Chapter Text
Tatum is six years old when she first meets Sidney Prescott, and she’s seventeen years old when she takes a bullet for her, but none of the intervening years make any difference whatsoever because Tatum would have done the same thing from the moment she stepped onto the bus on the first day of kindergarten, almost in tears because she had never left her mommy for this long before, and the pretty brunette girl sitting next to her had smiled at her and said, “Hi, I’m Sidney!”
She’d still had a lisp back then, so it had come out sounding more like ‘Thidney,’ which had made Tatum giggle, but Sid kept smiling and suddenly kindergarten wasn’t quite so scary anymore.
Tatum comes home from her first day bouncing off the walls. All she can talk about is Sidney, how she’d had her hair braided just like Tatum’s and how she’d shared her cookie during lunch because snickerdoodles were her favorite too and how she hadn’t worn a dress, she’d worn a pair of jean shorts, which was so cool, can Tatum have jean shorts too so she can be just like Sidney?
Dewey makes fun of her for it, because he’s a dumb boy who thinks he’s too cool to be excited about stuff just because he’s in the sixth grade now. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about though, because he’s popular enough, but he’s still a dork who has never had a best friend in his life. Tatum has a best friend now though, because she’d asked Sidney on the bus ride home if she wanted to be best friends and Sidney had said ‘yeth’ immediately in her adorable little lisp. So there, it’s only been one day of school and Tatum is already so much better at it than stupid Dewey.
They don’t have that much in common—Sid is quiet and studious and listens to her parents; Tatum isn’t and doesn’t. It doesn’t matter though, because for some reason Sid thinks Tatum is cool, even though she isn’t nearly as cool as Sid, and she lets Tatum grab her hand and pull her along whenever she runs off to places they definitely aren’t supposed to be.
Tatum’s mom isn’t even mad about it, she’s absolutely delighted. She doesn’t like the Prescotts much—Tatum can tell by the way she purses her lips whenever she’s on the phone with Sid’s mom—but she still thinks Sid is a good influence and lets them have sleepovers practically every week.
Even back in kindergarten, Sid was at the top of their class, and by the first grade, she’s already reading chapter books. She reads out loud to Tatum sometimes, lisp and all, and Tatum loves nothing more than falling asleep curled around her friend, listening to The Island of the Blue Dolphins and imagining a future where she and Sid end up stranded alone on a desert island and make up their own little country. She dreams about it a few times too, flashes of sand and laughter and turquoise water, and they’re the best dreams she ever has, enough to make up for all the ones where the shadow from her closet chases her down the hall.
*
They don’t grow apart in middle school, which Tatum is secretly kind of proud of, because Lily Chen and Casey Becker had been inseparable in elementary school too and now they’re constantly passing notes about each other and shooting spit balls back and forth in class. Sid and Tatum aren’t like that though—Tatum spends the first few years of middle school constantly switching up personas like she’s in a mall makeover montage, but Sid’s friendship is the only constant in her life. Sid is constant in general, because she’s always so perfectly, totally Sid, no matter what anyone else says is ‘in’ or ‘out’ right now. Tatum lives in awe of her, because she’s just so sure of what she likes and what she hates and how she dresses and who she is, really, and Tatum is pretty sure she’s the coolest person alive.
It’s harder for Tatum. She’s always liked boy things more than Sid—she sneaks into PG-13 and then R-rated movies through the back door of the theater at the mall, because she loves the thrill she gets from watching the really scary ones. She likes that kind of music too; she listens to Dewey’s old Holy Diver cassette over and over on her walkman until it breaks and her mother offers to buy her something more ‘appropriate’ like Olivia Newton-John. Dewey likes pop way more than Tatum does, but their mom doesn’t care because she has a clear idea of what is for girls and what is for boys. For some reason, even though she’s never fallen into the delusion that heavy metal is going to turn her perfect precious goodie two-shoes Dewey into a Satanist, she’s convinced that it’s far too dark and evil for a delicate little flower like Tatum. Dewey is pretty cool about at least, and he trades her his copy of And Justice For All for her copy of Different Light when their mom isn’t looking.
Tatum tries the whole tomboy thing on and off, but it’s more effort than it’s worth. She may like the movies and the music, and she may get pretty aggressive on the field during soccer games, but she also likes spending hours at the mall looking at clothes and talking to Sid about cute boys, not to mention the way she feels when the popular boys look at her whenever she shows up at school in a new outfit. Tomboys never impress boys, not in the turning-to-stare way anyway. Tatum has seen enough movies to know that if she commits to that role, she’ll be stuck with a lifetime of friendship with the cute boy next door until maybe he finally realizes she’s been beautiful all along at, like, prom or whatever, and she just isn’t that patient.
By junior high, she’s doing her hair and her makeup even better than the most popular girls like Casey Becker and Vicki Mason. She drops soccer and tries out for the cheer team, and boys start to really notice her then. Not that they hadn’t already—she’s blonde and had to start wearing a training bra before most of the other girls, so she’d gotten her fair share of Valentine’s cards or through-the-grapevine rumors of being like-liked, but it was never like this. The day after she makes the cheer team, she gets two invitations to the seriously cool parties that everyone knows have basically no parental supervision and always end up with games like seven minutes in heaven. Heads start turning in the hallway whenever she walks by. Vicki picks her as a partner in Biology, even though she usually partners with Jennifer Hayes.
Tatum doesn’t hate the attention—it’s not like she isn’t checking out any of the boys in return. Her first real crush is on Clay Vanderpool, who is tall and funny and has amazing hair, even if he’s flunking English, and she loves the warm little feeling she gets whenever she catches him watching her out of the corner of her eye. Boys are fun and kissing them at parties is one of her favorite hobbies, every bit as fun as putting together a new outfit that she knows looks killer, or watching Halloween alone at home and getting herself scared enough that she screams when her dog Jed barks at a passing car. It’s just that none of it is important, not the boys or the parties or the clothes, because none of it is ever going to make her feel like she does when it’s just her and Sid, alone in her room and laughing over some stupid inside joke until they cry.
She wishes Sid were on the cheer team with her, but she’s given up trying to convince her. Instead, she leaves her to do debate club and the school paper, which would normally be social suicide, except that Sid doesn’t hang out with those nerds and instead lets Tatum drag her along to the cool kids’ parties—some of the time, anyway. Sid isn’t exactly unpopular, but she doesn’t try hard enough to fit in for girls like Vicki to think about her one way or another. Tatum is allowed to bring Sid along to parties whenever her mom actually lets her come, or else whenever Tatum convinces her to pull the old trick of assuring their moms they’ll be sleeping over with one another. It works surprisingly well, because Tatum’s mom never talks Mrs. Prescott when she doesn’t absolutely have to and Mrs. Prescott spends a lot of late nights supposedly out working at her temp job at the municipal building.
Sid likes to pretend she’s only coming to look out for Tatum, but Tatum catches her smiling and moving her head to the music and can tell that she’s glad to be included.
*
Tatum has her first beer in classic American fashion—out of a red solo cup under her best friend’s disapproving stare. They’re close to graduating eighth grade, which means that in just a few weeks they’re going to be high schoolers with all of the properly grown-up teenage status the title conveys. It also means Vicki’s parents have started leaving her and her twin brother Sam alone whenever they’re out of town, and Sam knows a few older boys willing to get them a keg in exchange for a chunk of the cash the Masons had left on the table for takeout.
Sid wrinkles her nose at the prospect, but Tatum has seen enough movies that she’s been waiting for this for years and she powers through the weird taste to chug the whole cup on the spot to a few enthusiastic cheers.
“That stuff looks so gross,” Sid says, when Tatum holds the cup out for a refill.
“It’s fun, Sid,” she says, but that’s all she says, because if Sid doesn’t want to lose her drinking virginity or whatever, it’s not like Tatum is gonna The Last Prom her.
Sid’s definitely missing out though. By the end of her second beer, Tatum’s head is spinning and she understands why everyone drinks so much, because this is fun. She can’t stop laughing and she doesn’t even remember what started it. She hiccups loudly and hears someone say, “Holy shit, Riley’s fucking wasted.”
“I’m not’wasted,” she says, but her words come out sounding kind of slurred, and that sends her into another fit of giggles.
“You playing then?” someone else asks, and she isn’t sure what game they’re playing but she likes games, playing a game sounds fun, so she nods and lets herself be pulled over to one of the couches.
