Pearl

by Deirdre Riordan Hall

  Out of the blustery day and in the bustling dining hall, I inch away from Charmindy and toward Grant, ready to warm myself in the glow of his quiet presence. I sit with him, Sorel, and Pepper during lunch.

  “I’m going to a party this weekend. Who’s in?” Sorel asks. She doesn’t even bother to look at me. I’ve declined enough offers for her to assume it’s a pass.

  “I have band rehearsal for the winter concert,” Pepper answers.

  “You’re such a dweeb. I thought you said you were going to quit playing.”

  His cheeks blossom pink. “My advisor said it will look good on college apps.”

  “So you listened to him? Major dorkville, dude. I guess that just leaves you and me, Grant,” she says with a smirk that neither Pepper nor I miss.

  I sense Grant’s eyes flitting toward me. I should ask him if he wants to study with me; he could help me with math or do whatever it is guys and girls at boarding school do when they’re together if they’re not friends and if they don’t talk. The birthday card was merely a poetic gesture, a way for him to say let’s kiss without having to actually use the words, but everything he doesn’t want to do breathes between us like a living entity. Sorel hinted he’d been with a bunch of girls—maybe he was hurt, cheated on, or otherwise burned. I don’t know, and he won’t say.

  Across the room, Charmindy sits at a table with Brett. They’ve been hanging out often, despite Terran’s warning. I should ask her what they do together, but I’m afraid to mention the card and Grant’s singular interest in kissing, because that might make me sound like a pushover. In Manhattan, I could come up with a riot of things to do, but living in this frozen tundra with umpteen rules about where we can be together and when leaves my mind as blank as the canvas of snow on the broad lawn in front of Viv Brooks.

  When little red hearts and doily decor crop up around campus, I wonder who’d be willing to have an anti–Valentine’s Day party with me. We could smash a heart-shaped piñata filled with chocolate, create our own badass messages for candy hearts, and make sure everyone knows Cupid can suck it.

  I haven’t seen much of Grant. The chilly winter days, the freezing nights, or his ambiguity have made the card and the kissing both confusing and, now, irritating.

  As I imagine the broken-heart decorations we could make, I realize I don’t really know anyone not in a couple. Charmindy and her friends, all with dates, prepare for the Valentine’s dance at the student center. I fantasize about Grant asking me to go with him.

  That evening, Charmindy fusses over what to wear, while I consider reading some Edgar Allan Poe. Although it would be nice, for once, to have a reason to get dressed up, for someone to wait for me at the foot of the stairs, to share in the laughter and romance of the night.

  Never mind, the piñata would be much cooler.

  I wander to the common room, where I find Sorel with a feed bag of popcorn, watching a rerun of Buffy.

  “Where’ve you been, PJ? What’s going on? You too cool for school?” she asks pointedly.

  She knows where I’ve been. What she’s really asking is why I haven’t been hanging around with her and sneaking off to the woods for a smoke. Misery loves company or something like that. The cold and cigarettes are painful reminders that my lungs almost burst months ago, when my mother nearly killed me, along with a roomful of people.

  There are the Charmindys and there are the Sorels of the world. Even though I somehow have a genetic predisposition for the Sorels, in other words, the misfits, the liars, and the thieves, part of me wants to join the ranks of the good girls, the respectable and successful girls. In other words, the girls who have dates on Valentine’s Day.

  “Not going to the dance, huh?” she teases.

  I take a handful of her popcorn. “Nope. You?” I consider elaborating on my anti–V Day ideas.

  Instead of answering, she laughs loudly along with a quippy comment made on the TV. When it goes to commercial, she says, “You don’t want to see Pepper dance. But we’re going to meet up later. Party tonight. You should come. I bet Grant would like to see you.” She wears her usual mischievous grin cut with a snide upturn of her lip. “Or do you have to study?”

  I should know better than to provide her with an excuse to strut around with this insider knowledge, but I ask, “What’s up with him? Grant, I mean. What’s his story?”

