by Trisha Telep
St. Crispin’s even decrees what bookbag you can buy. They’re like that. Scholarship kids like me get a big break on the prices, though. Not enough of a break, but some.
Mitzi’s voice kept hitting high ugly pitches. I sneaked a glance over while I shrugged back into my blazer. Go figure—here we were in sunny Cali and they wanted us to wear wool.
The gaggle of girls in sunlight all giggled, the very same high-pitched nasal laughter. I was pretty sure Gwyn was laughing at them, though, not with them. I hitched my bag up on my shoulder and walked to fourth period. I only looked back once, and Gwyn was alight with the rest of them, standing in a flood of sunlight that picked out their glossy hair, their pampered skin, and the little glitters of gold jewelry—balls or small hoops, 24K of course—that St. Crispin’s approved of.
My chest hurt. My stomach growled again, telling me I was hungry, but I ignored it. The school doors swallowed me. Smells of linoleum, oil, chalk dust, the janitor’s harsh cleansers, and the funk of miserable kids in scratchy clothes, repeating drills when the whole world was outside waiting, all closed over my head. I trudged toward the classroom, and nobody yelled my name.
They were a couple minutes late to fourth period, but Brother Bob had been delayed with something or another. It was rare that he wasn’t in the room on the dot, so I opened up my secondhand trig textbook.
Gwyneth slid into her seat next to me. Mitzi gave me a pitying look, tossing her blonde pigtails. I slumped down in my chair.
“There’s a party tonight,” Gwyn whispered. She’d gotten some gum from somewhere, and the perfume of Juicy Sweet touched my cheek. “Out in the Hills. Wanna go?”
“I thought we were—”
“Come on.” She grinned while Brother Bob lumbered to the front of the room. He was sweating, and his round face was red. The collar always cut into the crinkled skin of his throat. Gwyn called the look “choked turkeyneck,” and I agreed.
“I won’t know anyone there.” But it was a mumble, because the class had quieted. Bob’s little, moist, dark eyes raked the rows of seats. Mitzi wriggled in her chair. Trisha shoved her bookbag under her seat and fiddled with her hair ribbon.
“Jesus, just say yes.” Gwyneth’s blue eyes narrowed as she stared at the front of the classroom. Brother Bob gulped and stood up straight. The chalkboard was freshly washed.
“Yes,” I said.
“Quiet down, girls,” Bob said.
Then the fire alarm went off. It was a drill, thank God. Gwyn and I glanced at each other, grabbed our bookbags, and got out of there. I guess we were meant to skip fourth period after all.
We stopped off at Gwyn’s house. Her dad was at work and her mom was off somewhere, so there was only Marisa the housekeeper, who clucked at both of us as we tore in through the door, laughing.
“Did you see that?” Gwyn was laughing so hard she hic-cupped. It was a wonder she could drive. Her place was twelve minutes away from St. Crispin’s if the lights were right. Today they hadn’t been, but we were lucky.
Driving with Gwyneth was like playing roulette. You just knew sooner or later you were going to lose. She got distracted and rolled through stop signs, forgot to check oncoming traffic, and didn’t notice red lights sometimes until I pointed them out, usually by yelling Jesus Christ! and grabbing for the dash.
She was in hysterics from the fact that we’d rolled right past a cop at a stop sign, blithely disregarding the fact that it wasn’t our turn to go. The cop hadn’t even glanced or flicked his lights. He’d just been sitting there.
I was in hysterics because we’d come this close to getting pasted by a huge red Escalade. On my side, of course. Because nothing would ever happen to Miss Luckypants. But I just went along, laughing. At least hanging out with her was never boring, not since second grade when she fell out of the monkey bars onto me. And when I spent the night in her parents’ glass-and-white-stucco mansion, sometimes I would close my eyes and imagine it was me who lived here and someone else who just visited all the time.
Gwyn dropped her bookbag on a stool at the breakfast bar and swiped her hand back through her hair. “Hi, Marisa.” She tried to put on a serious face and failed miserably.
“Ola, Marisa.” I waved, hitching my bag up on my shoulder.