She doesn’t know where Sid is anymore—she’d rolled her eyes and gone off somewhere with less beer when Tatum had chugged her second cup, so now Tatum is crammed between Vicki and Casey, who she usually hates spending time around during cheer practice. Neither of them seem as woozy as she is, but they’re both a little giggly and Casey’s cheeks are flushed. Tatum thinks that she seems a lot less of a bitch than usual like this, so she pokes her in the cheek.
“You’re all pink.”
Casey bats her hand away, but she doesn’t sound mad when she says, “Oh wow, Nate wasn’t kidding. You’re so drunk.”
“Well, you’re so bitchy,” Tatum slurs and then she starts laughing again, slumping forward against Casey. Casey rolls her eyes but Tatum can tell from the way her shoulder is shaking that she’s laughing too.
“Becker, you’re up!” someone shouts across the room, and Casey shoves Tatum off her shoulder and says, “Okay, truth. Hit me, baby.”
Apparently they’re playing truth or dare, which is cool. Tatum likes truth or dare, because she’s compulsively honest and dangerously impulsive, meaning she’s always at an advantage over people like Sid who keep their cards close to their chest and turn bright red whenever they’re asked if they have any crushes. Tatum kind of wishes Sid were here, because it’s going to be her turn soon and she wants to pick Sid for a truth, but it’s probably a good thing she isn’t. Tatum wants to know Sid’s secrets in secret, because her friendship with Sid is too important to be shared with girls like Vicki and Casey.
She’s so busy looking around for Sid that she completely misses Casey’s truth—something about third base and a movie theater—and isn’t paying much attention when Chloe Granger picks ‘dare’ until Nate says, “Come on, make her kiss someone,” and Tyler adds, “Ooh, make her kiss a girl.”
“Ew,” says Vicki, loudly, from right next to Tatum’s ear. She’s crossing her arms and glaring at Tyler. “Gross, why would you want that?”
“Because chicks kissing is hot,” Clay says. His pretty hair flops into his face when he speaks. “C’mon, Casey, we all wanna see it.”
“She’s not kissing me,” says Vicki, standing up abruptly. “You’re all such perverts.”
“No one cares, prude,” Casey says, flipping her off. “All right, boys, this one’s for you… Chloe, I dare you to kiss the hottest girl here properly. With tongue.”
She looks satisfied with herself, clearly expecting Chloe to pick her, because she leans forward a little and pouts her lips. Tatum rolls her eyes, because Casey is nowhere near as hot as she always acts like she is, and Chloe seems to agree, because she ignores the hint and plops down in Vicki’s empty spot next to Tatum instead. “You game, Riley?” she asks.
“Hell yeah,” Tatum says, because Casey is huffing angrily and Clay is still watching them and this is the best idea ever if it can both turn Clay on and piss Casey off.
“Sweet,” Chloe says, smiling. She’s really pretty up close. Tatum hadn’t really paid much attention to her before, but now she’s staring at all the little details on her face—the light freckles scattered across her nose and the delicate arch of her lips—and she can see what Tyler sees in her.
Chloe leans forward slowly and cups Tatum’s cheeks gently, and her hands are so soft. She’s being tentative about it, but she doesn’t have to because Tatum’s already leaning forward, staring at Chloe’s shiny pink lips. She thinks that Vicki’s absolutely crazy, because kissing girls isn’t gross at all—they’re all so pretty and anyway, if it was gross, then why is it so common in all the porno tapes Dewey thinks he’s done a much better job hiding than he has?
Chloe’s lips are as soft as they look when they finally touch hers. It’s a nice kiss—she doesn’t just shove her tongue into Tatum’s mouth right away like all the boys she’s kissed have done. She’s delicate at first, teasing, and then Tatum parts her lips and it turns out that Chloe is a fucking artist, twisting her tongue just the right way around Tatum’s. Tatum isn’t sure when she moved, but the next thing she knows, her hands are in Chloe’s hair and she’s straddling her lap and Chloe isn’t stopping, her hands are on Tatum’s waist and she’s biting at Tatum’s lower lip, pulling her closer. There’s laughter and some cheering, but Tatum doesn’t care because her mind is floating miles above it all and her body is on fire everywhere she and Chloe are touching, and she never wants this moment to end, because they’re moving perfectly in sync and Clay’s voice is saying, “Oh hell yes,” while Casey laughs.
“What the fuck?”
Tatum’s arm is being jerked backwards, twisting up at an uncomfortable angle. She pulls her mouth away from Chloe reluctantly, blinking up to see Sid standing over her.
“S’a dare,” Tatum says, squinting up at her.
“Way to spoil the fun, Prescott,” Tyler says.
Sidney yanks Tatum off the couch, propping her up against her side. “She’s drunk, you assholes, you’re taking advantage.”
“She was pretty into it,” Casey says, and Tatum hates to take Casey Becker’s side over Sid’s, but she totally had been into it. She’s not even that drunk, because she could totally stand up on her own if Sid would just let go of her and let her get back to kissing Chloe.
“Fuck you, Becker,” Sid says. “Come on, Tate, I’m gonna get you home.”
“Bye, Riley,” someone else calls. Tatum thinks it was Nate, but she waves back at the group at large as she’s steered towards the front door.
The cool air outside is enough to sober her up a bit, enough at least that she’s starting to realize just how totally and completely fucked she is if she tries to walk into her house right now, reeking of beer and with lipstick smeared all over her face.
“Mom’ll kill me,” Tatum slurs as Sid shoves her down the street.
“Yeah, that’s why I’m taking you to mine and calling Dewey,” Sid says. Her hands are gentle on Tatum’s arm, but she still sounds angry. “He won’t let you get in trouble, not when we found him puking in the bushes that time.”
“You mad at me?”
Sid stops dead and loops her other hand under Tatum’s other shoulder so that they’re standing still on the sidewalk, staring directly at each other. Sid’s brown eyes look black under the streetlights, but they’re still somehow soft and warm and why had Tatum thought Chloe Granger was pretty when there was Sid in the world?
“Tate, listen to me, I would never be mad at you for something like that. You didn’t do anything wrong, you just got a little too drunk. I’m just mad at those assholes for making you do stuff while you were drunk and didn’t know better.”
“It’s okay, Sid,” Tatum says. She’s still feeling a little hazy about the whole experience, and Sid is making her feel like she’d done something absolutely horrible, but she remembers how it had felt and the way everyone in the room had been cheering her on. “What if I wanted to make out with Chloe?”
“But you didn’t,” Sid says firmly, and that seems to be the end of the discussion.
Sid’s reaction worries Tatum—she had thought everyone else at the party had seen the kiss as something fun and sexy, no different than when Tally Cantwell had come out of the closet after Seven Minutes In Heaven with her bra off, but she can’t forget the absolute horror on Sid’s face when she had looked down at Tatum in Chloe’s lap, and Vicki’s sneered ‘gross, why would you want that?’ She spends Sunday nursing a hangover and imagining coming to school on Monday only to find out that the other girls have started talking about her like her mom sometimes talks about Maureen Prescott when she thinks Tatum is out of earshot.
She changes tops three times Monday morning—if she shows up wearing the shapeless sack of a shirt that she stole from Dewey, she’s calling more attention to herself, but if she wears the halter top she had been planning to wear, isn’t she just confirming all of their worst thoughts about her? She finally settles on something in the middle, an old Maiden shirt that she’s altered slightly at the waist and neckline, and goes to the bus stop to meet Sid.
For the most part, school is fine. She thinks she catches a few whispers and glances directed at her, but no more than are directed towards Jennifer who had apparently gotten caught making out with Sam Mason in the garage after Sid and Tatum had dipped. Chloe blushes when they pass each other in the hallway, but it’s not like they had ever been particularly close, and, better yet, Clay grins and winks at her when she and Sid walk past his table at lunch. So all in all, not a bad day, no matter how much Tatum feels like she’s walking around the school with a giant sign flashing over her head labelling her a slut, or worse.
At practice, Vicki turns up her nose when Tatum stumbles during a drill and mumbles something that Tatum is pretty sure had been lesbo, but even Casey tells her to shut the fuck up at that one.
“You’re just jealous Tyler thinks it’s hot when Tatum makes out with his girlfriend,” Casey tells Vicki in the locker room afterward, loud enough everyone can hear. “I’ll bet all the boys talk about how you’re just a boring prude.”
