Beautiful

by Amy Reed

I say, “Yeah.”

  There’s a store that sells supplies to make your own wine. There’s a restaurant with a menu in the window, where the salads cost fifteen dollars. We walk past these places to the corner with the 7-Eleven and the video arcade. There are no families here. This is where the town ends. There are little boys inside the arcade. There are big boys outside.

  “Most of them are high schoolers,” Alex tells me. They are smoking and drinking out of paper bags.

  I have never done anything interesting in my life, but I am going to. I am going to be one of them. I am going to do things.

  There’s a fat guy sitting in the middle of the sidewalk with a rat crawling across his shoulders and down his back, over his lap and up his chest. It settles on top of his head and looks at us with the same beady eyes as the boy. The rat is purple like the fat boy’s hair. It settles in like camouflage.

  “Purple Haze,” says Alex.

  “What do you want?” he says. His voice is high and nasal.

  His face is greasy and pockmarked.

  “Four hits,” she says, and I have no idea what she’s talking about.

  “Heard anything from your brother?” the fat boy says.

  “He’s in Portland.”

  “I know that,” he says, rolling his eyes.

  “He’s got a good job.”

  “No he doesn’t.”

  “Yes he does.”

  “He’s a junkie who lives in a warehouse and beats up fat people for fun,” the fat boy says, like it’s the funniest thing he ever heard.

  “No he doesn’t.”

  “He’s in a gang against fat people.”

  “Where’d you hear that?”

  “Classified information.”

  “Give me a cigarette,” Alex says.

  “Only if your friend will kiss me.”

  She looks at me. I shake my head.

  “Just give me a cigarette.”

  He pulls one out and hands it to me. “My dear,” he says, and offers to light it. I put it in my mouth and suck like I’ve seen my mom do.

  “Can we have the acid now?” says Alex.

  “Do you have money?”

  “She does.”

  He looks me up and down and the fat under his chin wiggles like Jell-O. “I’ll give it to you for free if you two make out,” he says, and the smoke from the cigarette goes too far into my lungs and I start coughing.

  “I’m not a dyke, fucker,” says Alex.

  “She’s not inhaling,” says Purple Haze, and points at me.

  “What?”

  “Your pretty friend. She doesn’t know how to smoke.”

  Alex looks at me like I’ve done something terrible. I hand her the cigarette, and my face burns.

  “Look, she’s blushing,” says Purple Haze. “Isn’t that cute.”

  “Just give us the acid,” Alex says, exhaling smoke like she knows what she’s doing. Everyone is watching. I know they’re thinking about what a fool I am. They’re thinking I don’t belong here. They’re thinking, Go back where you came from, little girl.

  “Have you ever taken a shit that was so good it was better than an orgasm?” says Purple Haze. “Like those really fat long ones that last forever and it feels like you lost like ten pounds?”

  “Give him the money,” Alex says to me. I open my purse and take out my wallet. My hands are shaking.

  “Easy, girl. Sit here next to me.”

  I look at Alex. She nods.

  I sit down even though my skirt is short. I put my purse in my lap to hide the place that is not covered. Purple Haze leans over and whispers in my ear, “Take it out slowly and reach over and put it in my pocket.” I do what he says. His jeans are too warm and slightly moist. He smells like salami.

  From his other pocket, he pulls out a makeup compact. He takes out two tiny cellophane packets with his fat fingers and puts them in my hand. “Have a nice trip, ladies.” I stand up and dust off my skirt. I am trying not to shake. They’re thinking, Go home, little girl. I don’t look at Alex or Purple Haze as I start walking. I don’t look at any of the high school boys even though their eyes burn holes into me. Go home.

  “She doesn’t talk much,” I hear Purple Haze say behind me, even though I’m already halfway down the block.

  “Wait!” yells Alex. I keep walking. I am still too close. If I stop walking, I will start crying and everyone will see me.

  “What’s your problem?” she says when she catches up to me.

  “I just wanted to leave.”

  “You have to wait for me,” she says.

  “I’m sorry.”

  She stops walking and so do I. She is looking me in the eyes. She is looking at me like she hates me. “Don’t do it again,” she says. Her voice is hard, not like a girl’s. I look at the ground and feel my body crumbling, turning into small, invisible pieces.

