Society Girl (Animos Society)

by Alys Murray

  “He’s your boyfriend?” Bernie said, awed.

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “You’re so lucky.”

  She didn’t answer, but Captain did, with a smiling sneer permeating the praise like sewer sludge.

  “You’re goddamn right she is.”

  All around her, as Daniel closed his eyes and belted about finding love, mutterings and knowing glances grew and grew and grew until it was a roar of laughter and jeers competing for control of the room.

  “Well,” Captain shouted, dropping Bernie’s hand and slapping his together in giddy glee. “I think we have made our decision, then. C’mon, lads!”

  The room exploded as the men ripped out streamers and party hats from their jackets. Daniel’s song quieted into nothing, but the room didn’t go silent for long. No, the men started singing as they stormed his makeshift stage. A cheap plastic crown found its way onto his head as their chorus rang out.

  Mud Duck, we have found you.

  Ugly and uncouth,

  You’re all we need…

  “Samantha.” She heard his voice, but Sam, who had faced the nearest wall, refused to turn around. She couldn’t watch. “What’s going on?”

  “Congratulations, Mr. Mechanic,” Captain boomed in his best impression of an American game show host. “You are the King of the Mud Ducks!”

  Cheers from the men in the room, confused clapping from the women. There was some awkward shuffling of feet clashing with the enthused hooting and hollering.

  “Samantha?” Daniel’s voice was less confused now but twice as gutted.

  “Yes!” Captain said, as if he’d just remembered. “Lady Piggy Dubarry, step right up and claim your prize!”

  For a moment, time froze. Sam was alone in her own head, safe as standing in the center of a hurricane. Time and rage and the inevitable swirled around her, but she stood quiet and firm, dealing and shuffling her wildcard thoughts until only one remained. This is what you wanted. Go and get it. The key in the ignition of her heart turned, killing the engine running it. Samantha was, once again, heartless. She had to be. If she felt anything, she would shatter.

  She dragged invisible ten-ton rocks behind her every step of the way, but Samantha walked to claim her prize. A pound coin and the pale, contorted face of the man she was in love with. He leaned into her.

  “Samantha, what is this?”

  “Go on, tell him.” Captain handed her a card with a printed script on it. “Tell them all.”

  She scanned it. “Don’t make me read this.”

  He shrugged off her plea as easily as she ignored Daniel’s insistent naming.

  “Part of your prize, Piggy. You get to break the news.”

  “Sam?”

  “Captain, please—”

  “You’re going to fucking read it or you’re out.”

  Samantha did as she was told, reading every word given to her loud and crystal clear. With each syllable, the room descended further into chaos. There were tears, there were exclamations of pain. There were walkouts and stormouts and collapses and curses. Daniel stood behind her, hidden from her view, but none of it registered. Because all she saw was the paper in front of her, and all she heard was her brother’s voice repeating over and over again: You’re such a fucking coward, Samantha. Such a fucking coward.

  And she knew he was right.

  “Welcome to the Mud Duck Ball. You have all been part of a two-hundred-year-old experiment. Every year, the members of the Animos Society compete to see who can bring the worst date to this party. Everything you know about us, everything we told you, has been a lie, and we thank you for your service. You were fine specimens. We regret not everyone can win, but that’s the way the game is played. Now, bow before your king, the worst date of all.”

  No one had a chance. Daniel was out of the door before they could even flinch.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Daniel was romantic. Daniel believed the best in people. Daniel hoped for the future. Daniel put his faith in everyone and everything. He wanted good and beautiful and bright and wonderful happenings.

  He wanted so little. Such simple things. Why were they impossible to get?

  His body carried him faster than he thought possible, out of the room, out of the building, into the great expanse of greenery behind the structure. He ran until his lungs gave. Until his tears spilled over. Until he simply couldn’t anymore.

