There was a honk a few cars back – not at us, but loud nonetheless – and I have to admit it threw me, sending a quick hot flush up the back of my neck. It didn’t help, of course, that my mother gasped in a breath loud enough for me to hear over the wind whistling through my not-quite-shut window. And, just like that, I lost my confidence, my hand reaching up to hit the right turn signal as if it had made the choice all by itself. As we took the turn on to Murphey’s Chapel Road, my mother loosened her fingers, pressing them against the fabric of her skirt. Puzzle solved.
‘It’s okay,’ she said as we breezed past a few neighbourhoods, with only two left turns, one access road and a shopping-centre parking lot to traverse before home. ‘You’ll do it when you’re ready.’
She was relieved. I could hear it in her voice, see it in the slow easing of her shoulders back against the headrest. But I was angry with myself for ducking out. It seemed a bad way to begin things, with a false start, a last-minute abort so close to take-off. As if I’d come this far, right to the brink, and in pulling back set a precedent that would echo, like the sound of my mother’s gasp, next time.
I avoided the roundabout for a week and a half. There were several almosts, most of them with Anthony in the car, pep-talking me like a motivational coach.
‘Be the road!’ he urged me as we coasted up to the ROUNDABOUT AHEAD signs. He’d made mixed CDs, full of bouncy, you-can-do-anything kind of songs, which he blasted, thinking they were helping. Instead, they distracted me entirely, as if by failing to complete the task meant letting down not only myself and Anthony but several bands and singers from all over the world. ‘Visualize it! Breathe through it!’
But, always, I took that last possible right turn. The music would play on, unaware of its ineffectiveness, while Anthony would just shake his head, easing an elbow out of the window, and say nothing.
His urging was gentler, but no less insistent, when the car was off and we were alone together at the beach. There was music then, too, but it was softer, soothing, as was his voice, in my ear, or against my neck.
‘I love you, I love you,’ he’d whisper, and I’d feel that same hot flush, travelling up from my feet, the adrenalin rush that was a mix of fear and longing. We’d got very close, but again I pulled back. Scared. It seemed ludicrous that I was unable to follow through with anything, as if from sixteen on I was doomed to be ruled by indecision.
‘I just don’t understand why you don’t want to,’ he asked me one night as we sat looking at the water, him now leaning against his door, as far away from me as possible, as if the fact that I didn’t want him made it necessary to put the maximum amount of distance between us. There was no grey here, no compromise. We’d come up so quickly on all or nothing that it blindsided me, a mere glint out of the corner of my eye before full impact.
‘I want it to be right,’ I told him.
‘How can this not be right?’ He sat up straighter, jutting a finger up at the windshield. ‘Moonlight? Check. Crashing waves? Check. I love you? Check. You love me …’
It took me a second, just a second, to realize it was my turn to say something. ‘Check,’ I said quickly, but he glared at me and let his finger drop, as if this explained everything.
As the days passed, and I found myself consistently taking the long way to everything, I got frustrated with all these decisions. A part of me wanted to barrel into the roundabout blindfolded, pushing the accelerator hard, and let whatever was going to happen just happen, anything for it to be over. The same part sometimes was so close to giving in to Anthony’s pleadings, wanting to finally just relax against the seat and let him do what he wanted, let his fingers spread across my skin, trailing downward, just give it all up and finally ease myself of these burdens. Scenario number one, of course, was stupid: I’d cause a multi-car pile-up and kill myself. As far as number two, well, it was harder to say. What would change? Maybe there wouldn’t be visible damage, dented bumpers or crumpled hoods. But something in me would be different, even if no one else could tell. Like a car that’s been wrecked and fixed, but the frame stays bent, and only the most trained of eyes can feel it pull on curves, or nudge towards the right on straight roads. Just because you don’t see it doesn’t mean something isn’t there. Or gone.
