“It’s pretty old-fashioned handing out actual invitations,” I say instead. The snark slips easily into my voice. It’s not the place making me eighteen again but the people. These people.
Ella retains her smile. “Flora used to put Post-its on our doors to invite us to movie nights, remember? She would appreciate what I’m doing.”
What I’m doing.
“Movie nights. Cool. Sounds like you guys had some good times,” Adrian says.
“It wasn’t all fun and games here. Ambrosia could tell you that,” Ella responds.
“No, it wasn’t all fun and games.” Sully shoves the card in her jacket pocket. “But some people at least knew how to play the games.” She starts down the hall, and Adrian and I trail after her. I only notice when I look back that Ella is wearing red lipstick too.
“Some of us made up the games,” I half-shout.
Sully spins around. She looks genuinely pissed off. “We all did.”
“What are you guys talking about?” Adrian says.
It’s a standoff, no weapons, just words. Sully’s expression is somewhere between defiant and angry. As I stare, the fight leaves me. Sully used to seem so complicated, an impossible code to crack. But she wasn’t. She was simplistic, in a way. She showed people what they desired and watched them bat helplessly at a toy she could have easily clawed from the air herself. She made us feel special when it was finally in our hands.
Then made us realize it wasn’t worth wanting anyway.
In this moment I feel sorry for her. Wanting something means accepting the possibility that you may not get it. But wanting nothing is worse.
“Did I say something wrong?” Adrian asks. “If I did, I’m sorry.”
Adrian is obviously afraid this is going to become an argument—I know how much he hates public confrontation. But Sully’s face softens and she musters a smile.
“Of course not. Nobody said anything wrong.”
She looks directly at me when she says the last word.
* * *
We walk past Exley on our way to the Butts. I keep my eyes down when I see who is standing out front: Felty and a woman cop I vaguely recognize from the night of Dorm Doom. She was sympathetic, offering us tissues, which I used to dry up the tears that kept coming, the ones I let Sully think were a performance.
Felty stares. Sully actually waves to him, which he tentatively returns. We’re together and we’re worse. His eyes are on me as we walk by, trailing up my body, honing in on the back of my head, like I’m a target at a shooting range.
You owe her that.
Before those words appeared on the mirror, Felty said them.
We’re some of the last people to arrive. Everyone else is clustered around an uninspiring tree, recently planted, parched brown stem and sparse head of leaves. It doesn’t stand a chance against a world of wind-whipped cruelty, just like the girl it was planted for. We stand behind Lauren and Jonah, whose hands are locked together. Sully whispers in my ear.
“There was writing on the mirror. In the bathroom.”
I keep my voice low. “I know. I saw it.”
“Saw what?” Adrian says.
“Nothing,” I say, too loud.
Lauren and Jonah turn around briefly, then look away. Across the circle, Clara and Hunter watch the tree intently, like it’s going to uproot itself and start moving any minute. Gemma is dabbing her eyes already. At the very back I spy Hadley, saying something to Heather. I haven’t responded to their texts from the past couple hours. Where are you? What’s going on?
I let a message in lipstick bring me here, where all the girls are talking about us. Whispers rise, circulating in the air like pollen. I can tell by the lowered chins, the eyes peering out from behind bangs. What else is there to talk about? Their husbands, their looks, their glittering careers that started here. Clara’s MFA and Lily’s SoHo gallery and Dora’s Broadway roles and Gemma’s celebrity acquaintances. They’re polished and accomplished, but they still have claws that need to be sharpened. Even now, I’m their favorite scratching post.
Soft music starts to play, something classical, like what Flora listened to when she studied, the swell of it floating out from her headphones. The circle breaks up to let Ella in. Ella, and someone else. White-blond hair, gingham dress, Mary Janes, slick of red on her lips.
“Sully.” I grip her arm instinctively, because I’m falling, my legs incapable of supporting my body and all the lies within it. “Sully, it’s her.”
Because it is her. It’s Flora.
