Love, Heather

by Laurie Petrou

  She spreads her hands out as though she’s reading a name in lights, and pausing for effect first, she says in an awestruck voice, “Niagara. Falls.”

  I laugh hollowly but agree to go down, deep down toward one of the wonders of the world because there is literally nothing wonderful here.

  Maybe it’s not the seventh wonder. Maybe Niagara Falls is on a list of the top fifteen, or the top two hundred, but it pulls us in some reversed tidal force, and the idea appeals to me, and soon I forget myself. I am sucked into the promise of its tacky, drooling mouth, full of gum wrappers and chewed-up garbage and tinfoil, the sun glinting off its trashy gob like the best kind of star. We park our bikes at the bus station, and I feel my heart lift. We ready ourselves for our voyage, prepare to ride the waves on a Greyhound bus.

  There are a lot of people going to Niagara Falls. Tourists and locals. Some kids, some teenagers, a woman who wears lots of perfume and a man who tells everyone that he worked on a movie with Tom Cruise. Right before we get on, I see a young woman empty a cloth sack full of brown and bruised bananas into the garbage. One after another after another, like a beat-up magic trick.

  “Imagine all the banana bread she could have made,” Dee says in my ear.

  It isn’t a long ride to Niagara Falls from our town. We watch the outlets and parking lots rise and fall from the window. Dee is on the other side of the aisle from me, snapping her gum and jiggling her leg. She looks like a little girl, and I’m reminded that it wasn’t that long ago that she was, that any of us were. When we were innocent and didn’t know that people would zero in on us, make it their mission to ruin us. But we know now: there are so many assholes looking to put cracks in the windows of our lives. I feel that burn that started when I first met Dee, that feeling that we can take our fate into our hands and change the landscape.

  We pass signs for helicopter rides and stores that specialize in sex toys, giant realtor billboards and theme restaurants trying to outdo one another’s crazy names and characters. People look small, wandering between these deliciously crazy eyesores. The whole dirty, cheesy town is trying too hard and kind of failing, but that makes it even better.

  “This is awesome,” Dee says, turning to me, eyes glittering. We are going to have the best day. Something to push away the worst ones.

  The bus stops in the Niagara Falls bus station, and I can feel it before we even get off the bus, while we’re waiting to get out. The doors open and it slides in, slick and smooth, up the stairs, up my shirt, behind my ears, licking every crevice: a warm breeze. It’s warmer here, sunnier, stickier, trashier. We stand in the street and a big fat fly buzzes lazily around my head, drunk on decadence, and the bus pulls away again, its engine revving and its wheels shaking off sweat.

  We laugh and head in the same direction as though pulled by a magnet.

  Where we go, naturally, is the wax museum. It’s on Clifton Hill, an area that is chockablock with noise, where giant billboards carry the strained smiles of tired strippers. The Great Canadian Midway is calling us in its hoarse voice, and the restaurants shake their hips and tempt us to feed our weary bodies, but it is the wax museum that nods quietly and knows what we really need.

  We want Niagara Falls in all its finest, waxiest, untouchable fakery.

  We go past impressive wax celebrities, like Taylor Swift and Katie Perry, who seem to be getting on just fine, and then head in, Dee leading the way with a fat grin on her face, like she just broke into the barn and ate all the chickens. There are groups of teenagers and couples and friends and families, all jostling and laughing and posing with these people, these waxy larger-than-life people. Indiana Jones and Marilyn Monroe and Freddy Krueger. The peeling paint is trying to hold itself up—tummy in, tits out—and the audio system is coughing out its scratchy, hungover voice. Our Lady of Frozen Beauty, Our Church of Celebrity and Eternal Youth. Give us a taste. We could be born again: dedicated parishioners, junkies of the camp faith. Maybe this place could save us.

  We spend the day there, and if this were a movie, it would be the part where the fun music is playing, the montage, where we laugh and scream and pull faces. It is where we see Johnny Cash all mournful, and Prince, that smooth fox who whispers something so dirty and poetic that I will never forget it. Dolly Parton looks right at us, and we are starstruck, and she tips her head back and laughs and it feels like we’re drinking the best southern lemonade. Dee says Justin Bieber looks like her aunt after a stroke. Jack Sparrow is terrific. Indiana Jones is missing an ear, and then, his whip. I know it’s in Dee’s backpack, coiled like a snake, promising to come out later.

