She hears her mother’s footsteps on the hardwood floor outside her bedroom; it sounds like they’re approaching her door. When the footsteps stop, Sethie listens, and she imagines her mother is listening too. Sethie stands up and walks back and forth between her bed and her desk a few times; she makes her footfalls heavy so that her mom will hear her and know she is perfectly all right inside the room, that there is no reason to knock on the door or come inside.
She waits until she can hear her mother’s steps retreating; my mother, she thinks, has oddly audible footfalls for someone with such small feet. Sethie decides that she will learn to step lightly; no one will hear her enter a room. She will be so soft people will wonder what kind of magic allows her to keep a constant buffer of air between her feet and the ground. Her footfalls will be so light that it will make people think she is thinner than she is.
When Sethie can’t hear the steps anymore, she lies back on the floor, straightens her arms, and tilts the mirror so that she can see only her collarbone, which doesn’t protrude like it should, and then her breasts, spilling out the sides of her bra. She tilts the mirror again so that she can see her stomach and the tops of her hips; all the soft places that should be smooth, and tight, and hard. I don’t have a pretty enough face, Sethie thinks, to make up for the fat on my body; but I don’t have a good enough body to make up for the flaws in my face.
A few months before Sethie turned thirteen, her mother arranged her bat mitzvah. Evil tradition, Sethie thinks now, paraded around in front of friends and family right when you’re most awkward; a year of invitations and snubs around school during the time when everyone’s most insecure about who likes whom and who doesn’t. The way she remembers it, she invited the girls she wished were her friends as much as she did any of the girls who actually were.
And an evil tradition, because it’s right when you’re likely in the middle of a growth spurt, and a dress bought and fitted months ahead of time is likely not to fit on the big day. She remembers the way her dress rubbed under her armpits; she felt as though she’d grown before she ought to have. Because of her recent growth, the dress was also shorter than it was meant to be. She was wearing her first pair of high heels, and panty hose with a sheen, just like her mother wore. One of the girls came up to her during the party and said, “It’s okay that your dress is so short, Sethie—you’ve got great legs!” It was a compliment, of course, but that night, Sethie went home and appraised herself in the mirror for the first time, especially her legs. They had looked better with the hose and the high heels than they did bare. If pressed, she’d have to admit that her bat mitzvah was the day when her body became what it is now: an endless source of fascination and disappointment.
Sethie presses the heel of her hand against the side of her stomach. There, right there; that soft piece just shouldn’t be there. She pinches it for emphasis. A useless piece of flesh, she thinks disgustedly, pulling it away from her body. I ought to be able to just cut if off. She drops the mirror now, and presses both sides of her torso, then pinches the fat. Yes, she thinks, I should just cut the fat right out.
She sits up and pinches her inner thighs. It’s so clear where the muscle ends and the fat begins. It’d be like liposuction. It’s not like she needs that fat. There’s a scab above her right knee, where she cut herself shaving. I could start there, she thinks. Make that hole bigger and then just reach in, and scrape out the fat with my nails.
She puts the mirror down, and places her hands on either side of the scab. It’s so easy she barely has to move; the scab flicks right off. And then she scratches the place where the scab used to be, bending her leg to get closer. She leans closer, feeling where her stomach rolls when she bends over. She sits back up and sucks her stomach in, then leans down again.
Blood tastes like metal. She wanted to discover something more romantic than that; that it tasted sweet or rich, that it oozed out from her skin like the melted part in the middle of a molten chocolate cake. But Sethie’s blood does not ooze; it isn’t slow and rich. It is thin, running down her leg, as if it can’t wait to get away from her.
Sethie’s blood is disappointing. She spits it into the garbage can by her desk. She’s glad she didn’t swallow it: for all she knows, blood might have calories.
She sits up and leans back against the bed, cups her hand beneath her thigh to catch her blood. It’s almost stopped bleeding anyway.
She jumps when the phone rings. The blood on her hand has dried, though, so it doesn’t spill onto the floor. The metal taste is fresh in her mouth, but this time it’s adrenaline, not blood. She doesn’t realize that every time her phone rings, she holds her breath before she picks it up, because every time the phone rings, it might be Shaw.
