I Kissed Alice

by Anna Birch

  “Oh yeah,” I say, because how else am I going to respond?

  I have no idea if I’ll be able to use any of this, and it’s not for Sierra and Griffin’s lack of trying. Watching old videos on my phone over the weekend, I thought the problem was with the method of delivery—I needed to see them live to experience the full essence of their art. Sitting here tonight, though, I realize that the problem isn’t the method of delivery at all.

  Still, there were moments of intimacy between Sierra and Griffin that spoke to me: Sierra, cradled in Griffin’s arms, with her fingertips brushing against his cheek. Griffin, holding Sierra by the ankle as she strains out toward the night. So many frames where they’re pulling and touching and clashing and holding, and I wonder if the exercise is one step closer to whatever my art is evolving into.

  “I wish I could move like that,” I say. “You’re both so talented.”

  “You could have, if you’d stuck with ballet,” Griffin says, and Sierra laughs.

  “You don’t know how good you have it,” I say. “I wish I could just … turn off my brain and move like that.”

  Griffin rolls his eyes, but Sierra chokes out a laugh around the straw stuck in the corner of her mouth. “You think we turn off our brains for this? Guess I could take that as a compliment.”

  “That’s not what I mean, just—” I sigh. “It’s effortless, the way you move. Just, like, instincts and your body.”

  “No,” Sierra says, “it’s not just instincts. It’s supposed to look like that. Have you ever seen my feet after I’ve been at ballet rehearsal all day?”

  I don’t have to imagine: Her toes are buddy-bandaged now, with the nails clipped down short and a delicate Hello Kitty bandage wrapped around one big toe.

  “Try dancing through that, knowing how much your feet hurt. Having to remember the choreography to four different parts, and God forbid if you’re paired off for a pas de deux at some point and have to depend on some new transfer because your old partner got moved to the tech department—”

  “Sierra—” Griffin frowns.

  “Look, I’m sorry—” Sierra isn’t actually sorry.

  I laugh, despite everything else.

  “What she’s saying,” Griffin says, “is that the artistry is in looking like it’s effortless. We’re having to constantly think three steps ahead, though.”

  “That’s literally what I just said,” Sierra says. “Thanks, mansplainer.”

  Griffin makes a face at her, and she flicks a piece of cheese onto his chest.

  “You have to love it, though,” Sierra goes on. “It’ll never look easy if it’s something you have to force yourself through.”

  We descend into silence, stuffing our faces and watching the interstate traffic fly by on the other side of the glass. Before long, Sierra and Griffin lose themselves in an entire semester’s worth of dance-track gossip, names I’ve never heard before and stories that don’t pertain to me. It’s just as well, though, because Sierra’s words won’t leave me alone:

  You have to love it.

  It’ll never look easy if it’s something you force yourself through.

  Sketches of Griffin and Sierra stare back at me from where my sketchbook lays on the floor, one abandoned almost-drawing after the next. I smooth my hands over each one, pick up the piece of charcoal from where it rests on a napkin, and search for some way to turn them into something complete.

  I don’t love what I’m doing anymore, and everything looks like effort.

  Admitting that I don’t love this anymore is a relief.

  The problem is that I just don’t know what it is I’ll do if I don’t do this.

  * * *

  It’s just after eleven when my phone’s ringer startles me out of sleep.

  For a long moment, I’m stunned by the screaming white against the total darkness of my dorm room. My first thought is Sarah in the bed across from me, but my phone’s flashlight feature tells me that she either isn’t back yet or is sleeping somewhere else. A month ago this would have worried me; lately the only way I even know she’s darkened our doorstep is by a steadily rotating pile of dirty clothes in her hamper and a sometimes-damp towel that hangs from a pants hanger next to her closet.

  Mom’s picture stares back at me on the caller ID.

  My stomach twists into a knot, and I answer the phone just before it goes to voice mail.

  “Is Griffin—”

  “He’s fine, honey.” Mom’s voice is tense. “No one is bleeding, on fire, or dead.”

