by Karen Rivers
“I’ll take these things to a changing room for you,” I hear Piper say in a stagy loud voice. She means that we’re being too loud. I’m so close to Soup’s face that I could kiss him. I want to kiss him.
If Piper is bad, I’m worse.
I’m so much worse than her.
I pick up my phone off the floor and tilt the screen so Soup can’t see it. I methodically delete James’s messages and then delete them from my deleted folder for good measure.
“That looks amazing on you,” Piper says. “You look so incredible in that. Not everyone can pull that kind of look off, but it looks like it was made for you.”
“It’s too tight,” the girl says. “I look fat.”
“You look amazing,” says Piper. “You look like sex on a stick.”
“Is that a compliment?” says the girl.
“Totally,” Piper coos.
When James kissed me, it felt too wet and too loose. His kisses made me think of spawning salmon, slapping the surface wetly in the shallow river. I feel almost bad for him. Poor spitty salmon James. He’ll be fine. He’ll recover from this terrible rejection. And besides, we only met once. How can he be so hung up on me? I don’t owe him anything!
I don’t owe anyone anything.
“Are you okay?” says Soup again. “Your face looks weird.”
“I was thinking about something,” I say. “Someone. Sorry.”
“You don’t have to be sorry, I just didn’t want you to faint on me again,” he says. “You say sorry a lot.”
I laugh quietly. “Habit.”
“Which part? The fainting or the apologizing?”
“Apologizing, obvi,” I say.
“You faint a lot, too,” he observes. “Swooning. Very Victorian.”
“The first time I didn’t faint!” I protest. “Anyway, those Victorian shows are all the rage now on Netflix. I’m just trying to keep up with the trends.”
“My mom watches those,” he says. “I think those shows are targeted at moms. Not trendy, per se.”
“Trendy, for the olds, what’s the difference?”
He laughs.
“Hey, stop flirting with my boyfriend!” Piper is back, reaching her hand down to help Soup up. He ignores it and stands by himself. I find myself secretly cheering for him. “I can’t believe that girl didn’t buy that shirt. It looked awful on her.”
“Maybe that’s why?” I say. “And I’m not flirting with anyone. I have to go.”
“No!” she says. “I’ve been thinking about it, and I think you need to give James another chance. Did you know that his dad was in jail for something terrible? I forget what, but it was something clean, like embezzling money or maybe murder.”
“Murder isn’t clean,” I say.
“Well, it was a business deal gone wrong. Or maybe it was stolen jewelry. I forget. Or a DUI.”
“Do you ever listen when anyone talks?” I say. “You’ve listed basically every crime known to man.”
“It wasn’t something terrifying, I’d remember that,” she says. “Like cannibalism or a mass-murdering clown.”
“Gee, that’s reassuring,” I say. “I’m going to block him. I’m definitely not going out with him again.”
She shrugs. “He knows where you live,” she points out. “Maybe I will suggest that he try to woo you. I think you’re woo-able. You think he’s cute, right? So why not?”
“Are you not listening?” I say. “Do you not care what I think? I don’t like him! I don’t want to see him again! Ever! I don’t want you to tell him anything at all! He’ll figure it out when I don’t answer for a while. I’m sure he’s been ghosted before. He’ll deal with it.”
“Okaaaaay,” she says, in a way that makes me feel embarrassed. “Well, me and Soup have a date tonight, then.”
“A date?” I say, hitting the word “date” hard. “Are you guys my parents? They do date night, too.”
“Basically,” Piper says. “Old married couple!” She laughs and presses her head into his chest. He’s been quiet this whole time, smiling a funny half smile and staring at me.
“I’ve got to go,” I manage, my throat starting to close up with panic. “Later, gator hater.”
She doesn’t even say it. She doesn’t say anything. “While, vile ’dile,” I mumble for her, to ward off bad luck. I can hear the sounds of lips on lips behind me. I’d run, but my legs are shaky from the faint, so instead I walk as quickly as I can, willing them to keep me upright, keeping my eyes down, not wanting to look at anyone, not wanting to see anyone.
