Indecent

by Corinne Sullivan

  “You guys ready for tomorrow?”

  It took me a moment to figure out what he was referring to. “How did you know I coached?” I asked.

  He twined his bare leg around mine. “Don’t you?”

  “I do, but how—”

  “I’m going to come watch.”

  “You are?”

  He ran his foot up and down my leg. I’d never had anyone’s toes on my body before, but I didn’t mind his. “Yeah.”

  “Do you have friends on the team?”

  “No.”

  “Then why—”

  “Because maybe I want to see you.” He poked me in the knee with his big toe. “That okay?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, of course it is.” I paused and, feeling encouraged, I said, “You’ve been drinking again.”

  A flicker of irritation crossed his face, but just as quickly disappeared into a grin. “You going to tell on me?”

  “I’m just worried about you.”

  “You shouldn’t be.” He paused, searched my face, and then added, “It’s just school stuff. Really.”

  “Please tell me.” I was begging, and I hated myself for it.

  Kip propped himself up on his elbow. “Why do you care so much?”

  “Because I care about you.” The words came out before I could hesitate. Even while my heart pounded, awaiting response, I felt proud of my boldness.

  He stared at me too long before saying, “I care about you, too, Imogene.”

  “You’re just saying that.”

  Irritation clouded his face again, and then passed. “No, I’m not.” His face softened and he touched my arm. “I want to talk to you, I really do. And I want you to talk to me. I’m just so sleepy right now.”

  Sleepy—with one word, so cloyingly babyish and yet said so coolly, Kip had pulled me back in. I was his again. “Really?”

  He kissed my head. “Yes, really,” he said, and I believed him. He pulled me into the damp nest of his chest hair, and as he fell asleep I matched my breathing with his, our bodies swelling and retracting together in slow, even waves.

  * * *

  I woke to light flooding through his curtains. I rubbed my eyes and looked at the clock on his nightstand. It was almost eight o’clock.

  “Fuck!” I flew from his bed and onto my hands and knees to collect my clothes from the floor. He turned over and watched me in half-asleep confusion.

  “What’s up?”

  “I fell asleep! I didn’t mean to stay.”

  He rolled back over. “It’s cool,” he said, voice muffled in his pillow.

  I lay on my back to tug my jeans over my thighs. “Shit, shit, shit.” Kip was breathing steadily, seemingly already back to sleep. Once I’d tugged on my shirt and jacket and forced my shoes back on my feet, I approached Kip’s bed. I wanted to kiss him, but instead I pulled his comforter up to his chin and tucked it around his skinny shoulders. He smiled; he was awake. “I’ll see you later?” I whispered.

  “Mm hmm.” His eyes were still closed. I tiptoed to the door and shut it behind me as slowly as I could to not make a sound.

  The hall was empty. I crept down the stairwell and towards the front door, not believing my luck that no one was yet awake. That is, until Raj stepped out of his room, dressed for a run. We paused for a horrible second, staring at each other, until I spoke.

  “I didn’t know you were a runner.”

  He blinked at me. “What are you doing here? What—why were you upstairs?”

  “Um.” Alarms blared in my head. It felt possible that I would get sick on the floor between us. “The lacrosse game. I had to get something to one of the players. I had—his jersey! I had to give it to him. The game is today.”

  His face was impassive. My panic felt as obvious as a stain. “You feeling better?” he asked.

  “Yeah! Yeah, I’m feeling much better. Sorry again about this weekend.” I thought to offer the next weekend, to redeem myself somehow, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

  “You shouldn’t be here.” He zipped up his jacket. “You can’t just go to their rooms.”

  I wondered why he said “their,” not “his,” before I remembered that, to Raj, there was no “his.” There were the boys, and then there were the apprentices. Them versus us. He didn’t see them as different people, capable of different things. He didn’t know there was just one person whose room I was interested in entering. “I know, I know, I’m sorry. I really—”

  “I’ll see you later.” He turned and walked out the door. I leaned up against the wall for a moment to slow my breath before I followed him out.

