Luckiest Girl Alive

by Jessica Knoll

  I pushed back out of the crowd the same way I came in. There was a bathroom right across the way, and I locked myself into a stall, remembering how I’d gotten my period yesterday, had been so relieved when it arrived because it meant the morning-after pill had worked. The run had jogged it all loose. When I’d taken off the shorts, they’d been stained a brownish red. I couldn’t even imagine how dirty and gross they looked, how the terrible combination of sweat and period blood must smell. I’d been so distracted by Hilary’s and Olivia’s sudden kindness I hadn’t even noticed the shorts were missing when I packed my bag.

  The door opened and I heard the tail end of a spirited debate: “Deserves it.”

  “C’mon, it’s pretty mean, don’t you think?”

  Silently, I climbed on top of the toilet, tucking my legs underneath me.

  “Dean takes it too far,” another said. “It’s all fun and games until she tries to kill herself like Ben.”

  “Ben can’t help being gay,” the first girl said. “She can help being a whore.”

  Her friend laughed, and I swallowed a thick sob. I heard the water run and the sound of paper towels crunching in their hands. Then the door yawning shut behind them.

  I had never cut school in my entire life. I can’t even call in sick to work now, all that good Catholic girl obedience milled into my bones, but the day had broken me, bulldozed any fear about what might happen if I didn’t follow the rules. All that mattered was honoring the humiliation, so crushing, it left me short of breath. I waited right where I was, working a section of hair between my fingers over and over (“self-soothing behavior” according to The Women’s Magazine’s body language expert), until the first-period bell stopped ringing. I gave it another five minutes to ensure I wouldn’t run into any stragglers in the hallways. Then I climbed off the toilet seat, silent as Spider-Man, pushed open the door to the bathroom, and walked briskly down the hallway and out the back entrance. I’d take the train to Thirtieth Street Station. Wander around the city for the day. I was halfway out the parking lot when I heard someone calling my name behind me. It was Arthur.

  “I think we have some leftover lasagna in here.” Arthur peered into the refrigerator, buzzing noisily.

  I glanced at the display on the stove: 10:15. “I’m fine.”

  Arthur bumped the door shut with his hip, a casserole dish in his hands, the top crusted yellow with cheese. He cut a generous slice and slid the plate into the microwave.

  “Oh.” He licked tomato sauce off his finger and dropped to his heels, rummaging around in his backpack. “Here.” He flung my shorts at me.

  They were light as paper, but when they landed in my lap I emitted a baritone “oof” as though someone had kicked me in the stomach.

  “How did you get these?” I smoothed them out on my lap like a dinner napkin.

  “They’re not the fucking Mona Lisa,” he said.

  “What does that mean?’

  Arthur zipped his backpack shut and rolled his eyes at me. “Haven’t you ever been to the Louvre?”

  “What’s the Louvre?”

  Arthur laughed. “Oh, dear.”

  The microwave beeped, and Arthur got up to test his dish. With his back to me, I took a quick whiff of my shorts. I had to know what everyone else had smelled.

  It was bad. The odor was sharp, primeval, inhabited your lungs like a disease. I stuffed the damp mesh ball into my backpack and propped my head on one hand, the tears snaking a silent, diagonal path across my nose.

  Arthur sat down across from me, letting me cry while he shoveled piles of steaming red-sauced meat into his mouth. Between bites he said, “When I’m done with this I’m going to show you something that’s going to make you feel a lot better.”

  Arthur polished off the loaf of lasagna in minutes. He took his plate to the sink and dropped it in there, not even bothering to rinse it. With a little wave of his hand, he started for the door in the corner of the kitchen. I’d assumed it was a door to a pantry or closet, but Arthur opened it to reveal a cold black rectangle. I’d later discover that Arthur’s old house had no shortage of doors—leading to back stairwells; closets; rooms mountained with books and papers, lumpy, floral-print couches sagging in the corners. At one point, Arthur’s mother’s side of the family had money, but it was so tied up in trusts, complicated legal decisions made of their past, that no one would ever spend it. Mr. Finnerman had walked out on Arthur and his mom eight years earlier, which had destroyed Mrs. Finnerman but which she tries to pretend didn’t. “Just one less mouth to feed!” she’s fond of saying whenever she’s feeling pitied. Mrs. Finnerman had gotten a job at Bradley not long after Arthur was born, knowing Mr. Finnerman was never going to wake up before noon, would never pull his own weight, that her position would ensure her son a spot, and a break, financially. Not everyone is flush on the Main Line, but the priorities are certainly different than the kind I’d grown up with. Education, travel, culture—this is what any pennies pinched should be used for, never flashy cars, loud logos, or personal maintenance.

