She looks up at me, gives me a leer, and says, “See something you like?”
“You wish,” I mutter.
“Too bad for you I’m straight,” she says. Her voice sounds unnaturally loud, and it’s probably because she has to talk over the music that’s still blaring from the living room. “Not that you’d be my type anyway. You’re too—” She waves her hand at me as she stands up with the olive juice–soaked paper towels. They flap, soiled and heavy, splattering juice in my direction. “What’s with your look, anyway? You want to be a boy? Is that it?”
“You want to be a slut, is that it?” I retort.
She scowls at me. “What the fuck does that mean?”
“I know you’re cheating on your boyfriend.”
Her eyes narrow.
“I know you’re cheating. I’ve read your disgusting love letters.”
She freezes for an instant, panic in her eyes. Then she crumples up the damp paper towels and throws them toward the sink. They land with a plop on the counter, striking some of the beer bottles. “You haven’t read shit,” she spits at me.
“I’ve been to your stupid little tree in the woods.” I step toward her and she actually takes a startled step back. I laugh. “You think you know everything about everyone, but I know your secret.”
“Shut up.”
“You hide those letters he writes you in that bag under the log. I’ve read them. I’ve read every single fucking one.”
“Shut up!” she screams, and now panic has fully bloomed over her, spreading tomato red through her makeup and seeping like a rash onto her neck.
“My darling,” I mock her. “He thinks about you on his way to school. He thinks about you when he’s working. He can’t wait to be alone with you so he can fuck your flat underage ass.”
She shoves me.
I stumble back in shock. There’s more than fury on her face—there’s hatred.
“Shut. The. Fuck. Up,” Ryan orders. Behind her, two girls are hovering in the entryway to the kitchen, watching us with wide eyes.
“Why should I shut up?” I shout as loud as I can. “Shouldn’t everybody know you’re cheating on your boyfriend with your teacher?”
She picks up a beer bottle and throws it at me. She has terrible aim, and the bottle crashes onto the floor, breaking. Shards of glass fly all over while beer fizzes everywhere.
A girl in a red dress runs over to Ryan and pulls her back. “Ryan, Ryan,” she says soothingly. “Oh my God, stop it. Ryan!”
Ryan throws the girl’s hands off her and runs out of the kitchen, and I’m standing in a pool of beer facing two Peebs who look like they just noticed I’m here.
—
I stare at my alcohol-flushed face in the bathroom mirror while everything spins around me. I lean against the counter, trying to hold on to the slippery granite, and the music is still pounding, and behind me someone pounds on the door, fist against the wood, thump-thump-thump, and I don’t open the door and eventually they go away, and I keep staring at myself until I stop wanting to throw up, until my heartbeat slows down, until I feel more like I’m swimming through mud than trying not to drown.
THE LEATHER BOX FROM MARGOT’S MOM’S CLOSET IS lying open on the marble kitchen island. I don’t know what time it is. The gun glints in the light of the crystal chandelier hanging above. The back door opens, letting in a blast of freezing winter air. It’s Angie, and she’s not wearing a coat. Her eyes are red, and I can tell she’s upset. I move toward her almost involuntarily. All I want to do is make sure that she’s okay, and it doesn’t even matter that she probably doesn’t understand how much she means to me.
It’s purer this way. She can take whatever she wants from me, whenever she wants it, because I’m her best friend.
Then Margot comes inside behind her, grabbing her hand. “Please don’t go,” she says. Angie doesn’t pull away. She doesn’t even see me.
Everything around me rocks, as if I were on a boat on the ocean. One of Margot’s friends pushes past me toward the drinks. Someone rips open a bag of chips, sending them flying across the floor. I move out of the way and bang my toe against a stool, and then I stumble into the edge of the island, and the box is right in front of me. The gun is engraved with leaves and flowers, and it looks like a charm you might wear on a bracelet next to a miniature dagger and a coil of rope.
I reach for it. The metal is cool, and the gun is heavier than I expected. It’s pretty. The vines seem to come alive, twining around the grip and the barrel, ending in the small dark muzzle: a silent, open mouth.
