You Know I'm No Good

by Jessie Ann Foley

  “I just want to know if he told you about me being a slut. I mean, he’s my dad, so I know he probably wouldn’t say that exact word. He probably used the word on your pamphlet—‘promiscuous.’”

  “You’re correct—he never called you a slut. I don’t believe he ever would.’”

  “Maybe not. But Alanna definitely would.”

  “What about you? Would you use that word—‘slut’—to describe yourself, Mia?”

  “The words I use to describe myself are irrelevant. It’s the words other people use that matter. Or do you not understand how high school works?”

  “Let’s talk about that word for a minute. ‘Slut.’ Did you know it’s almost seven hundred years old? It’s probably the oldest insult in our lexicon.”

  “Oh God,” I interrupt. “Another etymology lesson?”

  “What I find funny is that the first known use of the word is from Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales—see? I know my dead white guys, too—and when Chaucer used it, he was describing a man. Over the years, ‘slut’ morphed into an insult largely directed at women. But it had nothing to do with sexuality. It was used to describe a woman who kept a messy home. Which, in the days of chamber pots and bubonic plague, was most likely pretty much any woman at all.”

  I sit back and relax in my chair. When Vivian’s in lecture mode, it’s better to just shut up and let her ramble.

  “A couple hundred years after that, in the 1700s, the English writer Samuel Pepys used the word as a term of affection—for his own daughter, no less. ‘Our little girl Susan is a most admirable Slut,’ he wrote, ‘and pleases us mightily.’”

  I can’t help myself—a laugh escapes me.

  “I know, right?” Vivian laughs, too. “Poor little Susan.”

  “Look, I get what you’re trying to say. That language is always changing and sticks and stones can break my bones but words will never hurt me. And I appreciate that. But I think we both know exactly what it means when someone calls a girl a slut in the twenty-first century.”

  “It’s kind of a fun word to say, though,” Vivian says. “When you think about it. Slut. Try it.”

  “You’re weird. Slut.”

  “Again, but louder this time.”

  I roll my eyes. “Slut.”

  “Okay—now, just humor me for a minute, will you? Can you just shout that word over and over again until I tell you to stop?”

  I’m curious as to where, if anywhere, this stupidity will lead, so I comply.

  “Okay, okay, that’s enough.” Vivian laughs, holding up a hand. “Now, tell me: was there a moment in your repetition of that word where you’d said it so many times that its meaning started to break apart? When it began to feel like nothing more than a movement of your tongue and a sound coming off your mouth?”

  “Yeah. Probably about the tenth or twentieth time I said it.”

  “Okay. Good. That’s a phenomenon known as semantic satiation. Semantic satiation is the experience of saying or reading a word so many times in a row that it ceases to have any meaning. Ever since your intake, you’ve been asking me when you were going to get out of here and I haven’t given you an answer. Now you have your answer.”

  “Uh . . . you’ve lost me.”

  “I want to see you grow strong enough to transcend language’s ability to harm you. To take back the power to define yourself, to stop believing that other people’s perceptions of you matter more than the perception you have for yourself. To stop allowing the beliefs of others to become self-fulfilling prophecies. When you have tossed ‘slut’ into the centrifuge and spun all its meaning away until you can see clearly the only thing that remains—the hard and true and perfect seed of who you are—that, Mia, will be when you’re ready to go home.”

  24

  I HAVE BEEN HERE FOR twenty-seven days. Twenty-seven days that run into each other like cars in a pileup on an otherwise empty highway. They repeat and repeat, they repeat in the sun, and again in the rain; they repeat, the days of rapidly moving clouds and the days when the morning frost has encased each individual blade of grass into a million glittering, immobile spikes of ice.

