Gossip Girl: It Had To Be You

J sure hasn't missed much

Her bus was stuck in stop-and-go traffic all the way home from Pennsylvania, and her cab from Port Authority was manned by the slowest driver alive, but just before midnight Jenny unlocked the door to her family's apartment and tiptoed inside. It was dark and the windows in the living room were open. The ancient flax-colored linen curtains wafted pleasantly in the hot summer breeze. How nice it was to hear the sounds of traffic, to feel the musty floorboards creak beneath her feet, to smell the homey smells of cigarettes and coffee and curry powder. The dining room table was still covered with the remainders of dinner: a Pyrex lasagna pan containing baked chicken legs, pineapple slices, whole bananas, and what looked like partially melted Hershey's kisses. Next to the pan were two mostly empty bottles of Guinness. A light glowed from the study down the hall and she could hear the familiar voices of her dad and Dan.

"Hey people," she greeted Dan and her father. They lay on their tummies on the faded Oriental rug in the study, playing hangman. Dan wore a white wifebeater, backwards, and cutoff black corduroys. His shaggy light brown hair was sticking out all over the place and his eyes were bloodshot. There was a cigarette behind his ear and he was nursing a bottle of Amstel Light.

Rufus wore his favorite red cotton ankle-length nightshirt with the sleeves rolled up. There was lint in his beard. He sat up and held out his arms for a hug. "What's an eight-letter word beginning with t with two o's in it?"

Jenny crawled into his lap like a little girl and allowed herself to be smothered in his embrace. "You guys are scary, you know that? I mean, what would happen to you if I never came home?"

They'd eat each other?

Dan pointed at her bare, mosquito-bitten legs. "Jesus."

Jenny shrugged her shoulders. She had already decided to pretend that camp had never happened. "I don't want to talk about it."

Marx, the Humphreys' enormous black cat, strutted up and butted his head against Jenny's hands. Rufus adjusted her on his lap so he could add another letter to his hangman word. So far he had TO_ TO_SE, and his hangman was fully formed.

"I'm allowing feet, hands, and ears," Dan explained, swigging his beer.

"And a face! You promised me a face," Rufus grumbled, frowning at the word. "Tobnoise. Towpoise?" he muttered nonsensically.

Up on its roost on the bookshelf the dusty Sony stereo made a clicking sound and one of Rufus's weird arrhythmic jazz CDs came on. "So this is what you guys have been doing all summer?" Jenny demanded.

Dan nodded like it was no big deal. "Pretty much."

"And what about the rest of the human population? Have you gotten out? Seen anyone?" He shrugged his shoulders and Jenny wished he at least was wearing his shirt the right way around. "So basically you've spent the whole summer being a little Dad-in-training. No offense, Dad. And what about Vanessa?"

Dan shrugged his shoulders again. It was August, hot, and his skin was as pale as a mushroom. Jenny wanted to slap him.

"Tontoise?" Rufus muttered idiotically.

She extracted herself from her father's lap and stood up. Was it just her or were all boys retarded? She was tired from the journey and needed to sleep. "Dad, the word's tortoise. And Dan, if you don't call Vanessa, I'm going to call her for you, because some people are just nice, and some people are not."

Amen.

Lying under her cool pink sheet on the bed she'd slept on since she was two years old Jenny drifted defiantly to sleep. She'd spend the last three weeks of summer working on the calligraphy for the hymnals, learning breast-toning exercises, and making sure Dan showered every day and got out more. Soon she'd be in eighth grade—which was practically high school—armed with an awe-inspiring chest and the knowledge that most boys really are retarded.

How could she go wrong?