White Lines

by Jennifer Banash

  Alexa wipes the steam from the mirror with one hand and regards her face in the glass, wiping the corner of her heavily glossed mouth with one pinky.

  “Why do you do anything that’s bad for you?” she deadpans, her eyes moving over my face, reading me. “You’re Caitlin.”

  I nod wordlessly and turn back to the mirror, gathering my hair in a low ponytail and securing it with an elastic band. She doesn’t introduce herself. Why would she? Everyone knows who she is.

  “I hear you hang out downtown a lot.”

  “I guess,” I mumble. “I mean, I live there now, so . . .” I have no idea what to say next. I don’t like Alexa Forte, and she’s never treated me even vaguely like a human being since I transferred here, but I’m slightly freaked out over the fact that she is not only talking to me, but trusting me with her eating disorder, as I’m already assuming this isn’t the first time her stomach has spontaneously rejected a selection of baked goods. The question is, why?

  “I’ve never been below Fourteenth Street.” Alexa pulls a brush from her monogrammed Louis Vuitton shoulder bag and begins to brush her blond mane with long, careful strokes. “My parents say it’s dangerous down there.” She rolls her eyes apologetically, the whites shining in the glass.

  “Not if you know where you’re going,” I answer. “I could take you sometime—if you want. We could go shopping or something.” Anxiety rises in my chest, cutting off my breath, my hands tingling with numbness. Shopping? Had I gone temporarily insane? I could no more see Alexa Forte downtown, lost among the Goth freaks, club kids and punk rockers, than I could see myself running away and joining the circus.

  Alexa reaches into her purse and pulls out a pen. “What’s your number?” As I stammer my digits at her, I wonder what the hell I’m doing. In what universe could Alexa Forte and I possibly hang out? Maybe I should’ve stayed home sick today . . .

  “I’d say talk to me at lunch”—Alexa throws the pen back into her bag, my number written in black ink on the inside of her wrist—“but I think we both know that’s not going to happen.”

  Right. I’m still a freak. The lowest freak on the totem pole in a school of total freaks. Just in case there was any confusion.

  Alexa smiles regretfully, her cheeks rosy and flushed, and I find myself marveling that this is the same girl who just willfully emptied the contents of her stomach into the toilet moments ago. She’s not as perfect as she seems. So what? So, this might be interesting, I tell myself, as long as I don’t take it too seriously. Without another word or a backward glance, Alexa heads for the door, her hair swinging behind her.

  I take a deep breath and look at myself in the mirror, my stomach quieted now, face still pale beneath my bangs. I have my mother’s face, her pointed jaw, the same widely spaced eyes that make me look vacant as a porcelain doll, skin the yellowish hue of slightly curdled cream. “Who are you?” I whisper at my reflection, my voice hushed as if I am kneeling in church, the silence deep and viscous. I lean in to the mirror, one hand on the glass as I search my face for some kind of answer. The water drips mindlessly from the tap, and I hear my mother’s voice in my head, that low, seductive purr I know so well.

  I made you. You belong to me.

  I flick my eyes away from my reflection, stomach aching, wipe my hands on a paper towel and head back to class.

  EIGHT

  “SHE DID WHAT?”

  Sara’s white curls bounce in the afternoon breeze, and she kicks her booted foot repeatedly on the iron leg of the bench we’re sitting on outside of Gus’s Deli, across the street from Nightingale. Sara has a free lunch period today, and since this happens so rarely in her ridiculously overcommitted life, I’ve walked over to meet her. Part of me wonders if Julian is sitting on the steps outside our school, a slab of pizza in one hand, a Coke in the other, if he even thought about me at all once the bell rang. When I passed him in the hall this morning, he looked down at the floor in the very definition of the word awkward, his eyes sliding away from my face, a small smile of recognition twisting the corners of his mouth. Needless to say, I did not take this as the most encouraging sign in the universe, so I’m glad to get out for a while and avoid any potential lunchtime weirdness. I don’t know what I expected. I didn’t exactly think Julian would throw me to the floor and start whispering declarations of love in my ear or anything, but I didn’t bank on complete and total nothingness, either. My chest feels heavy, disappointment filling my throat, the taste of lemon juice mixed with dirt.

