The Girls Are All So Nice Here

by Laurie Elizabeth Flynn

  Sully was draped over a couch, her Belle dress riding up to show the garter belt holding up her fishnets. She never went anywhere without the right lingerie. The lumberjack, perched beside her, was the best-looking of the three guys, his dark complexion smooth yet impressively bearded.

  The next time I looked over at Flora, she was turned toward the pilot, chin tilted up. He was kissing her, with his hands cupped around her ass. I couldn’t tell if she was kissing him back but something released inside me, a warmth in my rib cage. She was ruined. She had done something to Kevin that she couldn’t take back.

  I pulled out my cell phone and took a picture. I hardly ever used the camera on my phone, since the pictures always turned out so blurry.

  “What are you doing?” Slash asked. I kissed him again to shut him up.

  Sully hooked her arms around my waist and I sank into her bony grip. “Buddy wants to know if we want to get out of here and go back to his place for some more drinks.”

  I knew what “more drinks” meant. I didn’t exactly want to have sex with Slash, but I didn’t want to end the night, either. If I said I wanted to go home, Flora would leave with me, and her self-destruction wouldn’t be complete. We’d received a lecture from RA Dawn in the first week of school. “Use the buddy system, guys. Always stick with a friend.” Flora had looped her arm through mine and smiled, as if to say she would always look out for me.

  But I hadn’t smiled back. I’d never promised anything.

  The guys shared one of the wood-frame houses on William Street, white with green shutters. We walked behind them in a pack of exposed collarbones and jutting spines. Slash hung back to share a cigarette.

  “You an English major?” he said, as if he actually wanted to get to know me, as if his slug of a tongue hadn’t been in my mouth for the past hour. When I didn’t reply right away, he continued to talk about himself. They were all the same, everybody I had hooked up with. Even when they did ask, they never cared to listen for the answer.

  Flora’s buzz was wearing off. I could tell by the way she sucked in deep, shaky breaths, gulping them down like water. I kissed her on the cheek, that strange protective instinct making an appearance, like a glitch in my system. She snuggled into me, her head in the crook of my neck.

  The boys lived in the first-floor unit and when we were inside, Sully grabbed Buddy the lumberjack’s hand and pulled him into the kitchen, where he pressed her up against the counter. Her hands slipped under Buddy’s jacket. He thought she wanted to get closer, but I knew what she was really doing. She would emerge with his cell phone, her desired treasure.

  We paired off, like we were getting on Noah’s ark. Sully and Buddy went into a bedroom. Slash tossed off his top hat and led me to a futon in the common area. Flora’s pilot sat down on the couch across the room, pulling her onto his lap like she was some kind of throw blanket to keep him warm. Her legs swung over his, crossed at the ankles. I fixated on her ankles because she kept bobbing them, even when Slash started kissing me and Flora’s pilot started kissing her.

  I kept my eyes open—I knew Slash would barely notice, anyway. Flora’s pilot swept his arm around her lower back, rubbing the swatch of exposed skin there with his thumb. He whispered something in her ear, moved her hair behind it. She laughed. That laugh was all I needed to hear to convince myself she was enjoying it. She was the one who wanted to be one of us. She was the one kissing back.

  Slash’s hands did the inevitable creep up my leg, under my skirt, to the outside of my underwear. I hadn’t worn cute ones or even shaved. Sully wouldn’t have approved.

  Somebody dimmed the lights—Sully, maybe—and I finally closed my eyes.

  Slash moved on top of me. I could feel his dick pressed against my thigh and thought it was only a matter of time before he unzipped his pants and wanted me to do something with it. But instead, he pulled away, pushed up my Cinderella dress. I jerked upright. The only guy who had ever gone down on me was Matt, and it had only happened once, which was awkward at the time but worse after, when he never expressed interest in doing it again. Sex with Wesleyan boys had been perfunctory, my head bobbing when it was their turn, my turn never coming.