  Still, on the Main Line, coming from a family that used to have money was infinitely more acceptable than coming from a family with money that was new as could be. It was part of the reason Arthur despised Dean. Arthur had property that would yield a much higher return than the latest Mercedes S-Class: He had knowledge. He knew mysterious things like to pass the salt and pepper together and that steak should always be cooked medium rare. He knew Times Square was the most despicable place on earth and that Paris was divided into twenty arrondissements. Soon enough, with his connections and his grades, he would be accepted into Columbia, where his mother’s side had legacy.

  His hand on the doorknob, he turned to me. “You coming?”

  Closer, I made out a few dingy steps before the dark swallowed them whole. I’d always hated the dark. I still went to bed with the hallway light on.

  Arthur patted along the wall until he found the light switch, and one lone bulb shuddered on. A cloud of dust puffed up beneath his foot with his first step. He’d kicked off his shoes when we first walked into his house, and his feet were swollen, the skin ripe and shiny like a baby’s.

  “This is not what my basement looks like,” I said, trailing not far behind. The floor was gray concrete, the walls ripped open, orange fluffy innards exposed. An army of clutter anchored one side of the basement—discarded furniture, boxes of scratched records, dusty paperbacks, old New Yorkers slumping with mildew.

  “Let me guess.” Arthur grinned at me over his shoulder. Beneath the jaundiced bulb, his acne purpled. “It has carpeting.”

  “Yeah, so?” Arthur continued toward the mess against the far wall and didn’t answer. I made my voice carry across the room. “What’s wrong with carpeting?”

  “It’s tacky,” he declared, wading through the boxes. For the rest of my life, I would live only in places with hardwood floors.

  Arthur squatted to the ground, so that for a moment I could see only the greasy swell of his hair. “Oh my God”—then came his laugh—“look at this.” When he stood he was holding a dead deer head high in the air, like a sacrifice.

  I wrinkled my nose. “Please tell me that isn’t real.”

  Arthur stared into the animal’s gentle eyes for a moment, as if trying to decide. “Of course it’s real,” he concluded. “My dad hunts.”

  “I don’t agree with hunting,” I said, tartly.

  “But you agree with hamburgers.” Arthur dumped the deer into an open box. One sculptural antler curled into the air, a bony beanstalk that led to nowhere. “You just let other people do your dirty work.”

  I folded my arms across my chest. I meant I didn’t agree with hunting for sport, but I didn’t want to argue with him and prolong this little field trip. We’d been downstairs just a few minutes, and already I felt pruney and cold, like skin that’s been resting for hours underneath a damp bathing suit. “What do you want to show me?” I pushed.

  Arthur doubled over, digging
through another box, examining whatever he exhumed and tossing it aside when he determined it wasn’t what he was looking for. “Aha!” He held up what looked like an encyclopedia and waved me over. I sighed and followed the path he’d forged through the junkyard, realizing once I was by his side that it was a yearbook he had in his hands.

  Arthur flipped to the back inside cover, tilting the page so I could read the note next to his pink fingertip.

  Art-man,

  I’m not going to get all gay and shit and tell you what a good friend you are, so fuck off!

  Bart-man

  I read the note three times before I understood. Bart-man was Dean, a play on his last name, Barton. “What year was this?”

  “Nineteen ninety-nine.” Arthur licked his fingertip and began to turn the pages. “Sixth grade.”

  “And you were friends with Dean?”