  * * *

  When I boarded the bus for the game an hour later, I was surprised to see Clarence sitting in the first row of seats. His hair was curled over his ears, desperately in need of a trim, and he gazed blankly out the window, seemingly unaware of where he even was.

  I sat down next to him. “Hi there.”

  He jumped.

  “How are you? I haven’t seen you in a while.”

  He turned to look at me, something between confusion and anger in his eyes. “That’s because I’m not on the team anymore.”

  “Oh.” I didn’t expect that response from him, didn’t even think him capable of such a response.

  “You knew that, right? That I’m not on the team?”

  “Yeah, of course. I’m sorry that happened.”

  Clarence turned back to the window. I felt guilty, but not for the reason he probably thought. Back in the beginning of the semester, I had promised Clarence something—guidance? Comfort? Friendship? I still wasn’t sure exactly what—and I had failed to deliver on that promise. I’d let my brother down. Worse still, I wasn’t the outsider that he was anymore; I’d been accepted and he hadn’t, and I could never promise him that that would change.

  “Really, Clarence, I had no idea that Larry was going to do that. I would have stopped him. I really would have.”

  He seemed to soften a bit at this. “It’s okay,” he said. “I wasn’t very good.”

  “Of course you were!”

  He looked at me and smiled. “No, I wasn’t.”

  I smiled back and didn’t respond; to protest again would be a lie.

  He pulled out his notebook and a pencil as the other boys began to board the bus. As Duggar passed he pursed his lips and smacked two wet kisses in our direction. We both ignored him.

  “So,” I said as the bus pulled from the lot. “Why … Um, did you just come…?”

  “I wanted to watch.” He didn’t look up from his notebook as he drew. It was tilted away from me so I couldn’t see what he was drawing. “Coach Larry said I could come with the team.”

  “That’s great. That’s really nice of you.”

  Clarence shrugged and continued to draw.

  I lay my head back against the seat and thought back to the field trip to Hook Mountain for the hawk watch. How much had changed since then. How much Adam Kipling had changed everything. I must have dozed off because the next time I opened my eyes, we had arrived.

  “Imogene?” Clarence said as the boys began to collect their bags.

  “Yeah?”

  “I didn’t just come to watch the game, you know.” He tucked his notebook away into his bag. I thought he might have been drawing me something, and I was disappointed that he didn’t have anything to give to me. It wasn’t until the team was warming up and I caught a glimpse of Clarence in the crowd, chin in his hands, that I wondered why else he had come to the game, if that reason could possibly be me. With surprising sadness, I concluded that I didn’t know Clarence Howell at all, not really.

  The boys lost the game 3-1. Duggar broke his stick over his knee and the boys were too afraid of Larry to speak for the whole ride home. I’d kept scanning the crowd the whole game, but I knew before the first half even ended that he hadn’t come. Kip hadn’t ever been planning to come, and I felt like a fucking idiot for thinking he actually might.

  * * *

  The Al
l Hallows’ Eve Ball was held that Friday in the dining hall, and the apprentices were given the day off to decorate. Babs and ReeAnn took an early trip to the store to buy paper lanterns and streamers and strings of lights. Meggy and Maggie went to the costume store for fairy wings and flower crowns—even for Raj, who was more than happy to comply. “Do I look pretty?” he asked, flapping around the room with his new accessories. The girls howled. I concentrated on untangling the lights, which spooled around me in twisted knots.

  Raj hadn’t spoken to me all week, and judging from the coldness of the other girls, he’d also told them about my refusal to go on our date—though how much he’d told them, I couldn’t be sure. Why did disinterest have to be cruel? And why should I feel that I owed Raj anything? I hadn’t even gone on the date, and still my private life was open for public discussion.

  I hadn’t spoken to Kip either. It wasn’t that I was angry with him for not coming to the game; refusing to contact him had become a game of its own. I would not text him until he texted me. Of course, had he texted me, I’d have flown to his room without hesitation. I had dreams every night of him texting me, of him slipping into my bed. Sometimes, the loss of him come morning would feel so profound that I’d cry. I traced back through our conversations, through the things we’d said; nothing he’d ever said was a promise, but I felt he had promised me something nevertheless. I wondered if he was losing interest. I wondered if I was losing my mind.