“Heard you were pretty jealous too, Becker,” says Izzy Phelps, from Tatum’s other side. Tatum likes Izzy a lot—she’s the one who had shown Tatum how to wiggle the handle of the Movieplex’s emergency exit just right so they could sneak into Flatliners. “You’re not the hottest girl at the party, huh?”
“Not my fault Chloe Granger has no taste,” Casey says, rolling her eyes. “Girls are just worse at knowing who’s hot than guys are, it’s whatever.”
“Or Riley’s just hotter than you,” Izzy says. “I’d have kissed you too, Tate.”
“Thanks,” Tatum says, smiling and shrugging like it hadn’t made her stomach flip to hear.
Even so, Tatum spends the next few days avoiding eye-contact in the halls. She isn’t even sure quite why she feels so humiliated by the whole encounter, because practically their entire school has done something after a few too many drinks and she’s heard way worse through the grapevine, not to mention from Dewey who likes to tell her whenever any of the juniors or seniors spend a night in the cold cell at the back of the Woodsboro Police Station for underage drinking. He acts like it’s a D.A.R.E. kind of warning, but Tatum suspects it’s mostly because he’s a big ol’ gossip at the end of the day and he likes to get her input on whoever’s involved.
She’s expecting it when Jason Deacon corners her by her locker, caging her back against the door with his body. He isn’t even pretending to look at her face, just stares straight down her shirt and addresses her tits directly. He isn’t nearly tall enough to get away with it, so Tatum winds up staring straight at his pimply forehead while he talks.
“So, Riley, I hear you put on quite a little show last weekend,” he says, his mouth stretching into a horrible smile. “If one beer gets you some girl-on-girl, what could I get for a whole six-pack?”
She pushes him back, and her hand feels sticky just from touching his gross-ass sweatshirt. “How ‘bout a foot up your fucking ass?”
“C’mon, don’t pretend you’re all offended or whatever. I heard Mason told everyone you blew him under the bleachers.”
“Sam Mason is full of shit, you couldn’t pay me all the money in the world to put his grody penis anywhere near my mouth,” she spits, slamming her locker shut and pushing him away again. “And the same goes for you, by the way—I’m never gonna touch your dick, cuz I don’t have the time to try to find it.”
“You kiss your mom with that mouth? Or do you just kiss Chloe Granger?”
“Fuck you.”
He grabs her wrist, spinning her around to face him. Now their classmates are starting to turn to stare at them, and Tatum can tell they’re listening in from the way the hallway has gotten a few decibels more quiet.
“Telling me to fuck off won’t change the fact that the whole school knows you’re a fucking slut, Riley,” he spits.
Tatum can feel her cheeks burning, because she doesn’t care what Jason fucking Deacon thinks, but if Sam Mason really is spreading rumors like that, that means it’s probably Vicki too, which means people are gonna listen. She yanks her hand out of his grasp but now she’s standing stock still in the middle of the hallway while dozens of students stare at her. She wants to pull up the front of her shirt, to cover her whole body, because what had she been thinking, showing up to school in a top that shows off the edge of her bra?
She opens her mouth, trying to think of a retort while she blinks back the fucking stupid tears suddenly gathering in her eyes, but then there’s a blur of movement and Jason is lying sprawled out on the floor, clutching his bloody nose in both hands. Sid is standing over him, her fist still raised and her jaw clenched.
“Don’t you fucking talk to her like that,” she says, and her voice is shaking with anger.
“You bitch,” Jason shouts back, but it’s muffled by the blood streaming down his face.
“You just got your ass kicked by a girl in front of everyone, man, I think it’s time to shut the fuck up. Riley doesn’t want anything to do with your loser ass.”
Tatum turns to see who had spoken and recognizes Billy Loomis stepping forward out of the crowd. Jason is already scrambling back, which makes sense because Billy is basically the coolest guy in the school. He doesn’t talk a ton, but he’s got a pretty face and this kind of intense energy that means that whenever he does speak, people listen.
And now he’s standing right in front of them and watching Sid with interest, which is frankly a little annoying because Sid is looking back at him with wide-eyed awe, like she’s suddenly forgotten that she hit Jason because she wanted to protect Tatum, not to impress Billy Loomis.
“Nice punch,” he says, grinning at Sid. His smile is, infuriatingly, perfect.
Sid blinks a few times, like she’s trying to break out of a trance or something, and finally mutters, “Thanks.”
“You’re Sidney, right?”
“Yeah. Uh, Sid?”
“Cool. I’m Billy.”
“Yeah, I, uh, know that.” She holds out her hand to him and laughs a little, just a touch too loud. “Nice to meet you, officially.”
“You’ve still got blood on your hand,” Billy says. “Probably should wash that off before a teacher sees.”
He’s right—her right knuckles are covered in Jason’s blood, and it’s dripping down onto the linoleum. Tatum watches the scarlet droplets fall, suddenly grateful there had been a reason for him not to hold Sid’s hand.
“Oh! Sorry, shoot,” Sid says, yanking her hand away. She rubs it against her jeans, looking embarrassed. “Thanks for scaring him off.”
“That was all you,” Billy says, laughing. “All I did was say what we were all thinking.”
“Well, thanks anyway.”
“Anytime.”
The bell rings, and Sid actually jumps, like she’d been so lost in Billy’s eyes or whatever that she’d forgotten they were still standing in a school hallway. “I guess I’ll see you around?”
“Later, Rocky Balboa,” he says, making a finger gun at her before turning to leave.
“We’ve got Algebra,” Tatum says to Sid, but Sid isn’t listening, she’s watching Billy’s ass while he walks away, her mouth hanging slightly open. Tatum grits her jaw, because she kind of wants to slap her, but instead she just grabs her bloody hand and pulls her into the bathroom to wash up before class.
*
They take care of each other; always have and always will. It doesn’t matter that Tatum is the one getting into trouble most often, because for all the Jason Deacons of the world Sid has to punch in the face, there will always be five girls on the cheer squad talking in hushed voices about what they’ve heard about Maureen Prescott, and so Sid will never know quite how much Tatum protects her.
Sid is—well, it’s not that she’s naive, exactly, because she’s sharp as hell and picks up on most things way before Tatum does. But her mind does this little thing every time, tells Sid ‘I’m probably just imagining things,’ like it’s desperately trying to take her back into the fantasy land she lived in before she noticed whatever awful truth, and then all of a sudden Sid is blinking back tears and insisting that she’s being stupid, her parents love each other more than anything and her mother really is just working late with town planning meetings and the like.
And so it’s Tatum’s job to make that fantasy as close to a reality as she can. She hadn’t even noticed anything off about Mrs. Prescott’s schedule until Sid had hinted at it back at one of their sleepovers, and now Tatum is never going to notice anything again, even when she hears the names from her mother’s hushed calls. It’s not Tatum’s business though, and it’s certainly not her mother’s or that of any of the stupid sluts gossiping about it during cheer practice—Maureen Prescott could do whatever she wants as long as she keeps it away from Sid, and all those other girls had better watch out because she’s the fucking assistant captain now, which means she will put them at the bottom of the pyramid if they don’t watch their tone.
It’s easy enough. Tatum is pretty and popular, so she gets along decently with most of the girls on the squad, but she stays out of drama for the most part. She dates Clay over the summer and it’s fun, but neither of them are particularly serious about the relationship, and so she’s hardly heartbroken when he starts seeing Melissa Anderson a few weeks later. She’s been stuck in the middle of too many awkward feuds over boys to ever let herself act that way—Tally and Izzy had almost thrown five years of friendship down the drain over fucking Stu Macher, who makes loud jokes at assembly so bad that Tatum wants to cover her own face in embarrassment on his behalf, and Casey and Vicki’s whole years-long back and forth thing is definitely about Corey Rodgers in the end.
Tatum can’t imagine letting a boy get between her and anyone, let alone her and Sid. The other girls respect her for it, she can tell—they listen to her when she snaps at them to shut up about Maureen Prescott, because they know she only ever intercedes when something is really important. She appreciates it; they’re her friends, even though she doesn’t spend that much time with them outside of practice, and they care about her opinion enough that she stops hearing anything about Mrs. Prescott in the locker room or whispered in the hallway.
Tatum knows they could still be talking behind her back, of course, but as long as she isn’t hearing it, then Sidney isn’t hearing it, and that’s all that matters. They don’t do much apart these days; teen parties get old after a while—Seven Minutes in Heaven with the same three guys, Truth or Dare with the same three dares—and Tatum would mostly rather spend her Friday nights with Sid and some stupid new release from Blockbuster, which they always get first because one of the dorky kids in their grade works there and he’s got a massive crush on Sid, so he holds a copy of any romcom aside in case Sid and Tatum come in.
