The Stone Girl

by Alyssa B. Sheinmel

  2.

  SETHIE COULDN’T TELL you when she began drinking her water every night. She doesn’t remember why she’s not allowed to use the bathroom until the bottle is empty. She knows the water has to be cold, because cold water is supposed to burn calories; your body uses energy to keep you warm. She read that on a Web site called anorexicnation.com, before it was blocked, or taken down, or whatever they do to Web sites like that.

  Inside her room, Sethie picks up the notebook next to her bed. She calls it her journal, but it’s really a list of what she eats every day. She began keeping the notebook six months ago. She writes everything down; even pieces of gum (five calories) and sips of coffee. She considers writing that Shaw didn’t kiss her today, not once, not really, but she’s too embarrassed.

  She hears the locks in the front door turning; her mother is home.

  “Hi, honey!” Rebecca calls out.

  “Studying!” Sethie replies; Rebecca won’t interrupt her if she thinks Sethie’s working. Rebecca is very proud to have a daughter, Sethie thinks, with such good grades.

  “Okay, honey,” Rebecca says, and Sethie can hear her walking through the apartment; she can hear the buttons of Rebecca’s jacket tapping against a dining room chair when Rebecca folds it over the back, can hear Rebecca’s shoes hitting the floor when she takes them off in the living room. Sethie likes communicating with her mother with the bedroom door closed between them.

  “There are leftovers in the fridge,” Rebecca calls. She doesn’t cook, but a few times a week she has dinners with the lawyers at the firm where she works. They usually go to steak houses, and Rebecca always orders the filet, and she always brings half of it home for Sethie. Sethie never eats it; her mother orders her meat rare. At restaurants, she tells waiters “mooing,” which both embarrasses and disgusts Sethie. By the time Rebecca brings the meat home, it’s cold, and looks raw. When Sethie used to try to eat it, she could barely swallow it. Rebecca doesn’t seem to notice that after a couple of days, the meat disappears from the fridge because Sethie has thrown it away, not eaten it. Rebecca doesn’t seem to notice that at restaurants Sethie orders meat well-done.

  Sethie is still slightly stoned when she begins her homework. Last year, before she began seeing Shaw, Sethie always began her homework earlier; she never waited until just before bed, and she was certainly never stoned while she did it. Tonight, she’s surprised how easy it is to read a history textbook stoned, sitting up in bed, balancing her water bottle between her knees.

  There are rules for Sethie’s water, other than that it must be cold. Sethie must finish the entire bottle in fewer than twenty minutes. She may not pee until she has drunk the entire bottle, no matter how much her body wants to. She must always drink her water before eight-thirty; if she finishes later than eight-thirty, she’ll still have to pee later, when it’s time to go to bed. Still, every morning, she wakes up and can barely make it to the bathroom. It’s usually the urge to urinate that wakes her, in fact. She doesn’t even need an alarm clock, though she always sets one.

  Before Sethie falls asleep, she imagines what she will eat the next day. Every new day, Sethie thinks, is an opportunity to be good. Lying in bed, Sethie imagines the clean slate of a day spread out for tomorrow; when she closes her eyes, she sees an enormous empty plate. She plans exactly what she will eat. Sethie doesn’t mind going to bed hungry; planning for the next day is more exciting that way. She imagines how satisfied her belly will be when she fills it with exactly the right amounts of only the things she should be eating. Tomorrow, perhaps she will wake up the kind of girl who doesn’t get hungry for a snack after school, who simply forgets to eat lunch because she’s so busy. Tomorrow she might wake up thinner than she woke up today.

  Sethie has never been much of a breakfast eater. When she was younger, she skipped it because her mother skipped it, and it made her feel grown-up. Today, the second day of school, she allows herself a coffee from the cafeteria; the students aren’t supposed to eat the food that’s laid out at breakfast time—it’s meant only for the teachers—but some girls always sneak it. Today, Sethie is pouring sugar (sugar is allowed; no fat and an extra bonus burst of energy) into her coffee when she overhears two juniors debating about sneaking some food.

  “I think I want a corn muffin.”

  “So get one.”

  “What if I get caught?”

  “Then you’ll put it back.”

  “Anyway, I’d rather do what’s healthier.”

