I shook my head. “I don’t get why guys—why you”—I nudged Graham’s shoulder—“are interested in Jess. Her brain function is nil.”
Graham cupped his hands at his pecs and raised a sly eyebrow. “Really? You can’t think of two gigantic reasons why I’d be interested?”
I stuck two fingers in my throat and gagged.
Viv’s eyes flicked down to her front before she crossed her arms there. “God, when did you become such a skeeze? You used to be my squishy Teddy Graham.”
Harry tipped his head back, laughing. “He’s always been a perv, Viv. Even when he was a chubby little dude who let you call him Teddy Graham and Graham Cracker, he used to talk about jerking it and—” His voice broke away as Graham lunged for him and the car swerved left. Graham tried to cover Harry’s mouth. “And he used to brush up against—” Graham caught Harry’s collar. Harry made a gurgling, hacking noise but righted the car.
Viv’s earrings danced on their silver hooks as she half shrieked, half laughed. “Sit down, Teddy Graham.”
I yanked his elbow and he slid back, all shamefaced grin. “Okay, okay.” His hands went up in surrender. “I used to brush up against girls in line during the seventh grade. I wasn’t a sexual predator. I was twelve. And I wouldn’t do it now.”
“No, now you just study on the bleachers by the pool whenever the girls’ swim team is doing laps,” I said. “Now you drool over Jess.”
“You’ll see, Pendleton.” He leveled a finger at me. “That girl wants me. We’re in the middle of a passionate courtship.”
“Does she have a thing for seventeen-year-old boys who use words like courtship?” I asked.
“This is why girls think we’re weird,” Viv said. “We spend all our time with them.” She motioned to the boys.
“I don’t understand why you think our sophisticated loner status is such a plight, Vivian,” Graham said.
“Don’t lump me in with Graham’s perviness,” Harry told her.
Viv patted him on the shoulder and then said to Graham, “Harry’s basically a monk compared to you.” Graham snorted. “He is. We didn’t even know he was going out with that shy little what’s-her-name from work until he broke it off.”
A stich formed between Viv’s brows as she stared into the dark of the rear window. No one was certain where to go from there. Viv had been furious that Harry had developed a crush on a girl, taken her out twice, and kept it from us. Harry insisted it wasn’t about having a secret. It didn’t work out with her anyway, although he’d never said why.
“May I please get back to the story?” Graham asked, exasperated. “I’m not screwing with you guys. They gassed the cows, but the gas wasn’t fatal. They were paralyzed by it and couldn’t struggle when hoisted up on big hooks to be butchered.” He dragged his finger across his neck. “They would bleed out, mooing.”
At a swell in the road, we had an unobstructed view of the slaughterhouse. Windowless, anonymous, with the atmosphere of all creepy abandoned buildings. Cars were parked haphazardly around it. Our classmates were a shadowy mass at the entrance. My hands were shaking and I slipped one in Graham’s. His fingers folded over mine.
He continued, “This one employee couldn’t stand to see the cows suffer anymore. He planned to burn the place down, stop all the carnage. He thought that once the flames caught, the cows would stampede to freedom and the slaughterhouse would close. So he set the fire and the alarm sounded, but rather than open the gates for the cows to run, someone hit the gas button and all the cows were paralyzed.” Graham paused. Viv’s fingers on the headrest were dappled red and white. “They burned alive.”
“Crap,” Harry said.
Graham spoke, waving our joined hands. “But the fire was extinguished before it finished the cows off. They were burned. Thrashing and beating their skeleton heads on the ground.”
“I’m going to vomit,” Viv said, rolling the window open. We got a strong, hot whiff of ash and death. After sixty years, how did the place still reek of decaying flesh? “This is why I’m a vegetarian,” she muttered, rolling the window back up.
We were quiet for a minute until Harry said, “Cheeseburgers smell much, much better.”
I laughed through my nose, failing to hold it in. Viv said, “You’re becoming as gross as Graham, Harry.”
“Really,” Graham said, “that’s the big insult all of a sudden? You’re as bad/vulgar/pervy/substitute-the-negative-adjective-of-your-choosing as Graham is?”
