Family Storms Read online

  Deidre’s house was in a gated community. The guard checked off Kiera and opened the gate for us. All of the houses were big and beautiful, but none was even half the size of the March mansion. That didn’t mean Deidre’s family’s home wasn’t a big, beautiful house in Pacific Palisades, too. As we approached, Kiera told me more about her. First, she explained that none of them talked about each other much with anyone who wasn’t a member of the VA club.

  “We hold each other’s trust sacred,” she said. “Any of us gossiping about any one of us would be considered worse than being a serial killer, but I can tell you more about Deidre now. Deidre, as you know, is an only child. I became friendlier with her than I was with the other girls because I frankly felt like an only child, especially after Alena came along. I think you’re beginning to understand why.

  “As I told you, Deidre’s father is an important business attorney with beautiful offices in Century City. Her mother works with her father. She’s his personal secretary. I think she became that because most men hire beautiful women to become their personal secretaries and then have affairs with them.

  “Look, everyone’s here already,” she said, nodding at the three cars parked in the driveway. We pulled in behind the one on the right and got out.

  Deidre’s house was a sprawling Spanish-style hacienda with a large courtyard. It didn’t have views of the ocean because of the tree line on the west side, but it was high enough to capture the sprawling vistas and the lights of sections of Los Angeles on the east side. Deidre opened the arched front door before we reached it.

  “Everyone has to take off her shoes today,” she said. “We just put in a new carpet in the living room, and my mother is anal about it.”

  Kiera kicked hers off, and I slipped out of mine. We put them next to the four other pairs there and followed Deidre over the tiled-floor entry, down a hallway, and into the living room, where the girls were sitting on settees. There were some soft drinks on the table and a bowl of popcorn with smaller bowls, but I was glad to see no whiskey. It looked as harmless as a gathering of teenage girls could look.

  “Everyone knows who Sasha is,” Deidre began. “Sasha, you know Marcia Blumfield and Doris Norman.”

  “Hi,” Marcia said.

  “Right,” Doris said. She sipped her soda and shifted her gaze to Kiera.

  “Sit anywhere you want,” Deidre said. She flopped into the big armchair to the right of one of the settees. Kiera sat beside Margot, and they made a place for me. “If you want something besides soda, let me know,” Deidre said. “Don’t spill anything or drop anything on the floor, or I’ll have my mother visit you late at night.”

  The girls laughed. I sat, and Kiera poured herself a Coke. She looked at me and offered some, but I shook my head.

  “Who’s first this time?” Margot asked. “I was first the day we inducted Doris.”

  “It might be instructive for Doris to lead off, then, don’t you think?” Deidre said.

  “You mean since the last meeting, no one’s made loveydovey dangerously?” Marcia asked.

  They all laughed again.

  “Okay, I go first, then,” Doris said. She looked at Kiera. “Unless I’m wrong.”

  “You’re not wrong,” Kiera said. “Go on.”

  “Well, you all know my father owns and operates a bowling alley in Manhattan Beach. On weekends, I often go in to waitress at the café. I’ve always had a crush on the bartender’s son, Crawford.”

  “Crush. Give me a break,” Margot said. I noticed how she looked at Kiera after practically everything she said to see if Kiera approved.

  “Well, what would you call it?” Doris fired back.

  “Hunger,” she said, and everyone laughed, even Doris.

  “Okay, hunger. No matter how I flirted with him whenever he was there, he didn’t seem to notice or care. Last weekend,” she said, smiling, “he did.”

  “Doesn’t sound dangerous to me,” Marcia said.

  “I didn’t get to it yet, genius.”

  I wanted to ask why it had to be dangerous but remembered Kiera’s warning about asking questions. She must have sensed it, however, because she turned to me to explain.

  “Sasha’s probably wondering about this ‘dangerous’ thing, right, Sasha?”

  I looked at the other girls. They were all focused on me. “Yes,” I said.

  “We came up with the idea to add some additional excitement,” Kiera said.

