All the Pretty Things

by Emily Arsenault

  “You want any water or anything?” she asked, settling herself in front of the computer.

  “No. Why, is this going to take a long time?”

  “Uh…no. You should sit down, though.”

  I did. I pulled her voice recorder out of my bag and plunked it down on the table. “Here. Take it. There’s nothing on here that anyone cares about, I don’t think.”

  Winnie nodded, unsurprised, gazing at the computer screen.

  “Before it disappeared, I was downloading stuff from it onto my computer,” she said.

  Two of her fingers hovered over the mouse. The screen showed a list of items, about twenty, with little audio play buttons next to them. I had to remind myself to breathe.

  “I’m going to play you something,” she said.

  I felt my chest start to seize. “Okay,” I managed to say.

  “And I’m playing you this because you care about Morgan.” She took a deep breath. “I can tell you do.”

  “Okay,” I said, growing impatient.

  She bit her lip and studied me for a second.

  “It’s not fair of me to ask you if you really want to hear it, I’m realizing now. Because you don’t know what you’re gonna hear.” She hesitated. “Do you?”

  My chest was so tight I could barely get the words out of my throat.

  “Umm…maybe you should just play it?” My voice came out squeaky.

  Winnie’s gaze shifted from me to the laptop’s keyboard, which I noticed was full of crumbs and cat hairs.

  “I want you to know I’m not a mean person,” Winnie said. “Morgan asked me to delete it. But in a way, I kept it for her…because I wasn’t sure anyone would believe it if they didn’t hear it for themselves.”

  I watched her hand on the mouse, and I watched the little arrow on the screen hovering between the Play buttons numbered eleven and twelve.

  “Which one is it?” I asked. “Eleven or twelve?”

  “Twelve,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

  I gently pushed her hand away and clicked number twelve.

  The recording started with the squeaking of a door. My father’s voice followed.

  “Come on in, honey. You looking for Ivy? She’s out of town, you know.”

  “Yeah. I know. I’m not looking for her.” My stomach dropped. This second voice sounded like Morgan’s. “I need to take next Sunday off to watch my brother, and I couldn’t find Chris to ask him.”

  “What’s happening next Sunday?” Dad asked.

  “My mom has to work extra and his day camp doesn’t run on Sundays.”

  Yes. Definitely Morgan.

  Dad’s chair creaked. “You know Sunday’s a busy day for us.”

  “Yeah. It would just be this once,” Morgan said quickly.

  “Okay, honey. I know you’re good for it.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Cork,” she chirped.

  “Please, honey, you know you can call me Ed. We know each other well enough for that, right?”

  A soft laugh. “Um. Right. Okay.”

  The tone of her reply made me suck in a breath. Winnie glanced at me. I focused my eyes on the saltshaker in the middle of the kitchen table.

  “Hey…was it you I saw out by the wave pool yesterday in that red bathing suit?”

  “Uh…yeah, I guess. I was there during my lunch break. Emma and I were just cooling off because it was so hot. I don’t usually do that, but it was ninety-five degrees.”

  “You can do whatever you want on your break. I wasn’t complaining.”

  A pause. Winnie bit down on her lip and stared at the laptop, clearly afraid to look at me. I returned my gaze to the saltshaker, my heart starting to pound hard.

  “I just liked how you looked in that bathing suit.”

  I lost focus on the saltshaker and felt the kitchen start to slip sideways. Winnie, the kitchen table, and I were all sitting on a slant. Soon we’d be on the ceiling.

  “Oh,” Morgan said.

  “You look nice in that. You look like a lifeguard.”

  Morgan laughed a little. “Uh…oh!”

  “I bet you’d look even nicer in a lifeguard chair. How’d you like to sit up in that lifeguard chair?”

  I gripped the sides of the kitchen table and closed my eyes. I didn’t care if Winnie was watching me.

  “Where?”

  There was a shifting, a creaking, and then their voices moved away but were still audible.

  “See?” my father said. “See that chair? I’d love to be able to look out that window and see you sitting up there. That’d be a nice view.”

  After a pause, he said, “Lifeguards get paid quite a bit more than what you’re making in the Food Zone.”

  “I’m not a lifeguard, for sure.”

  I put my hand to my mouth—because I could feel it hanging open, and I didn’t have the mental capacity to close it. My brain was too busy trying to form an impossible denial. Maybe this isn’t Morgan’s voice. Maybe it isn’t my dad’s. Maybe the girl is actually Winnie. And maybe the man is Chris.

  “Maybe you’d like to sit up there and try it out. Maybe you could see how it feels. Just for a couple of days. We’re short one lifeguard right now. And Chris is too busy to fill the position really quick. So just for a couple of days, right?”

  Morgan let out a little huh kind of laugh—the kind she used on drunk boys who tried to talk to her at parties. The kind she used on teachers who told dumb jokes. I didn’t have a laugh like that because I didn’t know how to pretend at the same things she did. But she had one. I knew it well because it had saved us more times than I could count. There was no denying it was her.

  “How would that be?” my dad pressed.

  “Oh, I don’t know. I don’t think you realize—”

  “Realize! I realize a lot of things. I’m a realizer, actually. I’m a pretty darned good realizer. And I realize that you could use the extra money, and I could use the view.”

