Luckiest Girl Alive

by Jessica Knoll

  The word “expulsion” filled me with the same kind of dread that “cancer” or “terrorist attack” did. “How could they expel him? He didn’t even do anything. Not really.”

  “I think it was just the final straw for them.” The Shark blinked, and a tear formed. I watched in amazement as it rolled down not her cheek but the side of her face. She flicked it away, like you would an ant scurrying along your thigh. “After the fish.”

  She may as well have been speaking Spanish, which I was just barely holding on to with a C. “The fish?”

  “Oh.” The Shark shifted in her seat. “I thought he told you about that.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Impatience makes me loud, and the Shark brought her finger to her lips, shushing me.

  She lowered her voice. “I don’t know, I wasn’t there. But he was suspended last year for stomping on a fish in biology class.”

  I could picture this, I realized. I could picture the way Arthur bared his teeth and popped his eyes at Mrs. Hurst, that face, his large foot coming down on the slippery blue body, flapping and gasping for breath on the wet floor, knowing he had to deliver as much force as possible or the thing would just slide away. “Why would he do that?”

  “Those guys.” The Shark shook her head, a mother dismayed by the violence in music videos already. “Dean. They dared him to.” She brought her fingers to her temples, stretching the skin so that she became an Asian shark. “Poor Arthur. He’ll never get into Columbia with this on his record. Not even with legacy.”

  Later that afternoon, I pretended like I had a cramp a mile into the five-mile loop and motioned for the other girls to run on without me. Then I doubled back toward school and covered the same ground in seven minutes.

  This time, I held the doorbell down and didn’t let up until I felt the house shake with Arthur’s footsteps. He swung open the door and gave me a flat look.

  “Arthur!” I barked at him.

  “Calm down already.” He turned and started up the stairs. “Come on.”

  We sat on his bed and he passed the bowl to me.

  “Is it really final?” I asked.

  Arthur opened his mouth wide and exhaled a fat tube of smoke. “It’s really final.”

  “It’s fucking Dean who should be expelled,” I muttered.

  “There’s a reason the cafeteria is named after his family.” Arthur tapped the side of the bowl against the bed frame, loosening up the contents. He offered it to me again and I shook my head.

  “Well, maybe he would have been expelled if I’d had some balls,” I said.

  Arthur groaned and launched himself off the bed. I caught my balance as the mattress shifted in my favor. “What?” I demanded.

  “But you didn’t,” Arthur said. “You didn’t! So stop with this self-loathing bullshit.”

  “You’re mad at me for that?” I clutched my stomach; I couldn’t take anyone else being mad at me ever again.

  “You should be mad at you!” Arthur roared. “You had the chance to take him down and you didn’t because you”—he launched a hearty laugh straight from his gut—“actually thought you could redeem yourself.” That made him laugh more. “Oh my God, oh my God,” he kept repeating, like it was the funniest fucking thing he’d ever heard.

  I felt everything go still and quiet in me. “Oh my God, what?”

  Arthur sighed, pityingly. “It’s just, don’t you see? Don’t you get it? You were injured out the gate. And you’re just—” He grabbed his hair. When he released it, tufts stood wildly at all angles. “You’re just such a stupid cunt that you couldn’t see it.”

  I would have taken Dean’s hand a million times across my face over this. At least what he wanted, what he was angry he couldn’t have, was the most basic, primal thing in the world, which was in no way a reflection on me as a human being. The realization that Arthur saw me as something completely different than how I thought he saw me was devastating. We weren’t friends, peers, united in our disdain for the Hairy Legs and HOs, above it all. I was a reject that Arthur had kindly taken in. Not the other way around. I hit back the only way I knew.

  “Yeah, well,” I sputtered, “at least Dean wanted me. I had a chance. Unlike you. Fucking walking around with a three-year-old boner for him.”

  Arthur’s face crumpled, ever so slightly, and for a moment I thought I would cry too. He had defended me, had been the only one to do that besides Mr. Larson. Before I could stop this train from shrieking to life, Arthur’s features settled comfortably into a mean, cold stare. And then it was too late. “What are you even talking about?”

