Alex Gaskarth Must Die

Once we’re at the mall, I grin and immediately start leading the guys towards Victoria’s Secret. They’d promised to buy me ‘anything you want- anything at all!’, waxing poetic about my food in between, so sure, I planned to take advantage of that just a little bit. Just a little. ‘So,’ Alex starts as we near the giant pictures of nearly-naked supermodels. ‘This, uh, buying you anything you want thing, I hope you know I wasn’t serious.’

‘What?!’ I make a shocked face, and his hands come up quickly, his face becoming defensive.

‘No, no, I mean, you can have, like, a pair of underwear and an outfit since you’re stuck wearing my clothes and you look really weird, but I hope you know my parents still give me money, so don’t-’

‘Relax, Alex,’ I laugh. ‘I’m not being serious, I know.’ His face quickly melts into relief, and he lets out a breath as he smiles.

‘Thank God.’

‘I’ll try and pick the cheapest things I can find, ‘cause all I need is like a pair of underwear and-’

‘No,’ Alex says quickly. ‘I want to buy you a full outfit. We want to buy you a full outfit.’ Around him, Jack, Zack, and Rian nod in agreement.

I look at them skeptically. I’m wearing my black heels from last night with Alex’s tank top and basketball shorts, so yeah, I look pretty weird, and I can’t count how many times people have given me weird looks, but I don’t want them spending their money on me. I’ll survive for, like, three hours, and then I’ll go home and work on my homework and I’ll forget all about it.

‘Guys, no,’ I say. ‘We’ll find some stuff on sale, this is your money and I don’t want you spending it all on me.’

I can tell they want to keep up the fight, at least a little longer, but common sense takes over in the end. ‘Fine,’ Alex relents. ‘No shoes. But everything else!’ I roll my eyes, and then roll them again once we enter Victoria’s Secret. The boys look like every other guy in the store, trying to ogle the bodies blown up on the wall and trying to look natural all at once. It’s safe to say they fail at both.

Ten minutes later, I’ve picked out a simple black pair of panties with KISS IT stamped across the back in giant pink. It’s painful just looking at it, but they were the cheapest pair there and also the only one without an abundance of leopard print and ribbons. When I arrive back at the boys, I display them with a sarcastic ‘ta-da!’ and they immediately burst into laughter. ‘Yeah,’ I sigh. ‘I tried.’ Jack grins and snatches them away, running towards the counter to pay, and we follow behind to watch.

He picks a pretty blonde who looks shy and around college age and strides up with the panties swinging around his index finger. She blanches visibly at the sight of him, this tall skinny kid with a weird blonde streak through his hair and stutters out a greeting as the rest of the guys and I try to stifle our laughter. Once he’s done wiggling his eyebrows at her and staring pointedly at her chest, he hands me the pink bag with a flourish. ‘Very nice, Mr Barakat,’ I laugh, and then we’re on our way.

I hesitate outside of almost every store we pass, debating whether or not to go in and then eventually dragging them in after me to watch as I try on clothes. They don’t do much, honestly, just smile and nod and tell me I look nice in every single outfit, which is pretty good for a group of teenage boys, I admit, but still completely useless. It probably is insanely boring to them, but they were the ones who promised. At Pac-Sun, our eighth store, I scan the racks where I spend my time after school earning a depressing amount of money and immediately zero in on a dress I’ve been pining after. I’ve tried it on before and it looks great, if I do say so myself, but it was way too expensive. Now, it’s been relocated to the sale section and costs a grand total of $8 with my employee discount. ‘Finally,’ the boys groans as I lead them to the changing rooms one last time.

‘Hurry up!’ Jack calls over the door when I toss Alex’s tank top and shorts over at him. ‘We’re hungry!’

