I liked them tall and skinny and long-haired and into Big Star. At least in theory I did.
    Somebody passed me a joint, and I took a long hit and laid my head back again and listened to the song that was playing now, the Velvet Underground with Nico’s smoky voice singing “I’ll Be Your Mirror”:
Reflect what you are, in case you don’t know.
The song ripped open a hole in my chest, and for a minute it was hard to breathe.
    When I looked up, my vision blurring, Justin had his hand on Soo’s face like they did it in old movies and they both had their eyes open and they kept stopping to look at each other and squeeze hands.
    â€œGet a room, why don’t you?” I called, my words all slurry and echoing in my own ears. Soo looked over at me, her eyes fierce. And then she left. She just left me there,
Bye-bye, baby, bye-bye.
She probably went upstairs to her bedroom, and I knew what she was doing there, something I’d never done even though I’d thought about it once last year when that nineteen-year-old boy Anton Oboieski was on top of me and I knew everyone else was doing the same thing in the rooms all around me but then he opened his eyes for a second and narrowed them at me, as if realizing only then that I wasn’t Ginny. When he closed his eyes again, I pressed against his chest and said, very softly, “Sorry,” and grabbed my plaid shirt and leggings and crept out of the room, waiting with a warm, undrunk beer until the rest of them were finished. Since then, I’d let those boys do so many things to me but that one thing—​I was just saving that one thing. I was holding on to it in the hope that someday I’d want somebody and he’d want me, too. The same amount.
    Now Tommy grabbed me and shoved his hand down my shirt, and I was enveloped by the whole thing, the music and the drugs and the meaningless touches. I just left my body and let it happen, let him grope and paw and lick and kiss. I let myself get erased.
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    It was almost five in the morning by the time I got home. Justin had come back to retrieve me, driving Soo’s Le Car, and now the two of them were dropping me off as I groaned, prostrate on the back seat.
    I forced myself to