  It gets quieter as time goes on, and then we are the only ones here. We stand in silence in front of James Franco. We both notice the same thing. He looks like Reg: he looks eager and full of shit, like an opportunist and a homewrecker and a homemaker. Like he has bad ideas and bad breath and terrible impulses. He looks like he slept in those clothes but loves how it looks.

  Dee puts her hand in her pocket, and I look over my shoulder. She has a lighter in her palm and holds it up.

  “It’s your turn, Stevie.”

  “My turn for what?”

  “Do it,” she whispers. “Now.”

  I stand up on the platform and reach up, the lighter under his nose, the flame tickling him like a feather. And it takes forever, but then suddenly his face is distorted, caving in, and it feels great. We watch him. He has no nose; his moustache is covered in beige wax, like he just drank the head off a pint of acid. He looks defeated. He’s everyone: a stand-in for all the hurt. It feels so good, and I want more.

  “Much better,” Dee says, and I nod, feeling strong.

  We immediately get the hell out of there, hitting the sidewalk at a run once we’re out of the museum, laughing and gasping for air when at a safe distance. We lean against a building painted a bright yellow. I stand back to look at it: an old wall mural ad for the Marlboro Man, standing in a field of wheat.

  “Look at that cool bastard,” Dee says, and I nod. He’s twenty feet of I-don’t-give-a-shit.

  “Unflappable.”

  “He doesn’t care about anything.”

  “Nope.”

  We start walking down toward the falls, and a fine mist fills the air the closer we get. We reach the fence and put our hands on it, looking down at the wonder itself.

  “Wow,” Dee says. “Pretty amazing.”

  I shrug. “If you like that kind of thing. It’s a little over the top for me.”

  She laughs, and then we are quiet as we watch for a while.

  Dee turns and looks at me, considering something.

  “What?”

  “I’m just thinking …”

  “About what? Spit it out.”

  “Well, okay. I’m thinking about Lottie.”

  “What about her?” I ask, closing my eyes against the spray.

  “Don’t you think maybe she needs a wake-up call, too?”

  I look at Dee, suddenly feeling protective, defensive. “What? Why?”

  Dee scoffs. “Seriously, Stevie? Why? Did you forget that she’s the reason this all happened in the first place? I mean, at the very least she was a silent party to what they did to you. She never stood up for you.”

  I look away, my eyes stinging now, from either the beauty or the misery. I wipe them and watch a small family taking pictures. The mother holds up the little girl while the father takes the pic; they switch, then take a selfie of the three of them. The girl starts to wriggle, and they put her down and move away.

  “Whatever. It doesn’t even matter. I don’t even know if she hangs out with them anymore, so who cares. There are worse people.”

  “Okay, suit yourself.” Dee leans into her cupped hands and lights a cigarette. She stares out over the fence at the falls. “I mean, one of the ‘worse people’ is definitely Aidan …” She looks at me, and I stare ahead.

  “No,” I say, firmly, quietly.

  “Why?” she asks, throwing up her hands in exaspera
tion.

  Because I’m afraid of him. Because I’m afraid he’ll hurt me again, worse this time.

  “I just don’t want to. No, I said. Just leave it.”

  Dee rolls her eyes and takes a drag of her cigarette, then passes it to me. I take it, inhaling, and it gives me a dizzy feeling. I close my eyes to the mist of the falls, which spray around us lightly.

  A moment passes between us. I think of Lottie and Aidan, and a small shock of fury inside me flares up bright and sharp. Lottie has no idea what my life is like. There was a time that maybe I could have told her what Aidan did, but not now. The feeling of that moment with him is almost palpable again, and I shake my head. It disappears for now.

  * * *

  On our way back to town on the bus, it feels like we’re pulling the cover over something behind us, protecting and preserving where we’ve been. Dee dozes against the window in a seat across the aisle from me. Her body relaxes. I lean against the window in its rattling motion, my eyes open and alert.