  Sara is picking at one of her many bizarre salad bar creations—a heap of lettuce studded with mandarin oranges, tuna fish, almonds and black olives. The result makes it seem like she cruises the salad bar blindfolded. Just the smell makes my stomach turn over again, and I take a sip from the cup of black coffee in my hand, the bitterness steadying my nerves, caffeine shooting through me like lightning. It would be amazing if I could somehow get through the day without chemicals, caffeine included, but with the amount of sleep I get—or don’t get—it’s not even close to an option. I try to remember what it was like to wake up excited for the day to begin, to need nothing but my own momentum to propel me from one activity to another, but every time I close my eyes and search for that feeling, I come up blank.

  “It was definitely weird,” I say, placing the hot cup between my thighs to warm them.

  The wind is rocking through the trees above us like it means business, and I almost can’t wait for the first snowfall of the year, the whole city suddenly clean, blanketed under drifts of white dust, how silent it will feel. I didn’t tell Sara everything that happened in the bathroom—just that Alexa Forte had asked for my number and hinted that she’d like to hang out downtown. Somehow, what went on in that stall, the food that was violently ejected from her perfect body, doesn’t seem mine to recount, so I’m staying quiet about it.

  “God,” Sara muses, taking a bite of tuna, “do you really think she’ll call?”

  “Who knows?” I shrug, pulling my black leather jacket closer to my body. “I’m not exactly holding my breath.”

  Sara’s laughter is a snort, her cheeks stuffed with lettuce. With her white hair and nose pink from the cold, she reminds me of a bunny rabbit, the furry hood on her vanilla-colored down coat adding to the illusion. “Are you working tonight?” She swallows hard, wiping her mouth with a napkin. “Or can I come over?”

  Sara hates clubs and can’t understand why I choose to spend every night in them. The one time I persuaded her to give the club a second chance and took her to work with me, she was yawning five minutes after we got there, and I ended up putting her in a cab an hour later. She maintains to this day that nightclubs give her narcolepsy, and that everyone who frequents them is pretentious and totally full of themselves. That’s the point, I tell her, rolling my eyes.

  “Working. But you can come over this afternoon if you want.”

  Sara takes one last bite and closes the plastic top to the salad bowl, placing it on the bench next to her black tote bag, a row of metal safety pins running up the shoulder strap. “Can’t,” she says, still chewing. “Yearbook.”

  “Why don’t you just move a bed into the pub lab and be done with it? That way you can arrange senior pages in your sleep.”

  “Good idea,” Sara says, swallowing hard. “Imagine all I could accomplish. I could really get things done.”

  One of the reasons I love Sara is that we totally get each other—same completely sarcastic sense of humor. Sara is so deadpan that most people can’t even tell when she’s kidding. Especially her teachers, who mostly think she’s some kind of mad genius when she’s not totally annoying them with her smart-ass remarks.

  “You look thin,” she says out of nowhere, scrutinizing my legs covered in black leggings, her eyes moving up to search the bones in my face. “And tired. You’re working too much.”

  “Not really,” I say, brushing her comments aside. “But why beat around the bush? Why don’t you just tell me I look like shit?”
>
  Sara rolls her eyes and nudges me in the side with her pointy-ass elbow. “Relax! I’m just worried about you, moron.” She smiles and her tone is playful, but I can tell that beneath the veneer of lightness, she’s dead serious.

  “I just . . . think maybe you’re partying too much. I mean, after the whole fiasco at Nightingale, I think I have the right to be a little worried, you know? Doing lines in the bathroom? That’s not like you, Cat.”

  Her eyes mist over with tears, and she looks away from me and out into the street, the grin slowly evaporating from her face, fading into nothingness.

  “Look,” I begin, trying to keep my tone reasonable so that I don’t burst into tears or fly off the handle. Her concern infuriates me. I don’t want to be questioned or cross-examined. She’s supposed to be the one person who understands me completely, the one person I don’t have to defend myself to. “I told you what happened. I got home really late the night before, and I was practically falling asleep in class. I was just doing one little line to get me through the day, and if that idiot freshman hadn’t walked in, no one would be any the wiser. We wouldn’t even be having this conversation.”

