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Being a girl from the West Side with lots of friends tends to mean everyone thinks they have you figured out. Truth is, they don’t. Not at all.
I get it. From the outside, I guess I seem real simple. Just a girl who loves making out with her boyfriend, hates greasers, and doesn’t have much space in her head to think about anything but that. I do think, though. In fact, I think a lot.
The first of those things people think about me is complicated. Brill and I both cheating on each other was the big scandal of last year. Really, him cheating on me was, I’m better at covering my tracks. No matter what happens between us, though, we always end up getting back together somehow. Sure, I guess I like to make out with him, though. He’s not much different from any other boy.
If my friends are right about one thing, it’s that I do not like greasers one bit. All they do is get in fights and jump little kids and creep on girls. Girls like my good old friend Marcia who is too naive to realize she’s making a mistake.
The morning after Randy told me that he saw Marcia and the greaser out together, I passed her a note in math class, which she ignored, so I passed another and another. I was folding up my fourth when the teacher looked me dead in the eyes. I knew I was caught.
“Miss Bush, what is that in your hand?” He asked me.
“Jitney-Bush,” I muttered under my breath. My parents are divorced. My dad’s name is Bush, he moved to Chicago with my little brother when I was nine and my brother was five. Now he’s remarried, owns a jumbo jet, and he pays for my college fund, but he’s not a real father to me. I wish he were. Jitney is my step-dad’s name, I took it too when he married my mom. Nobody who met me anytime past fourth grade knows he’s not my real dad. I tell anyone who asks that Bush is my mother’s maiden name.
“What was that?”
“I said it’s a note,” I lied.
“Passing notes is a detention, Beverly. Unless, of course, you think it’s important enough that you can share it with the class.”
I took a deep breath, trying to make sure the embarrassment didn’t show on my face. I almost stood right up and read it, just to spite him, but then I pictured the look on Marcia’s face if she heard me read out, You have a boyfriend, Marcia, you can’t be going out with greasers. “I’m sorry, the detention’s okay.” I shoved the note in my backpack.
In the hall, where she couldn’t ignore me, I grabbed my friend by the shoulder and turned her around to look at me. “Marcia, stop ignoring me.” I crossed my arms. “Who’s the greaser?”
“I…” She couldn’t meet my eyes. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” She was lying and I knew it. She’s a terrible liar.
“I know you do,” I said, “I really should not have to explain to you why messing around with a greaser while you have a boyfriend is bad, but—” Marcia’s face went from embarrassed to angry, an expression I rarely saw on her.
“Oh, lay off. I knew what you were doing, and I kept my mouth shut!” Marcia was the only person who knew about me cheating on Brill. She caught me kissing somebody at the drive-in, but she didn’t tell anyone. I was glad it was her who found out and not someone else, since she’s pretty trustworthy and she’s not the type to hold it over your head for the rest of your life (although her bad memory may be to thank for those,) but I guess she wasn’t too much above that. “We ain’t even messing around, we just call on the phone sometimes and take our sisters out for ice cream. Why can’t you just let me have one thing?” She tried to storm away, but I grabbed her hand and looked straight into her light brown eyes.
“You don’t need a greasy boy, Marcia. You’re a Soc.” I really hate to call us Socs. It’s a stupid word that greasers came up with to categorize us. The real classy woman I like to think I am pretends she’s never heard of the word. She calls us West Side girls, or just plain old girls. Marcia’s not that way, though. She needs things spelled out for her. Sometimes it’s refreshing, and sometimes it makes me so mad I can hardly stand it. “Don’t you know what that means?” She didn’t. I looked in her eyes and I knew she didn’t know. She pulled her hand out of mine.
“Well, he’s the only thing that really makes me happy these days, so you can just lay off!” To my surprise, she shoved me to the side. She’s smaller than me, but I was so surprised by it that she managed to get past me.
I was mad at Marcia for the rest of the day. Every time she glanced at me from afar or bumped into me, I crossed my arms and looked the other way.
My house was empty when I got home. It’s usually that way, since my stepdad works all the time and my mom is off doing who-knows-what. I sort of prefer it that way, since my mom isn’t home to make comments on it when I get myself an apple or a bowl of cereal. Also, I can use the telephone without any fear of somebody listening in from downstairs. So that’s what I did.