The fall carnival appeared in one afternoon, with rides and sideshows and the huge Ferris wheel cropping up in a field by the shopping mall as if dropped from the sky itself. In daylight, as I took my shortcut to school, everything looked tired and rusted, the tarps covering equipment flapping, workers walking around with craggy faces, half asleep. But by that night, with the lights blazing and the sounds of the carnies rounding up business for the games, it was like a whole new world.
Anthony walked in, bought some cotton candy and proceeded to lose twenty bucks in about five minutes playing a game that involved shooting water pistols at stuffed frogs. I just stood and watched him, silent after my first three tries to point out he was never, ever going to win.
‘Tough luck, buddy,’ the guy running the game said in a monotone voice, his eyes on the crowd moving past, already looking for the next sucker.
‘One more time,’ Anthony said, digging out some more bills. ‘I’m getting closer. I can feel it.’
‘How badly do you really need a frog anyway?’ I asked him. They looked like the typical carnival stuffed animals I remembered from my childhood, the kind with nubby fur that smelled faintly like paint stripper. They always looked better before you actually won them, as if the minute the carnie handed them over they faded, or diminished somehow, the golden ring gone brass.
‘It’s not about the frog,’ Anthony snapped at me, bending down to better line up his shot. ‘It’s about winning.’
‘Winning a frog,’ I grumbled, but he just ignored me, then slammed his fist down and stalked off when he lost. Again. He cheered up a little bit when I used my money to buy cake and tickets for the Ferris wheel, then stood in line with me, chewing loudly, the frog forgotten.
Behind us was a guy with his daughter, who looked to be about eight. She had a big stuffed lion under her arm and was gripping her dad’s hand, staring up at the Ferris wheel as it moved lazily above us.
‘Now, honey,’ the man said, squatting down beside her, ‘you don’t have to go on it if you don’t want to.’
‘I want to,’ she said firmly, switching the lion to the other arm.
‘Because it might be scary.’
‘I want to,’ she repeated.
‘Okay,’ he said, in the kind of voice that was usually accompanied by a shrug. As if he doubted this, her conviction. But as I watched her face, the careful way she studied the ride as it came to a stop, I envied her for knowing exactly what she wanted. But it was easy when you’re little, I figured. Not so many choices.
We got on the ride, and as Anthony pulled the safety bar towards us I craned my neck round, watching to see if the little girl would get into the next seat. She did, without hesitation, planting her lion next to her and laying her hands in her lap, as if she was only getting on a bus, or sitting in a chair, the world to remain always solid beneath her.
As we started moving, Anthony wrapped both his hands round mine and kissed my neck. I closed my eyes as we moved up, higher and higher, our seat rocking slightly. The Ferris wheel was higher than I’d thought and, staring down, everything seemed to shrink to a pinpoint. I could see the steeple from the church on my corner in the distance, beyond that the lights from the football fields. From up high, everything seemed closer together than it actually was, as if the further away you got, the more the world you knew folded in to comfort itself.
Anthony was sliding his hands on to my stomach, moving one to the small of my back, one down my waistband, murmuring in my ear. We were still rising, higher and higher, and someone was screaming a few cars down, but I told myself it wasn’t that little girl, not her. In my mind, I saw her solid face, her absolute determination, and refused to believe it would be so easy to sway her.
/> We were at the very top when I looked down and felt dizzy. Anthony was pressing against me, his fingers digging, hardly caring that this was not the place, not the time, so determined was he to win whatever it was he wanted so badly, that seemed so ideal, at least as long as it shrank back from his grasp. All those nights at the beach, when I’d pushed him away, I hadn’t known exactly why, just that it hadn’t felt right. But as my view from high up narrowed, I realized that my relationship with Anthony had done the same, going from a wide endless horizon of possibilities to one pinpoint of a destination. I wanted to have choices, to know that I could, at any moment, still take the long way home. Sure, there was a quick way to anywhere. But sometimes, when you took the shortcut, you missed the view.
‘I love you,’ he whispered in my ear. ‘I want you.’