  Silence.

  “Think about it, honey. I’ll set it up with Carla. Just while we’re short that one lifeguard. I’ll tell her I know you and you can just slip in for a few days.”

  “Umm…umm…I’ll think about it?”

  Winnie tapped the mouse. The voices stopped.

  “Is there more?” I whimpered.

  “If they talked about it again, it wasn’t in the office.”

  Winnie watched me as I tried to recover my voice.

  “Do you want some water or anything?” she asked.

  I shook my head and tried to take a deep breath, which I choked on.

  “You sure?” said Winnie.

  “Yeah,” I said quickly. “So Morgan knows you have this?”

  “Yes. I told her about it. And I warned her…I warned her that he might…” She trailed off, clearly remembering who she was talking to.

  I picked up the recorder from the table and put it in her hands. When our fingers met, it seemed she was shaking worse than me.

  “Take this,” I mumbled.

  “I’m sorry,” she said softly.

  “What’re you sorry for?” I whispered.

  I didn’t wait for an answer.

  I knew the answer. She felt sorry for me. That I had to be the daughter of the person speaking to Morgan on the recording.

  Morgan.

  Oh my God. Morgan.

  A picture of her flashed into my head. Standing in my father’s office. Trying to smile politely, trying to hide her reversed canine tooth, as my dad said, I’m a pretty good realizer. The kind of statement we used to laugh at together.

  I got up. I ran out of the house, the word lucky echoing in my head as I stumbled across the long swath of clover, over the sidewalk, and into my car.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

 
Morgan’s house was about two minutes from Winnie’s. I drove over there in a blind panic, praying that no dogs or small children got in the way, because I wasn’t sure if my reflexes would work. I was gasping and crying as I pounded on Morgan’s door. When no one answered in the first few seconds, I just pushed the door in, barging in, screaming, “Morgan! Morgan!”

  As always, the house smelled like lavender and Stinkangel. I could hear the television on in the next room. It sounded like something with zombies was playing. I could hear them gurgling and gagging.

  “I need to talk to you!” I screamed.

  Morgan appeared in the living room doorway. She was wearing black leggings and a long tank top. Stinkangel came up behind her, nails scratching fervently on the hardwood floor. When she saw me, she gave a single bark.

  “Are you okay?” Morgan said softly.

  “No!” I wailed.

  She led me into the living room and put the TV on mute. I was right about the zombies. They continued to stagger and flail across the screen in silence.

  I flopped down on the couch in a manner not unlike the zombies. I was feeling a little undead myself on the cramped old love seat, where Morgan and I used to squeeze in together and watch movies when I’d sleep over. Where Morgan used to pull her red fleece blanket over us, and our knees would touch.

  She sat with me now but hugged the opposite arm of the couch, still keeping her distance. Now I sort of understood why.

  “Winnie played me something she recorded,” I said hoarsely. “You and my dad talking.”

  Morgan’s eyes went wide and the color drained from her face. I felt like I’d just slapped her.

  “I want to ask you if it’s true, but I know it is.” My voice was trembling. “There’s no way that was someone else.”

  Morgan covered her face with her hands and I looked away. A guy on the screen shot a zombie in the head, and blackish ooze poured out. I stared, feeling like I might have a similar substance in my head and heart right now.

  “Please say something,” I murmured.

  “Winnie shouldn’t have done that,” Morgan mumbled. She yanked the old red fleece from the back of the love seat and wrapped herself in it, covering her shoulders and pulling up her knees.

  “But she did,” I said softly.

  “I don’t think I can talk about this,” Morgan said, gripping the fleece with both hands and pressing her fists over her mouth. “Not with you.”

  “Please,” I said. It was all I could think of to say.

  “You would have trouble understanding,” Morgan added.

  I stared into my lap. “I’ll always have trouble if you don’t say anything.”

  “I just mean…you don’t know how it is for me. To need a job at Fabuland so badly, to help my mom. She can never get enough hours.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I hear you. Tell me more.”

  “You have no idea what you’re asking for, Ivy.”

  I could feel tears coming to my eyes again. “Then tell me before I can change my mind.”

  Morgan was quiet again. Then she closed her eyes, sank backward into the love seat cushions, and whispered, “Okay.”

  She kept her eyes pressed tight, but started talking. “This will be like the story swap in Mr. Tomlinson’s class.”

  “How’s that?” I asked.

  Mr. Tomlinson was our ninth-grade English teacher. Morgan had loved that class. She always wrote horror stories, usually about cloning or botched medical experiments, and always got As. Sometimes I wondered if it was her taste for weird things that allowed her to be friends with me the way other kids couldn’t.

  “Remember when he always paired up kids to critique each other’s stories?”

  “Yeah,” I said, casting my mind back, trying to recall what exactly the rules were.

  We had to say what we liked and didn’t like about each other’s writing. The critic got five minutes to talk. The writer was not allowed to interrupt. You can quietly think what your reader is saying is crap, Mr. Tomlinson said. But you can’t interrupt. You don’t try to defend your work to them. You just take it in.