  Don’t believe it, his soul urged him, there’s got to be some mistake. The rest of him knew the truth. The rest of him knew everything he’d felt and seen and been the last month of his life was a lie. A beautiful, poisoned lie. He couldn’t have possibly told anyone how long he’d been out there by the time a tall liar in a black dress broke the wall of grass to stand above him.

  They stared at each other in silence. He had nothing to say. He had a million things to say. For her part, Samantha was unreadable. Her walls protected her.

  “What do you want me to say?” she asked, her tone even and crisp.

  “What the hell kind of question is that?”

  “I don’t know what you want from me.”

  “Tell me it’s not true.”

  Silence.

  “C’mon, Samantha.” He rose to his feet, not caring how desperate and pathetic he sounded, even to his own ears. “Tell me. Tell me it’s a lie. You didn’t mean it. You really love me, and this is a bad dream and I’ll wake up.”

  Silence. Somehow deeper than before.

  “You could at least explain yourself.”

  “I did what I had to do.”

  She had the audacity to shrug. Shrug, when he’d been humiliated in front of everyone she knew for the sake of winning some contest.

  “Christ!” he exclaimed, throwing his hands in the air. “I wanna shake some sense into you.”

  “Daniel!”

  “Don’t give me your fucking cool, collected bullshit. You felt something. This”—he waved between them—“is real. You can’t fake what we have, Samantha.”

  At this point, his anger was no longer about the contest. Maybe she’d fallen into one of those movie things where she agreed to go out with him as a bet but fell in love with him for real. He could live with a bet. His desperation now came from his refusal to believe he’d been fooled.

  He thought she loved him. He bought it, hook, line, and sinker.

  “I lied, okay?” She spoke in straight lines, as if she were ten feet above him and wearing a crown. “I lied, and it was fake, and I don’t feel anything for you.”

  “I wanna shake you until you fall apart and have to pick that heart of yours off of the ground. At least you’d finally know it was fucking real.” He took her shoulders and pressed his forehead against hers, imploring her to return to earth, to not break the thing he’d given her so freely. “This isn’t you, Sam.”

  “Yes.” It was less of a word and more of a lead bullet. “It is. This is me. There is no hidden Samantha, no warm and fuzzy romance novel bullshit underneath. I wanted a family, and I had to get into the Animos Society to get it. A month ago, my father wouldn’t even look at me, and now he treats me like I count. Like I matter. That was what I wanted. Not a love song. Not a boyfriend. Not a Cinderella story. I wanted a family, and I did what I had to do to get it.”

  “It was a lie, then? It was all a lie?”

  “It was a challenge and I had to—”

  No more. He kissed her, breathing life into her, challenging her to deny him. But the harder he kissed, the less she moved. The less she responded. The colder she felt under his hands. He pulled away as fragments of his heart flaked away into a pile of debris at his feet.

  “Nothing? You don’t feel anything?”

  “No.”

  Daniel was a poet. A writer. A lover of words and connecting them until they created a tapestry. But there were no words to describe this moment.

  She was a statue and he was begging her to love him. Marble doesn’t suddenly open its arms and take you in. He could beg and plea
d and cry and thank her for breaking his faith with love. But she would not be moved. He realized it now. And hated himself for not waking up sooner.

  It all made sense now. Her insistence on coming to this party. The way she swanned him around Oxford and pranced him around in front of her friends and always ran when Animos called. God, now he even understood why she wouldn’t have sex with him. It wasn’t because she was shy or trying to take her time or wanted his first time to mean something. It was because she didn’t want to get her hands dirty with her fake boyfriend.

  It was all a lie. A joke pulled on him, so desperate to believe in love and sex and magic that he would fall for the punch line hook, line, and sinker.

  “Then you were right.” He shoved his hands into his pockets and began his exodus. Daniel couldn’t believe he wasn’t crying. “You really don’t believe in love. Maybe I don’t, either.”

  “Daniel—”

  “Don’t apologize,” he snapped. “I don’t believe you.”

  “I wasn’t going to apologize.”

  Rain clouds hummed somewhere in the distance. Lightning flashed. A storm was coming on, and Daniel didn’t feel a thing.