  “You know what I’m talking about.” I flipped my blond ponytail off my shoulder. My hair, my boobs, everything about me that had gotten me into so much trouble was suddenly my only weapon to defend myself here. “You’re not fooling anyone.” My eyes darted around the room. I spotted the yearbook on Arthur’s desk. I sprung off the bed and seized it, flipping to our favorite page.

  “Uh, let’s see.” I found Dean’s picture. “‘Fuck me in the ass. So hard it bleeds.’” There was so much scribble on Dean’s picture that Arthur had drawn an arrow from Dean’s face to the bottom of the page, where he’d written more. “Oh! And this gem: ‘Chop my cock off.’” I looked up at Arthur. “You’d probably stuff it and sleep with it every night like a blankie, you fucking faggot.”

  Arthur lunged at me. His paws were on the book, yanking it out of my hands. I tried to wrench it back, and when I did, I lost my balance. I stumbled backward, slamming my head against the wall. Like a toddler, I was infuriated by this boo-boo. I wailed and held the place where it hurt.

  “Did you ever stop to think,” Arthur huffed, our little scuffle inciting his heart, buried under all those layers of fat, “that I don’t want to fuck you not because I’m gay but because you’re disgusting?”

  I opened my mouth to defend myself, but Arthur cut me off. “What you should do is hack those off—no one who’s ever done anything important has a rack like that.” He cupped his own man boobs and shook them violently.

  If I’d continued on the run I’d have been climbing the hill on New Gulph Road at the moment, but I still wouldn’t have been breathing as hard as I was then. I had my fingers around the picture on Arthur’s nightstand, the one of him and his father, laughing at the water, and before Arthur could grab me, I fled. I heard him on the stairs behind me, but unlike in a horror movie, the murderer was obese and slow and stoned. I was by the door, hauling my backpack over my shoulder, before Arthur had even made it to the second floor. Then I was outside, and I just kept going until I knew Arthur was well behind me, bent over and braced on his knees, gasping and furious. I didn’t stop for almost half a mile, realizing I was going for the Rosemont station now, which was further but wouldn’t be a place Arthur would think to look for me. When I finally slowed to a walk, I looked at the picture in my hands, saw the happiness Arthur wanted there, and considered turning back. But then I thought how his dad was a dick. I was probably doing him a favor by taking that picture. Maybe it would help him move on, stop being such a fat asshole. I paused on the side of the road and found a safe place for it anyway, tucking it into a folder to protect all the stupid shell decorations on the frame.

  I found out a few days later that Arthur enrolled in Thompson High, a public school in Radnor. In 2003, Thompson High sent only two students out of its graduating class, 307 total, to Ivy League universities. Arthur wasn’t destined to be among them.

  CHAPTER 11

  * * *

  It was an e-mail that, had I been twenty-two years old, fresh out of college, desperate for a job, I would have called up Nell to read aloud. “Oh my God, listen to this!”

  Dear Ms. FaNelli,

  My name is Erin Baker, and I’m the HR coordinator for Type Media. We have an opening for the Features Director at Glow magazine, and we’d love for you to come in and interview if you are interested. Could I take you to coffee to discuss this week? Pay is competitive. />
  Warmly,

  Erin

  I closed the e-mail. I was in no rush to respond because I was not interested in the least. Yes, features director was a major step up from senior editor and I could make more money, but I didn’t have to worry about money, not really. No matter how much they offered me, it would never be enough to make a move to a magazine exactly like The Women’s Magazine, only not nearly as iconic, when LoLo had dropped the fucking New York Times Magazine on my doorstep like a house cat does a headless mouse.

  Even though I had written the words “his member” far too many times in my tenure at The Women’s Magazine, there was a recognition in the name that offered me protection, much like my engagement to Luke did. When I tell people I’m in magazines, and they ask where, I never, ever get tired of cocking my head modestly and answering in my best uptalk, “The Women’s Magazine?” That inflection in my voice—have you heard of it? Like those smug Harvard bastards—“Oh, I went to school in Cambridge.” “Where?” “Harvard?” Yes, we’ve all fucking heard of Harvard. I got off on that instant recognition. I did enough explaining in high school, to justify my peasant presence among kings—“I live in Chester Springs. It’s not too far. I’m not too poor.”