THEN
We brought Kevin’s phone to the roof, where we sat on the edge, legs hanging down, as Sully pulled up his text message history with Flora. “This is gold,” she proclaimed.
All it took was a brief scroll for us to see how the relationship had started to fray. Her desperation its own beast, her panic something palpable. Where were you? Who were you with? Why didn’t you call me back? His excuses, always generic, his patience losing steam as her insecurities hit a crescendo. I went out with the guys just Aiden and Martin. It was late, didn’t wanna wake u
Who are Aiden and Martin? Do they really exist?
She must have sensed herself losing him. You had to cup boys in your palm ever so gently, like you would when you found a frog in the woods, frozen on your path. If you closed your hands too tightly it would panic and thrash against your fingers until it either found a way to jump out or suffocated.
“This is sad,” Sully said. “She’s so desperate for him to be a certain kind of guy.”
I felt like she wasn’t just talking about Flora anymore.
She started typing something, then handed the phone over to show me. It said: Hey babe where are you? Are you okay?
“Hit send,” she said. I did.
Not okay. I’m sorry. In my room, please come
The response was almost instant, which made me angry. Flora had run away from the party for attention. She wanted Kevin to follow her, to fold her into his arms and apologize, even though she was the one who had fucked up.
And because I was pissed off on behalf of girls everywhere—annoyed that Flora was just so good at playing the damsel in distress, and angry that a white knight had always been there to rescue her when she should have saved herself—I snatched the phone and typed something back.
I’m not coming. I know what you did.
“Oh, that’s good,” Sully said, her fingers like talons on my shoulder. “Short and sweet.” She sputtered on a laugh. “Okay, not sweet. But it’s perfect.”
We stared at the phone, waiting for Flora to respond, both of us watching the screen with glazed eyes. This was our entertainment, better than actually being at the party. It was the logical next level in whatever game Sully and I were playing.
I didn’t even know where Kevin was, whether he was still downstairs. I should have tried to find him, played the normal, drama-free girl to Flora’s mess. But in those moments, breaking Flora down was more important. Because it was never just about the boy. It was about the girl standing in the way of the boy. Maybe it had been about her the entire time.
The message that popped up on Kevin’s screen wasn’t at all what I expected. It made me hold my breath, like a balloon that had become too big to fit inside my chest.
If you don’t come I think I might do something bad
“Oh, come on,” Sully said. “What a fucking drama queen. Evie was like that. She always threatened to do something to herself whenever we had a fight.”
It was a puncture in another girl I needed to beat. If I could pull off what Sully expected from me, I wouldn’t have to compete anymore.
“Flora isn’t going to do anything,” I declared. “Besides put on those god-awful bunny slippers and cry herself to sleep.”
Sully snorted. “She’s acting like she did nothing wrong. She’s the one who had a stranger’s dick inside her.”
I didn’t answer, because I didn’t want to think about that night. Instead, I thumbed out a rep
ly.
You need to take care of yourself. I’m not going to be around anymore. We shouldn’t be together.
We both stared at the message. “It’s too formal,” said Sully. “Change the last part to I need to figure shit out. It’s totally a line a guy like Kevin would feed her.”
I did what I was told. After I hit send, I realized it was something Kevin had actually said to me. I had seen it as a promise, but maybe it was an excuse the whole time.
“There you guys are. This party sucks,” Lauren said, suddenly hovering over us. I buried the phone in my lap. “What are you doing? Did you see Flora? She looked so upset. I think we should go and check on her. I’m pretty sure she left.”
“You do it,” Sully said. “If you’re so concerned. We’re having fun.” She stood and grabbed my hand, pulled me up and led me through a clump of smokers and back indoors. We ended up in the same bathroom we had followed Flora into and locked ourselves inside.
“What if he’s already back at the Butts?” I said, my grip sweaty on the phone. “What if Flora knows they’re from us?”
“He’s not back there. I guarantee he’s downstairs having another drink. And she’s probably already in her pajamas with some fucking hot chocolate.”