  “By the way,” he called over his shoulder. “I want my fucking coat back.”

  …

  Samantha stormed into the Ancillary Chamber, her feet smacking against the floor, announcing her presence. She didn’t care if she looked like a half-drowned rat from the rain showering her walk back to the house nor did she care about the grass stains on her hem. Nothing mattered but the blue jacket, the one she was going to wear when she walked into her house tonight, the one she would show off to her father and wear to dinner with him tomorrow night. This was the moment she’d fought for, cried for, sacrificed everything for.

  The Ancillary Chamber was decidedly male. None of the women remained, leaving the Animos Society to wallow in a pit of streamers and spilled booze and crushed napkins. They cheered her arrival.

  “Piggy!” Captain said, raising his glass to her. “What are you looking so glum for? I thought it went well, all things considered.”

  She held out her hand. A commanding gesture for someone who’d done nothing but bow and scrape and defer all of her life choices to these men for weeks.

  “Give me my coat. I want my coat and I want it now. I’ve jumped through every hoop and I’m getting my coat. Give it to me.”

  “You’re not getting a coat.” Captain took a drag on his cigarette and blew the smoke in her face.

  “Very funny. Hand it over.” She opened and closed her outstretched hand a few times, a gimme gesture. “I won; I’m in Animos now.”

  The joke wasn’t about the jacket. The joke was on her. She knew it only because the room erupted in the wheezing, side-gripping laughter of a band of hyenas. But no one laughed harder, louder, or with more teeth than Captain.

  “You’re not in Animos,” he exclaimed.

  “But I won.”

  “You thought we were serious? You thought you were actually going to get in?”

  Sam’s eyes widened, which only made her more hilarious to them. Her body seemed to empty of blood; she thought she might turn to dust and blow away.

  “Y-you said—”

  “This is a club for gentlemen. You were a distraction. A plaything. You were never going to be in the Animos Society, no matter who your father is.”

  Dismissive. Obvious. She was so stupid. So blind. So, so very dumb. What little fragments of her heart broke into pieces too small to see or pick up ever again. She’d given them everything. She’d given them Daniel.

  “I did everything you asked!”

  They were not moved, neither to more laughter nor sympathy. Not a single one of them spoke up in her defense or against her. She was suddenly on the outside, the very far outside, and totally alone.

  “And it was amusing,” he tutted. “But not enough.”

  Not enough. Nothing was ever enough. Not for her father. Not for these bastards. Not for herself.

  “You may go, Piggy.”

  For the last time, Samantha obeyed.

  Sam didn’t know how she got home. Maybe she walked. Maybe she took a cab. All she knew was when she threw open the door of her house, her father was there, flipping through the evening post. And she couldn’t help it. She didn’t have control any longer.

  “Dad,” she breathed.

  “I—”

  Though she knew he would hate it, she leaped for him, throwing her arms around his neck and locking herself onto him. Samantha was a lot of things to many people, but right now, she was a heartbroken girl who needed her father to tell her everything was going to be all right.

  “Dad, I messed up. I ruined it.” She sobbed, staining his shirt, clinging tighter to him than she ever had before. The torturous pain of failure—not just to get what she wanted, but moral failings—ripped through her like fire through a piece of nitrate film. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Calm— Uh—” Her father slowly relaxed into her shaking embrace. To her surprise, he did not try to push her away. “Calm down, what’s happened?”

  “I didn’t get in. I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry. They were never going to let me in. And I lost… I lost…”

  She couldn’t bring herself to say his name. He was too good for her. And thinking of him and his suddenly cynical eyes brought on a fresh wave of sobs.