She lets Sid pick the movies. If Tatum wanted to watch The Shining or The Thing, it’s better alone anyway, because she likes to curl up alone under a blanket and get herself properly scared, knowing her mom is always just a few doors down if it gets to be too much. It’s so much better to watch Sid watch the movies she likes, to see her face light up when she laughs and her eyes start to shine when she gets emotional enough to tear up.
*
Sid feels things more strongly than Tatum. Tatum can tell, because she chokes up for real at the end of When Harry Met Sally and sometimes at whatever sad Joni Mitchell song she’s listening to on her Discman, and Tatum wonders what it’s like to be Sid, to have this vast reservoir of emotion buried inside of her that even Tatum has only just barely touched the surface of. Tatum can’t imagine feeling things like that—she’s worn her heart on her sleeve since she can first remember, and she needs to concentrate to keep any emotion stuffed down for even the length of a conversation. Sid’s the opposite—it seems like it takes her monumental effort to drag any of her feelings up from the depths, to give Tatum even a sliver of everything that is Sid, and Tatum’s absurdly grateful for every brief glimpse.
It’s like that with boys, too. Tatum’s crushes burn bright and then fizzle out, little fireworks that pepper her adolescence, but Sid doesn’t just think boys are cute and fun, she pines, harboring her feelings in her chest for years like a coal in the bottom of a woodfire stove. It takes her months to admit to Tatum that she thinks she likes Billy Loomis, even though Tatum had seen it on her face the day she’d punched Jason Deacon. She pretends to be surprised, because Sid is bright red and looking nervous, and Tatum is proud of her, so she swallows down her bile and tells Sid that Billy would be lucky to have her.
That part is true, anyway. Billy is cute as hell and seems like he’s cool for real, but he’s not Sid, and even Billy Loomis doesn’t deserve the way Sid’s biting her lip thinking about him. At least Billy’s properly picky about girls, so he stays available for Sid to blush and mumble about throughout freshman year. For all her dismay that Billy seems never to notice her, Tatum knows it’s only a matter of time. Sid’s the best person at their whole school and, despite his distance, Billy seems to be the only one of the boys who seems smart enough to actually have realized that, so he was always going to fall in love with her sooner or later.
It finally happens in the middle of their sophomore year. Billy catches up to Sid at the end of lunch and asks her smoothly if she has any plans on Friday night because he has two tickets to The Pelican Brief, which seems like the kind of thing she’d like. Tatum hates that he’s right about it, too—Sid loves thrillers as long as they’re not too gory, and she absolutely adores Julia Roberts, which means it’s exactly the kind of movie that will get her snuggling up really close to Billy in the theater. He might even get a proper makeout session out of it, as long as he’s smart enough to let Sid set her own pace and the theater isn’t too crowded.
It’s not that Tatum dislikes Billy. No one dislikes Billy, because he’s annoyingly, infuriatingly perfect. He’s not just hot, he’s also smart without being nerdy, funny without being ridiculous, athletic without being one of the meathead jocks. Tatum’s pretty sure every girl in the school has crushed on him at some point or another—her own Billy Loomis phase had gratifyingly faded years ago, when she’d started dating and had realized that the sullen bad boy type wasn’t nearly as fun as it looked from the outside. He’s not like that with Sid though, he’s a gentleman: holding doors for her, carrying her books, letting her tell him where she is and isn’t comfortable being touched. It’s driving Tatum absolutely insane, because she can’t help but feel like she’s losing her best friend and the worst part is, she can’t even be upset about it.
*
Losing Sid to her honeymoon phase with Billy is only half of Tatum’s problem. The other, much more embarrassing issue is Stu Macher.
Billy is charming and handsome and perfect, so if Tatum had any sense whatsoever, she’d be like Sid and fall head over heels in love with him. Billy’s dorky sidekick Stu, on the other hand, is loud and crass and thinks he’s much funnier than he is, which unfortunately means that of course Tatum develops an instant fucking fixation on the guy. It starts the day Billy first asks Sid out, because Tatum had been trying her best to play the supportive friend despite her misgivings, but Stu had spotted it at once and tried to reassure her, in his dumb horny guy kind of way.
Tatum has had two boyfriends and many more almost-boyfriends, but none of them had ever prepared her for Sid having a boyfriend. She takes Billy seriously, lets him hold her hand at lunch and carry her books to class, and suddenly the seat next to her at assembly, the one that’s been Tatum’s for years, is being occupied by fucking Billy Loomis. She tries to smile about it, tries to act like it’s totally fine that she’s suddenly being squeezed out of the most important relationship in her life, but she doubts she’s doing a good job of it. Sid would have noticed for sure, if she were capable of noticing anything at this point that wasn’t just Billy’s stupid brown eyes.
Stu notices, though. Stu may be a complete fucking idiot who wouldn’t recognize tact if it bit him in the ass, but he notices. He keeps meeting Tatum’s eyes and grimacing whenever Sid and Billy are being particularly egregious with their PDA, and it helps not to feel quite so alone.
Her crush keeps getting worse, too. He’s surprisingly sweet sometimes—like, he’d noticed the Metallica sticker she had on her locker door and he’d burned her a fucking CD with all the kinds of music everyone else always assumes she hates just because she’s blonde and on the cheer squad. It’s all Megadeth and Iron Maiden and Pantera, and it’s such a dumb thing for her to take so personally, because he probably makes mixes like that for his guy friends all the time, but when she gets home and hears the opening notes of Cemetery Gates, she bursts into tears.
And he always shares his Twizzlers with her, any time they’re hanging out.
Not that it matters, because for all his sweetness, he’s dating Casey Becker, who Tatum fucking hates. They’re not even on the cheer team together anymore, because Casey had gotten all pissy and quit the previous year when Vicki had been picked as the last flyer over her, and now she just glares whenever she passes any of the other girls in the hall. Tatum doesn’t even like Vicki, she’d have taken her side in their dumb rivalry if anyone had actually asked, but she’s pretty sure Casey still hasn’t gotten over Izzy and Chloe calling Tatum hotter than her either, because she’s always pulling her top down a few inches around Tatum to make sure all the guys are looking at her.
Tatum may have sworn years ago never to let a guy come between her and the girls, but it’s nearly impossible when Casey keeps acting this way. Like, Tatum likes to fuck as much as the next girl, but there’s a difference between being classy about it and being like Casey and giving stupid cow eyes to every boy on the football team when you already have a boyfriend. Izzy keeps glaring at Casey too, which makes Tatum feel better, because Izzy and Stu had dated for almost three months and they still seem like they’re pretty good friends. Izzy laughs when Tatum asks her about it and says that it’s hard to stay mad at a guy who had been willing to spend so much time down south, which doesn’t help Tatum’s crush at all.
It’s not like Sid’s around to talk about this stuff with, not when her phone line is always busy and she walks home with Billy every day instead of waiting around for Tatum to finish practice. Tatum is kind of going out of her head about it, because she doesn’t want to admit to Izzy that she’s jealous of fucking Casey Becker, but she’s going to punch a wall if she doesn’t admit it to someone.
After Stu gives her the metal mix, she decides to do something about it, because who cares if her dumb crush is unrequited or whatever, he’s basically her friend at this point and she won’t let a friend get cheated on behind his back. Stu is a lot more sensitive than most people give him credit for, and Casey apparently couldn’t care less, because here she is on the football field disrupting practice again.
Tatum marches up to her and shoves herself between Casey and Steve fucking Orth, who’s not even that good because he’s big and strong, but he’s slow as shit and so he keeps getting beaten on every single blitz.
“Don’t you have something better to do than stand around distracting everyone?” Tatum asks Casey. “Like, I don’t know, a date with your boyfriend?”
“What boyfriend?” Casey asks, which is fucking pathetic because even someone as dumb as Steve Orth must have seen her hanging off of Stu in the hallways. He’s not even listening anymore though, because Tyler has him in a headlock and really, they both should get off their asses and back to practicing because Tatum is sick as hell of having to watch their quarterback take five sacks per game.
“You’re such a fucking whore,” Tatum snaps. “Don’t be surprised when Stu dumps your cheating ass.”