  “So you can tell me when it’s been five minutes,” Morgan said. “And if I’m not done by then, you can decide if you want me to say anything more.”

  “Okay,” I agreed, and decided to close my eyes too.

  I wanted to reach out and grip her hand—like we’d done right before we’d rode the Yo-Yo together that one time. But I knew she probably didn’t want me to touch her. And anyway, it was probably already too late. We were already speeding toward the concrete.

  “Winnie played it for me,” Morgan said. “She played it for me right after she heard it. She had to admit she was recording in your dad’s office, first of all. So there was that. But anyway, she played it and told me she was worried about me. That I should avoid getting into that kind of situation with Mr. Cork at all costs. Because Winnie had gotten into something like that last summer, and she regretted it later. Regretted it really bad.”

  “Something like…what?” I mumbled into the darkness behind my eyes.

  “Shh,” Morgan said. “If I keep having to remember you’re there, I won’t be able to say everything.”

  I nodded before remembering that she couldn’t see me.

  “Winnie had started recording because she was so angry about what happened to her,” Morgan went on. “She thought she’d catch him referencing it sometime, or doing something like that to someone else. And she was right. She caught it. But she didn’t have the heart to spread it around, like was probably her original intention. She just played it for me and told me I really needed to be careful. It had started like that with Mr. Cork and her. But then it got out of hand and she didn’t know what to do. Last summer, Mr. Cork started making more serious moves and then they were kind of together, for a little while. Just a couple of weeks, really. Winnie felt bad about it after and didn’t want to go back to Fabuland after that, but this year she needed the job again. So she came back but tried to never be alone with him. Like at night. Like at closing. It wasn’t hard, I guess, at first. Until Chris started flaking out on his nights.”

  My breathing started to feel funny—like my lungs couldn’t keep up with the number of breaths my mouth was trying to take.

  “She was surprised she got to keep her job, but by the start of this summer he acted like he’d forgotten the whole thing. But she hadn’t.”

  I tried to take a deep breath. I knew it was audible—slightly gasping. Morgan ignored it. Maybe she thought it was Stinkangel.

  “I wasn’t sure what to believe from Winnie in the beginning. And when at first I said that that lifeguard stuff was just him joking around, just him trying to do me a favor, she told me I needed to wake up. I was like, yeah, whatever, Winnie, I think I can handle it. I’ve known this guy since I was a kid, you know? But it didn’t take long after that for me to really understand.”

  My eyes flew open. “Morgan?” I said, my voice cracking. But she went on, the words tumbling out now.

  “After everything that happened with Ethan, I went to Mr. Cork and I told him that with everything else I was going through, I was feeling like I couldn’t do that job anymore…I shouldn’t be in the lifeguard chair, that it was a bad idea. He said he understood. He didn’t want me to feel bad. And then he, like, hugged me, which was weird because I know he’s not very huggy. You’ve told me that, even. But then it wasn’t really a hug at all, exactly. Because he was kissing me and…but he couldn’t. Because I pulled away. And I ran.”

  I grabbed Morgan’s arm and squeezed so hard she yelped.

  “Sorry. It’s been five minutes,” I managed to say. “You can stop talking.”

  Morgan wriggled away from my grasp, keeping her eyes shut. “And then, for the next couple of days, I couldn’t really believe it had happened. Thank fuck you weren
’t around. What would I have said to you? I felt like I was going crazy. I stopped sleeping. I stopped eating. You were coming home. How could I even look at you? It didn’t matter what I did to get away from it. And then there was the thing with Ethan, too—something wasn’t right there either. I just had to do something. It was pure adrenaline that made me climb up the Ferris wheel. And then it was such a relief to be up there, away from it all. I just needed to do something that would get me out of all this, at least until I had time to think. And it worked, kind of. But not really. Because what do I do now?”

  “Stop talking!” I shrieked. Because the whole room felt scattered. The love seat was sideways and I was sliding off.

  Morgan finally opened her eyes and stood up, staring at me, her eyes flashing as she watched me struggle to get up off the floor.

  “I mean, really, Ivy. What the fuck do I do now?”

  “How would I know?” I stood up too, barely managing to keep my balance.

  “Exactly!” Morgan screamed.

  Stinkangel yipped. I turned and gazed into her crusty little brown eyes.

  “Your dog is gross,” I hissed.

  “But I love her!” Morgan was still screaming.

  I looked at the floor and then the television screen. The zombies were still going at it, climbing clumsily through a car window and feasting on a screaming driver. Morgan also watched for a moment. It was easier than looking at each other.

  “Then maybe we understand each other better than you thought,” I mumbled.

  Morgan didn’t reply. She just stared at me.

  “On the Ferris wheel,” I said. “Why did you say Ask Ethan instead of telling me any of this?”

  Morgan looked away from me, into the television. And then she burst into tears.

  “I do care about Ethan. About what happened to him. And I know it was really messed up to say just that. But looking at it all now, wasn’t Ethan’s dying still worse than everything else? And how was I supposed to say both things? How was I supposed to say the other thing out loud?”

  I stood there shaking my head for what felt like forever. Morgan wiped her tears away and waited for me to say something.