Someone says my name.
Ryan lunges toward me from the other side of the island. She screams, “You fucking liar! You tell him it’s not true.”
Across the kitchen Angie hears Ryan and glances in our direction. Her eyes widen and her lips form my name but I can barely hear her over Ryan’s yelling. Angie marches over to me, demanding, “What the hell are you doing with that?” She pulls the gun from my hand. Her fingers are so cold from being outside it’s as if they’ve been dipped in a bucket of ice. They still send an electric jolt all the way through my vodka-induced emotional padding. She gingerly places the gun back in the box as if she’d been handling a snake. “Let’s go,” she says.
It takes me a second to realize she wants to leave. With me.
As we start to go, Ryan picks up the gun. “I’m not finished,” she declares, her finger on the trigger.
Margot grabs her arm, yanking the gun down. “Where did you get this?” she asks, her face white. “This is my mom’s.”
Angie takes my hand and drags me out of the kitchen and into the cream-on-white living room, where the music is blasting extra loud. A few people are dancing in a circle, drinks in hand. The giant TV above the gas fireplace plays a video on mute in which a black man with dreads and a bloody face walks away from a burning car. Several empty bottles of beer are tipped over on the white fur pelt that serves as the living room rug. There’s no head attached, but I have no doubt it came from a bear. The fact that the rug has been decapitated makes it even worse. I’m fixated on the absent head, wondering what happened to it and whether there’s some kind of dumping ground for discarded bears’ heads. I picture them piled up in a pyramid formation in an abandoned city lot; the colors would be shades of blue and gray, the white heads shadowed, toothy jaws slightly parted.
Angie pulls on her coat, her scarf and gloves, and practically throws mine at me. I fumble with the zipper on my down jacket, tug on my wool hat. We are almost at the front door when Margot comes running after us. She pleads with Angie not to go, and Angie halts with one hand on the doorknob, turning back to look at her.
The two of them, at this moment, would make such a good panel. I could title it “Stay.” Margo’s hand is outstretched, her arm extended so that the sleeve of her white sweater slides up, exposing the delicate bones of her wrist. The sweater is practically see-through. Beneath it the outline of her black bra is clear, and the waistline of her black leather leggings hugs her flat stomach.
I get why Angie likes her. I don’t want to get it, but I do, like a punch to the gut. Margot exudes this attitude that’s somewhere between dominatrix and jock, and it should be annoying but for some reason it’s not. She makes you feel like you want to please her, and she’s turning the full force of that onto Angie now. She won’t be able to resist.
Angie’s expression is a little wary. She knows she’s going to lose this game. Thick brown curls tumble over the flushed apple of her cheek. Her scarf is a slash of crimson around her throat, her coat swinging wide to reveal the arc of her waist. Her hips turn halfway to the door, but her torso twists toward Margot. Even if her legs are taking her away, her heart is bringing her back.
I’ve sketched Angie countless times, and every time I feel guilty for stripping her naked with my pencil, but that doesn’t stop me from doing it again.
I’ve never drawn Margot before, but she’s a lot like Angie, physically. They’re both tall, and I would start them as a series of oval shapes, their limbs long and graceful as they move toward each other in their dance of apology.
And then there’s me, an extra in their drama, sweating in my down coat a few feet away. I’m a pile of bulging circles, half a head shorter than Angie, my thighs like squashed loaves of bread. Angie’s always telling me I’m cute, but cute is a euphemism for “not sexy.”
I turn away so I don’t have to see them kiss. I can imagine it just fine on my own.
I fix my blurry gaze on a painting hanging over the side table in the front hall. It’s a stroke of gold over indigo blue, the colors so vivid they make me feel light-headed. I take a step closer. The paint is thick, layered onto the canvas as if it had been spread like peanut butter. There are shadows of orange and vermilion beneath the gold, like sunlight sedimented into stone.
Angie and Margot have forgotten about me.
