Monster 43

Tammi and I were just smoking outside the Circle-K during eighth period on the day before Christmas Break. We were waiting for Fiona Jalensky and Megan Bonham to finish filling up Fiona’s car, aka our ride back to school. Or Tammi’s at least. I have my own car, but I’m only sixteen, so I needed Megan to buy me cigarettes, and she needed Fiona to drive her since she didn’t want to ride in my car since it’s a junker and smells like cigarettes anyway, and Fiona’s only seventeen still. Megan’s eighteen, but doesn’t know half the stuff the rest of us do.

“Okay, I’m done!” Fiona called out. “No smoking in Sven!”

Sven-- that’s her car, her Saab, her baby. She loves Sven more than just about anything else in existence.

Except her boyfriend.

I thought of Bart Savarnich as I got into Sven. It hadn’t been that long since the last time I had. I thought of him every night back then, in my nightmares.

But don’t think this is going to be one of those stories where the girl gets raped. He’s not in my nightmares due to the horror of what he did as much as due to guilt over what we did. Both of us consciously.

And don’t think it’s going to be some sort of traumatic: “Oh no! I just lost my virginity to a guy who already has a girlfriend and he’s still with her!” story either. One, I wasn’t a virgin then, and two, I knew what the situation was between Bart and Fiona, and I didn’t intend to change things between them.

It happened in April-- over seven months before this freezing December day. But April wasn’t warm either. We were in Chicago-- seven hours by bus from Bainbridge, Ohio, for a show choir tournament.

Bart’s best friend Hank Remington was entertaining our group the whole way up with stories about the various sexual exploits that occurred on previous show choir trips. It was all getting me fairly turned on, and I could see the outline of Bart’s erect penis inside his cargo pants. Probably wishes Fiona were here, I thought.

But instead of referencing her, he began to make all these flirtatious comments to me. And I let him.

That night, after going out on the town and seeing Wicked, our ‘show’, as he kept calling it (although I’ve personally always preferred the term ‘play’), and while everyone else was in the hotel lobby having an impromptu party, we snuck up to the room he was sharing with Hank and my friend Edward.

As quickly as anything he had stripped my dress off and his pants and we were fucking. “Fuck like minks!” he exclaimed. I wondered if that’s what he thought we were doing, because that was nowhere near as good as the best sex I had ever had. Does this work for Fiona? I wondered.

He was still thrusting into me when the door opened. Oh shit, I thought, sweating underneath Bart as Edward walked in. It’s one thing for me to be seen having sex with someone, I thought. Just another case of Monica with a boy, right? But when the boy is half of the school’s longest-running couple and the one catching us is as good of friends with her as he is with me, he’ll tell her and she’ll hate me.

“What the fuck are you guys doing?” Edward exclaimed. He still wasn’t taller than me back then, so even next to the somewhat-slight Bart he looked like a total shrimp.

Wordlessly, Bart climbed off of me and grabbed his pants, gravitating towards the bathroom. “Where are you going?” Edward demanded, blocking him. But Bart pushed him out of the way and slipped inside the door.

So Edward turned his gaze to me. “I thought you and Fiona were friends,” he said.

“We--” I began.

“You just slept with her boyfriend!” he exclaimed.

“He was lonely,” I mumbled. “He told me he needed this.”

“Well, tough luck. That little bastard… do you realize what this is gonna do to her?”

“To who?” I asked.

“To Fiona!” he growled. And for once, Edward Venderhaven actually scared me. “Do you ever think, Monica?”

“Do you ever knock?” I retorted venomously.

“Oh, and why should I have? It’s my room! I have a key! Hank’s the one who should have been up here doing-- this-- and he’s in the lobby partying still. As far as I could have assumed, Bart was either in the shower or sleeping. He wasn’t gonna answer my knock then. And I guess the same is true when he’s so involved with you!”

“God, Edward, would you just shut up?” I asked. “Just because you’re still a virgin--”

“That’s low, Monica. That’s so low, you know I could care less.” He shook his head at me. “Have fun with Bart.”

He would have left then if Bart hadn’t come out of the bathroom fully clothed and stopped him at the door. “Hey, Edward,” he said conversationally.

“What?” Edward snarled.

Bart laughed nervously. “You know this all means nothing, right? You know this is just a one-time thing, what happens in Chicago stays in Chicago, just like Hank was saying about Washington last year?”

