Shelly Part 4 Celebration

She paused as she turned the car into a freeway off ramp and coasted down towards the street. She took a left at the light. “Anyway, so I’m lying on my back and out of nowhere I start imagining that it’s Katie there between my legs. It made all of the difference in the world. When I came back to my senses, Jamie was sitting a little distance away from me and he said, kind of suspiciously ‘Who’s Katie?’ I realized that I must have said her name out loud when I came. I told him right then and there that it wasn’t going to work out between us and why. Men just don’t interest me in the slightest.” Megan glanced up and met my gaze in the rearview mirror. I quickly looked away, feeling anew that flash of fear that had struck me before.

“That’s gross,” Laura said suddenly, giving Megan an exaggerated look of disgust.

Megan cast a sidelong look at her. “Don’t you start with me, sister. I’ve been saving up my Lompoc white trash jokes for just such an occasion.”

We drove down to the beach and continued right on toward the water, driving onto the pier at Stearns Wharf. The car bumped rhythmically over the timbers spanning out over the beach to the water. To the west, the sun was sliding slowly down towards the Channel Islands, casting long shadows across the beach. “Oh, I want a sailboat,” I said wistfully, looking at the forest of masts at the marina.

“Better save your pennies,” Megan advised. “They run about the same range as a car.”

Laura snorted. “I’d rather have a car. But that’s what sucks about having a poor-ass family.”

“Here we are,” Megan said, stopping in the middle of the lane. I looked out the window uncertainly, but followed the others out. Then I spotted the valet jogging up to take the keys from Megan. Rachel, Casey and Darren were already seated, the latter pair snuggled up close together at the far end of the table. Rachel sparkled, wearing her black hair up while makeup accentuated her features in a way that was both sexy and sophisticated. The dress that Megan had bought her was black and strapless.

“You look radiant,” I said unabashedly.

“Megan helped me with everything,” she confided, then leaned closer to whisper. “Just in case you feel like getting laid tonight, was what she said. I called her a pig.” She laughed.

I sat down across from her as she greeted the others, setting my gift down quickly next to Casey and Darren’s gift-wrapped DVD player. It was soon followed by two more packages from Laura and Sachiko. It felt good to sit down to dinner with friends again. For a while I had feared that things would never be the same between all of us.

A waiter arrived to take our order. Rachel started to order a Diet Coke, but Megan leaned forward in her chair and fixed her with a glare. “Oh, wait,” Rachel said. “I think my friend over there is trying to tell me that I should get something with alcohol. It’s my twenty-first birthday today.” She smiled at him sweetly, a little too sweetly, I thought, though it didn’t appear that he minded it in the least. When he left, she turned to watch him walk away. “Damn fine ass,” she said appreciatively, sharing a glance at Casey that told me the other girl agreed with her.

“He’s alright,” Megan said, shrugging. “I’ve smelled worse.”

Rachel pointed her finger at her. “You screw with this one and I will sock you in the boob.”

Megan grimaced and then said quickly. “Hey, why don’t you open your presents?”

She opened Sachiko’s first. The shape made it completely obvious, though, even covered by the paper. “Raura said you like tennis, but did not have a racket,” she explained.

Laura’s was a book, which seemed like an odd thing for her, but it seemed that it was something that Rachel had wanted. The DVD player got enthusiastic praise as well, and I once more began feeling apprehensive about the necklace. Rachel picked it up and read the card aloud, then began to tear off the paper. She opened the box and stared inside. I knew that she must hate it but, being the good friend that she was, would probably try to make me feel better about it.

Megan quickly reached over and lifted the necklace out, holding it up for everyone else to see. “I tried to tell Shelly that it was too expensive,” she lied, shaking her head, “but she wouldn’t listen.” She stood behind Rachel and looped it around her neck. The effect was striking. I realized that Megan had found a pair of matching earrings and had fixed Rachel’s hair deliberately to show off the necklace.

“It’s my birthstone,” Rachel said, “topaz.” She stood up and looked around. “Is there a mirror in here?”

“I saw one when we came in,” I answered, standing up to show her where it was. I knew that this was my chance to get her honest opinion, so that she wouldn’t be worried about making me look bad in front of the others.

Rachel stood in front of the mirror, turned slightly and posed coquettishly. “You know,” she said, “you’re my best friend and I wouldn’t have been upset if you didn’t get me anything. But this is really beautiful.” She smiled and gave me a hug. “Thank you, Shelly.”