‘I’m nearly done,’ I call back, zipping up the back of the dress and examining my reflection. The dress is black, with a sweetheart neckline at the bodice and two straps, one from the center and one from the outside, that join together at the shoulder. I thought they looked cool and sort of Aztec-ish; Jack laughed and told me they looked like something out of an S&M warehouse. The dress hits just a little past mid-thigh and, paired with my heels, I look like I’m going out to a party. Smiling when I’ve smoothed down the dress and fixed my hair a little, I step out with a click of my heels. The boys are all turned away from me, looking around the shop and laughing among themselves. I clear my throat. ‘Well?’

The reaction I get is straight out of a movie and I have to press a hand to my mouth to stop my laughter. They turn and start, their eyes widening a little, their heads moving slightly in surprise. ‘You guys are so subtle,’ I laugh.

Jack swoops in, ignoring my words, and picks me up, spinning me around once before setting me down lightly. ‘My best friend’s hot!’

‘Why yes I am,’ Alex says, striking a model pose. We laugh and Jack knocks his head lightly, mock-rolling his eyes. ‘And so’s Rebecca.’ He looks at me and smiles, eyes running up quickly before settling on my eyes, and I smile back. It feels real, and it is real, I remind myself, this friendship with the guys.

‘You look great,’ Zack confirms with a smile.

‘You do,’ Rian agrees.

‘Gracias, hombres,’ I say, doing a little curtsy as I smile shamelessly from their compliments. ‘Now, what was I hearing about food?’

- - -

At the food court, we grab a circular table tucked away by the window and settle down with our food: Zack and Alex with pizza; Jack, Rian, and I with Panda Express. Somehow, we get to asking questions to each other. They call it 20 Questions, a supposedly foolproof way to break the ice with new people as you ask and answer questions; not the 20 Questions where you pick an object and everyone else guesses what it is. It’s really just As Many Questions As We Can Get Through, with the boys asking the obligatory perverted and slightly intrusive questions and me asking boring ones to do with colours and music. We ask and answer each one honestly, laughing and pointing forks at each other in between, and I can’t help but realize that the only other person I’ve been this open and honest with is Robin.

‘Okay,’ Jack says on his turn. ‘You’re stuck on Earth with the five people on this table; who would you eat and who would you have sex with?’ He turns to Alex on his left expectantly.

Alex chews his pizza, holding up a hand to tell us to wait. ‘I think I’d eat Rian,’ he says, to an annoyed ‘Hey!’ He shrugs and points to Jack and Zack. ‘Dude, they’re, like, all bone.’

‘What about me?’ I ask, looking down at my legs and fidgeting self-consciously.

‘If I’m fucking you, I can’t eat you,’ Alex says matter-of-factly.

He laughs when I stab at him with my plastic spoon, and shrugs again. ‘You’re the only girl here, what d’you expect me to do?’

‘Pretend they’re girls,’ I say, pointing at Jack, Zack, and Rian. ‘The girl versions of themselves.’ Alex pauses thoughtfully and then makes a disgusted face.

‘Can you even imagine what Jack would be like as a girl?’ We start to think about it, and then stop quickly, screwing up our faces to banish the thought from our minds.

‘God, no,’ Zack says, ‘I don’t even want to think about that.’

‘He’d be tall and skinny with no boobs,’ I start, ‘and he – she, I mean, sorry – she’d tell dick jokes and have ugly hair.’

‘Insult me all you like,’ Jack says over the boys laughter, ‘but not this baby here.’ He pats the yellow streak in his hair fondly, and glares at me.

Thirty-seven questions later, covering pets (‘I have a sister called May,’ Jack offers, and I throw a piece of broccoli at him.), bra-size (‘I’m not answering that,’ I say, as Jack grins, telepathically shooting me an I know, Becca, I just wanted to see the look on your face.), favourite teachers (‘What?’ I ask, when Alex flushes, shoves the rest of the pizza in his mouth, and darts off to the bathroom. The guys shake their heads at me, only saying, ‘You’ll find out eventually.’), LA vs. NYC (‘Why am I the only one who likes New York more?’ I ask, genuinely confused as to why anyone would pick a barren wasteland with the occasional famous person over the city that never sleeps. ‘Come on, guys, East Coast pride!’), and kid names (‘Luke,’ the boys all answer simultaneously. ‘So I can say, “Luke, I am your father.”’), we finally leave the mall and pile ourselves back in Alex’s car.

