Matt reacted first, looking as if he smelled something bad. Rachel’s eyes examined the lockers, top to bottom. Dylan and Chloe sauntered up and stopped. Dylan tried not to laugh, and Chloe had an I won, loser smile. Greta repented of every bad thought she’d ever had about Priya and Angela. This was how it felt to be on the other side.
Dylan stepped forward, pushing past Matt and Rachel. His face got serious, leaning in close. She recoiled, the water fountain digging into her leg. Adrenaline buzzed in every limb, her heart pounding. She had once wanted that face close to hers, wanted to touch that body. Now his proximity scorched her.
“Boo!” he whispered. Then he stepped back, laughing. Chloe and Matt sniggered. Rachel’s face reddened.
Priya walked up behind them and took it all in—Greta shrinking from their cold laughter. She had missed the words but understood everything. “Grow up, you guys.” She cuffed Matt and Dylan on the backs of their heads. “Four against one isn’t even fair.” Her eyes held Greta’s for a second before moving past, pulling them all forward.
Their laughter shifted to something else, Greta already forgotten.
The tears came before she made it to the bathroom. She’d tried. She’d really tried. On the Sunday after the party, Greta had only left her room a couple of times, and always wearing a turtleneck. She’d scrubbed her body in the shower, the water scalding hot, and shrunk from her limp clothes on the bathroom floor. Like they were infected by deadly bacteria and needed to be burned rather than just washed. After her shower she’d shoved them deep into the laundry hamper in her bedroom. But somehow she’d still sensed them there—not far enough away. Later, when everyone slept, she dug out the shirt, wrapped it in a plastic bag and dropped it in the garbage can behind the house. No one would find it there.
Sunday night, lying in bed, Greta gave herself a pep talk. In the tally of reliefs and embarrassments, embarrassments won by a landslide. Could she even salvage this? Getting blind drunk on half of what anyone else had consumed. And who knew how she’d been with Dylan. He’d had a lot of girlfriends, then her—the drunk virgin. Was she terrible? Being too sick to help clean up the next morning, not saying more than three words to anyone. Greta pressed her face into her pillow to quash the squirming. Monday would be a Reset button. She’d feel better, dress nice. Act normal. Smile. Maybe they’d laugh about it.
But then Greta found out she didn’t hold the Reset button. Angus—who Greta vaguely remembered hitting on her—came toward her on the way to English that Monday, giving her a cold stare before walking past. “That was easy,” he said, close to her ear, meaning you were easy. In bio, Priya had watched her with unblinking cat eyes. Then Sam had clutched her arm in the bathroom, beaming. “I heard.” Like there should be a Hallmark card for the occasion. In the hallway, a girl who sat with them at lunch smiled—really smiled. Greta didn’t even know her name. A few others had darted glances at her when she walked down the hall. Did she imagine it? When she’d sat down next to Rachel at lunchtime, though, Chloe got up and left. The table felt even emptier with Matt and Dylan at a lunchtime intramurals game.
It was funny—a few weeks earlier, no one had known she existed. Now everything about her was defined by Dylan’s penis, her contact with it and whether people approved or disapproved.
When Greta and Rachel had stopped by their lockers at the end of the lunch hour, Greta pulled Rachel aside, trying to sort out her head. “I think I made a mistake, that it was too soon. I don’t know.” She stared at a spot on the floor.
Rachel put her hand on Greta’s arm. “You like Dylan, right?”
Greta nodded.
“And he likes you. So what’s the problem?”
“I—” It was hard to explain. She’d imagined it all differently. She didn’t even know if she’d liked it, his body on hers. “It was my first time, and…”
“Oh, really?” Rachel cringed. She grabbed Greta’s other arm too. “Don’t worry. Drunk sex is the worst. It gets better. I promise.” Greta watched Rachel’s eyes look past her shoulder, and she turned to see Ash, holding out her English textbook.
“I took this by accident,” he said. Then he’d left, his face blank.
Panic had strangled Greta again, the feeling she’d tried to corral all weekend. Everything had spilled out of her control. “He didn’t hear that, did he?”
Rachel shrugged. “I’m not sure. I don’t think so.”
