Thirteen“Since she’s been dating Ricardo,

she is nowhere to be found,” commented Ximena.

“She is never home. I called her three times so she could join us and couldn’t reach her,” said Marifer.

“She’s skipping school way too much, right? She’s absent at least once a week” said Viviana, “and she doesn’t care. She hasn’t asked me for my notes, or anything.”

“She must be in love,” said Lolis.

“She can be as much in love as she wants but you don’t ignore your best friends.” said Ximena. “When she has no one to date, she sticks to us like gum, but the minute she finds a boyfriend, she vanishes.”

“I bet Ricardo will ask to marry her soon and she won’t finish college,” said Marifer.

“I’m glad she finally found a serious boyfriend,” said Viviana.

“Yes, it was about time, to tell the truth. I was worried, frankly,” said Ximena.

“Why?” asked Lolis.

They all laughed.

“Because she has a terrible reputation, Lolis,” said Ximena.

“What does she do that’s so bad?” said Lolis.

“She must have told you everything,” said Marifer to Ximena.

“She is my best friend, and she has told me many things. You’re insane if you think I am going to repeat them.”

The girls got quiet. Ximena had no choice but to break the silence.

“I love her,” said Ximena, “but she needs psychological help because she is too irresponsible, and she won’t admit she is hurting herself.”

“I’m afraid someone will take advantage of her,” said Marifer.

“Exactly,” said Ximena. “She thinks she can control everything, but one day it will slip out of her hands”.

“But doesn’t she take precautions? What could possibly happen to her?” asked Viviana.

Ximena sighed.

“You have no idea of the things she does.”

“Like what?” asked Viviana. “I mean, if she takes the pill or makes sure they wear a condom, what’s the problem?”

“No Vivis, it’s that she hooks up with too many guys. Would you come on to a guy the first time you ever saw him at a party at some stranger’s house and two hours later you are in bed with him?” said Ximena.

“Who was the guy?” asked Marifer.

“Who knows!” said Ximena. “A freeloader from the Roma or Nápoles or who knows where.”

“Were you there?” asked Lolis.

“No, but she told me the next day that they made it in the guy’s VW van on the street.”

“Nooo!” they howled. “Where?”

“In Calderón de la Barca, in Polanco,” said Ximena. “Okay, check this out: they were inside the van bouncing in the middle of the street and after a while, Lucía was dying to pee but there was nowhere to do it. The party was long over, and she wasn’t going to ring the bell at 5 am to ask to use the toilet, so the guy tells her to do it behind a bush.”

They were laughing hysterically.

“And what did she do?” asked Lolis.

“Just that,” said Ximena.

“Oh my God!” said Marifer.

“I can tell you thousands of stories like that,” said Ximena.

“How many guys do you think she has been with?” asked Marifer.

Besides Enzo, Lucía had slept with a friend’s boyfriend, possibly belonging to one of these friends, she would not say who; with a gay guy in denial, with a married guy about the age of her dad, with a guy who sang in a rock group that was starting to make it, with a director of commercials she had met at a casting; with a dealer that looked like Sting; with an alcoholic gringo who was like 20 years older; with a French guy, with a middle-aged though very handsome Italian with green eyes and shady businesses, a Venezuelan, and a Belgian. This list did not include the guy in the van, the two official boyfriends, and the untold, anonymous men with whom she just made out.

“Jeez, with a bunch. And I think she hasn’t told me half of it. But from what she has told me, at least fifteen.”

They all did their mental math. On average, each one calculated that between all of them they had fucked no more than fifteen. Not counting Lolis, whose innocence they mistook for virginity.

“No, well then, she is fucked up,” said Lolis.

“I wonder if there is anything we can do to help,” said Marifer.

“I don’t think she needs anyone’s help. She’s happy this way,” said Viviana. Their morally superior attitude towards Lucía annoyed her.

“Remember that time at the sex education class?” continued Ximena, refuting Viviana with more evidence of Lucía’s incorrigibility.

The sex education class was taught once a year by some devout mothers who were especially selected by the nuns for that purpose. That time, in the auditorium, the teenage girls learned for the umpteenth time that copulating before marriage was a sin. The nuns passed around a basket so that the girls could feel free to express their concerns about their sexuality in little anonymous notes.

A few students wrote their questions on the graph paper. Then Mrs. González de la Cueva opened a note and hesitated before reading it, her voice trembling with anger: “What does semen taste like?”

“Remember?” said Marifer.

“The Prefect of Discipline jumped off her chair so fast, it fell over,” said Ximena.

“She looked like she was going to explode when she asked who wrote it,” said Viviana.

“The first thing that came to my mind was that it tastes like lime sherbet,” said Lolis.

After laughing, the friends recited in unison the unforgettable response of Mrs. González de la Cueva:

“That is something I will not answer because I don’t know, and I don’t ever intend to know. It is disgusting.”

“So,” said Ximena, resting her case, “who do you think it was?”

“Nooo,” said Lolis.

“Of course,” said Viviana. “Who else?”

“She told you?” asked Marifer.

“She didn’t have to,” said Ximena, “I know her. If I were Ricardo, I’d be embarrassed to go out with Lucía. You go to a party and half your acquaintances have already scored with her. Let me put it this way: she was so scared, that she even went to get an AIDS test.”

“And what did it say?” asked Lolis.

“Don’t be stupid, Lolis,” said Viviana. “Obviously she was negative.”

“How do you know?” said Marifer. “Maybe she has it.”

“She doesn’t have it,” Ximena assured them.

“Negative means yes, or no?” asked Lolis.

“It means no!” they all laughed.

“But negative means something bad, so if they say you are negative, maybe it means you have it,” explained Lolis.

“Lolis, really. In any case, she was so paranoid,” continued Ximena, “that she didn’t believe the results and retook the test at the British Hospital with the excuse of donating blood.”

“Where did she get it done the first time?” asked Marifer.

“I think at Censida, near Metro Insurgentes,” said Ximena.

They were all horrified.

“Obviously, she wasn’t going to go to her gynecologist,” continued Ximena. “What if he told her mom?”

“The doctor is supposed to keep it confidential,” said Lolis.

“Supposed to,” they all said in unison.