  “Sorry,” I say. I look up and expect her to be gone, but she is still there, smiling like nothing happened. I am solid again. She takes my hand and pulls it gently.

  “Let’s go in here,” she says.

  We slide between a closed boutique and a fancy cheese store. In the shadows Alex says, “Where’s the acid?” I hold out my hand with the two little cellophane packets. “You take one and I’ll take two.” She opens a packet and licks it. The two tiny white paper squares stick to her tongue. She opens the second packet and presses her finger inside. One square sticks and she points it at me. “Here,” she says.

  “What?” I say.

  “Eat it.”

  I lick her finger and it is salty.

  “Am I supposed to swallow it?”

  “Just let it dissolve.”

  “Where are we going now?”

  “James’s house.”

  I say “Shit,” and it sounds ridiculous coming out of my mouth.

  “You look good,” Alex says. “Don’t worry. He already wants you.”

  She walks fast and I try to keep up, but I am dizzy with “he wants you.” It is good that she’s so far ahead, that she can’t see the stupid smile on my face.

  “It’s only about a mile,” she says, and we don’t talk until we get there.

  We walk along the lake, on the sidewalk made for joggers and mothers with strollers. It’s strange how different the shore is here, all perfect and straight. Instead of sharp rocks, instead of seaweed and barnacles and other live things, this beach is flat and sandy and barren, marked only with goose crap and the occasional piece of litter.

  Here I am with the first friend I’ve had in forever. Here I am on my way to meet a boy who wants me. My life on the island is over. I have a new face and a new body and new clothes. I have a new friend and nothing will ever be the same again.

  (THREE)

  James’s house is in a development full of mansions, down the hill from my apartment building, on the lake where the big houses stare at Seattle, brand-new with naked dirt yards no one’s had time to plant anything in.

  The shadows that cling to the side of the house start moving and I can’t tell if I see James or darkness shaped like him. It feels like the ground is breathing and the air has hands, like everything is moving except me, like I am the only thing solid, like it is the rest of the world that is dizzy.

  I say, “I feel weird.”

  Alex says, “It’s working.”

  “Hi,” James says, and he looks at me like he’s a movie star. Something is off about the way he leans against the house, like his hips are out of joint, like his body is overextended and struggling to stay upright. He’s wearing a plain black sweatshirt, a baseball hat over his mohawk. He could be anyone right now. He could be normal, anonymous. I start laughing because suddenly he doesn’t seem so tough. I laugh because suddenly everything’s colored like a cartoon. I laugh because it’s the only thing to do when your legs give up and you fall on the ground, when you’re an idiot and you know you’re an idiot and everyone around you is an idiot and there’s nothing you can do about it.

  I am
on the ground. I am looking up at James’s giant moon head and he is not laughing. He is looking at me like I have done something wrong, like I am not Cassie the Beautiful Seventh Grader, and all of a sudden none of this is funny and I want to cry.

  “What did you do to her?” he says to Alex. He is angry. He is going to hurt us.

  “What do you mean?” she says, and for some reason I hate her. I grab her hand anyway and she pulls it away, and I know I am supposed to stay on the ground.

  “What the fuck did you do to her?” He is holding her by the shoulders. He is shaking her hard. Her head rolls around.

  “Ow,” she says, like she is starting to think about not laughing.

  “You ruined her, you fucking bitch. You ruined her,” is what he says, like it is the worst line from the worst movie ever made. I cannot hear what they say anymore because my ears are full of dirt. I can feel the ground and I wish it were mud so I could roll around in it, so I could be covered in brown. I could run away and be invisible in the dark. I could live in the trees and no one would find me. I am planning this. I am taking notes in my head to remember later. I don’t know what I will eat, but I’ve heard there are people who eat worms, bugs, rodents. I will eat these things. I will need nothing.

  I cannot hear but I can see Alex talking her way out of something. I can see James calming down like she’s got a spell on him. I can see her giving him the other piece of acid she did not give me, and he is putting it in his mouth and smiling with his big, straight, sparkling teeth. I see all of this, but all I hear is the dirt crunching in my ears and you ruined her over and over. I don’t know what it means, but I like the sound of it. It sounds like a movie, dramatic and important, and I am dramatic and important and worthy of having a movie made about me. There are people who will pay money to watch me get ruined. I am on the ground and can’t get up and I feel like a movie star, the beautiful, tragic kind of movie star whose life ends too soon, whose death makes people remember them as brilliant.

