Every time it happens, I can’t help but wonder what’s coming next.
I get dressed and sit at the kitchen table, resting my head against it, too nauseous to eat. Mom mutters something about how it must be Wednesday because she thinks they’re worse than Mondays—so close to and far from the weekend—but it’s not that. It’s when my body decides to remind me it can do more than I’ll ever want it to, it is so painful.
In Phys Ed, I tell Prewitt I’m not feeling well enough to run. She reluctantly lets me sit out because I never sit out. I’m not the only one with a sense of self-preservation. Trey Marcus nurses a pulled muscle and Lana Smith tells Prewitt she woke up too late for breakfast, so she’ll just skip running and spare us all her eventual collapse. She gets a detention for that.
The sun bears down on us, holds tight my skin to my body. I lace my fingers together, turning my hands into one giant fist, and press it hard against my abdomen, pushing my outsides against my cramping insides. Lana and Trey talk quietly about Wake Lake. Two more days.
I watch everyone circle the track. All dogs, no rabbit.
Eventually, Prewitt blows her whistle, signals the showers. The best part about not working up a sweat is not having to wash it off, so when we head inside, I break from the class and find a spot for myself wedged between the wall and a broken vending machine, like a sick animal crawling off to the woods to die.
I fall into a hazy sleep that feels like a second by the time I jerk awake, drool all down my chin, but I know it must have been longer than that. I wipe my mouth and check the time on my phone. Five minutes before the bell and it’s too quiet. That’s the first thing I notice. It’s too quiet. This should be the mad rush before third period, halls congested with students trying not to get to their next class too early or too late. But it’s not.
I get to my feet and walk until a murmured frenzy reaches my ears and guides me toward the front of the school. Two girls hurry past and when they see me, they explode into giggles that tell me they know. They know what it is.
Two giggling girls.
A dull, warning ache.
This is what comes next:
Jane. It’s so funny, what’s been done to her. It’s funny that her cheerleading outfit is in a crumpled heap at her feet, exposing her body, all those years of wear and tear to anyone who wants to look, except for this small allowance of modesty—
She’s wearing my bra.
My vision tunnels. I step back until the dark edges fade, allowing me to see more of this thing I don’t want to see.
The red.
They’ve painted her nails and her lips red.
Her mouth is a perfect, startled O.
John’s hands are raised triumphantly over his head.
My underwear is draped over his fingers.
i hide behind a nearby locker row and watch Coach Prewitt chase away the crowd until the bell rings. Stragglers amble by after that, braving her wrath, hoping for a glimpse of the show even though nothing they see will be as good as the retelling.
When the hall is completely empty, Prewitt redresses Jane carefully, shaking her head and muttering to herself. Stupid goddamn kids. My bra and underwear are clutched in her hands. She contemplates them a moment, then, disgusted, shoves them into a nearby garbage can and leaves. I wait until I’m sure I’m alone and then I go to her. Jane.
I hold my hands out next to hers and exhale. This close, I can see a subtle difference in shade. Off by degrees. That’s not my red. It’s some other girl’s. Problem is, far enough away, it’s easy to mistake for mine. I have to make sure no one else does. I bring my fingers to Jane’s mouth. Marker. Permanent. The nails too.
But I can get rid of this.
I pick at the surface of her “skin” until it starts to flake. The circle around Jane’s lips goes slow. The outer layer is weirdly stubborn. I want to talk to her, ask her how she’s doing because it feels like she’s real and I’m not. You okay, Jane? No, nobody saw. But if they did, it doesn’t matter. Whatever, you know? Fuck them.
It takes a bit of elbow grease until the red O is gone except it makes it worse somehow—what’s left behind is a white stain. I work on her right hand, chipping the polish off her fingernails carefully, to preserve my own. Pieces of her get under my thumbnail, make me hiss and wince, but I keep going until there’s no red on her anymore and then—I’m done. I step back and stare at her and I know who she’s not.