  Of course he’s fine.

  I was with him four hours ago, and he was the picture of health.

  “Isn’t it past your bedtime?” It’s definitely past mine.

  “I’ve been on the phone for four hours with June Baker,” Mom says. “She was forced to resign from Ocoee today.”

  “What? Why?”

  Mom’s sigh rattles the speaker. “Somehow they found out that, ah—I—we—had a little bit to do with June, er, working around your grades when you entered the scholarship contest.”

  “What do you mean ‘we had a little bit to do’ with the Capstone?” I can’t feel my face.

  I thought crappy grades and a dead muse were my worst nightmare.

  I was wrong. This is my worst nightmare.

  “People like June don’t do things out of the goodness of their hearts, all right?” Mom’s tone is loud and fast. “Pulling strings costs money, Rhodes. I thought we were on the same page about that.”

  “We have never been on the same page about any of this,” I snap.

  “Well, I guess it’s good you don’t want it, then,” Mom said. “Bootsie Prudhomme, the old bitch, is the interim chairwoman now.”

  My heart sinks. Bootsie hasn’t had a problem with me, per se, but she’s always hated June—which means this won’t be the first time I’ve been caught in the blast zone between the two of them.

  “So they’re kicking me out,” I say.

  “I have a call with Bootsie tomorrow,” Mom says. “She wants to schedule a meeting to ‘sort this ol’ thing out,’ whatever that means.”

  “So they’re kicking me out,” I say again.

  “Don’t jump to conclusions,” Mom snaps. “You’re always so quick to think the worst of things.”

  “What’s going to happen to Randall?” I ask. This doesn’t affect just me.

  Just how involved was he in all of this? Is Randall complicit?

  If Randall had no idea, then he could be another body in my mother’s blast zone. She’s taken down so many people around her who haven’t deserved it.

  I think of Griffin, in his tech-track uniform with the light lost in his eyes.

  I think of Dusk, tempted week after week with Mom’s money to manipulate me into doing something I didn’t want to do anymore.

  As much as I can’t stand the guy for harping on me at school in perpetuity, I don’t want him to lose everything because my mother is a horrible human.

  “What do you mean, what’s going to happen to Randall?”

  “Well? Is he going to lose his job because you’re a conniving bitch?”

  “Rhodes Anne Ingram! Don’t you dare—”

  “Oh, you’re going to try to talk to me about values?” I scoff at her. Her character has never been more apparent to me than it is now, and I don’t think I’ve ever been more disappointed in the kind of human she actually is. “What’s going to happen to him?”

  There’s a long pause on the other end of the line.

  I half expect mom to throw back her usual favorite response: I don’t owe you an explanation.

  Instead, her tone is measured.

  Rage seeps between the edges of each word, given one at a time, but she never loses control of her emotions.

  “Well, I’ve been getting your progress reports. I knew you wouldn’t hit the GPA requirement months ago.”

  “And…?”

  “Let’s just say, Mr. Randall has more than enough deniability. He’ll be as
surprised as everyone else.”

  “You mean, you went to June behind his back.”

  “I told June to call him and check up on you, yes.”

  “If this somehow comes back to him, if he somehow catches the blow because of you—”

  “Don’t you dare threaten me, not after everything your father and I have done for you—”

  This is the point where things are going to fall apart. I hear the tears in her voice now—everything is drenched in the kind of emotional volatility that will result in the horrifying crap show of watching an adult throw a very age-inappropriate temper tantrum.

  I know her well enough to know when it’s time to pull the emergency brake.

  “I’m sorry, Mom.” I’m not sorry.

  But she’s a child, and I’m not, and this is the thing that will smooth her feathers.

  I hear sniffling through the line.

  She says nothing, so I go on.

  “Just let me know where to be when you meet with Bootsie, I guess.”

  “I wasn’t planning on you being there.”

  “You’re not meeting Bootsie without me,” I say. “I’ve had enough of you throwing wads of cash at people to get what you want.”

  More sniffling.

  I’m still pushing it with her, but she doesn’t push back.

