Beautiful

by Amy Reed

  “It’s okay,” Sarah says. “If you can’t—”

  “No,” the lady says. “I want to help you.” She walks into the living room, over to the couch, picks up a purse, and starts rummaging through it.

  “I think we’ve actually reached our goal,” Sarah says, looking at me with a sadness in her eyes that makes her suddenly look very old. “I think we’re done fund-raising, so we’re going to go now.”

  “No, wait,” the lady says. “I know I have some money for you.” There is a panic growing in her voice. My eyes search for something to look at, anything but her. I look at the table. There are flies on the tuna. There is mold on the saltines.

  “It was nice meeting you, ma’am,” I say, already walking toward the door. “We’ll see our way out.”

  “No, wait,” she says again. “George, see if you have any money for these nice girls.”

  I open the door and suck in fresh air. I look behind me and Sarah is taking a twenty-dollar bill out of our manila envelope. She places the money under the plate that holds the lady’s awful dinner. The lady is still in the living room, rummaging through her purse and saying, “No, wait,” over and over, asking George to help her. Sarah meets my eye and starts walking, and I love her more than I’ve ever loved anyone.

  We walk quickly to where Alex is waiting. We say nothing. We are closer to each other than we need to be, our shoulders and hands bumping.

  Alex is standing around the corner smoking a cigarette. “How much do we have so far?” she says. Sarah hands her the manila envelope and Alex counts the money while we stand there, our shoulders just barely touching. “Fifty-two seventy-six,” Alex says. “That’s enough for some tacos and weed and acid.”

  We go to the arcade and meet Purple Haze and I don’t sleep until tomorrow.

  (EIGHT)

  We’re driving away from school in Ethan’s ’87 Honda Civic and I’m waving like I’m in a parade. People are gathered around to watch us go. There should be streamers, balloons, a big band playing. I am fighting the urge to honk the horn.

  I am riding in the front seat of a car with the coolest guy in school. That makes me the coolest girl in school.

  Alex is waving with that smile on her face like I know what you’re going to do, and Sarah looks sad and mousy like Don’t leave me alone with her, and James the asshole is there with a look on his face that says I am such a dumb-ass, and I want to yell out the window, “Look what you’re missing!”

  “What do you want to do?” Ethan asks me when we get away from school. Suddenly, his car doesn’t seem so spectacular. I notice the faint smells of hamburgers and mildew. We are driving through quiet residential streets.

  “I don’t know,” I say. I want to keep driving. I want to drive by every single person I know. I want them to squint their eyes and look in the window and see that it is me.

  “Are you hungry?” he says.

  “No.”

  “I’m fucking starving.”

  “There’s food at my house. My mom’ll be asleep until five.” I don’t know why I say this. It seems like the right thing to say.

  “Cool,” he says, and I tell him where to go.

  I want to keep driving. I want to go back and get Sarah. I don’t want to go to my house and watch him eat. I don’t want him in my room where he can see the chair I sit in by the window when I’m alone, where I sleep, where I lie on my back and look at the ceiling. I don’t want to be alone with him.

  This is what he meant by “I want to get to know you better.” This is the “alone time.” This is when we pass a joint back and forth and I let him talk and let him think I am interested in what he’s saying. We are talking about the things you are supposed to talk about before you have sex.

  He tells me: “My father is an artist, but I don’t live with him. My mother is an accountant and amateur bodybuilder.”

  I tell him: “My father does something with computers. My mother does nothing.”

  It is the middle of the afternoon and my mother is sleeping. She does not know we are here, in my bedroom, on my bed. She does not know his hand is under my shirt and rubbing while he talks. He does not know that I feel nothing.

  I have never met a bodybuilder, but I’ve seen them on TV. I am wondering what Ethan’s mother looks like, if she’s the kind of woman who looks like a man.

  “My father lives in Israel,” he says. “I’m gonna live with him when I graduate.”

  What’s so special about Israel? I want to say, but I don’t.

