Dark Rooms

by Lili Anolik

  He shakes her off. “Go where?”

  “To the bathroom.”

  “You’re a big girl. You can use the toilet by yourself.”

  “There’s no lock on the door. I want you to make sure no one walks in.”

  “Hey, Grace,” Ruben says, “Maddie’s looking for someone to watch the door while she goes peeps.” Turning to her: “It is just peeps, right?” Turning back to me: “Can we borrow your bodyguard?”

  Dropping the baby doll act, Maddie says, “Ruben, come on.” She tugs his belt buckle.

  “You are one spun-out little honey, honey,” he tells her. But he lets her drag him across the room. As he passes the kitchen area, he looks back, brings a pinched-together thumb and index finger to his lips: a toking gesture. Mouths the word later to Jamie.

  Jamie gives a lazy smile back. Watching him, I think how his entire body has the attitude of that smile.

  He turns the smile my way. “There’s room for two,” he says, patting the spot next to him on the beanbag chair.

  There isn’t, really, and when I drop down, I end up more on him than the chair. Not that I mind. I mind even less when he doesn’t seem to. And for fifteen minutes at least we sit there, mashed together from hip to shoulder, my right leg twined through his left, tranquilly watching the activity swirling around us, the cliques forming and dissolving, the conversations and flirtations flaring up, abruptly dying down, only to flare up again in a different corner. It’s just a few weeks into the school year, and people are still checking out the new clothes, the new haircuts, the new attitudes and poses and vibes, interested in each other now in a way they won’t be in a month or two.

  Ruben and Maddie return from the bathroom, though not to me and Jamie, settling by the wall with the India-print tapestry on it, fighting every so often but mostly hostile to one another in silence. Ruben eyes the girls, does lip-licky things with his mouth; Maddie eyes him, appears restless and unhappy. A few feet away, Mr. Tierney, besides Shep the only nonstudent present, looking tousled and handsome in jeans and a knit tie, is addressing a trio of sophomores, female, naturally, telling them about a trip he’s planning to take to Nicaragua over Thanksgiving break. Mr. Wallace enters a minute later. Shy-faced, gangly-limbed, his glasses fogged up from the walk over, he approaches the little throng. Mr. Tierney gives no sign of seeing Mr. Wallace but he must have because he shifts the angle of his shoulders a degree or two, subtly barring his friend’s entry. Mr. Wallace, unaware that he’s being snubbed, hangs back, politely waiting for acknowledgment. Waiting and waiting. It starts to become awkward for Mr. Tierney to ignore Mr. Wallace yet he continues to do so. One of the girls, Sophie Plunket, the prettiest of the bunch, turned off by the weirdness or bored by it, drifts away. Mr. Wallace moves into the voided space. Still Mr. Tierney says nothing to him. Finally Mr. Wallace retreats to the kitchen, shaking his head in hurt puzzlement.

  I’m puzzled, too. Mr. Tierney pretending Mr. Wallace—sweet, bumbling, funny-looking Mr. Wallace—is invisible? Why, so he doesn’t have to share the attention? God, what a jerk. I’m about to make this observation to Jamie, but then remember that Jamie seems to be getting along with Mr. Tierney these days.

  I make this observation instead: “Wild party.”

  Jamie looks at me, eyes diffuse in that watery way of someone fighting off a cold, then laughs. “Yeah, really hopping. I can’t even get a sugar high.”

  “That’s not soda you’re drinking?”

  “Seltzer water. Pomegranate flavored.” He wipes his nose with his sleeve before handing me the can.

  I hesitate, worried about catching whatever he has, but only for a second. The imprint of his lips is on the rim. I place my lips over it in a kind of kiss.

  “I’m not even supposed to be here,” he says, as I pass him back the can. “There’s a tournament in Stamford this weekend.”

  “Decided you didn’t feel like making the trek?”

  “No, I made it. Left right after sixth period. Seeded one, out in round one.”

  “Anybody can have an off day.”

  He sighs. “Yeah, that’s true. The tournament was Bronze level—kind of bush-league. There weren’t that many points at stake. Still, though, I’m doing a PG year to get my ranking up, not tank it. And it’s my second first-round loss in the last six months. I’ve already dropped from number 3 in Connecticut to number 5. I haven’t even looked at my national ranking. Too scared to.”

