by Karen Rivers
There’s that word again: love.
It pollutes everything.
It changes you.
Would I be different without my camera?
The camera bench sits against the wall in front of a fancy MG convertible, which is parked on carpet patches. He only drives it on perfect sunny summer Sundays. Never on highways. Never in traffic. Never on weekdays. The car is so perfect, it looks like a piece of art. I climb into it, sit in the driver’s seat, pretend to drive. I haven’t learned yet. I’m old enough, but I haven’t needed to. Piper drives everywhere we need to go in her mom’s Volvo, which perpetually smells like a wet dog even though her dog, Margarine, a big fat yellow Lab, died in the spring. She let me record the vet putting him down. I’ll never forget the way a film rose over his eyes, a matte glaze covering the brown gleam of them. She threw herself on the vet at the last minute. She screamed, “Don’t!” but it was too late. Her mom held her arms back like she was in a bar brawl. She made me delete it after. She made me promise not to show anyone.
I never did.
I wouldn’t.
This car does not smell like dog. I inhale the Dad smell of it, leather and air freshener and Armor All. I pretend to turn the key, press my foot down on the gas. Hard.
Where would I go?
You can never get far enough away from yourself, that’s the problem.
And I could never escape from Piper.
And Soup.
And what I want.
I get out of the car and shake the floor mat so the dirt from my flip-flops doesn’t give me away. I close the door gently so no one will hear.
* * *
In the kitchen, Mom and Dad are embroiled in a pretty raucous game of Scrabble, glasses of red wine in their hands.
“Sloane?” says Mom as I grab some water from the fridge. “I’ve been wondering where you were! I thought you were at Piper’s, getting ready for the dance? But she called and said you weren’t going.”
“Are you okay?” says Dad. “I was really looking forward to that photo opportunity.”
I roll my eyes. “Migraine,” I lie, trying to look sick. “You’ll have to take pictures of Mom or something. I don’t know. Sorry.”
“Oh no,” says Mom. “I’m so sad you’ll miss the dance! You had such a great dress. You know, I was going to dig out my own prom pictures; I think mine was similar, although it was bright pink.” She shudders. “The eighties weren’t kind!” Then she seems to remember my headache. “Are you going to take a pill? Should you eat something? Those pills make you puke, remember?”
I raise my hand in a gesture that might mean yes or no or who knows what and slowly go up the stairs. “TRIPLE WORD!” Dad yells.
“Shhhh,” Mom says. “Not when she has a headache!”
He lowers his voice. “I’m powning you now,” he says. “You’re goin’ down, Whittaker.”
“You wish,” she says. “Take THAT!” They laugh. I can hear the glug glug of more wine being poured. I can’t imagine why they are so happy. I don’t understand why this is enough: this small town, their small lives, a car they only drive on weekends. I’m going to be so much more than them. I’m going to live so much bigger than this. Maybe I won’t be as rich, but at least I’ll do things.
I go into my room and shut the door, turn the fan on to drown them out. I climb into bed and plug my phone in. It takes a few seconds for the apple to light up on the screen. Slowly, my apps load, the notes on top, still open. I glance at the app, meaning to close it. It’s the list of supplies to fix Mr. Aberley’s boat, but then I notice that Soup has added something to the bottom of the list, highlighted it so I can’t miss it.
At the bottom of the shopping list, Soup has typed, “I’ll help you fix the boat. I know how to use this stuff. Tomorrow at 11? C U at the beach. x.”
I stare at the “x.”
The “x” was obviously a mistake.
A typo.
Wasn’t it?
I hate the way my stomach drops. “Boys are a weakness!” I whisper. “Don’t be weak, Sloane. Real girls don’t need MPDBs to prop them up.”
My phone buzzes, startling me. The buzzes come fast and furious as I scroll through all the texts I missed when the battery died. Piper and Piper and Piper and Piper, always Piper. I close my eyes and the phone keeps vibrating with her and everything she has to say.