They drop me off at Brittany’s, waving and yelling goodbye’s and laughing as the three girls come out and immediately start yelling, What the hell are you doing with them? and We were so worried, why didn’t you call?! I grimace under all their questions and thank the guys, managing to ignore Brittany, Robin, and Zoe before they herd me into the house.

‘So?’ Brittany prompts, after all the hugging and the worrying is over and we’re safely up in her room.

‘So, what?’ I ask, feigning ignorance.

She rolls her eyes, says, ‘So, what happened?’ and I start to fill her in, starting from the puke to right now. The girls sit in rapt silence throughout, their eyes practically popping out of their heads when I finish.

‘What?’ I ask.

‘Wow,’ Zoe says.

‘Yeah,’ Brittany agrees. ‘Wow.’

‘What, wow? I only helped a drunk dude home and got a new dress. Speaking of…’ I stand and do a little spin for their approval. Zoe and Robin smile and give me a thumbs up, while Brittany’s too preoccupied with freaking out over my story.

‘You only helped Alex Gaskarth – the Alex Gaskarth! – home and ended up in bed with him is what you did!’ she shrieks. ‘Oh my God, you’re like, a natural for this plan,’ she adds as an afterthought.

I roll my eyes and lean my head against Robin’s shoulder. ‘They’re my friends,’ I say, shrugging. ‘I don’t have some agenda befriending them.’ And then I realize what I just said. ‘Except I do. I mean, it feels like I don’t have some plan because it’s so natural but I do.’ I pause, screwing up my face when I go over my words. ‘What?’

‘You make no sense at all right now,’ Robin chuckles, patting me on the head.

‘And I wasn’t even drunk last night.’ We laugh and move onto less serious topics, like how Brittany and Tyler, the quarterback of our football team, slept together last night and Robin waking up clutching a pineapple to her chest before I decide it’s too late and I have to get home. Robin and Zoe agree (we’ve all got this giant English essay due tomorrow), and we separate, Brittany dropping all of us back home with a wave and a smile.

- - -

From then on, I start sitting at Jack’s table every day. It’s half to do with the plan, half because I actually like hanging out with them, certainly more than the cheerleaders who are only interested in things like Jennifer Aniston and new colours of nail polish. The boys are…fun. I sit between Jack and Alex, and we laugh and throw things at each other and break into random bouts of song a lot. (Okay, that last one was mainly Jack, Matt, and I.) It’s weird how well we get along, considering these are simultaneously the most hated and the most loved people at Dulaney, but hey, I’m not complaining.

Our regular table is made up of Jack, Alex, Rian, Matt, Evan, Vinny, and Danny. They’re the ones there everyday, and then sometimes Lisa, Kara, Jennifer, Claire, or some other girls join us. Conversation is normal; a far cry from what I was expecting given Alex’s reputation. It’s not all which girls are the hottest or who they’d like to do, it’s music and food and people and our lives and everything under sun that we can think to talk about. There’s still a fair amount of discussing who slept with who at that party and things like that, and it’s kind of disgusting and depressing how Alex always has a girl on the side, but those discussions never last for long so I just ignore them and preoccupy myself with eating when they talk about that.

The girl’s and I still hang out after school like we always do, and we’ve got those sleepovers on Wednesday to convene for the plan, so I haven’t entirely abandoned them for the boys. Brittany and Lauren are ecstatic about how well I’m getting along with the boys and how well the plan’s going, so I guess that’s a plus. The whole thing feels all wrong and all right all at once: now that I’m friends with Alex and his friends, I obviously don’t want to hurt them, but now that I’m friends with Alex and his friends, I’ve got even more of an idea of just how many girls he’s juggling at once and how flippantly he deals with them. The scales are tipped more in the plan’s favour right now, though, because no matter how funny or nice he is around his friends, he treats girls like complete shit. It’s a far cry from the boy who moaned about love while I was driving him home, that’s for sure.