  Her smile is ten degrees of sly. She can’t subdue her satisfaction. “He hasn’t told you?”

  I understand this is her mother hen way of trying to undermine my connection to him. I reply with a penetrating, hypnotic, steady gaze. My eyes are dry, and they burn, but I don’t let up until she caves.

  “He’s been with a bunch of girls. They were helpless when he showed up with the remnants of his sexy accent. He never got serious, though, except once. He was a player in indie-guy clothing. Taking names, kissing lips, breaking hearts. You’ve been warned.”

  If this is true, maybe I’ll burn the card.

  When I return to my room, Charmindy has left only a spritz of floral perfume in her wake. I take notes for a history presentation, but questions unrelated to the Cold War fill my head. Why don’t I have a Valentine’s date? Why am I undesirable? I’m not horrible looking. My mother wasn’t in the Shrapnels because of her outstanding talent or her winning personality. She didn’t regularly have boyfriends half her age by accident. Maybe that was drug related, but they spent nearly as much time fooling around as they did taking hits. Although she’d let herself go, she had been gorgeous.

  I’m not hideous. When I look in the long mirror on the back of the door, by some miracle, relatively straight teeth appear beneath my smile. My eyes are bright, and underneath I’m mostly a good person. I don’t see pretty, but I’m passable.

  Then again, my mother always said my cheeks were too big and that I walked funny. I don’t like how veiny my hands are. I refuse to pluck my eyebrows. My voice sounds scratchy, like I’ve perpetually just woken up, even worse now after the fire. I’m kind of smart, which, given my grammar school attendance record, is another phenomenon. Still, no boyfriend. Grant doesn’t even want to be friends.

  I just want that look from a boy, not the hungry “I want to sleep with you” look. The “I adore everything about you” look. The “I would move mountains for you” look. The one that whispers, You are my everything.

  As I return to the index of the thick book to find information on women’s roles during the Cold War, I catch myself singing “Tonight” from West Side Story under my breath. At each of three schools I went to before Laurel Hill, it happened to be the annual theatrical production. I know the songs by heart. I long to duet with someone from the rooftops. A someone who I’m not afraid is going to break my heart, who accepts me, big hands, cheeks, scratchy voice, and all.

  About an hour later, Sorel bursts in my room. “Let’s go,” she says.

  “Where?” I ask, not looking up from my homework, finally having found the inspiration for my essay.

  “It’ll be fun. I promise.”

  “Where?” I repeat.

  “Off campus,” she says with a raised eyebrow. She picks up my boots and coat and turns for the door. “Let’s go!” she says without leaving me a choice.

  Chapter 15

  I hustle after Sorel, pulling my boots on as we tromp down the hall. When we get outside, I button up my coat against the wind that blows nearly invisible snowflakes toward the earth. I follow her to a side road that leads to a residential area off campus.

  “As far as anyone is concerned, you and I just took a walk,” she says warningly.

  At the end of the road an Impala waits, its exhaust puffing white clouds in the cold air. Still addled by the smoke from the fire, I cough. Pepper and Grant sit in the back of the car. Seated in the passenger seat, a wispy girl with bright pink hair smiles when we get in.

  “What the hell took you so lon
g?” asks the driver, a bulldog of a girl with a shaved head.

  “Slowpoke here,” Sorel says, elbowing me.

  “What’s your name, slowpoke?” the driver asks.

  “PJ.”

  “I’m Mags, and this is Chelsea.”

  Pepper and Sorel are wedged between Grant and me and immediately start making out.

  “Get a room,” Mags warns, eyeing them in the rearview mirror. They slowly pull apart. “Screw Valentine’s Day,” Mags says.

  Screw it indeed. Though being in the car with Grant brings an interesting change to the night. Tonight, tonight . . .

  Mags parks on the lawn in front of a mustard-colored ranch-style house. Silhouettes of a trailer, some old chairs, and other debris dot the yard. She leads us to a side door. Loud music plays audibly from inside.