  “My mom’s a gentile, so according to Jewish law, I’m not Jewish. I don’t know why my father married a fucking gentile.” He says this as he’s unbuttoning my gentile pants, as he slides his hand into my gentile underwear.

  This is what I know about him: He likes skateboards and hamburgers (no cheese; not kosher). He does not like vegetables or school. He does like beer and pot and nitrous oxide and ketamine.

  What he knows about me is my first name, how old I am, and that I live in this apartment building. He knows that my mom sleeps like the dead in the late afternoon, that we have bulk quantities of snacks, that my door locks, that I’m a good kisser, that I let him do anything he wants. He knows that my underwear and bra are pink and lacy. He does not know about the old white cotton bras and underwear hidden in the back of my drawer. He does not know my face without makeup.

  He knows what it feels like to be on top of me, that I don’t move, that I am small and thin and pliable, that my breasts are the perfect size for his hand.

  I am thinking, This is supposed to be special. I am thinking, Everybody’s lying about this being special. I am strangely not scared. All of this seems vaguely familiar, like I’ve seen it in movies, like I’ve seen myself doing it. I wonder why I can hardly feel anything else, how I can know that it hurts but not even feel it, how I don’t even have to be here, how I can drift away to somewhere else, float up to the ceiling and watch how ridiculous we look: him thrusting into me like his life depends on it; me lying there looking like I’m wood, something hard and unbendable, when really I’m nothing, when really I’m just skin wrapped around fog.

  “Does it hurt?” he asks me.

  “It’s okay,” I say.

  “Does it feel good?” he asks me.

  “Yeah,” I say. I am lying. It feels like nothing. I wish he would stop talking. I wish he would stop making me speak. It is hard to speak when I’m on the ceiling, in the corner. It makes me have to come back down, feel his weight on top of me, feel him hard inside me, punching my insides. I come down long enough to say what he wants to hear, then float away again. It is not difficult, this flying from place to place. It is like I was born knowing how to do it.

  “Oh, shit, I’m gonna come,” he says, and I hear him and my ears bring me back to the bed just in time to feel him shudder, hear him groan. He holds his breath and the world pauses and I feel like I’m holding the whole thing up with my skinny arms and bent knees, my legs spread wide open, then everything lets go and he falls on top of me and I sink into the mattress until I am nothing.

  He lies like that for a while, like he’s dead, and I think for a moment that he is. I would not be traumatized if he died on top of me, his shrinking, shriveling dick still inside me. Anything could happen and it would not matter.

  He rolls over and digs through the pockets of his pants on the floor. He puts a cigarette in his mouth, gives me one. I open the window, light some incense and put the jar I use as an ashtray on the bed between us. I lie back down next to him, cornered between the wall and the ashtray. We barely fit. I feel too naked. He rolls onto his side and faces me, puts his arm around me. He kisses my shoulder, my neck, my jaw, my ear, making annoying cooing noises as he does it. I want him to stop. I want to crush my cigarette on his eyelid. I would rather he keep fucking me for the rest of the night than lie here staring at me and tracing my ribs with his fingertips, acting like what happened meant something.

  “That was beautiful,” he says, and kisses me soft
ly on the mouth and all I can do to keep from throwing up is squeeze my eyes shut, lift the cigarette up to my mouth, tighten my lips, suck, blow, put my arm back down. Over and over I do this, visualizing the smoke becoming solid inside my body, until the cigarette filter is melting and I put it out in the ashtray.

  I make myself move to get up to go to the bathroom. I make my body turn and climb over him, my feet walk, my arms pull myself into my bathrobe. His eyes follow me, heavy-lidded, like they’re just moving because they need something to do.

  “Hey,” he says.

  “Yeah?” I am backing out the door.

  “I love you,” he says, and it sounds ridiculous. Everything about him is ridiculous: the messy hair; the forest of zits on his chin; the thin, pathetic attempt at a mustache; the white thigh; the penis laying against it, shriveled and small with the condom still on.