  “You mean you came up with it,” Deidre told her.

  Kiera smiled. “Whatever.” She turned back to me. “You see, Sasha, some of the recent sexual episodes described here were quite mediocre.”

  “You say,” Deidre told her. “I was quite satisfied the last time.”

  “It takes so little to satisfy Deidre,” Kiera said, and everyone laughed again, including Deidre. “Anyway, a suggestion was made by moi to the effect of performing the ultimate sex act as close to in public or in the presence of a third party as possible, trying not to be discovered, of course. Therein lies the danger. Which brings us back to Doris. Go on, Doris,” she said.

  “Crawford hung around longer than usual this particular day. I could feel his eyes on me, and he was flashing that cute, sexy smile of his. To my surprise and delight, I might add, he waited until I was finished with my shift, and then he and I had something to eat and drink, mostly drink. He snuck me some of his vodka. His father asked him to get something for the bar in the storage room, and I went with him. When we got there, we began to kiss.”

  “Storage room?” Marcia moaned. “That’s hardly dangerous.”

  “Will you wait!” Doris said, stamping her foot.

  “She’s right. Don’t rush her. Don’t ever rush it, girls,” Kiera said. Everyone smiled. “Go on, Doris.”

  Doris sent some eye darts at Marcia and continued.

  “He was trying to undo my skirt, and I said, ‘No, not here.’ I remembered our new VA pledge.”

  “Where did you go?” Margot asked, leaning toward her. All of the girls looked more interested now.

  “I took him by the hand to an area right behind the pins. We made love to the sound of strikes and splits,” she said proudly.

  Marcia grimaced, shaking her head. “That’s not much. I don’t think it was possible for anyone to see you.”

  “You don’t bowl at my father’s bowling alley. Anyone looking past the pins might have seen us. That counts, doesn’t it, Kiera?”

  “It counts. It wasn’t as dangerous as Margot’s time with Perry Gordon just under her father’s home-office window, however.”

  Doris looked disappointed. “Well, I thought it was clever,” she said. “And it got Crawford very excited, just like you said it might. He couldn’t believe I wanted to do it there.”

  “It was clever. That was very good, Doris. I don’t mean to say it wasn’t,” Kiera told her, and her sour, disappointed expression flew off her face, to be replaced by a satisfied smile. She nodded at Marcia.

  “From the look on her face, I don’t think Sasha understands us or what we’re talking about or what we believe,” Margot said. Everyone turned to me.

  “I thought I would let you guys talk a while to whet her appetite,” Kiera said, and then turned to me. “You know what Alcoholics Anonymous is, right?”

  For a moment, I lost my breath. She knew very well that I knew what Alcoholics Anonymous was. It was a place my mother should have been regularly, even before we were on the street. I glanced at Deidre and saw the way she was staring at me, poised to see my reaction. Every part of her face was perfectly still. She wasn’t even blinking.

  “Yes, I know what it is.”

  “Well, then, it’s simple to understand,” Kiera said. “Alcoholics go there to swear off alcohol. We meet here to swear off virginity.”

  As if they anticipated my reacting with shock or negativity, they each pounced with a defense.

  “Why should boys be the only ones to be ashamed of being virgins?” Margot asked.
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  “Why should they be the only ones to enjoy having sex whenever they can or want?” Marcia added.

  “Why should boys be the only ones who can brag about how good a lover they are?” Doris asked.

  “Why do we have to be the ones who always say no?” Deidre asked.

  “Most boys, the ones who really are good lovers, don’t want to be with virgins, anyway,” Kiera said. “When they are, they always act as though they’re doing the girl a big favor.”

  “What we do here is support each other, advise each other, and protect each other,” Deidre told me. “Any girl out there on her own is vulnerable and afraid. You’re very lucky Kiera has brought you here. You may not realize it now, but you will soon enough.”

  “She thinks she doesn’t have to worry because she’s only fourteen,” Kiera said, as if she were reading my mind.