She sniffed at both of us, but opened up the fridge door. In under a minute there was a plate of sugar cookies and two big glasses of milk. Like magic. Round-faced, round-shouldered, and round-eyed, she wore a black dress that seemed to be a uniform. A clean, starched white apron never had the slightest stain.
I took a sugar cookie. She gave me her usual tight smile, one that didn’t reach her solemn dark eyes.
Our laughter drained away. Gwyneth dropped down on a stool, and Marisa pushed the plate a little closer to me. I took a gulp of milk, and my stomach eased up a bit.
“Rolled right past him,” Gwyn giggled, and then we were off and running again.
It took a long time for the giggles to fade, especially with Marisa restocking the sugar cookies and pouring more milk. “So what did Mitzi want? Other than to invite you to the shindig of the week.” I even managed to say it casually.
“Oh, just stuff. You know she doesn’t exist unless everyone around her is adoring her. It’s just sick the way they all stand around and valley each other.”
Yeah. It is. “You sure you want to go to this party?” With me was what I meant, and Gwyn gave me a bright little sidelong glance. She looked so healthy, the roses in her cheeks blooming. I’d torn all the pins out of my hair and I felt greasy. The uniform didn’t help.
“You can borrow my black silk shirt.” She wasn’t quite wheedling. But that black silk was her baby. She hardly ever wore it.
“Nah. You can just drop me off at my house. I don’t want to go.”
“You want to go to the Bleu again. The boring old Bleu.”
That’s where you wanted to go five minutes before Mitzi descended from on high to invite you. “No, I’ve got homework.”
“Please. It only ever takes you five minutes to do your homework. I’m driving, you’re coming with me. You have to. I can’t go deal with those squealing idiots all on my own.”
Why go, then? But I gave in. Oh, I played like I wasn’t going for a while, until she got irritated and threw a cookie at me. Marisa sighed and whisked the plate away. I finished my milk and picked the cookie up. I didn’t eat it though. I’ve got some pride.
But I did say, “Okay, fine. I’ll go. Jesus.”
Which made Gwyn all sunny again. She’s always like that when she gets her way.
Some guy’s house, up in the Hills. There was a keg, thumping music, and a lot of whooping going on. Someone’s parents were away—I think the ratfaced guy in the corner taking shots with a bunch of pimpled jocks was the host, but I never found out for sure. It was a warm night, the winds just starting up. Full moon like a big wheel of boiled cheese coming up over the coast, rising above the broken pleats of the Hills. It was a nice view, through whole walls of glass. As soon as we got there Gwyn went for a beer and I was left all by myself near the front door, staring at groups of kids I didn’t know.
I saw Mitzi in the corner, and she perked up when she saw me. When I say perked up I mean swelled up like a frog preparing to spit poison, and I suddenly got a very bad feeling about this.
The bad feeling lasted. I found Gwyn in the kitchen, her golden head together with Trisha Brent’s. They were giggling over something, and I began to feel a little lightheaded. There had to be a hundred people in here. One kid started barfing in the pool just as I passed the wide-open French doors out to the patio. I peered out, the madrona trees down the hill moving gently as the wind poured past me.
It felt good. I wanted to step outside, but the kid horking into the pool kind of destroyed the mood. I stood there, hanging onto one edge of the open door, and someone got a little too close.
When I looked up, it was to see Scott Holder.
Half the girls at St. Crispin’s were in love
with him. Blue eyes. Blond floppy emo-boy haircut. Plays soccer and goes to Ignatius Academy, which is the closest thing to a sister school we’ve got. The end-of-the-year dances put Iggies and Crispies together, with the staff of both watching like hawks. Guess they don’t want any of the Catholic escaping.
He was saying something, those chiseled lips moving. I stared at him. He was still in the prep outfit Ignatius makes the boys wear, though he’d ditched the jacket and unbuttoned the shirt. The necklace—a single canine tooth on a hemp cord, its top wrapped with gold wire—was definitely not regulation. He grinned at me, showing those white white teeth.
“What?” I had to yell through the music.
He said my name. “Right? You go to Crispy.”
I nodded. What the hell do you want?