* * *
I’m almost at the mall exit when I hear a voice that my body recognizes before I do. Goose bumps jump up on my skin before I turn around.
“Your phone broken or what,” he says flatly, a statement, not a question.
“James,” I croak. “Yeah, it is. Broken. My phone. Why?”
“It is?” His eyebrows shoot up; a smile plays on his lips. “Because I thought maybe you were ignoring my texts and calls.” He has a mean smile. A cruel smile. A stingy smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.
“Oh, yeah, no,” I lie. “It fell in the water. It’s been in a bag of rice for, like, three days.”
“Really,” he says, deadpan, like he knows that I’m lying.
“Really,” I say, trying to sound convincing. “I’m late, I’ve got to…”
“Let’s make plans. You cut your hair. You and Piper, you got to be the same all the time?”
“Oh, um, plans?” I say. “I don’t have my calendar and I…”
“It’s summer. You don’t work. How busy is your schedule?”
I stop, stung. “I’m busy,” I say frostily. “I see friends and … stuff. I do stuff.”
“So you are avoiding me. I get it. Was the sex that bad?” His voice is too loud. An elderly woman leaning on a walker stops in her tracks and slowly turns around to look at us. Her eyes have a sag underneath them that shows pink. It makes it look like she’s weeping.
“My grandma is ill,” I say coolly. “I’ve been spending time with her.” It’s half true, half a lie. Grandma is ill, if having had a stroke is “ill.” She’s dying. Grandma is dying. I haven’t been to see her once. I can’t. I just can’t. My hand is shaking. I stuff it into my pocket so he can’t see it.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
“Me, too. Thanks.” He’s just a boy, I remind myself. He’s just a person.
“I’m sorry,” I add, without saying exactly what for.
“No big deal. Anyway.” He draws it out long. His body is slightly too close to mine.
“Anyway,” I repeat, taking a step back. “I really do have to go.”
“Yeah,” he says, “I get it.” He takes a step toward me and I freeze. He’s going to kiss me. I don’t want to be kissed. The no is stuck in my throat. I try to say it, but I cough instead. He reaches up and taps my nose. His black eyes are assessing me, measuring me, searching me. I don’t want him to see me. It’s not you! I want to scream. You aren’t my One!
He’s smiling bigger now and there’s something stuck between his two front teeth. His hair looks slightly dirty. A wave of revulsion sweeps over me.
“Bye,” I mutter, pushing through the heavy doors, making my escape.
* * *
“Sloane?” Elvis calls. “Someone’s here to see you!”
I know it’s not Piper. Piper would just come upstairs. Besides, she’s at work today. Today is a terrible day. Today is the worst day of my life, so far.
Grandma died this morning.
Grandma, who smoked cigarettes through an elephant’s tusk.
Grandma, who once made a man in a suit cry in the middle of a meeting.
Grandma, who sat silently in the home, staring out the window at things that weren’t there, talking to people who died a long time ago.
Grandma, who always said that boys didn’t matter.
I love her.
I loved her.
I try saying it out loud. “Gr
andma died this morning.” But it doesn’t feel true. It can’t be true because I haven’t gone to see her.
“Sloane!” Elvis calls again.
I click pause on the movie that I’m watching on Netflix. It’s one from my favorite documentary series, where they made a bunch of films, the first one with a group of seven-year-olds. And the next seven years later. And another seven years later. It’s lives sped up. Some of them don’t go as well as others. I frown.
I know who it is. I think of Piper, her tongue on her lip, saying, “Give him a chance!”
I think of Soup, nodding.
Smiling.
He doesn’t like me.
I was wrong about everything.
I was definitely wrong about him.
“Coming,” I yell.
I glance at myself in the mirror, quickly change into a clean tank top. Hot pink. Our power color. We reclaimed pink. We made pink cool and tough, not girly and weak. Pink is strength. Pink is strong.
“Right, Piper?” I say.
I flex my bicep and smile at myself in the mirror. Too toothy. I try again. Better.