The car slowed as Harry searched for a parking spot. The smell was suffocating, all hot and heavy, inescapable. I bounced my heels in place and flapped the pages of a paperback I had pulled from my purse to give to Graham, but had forgotten about. I was snapping the cover open and closed when Graham pressed it shut.
Light from outside shone as a bar across his flinty irises. He wore wire-rimmed spectacles that would have appeared boring on a face less complicated than his. “There aren’t actually bovine corpses left in there, Izzie,” he told me softly.
“I know that.”
“Do you?” He tapped my bouncing knee. I dug my heels into the car’s floor.
“You have to read this one next.” I tossed the paperback to him. He turned it over to the front cover.
“If I’m lifting the moratorium on dystopian, you’re going to start reading detective novels again.”
“We’ll see.” I sounded wrong, nervous. He cocked his head. Slumber Fest was not my scene any more than it was Graham’s. Or Harry’s. We didn’t go to our classmates’ house parties or beach ditch days, half because we weren’t invited and half because we had more fun in the barn. We could be ourselves there.
For some reason I wanted to convince Graham I wasn’t as miserable as he suspected. “There’ll be Jell-O shots—I’ve never had one. And it won’t kill us to mingle with the kids we’ve gone to school with forever.”
“Uh-uh,” Harry said. “I’m here on official news blog business. Covering the story. No mingling.”
“Slumber Fest is an adventure,” I said emphatically.
“What I don’t get is why Slumber Fest is at a slaughterhouse,” Harry said.
“Because that’s the tradition. It’s . . . it’s an institution,” Viv told him, her voice high and adamant.
He gave her a look like, But why?
“I don’t think it’s because our classmates like the idea of mass cow homicide,” Graham said. “The slaughterhouse bit of Slumber Fest is irrelevant. The chills are the point. Chills and thrills are like a permission slip to do whatever or whoever you want.” Graham crinkled the corners of his eyes at me.
“There are so many better places,” Harry said. “Like down on the beach.”
“Or the picnic spots on the hills,” I said.
“Or the lighthouse in Berrington,” he answered.
“Or the old pier’s carousel house. Or Ghost Tunnel,” I said.
“Oh, there’ll be ghosts. The spirits of massacred cows will haunt all the meat eaters,” Viv boomed, and cracked up.
I laughed too, though nervously. I wasn’t all hyped up on adrenaline because of chills and thrills. It was our senior year. Soon we’d scatter. We wouldn’t live on the same street. The four of us wouldn’t go to the same college, and even if we were no farther than me at UCLA, Graham in Santa Barbara, Viv in San Francisco, and Harry who knows where because he needed financial aid, it wouldn’t be the same. Siblings move but stay close because of blood and bossy parents. I wanted a force as strong for us. I wanted something gigantic to happen that would make geography irrelevant.
There was a sense of shared anticipation among our classmates at the slaughterhouse’s entrance, like in class right before summer break. It made me jump a little, even though circles of conversation didn’t open up as we squeezed in. The artsy alternative kids, poetry girls, and the Brass Bandits shared space. The lacrosse players, arms bracing coolers, had declared temporary peace with the soccer team, and they were knocking around and feinting punches.
Viv’s arm tightened around mine. The year before, three senior girls had started the night single and ended up coupled. Viv didn’t have a specific boy in mind—Luke McHale was a hundred crushes in the past. She wanted a tall, creative, anything-but-blond guy. The slaughterhouse was where she planned to make it happen.
Right then I followed Viv’s narrowing eyes. Her last and most important criteria for a boy: They couldn’t be tainted by her nemesis, Amanda Schultz. Amanda was flanked by her two best friends, the girls Graham called imminent sorority girls, Rachel Wyndamer and Jess Clarkson. To Graham, the title wasn’t a judgment but a fact.
Viv’s features pinched as she stared at Amanda and her plush pink beanie with rabbit ears. Viv nudged my side for me to look. “I think Amanda’s stuffed animal hats begin as actual stuffed animals she steals from little kids.”
“But she only steals them from kids with cancer,” Graham chimed in, propping an elbow on my shoulder.
“No, not kids, babies,” Harry said.
A trace of a smile warmed Viv’s eyes.