  The goal of this rigidly enforced daily schedule, of the Rule of Six Inches and sewn-shut pockets, of dreary group chats where Mary Pat drones on about self-care and coping mechanisms and “adding to your mental toolboxes” while girls digest their breakfasts and daydream, of holding us accountable and teaching us responsibility in the form of scrubbing dorm toilets that smell of bleach and blood since we spend so much time together our menstrual cycles are all synced up: the goal of all this, I see now, is not to heal me but to dull my will with repetition until I’ve forgotten what freedom is, until I’ve forgotten spontaneity, danger, or adventure. Until I no longer crave these things. Until it feels like a year, or two years, so that I have to remind myself from lights-up to lights-out that it’s only been twenty-seven days and I have no idea when it will end, because my therapist has given me a goal that is holistic and tailored to my individual needs and also completely impossible to ever achieve because the truth is that those girls were right, I’m trash, I’m a slut, and I can’t fix it, because everything counts and I could repeat that word again and again—“slutslutslut”—repeat it until my voice gives way, but it won’t do anything to erase the memories of what’s been done to my body, of what I allowed to be done to my body by Scottie and everyone who came after him, or to change the harsh and specific timbre that laughter takes on when it’s aimed directly at my life.

  25

  MADISON WAKES ME UP in the middle of a frigid Tuesday night and points out our window into the darkness. We see a pair of headlights coming up the drive, illuminating a soft snowfall, hear the crunch of gravel, doors opening and shutting. It’s too dark to see any faces.

  “Intake,” whispers Madison, and just like that, I’m no longer the new girl.

  We meet her in the morning at group chat. She’s beautiful—like discovered-on-the-street-by-a-modeling-scout beautiful—and she seems strangely untroubled. There are no scars on her wrists; no chewed cuticles; no unfortunate, already-regretted amateur tattoos; no wild-eyed rage smoldering just behind her gaze. She doesn’t even have any split ends. Most concerning? She’s actually smiling.

  We all dislike her instantly.

  Mary Pat introduces her as we slouch around in our semicircle, staring.

  “Why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself, Freja?” she suggests.

  “Hello, everyone.” She waves a delicate hand around the room. “Like Mary Pat says, I am Freja, I am seventeen, and I am from Denmark.”

  “Ooh, an international student!” Madison whispers excitedly. “We haven’t had one of those since Flor maturated!”

  “What do we know about Freja’s country?” Mary Pat smiles around the room, making brief eye contact with each of us. “Can anyone tell us where it’s located?”

  “The fuck kind of question is that? It’s in fucking Europe. Do you think we’re stupid, MP?”

  “No, I do not.” Mary Pat turns sharply and faces Trinity. “I’m simply opening up the conversation and trying to make Freja feel welcome. And frankly, I don’t like your words.”

  Trin snort-laughs but says nothing more.

  “Well, it is a small country.” Freja’s English is as perfect and precise as fingers tapping sharply on a keyboard, and the tiniest whisper of an accent makes it sound even more polished and sophisticated. She’s wearing these shearling slippers that are a sumptuous pale pink color, like the skin of a hairless cat. “And I know children in the United States are not explicitly taught geography as part of their—”

  “Denmark,” I say, cutting her off. If this is the kind of Red Oak girl she’s going to be, kissing Mary Pat’s ass as soon as she walks through the door, then it will be necessary to put her in her place. “A peninsular Scandinavian nation, bordered on the south by Germany. Population maybe like five million? Capital: Copenhagen.”

  “A Viking past,” continue
s Vera. “A socially progressive present. And perhaps it’s due to the cherished Danish principle of hygge that those slippers of yours look cozy as fuck.”

  Around the semicircle, girls applaud, while Vera leans in for an air five, since slapping her hand to mine is against the Rule of Six Inches.

  Mary Pat tries to lead a discussion about strategies for breaking free of negative habits of mind, but nobody even pretends to pay attention. We’re all too consumed with Freja, with dissecting every detail of her: the slippers, the impeccable white Fendi tracksuit pants with the pockets neatly sewn up to make her dress code compliant, the cover-girl cheekbones, the black eyebrows microbladed to perfection, the unnervingly placid smile. Even among this assembly of rich girls, she glows with money, privilege, confidence, sophistication. Of course I couldn’t care less what she thinks about me, but as Mary Pat drones on, I find myself tucking my own feet, clad in polka dotted rubber-bottomed Target slipper socks, beneath my chair where she can’t see them.

  Afterward, before morning classes begin, we convene in the common room to debrief.

  “I can’t even,” Trinity declares, “with this snooty-ass bitch.”