I go to the garbage and my hand is almost in it before I realize what I’m doing and it’s that exact moment I feel eyes on me.
Penny’s at the end of the hall. Her face is blank, but there can’t be a single part of her not enjoying this and I wonder how long she’s been there, if she saw it all. I try to think back, try to pick her out of a crowd of blurred faces, but I can’t. It doesn’t matter. She knew it would happen. She let it happen.
I’m not allowed to leave¸ but they can’t expect me to stay. I walk out of school, scratching at my arms until angry finger marks flare on my skin and slowly disappear. By the time the house is in sight, I remember my bike but I’m not going back to get it.
The front door is locked, even though the New Yorker is in the driveway. I knock, just to test it, and no one’s home but I have a key for the house because it’s my house now.
I have a key for the car too. Emergencies only.
This feels like it could be one.
I stand in the sun porch and the quiet pulls at me, and different parts of me want different things. There’s the part of me that wants to go inside and sleep. There’s the part of me that wants space, distance, because it all feels too close.
The part of me that wants to go is louder.
And then I’m in Todd’s car, I’m in it and it’s on and then I’m outside of Grebe, twisting along back roads so deserted it doesn’t even matter which side I drive on. I forgot how it felt to push foot to pedal, to go fast, fast, faster and break, watching the tires kick up dust in the rearview. I learned to drive when I was fourteen. My mom took me to an abandoned lot out of town and showed me in case there was an emergency and my father was too drunk to get behind the wheel, like we lived in a world where help could never come to us. It wasn’t long after when I discovered my father was the emergency. Mom saw it coming, what I didn’t. She finally got a steady cleaning job and started working nights and he’d get so wasted, just drink the house dry and still be thirsty after and what do you do when you’re thirsty? Get more to drink. Couldn’t walk straight but sure he could drive and hell, no he wouldn’t call a taxi and you can’t call the cops on your dad because—you can’t. So you beg him to wait until it’s dark out and the streets are empty and you take him yourself and you never get caught.
He was so glad when I finally got my license because everything didn’t have to be such a production anymore. I could pick him up from the bar, or the houses of any of his friends who would still have him, and it didn’t matter who saw me. My father loved my mother’s work nights. He could fall down guilt-free because the only person he had to answer to was me and as far as my father was concerned, no parent was ever meant to answer to their kid.
I circle the outskirts of Grebe over and over, pretend I’m actually going somewhere but I never really manage to convince myself.
I don’t know how long it’s like that, just driving, before the lights flash behind me.
I don’t even understand what they mean until the short shrill burst of a siren follows.
Oh, Jesus.
I pull onto the shoulder while the unmarked Ford Explorer behind me does the same. I squeeze the steering wheel as I mentally catalogue all the things that are wrong, like my license isn’t on me. Oh, and this isn’t my car. Was I speeding? I think I was. Shit. Shit. I turn the car off and roll the window down, listening to the footsteps crunch across the ground until they reach my door.
“Romy Grey. Shouldn’t you be in school right now?”
The voice is familiar in the terrible way most recurring nightma
res are.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he asks.
“Why don’t you tell me?”
He’s good at that, telling me.
“Step out of the car, please.”
All the Turner boys look the same. I guess that means they all look like their father but when I see the father, I see the sons. Sheriff Turner exhales impatiently through his nose because it takes me too long to step out, but I couldn’t do it before my legs felt sure enough to stand.
“This your car?” he asks.
I hate you.
Such an easy thought, I’m lucky it doesn’t come out of my mouth.
“What?”
“I asked you if this”—he points to the New Yorker—“is your car.”
“It’s Todd’s.” He knows it’s Todd’s.
“He know you’re driving it?”
“Yes.”
Turner squints at the farmhouse in the distance. “So he reported it stolen for kicks?” I turn to ice. I can’t even swallow, I’m so frozen. Turner nods to the house. “We got a call from Mr. Conway. Told us a suspicious-looking car come tearing down this road almost a dozen times.” Conway. Christ. He’s probably watching this from his window, binoculars pressed against his eyes to better the view. “Been drinking?”