12.
JANEY SAYS EVERYONE is going back up to Columbia tonight and Sethie has to come. “Get dressed. Everyone’s waiting for us.”
Sethie feels guilty that she’s made everyone wait while she was inspecting herself in the mirror, even though until this very moment she didn’t know she was going up to Columbia tonight. She’s not entirely sure who “everyone” is, but she thinks it means Shaw will be there.
“What are you wearing?” Sethie asks.
“Jeans and a funky top. I’m hanging up now, and I’m going to get into a cab—meet me on your corner in five minutes.”
“Five minutes isn’t enough time to get ready, Janey! It’s barely enough time to get downstairs.” Sethie feels genuinely panicked. She still has to wash the dried blood off her leg and hand.
“Sure it is, when a girl’s as gorgeous as you are. See you in five.”
For a second, Sethie stares at the phone in her hand. She doesn’t understand why she has to go up there with Janey anyway. Shaw’s never been on time since she’s known him; she bets that if she could only wait for Shaw, she’d have all the time in the world. But Janey will be in her elevator by now, and on her way.
Sethie scoots across the floor and opens her jeans drawer. No one will be able to see the blood with her jeans on anyhow.
“Not bad for five minutes, young lady,” Janey says. Sethie wishes she’d had more time to get ready. Clearly, Janey spent plenty of time applying the black liner around her eyes, and Sethie’s own makeup feels messy and inadequate by comparison. Sethie tried doing her makeup like Janey’s yesterday before school, but it didn’t look the same on her. The black eyeliner made her eyes seem too round, almost somehow far away from the rest of her face. And her hair kept getting caught in the Vaseline she smeared on her lips; Sethie remembered later that Janey keeps her hair mostly pulled back. The makeup was odd on Sethie, as though people would be able to tell, even without ever having seen her before, that this wasn’t what she usually looked like. So tonight she rubbed pink gloss on her lips and chocolate brown mascara on her lashes. She pressed blush onto her cheeks and powder onto her eyelids. She’d wanted to add brown eyeliner, but there wasn’t enough time.
Janey’s moved on to other things.
“They have parties almost every weekend. The school hates it, but their house is technically off campus, so there’s nothing they can do.”
Sethie nods. She thought all frat houses had parties.
“Doug says it’s the best house on campus.”
“I thought you said it was off campus.” Sethie blinks.
“Well, technically, sure, but I just mean—the best house of any of the fraternities up there.”
Sethie nods. She guesses that’s important. Even though it’s freezing, she rolls the taxi window all the way down. She hasn’t eaten much today, and the cool air wakes her up a little. She should get some coffee, she thinks. Or a Diet Coke—no calories. It’ll be a late night.
Janey walks into the frat house like she’s a regular, which Sethie guesses she is now. Janey and Doug have been together for nearly two months. Janey pulls Sethie toward the stairs—she wants to go straight up to Doug’s room. Sethie wants to look around to see whether Shaw has gotten here yet, so she lags behind.
She sees him over on a couch by the window. She smiles.
“Wait,” she says to Janey. “I want to say hi to Shaw.” She drops Janey’s hand.
Shaw doesn’t realize she’s there until she’s right next to him. “Hey,” she says. She wants to lean down to kiss him hello, but she doesn’t think he’d like that. So she waits.
Shaw raises his eyebrows. “Hey!” he says loudly. “When did you get here?”
“Just now, with Janey.”
“Oh,” Shaw says, nodding. Shaw swings his arm from the back of the couch where it had been resting; for a second she thinks he might take her hand, pull her down onto his lap. Instead, he gestures to the girl and the guy sitting next to him. “This is Anna, and you know Jeff Cooper, right?” Sethie nods. She guesses Jeff and Anna are a couple, but it’s hard to tell; the couch is so small that they’re all three sitting very close.