I nodded. I had known it was going to be like this all along. “That’s the biggest load of bullshit I’ve ever heard,” Edward said. “You just cheated on your girlfriend and you’re trying to get me to abide by some nonexistent show choir code.”

“It’s not non-existent!” he whined, his voice rising in pitch as it rose in volume. “Hank knows all about the code!”

“Well, then I hope Fiona does too,” Edward said as he stormed out. After one more look at Bart, that now-whiny and wormlike man, I became disgusted with what I had just done and slipped my dress on to follow Edward.

“Edward, you can’t,” I told him. “Do you really want to hurt her like this?”

“He hurt her, not me.”

“Edward--” by then, I was crying. I don’t cry much, so this fact made me even angrier than I would have been otherwise. What an asshole, I thought. Lonely? For three days? How weak is this guy? “I don’t want her to hate me,” I blubbered out. “I just want to forget it happened.”

He softened. “Fine,” he said. “But there’s obviously something wrong in their relationship.”

I nodded, feeling miserable.

And the rest of the night, I thought about what he said. Something wrong. How this will hurt Fiona. Bastard. And I realized that letting the longest-running high school couple run on was not the smartest idea.

I couldn’t do a thing, though. Not until that afternoon at the Circle-K.

“Gotta hurry,” Fiona said.

“Why?” I asked, while thinking: Probably Bart.

“Have to meet with my guild-- D&D-- Bart introduced me to them, and there’s this guy Devin--”

My interest was sparked. “Is he hotter than Bart?” I asked.

She seemed to honestly be thinking about that one for a moment before definitively nodding yes.

The day we got back to school after the Chicago trip, I walked in to see Fiona hugging Bart. They looked like they were trying to act like long-lost lovers in a romantic movie. Other people were staring at them—almost glaring at them—as they walked by. I shook my head, trying to jar the images of Bart on top of me out of my head. If people knew what I had been doing with Bart they would be looking so strangely at Fiona. There was an envelope full of pictures from Friday afternoon and evening in my messenger bag, ready to show people. After seeing Bart and Fiona, though, I knew I wouldn’t. I hadn’t taken any pictures on Saturday or Sunday...I had still been thinking about Friday night too much.

Bart had been snapping pictures all over, though—most of them on his new cameraphone, which he then sent on to Fiona. “Covering up his dirty deeds,” Edward had whispered to me when he started. I noticed that most of the pictures he took were of buildings—giant phallic skyscrapers. “That or compensating for something.”

Edward essentially hadn’t left my side the rest of the weekend. I didn’t know whether he was trying to protect me or spy on me, but while it sometimes was a bit of a hassle, it was generally pleasant. It kept girls who thought I was their friend but were really just very annoying away from me at least. When they annoyed me, I just became quiet. Edward actually got rude. But he was nice to me.

Which was why I wasn’t surprised to see him standing by my locker, looking at me sideways. “Are you all right?” he asked.

“I just saw Bart and Fiona together.”

He nodded. “But you kind of knew you were going to, right?”

I nodded. “Yeah…it’s just weird, because she doesn’t know anything.”

“She will eventually. Just wait and observe. There’s gotta be a crack somewhere.”

In the months following this I was sometimes unsure about our mission. I had been a willing participant in what had happened, after all. Sometimes after religion class I wanted to find Fiona and just lay it all out. But somehow Edward would always be the one to find me first. I’d start telling him everything instead, and he’d always reassure me that what we were doing was right. Which is why the first thing I did when I got home after dropping Tammi off and smoking another cigarette apiece in my car was call Edward. “Operation Monster is set to begin,” I told him.

“What’s the angle?” he asked.

“A second love interest for Fiona.”

He nodded over the phone. I could sense the nod. “What’s his name?”

“Devin Langermann.”

“Do you know anything about him?”

“Just that he’s very, very tall.”

“Possibly capable of beating up Monster 43?” (This being our codename for Bart, with the ‘43’ referencing Fiona’s lucky number).

“Maybe. But isn’t Bart kinda strong?”

Edward scoffed. “He thinks he is. I could take him.”

“You wish,” I said.

“I do wish. If I could’ve, I would’ve in Chicago.”

“That probably wouldn’t’ve been a bad idea,” I said.

“Yeah it would’ve. He’d’ve gone whining to Mr. Rivers or one of the other chaperones and then everything about you and him having sex would’ve been found out. I don’t think you could’ve afforded something like that on your record, could you?”