  James looks at me like I am something salvageable, like the something that got ruined is still there somewhere. He helps me up and says, “So you’re not so straight,” and I say, “No,” even though I still didn’t know what that means. And he says, “How are you feeling?” and I feel my feet leave the ground and the air in my lungs feels heavy and warm and full of mud, and he says, “I took some, too. I’ll be like you soon.”

  The boys from the lunch table are shadows on the other side of the empty yard, watching and grinning like they know something I don’t. They are drinking something brown out of a bottle and smoking something that does not smell like cigarettes. I am supposed to walk now but what I want more than anything in the world is to lie on the ground and look up and feel like I am at the bottom of something.

  There are stairs a mile long that lead up to a deck with nothing on it. I hear my steps echo on the wood and I am waking up the whole neighborhood. There’s a door that leads into a sci-fi kitchen, all shiny silver chrome with knobs and levers, the kind of kitchen in the magazines Mom buys, the kind of kitchen on the shows about rich people. The boys and Alex are here somewhere, but I do not see them. They are in the sink. They are hiding in cupboards. They are not in the refrigerator that is cold and full of boxes of takeout, a door full of condiments. There is a block of cheese with blue spots, and another that is round and dusty. I hold them in my hands and watch them melt through my fingers, staining my skin with the smell of feet that will never wash off.

  James says, “What are you doing?” and I say, “Nothing,” and he slaps my hand for handling the cheese, the fascinating cheese with names in different languages. He says I have to leave the kitchen. He says we can only be downstairs. It is pitch-black and I cannot hear the sound of my footsteps. Downstairs is his floor, his entire floor. Downstairs is his bedroom. I can make out a Ping-Pong table. My feet feel expensive carpet. My fingers do not feel a light switch.

  He tells the boys to stay. He tells them we need to talk. They laugh and I laugh and I don’t know what I’m laughing at but it is laughter and it feels better than the slap on my hand and the smell of the cheese and the cold steel refrigerator and the kitchen that is never cooked in. The boys sit on the couch and one of them farts and the other ones laugh. Alex opens drawers and touches things. James does not slap her hand. He is busy leading me into his room at the end of the hall. There is already music playing.

  His walls are white brick. They are not real. They are the Pink Floyd album cover like my dad has. Painted, professional, commissioned by parents who are not here. The walls are dripping because I am on acid. He is not yet on acid. The tab is still on his tongue, dissolving, tasting like spit wad.

  I’m thirteen and I’m on acid. He’s fifteen and he will be on acid soon. I’m on his bed and under The Wall and listening to Pink Floyd. I do not know why James listens to music my dad likes. I do not know why I am looking at his stereo, the real kind, with different levels stacked on top of each other and blinking lights—green, red—with speakers as big as I am, playing Pink Floyd and reminding me of snow.

  He is wearing a baseball cap and I want it off his head. It makes him look like a normal boy. I want his hat off because he is not that kind of boy. I would not be on my back like this for that kind of boy.

  I pull off his baseball cap because I need him to be someone else. His hair is flat and straight like a girl’s and falls into his eyes. He takes the hat out of my hand and puts it back on his head. He says, “Stop it,” and I laugh, and I do it again and he grabs it again and I think it’s a game but he does not, and he says, “Fucking stop it,” and pins my wrist onto the bed, and I stop it. Then his tongue goes in my mouth and this is nothing like a first kiss is supposed to be.

  Alex opens the door and says, “Can I use the phone?” James waves his hand and I can’t tell if he’s giving her permission or shooing her away, but she comes in and sits on his desk and picks up the phone and starts dialing. He takes off his hat because it is getting in the way of our faces and I know better than to ask why it’s okay if he does it now but not when I wanted him to, and I cannot see what he looks like now because I’m closing my eyes.