  “The U.S. Junior Open isn’t for a few months, right?”

  “Beginning of December.”

  “So you’ve still got time to get in match-tough shape.”

  He groans. “Just thinking about all the training I need to do makes me tired. Like too tired even to hold my head up.”

  “Give it a break then,” I say, sliding my hand into his hair, dampish with sweat and warm at the roots. He smells clean, though, piney, like the Lightfoot’s soap he uses. He leans his head back so that I’m cradling it with my palm. I start moving my fingers in small concentric circles.

  “That feels good,” he says.

  As I massage his scalp, I gaze down at his face, at the skin on his cheek, stretched tight across the long, curved bone, at the spit glistening on his lower lip, as pillowy as any actress in Hollywood’s. And then, out of the corner of my eye, I see Shep flash two upraised thumbs at him. I jerk my head around. By the time I do, though, Shep’s already back in conversation with Thad Nichols, repeating his junior year because he got mono last fall and missed most of the semester. “Oh God,” I say. “I saw that.”

  Jamie lifts his head from my hand. “Saw what?”

  “The sign Shep just gave you.” I start to laugh, laughing but embarrassed.

  Careful not to look at me, Jamie says, “I didn’t see a sign.”

  “He just thanked you for talking to me. Don’t bother to deny it. Pretty soon he’s going to be paying people to be my friends. That’s the next step, right? Actual money changing hands?”

  Jamie grins feebly. “Think I can get anything out of him now? Snack bar’s open till nine and they’re selling these chocolate chip cookies this year that are, like, out of this world.”

  Glad to change the subject, I say, “You’re hungry?”

  “Vaguely.” He rubs his eye. “By the time I got back from Stamford, Stokes was closed.”

  “There are cookies here. Chocolate chip ones, too.”

  “No, not chocolate chip. Carob chip. Big difference. Shep made them for me.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s trying to reduce the amount of caffeine I consume. Thinks it’ll boost my immune system or some shit.”

  “That’s thoughtful of him.”

  “Yeah, well, I wish he’d be less thoughtful and just make me regular chocolate chip cookies. I mean, if he’s going to make me cookies.” Jamie heaves himself up out of the beanbag chair. “I’m going to get another seltzer. You want?”

  “That’d be great. Thanks.”

  He nods and walks over to the picnic table, hovering above the two platters. I hope he’ll take a cookie, stash it in a napkin or his pocket, just to be polite, but he doesn’t. Even though I’m annoyed at Shep for humiliating me a minute ago, I feel sorry for him now. Then I feel annoyed again. How can he be so dumb? Doesn’t he understand that Jamie and Ruben and Maddie—Nica, too, when she was alive—don’t respond well to kindness? That they see it as weakness, something to be made fun of or exploited? It took me a while but I finally learned that lesson. Why hasn’t he? He’s around them enough. They like it best if you treat them the way they treat each other: dryly, derisively, cuttingly. That’s how they know you’re one of them.

  I watch Jamie throw away the old seltzer can, pop the top on a fresh one. A bit of spray gets on his hand and he wipes it on the seat of his pants. Then, to my surprise, he turns to his right and strikes up a conversation with Polly Abbot, a senior with a rabbity face. To her surprise, too, it looks like. And delight. It’s to her even greater surprise and delight when
, moments later, he grabs her by the wrist, leads her to the closed door off the hallway—Shep’s bedroom. Almost before I’ve registered what’s happening, Jamie’s opening the door, hustling Polly inside, shutting it again.

  I stare for a long time at the blank-faced plank of wood, blinking in shock. Finally, I look away, and, as I do, I see Shep. His eyes are turned toward the same plank, his expression one of confusion. Of anger, as well, if I’m not mistaken. And why shouldn’t he be angry? Jamie’s screwing around at a school function, not even being subtle about it, and on Shep’s personal sheets? How incredibly disrespectful. For a second I wonder if there’ll be a scene, if Shep will march into his bedroom, toss Jamie and Polly out. But then Thad says his name a couple of times, and when he smiles at Thad, shaking his head at his rudeness, I realize, with a little stirring of disappointment, that he’s letting it go. Mr. Nice Guy.