“Oh, that’s cute, you think he’s going to dump me for you?” Casey asks, laughing. “Not likely, he follows me around panting like a little puppy.”
Tatum shoves a pompom against her chest, wishing that they’d given cheerleaders something a little more intimidating to hold. Like maybe a fucking gun. “Look, if you want to cheat on yet another boyfriend, it’s your own fucking funeral. Just get off the fucking field and don’t do it in front of me.”
She winds up regretting it almost as soon as she gets home. She’s sure her face had looked absolutely insane while she’d been talking, because even Steve and Tyler had looked a little scared of her, which means that Casey is for sure going to tell Stu that Tatum flipped out at her like some kind of psycho. So now Stu is going to feel bad for poor little Casey and he’s gonna think Tatum is like, Catherine Tramell or some shit.
She doesn’t even know why she had gotten quite so aggro, because Casey may be a slut but it’s not even like she’s in love with Stu or anything, so it’s really not any of her business. It’s getting hard to control herself though, because things are just so weird without Sid around to ground her. She feels unmoored, like she’s drifting aimlessly until Sid forgets all about Billy Loomis and comes back to her, and she doesn’t know what to do with that.
At the very least, she’s pretty sure that Stu would understand that part. She catches him watching Sid and Billy sometimes, his expression vaguely wistful, and she knows exactly the feeling.
*
Tatum hates having crushes. They may be fleeting, but they’re always embarrassing, puting her on the back foot, and her taste in guys has always been a million times worse than she wants to admit. It would be one thing if she were clever like Sid, blushing and smiling at the beautiful and sensitive boys like Billy Loomis, but here Tatum is stuck feeling her stomach fill with butterflies every time this gangly dork makes a stupid pun.
She wants to tell Sid, but more than that she wants Sid to notice herself. It’s fine that she hasn’t yet, Tatum tells herself, because Billy is Sid’s first real boyfriend and of course she’s going to be wrapped up in her own little world for a while. It still hurts, though, because Sid has always known Tatum better than she knows herself, had been the first one to call out her crush on that fucking moron Clay Vanderpool, and now Tatum is making a complete fool of herself over someone even dumber and Sid hasn’t said a word.
The whole situation is made more awkward because, as much as Tatum hates being left out, she hates being the fifth wheel even more. It happens a few times because Sid feels pity for her, so their date nights get overcrowded because Billy always brings Stu, which means Stu brings Casey and Tatum’s the odd one and has to pull a stool up to the side of the diner table while the two couples each share a booth. Sometimes Stu and Billy’s geeky friend Randy will join them, and he’s fucking weird and awkward to be around, but he’s also kind of funny and at least balances the numbers out. If Tatum could just crush on Randy instead of Stu, everything would probably work out just fine, but unfortunately she’s imprinted on the dork like she’s a baby duckling and, besides, Randy has a crush on Sid that’s visible from space.
She and Randy gravitate towards each other anyway, though. Having unrequited crushes will do that. He keeps trying to talk to her about it, and some of the things he says lodge into her brain enough to scare her.
The first time it happens is when they all go to Body Snatchers together, like they’re on a triple date instead of an awkward, pining fifth and sixth wheel. Randy buys Tatum a soda when the boys go to concessions to buy whatever for their girlfriends, which was almost sweet, but Tatum is in a foul mood nonetheless. The movie is pretty good, but Casey won’t stop giggling over all the scary parts like she doesn’t understand the idea of dramatic tension and she has to ruin it for everyone else in the theater. Randy rolls his eyes every time it happens, and Tatum might think his thing for Sid is a little pathetic, but at least he seems to be the only other person in this theater to understand that Casey Becker is the most fucking annoying bitch on the planet.
“He’d probably dump her for you if you asked,” Randy tells her on the way out of the theater.
Billy and Sid are walking ahead of them, arguing about whether or not the movie was a waste of time while making those sickeningly sweet eyes at each other the whole time. Stu is just behind them and he has his dumb fucking hands all over Casey while she giggles about something, because she seems unable to do anything other than giggle. Well, given the way Stu and all the other boys are all over her, she can probably fuck too. Tatum wonders if she giggles throughout the act.
“She’d never dump him for you if you asked,” Tatum snaps back, because she hates that fucking Randy of all people is the first to notice her crush and when she’s embarrassed, she gets mean.
Randy seems unbothered. “Clearly you haven’t seen enough movies, because the nice sensitive nerd gets the girl all the time. Can’t Buy Me Love? Fast Times at Ridgemont High? I just need to wait for her to realize Billy’s an asshole.”
Tatum rolls her eyes. “Okay, well in case you hadn’t noticed, we aren’t in a movie, we live in the real world, and so it doesn’t matter what happens in the movies. I want you to take one look in the mirror and then one look at Billy freaking Loomis and realize you’ve got about as much of a chance with Sid as I do with Brad Pitt.”
“Wow, harsh,” Randy says, but he still seems infuriatingly unconcerned about the whole situation. “Anyone ever tell you you can be kind of a bitch?”
“Anyone ever tell you you can be kind of a douchebag?”
Randy shrugs. “I’m just saying—it’s worth asking Macher out if you really care that much. He doesn’t give a shit about Casey. He doesn’t give a shit about any girls, really, so no reason you can’t be as much of a stand-in as she is.”
“A stand-in for what, exactly?” Tatum asks, folding her arms. They’re lagging behind now, and any minute Billy and Sid are going to snap out of their little lovesick bubble and tell them to hurry up if they want a ride home.
“You really haven’t noticed? And you watch him so much.”
“I do not,” Tatum protests, though she probably does. She’s certainly started to pick up on the little details, like the way he wrinkles his nose when he’s laughing for real, which he does around Billy and Randy but never Casey, and the way his eyes go sharp and bright sometimes when he’s talking about a movie he really loves.
Randy laughs, rolling his eyes. “Sure you don’t. Good luck, anyway.”
*
She’s not sure if she needs good luck from the likes of Randy, but she is starting to agree with him that, at the very least, she has a better chance with Stu than he does with Sid. Billy keeps doing these stupid romantic things like whisking Sid off campus for a picnic lunch. Tatum would be more upset, but Stu has started shrugging Casey off more and more at school lately and now he’s sitting with Tatum and Randy instead of Casey’s annoying friends.
“Do you think they’re fucking yet?” Randy asks suddenly, and Tatum spits out her Diet Coke.
“Nope,” Stu says, and he sounds weirdly glum about it. “Billy says she’s got some dumb underwear rule.”
“Can you not talk about my best friend like that, you absolute fucking pigs?” Tatum asks. “She’s allowed to have whatever boundaries she wants.”
Stu rolls his eyes. “Sure, she’s allowed. I just don’t get it. The guy could have practically any girl in school, and he goes for the only one who won’t put out.”
“You’re an idiot,” Tatum tells him. “Besides, guys get bored when girls give it up too easily.”
“I don’t,” he says, which is fucking rich because he’s had, like, six girlfriends in two years.
“Sure you don’t.”
“I don’t! It’s like, it depends on the chemistry, right? Like you wouldn’t want to watch, like, Jason Takes Manhattan more than a few times, but something like Halloween is good enough you’d never get bored.”
“So Casey’s fucking Halloween?” she asks, and it stings a little, because she’s pretty sure it’s Casey’s favorite, but it’s one of hers too.
Stu shrugs. “Something like that.”
“What am I, then?” she asks.
“Um, I don’t know, Silence of the Lambs?” he suggests. “Because the chick in that is badass, like you.”
She has no response to that because, fuck, that was actually a really good answer. She wants to flip Casey off across the courtyard because ha, take that. So what if you’re Jamie Lee, Stu thinks I’m Clarice fucking Starling.
“And Sid’s Psycho,” Randy says. Tatum had almost forgotten he was there.
“Excuse me, did you just call my best friend a psycho?” she asks him, while Stu cackles.
Randy flushes. “No, I just meant like… she’s the best, you know? An all-time classic.”
“I don’t know, I prefer Lambs,” says Stu, and there’s no way Tatum is misreading that, right? That’s definitely, unambiguously, flirting with her.
She’s saved from having to come up with a response by Billy and Sid, slipping back into the courtyard casually like they hadn’t just ditched. Sid slides in between Billy’s knees, looking up at him happily, and Tatum notices with dismay that there’s a hickey starting to form just below her chin.