It’s as good as a slap in the face. “No, sir.”
“So if we did a roadside sobriety test, you’d pass, that what you’re telling me?”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m telling you.”
“But you’ve already lied to me once. Today.” He runs his hand over his mouth, like he’s considering it, letting me go, because he’s trying to make a fool out of me, thinks he can put hope in me that I’ll walk away from this with no trouble at all. I’m not a fool. He lowers his hand and points to the space of road in front of him. “Okay, Romy. I need you to stand right there. Feet together, hands at your sides.”
“What?”
“Feet together, hands at your sides.”
My eyes drift to his holster, that’s how much I hate him. I’m boiling with it. I press my lips together and at first I want to fight this but I know I can’t win because that’s not what I was put on this earth to do. I drop my hands to my sides, feet together. He holds his hand up, raises his index finger, tells me to focus on the tip of it and then leads my eyes side to side, up and down and that is not even the end of it. He makes me walk a straight line, heel to toe, turn and walk it back. He makes me stand on one leg and count and when I pass all these tests with flying colors, he tells me he’s calling my mother. I can’t get any more dead while I listen to him say he’s recovered the car and oh, guess who was driving it. His voice is getting to me, turns this open space into a coffin. I start scratching at my arms again.
He hangs up and shoves his phone in his pocket.
“There’s a lot of ways I could make this go,” he tells me. “You were speeding, driving erratically. That’s not your car and I’m guessing your license isn’t on you. So that little sobriety test would be the least of your worries. But know what? I’m going to give you a break and hope you learn something from it. Now get in Todd’s car. I’m following you in.”
I take the drive in to Grebe at a crawl, wasting his time and delaying the inevitable. When we finally get back to the house, Mom and Todd are waiting on the porch. She’s upset, that’s plain across her face and in the way she’s holding herself, arms wrapped tight around her middle. Todd looks too serious, doesn’t look right too serious. He grimaces when he sees the dirt on the car and I wish that I could take this whole thing back. The screen door whines as she pushes it open. They meet us halfway up the walkway.
“You all right?” she asks. I nod. She holds out her hands. “Good. Keys. Now.” I hand them over, my eyes everywhere but hers. “Are you kidding me with this? What were you thinking, Romy?”
Todd clears his throat. “AJ, I think we can figure this out inside.” Mom flushes when she finally realizes who she’s embarrassing me in front of. Todd reaches out, shakes hands with the sheriff. “Levi, we appreciate your help today.”
“It’s my job. I’ve got to do it for everybody.” He turns to me. “And you. You learn something?”
“Every single time,” I tell him.
After I’ve been banned from driving the New Yorker until we all forget about the time I took it without asking and the sheriff brought me home, I have to ask my mother to drive me to Swan’s. It’s a quiet ride out. She keeps clenching her jaw. It’s not until we reach the town sign, she asks, “What happened today?”
“Nothing.”
“You don’t just get in a car and go for nothing.” She pauses. “If something happened and I can do something about it, you should tell me.”
“Nothing happened.”
She sighs and turns the radio on. Cattle graze in fields off the road and they look sleepy with the heat. When I was nine, my mom got hired to clean a hall out in the country after it got rented for a wedding. Dad had been at the bottle all day and she didn’t want me to stay with him, so I went with her. I filled my pockets with diamond confetti that got all over the floors while she swept, vacuumed, scrubbed, and wiped down surfaces.