  17

  My shift is almost over at the Dairy Queen. It’s been quiet. Dee, Antar, Jesse, and Ava are sitting at a corner table, playing cards and sharing fries. I have pulled up a chair and am hanging with them when the door chimes, and Paige walks in with Breanne and three of her other friends, all lip gloss and boobs, people I partied with two short months ago but who hate me now. My heart takes a nose dive and my hand goes to my hair, tucked into a hairnet, in some primal protection instinct. They march up to the counter, and Paige gazes around impatiently, pretty and bored. She sees me, and something passes for a second between us. We were almost friends, I think. Things could have gone differently.

  “Um, hello?” she chirps at me. Breanne says something I don’t catch. They cackle together like witches.

  I don’t rush to get up, not like I once might have. I try to hold Paige’s stare as I walk slowly around, behind the counter. Dee and the others are watching, their cards still in their hands.

  “Yes?” I say, matching her bitch for bitch.

  Breanne gives me a cool smile and orders a chocolate dip. I say nothing and turn around to make it.

  “Nice hairnet,” I hear Paige mutter, my back to her. Breanne snickers. My shoulders tense, but I keep moving the soft serve into a spiral. There is a lump in my throat, and I blink a few times. Keep it together. When I’m done, the chocolate dip drying, swirled to perfection, I turn and hand it to Breanne. Paige stares at me, challenging. Something hard in her expression. It hits me right in the gut.

  Breanne looks at her cone. She turns it back and forth, evaluating the swirly top. Then she looks over her shoulder at Dee, Michelle, Antar, and Ava, and says, “Hey! This looks familiar! It’s you, Antar!”

  There is a shocked silence. Paige looks at me, her face faltering for a moment.

  “Seriously?” I say to her. “Why are you friends with her?” I point at Breanne, feeling bold and furious, fearless outrage coursing through my veins.

  Breanne looks at Paige, and there is a moment, and then Paige laughs, a hard bark of a laugh, like she’s forcing it. Then she takes Breanne’s cone and shakes it back and forth like it’s talking. She puts on a voice like Apu from The Simpsons and says, “Thank you, come again.”

  Breanne covers her mouth in that way of hers, all shocked laughter. Paige shrugs. Breanne tosses a few coins on the counter, and they walk to the door. Getting into the spirit, she looks at Antar as she takes a bite out of the ice cream, grinning savagely. The door chimes.

  “Bitches,” says Dee immediately.

  Jesse puts his hand on Antar’s shoulder and asks if he’s okay.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. They’re idiots, whatever.” His mouth is set in a straight line, and he’s looking out the window. “Hey,” he calls to me, “can we get some more fries? I am starving all of a sudden.”

  Later, Dee and I walk toward my house.

  “I can’t believe them,” I say, clenching my fists.

  “I told you. Paige is no better. She is completely evil,” Dee agrees.

  “But no, see, she didn’t used to be. Like, I felt like there was some good in her, even after everything. I always thought she just got swept along by Breanne. But now? I cannot.” I pause, shaking my head. “We should do something, you know?”

  “Well, sure.” Dee smiles.

  “People should know that she’s, like, a racist bitch. Just as bad as Breanne.”

  Dee glances at me and smiles. “Yeah.”

  “What should we do?”

  “I think you’ve got this one,” she says, looking straight ahead.

  I pause, thinking. “Yeah.” We walk in silence for a bit, passing my old elementary school. It looks so different to me now. So small.

  We get to my house, and Dee gives me a squeeze and keeps going. As she saunters away, whistling, hands in her pockets, I think about what I can do. And like a bolt, I remember the Makers’ Space, that artists’ clubhouse I have the key for. I feel a shiver of excitement and almost call out to Dee, but then just leave it. The shadows of the trees are long, but nothing touches her as she strolls down the road; she seems to just float away like some kind of ghost. She knows I’m watching her and raises a hand in a salute to me.

  I look up at my house. The front porch light is broken, but there are lights, and lives, inside—without me. I can see them walking around in silhouette. I think of Lottie’s house down the street, that house that used to be like my own, better even. There’s a second then that I feel something soft, warm, for Lottie, like an old worn blanket. Then I remember what Dee said, and wonder if she would ever do something to Lottie without telling me. No.

