White Lines

by Jennifer Banash

  Sara throws herself on top of the bed, pulling the white comforter up to her chin with an audible groan that signals me to climb in next to her and rest my head on her shoulder. Her blond springy curls tickle my face, and I push them away gently with one hand, patting them down on the pillow like I’m consoling a small child.

  “What brought it on this time?” Sara whispers sleepily.

  “Not sure,” I answer with a deep sigh as my body begins to let go and relax. “Nothing. Everything?”

  “Uh, can you maybe be more specific?” Sara says with a giggle.

  “Alexa came out with me last night. And I went to breakfast with Christoph. Before that, I partied on a semi truck that drove around downtown packed with about a hundred screaming club kids who were blitzed out of their collective minds. So one of those things, maybe? All of them?”

  Sara sits straight up in bed, and the whites of her eyes and her platinum hair glow in the dimness of the room. “I’m sorry,” she deadpans. “I think I just hallucinated. Alexa Forte partied with you on a truck? Did she run away screaming into the night?”

  “Hardly,” I snort. “I think she went home with a barback, actually.”

  “Slut,” Sara says, giggling.

  “Totally.”

  “And how did you end up with Christoph?” Sara cannot keep the note of revulsion from creeping into her voice, and at the sound of it, I immediately become defensive. Sara thinks Christoph is a creep, one notch above child molester. She’s never even met him, but every time I’ve so much as mentioned his name, she’s become agitated and suspicious. Maybe it’s because Sara’s dad had an affair a few years ago with some twenty-year-old nitwit he met through the personals, of all places. Her parents worked it out, eventually, though according to Sara they still go to couples therapy twice a week.

  “I didn’t end up with him. We just went to breakfast.”

  Sara lies back down and turns on her side to face me, one hand propped beneath her head. I can feel her unsaid thoughts like heat-seeking missiles. When she speaks, the words come slowly, carefully, as if I might break at the sound of them.

  “Were you high last night?”

  I shrug. “A little. Not really. Not bad.”

  Sara sighs, flipping onto her back and crossing her arms over her chest.

  “I shouldn’t have ever taken you there in the first place,” she mumbles. “I could fucking kick myself, I really could.”

  There is a tremble in her voice, and even though I’m not looking at her, I know she’s gnawing at her bottom lip the way she always does when she’s upset. By tomorrow, she’ll be able to peel the skin off in strips and will once again be addicted to the small pot of Carmex she always carries in her bag.

  “What are you talking about?” I prop myself up on one elbow to see her face better. “I would have found it anyway, and if not the club, something else. I don’t need saving,” I say softly. “That’s not your job.”

  “Then whose is it?” she says quietly.

  I fall silent, burying my head in the pillow. The soft cotton smells of the musk of her perfume and of the sweet scent of detergent. The room is heavy with the sound of our breathing, with all that remains unsaid, Sara’s chest rising and falling beneath her sweatshirt.

  “What about school, Cat? I mean, I don’t want to sound like some kind of mom or something, but what about the SATs? Have you even started studying?”

  “Jesus, Sara, I’ll figure it out,” I say, unable to keep the annoyance from my voice. “I will,” I say more quietly. Even as the words leave my lips, I know they are a lie.

  Sara exhales loudly, and when I look over at her, I think I see a tear squeezing its way out of the corner of her eye. I want to reach out and wipe it away, but instead I lie there silent, do nothing.

  “You’re not seriously considering starting anything with Christoph, are you? I mean . . . he’s, like, old enough to be your dad!”

  “Gross,” I mutter, pulling the blanket up to my neck. “Besides, my dad never takes me to breakfast.”

  “That’s so not what I meant,” Sara answers, irritation creeping in little by little. “I know you’re pissed at me for saying this, but I’m worried, OK? First that psycho Julian, and now Christoph. Is it possible for you to have worse taste in guys?”

  “Just chill out,” I snap, turning over on my side. “First off, I freaked out on Julian the other day in the hall, and I doubt he’ll ever speak to me again anyway. And I just had breakfast with Christoph. It’s not like he deflowered me on the hood of a car in the middle of Times Square or something.”

  There’s a long pause. I can hear the traffic outside Sara’s window start to pick up, the rain hurling itself against the panes of glass.

  “Well,” Sara says after what seems like forever. “Not yet.”

  I immediately break into laughter, the giggles bubbling up from my throat like a magnum of good champagne shaken and released from the bottle. When we catch our breath, Sara clears her throat, reaching up to pull her mass of curls farther away from her face so that they’re spread out all over the pillow.

  “You really freaked out on this Julian kid?” Sara asks, her voice low and sleepy.

  “Unfortunately,” I mutter. “I’m sure he thinks I’m completely insane.”

  “Oh, whatever,” Sara snorts, kicking my foot under the blanket. “He ignored you the other day! What does he expect? And I told you, his ex was a total psycho. Completely bananas. Loony tunes. I’m sure he’s used to it.”