  I was vaguely aware of Flora and the pilot across the room. I heard a zipper, the shifting of fabric, something like clothes dropping to the floor, but my eyes were shut, and even if I had opened them, it was too dark to see much beyond the outlines of people. My legs dangled over Slash’s shoulders and he gripped my butt with his hands. I would have to fake an orgasm. It was too foreign, having some random person’s tongue darting in and out of me, his mouth opening and closing like a machine.

  Then I promptly stopped caring, stopped hearing anything, because my guy was good at what he was doing, much better than Matt had been. I let myself fall back on the couch, legs trembling. This was different from before, when the guys didn’t care about my pleasure. This was a dull throb building, my entire body tingling, a total loss of control. When I came, it was loud and ugly and I didn’t care.

  I finally cracked my eyes open long enough to see Flora’s pilot moving on top of her, shifting her head to the arm of the couch. She was turned away from me so that I could only see her hair spilling onto the parquet floor. She wasn’t making a single noise. That didn’t mean anything, of course. She hadn’t made any sounds in bed with Kevin either, aside from a few giggles. Girls like Flora didn’t have to shout to make themselves heard.

  I expected Slash to clamber on top of me, or at least sit down beside me and pull his dick out of his pants, because boys never did anything without expecting the same or greater in return. But he got up and kissed me on the cheek, then padded away. I heard the tap running a few seconds later. “Want some water?” he said. I nodded, even though he obviously couldn’t see me.

  I crossed my legs, my body humming, waiting for Flora and the pilot to finish so we could laugh about this. But the couch kept creaking, the pilot making occasional quiet grunts. I was sure he wished he had synched it so that we finished at the same time.

  I got up, groping my way to where a bathroom must have been. That was when I heard Flora. It sounded like she was crying, or whimpering. But the noise stopped before I could decide if that was what I’d heard. I found the bathroom—filthy, the toilet freckled with shit—and sat down, even though I didn’t really have to go.

  By the time I flushed the toilet and opened the bathroom door, Sully and Buddy were sitting on the couch on either side of Slash, whom I couldn’t look in the eye with the lights on. Flora was on the love seat, smile placid. The guys would celebrate this later while we stayed mute. I would be called a slut if anyone found out. But so would Flora, and that made it okay somehow.

  We got stilted hugs at the door. Slash actually said, “We should do this again sometime.” I was no stranger to that line. He never bothered to ask for my name, much less my phone number.

  Sully talked the entire way back to Butts C, but Flora was silent. The campus was peppered with costumed students. A pack of Crayola crayons ran down High Street, a whorl of shrieks; a boy dressed as a centaur was almost completely naked.

  “Flora, you’ve been holding out,” Sully said, tugging on the ends of Flora’s hair. “I had no idea you were so wild. I like it.”

  Flora didn’t have a response. Sully winked at me over her head.

  When Flora and I were in our room, I got into bed without taking off my dress or makeup. Flora did the same, which was maybe the most shocking thing of all—she followed a skin-care regimen every single night, cleanser-toner-moisturizer. I had almost dozed off when I heard her voice in the dark, small and scared.

  “I didn’t want to do that.”

  I pretended I was asleep.

  NOW

  To: “Ambrosia Wellington” a.wellington@wesleyan.edu

  From: “Wesleyan Alumni Committee” reunion.classof2007@gmail.com

  Subject: Class of 2007 Reunion

  Dear Ambrosia Wellington,

  The people you gr
ew close with during your time at Wesleyan knew you at your best—and sometimes even your worst. We all have things we wish we’d told our friends back then. There’s no better time than now!

  Sincerely,

  Your Alumni Committee

  Kevin McArthur looks the same, at least through a windshield. I can’t stop staring at his face, even when Sully gets out and makes her way toward me. As she walks over, I realize that maybe she said There is no us not because of what we did, but because of what she did when I wasn’t looking.

  “Amb,” she says, her voice forceful. My eyes flit back to Kevin, who is watching us. I can’t read his expression. “Amb, wait. I can explain, okay?” Her hands are on my wrists. I want Kevin to get out of the truck and complete our fucked-up trio, our walk to the darkest parts of memory lane. But he stays where he is.

  “Amb, hear me out, okay?”