She glares at the mark, which isn’t exactly fair, because it’s not Sid’s fault that Tatum wants to be the one getting hickeys during lunch from her best friend’s boyfriend’s best friend. It sucks all the same though, and there is nothing she can do to kill the ugly little jealous part of her brain.
She smacks Randy on the back of the head as they head into class. “Psycho, my ass,” she tells him.
“Oh yeah, so what movie is Sidney, then?”
“The Shining,” she says, because it’s her favorite. She supposes that’s probably what Randy had meant too, except when he’s doing it, he’s being a pathetic loser and when she does it, she knows what she’s talking about.
He nods. “Makes sense. Smart, competent woman dating a psychotic jackass.”
“Stop acting jealous, you sound stupid,” she tells him.
“Stop crushing on Macher, you sound stupid,” he replies, and he’s kind of got her there.
*
Sid finally agrees to come to Tatum’s for a sleepover a few weeks after she has started dating Billy, because she says she feels bad they haven’t had much girl time lately and she doesn’t want things to change between them just because she has a boyfriend now. Tatum swallows down the bitter too late, because at least Sid is finally trying, and the last thing Tatum wants to do is waste the opportunity for girl time with Sid by getting into a dumb fight.
Things feel surprisingly normal between them. They bake a sheet of snickerdoodles and laugh their asses off when they keep burning their fingers on the sheet instead of waiting for it to cool, like they’re back in elementary school again. Dewey comes home and tells them to stop making a mess of the kitchen, but he smiles at Tatum while he says it, because even Dewey had noticed how much she had missed Sid lately.
“So, uh, do you and Billy ever talk about Stu and Casey?” Tatum asks, as soon as they’re up in her bedroom. She doesn’t know how to broach the topic most subtly, but it’s not like she ever keeps secrets from Sid anyway. Sid can usually get them out of her in ten seconds flat, as long as she doesn’t have her tongue down Billy’s fucking throat.
“Not really?” Sid says. “Billy hates Casey, though.”
“Because she’s a fucking bitch,” Tatum says, and there it is, finally, the dawning realization on Sid’s face.
“Oh my God, Tatum, do you have a thing for Stu Macher?”
“What if I do?” she asks. “He’s cute. Look at this.” She reaches into her desk drawer and pulls out the mix, tossing it to Sid. “It’s, like, a bunch of metal? Because he saw my Metallica sticker.”
Sid wrinkles her nose down at the disc. “Billy likes Metallica sometimes,” she says. “He tries to play it when we’re, you know, and it always kills the mood. He mostly likes, like, Alice in Chains though? And Stone Temple Pilots?”
“That makes sense,” Tatum says, because Billy is kind of intense and serious and acts like he thinks he’s the coolest person ever to live, so of course he’d like all that sadsack music from Seattle.
“I like Alice in Chains,” Sid says, like she’s trying to defend him, even though Tatum hadn’t even said anything she was thinking out loud. “And I can’t believe you’re acting all high and mighty about Billy right now! You like Stu Macher.”
“Yes, fine, I have terrible taste in boys, we know that,” Tatum says, rolling her eyes. “But, like, I really, really like Stu, okay? So if you could, maybe, like… ask Billy about it?”
She hates that she’s doing this, because she does not want to owe Billy Loomis a fucking favor, but she’s kind of reaching her wits end about it. Tonight is all well and good, but Tatum knows Sid and she knows that Sid likes Billy so fucking much it scares her and she’s not going to be around for Tatum many nights in the near future. But maybe that’s okay, because maybe Tatum can have Stu, cute dorky Stu, and she and Sid and Billy and Stu will all be linked together like it feels like it should be.
Besides, if Tatum has to endure another date night watching Stu drooling all over fucking Casey Becker, she’s going to go ballistic.
“Of course,” Sid says, because no matter what, she’s always going to be Tatum’s best friend and best friends do things they don’t want to for one another. It’s just like how Tatum now puts up with Billy Loomis’s presence, looming like a black cloud over their lunch table.
*
It turns out that Tatum doesn’t need Randy’s luck and maybe she didn’t even need Sid’s intervention, because it’s barely a week later when she and Sid are waiting to meet Billy at the mall and Stu shows up, gloriously unencumbered by fucking Casey, and beaming at Tatum like she’s the only girl in the world.
Sid and Billy are wrapped up in each other again, maybe acting a bit less PG than is appropriate for a public mall at 10 am on a Saturday, but Tatum hardly cares because the dumb boy she’s crushing on is pulling her aside and saying, with that dorky lopsided grin that always makes her weak at the knees, “So, uh, Billy says you have a thing for me?”
She smiles back at him, trying for coy. “And how would Billy Loomis know a thing like that?”
“Apparently a little birdie told him,” Stu says. “You know those birdies. Huge fucking gossips.”
“And a complete disregard for the concept of privacy, apparently,” Tatum adds, though she doesn’t mind, not when Stu is looking at her like this. “Where’s Casey?”
“I dumped that bitch,” Stu says, and Tatum really should probably object to that description but he’s right, she is a bitch and she didn’t deserve him. “So, uh, wanna split a pretzel?”
And sure, it’s not the most romantic declaration, but if Tatum were looking for romance, she’d be crushing on guys like Billy or Randy, and she isn’t, because she’s an idiot. She’s smiling so wide her cheeks hurt as she nods. “Yeah. Buy me a pretzel, Macher.”
*
He’s not a bad boyfriend, all things considered. He teases her like she’s one of the guys, which Tatum loves because it means he thinks she can take it, but also he carries her books and makes out with her in the janitor’s closet between periods because he’s great at picking the lock. It doesn’t hurt as much when Sid doesn’t wait to meet her after practice anymore, because Stu is there leaning against her car instead and he’s always down for a detour out to the State Forest on their way home.
At the end of their first week together, he plans a proper date night for her, which is obviously just code for getting into her pants, but it’s not like she’s going to pretend she isn’t looking forward to exactly the same thing. It’s not the fanciest date of all time—dinner is just at Shelly’s diner, but it’s honestly the best date Tatum’s ever had, because he makes her laugh so hard that milkshake comes out her nose. He takes her back to his place after, because his parents are out of town, and she calls to tell her mom that she’s going to spend the night at Sid’s.
He teases her about that, “Oh, the whole night, huh? Here I was thinking we’d just watch a movie and then I’d drive you home like a gentleman,” but she smacks him and he shuts up.
It turns out he’d rented Silence of the Lambs, which is sweet because he calls it ‘their movie,’ and it’s a really fucking good movie to be theirs. They wind up naked before the end of the first act anyway, and it turns out that Izzy hadn’t been lying when she said he’s really fucking enthusiastic with his tongue, so she doesn’t even have to rub herself off like she usually does with other boys.
*
She wakes up on Saturday morning to the sight of Stu drooling on the pillow next to her, his mouth wide open, and she thinks, Shit, he looks so dumb like this. She’s halfway in love with him already.
He makes her pancakes and they’re not bad, even if they’re just straight from the Bisquick box. He’s surprisingly good at flipping them, gets them perfectly round and even every time, and Tatum thinks suddenly, how many times has this boy had to make his own breakfast?
She knows his parents both work, but she hadn’t quite realized how empty the house always is without them. No wonder he’s always filled it with parties and girls and whatever else, anything so he can’t hear the eerie silence of the empty bedrooms upstairs.
“You okay, babe?”
That’s another thing about Stu—he has an uncanny ability to catch her out every time her thoughts stray dark and sad. She suspects it’s probably a symptom of years friendship with Billy Loomis, who fucking broods like he thinks he’s in fucking Buffy or whatever.
“Yeah, just—it’s really quiet in here.”
“We can turn on the TV or something—there’s an X-Files marathon on.”
“Yeah, that works. Sorry.” She feels stupid all of a sudden, like a child asking for a night light. “It’s not a big deal or anything, it’s just—Dewey still lives at home, and Jed’s always being loud, so I’m not really used to such a big house being so, like, empty.”
“Jed?”
“My dog. Like in The Thing, you know?”
“The dog in The Thing has a name?”
“No, I just meant—the actor dog, his name was Jed. I don’t think the dog in the movie has a name.”
Stu nods. “Sick. Is it a husky?”
“Yeah. He’s like, kind of my best friend in the world, other than Sid. I’ll introduce you some day?”
“The cat should be around here somewhere,” Stu says, pulling aside the drapes to peer out into the backyard. “She’s usually in the bushes or whatever, but she’ll be back by dinner. She likes hunting birds, I always find them lying in the garage in pools of their own blood.”