  Alex is on the phone talking to everyone she knows. I can feel her sitting on the desk next to the stereo blinking red and green, stop, go, and James’s tongue is in my mouth and it tastes like something dusty, small, darting around and hitting my teeth like it’s looking for a way to get inside me, a trapdoor, searching for something hidden and unlocked. And Alex is watching and telling everyone she knows, “Cassie’s on the bed with James and they’re slurping.” She keeps saying “slurping” and it sounds like something ugly, and her cackle ricochets off the wall, the white bricks like the album cover, and it is too loud in here, it is too bright, and the slurping makes spit and the spit makes choking and I close my mouth and lock his tongue out and he says, “Get the fuck out, bitch,” and I think he’s talking to me, but Alex cackles and hangs up the phone and James says, “Turn off the lights,” and she does, and “Close the door,” and she does, and my teeth open and his tongue goes inside and I try to keep up but I have no idea what I’m doing and I’m scared because it’s just me and him and I can’t see anything but the green and red lights, and he’s the only one who knows his way around here in the dark.

  There’s a mouth on mine and teeth scraping and I’m thinking of cheese. I’m thinking, why does expensive cheese stink? I’m thinking of my stubbly armpits that he’s touching with his big hands. The sound of a zipper unzipping. The sound of Pink Floyd. And I’m thinking of snow. I’m thinking of driving fast through it, nothing but white shiny sometimes texture, patterns that shift and cackle because the sky is cloudy and the shadows are lying. And I’m wearing a white cotton bra that is not a bad-girl bra. He laughs. He says, “Is this a training bra?” and I look at the lights—red, green—and they tell me nothing about what I should answer. So I shrug as well as I can shrug with his body on top of mine and my right arm under his hot hand and my left ar
m not wanting to move at all and my shoulders cold and shuddering under Pink Floyd snow.

  His fingers are inside me and I am trying to make my mouth move. I feel something that feels like sickness, something all through my body, like poison slowly filling me up. I don’t know if my mouth is moving because I can’t feel anything except the poison. There is something running in my brain. I cannot see it but I know it is coming. I can feel the pounding of the footsteps shaking everything. I hear pants unzipping, somewhere far away, and I don’t know how long this is supposed to take but I hope it is fast because I want to go home. I want this feeling to stop. I want to give him what he wants and leave. I want to leave Alex out there with nothing to sit on. I want to leave the lunch-table boys to their farting and drinking. I want to leave James with his hat and his hair and his hands and his tongue and his wall and his stereo saying stop, go, directions that I do not hear.

  Something in the other room crashes. He says, “Fuck,” and runs out the door without zipping up his pants. I feel myself floating without the weight of him on my body. I hear the boys yelling and Alex cackling, and the CD is over and it’s definitely time to go. I zip up my pants and put on my bra. I put on my shirt tangled in sheets. I walk out of the bedroom. I feel the ghosts of his fingers inside me.

  There’s a vase broken on the floor. James is yelling at the boy with the bottle in his hand. The other boys are burning each other with the hot metal on their lighters. Alex is sitting on the couch and looking at me like, “Well?”

  “I’m going home,” I tell her, and my voice sounds far away.

  “No, you’re not,” she says.

  “It’s past my curfew,” I lie.

  “Did you guys do it yet?” she asks. I shake my head. “You have to stay a little longer. You have to stay until you do.”

  “I have to go home. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  I walk toward the door. James stops yelling and says, “Aren’t you going to spend the night?”

  The boys say, “Aren’t you going to spend the night?”

  Alex says, “Yeah,” and I say nothing and all of them are looking at me like my life depends on what I do now, and everything is quiet and waiting and I want to run. “I have a curfew,” I say. It is the closest thing I can say to something I’m not allowed to say, something not “No,” not “I want to go,” not “I don’t want to be in your bed, not with your dripping walls, not with your hat on or off, not with you touching me, not with your fingers inside me or anything else from your body.” I cannot say that. I cannot say anything close to true, just “I have a curfew” and James’s hands are on my waist, pulling, his voice sick sweet: “Come on, baby.” Alex’s voice: “Wait.” The lunch-table boys: “Cock tease.” My voice tiny, inaudible: “I have a curfew,” again and again, and his hands are pushing me away and his voice is hard: “What are you, a little girl?” Alex: “Jesus, Cassie.” The lunch-table boys: “Cock tease. Little girl.”