Greta watched his head disappear down the hall.
“Are you worried about your brother finding out?”
“Kind of. It’s embarrassing.” But not quite. Embarrassing was when she didn’t have the right clothes or lived in a dumpy stucco basement suite. This reduced her to something less than human. Shame, shame, double shame, now we know your boyfriend’s name.
“You’re overthinking this.” Rachel put her free hand around Greta’s waist and led her back into the busy stream of the hallway. “This is all very normal.”
Rachel was right. It happened all the time. It’s what’s done. And she had just compounded her weekend awkwardness by making an even bigger deal of it. Greta’s body felt hollow, from her center right into her legs. She realized she’d been looking for the right words, the right gesture—from someone, anyone—to make it right. She drifted, unanchored, from class to class.
After school, Rachel had stopped by her locker. “So I was talking to Matt and Dylan, and we’re thinking of going out to the cabin again this Saturday.”
The cabin. The words fell into the hollow, stirred up something inside Greta.
When Rachel asked, “Are you interested in coming?” Greta had thought that was it, her reset.
“I’ll come,” she’d said.
But it hadn’t gone as planned, hadn’t been her reset. And today, as she’d cowered against a water fountain, Dylan had smashed her insides again with one word. Inside a bathroom stall, she took deep breaths, trying to pull herself back to a state to be seen in public. I’ve got to get out of here. Ash. She needed him, that pillar by her side. But couldn’t tell him. She waited until the bell rang at the end of the lunch hour, and the bathroom and hallways emptied. Then she pressed cold paper towels against her eyes and slipped a note into Ash’s locker about feeling sick and leaving early.
Outside, the cold soothed her inflamed face. She closed her eyes and let the swelling calm. After scrounging in her backpack for change, she waited fifteen minutes for the bus.
On the path in front of Elgin’s house, Greta eyed the doors to the upper and lower suites. She didn’t want the basement—the memory of it full of mold and shadows—but upstairs she’d be with Elgin, in his barely there running outfit, by herself. He seemed harmless. She hadn’t caught him staring at her breasts or acting like a creeper. Still. She tromped an arrow in the snow, pointing to the basement, so Ash would know where to find her.
Greta slipped through the basement door, quietly, to avoid waking any ghosts. Her eyes adjusted to the grayish shapes, slowly making sense of them again: a boxy sofa, the thin line of a floor lamp, the lump of a discarded blanket. Cold and musty—an abandoned space. She didn’t even bother lighting the oven, wrapping herself in a blanket on the sofa instead.
She could never make sense of those shards still rattling loose inside her. They dug in, but no matter how long she looked at them, they never formed a whole picture. A grotesque kaleidoscope. When she tried to sort through it, all the colors mixed together until it turned into a swamp brown.
The second night at the cabin was supposed to fix everything. Just her, Rachel, Matt and Dylan. No Priya in a little black dress. No Angus trying to move in when Dylan turned his back.
“We have dibs on the good bed tonight,” Matt had said from the front seat of Rachel’s car, looking over his shoulder at Dylan.
“We’ll see about that,” Dylan said, nudging Greta.
She laughed, a tinny sound that grated in her ears. It would take some drinks. Maybe not the toxic punch that nearly killed her. But something.
>
Greta knew the turns in the road now, the signs they were close. The old boulder of nausea wobbled in her gut. She ignored it, unbuckling her seat belt the moment they pulled into the driveway. Matt collected some loose beer cans rolling around the car floor while Rachel pulled a plastic shopping bag from the trunk.
It hadn’t snowed since the weekend before. Their old tracks and footprints still marked the driveway and porch. Greta stepped close to Dylan on the cabin deck, suddenly chilled. The cabin would be cold.
Matt stumbled past, leaning close to the deck to drop the cans spilling from his arms onto a cushion of snow. He peeled back the welcome mat for the key. A plastic baggie sat on the bare deck boards, something white inside. He picked it up and felt underneath. No key.
“What the hell is this?” Matt ripped the seal of the baggie open and pulled a slip of paper from inside. “Did you really think we wouldn’t find out you had a party?” he read. He swore and dropped the bag and paper in the snow, then turned and started pacing. Kicked a dead potted plant into the snow. “How’d they know?”