Vegan, I almost added. Vegan hot chocolate. Guilt bubbled, but only for a second, when I remembered Best and Friend. I glanced at the phone. “Shit. She wrote back.”
I don’t know what you heard about what I did but it wasn’t like that, I swear I can explain, just please come here now
“No dignity,” Sully said. “This is pathetic.”
Her disgust was the fuel I needed.
I’m not coming. We’re done. I’ve known it for a while, but I just don’t love you anymore.
It felt good typing those words, sending them. I didn’t even wait for Sully to give me the okay. I was playing a role, and I was good at it.
While we waited for the reply, Sully had to pee. I leaned against the door, stretching out my legs. I saw the words first.
You don’t mean that. Please come, we can talk. I want to kill myself right now
My first thought: We’ve gone too far.
My second thought: We could go further.
Before Sully could say anything—before she had time to wipe and get off the toilet and tell me what to do—I had already done it. Not because I was her puppet. Because, head inflamed with vodka and drugs and rage, I wanted to.
Just do it, then, and stop talking about it.
The toilet flushed. I hit send. Sully clapped a hand over her mouth when she saw the screen. It was the mixture of surprise and awe that I had been waiting for. Since the day we’d met, I’d wanted to shock Sloane Sullivan.
“She’s not serious,” I said. “She’s just being dramatic. She’s one of those people who needs the attention.”
Sully laughed and slung her arm around my shoulder. “I had no idea you were capable of this. It’s pure evil.”
Pure evil was her highest form of compliment. I was drunk on power. “I should go find Kevin.”
“One sec,” she said, grabbing the phone. “Before you do that, let me show you something.”
I waited as she fiddled with the phone, figuring she might be writing something even worse than I had. But after a minute, she handed it back to me. “I told you I’d prove it to you.”
I was staring at the messages. The texts that Kevin had written to other girls, the ones I hadn’t believed Sully about. They were real.
Hey Lisa, was thinking about u earlier
Hey Tammy hows ur essay going
Hey Britt loved your Halloween costume
I only had to click briefly on each message to know that I wasn’t special. That Kevin indeed saw me, but the same way he saw other girls. I wasn’t unique. And in that moment, I wanted to pull back what I had just sent to Flora. I sucked in a breath, lightheaded. I needed it to be for love. I needed it to not be for nothing.
My eyes flitted up to Sully, who was smiling pointedly. I told you so. Suddenly she was the one I was angry with, even though she had warned me—I had just refused to believe her.
I still wouldn’t give her my outrage, and I wasn’t ready to let my fairy tale die. I slipped the phone into my purse.
“This doesn’t mean anything. So he hangs out with other girls. This doesn’t mean he’s sleeping with them.”
“Stop making excuses for him,” Sully snapped. “He isn’t worth it.”
“I still want to talk to him,” I said. “I can give him a chance to explain.”
Sully was silent for a long time. Finally, she shrugged. “I guess you do need to find him. Give me that phone. I’ll make sure he never knows it was missing.”
I gave her my purse and followed her out of the bathroom, then accepted her arm and skipped down the stairs. I cleared the heaviness from my head. We just wanted what every other girl wanted. To get laid, to get loved, to conflate the two into something beautiful. We found Kevin pretty much right where we’d left him, talking to two girls in lace dresses. My heart was a hot fist in my chest.
But he turned away from them as soon as he saw us. Saw me. Sully slipped an arm around him, which wasn’t part of the plan, but she was making up the plan as she went. She whispered something in his ear that made him pull away. A threat, probably, or a warning, wrapped up as something sweet.
I moved in and swayed against him. He mumbled something that I didn’t quite understand—I could tell he was drunk. My lips found the side of his face and I left a kiss there, hoping my lipstick would leave a mark, proof that it was real. He opened his mouth, cupped it almost directly over my ear. The heat made my whole body shiver, then freeze when I heard what he said.
“This can’t be serious right now, okay? It’s all fucked up. But you’re so cool, you understand, right?”