Mom always said I should diversify my friend pool. She’s a lawyer. That’s how lawyers talk. “I don’t need more than one friend,” I always insisted. “One is plenty!” But now I wonder. If I had more friends, would I have gone to the dumb dance? Or would I have someone here, right now, with me? Someone to hang out with, making fun of prom in general, rolling our eyes at the Instagrams of everyone’s corsages, pretending we didn’t want to go in the first place?
I blink back tears and scroll through the texts. “Where R U?” Then, “Want to c my dress?” Then a photo of her dress. Then a close-up of her face, an exaggerated sad pout. “I missssssss u.” Then another photo, this time of her shoes (Converse high-tops). Then one of her front driveway, Soup’s car. Then one of Soup coming up her front walk, grinning in his cocky way, carrying a rose like a romantic cliché.
She’d never even noticed him before.
Would she have “bumped” into him after the art show if I hadn’t admitted that I liked him?
“She competes with you,” Mom said once. “She’s always trying to be a better Sloane than you are. She wants to out-Sloane you.”
“That’s stupid,” I said, then. “Clever, but stupid. She doesn’t want to be me. She wants me to want to be her.” I paused. “It’s complicated, Mom, but we both understand it. I think.”
“Not very convincing,” said Mom.
“Ha,” I said. “Whatever. It makes sense to me. Sort of.”
“Clear as mud,” said Mom.
“She’s my best friend, Mom! Give me a break!”
“She was never interested in filmmaking before you got your camera,” Mom said. “Before you started filming everything. Doesn’t that make you feel weird?” She batted at my camera, which happened to be rolling. “Stop filming me!”
“Two people can like the same thing!” I said, then, slamming a door, I yelled, “It’s not a crime!”
/end scene
It’s not a crime.
It is a crime.
Soup was mine, even though he wasn’t.
I turn the phone off.
I turn Piper off.
I climb into bed and close my eyes. I want to fall asleep so that I’m not here, watching them dance in my imagination, laughing; watching them kiss, watching her do that thing with her tongue. I miss the Piper who chose those hot-pink sneakers with me to wear with the dress. I miss who we used to be, before I became a liar and she became one of those girls.
“Having boyfriends at our age is just a nod to the patriarchy,” she said once. “It’s not about anything but us learning to be cute and sexy, learning to want boy approval. It’s about being who they want us to be, molding us into being people who care only that we look good for men.”
“That’s not us,” I said. “We won’t ever be those girls.”
“Never,” she said.
We had so much power then, when we didn’t care.
I didn’t want to be one of those girls.
I still don’t want to be one of those girls.
I won’t be one of those girls.
Soup Sanchez doesn’t matter.
He signed with an “x” and that makes my heart hurt.
But it’s only a typo.
And the pain is probably heartburn.
“I’m one of you,” I mumble to the rats that start swarming into my dream. “We’re the same. We’re all the thing we don’t want to be.”
And they agree. Of course they agree. Who wants to be a rat? They flick their scaly tails and shuffle into the darkness, always mostly hidden from view.
* * *
I don’t think that Soup is
going to show up but then he shows up. I’ve been waiting, leaning on the boat’s hull in the gravelly sand, collecting the white twirls of broken shells that the waves have tossed above the seaweed line. The beach smells tidal: salty and dank. It’s not quite warm yet, the day hung with a thin gray haze that’s stuck over the ocean with no wind to blow it clear. The sun is a shiny disk, trying to burn through but failing.
I raise my camera and film Soup coming toward me but then I feel shy and quickly put it away. Not everyone likes being on camera. Plus, he’s Piper’s. Not mine. And a part of me knows better than to capture this moment, in case she sees it and sees through me and what I’m really doing.
My tongue is stuck to the roof of my mouth, not prettily dancing against my lip, manipulating the narrative. I hang my head down, digging for nothing in my bag so he can’t see my face.
I’m blushing, I know I’m blushing.
My stupid face always betrays me. I press my hands to my cheeks, hoping to cool the color away.