“Tell Janey not to go getting into too much trouble up there,” Shaw says, stretching his arm back behind the couch and nodding toward the stairwell. Sethie thinks she’s supposed to leave now; Shaw has sent her away with a message.
“Okay,” she says, “I will.” She thinks Shaw looks pissed, but she’s not sure why.
Sethie can’t remember exactly which room is Doug’s, and now Janey’s gone, so there’s no one to show her the way. She’s scared of walking into the wrong room, but she knows she looks like an idiot hovering outside three closed doors. She strains her ears until she thinks she hears Janey’s laugh. She follows the sound and feels very brave when she turns the doorknob and very lucky when she gets it right.
“Sethie!” Janey squeals as she opens the door. She jumps up from her spot on the couch. “You found us!”
Janey kisses her on the cheek, her lips sticky and hot. “Everybody, this is my best friend Sethie. Isn’t she pretty?”
Sethie isn’t sure why Janey is addressing “everybody”—the only people in the room are Doug and one other boy. Janey gives her labels quickly, if not lightly: Sethie is already her best friend, Doug already her boyfriend. But it feels good to be called someone’s best friend. Sethie hasn’t been called that since elementary school, when she had a new best friend every month or so.
Janey takes her hand. “Sit here,” she says, leading Sethie toward a small couch that Sethie thinks is technically a love seat, though she can’t imagine anyone here would call it that. “You’ll make room for her, right?” Janey says to the lanky boy propped in the corner, who nods. Sethie sits.
Janey takes her seat across from Sethie, next to Doug on the bed, whose arm goes around her almost automatically. Sethie bets they kissed hello too.
“Is Sethie short for something?”
“What?” Sethie says, turning her head from Doug and Janey.
The lanky boy on the couch next to her repeats his question. “Is Sethie short for something?”
Sethie nods. “Yup. What’s your name?”
Lanky Boy smiles. “You didn’t tell me what Sethie was short for.”
Sethie smiles back. “You didn’t ask.”
Lanky Boy smiles wider. “You’re pretty clever, aren’t you?”
“Yes, actually, as a matter of fact, I am.” Sethie can’t quite believe she just said that. It’s the kind of snappy comeback Janey would come up with, not her. She decides that Lanky Boy must be an excellent conversationalist.
“So what is your name?” she asks again.
“Ben.”
Sethie nods.
“So what is Sethie short for?”
Sethie pauses before answering. She could try for another snappy comeback. But rather than press her luck, she says, “Sarah Beth.”
Ben cocks his head to the side like he’s considering that. “Is Beth your middle name or part of your first name?”
“Middle.”
“So why not Sarah?”
Sethie purses her lips, feeling how dry they are. Her lip gloss has already worn off. Not like Janey’s.
“Don’t know.”
“Hasn’t anyone ever asked that before?”
Sethie smiles, and then laughs. “Nope, no one ever has.”
“So I’m your first,” Ben says, raising his eyebrows.
Still laughing, Sethie says, “Sure, you could call it that.”
Sethie looks back at Doug and Janey, who are smiling and whispering, glancing over at them. She’s sure they’re talking about her, but she can’t imagine about what, or why. For once, at least for now, she doesn’t care. She feels warm, and the couch is soft, and Ben’s long arms and legs make her feel small beside him. And small is almost skinny. Ben hands her a beer.
“Thanks.” She takes it, but she doesn’t open it.
“The way it works,” Ben says, “is that you pop back that little tabby there—”
Sethie scowls at him. “I’m familiar with the mechanics of cans.”
“Well then, let ’er rip.”
“No. I haven’t decided whether I’m going to drink it yet.”
“Why’s that?”
“I haven’t eaten much today, so I’m going to have to pace myself.” Sethie can’t help but feel a nice little poke of pride when she says she hasn’t eaten much today, just like that, like it’s no big deal, she’s just a regular skinny girl who can skip the occasional meal without thinking about it, longing for it, imagining what it might have been and how many calories it might have had.
“Well, we can’t have that,” Ben says, “slip of a thing like you.” He reaches his arms across the couch, over Sethie. She leans back into the couch as much as she can. His fingers almost touch her breasts, but she holds her breath.