  “It doesn’t matter anyway,” I say, my throat an aching hollow tube as my mind floods with the golden hue of his skin, the upward tilt of his dark eyes. The hurt and confusion reflected in them as I walked away. It’s so easy to hurt people, just by being alive.

  “Guys are so annoying,” Sara says, throwing her warm leg across my own and yawning loudly. “You’re better off here with me.”

  My heart somersaults in time with the memory of Julian’s face, and I turn toward Sara, my head on her shoulder, our bodies curled together like a pair of bookends, a matched set. As our breathing slowly quiets, fading into the insistent sound of the rain lashing the windows, Sara taps her foot against mine in a code I can neither recognize nor decipher, but which lulls me far from terror and into sleep.

  EIGHTEEN

  I’M STANDING OUTSIDE the bio lab at break on Monday morning when I see Alexa moving down the hall as if in slow motion, her body wrapped in an enormous black sweater that makes her look more delicate and breakable than usual. She’s alone for once, and without her usual entourage she seems smaller, less powerful. When she gets closer, I notice the circles beneath her eyes she can’t hide with powder and paint, lavender hollows that hint at just how she spent the rest of her weekend. Even though she’s clearly exhausted, a rosy flush decorates her cheeks, her sleepless eyes glittering.

  I spent the rest of the weekend at Sara’s, safe beside her in the bed, watching movies and stuffing our faces with pizza and the Little Debbie snacks her mother always keeps in the well-stocked kitchen cupboard along with the other junk she buys for Sara but her trainer won’t allow her to consume. I wasn’t scheduled to work on Saturday, but when I got home late Sunday afternoon, the answering machine showed three hang-ups, the sound of breathing filling the tape with a whooshing sound before it clicked off. As I stood there, Christoph’s face filled my mind, making me dizzy, and I had to sit down on the bed and close my eyes, skin mottled with goose bumps that prickled my flesh.

  “Hey.” Alexa’s voice is as breezy as if we’re at a garden party in the Hamptons instead of loitering in a vaguely antiseptic hallway outside a stuffy classroom.

  “Where’d you end up the other night?” I ask, knowing the answer well before the words even leave her lips.

  She smiles. “Oh, you know. Here and there.”

  I nod, playing it cool. No matter how hard I try, though, I’ll never be as unflappable as Alexa Forte. It’s just not in my DNA.

  “You like him.” I sa
y this as a statement, flatly, because it’s obvious. If it weren’t so amusing, it would almost be sad. I’ve been clubbing for about a year and I’m like an incurable disease. Alexa goes out for one night and guys are throwing themselves at her feet. All things considered, she could probably do a lot worse. Ethan’s gorgeous, and from what I’ve heard, which admittedly isn’t much, he’s also pretty smart. The only drawback being that he’s also at least twenty-four and working as a barback at a nightclub—something I’m pretty sure Alexa’s mother wouldn’t find desirable in any sense of the word.

  “What’s not to like?” She crinkles her brow as if I’m the dumbest human to ever walk the face of the earth, and as far as Alexa Forte is concerned, I probably am. “He’s totally hot.”

  “True,” I say with a sheepish smile. I can’t even pretend I know what she’s talking about. I have no idea what it would be like to roll around in bed with someone you were completely into for an entire weekend, climbing out of each other’s arms only to eat bits of stale toast and lick flat champagne off each other’s naked bodies. Most of the time I can’t even imagine letting a stranger get close enough to touch me. That being said, the experience of trusting another human being enough to let them put part of their own anatomy inside me would probably cause my brain to short-circuit entirely, filling my head with a dangerous sputtering electricity. With that thought, I shudder, my shoulders twitching reflexively.

  “Are you going to see him again?”

  “He wants me to come to the club and hang out on Saturday night while he works.” She shrugs as if the thought is pedestrian at best, but the shine in her eyes tells me otherwise. She is seriously smitten, even if she doesn’t want anyone to know it.

  “So what happened to you?” Alexa’s expression is mischievous, as if she’s just swallowed a delicious secret, one she wants to keep to herself.

  “Nothing,” I say quickly, my tone offhand and breezy, both because it happens to be true, and to change the subject. Christoph, like everything else in my nocturnal life, exists only in that space. I cannot imagine him doing something as normal and everyday as making coffee or toast for breakfast, then reading the paper. If sunlight touched him, I imagine he’d disappear, crumbling into dust. “We just went to breakfast, then I went home.”

  “Uh-huh.” Alexa nods disbelievingly. “Sure you did.”

  I laugh, opening my mouth to protest, when Britney and Alison, two of Alexa’s minions, begin their slow strut down the hall, their eyes sweeping the hallway and then widening in shock at the incongruous sight of their fearless leader engaged in a conversation with the weirdo who dyes her hair random colors and has some kind of bizarro life that does not involve finding the perfect Jessica McClintock peasant dress to wear to the next senior prom at Dalton or Spence.

  Britney turns to Alison and begins whispering something behind her cupped hand, her French manicure flashing in the fluorescence of the hallway, her lips moving without sound as Alison throws her mane of dark hair over one shoulder and dissolves into peals of laughter.