  “Something is off with her,” Vera says gleefully. “What was with the faux angelic smile?”

  “Something’s definitely rotten in the state of Denmark,” I agree.

  “Oh my God, nice Hamlet reference.” Vera crumples up her morning meditation and throws it at me. “I love that you’re such a secret dork.”

  “But for real,” Trinity continues. “Why does she talk like that? I am this. She is that. Doesn’t she know how to use a contraction?”

  “I loved her,” Madison sighs. She flops down onto the gray futon and smiles dreamily up at the ceiling.

  “Oh Lord. Here we go.”

  “Did you guys see her? She’s gorgeous. And that accent. She almost sounds, like, British. But cooler.”

  “Lord.”

  “Stop othering her, Madison,” Soleil chides. “Just because someone speaks English with an accent isn’t a reason to dislike them or like them.”

  “I don’t like her because of her accent,” Madison snaps. “I like her because of . . . because of everything about her.” She sticks a finger in her mouth and begins dreamily tearing at a hangnail.

  “Last thing you need,” says Trinity, “is another stalking victim. You’re on track to get out of here this spring, once you can stop picking at your damn self for a minute.”

  “I told you guys, I have a thing with impulse cont—”

  Just then, Freja glides past the doorway in her velvet cat-flesh slippers and we all fall silent, listening to the chuff chuff chuff of her feet against the linoleum, consumed in our own private thoughts about her, about ourselves.

  26

  THAT NIGHT, AT DINNER, I’m sitting at my regular Birchwood crew’s table when Freja brings over her tray. She doesn’t ask if she can sit with us. She just sits. Which might not seem like a big deal, since our student body is way too small and full of misfits for people to clique up like they do at a regular high school. But it goes totally against unspoken Red Oak etiquette. Freja lives in Conifer, and the normal thing to do, especially when you’re new, is to sit with the other girls in your house.

  “I like your earrings,” Madison says hopefully as soon as she sits down.

  This is obviously not true. The earrings are giant geometric gold hoops, twinkling off the track lighting, brushing against Freja’s soft, sloping shoulders. They are far too on trend for Madison’s hopelessly preppy aesthetic.

  “Thank you, Madison,” Freja says, tossing her glossy blackbird-wing hair. “These are my mother’s.”

  “Well, you know what they say.” Trinity half stands, leans over our hunks of meat loaf and clots of mashed potatoes, and flicks one of Freja’s earrings. “The bigger the hoop, the bigger the ho.”

  While we all fall over each other laughing, the hoop trembles and shakes and dances on Freja’s earlobe. She reaches up coolly and stills it with two tapered fingers.

  “No,” she says, staring into Trinity’s eyes. “I did not know this is what they say.”

  “Don’t pay any attention to Trinity,” Madison says quickly. “We’re all super happy you’re here.”

  “Speaking of,” Vera says, her voice syrupy with malice, “why are you here, sweetie?”

  “Ah.” Freja looks around at each of us and takes a delicate bite of her meat loaf. “So this is the question you were all whispering about today.”

  “We weren’t whispering,” I say. “Anyone at this table will say anything to anyone’s face. Try us.”

  Freja blinks calmly at me. Her napkin is folded across her lap like she’s dining at the Four Seasons or something. “Very well. Do you know of a Nicoline Pedersen?”

  “I mean,” says Madison, “I feel like the name sounds familiar? But, like, I can’t exactly place it?”

  “She is my mother.”

  “Madison’s just being nice,” Vera says. “Don’t flatter yourself, honey. None of us has any clue who your mother is.”

  “Well,” Freja says, returning to her meat loaf, “then that is why I am here.”

  27

  IF WE LIVED IN THE WORLD, we could simply google Nicoline Pedersen and we would be able to at least partially figure out Freja’s deal. But as Vera likes to say, we don’t live in the world: we live in Red Oak. So we can’t figure out a damn thing, and it’s driving us crazy.

  I haven’t been here long enough to have even the faintest shot at supervised tech privileges, and Vera and Trinity skipped out on toilet duty last week, so they’re a no-go, too. Which leaves Madison. Problem is, Mary Pat won’t let her have even one minute of supervised internet time unless she can keep her teeth away from her hands for long enough to at least let them scab up.