But it wasn’t enough, this time. Maybe later it would have been, but as I pushed him away, I knew that time would never come. Winning might not have been everything, but Anthony was tired of losing at this game. If he couldn’t have me, he’d find an easier prize.
The ride hadn’t even come to a full stop when he pushed the safety bar away from us. It rattled, loudly, and sent a ripple of force through my metal seat, an echo I felt in my bones. Then he stomped down the stairs to the sideshows, pushing past all the people lined up for the next ride while I climbed out slowly, taking my time, telling myself to pay attention to how the earth felt beneath me and not take it for granted any more.
I’d driven, and Anthony was gone, lost in the crowd of sticky wrappers and screaming children and all the voices of the game workers, their coaxing and wheedling like a swarm of bees hovering. When I finally got to my car, it seemed like everyone was leaving at once, a long snaky trail of brake lights leading out to the main road.
I pulled up behind a pickup truck and then sat there, moving forward in tiny increments, watching the traffic light up ahead drop from red to green, then climb to red again. Even though I’d only been driving for a couple of weeks it already felt more natural. Things that before I’d had to think about consciously, like switching gears and working the clutch, now happened automatically, as if that part of my mind was handling it, making those decisions for me. Maybe that was all it took, in the end, was the time to let the new soak in. To stand in the face of change and size it up, acquaint yourself, before jumping in. It was all the pressure that was so hard, those little nudges forward, poke poke poke. If you just backed off, and let it come to you, it would.
When I finally made it to the light, I hit my indicator, signalling the left turn that would lead me around the shopping mall and through two neighbourhoods before depositing me neatly on to my own road. It was the way I’d always gone, up until now, but this time I didn’t feel that burning burst of shame in it, knowing I was taking the easy way out. I just remembered the view from up high, the way all the roads led to each other eventually. It didn’t matter which route you took, as long as you got home.
I was thinking this as I moved up to the solid green of the light. That burst of freedom in realizing that my choice was okay. But even so, at the last minute, I turned my wheel to the right, surprising even myself, and shifted into second as the roundabout came up into my sight. It was crowded with carnival traffic, cars whizzing past: I could see it, as if I was still up high, the absolute geometry of that perfect circle. This was normally the moment I was dumb scared, hands shaking, but this time I only pressed further, closer, pressing my shoulders back against the seat as if taking the scariest, and most exhilarating of rides.
As I got nearer, I glanced in my rear-view mirror, and saw the Ferris wheel. It was far behind me, brightly lit, and looked small enough to slide on my finger and keep there. Another circle, representing a kind of infinity that I was only beginning to understand. So when I looked back at the road, easing myself closer to the roundabout traffic, I sealed that image in my mind as I merged in, holding my breath, and felt myself fall into the rhythm of the cars around me. I turned the wheel, leaning into the first curve, feeling that rush of accomplishment and speed as we all moved away from the centre, further and further out. It was happening so fast, but I was there, right there, alive, wanting this moment to be like brass rings and Ferris wheels and all the circulars of this life and others, never ending.
Extract from
Just Listen
I taped the commercial back in April, before anything had happened, and promptly forgot about it. A few weeks ago, it had started running and, suddenly, I was everywhere.
On the rows of screens hanging over the ellipticals at the gym. On the monitor they have at the post office that’s supposed to distract you from how long you’ve been waiting in line. And now here, on the TV in my room, as I sat at the edge of my bed, fingers clenched into my palms, trying to make myself get up and leave.
‘It’s that time of year again …’
I stared at myself on the screen as I was five months earlier, looking for any difference, some visible proof of what had happened to me. First, though, I was struck by the sheer oddness of seeing myself without benefit of a mirror or photograph. I had never got used to it, even after all this time.
‘Football games,’ I watched myself say. I was wearing a baby-blue cheerleader uniform, hair pulled back tight into a ponytail, and clutching a huge megaphone, the kind nobody ever used any more, emblazoned with a K.
‘Study hall.’ Cut to me in a serious plaid skirt and brown cropped sweater, which I remembered feeling itchy and so wrong to be wearing just as it was getting warm, finally.