- - -

It’s December 23rd, and Baltimore is in full holiday mode, lights wrapped around the buildings and a light sheet of snow every night that turns into really disgusting grey slush the next day. And the weather. Oh, God, the weather.

‘I hate Baltimore,’ I grumble inside Brittany’s car, pulling my coat around myself to ward off the chill. We’re on our way to yet another party: a Christmas party, this time, thrown by one of the footballers in, you guessed it, his massive house.

Brittany rolls her eyes and turns up the heat with an exaggerated motion. ‘Good enough for you, seventeen-year-old-with-an-old-grandma’s-circulation?’ Robin cackles in the back and reaches forward to ruffle my hair. It’s only Brittany, Robin, and I today, with Zoe flown off to California to visit her family over Winter Break. One plus of the weather being ridiculous, though, is that I’m going to the party today in actually reasonable clothes: plain black jeans, a white v-neck, navy Converse, and a really tight blue Abercrombie hoodie Brittany threw at me after seeing the slouchy green sweater I inherited from my grandpa.

‘Good enough for me, born-and-bred-Baltimore-citizen-who’s-gotten-used-to-the-stupid-weather,’ I reply. She rolls her eyes and starts humming along to the radio, a top hits station that’s playing a holiday song by Mariah Carey or Alicia Keys or someone like that. I don’t have to look at Robin to know she’s grimacing at the song choice too.

Soon enough, we’re arriving at the party and going up towards the door where the footballers and cheerleaders whoop and envelop us in giant hugs. I have to laugh when I see their outfits: miniskirts and shorts and – somehow – even tans in the coldest of months and Santa hats, which they immediately toss to us as well. I notice Brian, the footballer I got when we did our Secret Santa party last week, wearing the light-up glasses I got for him and he winks and flashes a thumbs-up at me before we drift away. The party passes like all parties, with booze and loud music and a pool and people disappearing upstairs to come down thirty minutes later with their hair mussed and their clothes on back-to-front. Somehow the holiday atmosphere (and maybe the clothes I’m wearing, if I’m perfectly honest) has me louder and happier and doing things I would never do normally. Accepting a challenge from Tyler for a shots-contest (and winning); kissing more random people under mistletoe than I’ve ever kissed anyone at all in my seventeen years of life; and dancing and screaming to the music with Brittany and the other cheerleaders. It’s weird, I thought people who got smashed and did stupid shit at parties were pathetic and must be having the worst time in their lives, but, well, it’s fun to just lose your mind once in a while. It’s fun to get smashed and do stuff and not remember what you did ten minutes later. I say so after Robin, Brittany, and I are crashing in a bedroom upstairs, and they laugh in response. ‘What?’ I ask, to which they only shake their heads in reply.

‘It’s just weird to see you so carefree, is all,’ Robin shrugs. ‘You’re always worrying about something or other, you never really let go.’

‘Well, I love letting go,’ I say, giggling as my hair brushes my neck and tickles me. ‘I’m gonna let go every night now!’

‘Of course you are,’ Robin says, patting my head. ‘Now go to sleep, Drunk Rebecca; who knows what you did tonight.’

- - -

From Alex G. to Jack B. on 12/24/05
fgiuvk jagtkk

Jack B. to Alex G.
4 in the moerningh
why are you texting me

Alex G. to Jack B.
jfevk innb vrewsed

Jack B. to Alex G.
friends don’t let friends drunk text
go back to bed alex

Alex G. to Jack B.
io did simthingg tpnuyte

Jack B. to Alex G.
don’t you always?

Alex G. to Jack B.
no9 but lilke
wiuth s griend

Jack B. to Alex G.
yeah, lisa’s a friend…
anything else, captain obvious?

Alex G. to Jack B.
no lieke
dcofferent

Jack B. to Alex G.
spit it out dude

Alex G. to Jack B.
i kuissed rwbwecca