“Want to go outside?” He was too tan and perfect to be real. For a second I actually thought he was asking me to go outside with him, and a weird little double-track fantasy popped up inside my head. It was Scott Holder picking me up from St. Crispin’s in his maroon Volvo, me throwing my bookbag in the back seat and getting in, and Mitzi and her pals watching enviously from the sidelines.
Then I woke up to reality, looked over his shoulder, and saw Mitzi and Gwyn, standing really close together. Mitzi looked like the cat that had swallowed the canary, and Gwyn’s mouth was a round O. They were staring right at me, and I recognized my only friend’s expression.
It was the same way she looked on April Fool’s Day. Gwyn doesn’t have much in the way of subtlety. Mitzi whispered something to her, cupping her hand and rolling her pretty, avid, gum-ball-blue eyes. And Scott’s smile was beginning to look like an inverted V because his eyebrows had gone up.
He looked really sure that I would follow him out the door onto the patio, where the kid throwing up had subsided into a gurgle and a bunch of laughter echoed around him.
Everything fell into place behind my eyes. It’s the sort of thing that happens every day in schools across America. Someone makes a choice and hangs someone else out to dry.
I pushed past Scott, hitting him hard with my shoulder. He swayed aside. I plunged through the crowd and my stomach started revolving. I think I heard Gwyneth call my name once or twice, but I ignored it. The living room was a mass of kids all hopping around to some hip-hop anthem. I got jabbed with sweaty elbows and knocked around until I made it through to the foyer. Pot smoke hazed the air.
Normally Gwyn and I would’ve found a spot to sit and watch, sharing a beer or a joint and making snarky comments about every idiot in the room. But this time I slipped out through the front door and down the wide palatial steps.
The winds had arrived. They smelled dry and burning, but not as burning as the tears flooding my eyes. They splashed on black silk, and I made up my mind not to give the stupid shirt back.
The party had spilled out the front door. Groups of kids were standing around laughing. A line of shiny new cars stretched around the circular driveway and poured down the hill. I kept walking, my Mary Janes slapping the pavement. The roads up here were twisty but had shoulders and ditches, the madrona whispering and moving on either side. Stars of light were houses up and down the hill, none of the neighbors too close to make a fuss.
I had to walk for a while before I reached the little red Miata. Gwyn had left her door unlocked, so I could pop the trunk and get my bookbag and blazer. If I remembered rightly, down at the end of the hill was a crossroads and a higher-end Circle K, in case anyone ran out of booze or Twinkies up here in the rich section of town.
It was gonna be a long walk. The wind whispered and chortled.
Gwyneth yelled my name. It was faint and faraway, like she was standing on a train platform and I was pulling away.
I turned around, hitched my regulation bookbag up on my shoulder, and started walking.
There wasn’t a cab, but there was a bus going downtown. I climbed on, swiped my pass, and sat right behind the driver. That’s the safest place at night, especially if you’re crying. I had to dig in my schoolbag for anything that might possibly be called tissues, found nothing, and ended up wiping at my face with my white school shirt. I had to do the laundry anyway.
It took a solid hour, though the bus only paused at one stop for no discernable reason. I could have been back at the party, necking with Scott Holder and making an idiot of myself. Or maybe they had something else planned. Who knew?
We dropped down into the valley, wound through one of the industrial districts, and ended up at the edge of downtown.
As a matter of fact, I pulled the stop cord before I thought about it, and climbed out in front of the Bleu. It was early yet in the night, only a few minutes after ten, and the all-ages club that was our sad excuse for party central was lit up like a Christmas tree. There was a gaggle of kids out front, some smoking, some just leaning against the wall and trying to look tough. Lots of eyeliner, lots of ratted-out hair, girls that weren’t Crispies in tartan skirts and platform Mary Janes. The goths had taken over the club bigtime tonight.
I paid two dollars in dimes and nickels, got a fluorescent hand stamp. I plunged into the air-conditioned darkness flashing with strobe lights and thumping bass. My bookbag went to the check counter. I stuffed the tab in the little hidden pocket of my skirt and hit the dancefloor. They were playing some industrial trash, but it had a beat and the music shook me out of myself. Everyone was sweating despite the air-conditioning, and the hot salt water on my cheeks was touched with cool little puffs of evaporation.