  “I love you, too,” I say because it’s the only thing I can think of, because it’s the only thing you’re allowed to say when someone says they love you first. Maybe that’s all love is—one person saying it because they think they’re supposed to and the other person feeling too guilty to say anything else—and everyone’s delusional who believes it’s anything like Shakespeare, because Romeo and Juliet were just crazy and horny and the same ages as me and Ethan. Maybe this is all love is and all it will ever be—boys fucking girls and pretending it’s love, girls getting fucked and pretending they like it, saying “I love you, too,” and wanting to throw up.

  I open the door and run to the bathroom. I lock the door and hug the toilet. My mouth is open and watering and the drool is going drip, drip, drip. I wait and nothing comes. I am empty inside so nothing comes.

  I brush my teeth. I splash cold water on my face. I pee and wash myself with a wet washcloth. I want him to leave so I can take a shower. I want to take the hottest shower I have ever taken.

  When I get back to my room, he is sitting up and pulling his shorts on. Something on his face is wrong.

  “Hey,” I say.

  “Hey.” He is not looking at me.

  “What’s wrong?” I say, trying to sound calm, but all of a sudden I can’t breathe. I have done something wrong. I let him do everything he wanted, but I missed something. I did everything but it wasn’t enough. He is not happy with me. I have done something wrong.

  He looks at his lap, searching for the right words. Finally, he says, “You didn’t bleed,” in a small voice. He does not seem angry, but I don’t know what else he could be.

  “What do you mean?” I say.

  “Virgins are supposed to bleed,” he says, and I realize he is pouting, looking at the white sheets like they let him down, searching for blood like it’s some kind of trophy.

  “What are you talking about?” I have done something wrong but I don’t know what it is. I am trying not to fall apart.

  “You’re a virgin, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.” Of course I’m a virgin. Why wouldn’t I be a virgin?

  “Thirteen is pretty young to not be a virgin.”

  “I am a virgin.” Of course I’m a fucking virgin. My hands ball up into fists and my eyes get watery and I can’t make the tears stop. It feels like the world is ending, like someone has found the perfect way to kill me, like some hole inside me has opened up and all my guts are falling out. I am trying not to shake. I cannot let him see me cry. Why am I crying? It’s only blood, the absence of blood. I let him do everything he wanted. That’s what matters. He is not mad. He is not mad at me.

  He looks at me, repentant, like he suddenly understands that he misspoke. But that is not it. I don’t know what it is, but that is not it at all.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. He pats the space next to him on the bed. I sit down. I breathe. I count to ten. I push the feelings away.

  “It’s just that I always thought girls were supposed to bleed their first time. I was just wondering because, like, you didn’t bleed and there’s, like, supposed to be that thing that breaks.”

  “Not all the time,” I tell him. I am breathing. I know this. I read it in the book Mom gave me to teach me about sex. Sometimes it breaks from other things. Horseback riding. Accidents.

  I pick one. I say, “Horseback riding.”

  “What?”

  “I used to ride horses. That’s what did it.”

  “Oh,” he says. He looks skeptical.

  “All the bouncing,” I tell him.

  “Okay.”

  I don’t care if he thinks I wasn’t a virgin. I don’t care if he thinks I’m a slut, if he thinks I’ve fucked a million boys before. All I want is for him to stop talking about this. I want nothing, silence. I want no memory, no feeling, no one, nothing inside me.

  Ethan finishes dressing while I look out the window at the wall of green trees that separates us from the next apartment building. He hands me my clothes and I just look at them sitting in my lap. Getting dressed seems like the most difficult thing I will ever have to do. Then I hear my mom’s bedroom door open, her slippered feet padding across the living room floor, and I throw my clothes on and smooth down my hair, and Ethan is up and out of my room and I follow him to the front door and my mom is sitting on the couch and turning on the TV and she looks at us and says, “Oh, hello,” and I say, “Mom, this is Ethan,” and she says, “Nice to meet you, Ethan,” and he says, “You too,” and she says, “Ethan, would you like to stay for dinner?” and he says, “Thank you, but I gotta be someplace.” I walk him to the door and he kisses me on the cheek, lingering too long so I can smell his hot, stale breath.