First I called up Brill.
“Hey, are you doing anything tonight?” I asked. “I was thinking we could go to the drive-in, or–”
“Sorry, Bev, I’m a little busy. I’ve got football practice in 15, and I gotta pick up Trip so that his brother doesn’t try to tag along. Nobody’s much in the mood for the drive-in, tonight, anyway, since Bob won’t be there. We should really just wait a few weeks.”
He had a point, but I was bored and didn’t feel like doing homework, so I called every girl I sort-of knew.
Madge Jennens didn’t feel like going to the drive-in if the boys weren’t going to be there.
Kathy Lane didn’t even pick up the phone.
I realized with a start that I didn’t know anybody else who I would be remotely willing to the drive-in with, alone. So I put on my sweater, jumped in my baby blue Thunderbird, and drove down there myself.
Brill was right, the place was almost deserted. Mine was the only car there, and there’s no fun in just sitting in your car and watching some horrible beach movie, so I got out and walked to the benches. I get antsy leaving my car out, especially at a place like this one that’s crawling with greasers, but I decided to test my luck.
The place was mostly full of junior high kids, who probably had their moms a block away hoping they would get their energy out. Most of them looked like they were from the West Side, as far as I could tell. It was sort of hard to know with kids that young. Not even the “queen of the Socs” herself, Cherry Valance, cared about any of that East-West side divide thing up until about 8th grade.
I’ve cared about it for as long as I can remember, but she can just go out with Bob Sheldon and be beautiful, and suddenly she’s the queen.
I hate that girl sometimes.
I saw red hair from across the drive-in, and I just knew it was her. It could have been any other ginger in the city, but I knew it was her.
I realized what a horrible idea it was to show up to the drive in alone and started to leave, only to bump into a girl.
She had dark, curly hair, cut real short with bangs. I don’t know about curly bangs, but she pulled it off. She was smaller than me. I usually hate to see girls skinnier than I am, but she looked skinny in a greasy sort of way. And for some reason, I sort of liked it. She was wearing a gray tank top and these giant jeans shorts. She looked just how a greaser girl would.
“What, you’re just gonna bump straight into me and then stare at me like I just told you the meaning of life?” She wasn’t angry, I have plenty of practice knowing whether someone is mad at me or not, when they’re acting like they’re not. That sort of comes with being a West Siders. I’ve cussed more than one person out with a smile on my face. I guess that’s a good thing about greasers, they’re real and we’re fake.
Oh my God. I’m as bad as Marcia.
My heart was racing and my face was hot as I watched her walk away.
I’m worse than Marcia. That’s a greaser girl.
I ran to catch up with her. I couldn’t stop myself, I just had to talk to her. I was very grateful that no one I knew was there.
“Hey, um…” I tapped her on the shoulder, and she turned around, smiling. She had a nice smile. It fell when she saw it was me, though. “Do you go to Will Rogers?”
She looked surprised. “Uh-huh. What do you care? You’re a Soc.”
“You’re right.” I felt my face getting hot again, but I didn’t want to turn back and go to my car. “So, do you?”
“Yes, I do. I’m a sophomore. Why, are you thinking you’ll come say hi to me at school?” I sort of smiled, embarrassed. “Oh, I see.” And then, she winked at me. Imagine that. She knew. “My name’s Ace.”
“Beverly Jitney-Bush,” I mustered. “Bev.”
“Cool, I guess I’ll see you around, Bev,” She smiled at me, and I really thought she was going to kiss me or something weird like that. But she didn’t. I just walked away. I thought I’d walk the other way to the car, so that I didn’t run into anyone else walking in. It didn’t do much for me, though, cause I walked right behind Cherry Valance. She was talking to some greaser chick with long black hair. Not the way I was talking to Ace, I mean. Just a regular old conversation.
“Cherry,” I said, and she spun around. “What are you doing?”
There was fear in her eyes, but she quickly blinked it away. “Nothing. Just talking. I guess all this with Bob and everyone made me realize it, greasers and Socs are not really so different. Not at all.” I hadn’t noticed the tears in her eyes until right then. “I’m just so sick of this rat race.”
“I think…” I stared at her for a second. I didn’t know what to say.
“I think I’m sick of it, too.”