There’s a trick I read about that said that if you smile when you aren’t happy, you can fool yourself into being happy. I eye my bed, the rumpled blankets. I could get back in. I could tell Elvis that I’m sick. I could say that I’m on my way out somewhere else.
“Sloane?”
“COMING,” I yell again.
I open my door and I head downstairs. He’s just a boy who likes me. He’s not a monster. He’s someone who wants to be with me. Not with Piper, with me.
Is that so terrible?
Maybe I can get used to him.
Maybe if I get to know him, I’ll like him.
Maybe I could try.
Poor guy, his dog was eaten by a rattlesnake in a state that has cactuses.
How bad can he be?
My mouth feels dry and there is a buzzing in my head that is a feeling that is a sound that is a feeling that is a sound, and I feel like a film that’s jumped the reel somehow and who am I, anyway, to tell this James that he’s not good enough for me, that no one is good enough for me except for Soup Sanchez who is my best friend’s boyfriend, I’m the monster and I’m not worthy and I’m not anyone or anything and I don’t deserve any better than this boy and his loose tongue and his grappling crab hands. I hear a voice come out of my own mouth, which is my voice, but also not my voice, and I reach up and touch my ugly hair and I say, “I figured you’d show up. Want to go somewhere with me?”
* * *
I drag Mr. Aberley’s boat to the shoreline. “Are you sure this is okay?” says James. “We should ask. This belongs to your neighbor?” He has a slow way of speaking, a drawl, which makes everything he says sound like it might or might not be a joke. He smiles slow. He talks slow. He squints slow. He reaches for the boat to help me, slow slow slow. If I were to film him, I’d do it in slow motion, his hand reaching slowly to his hair, his lips parting slowly in a smile. I take my camera out of my bag and I point it at him.
“Hey,” he says, slow like that. Backlit by the sun, maybe he’s cute. I’m not sure, I’m not sure, I’m not sure.
“Mr. A doesn’t mind,” I say, lowering the camera, answering his question. “He’s napping. He always naps between two and four. It’s a thing.”
“Is he your grandpa or something?”
“Friend,” I say.
“Rich friend,” he says, eyeing Mr. A’s house.
“I guess.” I shrug. “He’s an old man.”
“Uh-huh,” he says. “Bet he has lots of cash.”
I laugh even though it’s not funny. “What are you going to do, rob him?”
“Maybe,” he drawls; then he winks. “I’m joking. You look so serious.”
I shrug. “I don’t know you very well,” I say. “I can’t tell when you’re joking.”
“You’ll get to know me,” he says. “And you know me well enough to know what makes me—”
“Stop,” I say. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Uh-huh,” he says; the drawl again. “Okay, girl.”
“Don’t call me girl.” If I weren’t mad at Piper, I wouldn’t be doing this. And I don’t know why I’m mad. I don’t know why I’m doing this. I feel like someone who’s been broken, the sun bifurcating into two separate versions of me.
Me, Before.
Me, After.
I’m rowing now; he’s leaning back in the stern of the boat, dragging his hand through the water. He reaches into my bag, casually, so casually. He takes out the camera. I stare at him. No one touches my camera, no one but me and Piper. He presses record. “Tell us how you feel about James Robert Wilson,” he says. “Tell the world.”
“I don’t know yet,” I lie quietly. I do know. Don’t I? I hate him.
He lowers the camera. “What are you, some kind of filmmaker?”
“Kind of,” I say. “I want to be.”
“What kind of films?” He raises his eyebrows. “I know what you’d be good at.”
“Stop it,” I say. “Are you trying to be funny? That’s not funny.”
“I was going to say comedy,” he says. “You’re funny. You’re a spitfire, that’s what my dad would say. Like what’s-her-name from that show, I Love Lucy.”
“Lucy?” I say.
“Nah,” he says. “The other one. The friend. What did you think I was going to say?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “Forget it. I want to make documentaries. About people. About animals. Not comedies.”
“Like cute cats, stuff like that? You want to go ‘viral on the Internet’?” He makes air quotes with his fingers.
