Tangled

by Carolyn Mackler

Shasta began fiddling with her lighter and dropped it onto the deck. As she leaned over to pick it up, I noticed she was wearing a thong. Black and silky. Very hot. When she sat up again, she caught me looking. I must have flushed because as she slid back into her chair she grinned at me.

  I smiled back at her. For a second, we looked each other straight in the eyes. But then there was a piercing cry from inside the house and Dewey shouted, “Mama!”

  “Shoot.” Shasta stubbed out her cigarette. “I better go. He gets loud quickly.”

  “That’s cool.” I drained the last of my beer.

  “Listen,” Shasta said, hiking up her jeans. “Dewey goes to bed around eight. Feel free to come back after that.”

  I nodded. “Maybe I will.”

  As I started down the deck, Shasta called out, “Watch out for that board.”

  Then she waved and headed into the house.

  ten

  Around nine, as Pauline and Bill were watching TV, I went upstairs and showered and shaved. I couldn’t stop thinking about going to Shasta’s. I wondered if she’d still have that thong on. I thought about her nipples under her shirt and what it’d be like to get my hands on them, maybe even my mouth. I’d never been with someone in her twenties, and I’d definitely never been with anyone who’d had a baby. I wondered if her body would feel different than a high school girl’s, fuller or something.

  At nine thirty, I could hear my grandparents pass my room on their way to the bathroom. It’s the same every night. They brush their teeth together. Then the toilet flushes twice. Then their bedroom door closes.

  I waited on my bed for a few minutes before heading to the door. But just as I gripped the knob, this thought flashed through my brain: I don’t want to be an asshole right now.

  There was something Shasta said earlier, Don’t let me get too deep or anything. It reminded me of that girl, Jena, who I hooked up with at the resort last month, the one who found the suicide note. One night, when Jena and I were hanging out, she quoted a song to me about going into shallow water before you get too deep. I was thinking about Jena tonight and I kept getting a mental picture of her face the morning after I ditched her for her hot friend. I’d been heading over to the breakfast area when I spotted Jena hunched over a bowl of cereal. She looked like hell, her face blotchy, her eyes puffy. I didn’t want her to tell me off, so I grabbed a banana and trucked down to the beach. But now, as I pictured her face, I realized: I made that girl cry until her eyes were swollen. And thinking about that, it made me feel like shit.

  I let go of the knob and sank onto the bed again. I thought about that loose board on Shasta’s deck and how she was on the verge of tears when she talked about it. I thought about how Shasta is a real person with real problems, and I’m just some stupid kid who got suspended from school for fighting.

  Let’s say I went over to Shasta’s tonight and we had sex. My mom is picking me up tomorrow around lunchtime. I’m heading back to Brockport and I’ll never talk to Shasta again. But she’ll still be here, and she’ll still be alone to handle everything, to be a single mom, to worry if she’s going to run out of money. And maybe she wouldn’t think about me again, either. But maybe I’d become one more thing that’d stress her out, one more thing to make her smoke and drink cold coffee.

  Coach is always telling us we have to learn when to walk. I know he’s talking about partying and fighting guys like Timon Birch. But right now, this thing with Shasta feels like one of those situations.

  I stripped down to my T-shirt and boxers, switched off the light, and climbed into bed. I lay there for a while, my mind racing. I’m not saying it was easy, especially since I’d already gotten my head around the fact that I was going to hook up with Shasta. Those tits. That thong. Peeling off that thong. Mmmmm. But instead of pulling my jeans on and trekking down the lower road, I reached inside my boxers and took care of things myself. Can’t hurt anyone that way. And, man, it was good.

  The next morning, my grandparents went into Ithaca to do their recycling. After that, they told me, they were going to the farmer’s market to get something healthy for my farewell lunch.

  “Your mom looks like she needs all the vegetables she can get,” Pauline said, collecting her canvas bags.

  As soon as they were gone, I walked out to the shed behind the house. I found a spare two-by-four, a hammer, nails, a measuring tape, and a saw. I loaded everything into a metal toolbox, tossed in some sandpaper, and headed down the stairs toward Shasta’s cabin.

  Shasta was on the deck, drinking coffee and writing in a notebook. Dewey was toddling at her feet, pushing around a fire engine. When I reached the stairs, Shasta looked up.