When you’re dancing, time disappears. Everything goes away. It’s like being a drop of water in a body-temperature ocean, all the rough edges smoothed. When the crowd presses close and the sweat rises on the back of your neck, when you’re jumping or waving your arms and there’s the soft pressure of bodies against you, it’s like not being lonely again ever.
I bumped against him four or five times before I realized he was dancing with me. A shock of dark curling hair, a white shirt, threadbare designer jeans and boots. He looked about seventeen, dark eyes and high cheekbones. The music welled up in crashing beats, he leaned in, and I smelled peppermints and the clean healthiness of a boy. It wasn’t like Scott Holder’s expensive cologne. It was something else. My pulse spiked and I whirled away, but the floor was packed too tightly. He was behind me, his arms sliding around me, and the tears came in a hot gush. I leaned back into the anonymous arms for at least two songs. We were a still point and the rest of the dancefloor whirled around us, a kaleidoscope of eyes and lips and kids dressed up and painted.
A chunk of the crowd broke, and I lunged for freedom. The arms fell away and I made it past the bar (only soda and overpriced water—all-ages means no fun) and through the stiles out onto the street where the wind was still blowing. Stopped, tipped my face up, my cheeks drying and my hair lifting. Kids came out behind me—it was about time for a smoke break, and they were all shouting and laughing. I swayed back and forth as they bumped me, and waited for the bouncer to yell at me not to block the door.
“Hey,” someone said. Right in my ear.
I flinched. The bouncer, a thick pseudo-military guy who probably couldn’t get a job at a real club, yelled. But not at me. I opened my eyes and looked up, and it was him.
If he’d been too pretty, I wouldn’t have even paused. But he looked almost normal. Even the jeans could have been a thrift-store find. He was looking at me funny. A vertical line between his eyebrows, his mouth a little tense.
I swiped angrily at my cheeks. My feet hurt, and I’d wasted two bucks on this. Why? “Hey.”
“Johnny.” He stuck his hand out. “Hi.”
I looked at his hand, up at him, and Scott Holder’s blue-eyed smile, so full of itself, drifted through my head. But I shook his hand. “Hi.” His skin was warm and a different texture, not sweaty like mine. I pulled away after one limp shake. My bare calves tingled under the wind pouring up the street and rubbing against the edges of buildings like a dry cat.
“Mystery lady.”
His eyes passed down me once, took in the silk and the skirt and the white socks and the Mary Janes. “I’ve seen you here before. With that blonde girl.”
“She’s not here tonight,” I said immediately. He’d just struck out.
“Good. It’s hard to talk to girls when they’re with each other. You guys do it on purpose.” He grinned slightly, the tips of his teeth peeking out. “You want a cigarette?”
I stared at him. My eyes were hot and grainy, and my entire face felt flushed and blotchy. “No thanks.”
“Good. Let’s dance some more, huh? It’s early.” He hunched his shoulders, sticking his hands in his pockets. His hair was like mine, only curls instead of frizz. He looked very sure. And there was something wrong.
It wasn’t that he wasn’t attractive, because he was. He just looked so sure. You never get a teenage boy who looks that certain about everything. If they do it’s a front.
But he looked … it was weird. I couldn’t figure it out and didn’t want to stare at him. “I’ve got to go.”
“You just got here.”
How the hell do you know? I shrugged, rubbed one Mary Jane against the back of my sock, polishing it. My ankles hurt; I’d walked a long way down the hill to the bus stop. I was going to have blisters.
“Come on. Say yes.” He didn’t grin now. Instead, he looked serious. Very serious. His eyes had gone deep. “We have to stick together, you and me.”
Say what? I don’t even know you, kid. “Why’s that?”
“Because otherwise they’ll eat us alive. Let’s dance.” He offered his hand again, palm-up.
And I suppose it was true. And I’d paid my two bucks. And he didn’t smile, just looked at me as if this was serious business and I was expected to know it. The wind just made its low rasping noise.