‘And, of course, social life.’ I leaned in, staring at the me on-screen, now outfitted in jeans and a glittery tee and seated on a bench, turning to speak this line while a group of other girls chattered silently behind me.
The director, fresh-faced and just out of film school, had explained to me the concept of this, his creation. ‘The girl who has everything,’ he’d said, moving his hands in a tight, circular motion, as if that were all it took to encompass something so vast, not to mention vague. Clearly, it meant having a megaphone, some smarts and a big group of friends. Now, I might have dwelled on the explicit irony of this last one, but the on-screen me was already moving on.
‘It’s all happening this year,’ I said. Now I was in a pink gown, a sash reading HOMECOMING QUEEN stretched across my midsection as a boy in a tux stepped up beside me, extending his arm. I took it, giving him a wide smile. He was a sophomore at the local university and mostly kept to himself at the shooting, although later, as I was leaving, he’d asked for my number. How had I forgotten that?
‘The best times,’ the me on-screen was saying now. ‘The best memories. And you’ll find the right clothes for them all at Kopf’s Department Store.’
The camera moved in, closer, closer, until all you could see was my face, the rest dropping away. This had been before that night, before everything that had happened with Sophie, before this long, lonely summer of secrets and silence. I was a mess, but this girl – she was fine. You could tell in the way she stared out at me and the world so confidently as she opened her mouth to speak again.
‘Make your new year the best one yet,’ she said, and I felt my breath catch, anticipating the next line, the last line, the one that only this time was finally true. ‘It’s time to go back to school.’
The shot froze, the Kopf’s logo appearing beneath me. In moments, it would switch to a frozen waffle commercial or the latest weather, this fifteen seconds folding seamlessly into another, but I didn’t wait for that. Instead, I picked up the remote, turned myself off, and headed out of the door.
*
I’d had over three months to get ready to see Sophie. But when it happened, I still wasn’t ready.
I was in the parking lot before first bell, trying to muster up what it would take to get out and officially let the year begin. As people streamed past, talking and laughing, en route to the courtyard, I kept working on all the maybes: maybe she was over it now. Maybe something else had ha
ppened over the summer to replace our little drama. Maybe it was never as bad as I thought it was. All of these were long shots, but still possibilities.
I sat there until the very last moment before finally drawing the keys out of the ignition. When I reached for the door handle, turning to my window, she was right there.
For a second, we just stared at each other, and I instantly noticed the changes in her: her dark curly hair was shorter, her earrings new. She was skinnier, if that were possible, and had done away with the thick eyeliner she’d taken to wearing the previous spring, replacing it with a more natural look, all bronzes and pinks. I wondered, in her first glance, what was different in me.
Just as I thought this, Sophie opened her perfect mouth, narrowed her eyes at me and delivered the verdict I’d spent my summer waiting for.
‘Bitch.’
The glass between us didn’t muffle the sound or the reaction of the people passing by. I saw a girl from my English class the year before narrow her eyes, while another girl, a stranger, laughed out loud.
Sophie, though, remained expressionless as she turned her back, hiking her bag over one shoulder and starting down to the courtyard. My face was flushed, and I could feel people staring. I wasn’t ready for this, but then I probably never would be, and this year, like so much else, wouldn’t wait. I had no choice but to get out of my car, with everyone watching, and begin it in earnest, alone. So I did.
*
I had first met Sophie four years earlier, at the beginning of the summer after sixth grade. I was at the neighbourhood pool, standing in the snack-bar line with two damp dollar bills to buy a Coke, when I felt someone step up behind me. I turned my head, and there was this girl, a total stranger, standing there in a skimpy orange bikini and matching thick platform flip-flops. She had olive skin and thick, curly dark hair pulled up into a high ponytail, and was wearing black sunglasses and a bored, impatient expression. In our neighbourhood, where everyone knew everyone, it was like she’d fallen out of the sky. I didn’t mean to stare. But, apparently, I was.