  “Hey,” she said, waving. “What happened to you last night?”

  “Sorry. I just didn’t want to…” I trailed off.

  Shasta studied my face for a second and then gestured to the toolbox. “What’s going on with that?”

  “I thought I could try to fix that board,” I said, “if you still want.”

  “Seriously?”

  I nodded. “No guarantees. I’m heading home in a few hours, but I can try until then.”

  “Help yourself,” Shasta said.

  I crouched down on the deck and got to work ripping out the rotten board. After a few minutes, Shasta scooped up Dewey and carried him inside. I’m not a carpenter, but my dad is a do-it-yourself guy and he’s shown me some things. I spent the next half hour measuring the spot where the new board was going to go, sawing the replacement, sanding the edges so it wouldn’t be splintery.

  I was just nailing in the new board when Shasta came out on the deck.

  “Where’s Dewey?” I asked.

  “He’s watching a Thomas movie. My one major Mommy indulgence.” She stood above me, staring down at my work. “I can’t believe it.”

  “No big deal,” I said.

  I hammered in the last two nails. I was shaking the board to make sure it was secure when Shasta said, “What were you going to say before?”

  “About what?”

  “About why you didn’t come over last night.”

  “I just…” I set down my hammer and looked up at her. “I can be an asshole sometimes and I didn’t want to be one with you.”

  Shasta rested her hands on my shoulders for a little while and then headed back inside. As I cleaned up the scraps of wood, I could still feel where she’d touched me.

  After a few minutes, I loaded up the toolbox and walked over to the sliding glass door, which was partway open. Shasta was sitting on the rocking chair, Dewey on her lap. He was drinking from a sippy cup and she was reading him a book about trains.

  “All done?” she asked, looking up.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Thank you so much. That was the nicest thing to do.”

  “It really wasn’t a big deal.”

  Shasta and I stared at each other, neither of us saying anything. Finally, Dewey began to wiggle in her lap and point his finger down at the page.

  “One second, baby,” Shasta said, tousling his hair. Then she glanced back at me. “I just wanted to say that I don’t think you’re an—” She mouthed asshole over Dewey’s head.

  “You don’t know me very well,” I said.

  Shasta shook her head. “I still don’t think you are. I mean, we all have our moments, but don’t let them define you.”

  “I…” I started. This lump was forming in my throat. Goddammit. I had to split from here before I broke down.

  “I better go,” I said quickly, nodding my head in the direction of the road.

  “Okay, well, see you around. And thanks again.”

  “Yeah, see you around.”

  I raced across the deck. As soon as I was off the steps, I could feel the tears coming on. I jogged down the road. When I reached the ravine, I chucked the toolbox and sprinted into the woods. I ran fast, hurdling over stumps, stumbling through holes.

  I must have been a quarter mile into the woods when I let myself collap
se onto the moss. I was breathing hard and my face was wet. As I lay on my back, staring up at the towering trees, I thought about how I didn’t cry when Natalie died.

  But now I was laying on the ground, twigs probing into my shoulder blades, and I was crying because Natalie and I were a shitty couple. She was most likely cheating on me. I wasn’t a great boyfriend to her. If she hadn’t died, we would have broken up sooner or later and we both would have moved onto better things and someday, in five years, we would have bumped into each other at a bar and joked about how we were such a shitty couple.

  As it is, she’s buried in Lakeview Cemetery and I’ve been left behind to figure it out, wonder whether I could have prevented her from dying.

  Well, I couldn’t. Because sometimes horrible things just happen and you have to live with the fact that there’s no explanation. It is what it is. End of story.

  I stayed there for a while longer, breathing in the damp leaves. And then, finally, I stood up, brushed the dirt off the back of my legs, and started out of the woods.

  JUNE:

  SKYE’S STORY

  one

  This afternoon, I asked my mom if I could give her a blowjob. She shrugged and said sure. I pressed my lips together and glanced at her crotch. We both paused for a moment. Then she tapped her script against the edge of the table, smiled at me, and said, “I think you’ve got it.”

  We’d been through the scene fifteen times already, a few where I gazed romantically into my mom’s eyes and one where I flipped my hair bitchily over my shoulders. In the end, we decided this character would be all about the crotch.