Last I heard from Piper, they were heading downtown for late-night food. She sent a photo of them together, waiting at the bus stop, both looking glassy-eyed drunk. Their eyes glow red from the flash. The whole thing is out of focus.
There was nothing this morning.
She’s waiting for me to ask and I can’t ask because I’m waiting for her boyfriend on the beach in the fog with a bag of patching supplies and a guilty conscience.
“Hi,” Soup says. “Sorry I’m late. I had to wait while my mom finished telling me about how alcohol will destroy my life.” He pauses. “She’s probably right.” He does look a little green. I want to reach out my hand and push his sweaty hair off his forehead because there is something wrong with me and I’m the worst.
“Yeah,” I say instead. “My parents think that I don’t drink but everyone drinks, right?” I raise my thermos at him. It’s actually just water, but he blanches.
“Too soon,” he moans. “Are you seriously drinking already? It’s not even noon.”
“You sound like my dad,” I say, making a face. “Cheers.”
He fumbles open the bag of stuff and spreads tins and paintbrushes and a stir stick out on a log.
“This isn’t hard,” he says. “It smells really bad, just a warning. It will probably make me puke.” He looks terrible. “I hope not, but no guarantee. I’m pretty sensitive to smell.” He laughs. “That made me sound like a delicate flower, right? I’m tough.” He pauses. “Don’t tell Piper that I’m a delicate flower.”
“I won’t.” Because I’m not going to tell her about this ever, I think. “Do you, um, use fiberglass for a lot of things?” I say. “Like, art?”
He laughs. “No, I strictly paint,” he says. “But I help my neighbor patch his thrasher car with this stuff. It takes a beating. I bought my car off him. It used to be a beater but we fixed it up pretty well.”
“Oh,” I say. I know literally nothing about cars except that I don’t know how to drive one and I probably should. When people start talking about cars and driving, I feel like I’m in kindergarten, listening to the big kids talking. “I can probably do this patch by myself, you know. If it’s going to make you sick.” I take a sip of water, which I know he thinks is something else, and I feel too dumb to explain that I was kidding before. Jokes you have to explain are too awkward, which is fitting, because as it happens, I’m the most awkward person alive on this beach. “Then you won’t have to explain to Piper why you were here.”
He laughs, looking startled. “Why? Would she be mad?”
I shrug. “Who knows?” I fidget with my camera. I polish the lens on my shirt. You are the worst, I tell myself. You are so awkward, it hurts.
Soup is not awkward. He isn’t capable of awkwardness. He starts undoing jars and popping open a tin of something that does, in fact, smell putrid.
My phone buzzes. Piper. Of course. “R U mad,” it says.
I quickly answer, “No. Helping Mr. A. Call you l8r.”
“Piper?” Soup says.
I consider lying to make it less awkward, but instead give in to the inevitable. “Yep,” I say.
“She’ll have a headache,” he observes, not a shred of discomfort about him.
You signed with an x! I want to scream. What did it mean? I love you, too!
For a second, he looks like he wants to say more, but he doesn’t. I step into the boat and look down at the hull. “I don’t even see a hole in this thing,” I say. I rock it back and forth slightly and it shifts in the sand.
“Careful. You might split it.”
“I’m not that heavy!” I say.
“I wasn’t saying you were heavy, but it’s already cracked, right?”
“Right,” I mumble.
“We have to flip it over,” he tells me. “Then we can do a big patch all the way along that bottom seam.” He points. I jump out of the boat and land on my butt in the sand. “Graceful,” he says. “You should consider the ballet if this film stuff doesn’t work out for you.”
“Ha ha,” I say.
“Hey,” he says as we lift the end of the boat and turn it over. “Can I ask you something?”
“Okay.” My heart does six full somersaults in my chest. “Sure.”
“I know Piper hasn’t had a boyfriend before,” he says. “This must be weird for you.”
I shrug. “Is that a question? It seems more like a statement. Ms. Cabrello is always so sure that questions are supposed to go up at the end? Like this?”