ANGIE’S CAR IS FREEZING COLD, AND SHE CRANKS THE heater up on high, but all I feel is drunk. Everything is a fog, a slurry, and I lurch against the door, my face sliding down the frigid glass, my breath an alcoholic mist.
“You know what’s funny?” Angie says.
“What?”
“The reason Margot and I got in a fight is because she thinks I’m cheating on her.”
Angie’s words don’t make sense to me. I can’t remember her fighting with Margot, and the idea of Angie cheating on Margot is—“She thinks you’re cheating?” I say, bewildered.
“With you.”
The world seems to shudder. My insides slosh around as if I’d been liquefied. Despite the cold air still blasting through the vents, I’m dripping with sweat.
“I don’t know if she really believes that, or if she’s saying it to piss me off,” Angie says, her words clipped. “The stupid thing is, she’s half right. There is something going on between us, and it’s not okay.”
Angie’s phone tells her to turn, and outside the window the Atlantic surges, the waves crashing against the edge of the road, and I feel as if it’s going to swallow us, and maybe that would make Angie stop saying these things.
“I purposely don’t mention Margot to you because I know how angry she makes you,” Angie continues. “And I purposely don’t mention you to Margot because it makes her mad too. Do you know how hard it was to get her to invite you tonight? And you act like I forced you to go there against your will. How do you think that makes me feel?”
My stomach roils. I roll down the window, and the biting winter air screams in. I gulp it down, tasting snow.
“Are you going to be sick?” Angie asks.
I don’t answer, because if I open my mouth I don’t know what’s coming out. I clutch the door handle with clammy hands. The road ahead cuts a line through the dark, and tiny white flakes swirl in the beams of the headlights. I gag on the taste in the back of my throat and lean my head into the frigid wind, welcoming its lash on my flushed face.
Abruptly, Angie veers over to the side of the road, slamming on the brakes. The sudden deceleration causes a hot and nasty liquid to rise up in my throat, and I barely get the door open before I vomit vodka into the gutter. My head spins. I stumble out of the car, bent over, heaving. Snow dusts the edge of the street and strikes my face in tiny pinpricks.
Angie is behind me now, her hand on my back. “Are you okay?” she asks. She rubs my back, and the motion of her hand makes me sick again. “Oh my God, you shouldn’t have drunk that much. Jess, are you okay?”
—
I sit up, blinking in the light of the dashboard. “What—where are we?”
Angie says, “We’re almost home. You fell asleep. Or blacked out.”
There’s a disgusting taste in my mouth. I groan, wiping the back of my hand across my lips. My hand smells like puke and I recoil from my own fingers. “Did I throw up?”
“You don’t remember?”
“I—no.”
Angie sighs. “Yeah, you threw up. We stopped on the side of the road. You drank way too much.”
There’s judgment in her voice, and it pierces the fog around me. I shrink back in the seat. My throat hurts.
“Are you okay?” Angie asks.
“Feel like shit,” I croak.
“Yeah, I bet.”
We drive in silence through the lightly falling snow. As long as I don’t move, the world doesn’t spin. Angie’s phone tells her to turn right, and I realize we’re already back in West Bedford.
“I can’t believe you,” Angie says in a low, bitter voice. “I can’t freaking believe you.”
“What are you talking about?” I ask hoarsely.
I don’t remember why she’s mad. All I remember is her kissing Margot, and even though I didn’t mean to watch, I can still see it as if it were happening right in front of me. White carpet—the house had white carpet. I suddenly remember the sight of cranberry juice splattering all over it, an eruption of color on a blank canvas. There’s a weird buzzing in my head, nearly drowning out Angie’s voice.
She turns onto her street. One of the houses has an inflatable Santa on its front lawn, staked into the ground with ropes, but the wind is pummeling it backward, the plastic skin on Santa’s face rippling like water. I feel like that Santa.
I see Angie and Margot standing in the foyer, arms around each other, and I’m dizzy, and I press the heel of my hands against my eyes, and I smell the vomit again and gag.