Behind the building was a field and when the potpourri scent of her cleaner made me sneeze, I went outside. There were calves there, these sweet things that watched me with less interest than I watched them. There was this raggedy one, sitting in the middle of the field, its mother nearby. I didn’t realize it was sick until it tried to get up and it couldn’t. It kept trying and it couldn’t and then, eventually—it didn’t. After a while, a truck drove in. A man and a boy got out, looked it over while its mother stood close. It was dead, the calf. Dead and too heavy to load into the truck bed, so they tied a rope around its neck, tied the other end to the truck and dragged it off the field like that. Its mother watched until it disappeared and when it was out of view, she called for it. Just kept calling for it so long after it was gone. Sometimes I feel something like that, between my mom and me. That I’m the daughter she keeps calling for so long after she’s been gone.
her cheerleading uniform hugs the smooth contours of her body. Her arms are up and out and her pom-poms are secured tightly to her hands. The megaphone sits between her legs. All that school spirit in all that girl and in a single day, they wasted her. She inspires nothing now.
I’m making my way to homeroom when Brock’s shoulder clips mine and sends me staggering back. The sharp hurt of it radiates out, promising a bruise. He whirls around and I’ve got so many variations of fuck you to throw in his face but I swallow them all when he smiles at me with every single one of his teeth. He glances at Alek beside him. Alek holds his hand out, signaling Brock to stop, so Brock does. Brock shoves both his hands in his pockets and makes himself look almost conversational.
“Hey, Brock,” Alek says loudly, as a group of students pass. They slow. “You hear about how my dad pulled Grey over yesterday night? She was drunk.”
Another few students come down the opposite side of the hall and they stop for this. Brock raises his voice. “No, Alek. I didn’t hear about how your dad pulled Grey over yesterday night. You say she was drunk?”
“Yeah.” Alek steps toward me. “Feet together, hands at your sides, right, Grey? That what he told you to do because you were so smashed?”
“I wasn’t—”
“Swerving all over the road? That’s what Dan Conway says, and he’s the one who called your sorry ass in.” Alek’s eyes gleam. “Like father, like daughter, right? Meanwhile my dad had to waste his time seeing you home, make sure you didn’t kill anyone.”
It’s amazing how bad you can make the truth sound. As long as you keep it partially recognizable when you spit it out, a crowd will eat it up without even thinking about how hard you chewed on it first. They’re all rabid for Wake Lake, all of them, and I’m the bone that’s going to keep their mouths wet while they wait. I let them have it because some things you can’t do anything about. So it’s bell to bell
, class to class. They look at me, whispering those words that came straight from Alek’s mouth. Like father, like daughter. At lunch, I pass a guy who calls me Jane and then immediately apologizes with a shrug of his shoulders.
“Sorry,” he says. “All you bitches look the same.”
By the time the last bell rings, three of my nails are chipping.
When I first started with the nail polish, I didn’t know anything about it. The red would flake off before the day was half out, my nails would split and, over time, they turned yellow. And then I learned. Removing polish is a process too.
It’s less of one than the manicure itself, but still. I open my bedroom window and lay everything I need on my desk before I begin. Scrub brush, remover, a bowl and cotton balls, Q-tips, nail strengthener, and a piece of cardboard to protect the finish of my desk.
I wash my hands in the bathroom and start with the scrub brush, working it back and forth under my nails until they feel clean. Next, I unroll a cotton ball and tear it into fingernail-sized pieces. I pour the remover into the bowl and dip the bits of cotton—one at a time—into it and then set them onto the nails of my left hand. I give a few minutes to let the remover do its job, to eat away at the color. When those minutes have passed, I press into the cotton and swipe the polish off. I take a Q-tip dipped in remover for the edges because I never get it all. Repeat with the right hand. I apply the strengthener and wait for it to set. After enough time has passed, I clear off my desk and get everything else I need to finish the job. Cleanser and dehydrator, base coat, polish, top coat.
A ceramic file this time too, to round out edges.
My dad used to say makeup was a shallow girl’s sport, but it’s not. It’s armor. Leon wasn’t at Swan’s last night. Had to trade shifts with someone and the day before that, the diner was too busy and we were two girls short. I didn’t even get my break. The most he and I got to exchange were orders. Every now and then, though, he’d give me this smile I didn’t see him giving anyone else. I brush a thin layer of red onto my last nail, and wait for it to dry before I reach for the top coat. I apply the top coat and then I’m ready.