  Chapin approached and plopped herself cross-legged beside me. “Need help?”

  I handed her a string of lights I had yet to work on.

  “Excited for tonight?”

  I shrugged. “It will be fun, I guess.” Across the room, Raj and the twins twirled in circles, wings on their backs and streamers in hand, while Babs hollered about the wasted supplies.

  “Is Adam Kipling coming?”

  I looked at her; her face was sincere. “I don’t know. I haven’t really thought about it.”

  That was a lie. All week long, I’d been imagining this night. I would have Chapin do my makeup, put glitter around my eyes and some bold color on my lips and transform me into something otherworldly. I’d borrow something of hers to wear, maybe that lace-up pink corset top and matching silky pink skirt. Kip would see me from across the room and approach me, in front of everyone, and say in my ear, “Outside. Five minutes.” We’d lie down in the garden behind the building and kiss, as the music from the hall fell away and the party carrying on inside was nearly forgotten.

  Chapin smirked. “Of course you have.”

  “Well, maybe.”

  “This whole place has to look ethereal,” ReeAnn was saying across the room. “Like a fairy-tale forest.”

  “Want to drink with me beforehand?” Chapin asked me.

  “Definitely,” I said.

  * * *

  The dance began at eight, but no one other than first years arrived until nine. I stood with the other apprentices by the front door, admiring our work.

  “This place looks cool,” Raj said.

  We all nodded in agreement, even though it didn’t. We’d covered the lower windowpanes with green crepe paper—hoping to achieve the effect of sunlight filtered through a thick ceiling of leaves—but where it was already getting dark by four p.m., the paper just hung from the glass, limp and purposeless. Most of the twinkling lights framing the windowsills and tables had already slipped from the tape holding them up and now sagged towards the floor. The tables were scattered with dead leaves—a last-minute addition that looked more accidental than inspired—and covered with dishes of crumbling sugar cookies and watery fruit punch. Nevertheless, I’d drunk just enough vodka in Chapin’s bedroom before leaving to make me forget we were in a dining hall, that we were in a place that was familiar to me at all.

  While we were drinking, Chapin had played songs that had been popular when we were in middle school, and we danced around her bedroom, me hesitantly at first until the liquor began to grease my joints, Chapin uninhibited from the start. The dancing and the pop music and the buzz made me feel oddly excited for the boys tonight, improbably nostalgic for the school dances of years past. Had I even had fun at high school dances? I recalled taffeta gowns in pastels, dimmed lights and a scuffed gymnasium floor, a DJ commanding us to jump and put our hands in the air. It wasn’t any of that I envied or missed—it was the promise of these nights. The promise of a kiss, or a slow dance, or a new crush. I missed youth and its unflagging hope, its infinite excitement.

  “Did you like high school?” I asked Chapin.

  “No one likes high school,” she replied, shaking her butt in time with the music.

  Chapin had decided to wear the outfit I’d been eyeing, and so I wore her too-tight bandage dress, the one I’d worn the first night I slept with Kip. I’d felt good as I looked at myself in the mirror, but at the dance, with the other apprentices dressed in matching Elizabethan-style gowns they’d bought at a thrift shop, self-consciousness set in. Even Chapin, in her corset-skirt combo, looked more timely and appropriate than me. My desire to look good had warped my judgment, and everyone could see. I thought to return to the Hovel to change, but that felt like admitting defeat, an acknowledgement of my poor choice. Besides, if I left, even briefly, I might miss Kip’s arrival.

  As I’d predicted, very few students stuck to the A Midsummer Night’s Dream theme; save for a few first years who had donned shorts stuffed with towels over tights and oversized blouses, every boy wore a crisp button-down and jeans. Then the buses from Baylor Academy arrived.

  As the girls filed into the dining hall, lithe and leggy and unreal, I remembered just why I hadn’t applied to the apprenticeship program at Baylor Academy—even the ones that weren’t beautiful could easily convince me that they were. Their nails were painted, their hair curled, their shoes strappy, and their dresses tight and metallic and expensive-looking, the kind of dresses I thought only adult women owned. They passed by us apprentices without a glance, giggling behind their hands. They were light as dust particles, elusive as sunrays, golden wood nymphs I wished to capture between my hands and study and understand. They were women, really, not girls.