  And then Trinity gets an idea. She has her dad FedEx over a half gallon of children’s bubbles and a long plastic wand.

  “For those oral fixations of yours,” she says, handing the bottle over to Madison after Dee has sniffed and tasted the contents to make sure it’s not filled with, like, soap-flavored vodka or something. “It helped my dad quit smoking.”

  We’re all skeptical about the bubbles, even Mary Pat, but would you believe it? It actually works. Over the next four days, Madison manages to keep her hands almost completely out of her mouth. All day long she’s blowing bubbles, and even though every time I try to talk to her, I feel like I’m stuck in either a rave or a preschool class, by day five, skin—actual dermis—is growing over her tormented hands.

  “MP, you should put me on salary,” Trinity tells Mary Pat, as we all gather round to examine the delicate scabs that haven’t yet been gnawed or torn or picked off by Madison’s extreme BFRBs. She even takes to wearing her wig to bed at night, even though it’s hot and itchy, to combat the temptation to pull out her hair. And Mary Pat keeps her word: she awards Madison ten chaperoned minutes of computer time. No social media is allowed, of course, and no email, either; last time she was given that privilege, Vera reports, she sent a thirty-two-page love letter to her ex-girlfriend. (“In her defense,” Vera said, “it was mostly Billie Eilish lyrics.”)

  But she can use Google, and, that afternoon, with Dee hovering behind her, Madison manages to stick to her task.

  We gather in the common room during constructive relaxation to listen to her findings.

  “Nicoline Pedersen,” Madison begins, reading from the notes she’s taken in her journal. “Or, more commonly, ‘Nic,’ is a pop star and reality-television host known affectionately by some as ‘the Beyoncé of Denmark.’”

  “Blasphemy!” shouts Vera. “There is only one Beyoncé.”

  “Denmark is like a hundred times smaller than the United States,” I say. “So that means that even if she is the Beyoncé of Denmark, she’s still only, like, one one-hundredth of our Beyoncé.”

  “I find your centering of American culture problematic.” Soleil yawns.

  “Well, I find yo
ur decentering of Beyoncé even more problematic.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” sighs Vera. “Even a .001 Beyoncé is still like a thousand times greater than a regular person.”

  “Okay, so her mom’s famous,” Trinity says. “So what? It’s not like she’s the first celebrity kid to come to Red Oak. It doesn’t tell us what she’s doing here.”

  “That’s true,” Madison agrees. “Didn’t Olivia once pawn her dad’s Super Bowl ring for drugs?”

  “Rings. Plural.”

  “Come on, Madison. Didn’t you dig up any good dirt on this chick?”

  “Not really, honestly.”

  “You didn’t get distracted scrolling through Google images of her, did you?”

  “No! Except . . . well, she was at this film premiere last year, and oh my God, she was wearing this Balmain gown with these like chains on it and I googled how much it cost and it was, like, twenty thousand—”

  Trinity and Vera simultaneously pick up the couch cushions and throw them at her.

  “Madison, you’re hopeless,” says Trinity. “Vera, we’re just going to have to take this matter into our own hands.”

  “Yep.” Vera reaches over to pop the perfectly round bubble Madison has just floated across the common room. “Never send in a girl to do a woman’s job.”

  28

  OUR PE TEACHER, Coach Leslie, is this extremely fit former college hockey star with a plume of extremely white hair and a mouthful of extremely white teeth who swigs spring water from a gallon jug and looks as likely to don a high heel or ingest a mind-altering substance as I am to run for class president. If an organic granola bar somehow became sentient, it would take the form of Coach Leslie. Her motto for guiding us toward maturation, she often shouts at us, is HEAL:

  Hiking!

  Exercise!

  Air!

  Laughter!

  Which is why, even though the ground is already covered with a muddy layer of snow, she often leads us on nature hikes22 through the walking trails while cracking a series of knock-knock jokes that are too pitiful to repeat here. On one such hike a couple days after Freja’s arrival, Vera and Trinity take the opportunity to flank her at the back of the line.