  She knows, and she knows I know, that she’s finally screwed things up past the point of reconciliation.

  “We’ll see,” she finally says. “Bye, Rhodes.”

  “Love you too, Mom—”

  “Oh, you know I love you. Don’t start in on that—”

  “Bye.” I hang up the phone before she can say another word.

  It isn’t hard to drift back to sleep.

  I’m almost there when Iliana’s voice floats up from my subconscious, a clear-as-day memory from our fight at the library: “I know you’re only here because June Baker waived the GPA requirements for you.”

  It would be a low move, but this is the first time I’ve ever been the only thing that’s stood directly between Iliana and something she wants.

  All pretenses of sleep evaporate.

  I throw off my covers, and the tile floors are cold under my feet.

  When I click on the lamp, the room is cavernous, empty without Sarah in the bed against the far wall.

  The rest of the night goes with me pacing, and finishing a new Hearts & Spades panel, and chewing my fingernails.

  My life is going to hell.

  Cheshire is inexplicably gone, and the scholarship is evaporating into thin air in front of me. My grades are abysmal. There is no way to know what my future is going to look like.

  There’s only one thing left in my life I can control.

  It’s not something I think all the way through, but at four o’clock in the morning, it feels right. I open my laptop, and in a matter of a few clicks my Slash/Spot account is gone. My last breath on the website is one final Hearts & Spades update, a symbolic goodbye to everyone who has ever loved this thing Cheshire and I created together.

  It’s a goodbye to Cheshire, too.

  I finally fall asleep when sunrise casts purple-gray through the windows.

  * * *

  Curious-in-Cheshire 12:47p: I haven’t known how to say this

  User I-Kissed-Alice is no longer found in our system.

  Curious-in-Cheshire 12:47p: It didn’t occur to me until today that I need to just say it

  User I-Kissed-Alice is no longer found in our system.

  Curious-in-Cheshire 12:47p: I love you and I’m sorry

  User I-Kissed-Alice is no longer found in our system.

  Curious-in-Cheshire 12:47p: I want to try to meet again. I’ll be there this time. I promise

  User I-Kissed-Alice is no longer found in our system.

  Curious-in-Cheshire has logged out of the system.

  Curious-in-Cheshire has logged into the system.

  Curious-in-Cheshire 1:12p: seriously?

  User I-Kissed-Alice is no longer found in our system.

  Curious-in-Cheshire has logged out of the system.

  Curious-in-Cheshire has logged into the system.

  Curious-in-Cheshire 1:20p: test

  User I-Kissed-Alice is no longer found in our system.

  Curious-in-Cheshire 1:20p: test

  User I-Kissed-Alice is no longer found in our system.

  Curious-in-Cheshire 1:20p: test

  User I-Kissed-Alice is no longer found in our system.

  * * *

  2 comments // 21 kudos // 237 reading now

  USER COMMENT

  WAMH-Fan-01

  Does … that mean it’s over?

  —

  USER COMMENT

  Stay_curiouser1

  What the heck just happened

  TWO DAYS UNTIL THE CAPSTONE AWARD

  CHAPTER 21

  ILIANA

  Username: Curious-in-Cheshire

  Last online: 2d ago

  When I walk into Sylvia’s, Kiersten is behind the counter with a large frilly bib apron tied over a pair of BeDazzled shortalls and a flannel shirt. I walk past her to stow my coat and bag behind the counter, then pull my time card from the caddy and slam it into the ancient punch clock.

  I haven’t slept well in days.

  Not since the Slash/Spot notification that delivered two blows: Alice’s—Rhodes’s—final Hearts & Spades update and the realization that she took the ultimate step in severing contact with me forever by deleting her account.

  This is it: This is the sign I needed.

  Alice, and Rhodes, are finished with me forever.

  I don’t even know how to be devastated yet. I remember feeling like this the day I learned I lost my Savannah College of Art and Design scholarship—grief hit me hard and fast in the days after, when I had to look at the rest of my life head-on and try to figure out what the hell it was even going to remotely look like.