  After a minute, I haul myself out of the chair, head to the kitchen. That can of pomegranate seltzer water’s not going to get itself.

  Fifteen minutes later, Shep’s made his pitch for the Outdoor Club, wheeled the TV and DVD player on loan from the A/V Department, delivered by me that very afternoon, to the center of the room, dimmed the lights. I’m standing at the rear with Damon. Maddie’s at the front, sitting to Ruben’s left, the space to his right conspicuously vacant. As the strains of the movie’s acoustic theme song begin to swell, I watch her lean her head into his, whisper. He looks annoyed. She whispers again. This time he nods, though not happily, and she detaches herself from his side. Threading through the bodies on the floor, she slips out the door at the back, leaving her bag behind. I count silently to thirty, then follow.

  I step into Shep’s backyard. Empty. I quickly walk around front. Maddie’s not on the little porch, or on the path leading to Endicott either. For a minute, I stand perfectly still, resisting looking to my left. Then, slowly, I turn. Shep’s cottage borders the graveyard, haunted grounds for me and ones I’ve avoided since Nica’s body was found there by Graydon Tullis those many months ago. With a sinking heart, I move to the edge. Once I reach it, I stop, change my trajectory, proceed lengthwise along it, trying to peer into the dimness, past the line of spindly gray trees that separates city property from school. I see no sign of Maddie. Could she have gone back to her dorm, told Ruben to bring her bag by later? Is that why he seemed so put out? Because she was asking him to assume an obligation, saddling him with a task? With relief I decide that’s what must have happened. And I’m about to head over to Archibald—familiar and snug, full of noisy girls and food smells and posters of actors and musicians and European soccer stars in underwear advertisements, lights blazing in every window—when something catches my eye, a speck of brightness in the dirt. I crouch down for a better look: a hairpin.

  I pick it up. Recognizing what I have to do, I straighten and breathe deeply. Then I lift my leg, take my first step into the graveyard. The trees immediately close behind me. Inside it’s cool and silent, smelling of sap and freshly dug soil. Above my head the sky is bright, the moon three-quarters full, far-off galaxies glistening and glittering. Walking, I scrutinize the scrap of metal in my hand, like direction isn’t something I need to think about.

  And, as it turns out, it isn’t. I come to a slight swelling in the ground, a little hillock, and when I reach the top of it, I see Maddie. She’s leaning against the trunk of an oak, the sole tree in the graveyard, ancient and enormous. A cigarette’s between her fingers, and her head’s bowed so that I can only make out the upper portion of her face. She’s no longer wearing the pink cardigan, is down to a T-shirt, as tight as her jeans, both drawing attention to the compactness of her build: her small breasts, as round and hard as fists, her slim waist and long legs, her narrow hips. Her hair is pulled into that taut bun, so that from my angle it appears cut short and slicked back.

  She takes a final drag on her cigarette, flicks away the butt with her thumb and forefinger, her movements graceful without being feminine. Her face has turned, and all at once I can see it in full. I’m surprised at how soft it is—soft and so, so sad—her deep melancholy evident in the set of her jaw, the cast of her eyes, the slant of her lips, pale and unlipsticked now.

  I start to approach her. I keep thinking she’ll see me, or if not see me, hear me. But her eyes stay down, and my heels are sinking noiselessly into the earth as I weave through the headstones. And then, when I’m only a foot or so away, I step on a twig, snapping it in two.

  She looks up, startled. There’s a sharp intake of breath, but no words. And then she says, “Grace?” Not a statement, a question—a desperate one.

  With a shock I realize that she thinks I’m Nica. I open my mouth to say, yes, of course I’m Grace, apologize for spooking her, maybe even make a joke, but the words die on my lips. She’s staring at me, rapt, her face strangely beautiful in the shadowy half-light, the cropped-looking boy’s hair flattering it, showing off her wide forehead and high cheekbones, her nose appearing strong rather than big. As long as she looks at me, I tell myself, I’ll return the look, no harm in that. Her eyes drop to my feet and ankles, then travel upward, lingering on my thighs, my breasts, my throat, coming back, at last, to my face. When they do, I tighten my gaze suddenly, pinning hers underneath mine, rendering it immobile, helpless. Then I shake my head, turning it once to the right, once to the left, centering it. I smile. She starts, very lightly, to tremble.