  It was a racy week for auditions. Earlier today, when my mom read the breakdowns that Janet emailed us, she called my manager and said, “Skye’s a prostitute for one night and now everyone thinks she’s a slut?”

  A week ago, the independent movie I shot last fall had its television debut. I played a runaway teen who trades sex for crack. It aired on Wednesday evening in sixteen million homes and, all of a sudden, everyone and their doorman was freaking out about how they’d seen me on TV. I’d been stopped once in Starbucks, twice at the gym, and once when I was buying moisturizer at L’Occitane. People seemed surprised I wasn’t wearing stiletto boots and skintight jeans. Even so, they asked for my autograph and pulled out their phones to take pictures with me.

  And then, first thing this morning, Janet told us to clear the decks, that I’ve got two auditions tomorrow. Her assistant at Talent, Inc., emailed us the breakdowns and the sides. That’s what they call scenes in the business. I was taking a shower, so my mom printed them out. I wrapped up in a towel and we read the new sides as we sat on the edge of my bed, my wet curls dripping onto my shoulders. The first audition was for a show where I’d play a boarding-school slut who goes down on every guy in New England. The other is a full-length feature by an up-and-coming writer-director. I’d heard about Pete Fesenden on the industry blogs. Everyone was saying his short swept Sundance this year. Janet told us I’d be auditioning for a lead role in his film, a fifteen-year-old girl who is having an affair with a business associate of her father’s.

  “Well,” my mom said, rubbing my back dry with a towel.

  Then she picked up the phone and called Janet. As I got dressed, they launched into this conversation about my slut potential and whether, now that I’m seventeen, it’d work to my advantage to turn up the sex appeal. I’ve been auditioning since I was ten and, other than the crackhead, I’ve always booked wholesome parts. I’m half-Brazilian and half-Caucasian, so I tend to get cast as the adorably multicultural girl-next-door. Or I guess I should say used to get cast. I’ve had a dry run for a while now, haven’t gotten a serious nibble since last Thanksgiving.

  I was pulling on some yoga pants when my mom motioned for me to grab my phone, that she was going to conference me in. We sat next to each other, listening, as Janet reassured us that the slut thing wasn’t a trend, that she was most likely going to line up a squeaky clean audition next week. As she talked, my mom and I were nodding. We both know we can trust Janet. We’ve been working with Talent, Inc., since the beginning, when I was plucked out of my ballet class and invited to model.

  “Skye, honey,” Janet said in her hoarse smoker’s voice, “these are some meaty roles.”

  My mom looked over at me. “What do you think?”

  “They’re mature,” Janet said. “They have huge potential.” She paused before adding, “It may be just what you need, a change of pace from the usual.”

  Neither my mom nor Janet said anything, but I knew they were thinking the same thing, that maybe this would get me out of my rut, keep my career from coming to a screeching halt.

  “But are you comfortable doing them?” my mom finally asked.

  “They sound interesting,” I said. “Especially the Pete Fesenden film.”

  “What about you, Luce?” Janet asked my mom. “Are you okay with it?”

  “If Skye’s okay, I’m okay,” my mom said.

  “Great!” Janet said. “So call me with questions. I’m around all day. And as I said, I think this is just what Skye needs.”

  After we hung up, I rubbed moisturizer onto my hands and glanced out the window. It was almost nine. I could see a few younger kids scurrying across Central Park West in their plaid uniforms. It was weird to think that today was a school day, that everyone was in class at Bentley Prep. I’d been there since kindergarten, but I left in April. If I’d stayed, I would have gone to the prom last Saturday. As it is, I spent the weekend at our house in Sag Harbor, where I ran on the beach and watched movies and didn’t talk to a soul except my mom. If I don’t book any big jobs, I’m set to take the GED exam in August, which will land me with the equivalent of a high-school diploma.

  “Which one do you want to start with?” My mom set down her phone and took a squirt of my hand cream. “The boarding-school show or the film?”

  “How about the boarding-school blowjob one,” I said drily. “We can work up to real sex by afternoon.”