  A haze of smoke clings to the ceiling, and three guys with shaved heads, two punk girls, and one kid with stringy, long hair hang out in the kitchen. I trail Sorel to the living room, where there are more people my age, much like the first group, and one guy with sparse facial hair, who looks to be in his twenties.

  “Hey, Sorel,” the guy says.

  “What’s up, Mitch?” she asks, taking a seat on the edge of the love seat he sits on.

  I notice he has a tattoo of a caged bird and another of a dagger as he raises his hand to shake mine.

  “This is PJ,” Sorel says.

  He looks at me thirstily, but then someone hollers for him from the kitchen.

  Pepper appears, carefully balancing three cups of beer in his hands, and lands in the vacant chair, pulling Sorel to his side. “It’s Valentine’s Day, baby, and you and I are in the love seat.”

  Sorel rolls her eyes. “You all right to slum it tonight?” she asks as she hands me a cup.

  Her comment pinches me. The mustard-colored house is actually a step up from most of the places I’ve lived, at least in recent years, never mind the parties I often went to or tried to sleep through.

  “Who’s the one slumming it?” I ask, but she and Pepper are already practicing mouth-to-mouth.

  I leave the two of them and wander into the kitchen. I pass Grant, our arms brushing, as he trots down the basement stairs, where I hear pool balls clacking.

  Mitch leans on the door frame, with one arm raised above his head and a cigarette burning low between his fingers. “So, you from that fancy school too?” he asks.

  I turn my head, realizing he’s talking to me.

  “What? Oh yeah,” I say, nodding.

  He rubs his thumb across his lower lip. The kitchen empties as the music from the living room grows louder. Mitch steps toward me, taking one last drag from his butt. “Sorel said she’d bring some friends, but I never thought she meant someone so foxy.” He steps toward me again, and like a choreographed move, I take a step backward toward the counter.

  Sensible thoughts, about how this is a situation I don’t want to be in, catch themselves in a net in my mind.

  His bleary eyes barely conceal his craving.

  I fill my discomfort with a stupid question. “So, um, is this your place?”

  “Yep. Want to see Spidey?” He puts his hand on my waist.

  I wriggle to the side, away from him. There have to be twenty people in the house; why isn’t anyone in the kitchen? People are always in the kitchen at parties.

  “A spider? They kind of freak—” Before I can say anything else, his lips are too close to mine. I jerk away, with my hand over my mouth. He leaves me with the odor of burned rubber and stale cigarettes. My jaw moves to speak, but the words stick in the net in my mind.

  Grant appears.

  Mitch turns to a bottle of Jack Daniel’s on the counter and unscrews the cap as if he just came in the kitchen for a drink.

  I take a gulp of the beer, if only to wash the taste of him off my lips.

  “PJ, want to play pool?” Grant asks.

  Grateful for the excuse, I follow Grant to the basement, even though I want to head for the door.

  “Lame party, huh?” he asks.

  I want him to ask me to run away with him. Far from this stupid house and free from Sorel and her confusing possessiveness over Grant yet encouragement for me to hang out with him. Sometimes I think she wants me to like him so she can assert her power and try to break us apart. The riddle of the birthday card from Grant and his inconsistent behavior are far more favorable, at least they have their rewards.

  With a crack of irritation at this whole mess, I break the neatly arranged balls on the green felt tabletop. The white one rolls to the floor. Grant and I both bend over to get it, knocking our heads together as we stand up.

  “Sorry,” he says. “Want me to show you—”

  “Yeah,” I say before he can finish.

  “Are you a righty?” he asks. His voice is like a warm blanket and lazy mornings spent in bed.

  “Uh-huh.”

  He takes my hands and places them accordingly on the cue. My pulse quickens. Our hair brushes together as we pull back the wooden stick in tandem. In one swift motion, the white ball barrels toward the number five. The places where our skin touches light me like a candle. He seems to hesitate as he releases the cue to me, our eyes meeting before I gaze down at the floor.

