Alex Gaskarth Must Die

I wake up in the morning groggy and hot, sweat drying in weird places and my left arm going numb from where it’s wedged underneath my body. ‘Fuck,’ I groan, blinking blearily at Alex lying beside me. His hair’s sticking up in weird ways and he’s drooling onto the pillow but I still find myself wanting to curl into him and just never leave. I’m wearing his t-shirt from last night and panties and Alex is just in his boxers; his hand is reached halfway between us towards me. Yesterday this was all so exciting and new and fun and it still is, it’s still nice and I don’t regret it, but the morning light always makes things different than they were at night. I pull my hand back from where it was moving towards him and stay silent. Gradually Alex’s eyes flutter open and he smiles, a tiny, sweet thing before pulling me in closer. ‘Hey,’ he says through a kiss; ‘Hi,’ I reply, and kiss him back. His morning breath is terrible and so is mine, but after a few wrinkled noses the taste melts away and we roll around on the bed until my phone buzzes on the floor.

‘Should I get that?’ I ask, pulling back and resting my forehead against his. His breath gusts against my closed eyelids and I squeeze them shut tighter, wanting to remain in this little cocoon away from the outside world.

‘Fuck no.’ I laugh and ignore it like he says, but it keeps stopping and starting for the next ten minutes and I groan and pull away.

‘Hello?’ I mumble into it.

‘Rebecca!’ my dad chirps cheerily into the phone.

‘Oh God,’ I mumble, scrambling off Alex and pulling his hoodie on from the floor. Sorry, I mouth, and then turn away, oh God, what, I was just talking to my Dad and naked on top of Alex at the same time. There’s a special type of hell for things like this, probably. ‘Hi, Dad, sorry – we, uh, stayed up pretty late last night.’

‘Right,’ he says disbelievingly. ‘I’m going to pretend you girls stayed up braiding each other’s hair for both of us, but I was calling to say Mom’s out right now getting groceries and she was going to pick up some food for the drive up to New York. You can pick it up when you come over to get your stuff, so we’re taking requests.’

‘Okay, right, yeah, uh, lemme think for a second,’ I say, and rattle off an order of coffee, muffins, waffles, bacon, chips, and fruit. ‘We’re a little hungry,’ I say after a pause.

Dad snorts. ‘Are you sure you haven’t turned into Dustin? Because this is what he eats.’

‘Hey! It’s just going to be a long drive, alright?’

‘Alright,’ Dad laughs. ‘Get over here soon or else it’ll get cold. Bye.’

‘Yeah, see you soon.’

I hang up and turn back around to stare at Alex on the bed. He grins like a dork and beckons me closer and I go, of course I do. ‘Your dad?’ he says, putting his hands in the pocket of my hoodie and pulling me in.

‘Yeah. We should probably get going soon. It’s a long drive.’

‘You sure you’re okay to drive?’

‘Yeah, I didn’t drink that much and it’s only, like, a three hour drive. I’ll be fine,’ I insist to his disbelieving face.

‘Alright,’ he says slowly.

‘It will,’ I say again, rolling my eyes and dragging him down for a kiss. He makes a face and pinches my arm but lets it go while we shower. After getting dressed, we head outside and I immediately wish we hadn’t.

It’s not that – well – okay, yes, it is definitely that I would like to avoid everyone for a little longer. Jack lets out a piercing wolf whistle and Brittany just winks, but as I look around at other, completely random, people from school still milling around, I find all too knowing looks in their eyes.

‘Does everyone know we had sex last night?’ I whisper to Alex, picking up stray Solo cups and lobbing them in the direction of the trash can.

He snorts out a laugh. ‘Honestly I think everyone fucked somebody else last night so it’s not a stretch. But yo, you guys should get going, the food your dad’s got gonna get cold.’ I still feel kind of uncomfortable, but I shrug it off. ‘And hey,’ Alex says, leading me over to my car and pushing me back into it. He looks at me, his face serious, and frames my head with his hands. ‘We didn’t fuck last night; we made love.’ I can’t help the sappy smile that comes to my face as we trade kisses, waiting for Brittany, Lauren, and Robin to come.

‘Romantic idiot,’ I mutter into his lips.

‘Your romantic idiot,’ he grins back, just proving my point.

‘Ugh, stop making out, we have a city to get to.’ Brittany’s voice is punctuated by a paper ball thrown at Alex’s head and Rian’s laughter. We break apart, laughing with them, and soon enough, I’m kissing Alex goodbye and we’re on our way to New York.