“Here,” he says. He’s grabbed a bag of chips from the table on Sethie’s side of the couch. Sethie hadn’t known they were there, but now that they’re in front of her, her mouth is watering. How could they have been there that whole time, she wonders, without her having noticed?
“Ooh,” Janey says, reaching for the bag. “Yum.” She turns to Doug. “Can we get some pizza from that place?”
“Sure,” Doug says, but Sethie’s thinking, what place? Janey wouldn’t say “that place” unless she’d had its pizza already. But Janey has been coming up here regularly, to see Doug, because she’s his girlfriend.
“Sethie, you’re going to love this pizza,” Janey says. She stands up and walks to the window, perches on the sill, lights a cigarette. Sethie gets up to stand beside her. Chips and pizza, she thinks. And beer. Maybe a cigarette will help keep her from eating the chips at least until the pizza gets here.
But the cigarette burns down quickly, and then Janey is reaching her hand into the bag for some chips. Sethie watches her friend, watches her chin move as she chews, imagines the texture of the chip changing from hard to soft in her mouth. Digestion starts in the mouth, she thinks. The more you chew, the better. But Janey doesn’t look like she’s thinking about digestion, or calories, as she reaches into the bag again.
Sethie thinks Janey must be faking it. Even if she said that was just a phase she once went through. There can’t be a girl left who doesn’t at least fleetingly consider fat every time she eats. Only boys and little kids can do that.
Sethie decides she will fake it too. Just for now. Just for a few chips. Just until the pizza comes.
But then, what constitutes a few chips? Is that as many as you can fit before the pizza gets here? Because that’s how many Sethie’s eating. She barely puts one in her mouth before her other hand reaches back into the bag. She’s scared that Janey or Doug or Ben will notice, will make a joke about the girl who can’t stop eating. She can’t help herself: she is so hungry. The salt of the chips is the first real taste she’s had in her mouth all day; it tastes so strong, her eyes tear. She tries to force herself to wait in between chips; she can only take another chip after someone else has taken one. This rule slows her down a bit.
The pizza has pepperoni. Little pools of oil have formed on top of the cheese, in between the slices. Sethie thinks it’s interesting that some fo
ods even look like fat before they’ve made their way into your body and onto your inner thighs, your upper arms, the sides of your torso. And she thinks it’s pathetic, really, how even with all that fat floating on the surface, she’s still reaching for a piece of pizza.
I should hate myself more, Sethie thinks. If I hated myself enough, then I could stop eating altogether.
Two slices down. But she didn’t eat the crusts, and she took some of the cheese off the second one. She wishes there were salt; maybe, if she salted the second slice too much, it wouldn’t taste so good and she’d be able to put it down.
Doug’s on his third slice; Ben too. Janey’s still working on her first, because she’d stopped halfway through it to pour drinks. She pours a shot of something pink and sticky for Sethie. Sethie drinks it; she knows alcohol is fattening, but this drink burns on the way down like it’s going to swim after all the food in her stomach and make it dissolve.
Sethie stands up and lights another cigarette. She smokes it too fast; for a second she feels nauseous, and the nausea makes her remember that she can undo everything she just did. Every last calorie could get up from inside of her. She wants to hurry, before anything begins to digest.
It shouldn’t be hard, she thinks. Just ask where the bathroom is. You kind of have to pee anyway. She wills herself to feel nauseous.
“Where’s the bathroom?” she asks, quietly, like it’s no big deal, like the words don’t take up all the space in her mouth, like the words themselves aren’t the beginning of what she’s about to do.
“I’ll show you,” Ben says, standing up. He hadn’t stood up until now, and he’s so tall that Sethie’s head hits her back when she tilts her neck to look up at him. He’s taller than Shaw, but not any wider. Just longer. He puts his hand on Sethie’s back to lead her out the door, and she nearly leans against him, even though she’s not so drunk that she can’t stand up on her own. Someone this tall doesn’t seem like he belongs out in the world.
The Stone Girl Page 8