“Or maybe she’s a witch and they begin as real animals she captures and kills to stuff and turn into hats,” I said.
Viv’s heart-shaped face exuded light. “She’s a rabid stuffed animal.”
“With a PhD in psychological torture,” Graham said, the interest thinning in his voice.
“Ironic that she used to give me tons of grief over how I dressed and now she wears decapitated toys on her head to cover up how pure evil she is,” Viv said. I pulled her closer.
“We should pretend she doesn’t exist. Just ignore her,” Harry said.
Viv’s smile soured and she whispered, “Except she’s already erased me.”
“No one can erase you,” I said.
Graham shrugged. “She did literally erase Viv’s name in last year’s yearbook.” She’d substituted “Nobody” for “Vivian Marlo” under Viv’s picture. Viv either wanted to end Amanda or be her. I wasn’t sure then which she’d choose.
Word reached us soon that the fire department was inside, checking that the building wasn’t going to cave in on us. Graham shook his head, feigning disgust. “How pedestrian.”
“This is supposed to be death-defying,” I said, stomping a foot.
“I’m going home if I’m not risking life and limb,” Graham complained, garnering us dirty looks. Our classmates did not usually appreciate our brand of humor.
The bodies coiled tighter. My arm pressed into Harry’s, but I angled away from the contact. I never took Harry’s hand or jumped on his back like I did with Graham. You had to ground Graham like you would a live wire. Grab him before his stories got out of control. Except then you’d catch a little of his electricity and be that much more alive for it.
Harry wore a fixed and intent expression. Next to Amanda was Conner Welsh and his two closest friends, Trent and Campbell. Amanda, Conner, and their friends made up a little flock of despicable sheep. Our togetherness made us outcasts; their togetherness made them nasty tyrants. Most kids paid homage in order to be ignored by them. Viv and Harry weren’t so lucky. Just then, Conner snatched a bottle from a paper bag in one of the Brass Bandits’ hands. The trumpet player, Henry, whirled around and started to protest, saw it was Conner, and instead raised his hands in surrender.
Conner swigged, his boys jeering at Henry until he disappeared into the crowd to get away. Laughing, Conner mimed slapping the butt of cheerleader standing in front of him, Trent thrusted his hips in her direction, and Campbell, usually the least offensive of them, belted out a burp that scaled a full octave.
“Science is wrong about Neanderthals going extinct,” I said to Harry, jerking my chin at the boy band—Graham’s name for them.
Harry’s features shifted to neutral as he looked down his shoulder at me. “Cockroaches always find a way.”
Just then, a graying, paunchy man—the fire chief—climbed on top of a car hood, raised a bullhorn, and shouted, “Everybody home! The building is not structurally sound.” He continued yelling for us to disperse, until the objections drowned the bullhorn out. Putting up a fight didn’t work because firefighters emptied out of the slaughterhouse and herded us to our cars.
“We’ve just witnessed the end of an empire, friends,” Graham spoke from the corner of his mouth. There was a volley of shouts about moving the party to the beach or to Amanda’s house. None of those invitations were extended to us.
We were in the car bumper-to-bumper with our classmates for several minutes before Viv spoke. “I’ve been looking forward to Slumber Fest my whole life,” she said, the back of her hand placed morosely on her forehead.
Graham pushed his glasses up his nose. “You won’t even eat beef. Sleeping in a slaughterhouse would have been hypocritical.”
Her hair whipped back and forth and her glowing polish made comet tails in the dark. “Seniors bragged about it every fall. A couple years ago everyone played spin the bottle.”
“Then we probably would have caught mono,” Harry deadpanned. “Sleeping in a slaughterhouse doesn’t beat eating pizza from Lunardi’s and swimming.”
Viv emitted a high-pitched noise of disbelief.
“I only wanted to do it because it reminded me of the adventures we used to have,” I admitted. I gazed out the window.
My thought process went like this: sleeping in the slaughterhouse would have been a coup; it was unoriginal, though. This was the last year we’d spend in Seven Hills; we couldn’t waste it on stale adventures; the fire chief saved us from a brief and stupid exploit.