  “I don’t know what to say.” My teeth chatter, like they did the night of Dorm Doom, even though it’s warm out. “Why is he here? Why didn’t you tell me yesterday?”

  “He reached out to me,” she says. “A few weeks ago. He got a note too. I should have told you, but I didn’t know if we could trust him.”

  We. We’re we again. I watch, powerless, as Kevin starts the truck, wishing it weren’t so easy for him to leave all over. But he pulls onto the road without so much as a glance. I wonder if I’ll ever see him again, and what I would say to him if I did.

  “How did he even know where to find you?” I ask.

  “It’s a long story.” She drops her hands to her sides. “I’ll tell you later. You just have to believe me that everything I’ve done has been for us.”

  There’s only an us when it’s convenient for her.

  “Can we?” I sputter. “Can we trust him?”

  She nods, her face solemn. In the hard afternoon sun, I can see that age has played with her after all. It’s there in the lines around her mouth, in the light waves creasing her forehead, the pucker between those eyebrows I used to envy. “I think so. He said he didn’t know who else to reach out to, and he found my email address.”

  “But it doesn’t even make sense. He must have received hundreds of letters just like that. Hate mail. Death threats. Why would he do something about this one? Why now?”

  “I don’t know why. But I obviously didn’t tell him. He doesn’t know what we did.”

  “Unless he does, and he’s the one who sent the notes. He has more reason to hate us than anyone. We ruined his life.”

  She plays with her tank top strap. She knows more than she’s telling me. I want to shake the information out of her, turn her upside down like she’s a saltshaker and watch her insides spill out.

  “He has no clue, Amb. I swear, he doesn’t suspect us.”

  “I want—” I want to see him, but I’m not sure I do. After everything, I was lovesick over the loss of him, then I went into self-protection mode. I reread the emails once, twice, countless times. I saw us differently. Both of us self-absorbed and desperate for an excuse to talk about ourselves. Both manipulative. Even now, I have a complicated relationship with his memory. Sometimes he’s the sun and other times a thunderhead, scabbing out the light.

  I want to know if he ever actually felt it. If we ever would have had a chance. But I can’t ask him that. Not when I can barely ask myself.

  “Flora,” I say instead. “Have you seen her? Has… has Kevin seen her?”

  Sully’s lips form a scowl. “Of course I’ve seen her. You can’t miss her.”

  “Where’s Kevin staying? He can’t be here on campus.”

  “Somewhere in Middletown. I think he mentioned the Super 8.”

  Were you talking to him last night? Are you playing your own game with him? I never let myself consider back then that Sully might have felt the same way I did. Kevin was easy to fall in love with. So was she. But they had barely known each other—they were in the same room only a few times, although that could also be said for me and Kevin. Sully had been skeptical when I told her about the emails, but suddenly I understand that she and Kevin could have been doing the same thing.

  The wind churns her hair. She pushes it back impatiently. “We have to stay strong, okay? It’s you and me.”

  It’s you and me, as if it always was. Real friends are the ones you don’t see as often as you’d like, but it feels like old times when you do! Billie wrote something like that on one of her Instagram posts, accompanied by a picture of us from high school, hair knotted on top of our heads, baby Gwen Stefanis. Sully was there for my worst moments, but the worst moments only existed because of her.

  “Kevin must have suspected. We were the only ones who got close enough to take it. He’s had a long time to figure it out. He could have lured us back here to get revenge.”

  “Yeah, but, Amb. He was just as guilty as we were. Don’t let him off the hook.”

  It’s a strange thing to say, but she has a point. Sully and I didn’t go into the night thinking it would end the way it did. Kevin didn’t either.

  A car horn blares from the street, making us both jump. “We should get back,” I say, my panic shifting to Adrian. I left him there, where anyone could say anything. AW is a slut who deserves to actually die. The three-dimensional version of the ACB, surrounding my husband on Foss Hill.

  Sully’s eyes are on me as we walk past the Nics, that hypnotic seafoam gaze. “You don’t still love him, do you?” She makes love a dirty word.