  Although Alexa doesn’t turn around or acknowledge their approach, their presence registers in her eyes as a subtle flicker, but her expression does not change.

  “I should go,” she says, barely moving her lips. “Come over tomorrow night.”

  I nod slightly as the salad girls arrive in a cloud of Obsession perfume thick enough to qualify as a full body assault.

  Britney raises one dark blond brow, nostrils flaring as she takes in the black sweater I found in a thrift store on Avenue A, the leggings that end in combat boots covered in spray paint, my hair pulled back in a messy knot. With her excessively long legs and long, aquiline nose, Britney reminds me of a horse. Whenever I see her, I have this urge to put her in a barn and feed her hay until she whinnies appreciatively.

  “Slumming it, Lex?” Her tone is cloying, but the look she shoots in my direction is equal parts honey and arsenic.

  Alexa’s face ices over, her eyes deadened. “Like you’d know anything about it,” she answers, her voice clipped and dangerous. “Let’s evacuate.”

  Without another word, the three sweep past me, linking arms with Alexa in the middle, of course. As she glides down the hall, Britney chattering excitedly in her ear, Alexa turns to look back at me over her shoulder, one eye closing in a practiced wink. Somehow the thought that Alexa Forte is now living a double life thrills me in an unexpected way. Maybe we’re not so different after all, a voice pipes up excitedly inside me, her tone brimming with optimism. Unfortunately, she is answered immediately by the part of me that already knows better, the part of me that is continually disappointed. This isn’t a movie, she hisses, and some random encounter isn’t nearly enough to demolish the intricate levels of the high school caste system, honey.

  At lunch, I’m sitting on the steps with Molly, this girl from my history class who lives on Eighty-Ninth and Lexington and is totally anorexic and eats the same thing every day for lunch: a carton of Dannon vanilla fat-free yogurt and a bagel. Molly has lank red hair that she’s cut in an asymmetrical bob, and she wears wire-rimmed silver glasses and granny boots that lace tightly up her thin ankles. She favors sweaters and shirts with wide lace collars, and when I picture her room at home, I imagine her trapped under a deep pile of doilies, gasping for air. She divides her bagel into strips, separating the soft white dough from the hard, shiny bagel skin. The dough goes in the trash or is tossed to the pigeons swarming the street. Watching her, I begin to crave steak, French fries, chocolate mousse, fried dough covered in powdered sugar and dripping with oil. Eating her bagel takes almost the whole period, and by the time she’s finished, I am hypnotized into a stupor.

  It’s cold out, the trees finally stripped of dead leaves. In ten days or so it will be Thanksgiving, turkeys with all the trimmings, the sweet spicy scent of pumpkin pie permeating the air with cloves and cinnamon. I don’t know what’s more depressing, the fact that I will most likely be eating ramen noodles on my bed while watching Gone With the Wind or that I actually care. I could always go to Sara’s, but no matter how much she loves me, I would just end up feeling like a fifth wheel, a charity case without a family, someone worthy of pity.

  I’m eating a container of slightly mushy fruit salad I bought at the deli across the street when Julian comes careening down the street on his skateboard, a plastic bag from Subway in one hand. He’s wearing dark glasses that hide his eyes, and I can’t tell what he’s thinking as he begins to slow down, kicking the board up into his free hand as he comes to a stop directly in front of the school.

  Without even knowing what I’m doing or why, I stand up, my salad falling to the pavement in a brightly colored mess. Julian just looks at me, his face impassive. Every time I think about the scene between us in the hall the other day, my stomach deflates and I want to die. He might have been rude, but I was tired and sick, and I definitely overreacted. If I can’t put things right, I can at least try to explain myself. If he’ll listen.

  “Julian.” My voice comes out as a croak, and I push my hands into the pockets of my black leather jacket, conscious that they have nowhere to go. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

  I walk down the steps, leaving Molly with the remains of her bagel. Julian tucks the skateboard under his arm and pushes his sunglasses on top of his head so that I can finally see his eyes. He looks confused, startled, and suddenly I’m unsure of myself as I shift my weight from one foot to the other, hoping that the pavement will suddenly open beneath my boots like a trapdoor, hurtling me into the murky labyrinth of the Manhattan sewage system. Now that I’m here, I don’t know what to do with myself. I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from crying or running away.

  “I’ve gotta go to class,” Julian says, his eyes focused somewhere behind my right shoulder.

  The small sense of hope I’ve managed to gather together inside me plummets to my knees, leaving behind a heady mix of shame and disappointment in its wake. Of course he has to go to class. Of course he�
�d rather go to class than stand outside and have any kind of potentially pointless conversation with me. The blood in my cheeks begins to boil, and even the cold wind ripping down the street isn’t enough to cool them.

  “What are you doing later?” he asks, finally concentrating my face. His eyes betray nothing.

  “Umm . . . later?” I stammer, caught off guard. “I don’t know. Nothing, I guess.”

  “Meet me here after the last bell,” he says gruffly, giving me a curt nod before pushing open the door as the bell begins to ring loudly, filling the street with clanging noise.

  NINETEEN