“No, like global warming,” I retort. “Like animal extinctions caused by human activities. Did you know that by 2020, two-thirds of animal species will be extinct?”
He laughs. “Oh,” he says. “You’re one of those.”
“One of what?”
“One of those superior girls who think they know so much, they’re so much better.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“I know girls like you,” he says. “You’re white girls with tons of money, dripping with privilege.”
“That’s offensive,” I say.
“Exactly,” he says. “That’s what a girl like you would say.”
I keep rowing without talking. My brain feels like a broken clock, ticking over, not quite ever getting to the next minute. “Look,” I say. “I shouldn’t have done that with you.”
“You can’t say you were drunk, because you weren’t. You wanted to.” He looks uncomfortable. “Is this a trap? Are you going to call rape?”
“No! It’s not like that. For me, that’s all. For me, it was a mistake. No offense.”
“Huh,” he says. He scoops up a handful of water and flings it at me. It stings my eyes. I drop the oars. “That’s offensive.”
“Hey!” I say, blinking.
“How did you think I was going to react to that?”
“Well, it’s not like I thought you thought it was a big deal for you,” I say. “It wasn’t even really a date.”
“Felt like a date to me,” he says. “In the South, we call that a date.”
“I doubt it,” I say. “Unless you’re a time traveler from 1950 or something.”
He shrugs. “You ever film animals?” he says. “Those snow leopards or whatever that are on the brink of going extinct? Or do you just take selfies with you and your bestie, looking sexy?”
“You’re really aggressive,” I say. “I’m not sure why you’re being such a jerk. I thought you liked me.”
“I thought you liked me,” he mimics. He laughs, a deep unexpectedly rich laugh. He puts his hand on my knee. “I’m just kidding around. I do like you. Thing is, I thought you liked me. But no, you used me for my body.”
“I didn’t,” I say. “It’s only that I don’t know you.” My heart is beating too fast, too hard. Everything about this was a terrible id
ea. I can’t remember why I thought it wouldn’t end badly. Of course it will. He isn’t a normal boy. He’s older. He’s off. He’s different. I row harder, then I let the boat skim. It makes a hissing sound over the calm water. A tiny wake chases us. “I do film animals. Sometimes. When I can find them. I’ve been filming the jellyfish a lot.”
“The dead ones?” he says.
“Mostly,” I admit.
“So it’s basically a snuff film,” he says.
“Not actually. They’re already dead. But I’m going to edit it together with a bunch of other stuff about climate change and then interweave it with … you’re not interested in this.” I don’t know why I’m telling him except that I want him to see me as something other than a body in a pink bikini. I want him to know that I’m smart. I’m powerful. I’m not just a girl. I’m stronger than that.
“Not really,” he says. “Sounds boring. It would go viral if you made a catapult and splatted the corpses against a target. Hitting seals with jellyfish! Something out of the box.”
I roll my eyes. “Well, at least you’re honest. I’m not really into catapulting corpses for page hits, though.”
“Sounds like you’re trying pretty hard to be something you’re not.”
“Jeez, what are you, a therapist? I didn’t ask you to analyze me.”
“I’m just sayin’. What’s wrong with being you? Everything doesn’t have to be about the apocalypse. Like it doesn’t make you more important to only talk about Big Important Problems.”
“We’re all going to die,” I say doggedly.
“Yeah, I know,” he says.
“My grandma died this morning,” I say.
“Seriously?” he says. “Huh. Kind of thought you were lying about her being sick.”
“I wasn’t. And it’s pretty normal at this point to say something like, I’m sorry.”
“I’m not sorry, though,” he says. “She was probably old. Everyone dies, you said so yourself. Why should I be sorry? I didn’t know her.”
“Whatever,” I say. “Stop talking.” A wave of vertigo sweeps over me. I feel my phone buzz in my pocket. Piper, probably.
“So an island, huh. Sounds private.”
“It’s my favorite place.”
“So why are you taking me there?” he says. “So we can be alone?”