“You think I’m beautiful,” I said. I hadn’t seen that word in any of his texts to Lisa, Tammy, Britt.
“Yeah,” he said.
It was a truth I had learned even before Sully drilled it into me. Being wanted is what sets some of us apart from the rest. The world makes it goddamn clear that no matter how much a woman does, she’s nothing if she’s not also some man’s beautiful.
I should have let Kevin go when I found out who he was, written him off as another asshole. But I didn’t. So I ignored any lingering thoughts about Flora, the texts I’d seen. What Kevin had said about everything being all fucked up. I put my hands on the back of his head and kissed him hard, because I had shocked Sloane Sullivan, and I was capable of anything.
And because boys were one giant contradiction, or because his dick was doing the thinking, or maybe because he decided I was worth it after all, he kissed me back.
Flora was the reason we ended up in the upstairs bathroom, the same one where we—I—had sent that final message. I couldn’t exactly take Kevin back to our room in Butts C. Had she replied? I didn’t spend much time thinking about it because Kevin’s hands were all over me, skimming my breasts, hiking up my skirt. He did want me.
I had pictured sex with Kevin many times. It was what I fantasized about when I was supposed to be studying, when my fingers wandered distractedly into my jeans. Sex with Kevin in reality was a spurt of frenzied jackhammering, the same as sex with any other boy. There was no foreplay. We barely kissed. I focused on his hand, a warm starfish on my back. His breath cascaded by my ear in short bursts. This wasn’t worship. Not even close.
He barely made any sound, so I had no idea if he had come or not until he pulled out of me. We hadn’t used a condom and he hadn’t brought it up. I was on the Pill, but, for a brief, psychotic flash, I almost wished I weren’t. I didn’t want to make it easy for Kevin to walk away.
His pants were up and he was washing his hands before I even had time to unstick my ass from the counter. I was unnerved by his silence—behind a computer, he told me everything, but in person he had nothing to say.
“So,” I said, trying to make my voice light. “I
mean, I kind of can’t believe we just did that. I don’t do this kind of thing.”
A variation of the excuse I used every time I had sex. Now, when I needed Kevin to believe that I wasn’t the carefree slut I had so badly tried to become for everyone else, it finally sounded like a lie.
“I know,” Kevin said. He washed his face and rubbed the wet skin with his hands. “I don’t do this, either. I mean, I don’t cheat. You know that. I need to find her and deal with this.”
It was my chance to ask about Lisa, Tammy, Britt. I didn’t.
“I guess—” I started, but he cut me off, his fingers at his temples like twin guns.
“I really like you, Amb. A lot. But I need time.” His face was so earnest that he couldn’t be lying. I seesawed between hope and anger.
Hope felt better.
“I can give you time,” I mumbled, leaning into him. His lips brushed my collarbone. That wasn’t an accident.
“I’ll see you later,” he finally said. I watched him leave, unaware that the next time I saw him in person, it would be through a windshield nearly fourteen years later.
* * *
I needed to find Sully. My body twitched with its knowledge of Kevin. As I walked down the stairs, I rolled his words over, like I would for years. I need time. I could give him that. I had given more valuable things to boys who meant less.
I wouldn’t tell Sully the sex was just regular, drunken sex. By that time, I had already convinced myself that it was some kind of transcendental experience. “We just fit together perfectly,” I’d gush. I had to prove a point. I had to resuscitate the fairy tale.
Sully found me first, twisting my arm, her face a scowl. “Well? Did you get what you needed?”
“I was with Kevin,” I said.
“You fucked him,” she said flatly. “Wasn’t it fucking amazing?”
It bothered me that she took the words out of my mouth and made them crass. It bothered me that all I could do was nod.
“Good, then,” she said. “It’s done. We can go back to normal now. Let’s get some drinks, okay? I just let some meathead in a bow tie finger me and it feels like my clit got burned off.”
The Girls Are All So Nice Here Page 19