-

We’re staying at Brittany’s older sister’s apartment; she’s on vacation too, somewhere classy and expensive to go skiing with her fiancé like the responsible, got-her-shit-together adult she is. Brittany’s slightly bitter words, not mine. She’s got some younger sibling issues with Ashley (‘Call me Ash,’ she says as she hands over the keys, the yellow diamond glinting on her fourth finger matching her honey coloured hair, ‘there’s too many Ashley’s around here.’), but she’s letting us stay at her apartment in Manhattan for a week so none of us are complaining.

Ashley’s apartment is like something out of Sex and the City. It’s sixteen stories up with a view straight out of a tourist guide and I know from copious amounts of research for college that this place can’t be cheap. A loft on the very edge of Queens costs an insane amount; what must this, a 3 bedroom apartment a few blocks away from Central Park cost? It’s also furnished impeccably, all shining chrome, spotless white carpets, and maple wood like something out of a – not Crate & Barrel, Ashley would probably rip my head off for even suggesting that she would shop there, but something high end, like the Chanel of décor. We’ve been instructed to stay out of the master bedroom, but the two guest bedrooms are huge with California Kings so it’s no big deal.

We arrive in the evening, the sun just starting to set over the tops of the buildings and turn the sky purple, and find a Starbucks after finally managing to park my car. Driving up here, I’d thought maybe I’d hate it after all – that even though this place has been my dream for so long, I’d deluded myself into thinking I loved it and that I’d feel alone and out of place in such a big city, and that going to Pratt would be a mistake. Now that I’m here, though, ordering coffee and a muffin and watching a pigeon pick at some gum stuck to the sidewalk, it feels – well, not right. Not just yet. But it feels like I’m on my way to being okay and that this city will help me get there. Robin rolls her eyes at me over the top of her coffee, mumbles sleepily, ‘Stop getting your feelings everywhere, Becks,’ and I laugh and punch her arm. She was definitely the one that dragged me on the four-hour-long tour of Washington D.C.’s libraries anyway; she can deal with a little Central Park and yellow cab appreciation from me.

‘Alright, kids,’ Brittany says, descending from the bathroom in a puff of perfume, looking significantly better than she did when we arrived, ‘we’re on a tight schedule – you only get one senior year spring break, so let’s get going.’

‘Fine, Mom.’ Lauren rolls her eyes as Brittany drags us out, but I like that Brittany’s taken complete, obsessive-compulsive control over this entire trip. She’s right – we only get one senior year spring break, and I want to make this one count. If it were left to me, I’d probably just spend this week watching reruns of Friends with Robin while we gain a couple more pounds, but now that Brittany’s taken charge I know that not a single minute’s going to be wasted.

We stop in at Times Square and take a quick tourist photo together and then we spend the next couple hours wandering around aimlessly. The night sky starts to darken and more lights are flickering on, but the funny thing about the city is that you’d never even be able that it’s time for most humans to be asleep. There’s just as much activity as ever, a thrum in the air like something is always happening, and before we know it midnight’s closing in on us. We plod back to the apartment, clutching pretzels and ice cream, me taking shitty and shaky photos on my disposable camera, and fall into bed without unpacking. Between Brittany sleepily mumbling how all of us better be up tomorrow morning or she’ll seriously hurt us and finding out Lauren sleeps with socks on for moisture, I find myself thinking that if this is how the rest of my life goes – taking photos and falling into bed too late in the city, I wouldn’t mind at all.

-

The week seems to drag on like a sticky, slow summer day and fly by like a work-filled, errand-crammed day all at once. I find myself continuously in awe of the City, and I know that’s just the tourist in me talking – and I can’t wait for the days when I won’t be a tourist anymore, when I’ll be a true New Yorker – but I can’t help it. People and events crash by like a tidal wave, a relentless storm of things happening and it’s so real and so far from what Baltimore’s like it catches me breathless.