  “It’s healthier to take the corn muffin. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.”

  The other girl rolls her eyes. “No, I mean healthier like better for my diet.”

  “Oh.”

  Sethie thinks that the teachers are hypocrites: they’re always warning the girls about the dangers of dieting, but then they restrict the students’ access to breakfast. Sethie remembers the taste of the corn muffins here; she stole them herself from time to time, when she was in ninth grade, maybe even in tenth. She remembers how scared she was of being caught; she was the kind of student for whom stealing muffins might be considered acting out. She remembers that they were always warm, and the way that they crumbled when she bit into them.

  At lunchtime, Sethie spreads peanut butter over a bagel in the cafeteria. She is standing by the pastry table, where there are all kinds of breads so that the students can make their own sandwiches. At Sethie’s school, you’re not allowed to bring your own lunch. The cost of the school lunch is included in the tuition. Sethie added it up one day, and it came to something like eight dollars a meal. Not for me, Sethie thinks, balancing the bagel on a textbook; Sethie is on full scholarship. She wants to spread the peanut butter on thick, lick the leftovers from the knife. Behave, she says, almost out loud. Be good. Half a bagel. Thin layer of peanut butter. Coffee with sugar and skim milk. She must be good at lunch because there’s no telling what she might have for dinner tonight. On the phone last night, Shaw said that they’re going to Jane’s house tonight. When he told her that, Sethie realized that Jane is the name of the girl from yesterday, the one who listened to the other side of the wall with her.

  The editor of the yearbook, Dana, stands next to her at the bagel table.

  “Hey,” she says to Sethie. Dana reaches over Sethie for a cinnamon raisin bagel.

  “Hey,” Sethie says, thinking, Calories, Calories.

  “You’re not coming to the meeting today?”

  “Can’t,” Sethie says. Sethie has dropped yearbook this year. Since she did it all last year, she’s still going to be listed as managing editor on the masthead, and she can still put it on her college applications, so she simply doesn’t see a need to keep it up anymore.

  “Oh,” Dana says.

  Sethie shrugs and folds her bagel up inside a napkin, to take to the library. Dana, Sethie thinks, couldn’t possibly understand. Dana is tall and thin. Dana can eat a whole cinnamon raisin bagel with hot, melting butter, and not gain a pound. And Dana can have two yearbook meetings a week for eight weeks straight, meetings that begin right after school, when everyone is starving and begs to order in pizza and Chinese food. Meetings that end so that you get home just in time for dinner, which you eat anyway, because the pizza or the Chinese food at the meeting was only an after-school snack. Sethie’s school is filled with Danas, girls who are genetically predisposed to thinness, girls who can’t possibly understand that Sethie has to work at it, that Sethie simply cannot go to yearbook meetings this semester.

  3.

  JANE LIVES ON 72nd and Park Avenue, in one of those apartments the elevator opens right into. The floors in the foyer are marble. Her kitchen is behind a swinging door, and Jane leads the way straight there. Sethie thinks she could have found the kitchen without having been led, the smell of food in the apartment is so strong.

  No one else is home. Jane is an only child, and her parents travel a lot. The housekeeper has already left for the day. The kitchen counters gleam. The air-conditioning is set so co
ol that it makes the room seem cleaner. The housekeeper has made sure there is enough food for everyone for dinner. Jane must have told her she was having friends over. Sethie, Jane, and Shaw gather around the island in the center of the kitchen. Sethie eyes a bowl of nuts in the middle of the island. She is waiting until someone else—Jane or Shaw, she doesn’t care who—begins to eat them so that she can eat them too. If she doesn’t wait for them to eat first, she will be like a pig who only came here tonight for the food.

  Jane, Sethie thinks wryly, is anything but plain. She has thin blond hair to her shoulders and wears big hoop earrings, short shorts out of which pop skinny legs. Her eyes are dark with kohl, her lips bright with Vaseline. She looks, still, like she just got out of bed—but in a sexy way, as if only to remind you that her bed is close by.

  “You guys woke me up,” Jane says, reaching, Sethie notices gratefully, for a handful of nuts.

  “We did?” Shaw asks.

  “Yeah. Fell asleep watching Taxi reruns.”