Matt checked the door and lower windows, which they all knew was pointless. “And they were all have a nice night! when I left,” he said. “Unbelievable.”
They stood there looking at each other.
“So,” Rachel said, “should we hang out in the car? The shed? Turn around and go home?” She ran her fingers through her hair.
Not home. How could Greta have a reset if they went home now?
“Maybe we can get into one of these empty cabins,” Matt said, looking around. “Climb in a window or something.”
“No way,” Rachel said. “Do I look like a felon?”
“You guys do what you like,” Dylan said, scooping two beer cans from the snow. “I know where Greta and I are going.”
Where are we going?
“See you in an hour,” Dylan said. “Do you have a blanket in your car, Rachel?”
Matt snorted. “An hour. More like ten minutes.”
Dylan ignored him, and Rachel pulled a blanket from the trunk. He draped it across his and Greta’s shoulders as they walked in the direction of the only cabin with a porch light—a mobile home that resembled someone’s giant junk drawer: whirligigs, lawn gnomes, plastic flowers. The whole line of cabins looked a little haunted, with their dark windows along the gravel road and the one stark light. Bare trees in a brisk wind.
Behind them, the car doors opened and closed. Their feet crunched the brittle ice of melted and refrozen snow. Across from the mobile home, Dylan led her under the branches of the large pine and along the side of an empty log cabin. They put their hands out to feel their way, entirely blocked from any light. “It’s just up ahead,” Dylan said.
The moonlight outlined the branches of an apple tree—the yard a mushy gray—and the rooftops of a shed and garage. “Up here.” Dylan pulled her forward and helped boost her onto the shed roof, then pulled himself up. They crossed over to the garage roof, crouching close to the snow-covered shingles. He spread out the blanket and sat down, cracking a can of beer and handing it to her.
She took a sip, her stomach clenching against the memory of the previous week. From the garage roof, the other cabins formed a dark collage of shapes. Cold seeped through the blanket beneath her. The air had stayed just cool enough to maintain the snow. A flirtation with winter up to this point. She leaned against Dylan’s shoulder, and he reached for her hand.
“How was your week?” she asked him.
Dylan laughed. “You want to talk about basketball?”
Anything about him, actually. Who did he come home to? What did he worry about, and who worried about him?
Dylan took the can from her hand and set it by his, precariously angled on the roof. He eased her back, so she rested her head on his chest. The heat from his body made up for the damp blanket.
He traced his thumb along her hip bone where the bare skin and belt loop met. Cold but somehow scalding where he touched. She knew it began now. His hand on her belly, then moving up her shirt. She became still—not even breathing—and felt herself shrink next to his body, suddenly immense. He pressed against her side. Reaching over, he took her palm and held it against his chest, sliding it down his abs, lower. She pulled her hand away and ran it up his back. His body shifted onto her, crushing. She needed the beer just out of reach. Even Matt’s toxic punch. Something. He bent to kiss her while he fumbled with the button on her jeans, tugging them over her hips. It’s what’s done.
Her lungs collapsed, imploding under his weight. Held under water too long. Arms that weren’t her own pushed against his body. She wormed out from beneath him, off the blanket and into the snow. Gasped for air. Dylan sat up on his elbows, unbalanced.
“What? What’s wrong?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” Her face burned. “I’m sorry. I just… can’t…right now.”
He pulled himself to sitting and faced her, a gray form in the dark. “I don’t understand. Was I hurting you?”
“No.” Not exactly. Just pressing the life from her.
“It’s just…you seemed to want it last weekend.”
“Did I?” It was a relief to speak the words out loud. She needed to know. What did I say? What did I do? Can you tell me?
“Whoa. What are you implying?”
“Nothing. I just don’t…know…what happened.”
“You’re saying you didn’t want to sleep with me?” Anger hardened his voice—the first time she’d heard it there.
She tried to say no, then yes, but nothing fit. All the words jumbled in her head and wouldn’t line up in a sentence.
“I get it.” He jumped to his feet and strode to the edge of the garage.