  “He was my best bestie friend.” Arthur giggled nastily. “Look.” He stopped on a collage of candids. Students joking around at lunch, making funny faces on Super Saturday, posing with a giant green dragon, the Bradley mascot. There was a photo in the lower-left-hand corner, fuzzy in the way all photos appear after a few years, so that our past selves seem quaint and old world, and we realize, a little disdainfully even, all we know now that we didn’t then. Arthur and Dean were winter white, their crackled smiles in desperate need of a swipe of Chap Stick. Arthur was a hefty kid, though nothing like he was hulking next to me now. But Dean. He was so puny, his arm around Arthur’s bulldog neck so slight and fragile, he could have been someone’s kid brother.

  “That was right before the summer he had his growth spurt,” Arthur explained. “He got big and turned into an asshole.”

  “I just can’t believe you were ever friends.” I brought my face closer to the yearbook page and squinted. I wondered if girls at Mt. St. Theresa’s upper school said that to Leah now. I just can’t believe you were ever friends with TifAni. They’d laugh their disbelief—that’s a compliment, Leah. If they weren’t saying it now, they would be soon.

  Arthur snapped the yearbook shut, nearly nipping my nose. I let out a soft yelp, startled. “So don’t act like you’re the first to encounter the wrath of Dean Barton.” He thumbed the cover’s heavy gold font thoughtfully. “He will do anything to make people forget that he used sleep over at the fag’s house.”

  He tucked the yearbook under his arm. I thought we would go then, but something in the corner caught his attention. He pushed deeper through the boxes and stooped, trading the yearbook for his new discovery. His back was to me so that I didn’t see what he had in his hands at first, just heard his giddy little laugh. When he turned, the body of a long, lithe rifle pointed at me. He brought the gun closer to his face, resting his fleshy cheek against the handle and hooking his finger around the trigger.

  “Arthur!” I shrieked, stumbling back. I lost my balance, and my hand came down hard on an old swimming trophy. It was my bad wrist, the one I’d landed on when Dean slapped me, and I bellowed something incoherent.

  “Oh my God!” Arthur doubled over with fierce, silent laughter, leaning on the rifle like a cane. “Relax”—he gasped, his face flushed a furious red—“it’s not loaded.”

  “You’re really not funny.” I hobbled to my feet and squeezed my wrist, trying to blunt the pain.

  Arthur wiped his eyes and sighed, exorcising the last ripples of his laughing fit. I glared at him, and he rolled his eyes mockingly. “Seriously”—he flipped his grip, holding the rifle by its muzzle and extending it to me—“it’s not loaded.”

  I released my wrist reluctantly, taking the handle, a little slick from Arthur’s grasp. For a moment we were both holding it, a pair of track runners caught on camera passing the baton. Then Arthur let go and the rifle’s full weight was in one hand. It was heavier than I realized, and the barrel swung to the ground, scraping the concrete floor. I slipped my other hand under its cool belly and hoisted it upright again. “Why would your dad leave this here?”

  Arthur stared at the steel nose of the gun, his glasses foggy and smudged in the trembling light. I almost snapped my fingers, yodeled, “Anyone home?” but in an instant he jutted out his hip and made his wrist go limp. “Why,” he said, his voice gone light as a feather, “to make a man out of me, silly.” He lisped the last word, “sthilly,” popped his hip more, and I laughed, not sure what the appropriate reaction was, only that laughing was what he wanted from me.

  It was nearly November when the temperature turned on us, drove out the last lingering warm pockets of summer. Even so, drops of perspiration roiled beneath my sports bra as I rang Arthur’s doorbell. The assistant girls’ field hockey coach, who had been subbing for Mr. Larson for weeks, had no idea what she was doing and just told us to run five miles every day. Anything to get rid of us for an hour so she could flirt with the Bradley athletic director, who was married with two kids in the lower school. I’d taken to cutting through the woods and smoking at Arthur’s for miles three through five. Either Coach Bethany didn’t notice that I didn’t come back with the rest of the team or she didn’t care. I’m thinking the latter.

  Arthur cracked open the door just enough to wedge a square of his face in the frame, a pimpled Jack Nicholson in The Shining.

  “Oh, it’s you,” he said.