  Sethie’s head snaps away from the nuts to look at Jane. “I love that show,” she says seriously.

  Jane grins. “Me too! My dad recorded every episode back when it ran. I used to watch it sitting on his lap.”

  Sethie smiles back. “My dad, too. Even now, whenever I hear that music from the opening credits, I think of him.”

  “Me too,” Jane says, and smiles, so that Sethie knows that Jane’s father isn’t around much, either, though perhaps for reasons more interesting than divorce. Jane hums the Taxi theme song, and Sethie joins in. Shaw looks at them like they’re both crazy, so Sethie stops, and then Jane does, too, but she’s laughing.

  Sethie and Shaw went to Shaw’s apartment before coming here. Shaw wanted to show her his new bong. Sethie had never smoked from a bong, and Shaw had to teach her.

  “Put your hand there. Okay, now I’m going to hold the lighter, and you inhale. Got it? Then you take the bowl out and breathe it up, just like that, good girl.” Shaw was very tender. He rubbed her upper arm; he was sweet when it took several tries. And then, something caught, something worked correctly, and the smoke filled Sethie’s mouth and throat. She wasn’t sure whether the calm that came over her was from the pot or from having used the bong correctly.

  Then Shaw took a hit. Sethie admired his expertise. He leaned in, after, and Sethie went to kiss him, thinking that it had been two whole days since they kissed and longing for his kisses, for what always came after. But she did something wrong. Shaw pulled away, his eyes red.

  “You have to inhale, Sethie,” he said, coughing, but not angry. He had been blowing smoke into her mouth. He hadn’t been kissing her. Sethie wished she’d done it correctly. Maybe now he won’t do it again. She wanted a second chance.

  Shaw put the bong down, lay on his back. Sethie hesitated, then lay down next to him, but not quite touching. She always waits until he touches her first. She thought it was strange that he hadn’t kissed her for two days. Maybe she could remind him, somehow, of how it’s supposed to be. She felt distinctly the space between them. She waited for Shaw to reach for her, waited for him to tell her it was okay.

  And then his hand went to her face, and then down, over her arms, lower, pulling her close, rubbing her back, pulling her leg over his.

  It’s not real unless he kisses me, Sethie thought. It doesn’t count unless he kisses me.

  She grabbed at him, feeling clumsy, turned her face up at him. Please kiss me, please. His hands, always cold, on her upper thighs, under her school uniform, reaching for the curve of her ass. His face, buried in the pillow, looking away. Was he teasing her? Did he know it didn’t count until he kissed her?

  And then, he turned, fast, and kissed her. Sethie felt relief, everywhere. She sank into the bed, curled underneath him. His mouth was always cold, his tongue always slipped between her lips like ice water. She wondered, briefly, whether it was really pot that made her cold or the fact that she only ever smoked with Shaw, the boy whose caresses would never make you warm, against whom it was pointless to lean for heat. The boy who kissed ice cubes into her mouth until she swallowed, so that the cold filled her belly. She didn’t care if she was ever warm again. Sethie knows people don’t end up with their high school sweethearts, not anymore, not in New York, but she also couldn’t imagine ever being there with anyone but Shaw. Would anyone else ever know her body like this, know to put his thigh between her legs and rub her scalp with one hand, while grabbing her bottom with the other? She didn’t even know she wanted to be touched in those places all at once until Shaw did it. She wanted his kisses never to stop.

  But of course he had to stop. Jane would be waiting. And so here they are in Jane’s kitchen, and all Sethie can think about are the kisses she wants to continue. The fact that those kisses are still available to her, that what they had isn’t over. More kisses, more arms, more legs, all still coming. The way he can kiss her neck and her ear without tickling her. The first time Shaw ever kissed her, he first rubbed his fingers up and down her arms from behind her, where he was standing.

  “That tickles,” she said, giggling.

  “It’s not supposed to,” he said, sounding irritated, and she wondered what it was supposed to do. She’d been waiting for him for months at that point, from the very start of junior year. Sethie can’t remember a time when she didn’t know Shaw. Their apartments are close to each other; their parents brought them to the same play groups when they were toddlers. They weren’t friends, not when they were that young, and not through elementary school, when boys and girls didn’t really make friends with each other.