Greta scrambled after him, buttoning her jeans. “Wait! Where are you going?”
He covered the shed roof in one step and hopped to the ground. Greta slipped on the tinny slope and caught herself. She lowered to a squat and jumped, landing hard on her right ankle.
“Dylan!”
“I can’t believe you!” His voice came from along the side of the cabin now, out of sight.
“Wait!”
He didn’t answer, but she could hear his heavy steps on the gravel. Her ankle pulsed. She hobbled to catch up. Along the dark side of the cabin, under the pine tree, onto the road. Up ahead, the night nearly swallowed his shadow. The car’s interior light flashed on, Dylan holding the door handle. Rachel’s voice from inside.
By the time Greta caught up, Dylan, Matt and Rachel all stood outside the car—both doors hanging wide open. Matt gave her a cold stare, arms crossed over his chest. Rachel looked back and forth between Greta and Dylan, frowning.
Dylan turned and faced Greta. Three against one. “I liked you,” he said. “And then you accuse me of being some kind of…predator.”
“I didn’t!”
“I know what I heard. I’m done.” He motioned for Rachel and Matt to get in the car.
Greta moved forward, toward her spot behind Rachel.
“No!” Dylan held out his arm, blocking her way. “You can find your own way home.”
“Dylan—” Rachel stepped beside him and touched his shoulder. He shook her off. Matt didn’t say anything, flipping the passenger seat forward for Dylan to climb into the back.
“Rachel”—Greta didn’t recognize her own voice, high and frantic—“Rachel, don’t leave me here!”
Dylan turned and stared Rachel down. “Get in the car. Drive.”
Matt called, “Get in, Rachel. She’ll find another ride.”
Rachel looked at Greta, then at the ground. Like she might vomit. She turned, walked to the driver’s side and climbed in. When the engine hummed, Dylan backed away from Greta and ducked into the seat behind Matt.
The car rolled forward for a second, then peeled away, tires spinning on ice.
“Don’t leave…!” They were gone before she could say me. She chased the car, but the taillights rounded the bend, out of sight. Darkness closed in on he
r.
She had wanted Dylan, wanted to be with him, wanted to touch him. Why had she slept with him and then said no to him? She’d wrecked it. It was stupid, made no sense at all. On top of it all, bleeding into everything, shame, guilt. They whispered, Don’t tell. Your fault. But Dylan, Matt and Rachel had left her in the middle of nowhere—a temper tantrum—and ignored her and treated her like a pariah. Couldn’t they own that?
ELEVEN
Ash found her in the basement suite. “Why don’t you come upstairs now?” he said, standing over her. “You can have my bed. I have some cleaning to do, but I’ll be around.”
Greta followed him up the flight of stairs and walked to their bedroom, no sign of Elgin. Ash pulled out a mop and bucket from a broom closet by the bathroom. Greta climbed into Ash’s empty bed and read until early dusk dimmed the sunlight. She heard the television turn on in the living room. Not wanting to attract attention, then conversation, she left the light off.
Elgin tapped on her door sometime after 7:00 PM. “Greta? I’ve put a plate in the fridge for you, in case you feel better.”
She wanted to thank him, but that would confirm she was awake and possibly lead to more talking. She played on her phone under the covers instead, her stomach growling.
A couple of hours later Ash came back, and Greta climbed into her own bed. When she heard him drop onto his mattress, she said, “Goodnight, Ashwin.”
“Just Ash is good.”
“Did you know that Ashwin means ‘light’ and ‘brave knight’ and ‘friend’ and ‘protector’? I googled it today.”
Ash snorted. “Really?”
“Kind of fitting, don’t you think?”
“I would say more ironic, in my case.”
“No, Ash.” They didn’t speak for a few minutes. And then she said, “The name Greta means ‘pearl.’”
“Hmm. I bet Mom picked those.”
She nodded back, even though he couldn’t see her. Brave knight did seem unlike Roger. He would’ve come up with something like Chuck or Bob. After a few minutes, when Ash’s breathing slowed, Greta slid from under her blankets and pushed herself to her feet. Her growling stomach wouldn’t let her forget the plate of food in the fridge. And her thirst. She licked her dry lips.
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