I was struggling to make the final leap. I hugged my knees and relaxed while listening to the others talk. Their voices braided and became one long, golden note that felt comforting in my ears. It reminded me of Viv’s fingertips, like butterfly wings on my skin as she did my eye makeup, and Graham jumping off the end of the diving board with me on his back, and Harry smuggling king-size candy bars into the movie theater.
The end of our lives together was racing toward us. Graduation stood on my chest. If I didn’t do something, we would blow into one another’s pasts, and these three brilliant, dazzling friends would be lost to me.
5
Is she happy?” Viv asked. We shared the barn’s blush-colored sofa, her legs on my lap. The tart, fermented cider had its fangs in my tongue. It washed away the taste of the deep-dish pizza we had devoured after the slaughterhouse.
The barn was as hot as the car had been, the baby hairs framing Viv’s face curling with humidity. Graham paced, sending eddies through the air, his steps resonating up into the eaves of the loft where we stored our sleeping bags and camping tent. We almost always thought we didn’t need the tent until the mornings we woke bitten by bugs. Viv, her forehead misshapen with lumps, would cross her heart with a manicured nail and swear never to go again. But she’d braved the mosquitoes for me four times that past summer.
“Who cares if she’s happy?” Graham said with an abrupt turn. “She’s my mother. This is my fifth stepfather. She leaves for two months and this is what she brings me?” He beat the air with a wooden figurine. “It’s a doll.”
Viv smothered a giggle in her palm.
“C’mon, man. Maybe the guy’s decent?” Harry said.
Graham threw himself into a chair, its legs shrieking against the distressed white floorboards. Harry settled with his back against the sofa. He smelled metallic with sweat. Everything smelled of sweating skin. My limbs were noodles. I wanted to swim.
Graham drew my attention with a dragged-out sigh. “Actually,” he said, knocking a fist on the souvenir, “it’s not a doll.” Thoughtfulness crept onto his face “It’s an idol, one of worship. She used to send such interesting stuff, though. Unusual, exotic, grisly artifacts. Oh.” His eyebrows leaped up. “Remember the flesh-eating beetle colony from East Borneo? Used to pick skeletons clean?”
Viv shuddered and combed her fingers through the tangles in her hair. “I remember that dead mouse you and Harry tried to use t
hem on.” She gave him a reproachful look. “Grotesque. Anyway, you’re just pissy your mom didn’t bring you along to China or Japan or wherever. Poor Teddy Graham, didn’t get another stamp in his passport.”
Graham looked up, surprised, and then smiled showing his teeth, eyes twinkling at being pegged. He was four and stealing cookies again. “Sure, I wish she’d brought me to Myanmar or that I’d at least met the old dude before she married him. He teaches at NYU. He won’t even show his face until Thanksgiving.”
“Then nothing’s changed,” I said. My eyes stuck to the idol. It was carved from pale yellow wood, smooth and glossy. Graham had stomped into the barn when he and Harry arrived to pick us up for the slaughterhouse, tossed the figurine on the couch, and barked, “Don’t ask.” But it was all he went on about after we returned. “Where’d she find it?” I wondered.
Graham jumped up and knelt on the faded Turkish rug, instantly cheerier that there was a story to be told. He propped the doll so it was standing on my knees. The idol was featherlight. Harry twisted for a look and Viv sat, one pointy shoulder poking out of the netting of her swimsuit cover-up. We huddled around the idol like it was special, as though deep down we knew that stupid, nothing doll was a spark to our kindling. I brushed a finger along the lines of its crescent moon and the curve of its robe. A woman. Indeterminable age. Hawkish features. A charge ran into my fingertip when I touched her cheek and I snatched my hand back.
“My mother found it in the market of a village where she was doing research.” Graham’s mom studied near-extinct cultures all over the world. “The village is on the Irrawaddy Delta. She’s the idol of a cult that worships her. An ancient cult. They make tea from a special plant they find in the jungle to have ritual visions.”
“To get high?” Viv asked.
Graham’s dimples deepened. “More of an altered state of consciousness to communicate with her.” He thumbed the idol’s head. “They make blood sacrifices, too.”
Graham’s whirling thoughts showed through his gunmetal eyes, like waves through a spyglass. I smiled. “Is any of that not bullshit?”
First We Were IV Page 3