He laughs. “It’s a statement with a built-in question, which is, Is this weird for you?”
“Huh,” I say. “Well. It is what it is.” I realize that doesn’t sound very convincing, so I add, “I didn’t think we’d stay single forever. We aren’t nuns. I guess neither of us had ever met anyone who…” I pause. After all, this is a lie. I’d met Soup. He’d be worth it. I didn’t act on it because I’m an idiot. “I’m an idiot,” I accidentally say out loud.
“No, you aren’t,” he says. He looks confused.
“Sorry,” I say. “That was two different thoughts. Forget it. It’s fine. It’s good! I like you. What’s not to like?” My voice cracks. “I’m so happy for Piper. And you. For both of you,” I babble on. “If I had champagne, I’d raise it in a toast. Really. I’d write a speech, I’d…”
“Okay, okay,” he says, and laughs. “I get it. Fine. But I think that we should know each other a little. We should know each other more because then it’s not awkward. We should be friends.”
“Friends,” I echo. Behind me, a seagull laughs. At me, not with me. “Sure. We can be friends.” I hit the word too hard, and it comes out mad or sad or both, because it is.
He gives me a funny look. “Okay, so we’re friends, then.” He gives me a hug. I don’t know where to put my arms, so I leave them hanging down by my sides. I feel like an ironing board, I think absurdly, then I giggle.
“What’s funny?” he says.
“Nothing, this, you,” I say. “Everything. The world.”
“You’re pretty weird,” he says. “I respect that about you.”
“Well, gosh,” I say, taking another long drink. “That’s super. I aim to amuse.” I’m doing it on purpose now. Acting, but I don’t know how to act. I don’t know who I am. The water tastes like stale ice cubes. “You’re not marrying her, you guys are maybe hooking up or whatever. For now. Don’t get crazy.”
“I just want you to know,” he says. “I wanted to say that I like you, too, Sloane.”
“That’s good,” I quip. “Because Piper and I are a package deal.”
A silence hangs between us, which is interrupted by a bounding dog, who lifts his leg and pees on the bow of the boat. Soup laughs. “It’s a metaphor!” he says.
I don’t ask him what for. Instead, I reach over him to the concoction he’s made in the bucket and start stirring.
“We add this to that, right?” I say, even though I know it’s right because I watched the video three times.
“Yep,” he says. “Here, I’ll do it.” He takes it out of my hand, which is annoying.
“I can do it,” I say, grabbing it back. It wobbles on the log, nearly spilling in the sand.
“Hey,” he says.
“I watched the video, I know how to do this,” I say. “Let me do something.”
“Fine,” he says, and for a second I think he’s reaching out to hug me, but his fist comes up. “Fist pound!”
“Fist pound,” I mumble, knocking my ring against his finger.
“Ouch.” He shakes out his hand. “You punch like a boy.”
He picks up the tools and starts stirring, ignoring what I said about fixing it myself. I can’t bring myself to fight for it. Instead, I lean against the log and watch him. He’s right, it smells terrible. He doesn’t look up; he’s focused on what he’s doing. It gives me too much time to stare, to think, to wish. The whole thing takes less time than I thought it would, and before I’m really ready for it to be over, he’s spreading the fiberglass along the crack. Then he’s done.
My phone buzzes again. “Thanks for the help,” I say. “I guess this was good, getting to know each other? And now we’re super-good friends.”
He gives me a funny look. “It was good, Captain Sarcastic,” he says. “Yeah, it was fine. See you at school.”
I nod. I start putting the supplies back in the bag. I want to say, Were you ever looking at me that way before? Did you ever think of asking me out? Is there something here? Do you like me? But I don’t do it. It was probably only in my imagination. He never even noticed me. That happens with Piper. I’m Piper’s friend. I’m not anyone someone would see, not when they first look, not when she’s around, filling up the space with her Piper-ness.
I take my phone out of my back pocket and text her. “On my way with saltines and ginger ale,” I type. “C U ASAP.”