Brittany plans our schedules out down to the minute: sample sales and art exhibitions, museum tours and concerts, the zoo and the Statue of Liberty, even. We tour thrift stores for half a day and I find four Polaroids I have to bring home with me, plus a couple things in Jane’s size and a vintage Batman comic for Dustin, stupid little DC loving freak that he is. We go to Fifth Avenue after that, and take stupid dressing room photos in Chanel and Prada that we’d never, ever, in a million years be able to afford. Brittany knows the Kate Spade store manager by name, and he sends us off with a couple scarves like they’re not even a big deal. (‘It’s fine, they’re family friends,’ Brittany shrugs on the subway ride later. ‘We brunch with Kate and Andy every once in a while, but not recently; the baby.’) We go to the Met and the Guggenheim and some trendy little galleries dotted around the island to be cultured, and fall into a New York club where everyone is dressed to the nines against the flashing lights. Robin goes home with a guy and comes back in the morning, her expression like she isn’t sure if she should be beaming or nonchalant, demanding high-fives for her devirginization. (‘He’s twenty-two and he plays water polo for Stanford and he’s here on break with his sister, holy shit, guys, he gave me head in the bathroom and made me tater tots in the morning, it was the best.’) Lauren swears she spots Jimmy Fallon at a café one day, but by the time she’s done almost having a mental breakdown over it he’s long gone, and she mopes all day for her lost SNL love. We dart in and out of sample sales, Brittany weighing the pros and cons of each like a flowchart and Lauren, in all her six foot one and crew-rowing glory, glares at roughly seventy-eight people and scores us all a ridiculous amount of clothes and shoes. I’m glad for the money we’ve all saved up to spend on this trip, because shit, this city is expensive. Brittany’s parents come into town and treat us to a fancy dinner one night at a restaurant with multiple forks and chandeliers dripping from the ceiling, but other than that, we mostly eat pretzels and coffee.

It’s honestly the best time I’ve had in a while. I don’t even think I realized it before now, but I feel like I’ve been building up steam for too long this past year. (Whoever told me being a senior was easy was playing a seriously sick joke.) This week, in a completely unfamiliar place, has just been – good. Nothing but good times with good friends. I mean, sure, there are some things and people I miss, but life is simple right now and I’d like it to stay that way, although I’m not sure it can anymore. As time slips away and the return of school approaches again, I find myself wondering madly how to keep my life like this for as long as possible and with what feels like not enough fanfare on the L train the Friday night before we’re due to leave I realize that Alex has somehow been the cause of all this – he’s simultaneously been kind of the best and worst thing ever.

I shove the thought out of my mind for the rest of the weekend, but I should probably know by now that thoughts like that never stay dormant for long.

-

I manage to distract myself the last few days we’re here but by the time it’s Saturday night and we’re leaving again, Robin swings her feet up onto the dashboard, levels a look at me over the gearshift, and says, ‘Talk.’ I sigh and tap my fingers on the steering wheel one by one, thankful for once that my car is tiny and can only fit Robin, me, and the shitload of crap we bought – Lauren and Brittany are taking a taxi home. God knows what this conversation would go like with them here, but Robin’s – Robin’s good. Familiar territory. Fucking cars, I think, responsible for every awkward discussion since the birds and the bees with Mom and Dad in sixth grade.

‘I don’t think,’ I say slowly, measuring each one of my words carefully, ‘that I’m happy. Like, I am happy, but I don’t think I will be if – if this thing keeps going on.’ Robin nods and raises her eyebrows. My italics and her eyebrows are old friends. ‘I want to stop it,’ I say decisively. ‘I need to stop it. For everyone.’

‘But also you,’ she says.

I nod. ‘And him.’

Her mouth twists and she huffs a little. ‘Swear to God I saw this coming,’ she grumbles, not unkindly.

‘Shut up.’ I reach out an arm to shove her into the window, grinning. We stay silent for a moment longer before I start talking again. ‘I just – it was stupid of me. Of us all. Like, in the scheme of things, why the hell did we even get so worked up about him? He was just a guy. If we’d just let it be, everyone would have forgotten about it come graduation.’

‘But if you could, you wouldn’t have changed that.’

‘I don’t think so,’ I say hesitantly, shaking my head. ‘No. It – So much has happened because of it and I don’t want to, like, completely disavow all of that, you know? Good and bad things. It’s just, I don’t think I realized the bad things coming up. But I need this to stop. I need to end senior year on a good note and I need to get out of this before I’m in too deep.’

‘Rebecca?’ Robin says, after a pause. ‘I think you’re already in too deep.’

I nod in acknowledgement, making a noncommittal humming noise, and switch the radio on. She lets the subject drop, thankfully, and conversation drifts to less weighty topics for the rest of the drive but, with a kind of sickening crunch, I realize that she’s right. I am already in too deep. I like Alex, I like these girls, I like everything that’s happened to me because of this whole mess and I don’t have a clue how to separate all of those things and still come out alive.

-

Alex G. to Rebecca H. on 05/04/06
vend of spring break party @ meghan’s – sunday, 8pm

Rebecca H. to Alex G. on 05/04/06
whose genius idea was it to have that on a sunday
everyone’s gonna be hungover at school

Alex G. to Rebecca H. on 05/04/06
see you there! :)

Brittany L. to Alex G. on 05/04/06
we’ll be there.

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