“Gross,” Tatum says, but she’s smiling now. Stu probably gets it—he’s into all the same movies as she is, he understands the appeal of a really stylish kill.
“Yeah, real horror shit. Cats are the best.”
“Does she have a name?”
Stu shrugs. “I call her Killer. Mom calls her Princess.”
It cheers Tatum up, thinking of Stu cuddled up with a fluffy little kitten he insists on calling Killer. She laughs at him, calls him pussy-whipped because she’s proud of the pun, and he tackles her into the sofa, so it’s a pretty good morning overall.
They wind up watching TV all day and then ordering a pizza, and Tatum gets to meet Killer, who is soft and brown and kind of reminds her of Sid in the way she just stares at her. She’s sweet though, and she seems happy to curl up on the couch with them until they start making out again and threaten to squish her.
On Sunday morning, Stu’s mom gets back from her business trip, which is pretty disconcerting because Tatum walks downstairs in just her underwear and one of Stu’s Iron Maiden shirts to find a woman in a power suit standing at the island and drinking an espresso.
“Oh!” Tatum jumps. She runs her fingers through her hair, but she’s pretty sure there’s nothing she can do that will make her look any less like she just finished getting thoroughly fucked by this woman’s son.
Mrs. Macher seems fairly used to this kind of thing, because she gives Tatum a warm smile and says, “Hello, dear, you must be Tatum Riley.”
“Uh, yes?”
She holds her hand out. “Call me Louise, please. I’ve known your mother for years—tell her I say hello, whenever you next go home.”
Tatum shifts awkwardly. She can’t tell if that going home comment was passive aggressive or not, but she takes Louise Macher’s hand and shakes it anyway. “I will,” she says. “I was, uh, actually going to head out pretty soon?”
“No, no, stay for breakfast, please,” Louise says warmly, so maybe it hadn’t been a hint after all. “Will you be going to Randy Meeks’s house tonight?”
“Uh, I don’t—” Tatum starts, but Stu comes up behind her and wraps his arms around her, resting his chin on the top of her head.
“Definitely,” he answers for her, which is pretty rude especially in front of his mother, but at least he’s not acting like he’s ashamed of her. “Mom, I see you met Tatum.”
Louise smiles at him. “I knew you were lying about being sweet on her, Stuart.”
“Okay, can we not?” He lets go of Tatum abruptly and crosses the kitchen, grabbing a carton of orange juice out of the fridge. He seems irritated, which is confusing because honestly, Tatum can’t imagine a better scenario after her brand new boyfriend’s mom has just caught her doing the walk of shame to the kitchen.
“What’s at Randy’s house?” Tatum asks, if only to diffuse the tension.
Stu brightens at that. “Oh, yeah, we do Sunday sleepovers. You’ll like it, we just watch horror shit and, uh,” he glances at his mom, “eat junk food and stuff.”
That means they smoke a fuckload of weed, Tatum assumes. She laughs. “Cool, sounds like a party.”
*
Stu calls Randy on their way over to check about bringing Tatum, which gets a muffled rant Tatum can’t make out from Randy in return. Stu laughs though and gives Tatum a thumbs up.
“Okay, well, I’m bringing my girl anyway,” Stu says, and then he laughs again at whatever Randy says and adds, “I’m sure you would, perv. Grab something from work and we’ll be there in thirty?”
“Is it… weird, or anything, bringing me?” Tatum asks. “I don’t have to crash boys’ night or anything.”
“Nah, I brought Casey and she was kinda annoying, but that’s just because she was a fucking bitch. Sid came once too, and that was chill.”
“But not tonight?”
Stu grimaces. “Nah, she and Billy are going on a date, apparently.”
“That sucks,” Tatum says, and she means it. “It’s… not the best, when someone new is suddenly there.”
“Yeah,” he says. “Guess you get it as much as me.”
“They’re still in their honeymoon phase,” Tatum assures him, because it’s what she tells herself every time Sid ditches her to walk home with Billy. “I’m sure they’ll settle down eventually and then Billy will start doing, like, guys’ night with you again or whatever.”
“Maybe,” Stu says.
“Why were you so mad at your mom?” she asks, because she may as well bring it up now. The mood in the car is already soured, but she doesn’t seem to be getting anything else about Billy out of him.
“Oh, that, don’t worry about it. She just does this thing where she pretends to get all involved in my life or whatever and it’s like, okay mom, you had one conversation with me all month, that doesn’t make up for the fact that you mixed up my birthday with fucking Leslie’s or whatever.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine. She’s—she’s a good mom and she’s super nice, it’s just she’s never around, so I hate it when she pretends like she is.”
“She’s around enough to know you were sweet on me, apparently,” Tatum teases. It had felt good, knowing he’d liked her enough to say something around his mom.
“Yeah, she overheard Billy telling me to ask you out after Casey—you know, after I broke it off. She approves.”
“Oh, horror of all horrors, your mom likes your girlfriend,” Tatum says, rolling her eyes. “Still, I get it. That sucks.”
“Yeah.”
“Think about it like this—at least you don’t have to tell your mom you have fucking cheerleader camp or your fiftieth straight sleepover with Sid whenever you want to go out with a boy.”
“You could always just tell her you’re going to Randy’s. He’s basically a girl.”
Tatum mimes puking. “Gross, no way. Randy’s such a fucking weirdo. He’s always just staring at Sid like a total creep.”
“You can be a girl and a creep. What about Annie Wilkes?”
“You only hang out with Randy because he gets all your dumb references like that,” Tatum says, though she’d gotten that one too.
“And because he has the best weed,” Stu says, which is a fair point, because Tatum had once taken two hits from one of Randy’s joints at a party and spent the next two hours on fucking Jupiter. “Come on, let’s grab snacks or something.”
*
“Hey, Macher, thought you were bringing your girlfriend?” Randy says when he opens the door. “I don’t see Loomis anywhere.”
Stu punches him in the gut and Randy hunches over, wheezing, which Tatum thinks serves him right.
“Hey Stu, I thought this was supposed to be a cool hang,” she says, “but for some reason Randy Meeks seems to be here.”
Randy stares up at her, indignant, but it gets her a high-five from Stu, so it’s worth it.
He’s nice enough about Tatum being Stu’s plus one after that. He ushers her down to his basement and makes sure she doesn’t trip over the last half-step, and then he lets her pick from a frankly overwhelming selection of horror movies while he rolls a joint. Tatum suspects his politeness has less to do with her and more because he hopes she’ll tell Sid about how much of a nice guy he is, but at least he’s not being too much of a creep.
She picks Videodrome, because she’s never seen it and Stu and Randy seem scandalized by that, and it’s a good pick. The tension builds really well and the body horror stuff is pretty unsettling, which gives her more of an excuse to settle back into Stu’s arms. He keeps trying to slip his hand under her shirt, but she doesn’t even mind that too much because it’s fun to let him think he’s getting further before slapping him away.
When her phone starts ringing around 9:30, she’s expecting it to be her mom calling her out for still being out on a school night. She’s surprised when instead Sid’s number pops up on the screen.
“Wasn’t Sid going out with Billy?” she asks Stu.
“Yeah,” Stu says, and he sounds all moody about it again, even after all the weed.
“Why’s she calling me?”
He shrugs, so she climbs over his legs and walks up the stairs to Randy’s kitchen to answer the call.
“Sid? What’s going on?”
There’s a sniff from the other end of the phone and then Sid says, in a shaky voice, “I don’t even know what I did to piss him off.”
Tatum had heard of fight or flight before, but she has never experienced it herself. She thinks it might feel like this, though, because her fist is shaking as it clenches against the cell and her eyes settle on the knife block in the corner of Randy’s kitchen. “What the fuck did he do to you?” she asks, and she knows her voice sounds nothing like herself.
“No, no, Tate, nothing like that,” Sid says quickly, and at least she doesn’t sound like she’s lying. “He didn’t hurt me, he was just so mad. I don’t know what I did to make him feel like that, but he wouldn’t touch me the whole night. We wound up just going home, because dinner absolutely sucked, and he didn’t even give me a kiss goodnight at the door?”
“Maybe he was just having a bad day,” Tatum says, because that’s the only reason she can think of and Sid hates it when she gets mean about Billy, even though all she’s thinking is fuck Billy Loomis. “I’m sure he’ll make it up to you tomorrow and, if not, there are so many other guys out there who aren’t broody assholes.”