  “I was only fourteen the first time,” Margot said.

  “I wasn’t quite fourteen,” Marcia said.

  “I confess. I was almost fifteen,” Doris said.

  “The way you look, you’re not long for virginity, anyway,” Deidre said. “When Kiera dresses you and gets you made up, you look at least eighteen, nineteen. That’s why all those college boys were looking at you that night in Westwood.”

  “You don’t have a mother or a father,” Marcia said, “but every girl here will tell you it’s easier for her to come to one of us than to go to her mother with questions. What mother would accept the VA club? Even though she probably lost her virginity when she was about our age, she’d make you feel terrible even thinking about it.”

  “Exactly,” Doris said.

  “Well, what do you think?” Kiera asked me. “Want to be with us, part of us, the sex sisters?”

  They all smiled.

  “Or do you want to be on your own out there?” she added.

  I looked at each of them. They were all anxious to hear my answer. “I thought that once you lost your virginity, you couldn’t get it back.”

  “No, not physically back,” Deidre said, “but you can become a mental virgin, which is just as stupid.”

  “I’m still not sure about what I have to do,” I said.

  Doris laughed the hardest.

  “First, you take the oath, and then you get the tattoo,”

  Deidre said.

  “What tattoo?”

  “Girls?”

  They all stood up. Doris and Marcia undid their jeans and lowered them as they turned to show me a tattoo of VA done in a fancy script just above the crack in their rears. Deidre and Margot lifted their skirts to reveal the same one in the same place, and then Kiera rose, lowered her jeans, and showed me hers.

  “We’ll take you to get yours on Friday after school,” she said. “I think Sasha should have hers done in calligraphy. Her mother used to do calligraphy, and she’s doing it in art class now. Anyone have any objections?”

  No one spoke.

  “Deidre, you schedule the tattoo, and tell him what we want him to do.”

  “First the oath,” Deidre reminded her.

  “Yes, the oath.”

  “And then?” I asked, my heart thumping.

  “And then we help you break out of physical and mental virginity,” Margot said.

  “She began her period yesterday,” Kiera told them.

  “No rush,” Doris said. “I trust her. She looks as innocent as I did.”

  “Hardly,” Marcia said. “When you were born and your father asked what you were, a boy or a girl, the doctor said, ‘Slut.’”

  They all laughed. Doris threw a pillow at her. Marcia threatened to throw her drink at her.

  “Watch the rug!” Deidre screamed.

  “There’s one major added benefit,” Margot told me when things quieted down again. She looked to Kiera.

  “She’s right. When we say we’ll help you break out, we’ll make sure you break out with the right boy.”

  “No one knows the boys at school better than we do,” Deidre said.

  “The oath!” Doris cried.

  “The oath,” everyone else chanted.

  Deidre reached under the chair and produced a diary. She brought it to me, and all of the girls stood up.

  I looked at Kiera. “What is this?”

  “This diary contains every member’s description of her first sexual experience,” Deidre said. “When you’ve had yours and you write it into the book, you can read the others. Place your right hand on the notebook.”

  Were they serious? Was this some sort of joke? There wasn’t a smile on anyone’s face, and no eyes betrayed any humor. No one was going to leap to cry “April fool” or anything. They couldn’t have looked more serious in church.

  I put my hand on the notebook.

  “Repeat after me. I, Sasha Porter, do solemnly swear to share my most secret sexual thoughts with my sisters and with no one else.”

  I repeated it.

  “I hereby renounce virginity, and I will never betray any sister’s trust or speak of the VA club with anyone who is not a member.”

  After I repeated that, all of the girls placed their right hands over mine. They all closed their eyes as if in silent prayer. I closed mine.

  Each one hugged me and returned to her seat.

  “Now, then,” Kiera said, smiling. “Let me tell you how I made love dangerously this week.”

  Like kindergarten students gathering around their teacher to hear a story, the girls leaned forward. Despite what Kiera was about to describe, I found myself lost in my own thoughts.