  That first day, like today, there was nothingness.

  It reminds me of playing Mortal Kombat with my brother on his old Nintendo, when he’d almost beat me, down to one more critical hit until the match would be over. My character (Sonia Blade, always Sonia Blade) would wobble back and forth on weak knees, and Shao Kahn would declare, “Finish her!”

  Nicky, my oldest brother, would deal some kind of overkill level of complicated power move, my character would be put out of her misery, and I would spend the rest of the afternoon watching him gloat.

  I feel like Sonia Blade right now. I’m wobbling on weak knees, and in this little exercise of the imagination, it’s the voice of the Red Queen declaring, “Finish her!”

  I simply don’t have any fight left in me.

  Today is Kiersten’s first day on the job, and Sylvia has given her the decidedly unglamorous task of loading and unloading the dishwasher ad nauseum.

  “Everybody’s gotta start somewhere,” Sylvia says, bringing me back to reality between counting the ones and fives to balance the drawer. “She wasn’t too interested in learning the menu, so she can unload the dishwasher.”

  Kiersten’s vibrant teal, rhinestone-encrusted nails are a sharp contrast next to the simple white of the ancient restaurant-quality dinnerware in her hands. She plunks one mug after the next onto the counter, visibly fuming.

  “You don’t get tips unloading the dishwasher,” Kiersten says, too low for Sylvia to hear.

  “Tip sharing, sweetheart.” I shake the repurposed jam jar on the counter at her, stuffed with ones. “Everybody on the floor owes the tip jar fifteen percent at the end of their shift.”

  Kiersten says nothing. Instead, she pulls the industrial dishwasher closed and turns to the sink for another load.

  “Nope, don’t put your coat up,” Sylvia says a beat before I hang my coat on the rack by the back door. She turns to hand me a vinyl bank envelope and her keys. “Breakfast is slowing down. I need you to deposit this so I can watch Sarah train Miss Congeniality.”

  Kiersten stops to glare over her shoul
der. Sylvia glares back.

  “What’s with the fresh meat?” I put my coat back on and accept the load in Sylvia’s hands.

  Sarah cuts her eyes from where she takes an order on the other side of the room.

  It’s the first time I’ve seen her outside of school since the Capstone project presentation. At school, she’s been the last person to walk into our classes and the first person to leave—a grimacing, silent ghost I haven’t spoken with in ages.

  The room is small enough—and I’m loud enough—that it isn’t hard for her to listen to our conversation and her customer at the same time. Our eyes meet, finally, and then she turns to face the table.

  When Sarah turns, something glittery on her hip catches in the old lights that hang over our heads. Mr. Wade’s cassette player hangs from the waist of her jeans like it always does, but now it’s completely, inexplicably crusted in crystals.

  “Today’s Sarah’s last day,” Sylvia says. “Didn’t give me any notice. I told her I wouldn’t dock her pay if she brought her replacement in with her for her last shift.”

  I gawk at the back of Sarah’s head. Sylvia is making no attempt to keep this a secret—nor is she sparing anyone’s feelings—and Sarah’s shoulders hike up around her reddening ears.

  “Did she say why?”

  Sylvia drops her voice to a whisper, frowning. “No. I felt it coming, though—something’s been going on with that girl, and I’ve been on this Earth long enough to sense when somebody’s gonna snap.”

  “You’re not wrong,” I say. “This isn’t like her.”

  “I know you two are close,” Sylvia says, shuttling me past the bar. “I want you to keep an eye on her for me, all right?”

  “Mmm.” I pass empty tables loaded with plates.

  We were close. Now she doesn’t even tell me when she makes big decisions like quitting her job.

  The door to the diner jingles when I push it open with my hip, and I catch the full brunt of December cold to the face.

  I make a mental note to mention holiday decorations to Sylvia as I step into the chilly sunshine, but a hand on my arm catches me just before I unlock Sylvia’s old barge of a Buick. I don’t know what I expect when I turn around, but it isn’t good.