  “You’re my girl, right?” he says softly.

  “Right,” I say. What else would I be? You’re the most popular guy at school and I’m nobody. I will keep letting you fuck me until you get tired of it, until you find someone better to fuck.

  He backs out the door batting those eyelashes I thought were so sexy when I first met him. Now I want to pluck them out one by one. I close the door behind him and my skin feels like spiders and snakes and every disgusting thing imaginable is crawling all over it, trying to get inside of me. If I make the shower hot enough, it will kill them and I won’t feel anything but the burning and stinging of the water, not the dull pain where Ethan was inside me, not the sickness, not the fragments of feelings like hiccups in my brain.

  “Is he your boyfriend?” Mom calls from the living room.

  “I guess so,” I say.

  “He seems nice,” she says. “I bet your father would like to meet him.”

  “I’m going to take a shower,” I say, and do not wait for her response.

  I lock the door to the bathroom and turn on the water as hot as it will go. I take off my clothes, get in and feel the water like knives slicing through me. I close my eyes and clench my teeth and focus on the pain, welcome it, let it become part of me. I hold on to the wall as my back is pelted with water, burning through my skin and getting inside me, burning my veins and my muscles and fat and bones and thoughts and memories, burning me until I am nothing, until I am clean. I do not listen to the voice in my head screaming at me to get out.

  There are voices you can silence.

  (NINE)

  It’s a strange kind of quiet under a freeway overpass on a rainy day. You can hear the cars above you, muted by layers of concrete. You can hear the rain pounding on asphalt, on the metal of abandoned cars, on the wood of abandoned buildings. You can hear the boys on skateboards, their crunchy rolling back and forth, the wood hitting concrete, the scraping. You can hear the boys when they fall, their soft bodies hitting the ground, the skateboards flying, crashing, the shits, the fucks, the goddammits. You can hear all these things, but they’re somehow small, like you’re only hearing their shadows. You’re aware of everything but none of it matters. You can see the boys’ mouths move but all you can hear is static. The loudest thing is your teeth chattering. The loudest thing is the rain pounding, too wet and too heavy to be snow even though it’s freezing.

  Sarah’s lips are blue. I pass
her the pipe and she can barely keep it in her mouth. I help her light it because her hands are shaking. She inhales and the smoke seems to warm her.

  “Thank you,” she says.

  Sarah doesn’t have a winter coat, just the jean jacket she wears every day. I brought my old one to her house last week, the one I don’t need anymore. I have a new one now, the big puffy kind that’s popular. Alex laughed when I brought Sarah the old one, said something about charity. Sarah said thank you and looked embarrassed, set it next to her on the floor. I’ve never seen her wear it.

  “It is so fucking cold,” I say, hugging my arms to my chest.

  “Don’t talk about it,” Sarah says. “The more you talk about it, the more it’s true.”

  The boys are not cold because they are moving. They are sweating in their T-shirts. Their sweatshirts and coats are heaped in piles with their backpacks. Alex is not cold because she is inside Wes’s giant sleeping-bag coat. He’s got his arm around her and what they’re doing could be called kissing but it’s more like sword fighting with tongues. They are by the piles of discarded clothes, across the concrete from me and Sarah, on the other side of the world.

  I get up and walk over. I grab Ethan’s sweatshirt. He is my boyfriend now. Because I let him fuck me, I can do whatever I want with his sweatshirt.

  Alex sees me and stops. “What are you doing?” she says. Her face is covered with slime. She looks proud of herself, even though she’s the one who told me about Wes’s reputation for fucking anything, including a couple of retards from Special Ed.

  “Getting Sarah a sweatshirt,” I say.

  “Oh, aren’t you sweet,” she says like it’s the worst thing in the world. Wes has his hand up her shirt. He is trying to find the little that is there. Alex turns around and opens her mouth wide and mashes her face against Wes’s like his pasty, rubbery, zit-covered skin is the most appetizing thing in the world. I get away as fast as I can.