  “Wouldn’t we?”

  I’m silent, crossing my arms over my chest. Somewhere deep inside me I know she’s right, and it needles at my skin like a million tiny jolts of electricity. I know things have to change, that I can’t keep stumbling through the darkened landscape of my life, but I don’t know where to start. It’s like I’m running a race, weights strapped to my ankles, the clock ticking down minute after minute. Merciless.

  “Cat, I’m only saying this because I love you, but you’re fucking up. Big time. And what’s worse is that I think you know it. So be as pissed at me as you want.” She turns and looks at me, and the pain in her eyes almost breaks me apart. “But I’d rather have you be angry with me than continue down the path you’re on, because sooner or later you’re going to end up in the goddamn hospital. Or the morgue.”

  There’s a moment of silence in which I can hear the sound of my own ragged breathing mixing with the noise of the traffic, the cacophony of buses and pedestrians, the sound of Sara’s heart beating solidly next to mine.

  “For God’s sake, Sara, stop being so dramatic,” I snap, trying to brush off her words, but they stick in my brain, anchoring there with surprising force. “I’m not going to die,” I say more quietly now, looking down at the leaves that blow past my boots, wondering how I can be so sure.

  “Maybe not,” Sara says quietly. “But I don’t want to take that chance. I don’t know why you’re so willing to.”

  Sara’s voice breaks and she looks away again, her eyes distant as she stands up, walks to the curb and tosses her half-eaten salad into the trash. A woman walking an arthritic beagle passes slowly by, the dog dragging its hindquarters as it meanders slowly down the street. Tears swim in my eyes, blurring my vision, and I bring my fists up to my face, rubbing my eyes as if I want to blot them out entirely. When Sara gets like this, the only thing to do is change the subject.

  “So . . . ,” I say when she sits back down, taking a deep breath, unsure if I should tell her about Julian but suddenly unable to stop myself. “I met this guy yesterday. Julian. He’s new.” The words come out in a rush, and I’m aware of my face flushing stupidly. It’s been so long since I’ve had a crush on anyone that I feel like everything I’m saying sounds ridiculous. Sara’s mouth falls open and she waits for me to finish. “We had some pizza together yesterday at lunch, and today he just kind of . . . ignored me.”

  “Wait . . . ,” Sara says slowly, her brow scrunching into a mass of wrinkles above her shock of white hair. “He used to go to Dalton, right? Julian Lee? Worships the Ramones? Has a lot of dirty black hair? Looks Japanese or something?”

  “Yeah,” I say, nodding, “that’s him.”

  “Oh, Cat,” Sara says quietly. “You got off easy.”

  “What do you mean?” I take one last gulp of my coffee, wincing as the now cold liquid hits the back of my throat. I hate cold coffee. I’m feeling shaky and unhinged from all the caffeine, like I might break apart at any moment. My wrist aches, and I rub it absentmindedly with one hand as I wait for Sara’s response. It broke in two places last year when my mother decided that a B on a science test was unacceptable and slammed my hand in the door of our Town Car the night before I was supposed to see Depeche Mode at Madison Square Garden. I inwardly cringe, remembering the pain, the impact of metal on bone, the crunching sound as my wrist shattered into pieces, the high-pitched scream that left my lips, and my own bewilderment. Who’s that? I thought as my voice echoed through the air, shrill and unfamiliar, one part of myself watching, disconnected and weirdly observant.

  “You don’t know about him?” Sara crosses one leg over the other, angling her body toward me, her polka-dotted red-and-white tights a beacon in the weak fall sunlight. “His girlfriend tried to kill herself last year by taking an overdose of Xanax, and she left behind some kind of note blaming him.”

  I nod slowly, taking it in.

  “I mean, she was probably screwed up to begin with, but still, he is so not boyfriend material.”