  “It’s…” Her father’s hand hesitated over her back, but soon enough, he held her close and whispered, sort of like a father would. “It’s okay… It’s okay…”

  But Sam knew it wasn’t okay. Not now. And probably not ever.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  When Sam fell into bed that night with a puffy face and the ghost of her father’s comforting arms around her shoulders, she wanted nothing more than to dissolve into her sheets and never resurface. It wouldn’t have bothered her if the ceiling caved in and buried her beneath the rubble. Instead, she slipped into a dreamless sleep she didn’t deserve and woke in the morning to shouting so loud it rattled the walls.

  This was a quiet house. An ancestral house of dignity. These walls held secrets. They simply didn’t shake.

  Against her better judgment, which told her to bury herself in the sheets and her shame and never resurface, Sam followed the noise, her bare feet padding along the chilly floors as the voice got louder and louder and pulled her toward the half-open door of her father’s office. The noise hadn’t been clear enough to understand—or maybe she didn’t want to understand—until she caught the shadow of him in the sliver of open door. He paced the length of his office, still in his wrinkled clothes from the night before, telephone pressed to his ear, the fireplace poker in his other hand, which he swung haphazardly, punctuating his every deafening sentence.

  At first, it was the clothes that shook her to her very shattered core. She’d never seen the man in the same shirt twice ever, much less twice in a row.

  But then, the world came into focus and she was no longer caught by the fact that her father was yelling. What he was yelling completely disarmed her.

  “Do you understand what you’ve done to her, what you’ve done to our family? Do you think I will ever forget the way you’ve treated my daughter?”

  There was more to the argument, not that she heard it. All she heard was the music of those words. Our family. My daughter. And he meant them. She didn’t resurface from that revelation until he slammed the phone into the receiver, spooking her. It took a moment of heavy breathing for the haze of red rage to subside from his eyes, but when it did, he nodded in greeting.

  “Samantha. Good morning.”

  “Morning,” she managed, staring at the man as he attempted to force her to unsee what she’d seen, shuffling papers and straightening his sweater and glasses, returning the poker to its stand near the fireplace. When the attempts clearly fell short, he looked at her from over the brim of his crooked glasses and for the first time, Sam spotted the ghosts of his son in his face; there was a softness in
their father she’d never before seen in him.

  “We’re through with the Animos Society. If they think they can treat my daughter like that, they have…” He paused mid-sentence. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  What was the point in lying now? What would it get her? “That’s the first time I’ve ever heard you call me your daughter to someone that mattered.”

  “What?” he asked, confusion knitting a wrinkle across his forehead. The authenticity of the moment made it all the more painful. He hadn’t realized how cruel he was to her. “No. Don’t be silly.” A far-off look took over his eyes, as if he were searching through fragments of dream-memories. “I’m sure I’ve done it before.”

  She waited for him to meet her eyes. For weeks now, he’d avoided even glancing in her direction. Now, she would force him to see her. “No. You haven’t.”

  Silence prevailed. Even the crackling fireplace halted in reverence. And her father, the man who regularly slept in a chair to maintain his posture, slumped down in his seat.

  “No. I suppose I haven’t.”

  …

  A week passed. Daniel survived. Survived was a generous way to describe it. Daniel existed. He went through the motions of living, dragging himself from place to place, doing his work, generally breathing at a normal pace. They always said one required a beating heart to keep living, but Daniel wasn’t sure the doctors were right. Because from the moment their crown sank upon his head, his stopped. And it hadn’t restarted. He didn’t want it to. Turning it back on would mean embracing his hurt, all of his anger, all of the everything drowning him if he so much as recognized its existence.

  When he first met her, he couldn’t wrap his head around why someone would fight to remain so closed off and hidden from the world, why anyone would choose the mask of indifference and dignity over actually living. He understood now.

  It was the only damn thing he understood about her, but it was a start. At least it was an improvement on a week ago when his world collapsed, and everything was a mystery. Especially her.

  When Angie finally came to check up on him, he was in his back garden, wearing an oversize bathrobe and boxers. The limited clothing helped preserve him from the heat of the rising flames in front of him. The crunch of leaves alerted him to a visitor. He did not turn around to greet them or acknowledge their presence. Any visitor right now was an unwelcome one.