  My mom groaned. We always practice my lines together. Sometimes we take time to discuss the character. Other times we dive right in and then she’ll give me notes later. After seven years of auditioning, we’ve done practically everything. She’s confessed that she’s addicted to pain medication. I’ve told her to fuck herself. She’s said she has two months left to live. This winter, we had two scandalous scenes in the same night, one where I was going to murder her and one where she was going to murder me. After that, she poured us some chardonnay and we collapsed onto the couch, decompressing.

  Back when I was at Bentley, my mom and I had this joke that we did sides before homework. It was sort of true. Sometimes, I’d be on my way home from school when my mom would call and say, “Janet got us an audition tomorrow morning.” I’d jump in a cab and we’d spend the next few hours practicing. It’s not like my mom let me slack off at school, but she never nagged me. Granted, half the time I’d be scribbling my homework assignments in the waiting room of a casting office.

  “Living room in five minutes?” my mom asked, collecting the pages and heading across my room.

  “Sounds good,” I said.

  My mom reached the doorway and then turned and studied my T-shirt and yoga pants. “If you’re going to be a slut, you should dress more provocatively. Something to get you in the mood. How about that lacy camisole? And remember those red shorts you wore to the prostitute audition last fall?”

  I grinned at my mom. “You so want my body.”

  My mom rolled her eyes and headed down the hall. As soon as she was gone, I turned toward my closet and let the smile slide off my face. You so want my body. That’s something I would have said last year, and I genuinely would have laughed about it. Now I was reciting the lines, grinning the grins, but I wasn’t feeling it.

  What other choice did I have? I thought as I pulled off my T-shirt and wriggled into a slinky black camisole, adjusting my boobs so the right amount of cleavage was exposed. Most days
it seemed like if I stopped going through the motions I was as good as dead.

  In case it’s not obvious, I’m one of those rich, privileged, New York City kids that the rest of the world loves to hate. I had an Italian tutor when I was two. Etiquette classes at four. Broadway dancers performing for my birthday parties and, later, professional aestheticians on hand at my sleepovers. I’ve always had the right clothes and the right shoes and the right friends and, basically, whatever I wanted five minutes before I wanted it.

  I’m the perfect storm of overindulged offspring. I’m an only child. My mom lives off a trust fund from her oil tycoon grandfather so we have all the money in the world and she doesn’t have to work to get it. And there’s no boyfriend or husband to siphon away her cash or attention.

  My dad died before I was born. From what my mom has told me, it was this tragically magnificent love story. His name was Andres Oliveira and he was an artist from Brazil. He came to New York for a year on a painting fellowship and my mom met him at his gallery opening. They fell in love and she got pregnant but then he went back to São Paulo and died in a motorcycle accident. All we have now are some framed photos of him around the apartment, and one of his paintings hangs in our foyer. We don’t talk about him much, but sometimes I catch my mom looking at the painting and I imagine she’s thinking about him, wondering how things would have been different if he’d lived. As it is, I don’t know a word of Portuguese. And my only relatives are my mom’s family. They live in Texas and hate the East Coast, so we have to go out there if we want to see them.

  That’s probably why my mom and I are so close. My acting made us even closer. For the past seven years, she’s accompanied me to everything—auditions, classes, headshots, taping, more classes, more auditions, another round of headshots. In a way, acting takes over your life. All through junior high and high school, when my friends were blowing off their afternoons in Central Park, I was practicing lines, auditioning, being rejected ninety-nine percent of the time, occasionally booking a role. When I wasn’t auditioning or working, I was taking singing lessons. I was doing tap and ballet and Pilates. And then, every Saturday morning, I had my on-camera class. I did that for three years, at the Ron Clarkson Studio in the west twenties. Ron’s a well-known acting coach. Now I only see him one-on-one if I have a complex audition. At first, Ron had me in the teen class, then he graduated me to the adult one. Basically, it was a bunch of us sitting in a circle. We’d do scenes in front of a camcorder, and then we’d watch the footage and Ron would give us notes, how to improve our skills and how to use the camera to maximize our looks. My mom used to wait for me at a restaurant across the street from the studio. When I met her afterward, I’d be so wiped from the emotion I’d just want to sleep. Other times I’d cry the entire car ride home while she petted my hair and said, “Are you sure you want to do this?”