“I—I guess,” Sid says. “I just don’t understand it.”
“I’m sure you didn’t do anything,” Tatum says again, because she’s not sure Sid has ever done anything to piss anyone off in her entire life, not when they didn’t thoroughly deserve it first. “Do you want to come over here? We’re at Randy’s. We could, uh, switch movies?”
“So it’s some dumb horror again, huh?” Sid asks, but she’s laughing. “No, it’s fine, my mom would never let me go out so late on a school night anyway. Thanks for talking.”
“Literally always, Sid.”
“I know. Thanks.” She sighs, and Tatum can picture her, stretching out on her bed. “I’ll let you get back to the movie. Send my best to Stu and Randy, yeah?”
“‘Course,” Tatum says. “Love you.”
“You too.”
Tatum is in a bad mood when she gets back downstairs, and it’s not helped by the fact that they’ve kept playing the movie without her, because all boys are insensitive fucking assholes at heart, even the sweet ones like Randy and Stu.
“Your dipstick friend had better apologize for real,” she snaps, plopping down onto Stu’s lap and glaring up at him. “I just had to listen to my best friend crying because she doesn’t know what she did to make him so pissed off at her.”
She doesn’t know what she’s expecting from him, but it’s definitely not a smug grin. “Oh he’s pissed at her?”
She smacks him in the side of the head, hard, because what the fuck. “Stop grinning like a hyena, you massive fucking douche. Obviously Randy and I wouldn’t mind if they broke up either, but you don’t see either of us cackling every time Sid fucking cries. She was really hurt, and she says she didn’t do anything.”
“Are they gonna break up?” Randy asks eagerly, and he’s not doing much to prove Tatum’s point.
“Shut the fuck up, Randy,” Stu says, rolling his eyes. “Don’t sweat Billy’s shit, okay, babe? He’s just, uh, pissed at his dad right now. I’m sure he’ll make it up to her tomorrow.”
“Yeah, I said that,” Tatum says. “He’d better not make me a liar, though, because if he makes Sid cry again, he’s fucking dead meat.”
Stu grins down at her. “I love it when you get all psycho killer, babe.”
“Shut the fuck up and rewind the movie, jackass,” she says, but she’s smiling too now.
*
Sid seems happier the next morning at school, because apparently Billy had bought her a dumb little beanie baby bear to make it up to her, so Tatum supposes she doesn’t have to put out a hit on him right this second. She can’t even be all that mad at Billy for it—Sid gets like that sometimes too, all tight and weird because her parents have been doing their passive aggressive not-fighting fighting over dinner, so Billy can have one pass too. Hank Loomis seems like a jerk, anyway, and neither Billy nor Sid have the benefits of having an older siblings to call when things get bad. For all his uselessness, Dewey is sometimes a decent brother after all.
*
Stu throws a party for his and Tatum’s one-month anniversary. It sounds romantic, but really it’s just an excuse to get a group together to get shitfaced, so Tatum’s pretty sure it could just as easily be a National Donut Day party or whatever. Even so, she’s not unhappy about it, because Stu greets her at the door with a stupid little plastic crown that she’s pretty sure he’d stolen from Leslie’s old shit.
Stu places the crown on her head and gives her a stupid little bow. “Welcome, m’lady. Mi casa, etc. etc.”
“Wow, who knew you actually had any other friends,” she says, peering around him to look out at the back lawn. “Is that fucking Jason Deacon?”
Stu shrugs. “Who knows? I didn’t invite half these shitheads but like, the more the merrier, right?”
“Not when they wreck your whole house with their drunk horny teenage antics.”
“Not the whole house— I got my bedroom door locked tight, that room is reserved for a very special lady.”
“Do I know her?” Tatum asks, arching an eyebrow.
“Doubt it. She’s way too cool for you. Smokin’ hot too. And I hear she’s gonna be cheer captain soon.”
Tatum smacks him in the arm. “Shh, don’t jinx it!”
Stu is smiling down at her and she’s—happy, but it’s making her nervous, how damn happy she’s been this past month with this idiot.
“Anyway, make yourself at home,” he says. “Mingle, go find Sid, do whatever girls do at parties. I gotta go grab Billy, cuz apparently Harris and Kane are saying they’re the beer pong champions or some shit and we gotta show them their place.”
She rolls her eyes but gets up on her tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek. “Okay, stud, go win that gold medal.”
He ruffles her hair. “Aren’t you lucky to be dating the top athlete in school?”
“You’re such a moron. I am gonna go find Sid, but not because you told me to.”
Sid is easy to spot at parties, because Tatum just needs to wander around until she finds the room where people are the least drunk. In this case, it’s the kitchen—Sid is standing with her back against the counter and laughing at Randy while he fails to catch popcorn in his mouth.
“Hey babe, is this guy bothering you?” Tatum asks, and ducks the popcorn Randy chucks at her.
“I was about to get it,” Randy whines at her. “Where’s the beer here, anyway?”
“Garage, if there’s none left in the fridge,” Tatum says, shoving him out of the way to grab a cup of punch. “Stop bothering Sid and go bring some in, okay? Sid, I was sent to get you.”
“How come?”
“Apparently our boyfriends are gonna kick ass at beer pong and I figured we could give them some support,” Tatum says, rolling her eyes. “It’s gonna be less embarrassing than Randy trying to eat popcorn at least.”
“Sounds fun.”
By the time Tatum and Sid have woven their way to the backyard, Stu and Billy seem to be several rounds deep into their game. They play it like doubles ping-pong, because Stu’s parents have way too much money for their own good and if you buy teenagers a bunch of rec equipment, they’re going to figure out a way to make a drinking game out of it. This one is relatively tame; Tatum remembers Karen almost losing an eye the last time they’d played darts with the drinking rules in place.
Ping pong is a dumb game that should look dumb, even with the beer cups set up as part of it, but Tatum can’t ignore the fact that Billy and Stu are actually really good at it. It’s like they’re operating with one mind—Tatum knows Stu is several drinks in, but he’s still managing to put his body everywhere Billy’s isn’t, and there’s something strangely elegant about the whole thing. There’s something almost hypnotic about their bodies, about the way their arms are moving in perfect sync with one another.
Tatum must be drunker than she’d thought, because she’d only had one cup of punch, but now she’s watching Billy and Stu play fucking beer pong and thinking, wow, it’s almost sexual.
It’s Randy again, because it’s always Randy. He talks too much, acts a bit too fucking weird all the time, and no one notices how fucking sharp he can be when he wants to be. Usually about Sid, but not always.
“You’re getting it now,” he says behind her, making Tatum jump.
“Getting what?” she asks. Billy is shouting something at Nate, and Stu does that little nose-wrinkle laugh she finds so cute and throws an arm around his shoulders.
“The only person Macher is ever going to give a shit about other than himself,” Randy says, like it’s obvious. “He’d probably cut his own dick off if Loomis asked him to.”
“It’s called having a best friend,” Tatum says, rolling her eyes. She doesn’t have a dick, can’t quite imagine what it’s like, but she’s pretty sure she’d cut an arm off for Sid.
“I have friends,” Randy protests, which is kind of true and kind of not. They invite him to all their parties, let him sit with them at lunch and crash all their movie dates, but Tatum’s pretty sure no one would cut any of their own body parts off for Randy Meeks. “But don’t you think those two are a little bit My Own Private Idaho?”
Tatum wrinkles her nose. “I never watched that movie. It looked too sad,” though she gets his drift. If he wants to call her boyfriend a fag to her face, though, she’s going to make him fucking say it.
He holds up his hands. “They’re weird about each other, that’s all I’m saying.”
“You’re just jealous,” she says, though she’s not sure that’s true. Randy has never seemed to want to get any closer to Billy and Stu than he already is, never wedges his way into their bro-out weekends the way he does whenever Sid’s involved.
“You just don’t want to admit your boyfriend is a total freak,” Randy says. “A couple more drinks and I’ll bet he’d shove Loomis’s cock down his throat in the middle of the fucking living room.”
And that’s—well, Tatum doesn’t want to see it, exactly, because that would be cheating on her for one thing, but it’s not exactly an unappealing thought. She can feel her face flushing, and maybe she’s had a few too many beers as well.
“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” she says stiffly.
*
She goes to the library the next day and rents My Own Private Idaho, just so Randy won’t see it. She watches it on her own and she cries for two hours straight, but at least she can’t see much of Billy and Stu in it, so that’s a relief.