  Sethie remembers seeing Shaw at middle school dances, ridiculously outdated rituals where no one danced with anyone of the opposite sex, and in fact no one danced at all, because no one cool would ever dance at a school dance. She remembers thinking that he’d grown into a funny-looking kid, his hair a shade too dark against his pale skin, a lot of baby fat left in his face; somehow he didn’t look like he had a chin. Not tall enough, a hint of acne on his cheeks.

  But sometime between sophomore and junior year, Shaw grew three inches; freckles popped up all over his body, turning what had been pale skin into something colorful and interesting. His jaw became pronounced, his chin square and jutting like Clark Kent’s in old Superman comics. And his voice changed, becoming deep and gravelly, as though over the summer he’d gotten into the habit of munching on rocks. But Sethie could never put her finger on these changes; she could never pinpoint what was new about Shaw. All she knew, and all that mattered now, was that she wanted him. She couldn’t explain anything more than that; she couldn’t list his fine qualities, though she knew they were abundant, and she couldn’t tell you what they had in common, though she knew there was plenty; maybe she couldn’t even always remember what color his eyes were, but she knew they were the most beautiful eyes she’d ever seen. And, she didn’t know what it would be like if he kissed her, but she knew with certainty that Shaw must kiss her before the end of junior year. She saw him kiss other girls, out at parties, but instead of feeling jealous, she paid attention. She noticed what the other girls did before he kissed them, trying to see what it was he liked about them. And finally, one night, he was rubbing her arms so that it tickled.

  He kept doing it until she understood the feeling that came after the tickles passed. Then she was grateful he hadn’t stopped; she knows how close she came to sending the wrong message: I don’t actually want you. Your touches make me tickle instead of tingle.

  Remembering this has even distracted Sethie from the nuts. Shaw and Jane are both eating them now, and Sethie hasn’t even had one.

  Jane, Sethie thinks, is probably not a girl who waits for boys to kiss her, certainly not the boy who’s been kissing her for at least five months. But Jane doesn’t know about Shaw’s kisses. Shaw’s kisses are worth waiting for. And Jane doesn’t know that. Sethie is proud that Shaw chose her. Nothing else makes her this proud; not her straight As, not her 2270 on the SATs, not even the
day she stepped on the scale and was under 110 pounds. All of those things are important, she knows. She worked hard for them, wanted them for a long time. And Shaw is not more important; she knows that, too. But she worked harder to get Shaw, waited longer and wanted more, to have Shaw, the boy with the beautiful cold hands, the deep voice, the eyebrows that turn blond in the sun.

  “Elsa made Thanksgiving,” Jane says.

  “What?” Sethie asks dumbly.

  “My housekeeper, Elsa, made Thanksgiving food—turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes. Shaw, can you carve a turkey?”

  Shaw shrugs. “Never tried.”

  “Here.” Jane reaches into a drawer and brings out a knife. “Give it a try. The turkey’s in the oven.”

  “Why did Elsa make Thanksgiving?” Sethie asks Jane. They both watch Shaw, lifting the turkey onto the stovetop, holding the knife above it, trying to decide where to begin.

  “It’s my favorite. Elsa always feels bad when my parents are gone too long.”

  Sethie wonders how long is too long. “How long have they been gone?”

  “Only a week so far. But they won’t be back for another week. And Thanksgiving food makes for good leftovers.”

  Sethie considers what would happen if there were leftover turkey, stuffing, potatoes, and pie in her kitchen. Surely she wouldn’t have the discipline to make it last a whole week.

  Jane starts bringing Tupperware out of the fridge.

  “Wait until you try this. It’s my favorite thing in the world. Ritz-cracker stuffing.”

  “Are you kidding?” Shaw says from the stove, where he is elbow-deep in turkey. Sethie notices that when he tries to cut the turkey, the juices at the bottom of the pan spill onto the countertop.

  “I know, I know, it sounds weird. Just wait.”

  Sethie doesn’t think it sounds weird. Sethie can barely wait. This past summer she and Shaw spent three weeks at Shaw’s parents’ country house. There were other kids there; Shaw’s parents basically opened the house to all of his friends, but only Sethie stayed the full three weeks.