“Not last year, no.” More talk about my reputation. At least Edward cared to preserve what little I had left, though I doubt “has not, as far as we know, slept with another girl’s boyfriend” did much for me as far as that went. I was the notorious scarlet woman, but at least I could take pride in the fact that this distinction was deserved. Other girls got the same whore reputation for no good reason at all.

On New Year’s, I invited Edward over. My mom was at some party with people from work, so I answered the door.

“Hey dude,” I said.

“Hey. I got the extended edition of the Lord of the Rings DVDs.”

“Cool. Let’s go downstairs, I guess.”

We stayed in the basement watching movies until about three in the morning, not even paying attention to what time the ball actually dropped. It was nice, for once, just to be able to relax.

When Return of the King finally ended, Edward turned to me and said: “I saw Bart on Christmas Eve.”

“What was he doing?” I asked.

“I don’t know. He was with Hank. They were at the mall, shopping I guess. Bart was acting kind of weird.”

“Doesn’t he always?”

“Yeah, but he seemed even weirder than usual. Really shifty and stuff.”

“Interesting,” I said. It wasn’t really. Bart could do whatever he wanted to do, it didn’t affect me much right now. I hadn’t seen him in months. Talking about his weird actions wasn’t going to change anything. “How was Hank?” I asked.

“He looked fine. I don’t know, I didn’t actually talk to the guys. It’d’ve been nice to reconnect with Hank, but not with Bart around.”

You really hate the guy, don’t you? I thought. This isn’t just about what he did with me, and this isn’t about Fiona, this is something else altogether.

“You know, you guys always seemed friendly before the trip,” I said.

He scoffed. “We weren’t. I just wasn’t openly hostile. But he’s a weasel,” Edward said.

“What?” I asked, not understanding.

“He always seems to want to just squirm his way into things without ever really making a commitment. He was in the video game club for a while, then left. He was in the chess club, then he left that. He seemed pretty committed to the tech crew, but I think the only reason he was was so he could keep flirting with you and Harriet--”

I laughed—Harriet was a very annoying girl who seemed like the least likely person for Bart to consider wanting to have sex with.

“--and according to Fiona, he’s always got some new obsession whether it’s a book or a video game or a TV show or a person, and all of these things get in the way of the rest of his life.”

“And you don’t like people like that?”

“No, I actually don’t. Plus he once told Megan Bonham that I wouldn’t make a very good boyfriend for her.”

“I never knew you wanted to go out with Megan.” Megan didn’t seem anywhere near smart enough—or even pretty enough--to attract Edward’s attention.

“I used to. She was nice, but then she started getting all weird about not wanting to date people who were younger than her. Despite what she might say, she’s totally obsessed with images. I really had no choice but to move on, right?”

When school started back up again the change in Fiona Jalensky was evident. She seemed to have driven into her schoolwork with an immeasurable intensity. Something’s wrong, I thought, because even good students like her didn’t get that cold flinty look in their eyes about something as mundane as government class for no reason. But before I even had a chance to mention it she had changed again and had been consumed by cheerfulness. A happy Fiona, I thought. This I mentioned to Edward.

“I’ll check it out,” he said.

That night, he IM’d me and said: I told her.

Anger filled me. My mother was sprawled out on our couch with a glass of vodka watching last season’s Desperate Housewives DVD, imagining she was Gabrielle or Susan or Bree from Wisteria Lane instead of ordinary Patricia Fiorelli from Ohio. And now Edward was telling me he had gone against everything we had ever said and had told Fiona what happened. WHAT DID SHE SAY? I demanded furiously, fingers pounding into the keyboard.

She didn’t believe me at first, he said, but I think she’s gonna leave him.

I exhaled. It had occurred to me more and more over the past couple of months how big of an asshole Bart had been and how much I didn’t want him to carry on ‘getting it’ from Fiona when he didn’t deserve it.

She was just sort of spilling her entire story to me, Edward said. Like she just had to tell someone.

Doesn’t Megan know? I asked. They were best friends, and I would have thought she would have told her over Edward, who really was just one of her closer guy friends.

She knows. So does the amazing six-foot-eight Jew.

What? I asked. This part confused me, none of our friends were that tall or Jewish.

Devin. Who you heard about? But I think she was still confused enough to want a third or fourth opinion.

So she went to you, I thought. I wonder why? Why do we all depend on you? But instead of that I asked: So she’s leaving Bart for Devin?