  I take another step toward her. I’m so close now that I can see the thin bands of blue around her dilated pupils, the pulse beating on the underside of her jaw. Her back is pressed against the tree trunk, her lips parted. I am me, I think, and I am not me. Leaning forward, I slide my index finger under her shirt, pressing it against her sternum. Then, with murderous slowness, I trace my finger down her torso, down, down, down, until I reach her belly button, circling the rim once, twice, dipping inside. The muscles in her abdomen contract.

  “You’ve been avoiding me, Maddie,” I say. Our faces are almost touching. I can hear her breath as clearly as I can hear my own, feel the damp heat of it. Let her feel the damp heat of mine.

  “What do you want?” she says.

  “Information.”

  “What kind of information?”

  “How long were you and my sister together?”

  When she doesn’t answer right away, I take my finger out of her navel, start moving it down again, a quarter of an inch at a time. “How long?” I repeat.

  Her breath is coming fast and shallow, a pant. “Two weeks. A little less.”

  “When?”

  “Right after she and Jamie split. She started it, she ended it.”

  “Why did she end it?”

  Maddie swallows, shifting her mouth nearer mine. “She found someone she liked better. A guy.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I thought she told you everything.”

  “Before we were together she did. Not after.”

  “Why did she break up with Jamie?”

  Maddie’s face goes white. “I can’t tell you that.”

  “But you know,” I say. And when she doesn’t deny it, “Then you can tell me.”

  She tries to get up off the trunk, but there’s no strength in her movements, and when I apply the slightest pressure to her with my index finger, she falls back. “I can’t tell you that,” she says again, miserably. “Nica wouldn’t want me to.”

  “Nica’s dead.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It’ll stay between us.”

  “I can’t.”

  My finger has now made its way to the top of her very low-cut jeans, is resting on the warm skin there. I ease it—only just—into her waistband. She lets out a soft moan, and her whole body starts to shake. I bring my face in even closer to hers, brushing my mouth against her jawbone. “Tell me,” I say, my whisper slipping inside her ear, hot and wet, uncoiling like a tongue.

  She says something back, but her voice is so faint i
t takes a second for my brain to register what. I lean back. “What did you say?” Now I’m the one who’s starting to shake.

  “I said, ask your mom.” Her voice is strong, all of a sudden. Hard, too. “And it’s the last thing I’m saying to you.”

  “Maddie, I’m—”

  As the word sorry hits the air, she brings the flat of her hand crashing against my cheek. My head snaps to the side. With a sob, she pushes me away and runs off.

  I return to Shep’s cottage half an hour later. The strange sense of unreality has left me. I feel upset by the whole experience, though, frightened at the way it took me over. The credits have just started to roll on The Endless Summer. Damon and I slip out the door without anyone noticing.

  In the car, I tell him about the encounter, what I learned from it if not quite how. “So Nica found out she and my mom had the same boyfriend—hers,” I finish bitterly. “That’s why she broke up with him.”

  “You can’t be sure of that,” Damon says.

  “I can’t be but I am.”

  “You really think that’s something your mom would do?”

  “You mean, do I think it’s in character? Absolutely. She’s ruthless—the Queen of Hearts. You get in her way and it’s off with your head. And you know from Nica that she never shut up about how wonderful Jamie was. I assumed she meant wonderful for Nica, but I should have known better. She kept everything good for herself.”

  Damon’s quiet. Then he says, “But Nica didn’t seem angry at him when she talked about the breakup. If anything, she seemed protective. If Jamie and your mom really were”—he pauses, groping around in his mind trying to get his phrasing right—“hanging out with each other”—he pauses again to sneak a look at me—“why would she have cared about his feelings?”

  “I’m sure Nica blamed Mom. Thought she seduced him. Saw him as her victim, not her partner. It definitely explains why Nica was fighting with Mom so much before she died. And I thought it was because she had cold feet.” I laugh, shake my head. “Jesus, how dumb can you get?”

  “Cold feet over what?”