I had of course denied the possibility since I knew Dopey was grounded. Dopey's dad - my new stepfather, who, for a mostly laid-back, California kind of guy, had turned out to be a pretty stern disciplinarian - had grounded Dopey for calling a friend of mine a fag.
So when the rumor went around at the party that Dopey and Debbie Mancuso were doing the nasty in the pool house, I was pretty sure everyone was mistaken. Brad, I kept insisting - everyone but me calls Dopey Brad, which is his real name, but believe me, Dopey fits him much better - was back home listening to Marilyn Manson through headphones, since his father had also confiscated his stereo speakers.
But then someone said, "Go take a look for yourself," and I made the mistake of doing so, tiptoeing up to the small window they'd indicated, and peering through it.
I had never particularly cared to see any of my stepbrothers in the buff. Not that they are bad looking, or anything. Sleepy, the oldest one, is actually considered something of a stud by most of the girls at Junipero Serra Mission Academy, where he is a senior and I am a sophomore. But that doesn't mean I have any desire to see him strutting around the house without his boxers. And of course Doc, the youngest, is only twelve, totally adorable with his red hair and sticky-outy ears, but not what you'd call a babe.
And as for Dopey . . . well, I particularly never wanted to see Dopey in his altogether. In fact, Dopey is just about the last person on earth I'd ever wish to see naked.
Fortunately, when I looked through that window I saw that reports of my stepbrother's state of undress - as well as his sexual prowess - had been greatly exaggerated. He and Debbie were only making out. This is not to say that I wasn't completely repulsed. I mean, I wasn't exactly proud that my stepbrother was in there tongue wrestling with the second stupidest person in our class, after himself.
I looked away immediately, of course. I mean, we've got Showtime at home, for God's sake. I've seen plenty of French kissing before. I wasn't about to stand there gawking while my stepbrother engaged in it. And as for Debbie Mancuso, well, all I can say is, she ought to lay off the sauce. She can't afford to lose any more brain cells than she already has, what with all the hair spray she slathers on in the girls' room between classes.
It was as I was staggering away in disgust from the pool house window, which was situated above a small gravel path, that I believe I stumbled into some poison oak. I don't remember coming into contact with plant life at any other time this past weekend, being a generally indoors kind of girl.
And let me tell you, I really stumbled into those plants. I was feeling light-headed from the horror of what I'd just seen - you know, the tongues and all - plus I had on my platform mules, and I sort of lost my balance. The plants I grabbed on to were all that saved me from the ignominy of collapsing on Kelly Prescott's redwood pool deck.
What I told Father Dominic, however, was an abridged version. I said I must have staggered into some poison oak as I was getting out of the Prescotts' hot tub.
Father Dominic seemed to accept this, and said, "Well, some hydrocortisone ought to clear that up. You should see the nurse after this. Be sure not to scratch it or it will spread."
"Yeah, thanks. I'll be sure not to breathe, either. That'll probably be just about as easy."
Father Dominic ignored my sarcasm. It's funny about us two both being mediators. I've never met anybody else who happened to be one - in fact, until a couple of weeks ago, I thought I was the only mediator in the whole wide world.
But Father Dom says there are others. He's not sure how many, or even how, exactly, we precious few happened to be picked for our illustrious - have I mentioned unpaid? - careers. I'm thinking we should maybe start a newsletter, or something. The Mediator News. And have conferences. I could give a seminar on five easy ways to kick a ghost's butt and not mess up your hair.
Anyway, about me and Father Dom. For two people who have the same weird ability to talk to the dead, we are about as different as can be. Besides the age thing, Father Dom being sixty and me being sixteen, he's Mister Nice himself, whereas I'm …
Well, not.
Not that I don't try to be. It's just that one thing I've learned from all of this is that we don't have very much time here on Earth. So why waste it putting up with other people's crap? Particularly people who are already dead, anyway.
"Besides the poison oak," Father Dominic said. "Is there anything else going on in your life you think I should know about?"
Anything else going on in my life that I thought he should know about. Let me see....
How about the fact that I'm sixteen, and so far, unlike my stepbrother Dopey, I still haven't been kissed, much less asked out?
Not a major big deal - especially to Father Dom, a guy who took a vow of chastity about thirty years before I was even born - but humiliating, just the same. There'd been a lot of kissing going on at Kelly Prescott's pool party - and some heavier stuff, even - but no one had tried to lock lips with me.
A boy I didn't know did ask me to slow dance at one point, though. And I said yes, but only because Kelly yelled at me after I turned him down the first time he asked. Apparently this boy was someone she'd had a crush on for a while. How my slow dancing with him was supposed to get him to like Kelly, I don't know, but after I turned him down the first time, she cornered me in her bedroom, where I'd gone to check my hair, and, with actual tears in her eyes, informed me that I had ruined her party.
"Ruined your party?" I was genuinely astonished. I'd lived in California for all of two weeks by then, so it amazed me that I had managed to make myself a social pariah in such a short period of time. Kelly was already mad at me, I knew, because I had invited my friends Cee Cee and Adam, whom she and just about everyone else in the sophomore class at the Mission Academy consider freaks, to her party. Now I had apparently added insult to injury by not agreeing to dance with some boy I didn't even know.
"Jesus," Kelly said, when she heard this. "He's a junior at Robert Louis Stevenson, okay? He's the star forward on their basketball team. He won last year's regatta at Pebble Beach, and he's the hottest guy in the Valley, after Bryce Martinsen. Suze, if you don't dance with him, I swear I'll never speak to you again."
I said, "All right already. What is your glitch, anyway?"
"I just," Kelly said, wiping her eyes with a manicured finger, "want everything to go really well. I've had my eye on this guy for a while now, and—"
"Oh, yeah, Kel," I said. "Getting me to dance with him is sure to make him like you."
When I pointed out this fallacy in her thought process, however, all she said was, "Just do it," only not the way they say it in Nike ads. She said it the way the Wicked Witch of the West said it to the winged monkeys when she sent them out to kill Dorothy and her little dog, too.
I'm not scared of Kelly, or anything, but really, who needs the grief?
So I went back outside and stood there in my Calvin Klein one-piece - with a sarong tied ever-so-casually around my waist - totally not knowing I had just stumbled into a bunch of poison oak, while Kelly went over to her dream date and asked him to ask me to dance again.
As I stood there, I tried not to think that the only reason he wanted to dance with me in the first place was that I was the only girl at the party in a swimsuit. Having never been invited to a pool party before in my life, I had erroneously believed people actually swam at them, and had dressed accordingly.
Not so, apparently. Aside from my stepbrother, who'd apparently become overwarm while in Debbie Mancuso's impassioned embrace and had stripped off his shirt, I was wearing the least clothes of anybody there.