  Raj whistled. “Wow.”

  Maggie nudged him. “Please, they’re in high school. That’s fucked up.”

  Chapin slid something cool and hard into my hand. I looked; it was a flask. I discreetly bent to adjust my shoe strap and took a quick pull.

  Raj noticed. “Let me see that,” he said, taking it from my hand. He tipped it into his mouth and handed it back to me, smiling slightly. I smiled back. Perhaps I was forgiven.

  Chapin nudged me. I went to hand her back her flask, but she nudged me again, harder. I followed her line of vision. Kip had arrived.

  He, Park, and Skeat hadn’t spared any expense for their costumes: they wore padded doublets with puffy sleeves, velvet-looking vests, enormous knee breeches, stockings, pointy-toed slippers. Kip even wore a cape and a pilgrim-style hat with a long purple feather spouting from the top.

  Raj laughed. “Who the fuck are those guys?”

  “I’m glad someone followed the theme,” said Babs.

  I stared. I willed him to see me, but a crowd had formed around him. Already, a girl with long red hair had slung her arm around Kip’s neck and held her phone out in front of them to take a picture.

  I poked Chapin in the side. “Can I have some more?”

  She nodded and passed me back the flask. I ducked behind her, caring less about discretion this time, and took as long a drink as I could stand.

  * * *

  The apprentices were expected to circulate the room—to keep the cookies stocked, to make sure no one was sneaking alcohol, to break up any Vandenberg boys and Baylor girls who got too handsy on the dance floor—but I could concentrate on little other than Kip. I followed him around the room, watched him fill a cup with punch, watched him deposit a few pills into the cup and take a long sip. I lurked against the walls as he began to sweat, as he removed his
cap and stockings and cape and vest until he wore just his giant breeches and a white shirt, rolled up past his elbows. He danced wildly with his friends, arms thrown in the air and thrashing as though boneless, as though independent from the rest of his body. A group of girls joined them, and he grabbed the wide hips of a blonde, rocking her back and forth to the music. His eyes were marbles, his mouth slack. He stumbled forward once, falling into the blonde, and she laughed; I could tell from the glassiness of her eyes that she was on something, too. I watched him, and couldn’t stop watching him, even while the sight of him acting like this made me feel sick.

  I was back in college, back across the bar from Zeke Maloney. Maybe he doesn’t see you, I told myself, just as I used to tell myself. Maybe he’s not purposely avoiding you. But the truth was clearer to me than it was back then: Kip didn’t want to be with me, not really. Only at night, when he was lonely or horny, when he could call and know I’d answer. The realization was less devastating than it was satisfying to acknowledge, even if only in my own head. It was a satisfaction with hard edges, a satisfaction that curled my hands into fists and twisted a tight knot of anger in my gut.

  The dance ended at midnight. Kip left holding the hand of the blonde, his costume abandoned in pieces all over the room. I was supposed to stay behind and clean, but when no one was looking I tumbled out the door. I didn’t look at the buses loading; I didn’t look back once until I was halfway to the Hovel, when I heard the sound of footsteps behind me. Even though I knew it was coming, I still jumped when Chapin reached out and touched my shoulder.

  “Hey,” she said. “I saw.”

  That was all she needed to say. A sob burst out of me, and she wrapped her bony arms around me. I settled into her chest and cried; it had been a long time since I’d been hugged by a friend. She led me back to her room, grabbing a bag of chips that I was pretty sure belonged to ReeAnn from the kitchen counter, and sat me on her bed.

  “Start at the beginning,” she said.

  And I did. I told her the story of Kip and me from the very beginning, from the meeting between the trees. And like a good friend, she listened, never telling me I was wrong, never saying a word even when we both knew I was leaving the bad parts out. Because even though Kip hadn’t crossed the room to talk to me—and how could he, really, in front of everyone?—and probably didn’t feel the same way about me that I did about him, a small, tender part of me opened up inside as I spoke, a part that still believed that what I had with Kip was real.