“. . . the deal is with you and Ryan?” Angie is saying. “What the hell were you doing? I go into the kitchen and you have a freaking gun?”
“Ryan found it. Sh-she found it, not me.” My voice sounds funny in my ears, as if I were shouting from the bottom of a well.
“I don’t care who found it! You were being crazy tonight. I can’t believe what you said.”
“I didn’t say anything!” I shriek, and Angie flinches. “I didn’t say shit—what are you even talking about?”
Angie turns into her house’s driveway and pulls the emergency brake, making the car jerk to a stop. “You accused Ryan of cheating on her boyfriend!” Angie cries. “How can you not remember? Ryan’s boyfriend was there. And even if it’s true, how would you know? You’re—I don’t know what’s wrong with you.”
She shuts off the car’s engine, and the sudden silence makes her last few words sound shockingly loud. My stomach is still churning from the motion of the car, and everything I’m feeling is about to erupt out of my mouth just like the vodka. I try to contain it, I try to stuff it all back down, but I say, “What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with me?” My voice rises. “What’s wrong with me is you.”
My lungs are heaving, and I really want to throw up again but I swallow the dregs of vodka that rise up in the back of my throat. I choke it back, and it tastes foul.
“You made me come tonight,” I say, my words tumbling one over the other. “You ash-asked me to come. You made me promise. You made me. Did you ever think maybe I didn’t want to?”
“You didn’t have to come if you really didn’t want to. You could have said no.”
“I can’t say no! I can’t fucking say no to you!”
I open the door and climb out into the snowy night. I’m nauseated by the motion, and I have to pause for a second, gulping in the cold air, but then I shove the door closed as hard as I can. I start to walk down the driveway.
Angie’s door opens and she calls, “Where are you going? You’re supposed to stay over tonight.”
I stop, turning back. The porch light is on, silhouetting her in the flying snow. “I don’t think Margot would like that. Would she? What would you tell her?”
“Stop being a jerk. It’s not like that.”
“What’s it like then? No, wait, don’t tell me—I really don’t want to know. I don’t want to kn
ow anything about you and Margot. When are you going to get that? Stop telling me about her. I don’t give a shit about her. Every time you tell me about her it makes me want to throw up. Don’t you get that?”
She crosses her arms against the cold and comes toward me, but stops several feet away. “Why are you so jealous?”
“Why am I—” Her question makes me laugh hysterically. I’m shaking and laughing and all of a sudden I’m really, really cold, and I say, “Why? Jesus, Angie. Don’t act like you don’t know.”
Angie doesn’t move, and I’m shivering so hard it feels like all the liquor is being shaken out of me, and even if I’m crying, I can’t tell because my face is half frozen. I turn around to leave and wait for Angie to say my name, to tell me to come back, but she doesn’t say a word; and before long I’m at the end of the driveway, and then I’m on the sidewalk, and I’m walking, farther and farther away, and Angie doesn’t call me back.
WAKING UP IS LIKE CLAWING MY WAY THROUGH spiderwebs. My mouth is dry and sticky at the same time, my tongue thick and swollen, my lips cracked. When I open my eyes, weak gray daylight fills my room. The blinds are open. On the floor beside my bed I see my jeans crumpled next to my shoes. There’s an irregular, dark stain on the carpet around them, and the edges of the soles are crusted with dirt.
My head throbs. I reach for my phone, but it’s not on the nightstand. I glimpse my coat on the floor just inside the door. I sit up carefully, and I’m not as dizzy as I thought I’d be, so I swing my legs over the side of the bed and walk gingerly toward the coat. My phone is in the pocket, but it’s dead.
I go over to my desk and find the phone’s charger and plug it in. It takes a minute for the phone to turn on again. I open my messages, but there’s nothing new from Angie. I feel a stab of disappointment. I reread her message to me from yesterday before the party: Should I wear the black or red? She attached a picture of two dresses spread out on her bed. I sigh, closing the text, and notice a message above it from a number I don’t recognize. I open it.