  I used to think love was a permanent haze, cobwebbing a person’s sanity. That’s how I justified what I did to Flora. I clung to the connection I had with Kevin, retracing our actions, rereading the emails. It was embarrassing. My want was baked into every word. And he loved it, because he hungered for attention as badly as I did.

  “No,” I finally settle on, because I don’t trust Sully with the enormity of my emotions. I can’t possibly explain to her what seeing Kevin has done to me, what choked feelings he has unspooled.

  “We need a plan.” She casts a look behind us, like she’s afraid somebody is listening. “None of us will be able to move on with our lives until we figure out who’s behind this and what they want.”

  “Maybe it’s more than one person,” I say. “A lot of people hated us.” In my head, she’s still a suspect.

  “Well, what did I always tell you back then?” Sully says, her voice slipping into its natural velveteen. “We’re together, and we’re worse.”

  It was something we said to each other whenever we approached a pack of boys. I would hesitate, like their thick cluster of bodies was impermeable.

  “They’re together, and they’re bad,” I’d say, as in, Let’s pick someone else. Someone without a herd, the baby elephant toddling after the stampede. Sully would whisper, all Stoli and Burberry Brit, “We’re together, and we’re worse.”

  We’re almost back at Foss Hill, the festival still in full swing. It seems like everyone has a fun memory to smile about. It’s a gigantic, throbbing lie. All of them have secrets. Most of them have hidden behind a computer, written something horrible about someone else. And they’re acting like being back at Wesleyan is just so nice.

  For a moment, I’m relieved to see that Adrian is where I left him, but then I notice that Lauren and Ella have replaced Justin and Monty. Ella’s hand is on his back and she’s leaning in. I break away from Sully and catch up to them before Ella can say anything else to incriminate me.

  “I’m sorry I was gone so long,” I say quickly, grabbing Adrian’s arm. “I told you earlier, though. I’m not feeling well today.”

  “Okay.” He doesn’t look directly at me, and I can tell immediately that he knows something. I swallow the panic as it swells up. I should have told him our side of the story first. My side. The shape of it, forever changing.

  He continues before I can find the right words. “Why did you not tell me about Flora? Seems like kind of a big deal to leave out.”

  White noise roars in my ears. I didn’t keep him close
, and now I’m going to pay for it. “I did tell you. At least, I thought I did last night. I guess we were both wasted.” It’s an excuse I’ve used before. You were too drunk to remember. This time, he knows it’s a lie.

  He arches an eyebrow. “No. You said you weren’t really friends, and that I probably wouldn’t meet her this weekend. But you made it sound like she’s still—when she’s not.”

  I don’t want him to say it. Hearing it out loud makes my skin twitch. But he’s going to say it, because that’s what people do with tragedy. They talk about it because it’s too big to be contained, and talking breaks it into manageable pieces.

  “You could have told me,” he says. “I looked like an idiot when Ella mentioned her memorial. You could have told me she died.”

  There’s that word, in all its finality. I know she’s dead. I’ve known for so long. But hearing it never gets easier. Those words never fail to open the same jagged guilt.

  “I don’t like talking about it.” Nausea burns in my gut. “It was a hard time for me.”

  Adrian opens his mouth, then envelops me in a hug, and I let myself breathe. He doesn’t know what I am, and I’ll make sure he never has to find out.

  I don’t like talking about it.

  Because then I’d have to admit that I’m the one who killed her.

  THEN

  We destroyed Flora twice. We ruined her on Halloween, the night she cheated on Kevin. But what killed her came later.

  I asked her, the morning after Eclectic, if she was okay. She was still in bed, not up with her usual seven o’clock alarm.

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  It wasn’t her voice. It was flat, no bounce, none of the typical Flora inflections. She didn’t want to talk about what had happened. She didn’t want to talk about what she’d done to Kevin. She didn’t want to talk at all.

  That week, she studied with headphones on and barely acknowledged me with anything bigger than a nod. The doors on our floor were bare without her Post-it affirmations. She started leaving at night, which made me paranoid, because she could have been talking to Kevin. Once, I walked into our room when she was on the phone, and my heart could have punched through my chest. But it was just her sister on the other end. “Love you, Poppy,” Flora always ended her calls.