  Between blundering and sinking the white ball in the pockets more than the striped ones, I sip my beer. My tongue loosens. We chat between turns. Grant eggs me on. Finally, he sinks the eight ball.

  “Victory,” he says, raising his cue overhead.

  “I’m so not a worthy opponent,” I say.

  “Rematch? I’ll go grab us each a refill. Be right back,” he says.

  I watch the Three Stooges on a silent black-and-white TV in the corner, waiting for him to return. The band the Stooges plays loudly from a room above. Hearing footsteps on the stairs, I turn, giddy to see Grant, but instead there’s a tattooed arm, with a caged bird, on the railing.

  “What are you doing down here all by yourself?” Mitch asks. His eyes have gone swirly from the whiskey. He grabs a pool cue and strokes it as he approaches.

  I back away.

  “Can we try again?” He presses his hips against mine.

  A cold sweat washes from the top of my head down. “Listen, Mitch, I’m—”

  “She’s with me. And it’s time for us to go. Come on, PJ,” Grant says from the foot of the stairs. He’s granite, craggy, a geology-made man.

  “Sorry, I didn’t know,” Mitch slurs apologetically, holding his arms up feebly like a cactus.

  I rush up the stairs. Grant ducks into the living room and whispers in Pepper’s ear. Then he ushers me out the door we came in.

  Chapter 16

  It’s snowing more steadily; the flakes, each containing a million possibilities, land on the ground, piling in layers. I take a deep breath. “Thanks,” I say to Grant.

  “Sleazy fu—” The rest of the word disappears in a grunt as he picks up a handful of snow and throws it, hard, against the house as we walk away.

  “He—” I stutter. For some reason I want to apologize on Mitch’s behalf, just as I always had when my mother did something wrong when she was under the influence. Denial. “He was just drunk.”

  “Drunk enough to try to take advantage of you. No effin’ way.”

  I pause in the middle of the road.

  Realizing I’m no longer beside him, Grant turns around and takes a couple of long strides back to me. Snowflakes melt on my cheeks as tears trail their way along my jaw.

  Grant’s eyes and lips crimp intensely. With his thumbs, he wipes the space below my eyes. “You are beautiful; of course he wanted to get in your pants. Half the guys on campus do. But you’re—” He holds my face, my gaze, not letting me look away. “You’re worth more than that. You have this rare, raw beauty, and I don’t want anyone’s hands on you but m—” He loo
ks down, shakes his head, and starts walking again.

  I stand under the streetlight, the snow whirling in the wind like little frozen stars drifting to the ground.

  His hands on me, his gaze, the tension freezing between us, makes me daring. I follow Grant’s footprints as they track away from me. I spin around in front of him, blocking his path. My eyes say what my voice cannot: Please finish what you were saying.

  He looks at me more softly this time. “I mean it, PJ,” he says. The force behind his anger is gone.

  I look into his dark blue eyes. I unbutton his wool coat, slide my hands into the warmth surrounding him, and rest my cheek against his chest. He holds me until drifts of snow cover our boots.

  As we walk, our conversation gradually thaws out, starting with how annoying Pepper and Sorel are, with their bickering and kissing. Then we talk about Grant’s brother, who is moving to New York City for a new job, and what we’re each thinking of studying in college. Six months ago, college wasn’t even on my radar. It’s a strange future for me to consider, but Justine, my advisor, assures me not only is it possible, with financial aid and scholarships, but I owe it to academia. I gratefully tucked the compliment in my back pocket to take out the next time I bomb a test.

  “What I want to study isn’t what my father wants me to do, so there’s that. A story as old as the father-son relationship. Don’t do that. Do this. I keep exploring a new thing, hoping it will interest me and satisfy him, but inevitably, I just don’t care enough to commit my life to it. I’ve gone through anthropology, biology, chemistry, economics, international affairs . . .”

  “It sounds like you’re working your way through the entire academic catalog. You’re on the letter I, so what’s next?”

  “Independent study . . .”

  “That one comes before international affairs, if it’s alphabetical. And anyway, you have another year,” I say encouragingly.