  More a single question.

  What had I just sworn to do and to be?

  27

  The Oath

  I was really proud of you in there,” Kiera said as we drove home. “A couple of the girls were worried you were too young. Of course, they don’t know your history. Growing up in the streets, seeing the things you’ve seen, has made you more mature than they are, I’m sure.”

  “I didn’t see much more than poor people struggling to eat, Kiera.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  I didn’t, but I didn’t disagree with her. If she wanted to believe those things about me, fine. Right now, it looked like something of an advantage to have her think that way about me.

  “But you can’t keep going to school dressed like a character in Alice in Wonderland or something,” she continued. “I’m going to give you more of my things to wear. My mother has to realize you’re not a ten-year-old, and boys won’t take you seriously if you look like you just walked off Sesame Street.”

  “Ricky seems to like me,” I said.

  “He’s one of us. Besides, he’s only one boy. You don’t want to become dependent upon one boy this early. That’s the whole point of our club. Girls get into this frenzy to have a relationship. Heaven forbid they not be asked out on a date or not have a date to the prom or something. We’re free of all that anxiety and pressure.” She smiled. “And it drives the boys crazy because we act so indifferent. We’re in more control of our own destinies. You see the point, right?”

  “Yes,” I said. I did see the point. What she was saying made me feel a little better about what I had just sworn to do and to be.

  Luckily, Mrs. March wasn’t home when we arrived. I didn’t have to greet her with my face full of deception immediately. We went right up to our rooms, but Kiera wanted me to come into hers after I settled in so she could choose some clothes for me to wear to school. That was where Mrs. March found us. Kiera had at least five outfits laid out on her bed.

  “What’s all this?” she asked as soon as she entered Kiera’s suite.

  “Clothes I’m lending Sasha, Mother. She doesn’t have anything really fashionable. Alena’s things are just not right for her now,” Kiera said.

  “Fashionable? I hardly think the clothes you wear to school are what I would call fashionable, Kiera.”

  “They are to me and to my friends, Mother,” she said with what I thought for Kiera was remarkable control. She eve
n smiled at her. “You just forget what it was like to be a teenager. I’m sure your mother complained about the things you wore.”

  Mrs. March stepped closer to examine what was on the bed. “I don’t remember you wearing these things.”

  “Why am I not surprised?” Kiera said, rolling her eyes. “Sasha likes them,” she added.

  I hadn’t really expressed any opinion yet, but Mrs. March looked at me as though she had caught me in a betrayal and then relaxed her shoulders like someone accepting defeat.

  “How did the audition go?” she asked.

  “Neither of us was thrilled with it,” Kiera said. “We’re rethinking it.”

  “Why?”

  “Mother, will you ease up a little? Sasha has enough pressure adjusting to a new school, making new friends, learning the clarinet, and everything else.”

  Again, Mrs. March turned to me for a reaction. I was silent. I’m already deep in a lie, I thought, and felt trapped.

  “Very well,” she said. “I’m meeting your father at Palmeri for dinner. Don’t give Mrs. Duval or Mrs. Caro any grief.” She left.

  I knew Mrs. March was very upset with us, but Kiera looked as if she couldn’t care any less about it. She continued pulling clothing off hangers and tossing what she liked onto the bed with cries of “This will look great on you! This is perfect!”

  She stood back from the clothes. “You need some jewelry, too, and I have a watch you could have. Here,” she said, taking the watch off her wrist and handing it to me.

  “But it’s your watch.”

  “I have more than twenty, silly.”

  “Twenty?”

  “Those are real diamonds in it, by the way.”

  I put it on my wrist.

  “Looks nice on you.”

  She dumped a box of earrings, bracelets, and necklaces onto the bed beside the clothing she had laid out and began putting the outfits together with the jewelry. She had so much I thought she could open her own jewelry store.

  “Is any of this very expensive?” I asked.