  “I never said I wanted him to be.” I can hear the defensive tone in my voice, and suddenly I feel like I could sleep for a million years. “I don’t want to deal with anyone right now anyway,” I tell her, the words sounding hollow and empty. It’s true—the idea of having a boyfriend scares me silly, and even though I can’t imagine being in any kind of relationship, I’d be lying to myself if I didn’t admit that I wanted to get to know Julian in some way, that I’d felt a kind of connection between us yesterday rising up over the table, some invisible thread pulling us closer. A car screeches down the street blasting the new Duran Duran song, bass kicking, and Sara briefly nods to the beat. Sara is a sucker for pretty boys with highlighted floppy hair and early eighties New Wave wardrobes, and Duran Duran more than fits the bill as far as she’s concerned.

  “Well, that’s good, because he would be a seriously questionable choice, and I don’t want to see you get hurt. He’s the last thing you need right now, Cat.”

  My stomach turns over at her words, and I wonder if for just once in her life, Sara is completely and totally wrong.

  “Don’t worry. Like I said before, he totally ignored me today.”

  “Good,” Sara says with a snort. “Let’s keep it that way.”

  The trouble is, I’m not sure I want to. I stare out into the street, my eyes blurring and losing focus as I think of his face, that grin as he stared at me across the table, and my heart flops useless in my chest, trying to find its way out. But now that Julian’s ignored me, the ball has been firmly tossed into his court. If he wants to talk to me, he’ll have to make the first move. There’s no way I’m risking the total humiliation of walking up to him between classes and having him act like I have some kind of bizarre flesh-eating disease that will instantly infect him if he so much as breathes one word in my direction. Maybe I scared him away with that whole stupid speech about being a social pariah, but what else could I do? He would have found out the truth eventually. Everyone always does.

  I watch as a pigeon pecks at loose crumbs around the trash, its dirty feathers touching the ground as it bobs its delicate head toward the sidewalk. I wonder if it knows something I don’t, that maybe I should learn to be satisfied and stop expecting a banquet instead of a life full of stale, dry crumbs. The leaves above shake in the wind, and I look up at the sky for some clue about what happens next, some kind of answer. Instead, there are only clouds rolling across the horizon.

  NINE

  I’M WEDGED BEHIND the velvet ropes that lead to the Tunnel basement, and although I’m supposed to be sitting on top of a high stool, lording my power over the crowd and looking as bored as humanly possible, I’m antsy. The music is making me want to dance, even though the black, knee-high boots I’m wearing are cutting into my toes and making me cranky. So when Sammy, one of the club’s biggest dealers,
pushes to the front of the line, I’m almost relieved. He raises a pale eyebrow at the rope hanging between us, and I open it with a click, letting him in. He leans in for a double-cheek kiss, resting his hands lightly on my upper arms. Like most of the serious dealers, he’s wearing a black suit with a T-shirt underneath, and shiny shoes. Nondescript and boring. Sammy’s got to be in at least his late twenties but seems younger with his buttery blond hair and smooth, unlined face.

  “How are you, Cat? You’re looking fabulous as usual,” he marvels, his eyes sweeping the length of my body, taking in the black leotard, black-and-white patterned tights and high black boots, a white piece of fur knotted in my hair, lips stained bloodred. I feel like some kind of demented superhero in this outfit, but Giovanni was insistent as usual, so here I am, standing behind a rope the exact color of my parted mouth, one hand on my hip. I would die of embarrassment if I had to wear this outfit on the street in broad daylight, but the club is a place where I am most often someone else entirely, and where anything is possible. Sammy takes my hand, and I can feel the weight of a plastic bag being pressed into my palm. He winks, his eyes catching the light overhead before he walks down the long set of red-carpeted stairs.

  It’s scary to admit to myself that in the last few months, whenever Sammy presses that plastic bag into my palm, my pulse races, my eyes glitter in anticipation, the feeling of the sticky plastic under my fingers accompanied by a sudden dampening under my arms. As soon as Sammy leaves, I motion to Giovanni, who is leaning against the wall behind me chatting with a very young-looking boy wearing a white tutu, and ask him to watch the door for a minute while I run to the bathroom.

  “Can I abuse my power?” Giovanni raises one eyebrow, already sizing up the crowd with a Machiavellian grin.

  “Totally,” I say, laughing. “Have at it.”