I think, he said. At least that’s what I encouraged her to do. I don’t know this guy. I don’t know what he’s like. But anything’s better than staying with a cheating loser like Bart.

Cheating, yes, I thought. But… Loser how?

He flunked out of college, essentially ruining all the plans he had with Fiona.

Then why does leaving confuse her? I asked.

Because Bart’s so damn good at the guilt, the reassurance, all of that shit. But it’s in her hands now, and she has all the information she needs.

Edward signed off soon after saying this and I read back over the conversation hoping somehow that if I knew every bit of what was happening by heart than I could somehow free her from Monster 43.

And I was struck by how wise Edward seemed to be growing. What happened to the guy who would shout ‘penis’ at the top of his lungs in the hallway at school? I thought. He’s so analytical now it scares me.

I thought about Devin too. I knew as much about him as Edward did, which was nothing. I had no idea if he deserved her, but I wanted him to. I wanted him to win. And then we could get rid of Monster 43’s influence on our lives forever.

Edward told me about Fiona and Bart’s breakup on Monday, January 30th. But even after that I continued to have the nightmares.

“You sure you’re okay?” Tammi would ask me as I would show up to school for days in a row with bleary, half-dead eyes. I couldn’t tell her much though. Sure, we shared our secret, illegal rituals of smoking together behind the school, but she was still just a freshman and hadn’t been there in Chicago. Edward became my confidante instead, and we watched as Fiona continued to float around the school in a glaze of happiness he told me she hadn’t had even in the early days of Bart.

Monster 43 is defeated, I thought at one point. He doesn’t have her and she’s happy. We won and he lost. And to him I thought: Go back to your cave and hide!

I heard a few rumours about the breakup, but she shook them off until there was nothing more to say. I heard from one of the senior show choir girls that she had written a poem for English class about what a coward he was.

She’s made herself into the heroine even by cheating, I thought. Smart way to be rid of a bad reputation.

I didn’t talk to her during this time. I didn’t know what to say. Edward told me nearly everything about her anyway. I guess I was just glad she didn’t publicly call me out on what I did in Chicago, call me a skank or something. But I guess she got enough of that herself when she was with Bart.

I finally got up the courage to talk to her again on March 11th, when she brought Devin with her to the school play. After the ‘show’ was over, she was walking around in four-inch heels with a guy who still must have been nine inches taller than her. I approached them.

“Hey, girl,” I said. We bumped fists, something we had never done before, but it showed the solidarity that existed between us, as two girls hurt by Monster 43’s trajectory.

“Hey,” she replied. “This is Devin Langermann.”

“Your new boyfriend?” It was an obvious question, I knew, but I felt I had to ask it, because she didn’t know that Edward had been telling me everything about her for the past month and a half.

“Yeah,” she said, smiling up at him. Their eyes met in some sort of private conversation I couldn’t hope to interpret.

“You look good together,” I said. That fact was still stuck in my mind, and it was the only thing I could think of to say.

“Thanks.”

And that was all I needed. I didn’t need some awkward introduction of her telling him who I was. It would be too complicated. So instead I walked away to find Edward.

Along the way, though, I saw someone who I thought would never want to show his face here again. And he was doing something I was all too familiar with.

Bart Savarnich, Monster 43, was kissing Megan Bonham behind the sound booth. They jumped apart when I walked in.

“Hey, Monica,” Bart said in a friendly, coaxing way, as if I was an idiot. I just stared at him wordlessly, remembering his clumsy thrusting from nearly a year ago and flicked him off before walking up the steps and backstage. I could feel his eyes staring into the back of my head still as I ascended.

“Edward--” I said when I found him in the costume room. I started talking without knowing what to say, how to explain, what to ask. “Do you know? Does Fiona know? Does Megan know what we know?”

“Shh--” he said. “I saw it too… everyone knows. Everyone knows everything, Monica. And you think he would’ve learned-- or she would’ve--”

I nodded, head bobbing rapidly. “Why?” I asked.

“Because,” he said. “It’s like I said… he’s good at all of this. We can never truly beat Monster 43. We can only set examples against him.”

And with that, he took my hand, pulled me in, and kissed me, more tenderly than Bart or any other boy, and I knew that monsters didn’t matter anymore. Fiona and Devin could be happy, Bart and Megan could ruin their lives.

And I could finally have something to call my own.