I felt a thrill of pleasure at realizing that she actually liked it. The feeling brought tears to my eyes and I blinked them away quickly. “I thought you were going to hate it,” I admitted, feeling sheepish for my doubts.

“It’s perfect,” she reassured me. “Come on, let’s go back.”

Rachel drank conservatively over dinner, only having two glasses of wine, perhaps out of pity for the rest of us, who were stuck with drinking Coke and tea. She did manage to engage the waiter in a bit of small talk, the other girls coaching her every time they saw him coming back our way. The meal was beginning to wind down to a close when my cell phone rang. I excused myself and hurried toward the exit. “Home” shown in the phones display. I tried to quell my anxiety as I pressed the answer button. What could have gone wrong? Could something have happened to dad? “Hi, mom? I’m sorry I didn’t call you back yet. My friend is having her birthday. Is something wrong?”

There was a pause. I imagined my mother standing up and taking a deep breath. “You might say that. I picked up the mail today and got a statement from the insurance company. They were billed by Cottage Hospital, three thousand dollars, and you are listed as the patient.” Her voice was deceptively calm, but my heart nearly skipped a beat. How could I have been so stupid? “I thought it was a little strange,” she continued, “that the hospital would be billing me for an overnight stay. I thought I would have heard if something happened to you.”

Outside, I turned and walked down the pier towards the beach, away from the restaurant and my friends. “Mom, look,” I began, desperate to head off the inevitable. “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to worry you.”

She cleared her throat. It wasn’t a loud or even a rude sound, but she had conditioned me long ago to know that it meant I was interrupting. “So anyway, I thought I’d better call the hospital to clear the situation up. It took a bit of arguing, but I got them to tell me what had happened. Rohypnol, they said.”

“Someone slipped it into my drink, okay?” I said. I tried to think of a good explanation that wouldn’t implicate me further.

“Goddamn it! Shelly, what were you thinking? You went to a party, didn’t you? You were drinking, drinking alcohol. Don’t think that I don’t know how that stuff works. They said you were passed out when you got there.” I listened to her all but scream at me, feeling smaller and smaller by the moment. “You promised me you wouldn’t drink or go to parties,” she hissed. “Then, almost the moment I let you out of my sight, you start screwing up. How could you be so selfish, so stupid? And here you are, out late with your friends again tonight.”

I leaned against the railing and held the phone against my forehead, listening to the tirade from the other end. Tears of shame made hot tracks down the sides of my cheeks. A murky memory, smeared away by the effects of the drug, suddenly came back to me. Shawn’s fingers began to peel back the elastic band of my panties.

“Shelly? Shelly are you even listening?” Her voice went down almost below hearing, as though she had just covered the phone. “Stupid little bitch.”

It felt like a spark had gone off inside me. “Bitch? Bitch?!” I screamed back at her. “Is that what you think of me? How about asking me if I’m okay? How about asking whether or not I got raped? Did it even occur to you? Or did I just stop being your daughter the moment I made one mistake?”

“Shelly, I already asked the hospital about that,” she broke in, trying to regain control.

“Shut up, mom!” I felt light-headed and dangerously exhilarated. A couple walking past me on the pier turned to stare, but I ignored them. “How the fuck am I supposed to act? You’ve stomped on my dignity all of my life. You never let me just be a child. You--you didn’t even want me. You tried to get an abortion behind Dad’s back.”

From her sound of surprise, I might as well have slapped her. “Your father told you that?” she asked coldly.

He hadn’t. I had been eight at the time and my parents were in the process of getting a divorce. They were having one of their arguments that often escalated to a screaming match, this time apparently over child support. I never forgot my mother’s words that day, “If you hadn’t found out about the clinic, we never would have even had her.” I didn’t realize until some years later what that exchange had meant.

“Good-bye, mother,” I growled and threw the phone to the ground. It bounced off of the timbers and slipped between the slats of the railing. A splash sounded faintly from below. I leaned over to look down, but couldn’t see anything in the dark.

“Waste of a good phone,” Megan said, startling me. She put a hand on the railing and looked over the edge. “That sounded pretty rough.”

I crossed my arms, noticing the chill for the first time. “Never really saw me get mad before, huh?” I said, trying to sound casually flippant, trying valiantly to hold myself together.

Megan looked up at me, searching my face. “Was that your mother?” she said gently.

I nodded and bit my lip, not trusting my voice to be steady. I was beginning to shiver from the cold.