  I shake my head and return to the present. Paige. I look back toward where Dee was, but she’s gone. You’ve got this one, she said. It’s not too late, I think. I can get this done quickly. My heart is beating and pumping out that feeling I’ve come to recognize when I’m doing something, when I’m not taking it lying down.

  My handlebars are a little cold and the seat is damp, but as I get closer to the school, I am sweating. I have used the Space on and off since Pete gave me the key. I’m usually a little nervous with the older students, but I’ll be damned if they don’t have some cool equipment: great software and a soundproof audio suite, and even a darkroom if I feel like getting extra moody and arty. Sometimes I work there alongside the upper-years, and I love that no one really knows what anyone else is working on. Everyone ignores everyone else, and it gives me a thrill to think that I can get up to all manner of justice and mischief, that I can scheme and plan and execute right under everyone’s noses.

  I swipe the card through the reader, just as a dog in a nearby yard starts barking like mad, jangling my nerves. I slip inside. The bright lights surprise me, coming on with a hum. The Makers’ Space is empty. I throw my backpack on a table and slide into a chair at a computer, scooting it forward while it warms up. This shouldn’t take long, what I have planned. I putter around for a bit, scanning, working with Photoshop, digging up pictures, and I am feeling stronger and stronger. This is the right thing to do. My body thrums with justice and the knowledge that I am so balls-out in my actions, my fingers flying across the keyboard. Before long, the printer is booted up, buzzing with dangerous vengeance, and soon it’s spitting out copy after copy of our next job. Dee calls them “jobs,” what has been happening, what we’ve been doing, these vigilante acts of revenge, like she’s in Oceans 11 or something. It’s over the top, but I love it.

  I lay all the printouts in front of me and get started.

  18

  There seem to be hundreds of posters, all with the same image: Paige, grinning and cute and pretty as a stock photo of a cheerleader, her face glowing in the Polaroid we took together months ago—except there is a KKK hood drawn over her face and RACIST written across the top of the poster, all in red lipstick. In another, I cut her out and put her in the middle of a group of hillbillies I found online, blacking out her front teeth. They are plastered on the doors to the b
athrooms, on bulletin boards, and all across the hallway of ninth-grade lockers.

  People take pics with their phones before the teachers and janitors can tear them down, so the fire shoots across social media, moving from person to person, from page to group to message until everyone’s phone is burning hot. A video appears on YouTube within an hour, a shaky, amateur pan of the posters, people laughing, Paige herself turning from the camera with tears in her eyes. The title of the video is “Racist Girl Gets Schooled” and it’s seen hundreds of times by lunch, comments ranging from questions about what she did to emojis of brown hands clapping to suggestions that this is bullying.

  Dee slides into our table with her lunch tray, joining me and Ava. She’s grinning. I hide behind my sandwich, hardly tasting it. My heart is beating hard.

  “This is amazing!” she says. “That bitch will think twice about saying any of that shit now!” She reaches for my hand and gives me a little squeeze.

  Ava looks sideways, and I see that Antar is sitting a bit further down the table with a few other kids. I follow her gaze. “Why’s he over there?” I ask.

  “I don’t think he’s as happy about this as you thought he’d be,” Ava says, looking at me. “But, I mean, I think it’s pretty sick,” she says, smiling.

  “What’s his problem?” I ask, worried.

  He sees us looking and says something to the other kids, then stands up and comes over to us.

  “Hey, Antar,” I say. “Did you—”

  “I do not need you fighting my battles for me,” he says. “I mean, I’m all in for fucking shit up, you know I am, but let us do it ourselves, you know?”

  “What?” I say, looking for support around the table. “This is not just for you, Antar, this is—”

  “Seriously,” he cuts in, “I will pay back who I want to pay back. Trust me.” He walks back and sits down again, his friends looking over curiously.

  “Whoa,” I say, shaking my head. I look at Ava, who shrugs, biting on a fry and rooting around for another. “I mean, I kinda see what he’s saying,” she says, her mouth full.