  “Who else would it be?” I’d been coming by after cross-country practice for the last few weeks, ever since the day I cut class. The school caught me, no big surprise, and Mom and Dad grounded me, also no big surprise. When my parents asked why I did it, what was “so important” that I had to leave school grounds in the middle of the day, I told them I’d had a craving for the penne alla vodka slice at Peace A Pizza. “A craving?” Mom shrilled. “What are you, pregnant?” The corners of her face slouched in as she realized high schoolers get pregnant all the time and how humiliating it would be for her to have to take her fourteen-year-old daughter shopping at A Pea in the Pod.

  “Mom!” I huffed, indignant even though I had no right to be. She hadn’t hit that far from the mark.

  I think Bradley suspected something had happened in the lounge that day, something that had violated the Bradley code of moral excellence, but Arthur had removed my shorts before they figured out exactly what, and I certainly wasn’t going to be the one to tell them.

  Worse than the sudden drop in my stock—Mr. Larson was gone, without explanation. “He’s left us to embrace a new opportunity” was all the administration would say. I confided in Arthur, only Arthur, about the night I spent at Mr. Larson’s house. His eyes bulged behind his filthy glasses when I told him how we’d slept in the same room. “Holy shit!” Arthur gasped. “Did you have sex with him?”

  I gave him a disgusted look, at which Arthur laughed. “I’m just kidding. He has a girlfriend. A hot one. I heard she models for Abercrombie & Fitch.”

  “Who told you that?” I snapped, instantly feeling thick and squat, a fat little loser Mr. Larson took pity on once.

  Arthur shrugged. “That’s just what everyone says.”

  Even though I was grounded, my parents had only a vague sense of when cross-country practice ended, so I could easily hang out with Arthur most days. For the first time, I was grateful I lived so far away that I had to take the train home. “Sometimes practice is an hour and a half, other times two,” I told Mom. “It depends on the mileage of the day.” She took me at my word, and so all I had to do was call her from the germy pay phone at the Bryn Mawr station and say, “Getting on the six thirty-seven.” By then, practice had been long over and the initial blast of my high had mellowed into thick, warm sludge. I’d place the phone in the receiver, watch the creaky 6:37 come to a stop with an exhausted white puff. Either I was moving more slowly or everything else just appeared to be.

  Arthur’s eyes darted over my shoulder, to the squash courts behind me and the parking lot behind that, nannies waiting to pick up kids from practice, their beat-up Hondas pulsing with a commercial-free stretch of Y100. “People have been comin
g by, ringing the doorbell, and running away.”

  “Who?” I asked, feeling sick.

  “Who do you think?” He looked at me accusingly, like I’d brought them to his door.

  “Can you just let me in already?” One quivering bead of sweat escaped my sports bra. Took its time snaking into my underwear.

  Arthur swung open the door, and I ducked in underneath his arm.

  I followed Arthur up the stairs, three flights that moaned noisily beneath our weight. He had moved out of his bedroom and into the attic over the summer, he’d explained to me the first time he brought me up there. “Why?” I’d glanced around the bare-bones room uneasily, rubbing away the goose bumps on my arms. There was no insulation in the walls, and as a bedroom it felt makeshift, vulnerable. Nothing homey about it. Arthur had stuck his hand out the window and tapped the crusty belly of the pipe against the ledge. Some black ashes fluttered away, like charred snowflakes. “Privacy,” he’d said.

  He’d taken very few possessions with him when he moved, even his clothes remained in his old bedroom, so that every morning before school he used it as a sort of dressing quarters. But one very important object had made the journey north with him, was granted a prime position on a stack of textbooks that served as his nightstand: a picture of him as a child with his father. It was summer, and they were at the shore, laughing and looking out at the mucky brown ocean. Someone had glued pastel-colored seashells all over the picture frame. I’d picked it up once, quipped, “This looks like a kindergartner’s arts and crafts project,” and Arthur had snatched it back. “My mom made it for me. Don’t touch it.”

  Beneath this cherished picture was the Bradley middle school yearbook, which played an integral role in one of our new favorite pastimes: defacing the class pictures of the HOs and the Hairy Legs. It was more fun to destroy them in their middle school form—braces, frizzy hair, lanky limbed, and ugly.