  I signed out of my e-mail. I’d write this Erin Baker back later, some bullshit, “Thank you so much for thinking of me but at this time I’m very happy in my current position.”

  I tapped my moss green fingernails on the tabletop, wondering where Nell was. Several minutes ticked by before I knew she had arrived. The heads turning by the entrance to the restaurant were the first sign. The second was the top of Nell’s head, the most shocking shade of blond steering her right at me.

  “I’m sorry!” She folded into the seat. Nell is so tall her spindly legs never fit under the table. She crossed them in the aisle, one bootie dangling over the other, the heel sharp and thin as a talon. It was one of those nights. “I couldn’t get a cab.”

  “This place is a direct shot on the one from your place,” I said.

  “Subways are for people who work.” She grinned at me.

  “Asshole.”

  The server came by, and Nell ordered a glass of wine. I already had one, half down. I’d been trying to make it last, since I was only allowing myself two, essentially dinner.

  “Your face,” Nell said and sucked in her cheekbones.

  Finally. “I’m starving.”

  “I know. It sucks.” Nell opened her menu. “What are you getting?”

  “The tuna tartare.”

  Nell looked confused as she scanned the menu, small as a prayer book in her hands. “Where is that?”

  “It’s under appetizers.”

  Nell laughed. “I’m so fucking glad I’m never getting married.”

  The server returned with Nell’s wine, asked what he could get for us. Nell ordered a burger because she’s a sociopath. She wouldn’t even eat the whole thing anyway. The Adderall would have her disinterested after a few bites. I wish that worked for me, but whenever I took one of Nell’s blue pills, even the occasional night that coke turned into morning in the blink of an eye, my appetite always clawed its way to the surface. The only thing that worked for me was pure, hard discipline.

  When I placed my order the waiter said, “Just so you know that’s a very small dish.” He made a fist to show me.

  “She’s getting married.” Nell batted her eyes at him.

  The waiter made an “ahh” noise. He was gay, tiny and pretty. Probably had a beefy bear he’d hook up with after his shift was over. As he took my menu he said, “Congratulations.” The word was like an ice cube held to an exposed nerve in a tooth.

  “What?” Nell gasped. My forehead had creased into that V shape, which it always does right before I cry.

  I covered my eyes with my hands. “I don’t know if I want to do this.” There, it was said. Out loud. The admission like the one tiny pebble that dislodged, tumbled down the mountainside, so insignificant it didn’t seem possible the thrashing white avalanche that followed.

  “Okay,” Nell said, clinically, her pale lips pursing. “Is this a recent thing? How long have you felt like this?”

  I exhaled through my teeth. “A long time.”

  Nell nodded. She hovered her hands on either side of her glass of wine, staring into the red depths. In the dim restaurant there was no sign of blueness in her eyes. Some girls need that light, those two bright pools, before you can decide, yes, she’s pretty. But not Nell.

  “How would you feel,” she said, and there was a quick flare of her nostrils, “if you called it off. If Luke was one day just some guy you used to know?”

  “Are you actually quoting Gotye?” I snapped.

  Nell tilted her head at me. Her blond hair slid off the side of her shoulder and dangled, glinting like an icicle on the edge of a roof.

  I sighed. Thought for a moment.

  There was this one night, not too long ago, when some belligerent guy had called me an ugly whore because he thought I’d cut him in line at the bar.

  “Fuck you!” I’d sneered at him.

  “You could be so lucky.” The chain around his neck was dancing silver in the lights, and his reptilian skin folded in places it shouldn’t have at his age. If only he had resisted the local Hollywood Tans like I had.

  I’d held up my most important finger. “You’re adorable, but I’m engaged.”

  The look on his face. That ring’s almost magical powers in the way it emboldened me, protected me from the hurt.

  I said to Nell, “It would make me really sad.”

  “What about it makes you sad?”

  Because when you’re twenty-eight and you live in a doorman building in Tribeca, step out of a cab, Giuseppes first, and are planning a Nantucket wedding to someone with the pedigree of Luke Harrison, you’re thriving. When you’re twenty-eight, single, and look nothing like Nell, hawking those same pumps on eBay to pay the electric bill, Hollywood makes sad movies about you.

  “Because I love him.”

  The next two words sounded innocent enough, but I knew Nell, and they’d been chosen for maximum impact. “How sweet.”

  I nodded an apology at her.

  The silence that followed seemed to hum, like the highway behind my house in Pennsylvania. I grew up so used to it I mistook it for quiet. Only noticed it when I hosted a sleepover for the first time with my Mt. St. Theresa friends. “What is that noise?” demanded Leah, wrinkling her nose at me accusingly. Leah was married now. Had a baby she dressed in head-to-toe cotton candy pink for her Facebook albums.

  Nell brought her hands together in one last plea. “You know, people don’t care about you as much as you think they do.” She laughed. “That sounded bad. What I meant was it might only be in your head that you have something to prove.”

  If that was true, it meant deposits returned, a Carolina Herrera gown sulking in my closet. Doing this documentary without my four-carat tumor, evidence that I was worth more than my previously determined value. “It’s not.”

  Nell bore into me with her ink-colored eyes. “It is. And you should think about that. Hard. Before you make a big mistake.”

  “This is rich.” I laughed aggressively. “Coming from the person who taught me how to operate every single person in my life.”

  Nell’s lips slipped open, moving around words she wasn’t saying. I realized she was repeating what I had just said, back to herself, trying to make sense of it. In a moment her expression changed from frustration to amazement. “Because I thought this”—she circled her hands frantically, calling up all “this” I’d mustered for myself—“was what you wanted. I thought you wanted Luke. I thought this little charade made you happy.” She clapped one hand to the side of her face and sputtered, “Jesus, Ani, don’t do this if this doesn’t make you happy!”

  “You know?” I layered one arm over the other. Each a carefully placed barrier to keep her out from where it mattered most. “I asked you here hoping you’d make me feel
better. Not worse.”

  Nell sat up, cheerleader perky. “Okay, Ani. Luke’s a great guy. He sees you for exactly who you are and accepts you for it. He doesn’t expect you to be someone you’re not. By golly, you should really thank your lucky stars for him.” She glowered at me.

  Our adorable waiter reappeared with a basket in his hands. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “You probably don’t want this. But, bread?”

  Nell gave him a dazzling, infuriating smile. “I’d love some bread.”

  He visibly cheered in her spotlight, the blood dashing to his cheeks and his eyes brightening, sharpening, the way everyone’s do when Nell tosses out a handful of her fairy dust. I wondered if he felt it when his arm bisected the space between the two of us, when he placed the basket in the center of the table. The way the air crackled there, warning.

  The weeks passed, pushing New York further from the summer, September only halfheartedly fighting the heat. Filming was scheduled to start, whether I was ready or not. I had a dress fitting, and the seamstress marveled at the gap between my waist and the size six bodice. I’d balked when I first ordered it. A size six? “Wedding gown sizing is completely different from the sizing of regular clothes,” the salesgirl had assured me. “You may be a two or even a zero at a place like Banana Republic, but that makes you a six or an eight in a wedding gown.”

  “Don’t order the eight,” I’d said, hoping my horrified expression also explained that I would never shop at Banana Republic.

  I was driving “home” to the Main Line on Thursday evening. First day of filming was Friday. The documentary team hadn’t received permission to shoot inside the school, something that brought me relief, but not for obvious reasons. Bradley wouldn’t want any negative press, and my story would certainly give it to them, so that implied the angle the documentary was taking was more in line with my own. I wondered who else the team had gotten, besides Andrew. I’d asked, but they wouldn’t tell.

  I’d pillaged the fashion closet the day before I left: Dark waxed jeans, Theory silk tops, suede booties that were neither too high nor too low. I got the accessories editor to lend me a lovely little necklace: delicate rose gold chain, a small bar of diamonds glinting in the middle. It would pick up nicely—tastefully—on camera. I had a professional blow out the messy, trendy waves in my hair that afternoon. The goal was to look simple and expensive.