Last Girl Standing

by Lisa Jackson

  “I wasn’t hurting him,” Oliver said coldly.

  Michael, suddenly realizing he had some power, held his wrist limply and whimpered, as if he were gravely wounded. Joey pushed him, not buying it at all. Michael immediately pushed Joey back, and the wrestling match was on again. Mom had to get up from her seat and take the two boys away, scolding them as they each howled that it was the other one’s fault. The bedroom door slammed, and in the relative quiet that followed, Ellie sat with her stepfather, whom she couldn’t stand.

  “How was school today?” he asked her when the silence had stretched to uncomfortable limits. This particular question was about the extent of their entire interaction with one another.

  “Fine.”

  “About six weeks till graduation now.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Your mother and I talked about the Forsythes’ overnight party. We both think it would be better if you didn’t attend.”

  “Oh, I’m going,” Ellie said. Her father might be gone, taken by a heart attack when she was only eleven, but everyone said she’d inherited his stubborn spirit, and she wasn’t going to let Oliver Delaney dictate to her . . . ever.

  His face flushed, and his dark eyes glittered. He hated her, she knew. What he didn’t know was that she hated him right back. Just like she hated pretty much all the boys in her class, except Tanner . . . and maybe Chris McCrae. Those two she lusted after. She was going to get one of them in bed before the end of the school year, hopefully Tanner. She couldn’t believe Amanda had jumped in ahead of her, kissing him, wrestling around on Zora’s pool table.

  She thought of Delta, her dark good looks and vibrant smile. Ellie had wondered about the spell she’d cast on Tanner for the best part of high school, but now, at least, it looked as if that spell had been broken. If Tanner was with Amanda . . . no matter how minorly . . . then he was ripe for the picking.

  Delta could just eat shit, as far as Ellie was concerned.

  “You’re not going to that overnight party, and that’s final,” Oliver said, stabbing up a bloody bite of steak with his fork.

  Ellie simply got up from the table, put her half-eaten plate in the sink, and followed after her mother and brothers. She’d been working as a server at the Commons, an independent-living adult-care center, for the better part of the last two years and had been saving up for college. All senior year, she’d been taking courses at the local community college, and she planned to go to the University of Oregon, where Tanner had a scholarship for football.

  “Where are you going?” Oliver boomed after her.

  To my room, asshole. Normally she was at her job during these hours, but she had Fridays off, and without anything to do, she’d come home and gotten a jump on her homework, though unfortunately that meant she was around for dinner and therefore Oliver’s tyranny.

  She closed the door to her room, which would also piss Oliver off. “No closed doors” was his policy. He lived in terror that she would do drugs. Not that he cared a whit about her welfare, but it wouldn’t look good.

  Also, though she knew he would never admit it and her mother would never believe it, she had felt Oliver’s lustful eyes on her a time or two and not in a fatherly way. If she was bolder, and he wasn’t such a toad, she might take him up on it. Maybe that would wake Mom up. Except there were the twins, and as much as they drove Ellie insane, they were her brothers, and she loved them, sort of, and she couldn’t be the reason her mom and Oliver broke up. Why Mom stuck with him and supported him, maybe even loved him, was an enigma Ellie had tried to understand the last eight years since their marriage, but it was as unsolvable now as it had been in the beginning. No, the best thing she could do was make it through the summer and then hightail it down to Eugene, find a roommate, and go to college. She didn’t think Delta would be following Tanner. First, because Delta didn’t have the money, and second, because this Amanda thing had really put the kibosh on their romance . . . hopefully.

  But Amanda? With Tanner?

  The thought of that icy blond robot with Tanner irked Ellie deep down. And wasn’t Amanda supposed to be Delta’s best friend or something? Not that Ellie could stand either one of them.

  She flung herself on her bed, then rolled over and stared up at the ceiling.

  Once upon a time, she’d been the third of their group of three: Amanda, Delta, and Ellie. Third grade and into fourth. She still had the pictures of that time, when the three of them were inseparable. They’d all styled their hair in chin-length bobs. They got the same black ankle boots. They each had a bracelet with their name engraved in scrolled letters, and they swapped them around. Sometimes Ellie would have Delta’s, sometimes she would have Amanda’s. At some point in that year, she ended up with her own back, and Bailey and Carmen moved into the school—not at the same time, but it felt like it somehow—and they joined their group. Ellie had protested, had given both Bailey and Carmen the cold shoulder for the last half of sixth grade and that summer and into seventh, and suddenly Ellie was out, and Zora DeMarco, whose businessman father broke into the cell phone business when it was really starting up and suddenly had money coming out his ears, was brought in. And then Ellie’s dad died, and she didn’t give a rat’s ass about her fair-weather friends, and then . . . she was no longer one of the Five Firsts, she was an ex-First.

  Ellie climbed off her bed and went to her closet, searching on the shelf above her clothes for the jewelry box with the Scottie dog shaped out of “gems” on its cover. She opened it up, and the song “You’re the One That I Want” from Grease started playing. She dug through several tangled necklaces to find the bracelet with the letters of her name scrolled in silver. She’d saved it. What a laugh.

  She put it on and twisted her arm, letting the overhead light bounce off it.

  Maybe she would wear it when she had sex with Tanner.

  Maybe on the night of the overnight.

  * * *

  Bailey sat at the kitchen island beside Carmen, eating an oatmeal cookie, while Carmen’s mother and her own mother shared cups of coffee and conversation. Bailey had been surprised to find her mom at the Proffitts’, as the once-sacred Friday afternoon confab between the two women had sort of dissolved since Joyce split from Bailey’s dad and apparently took up with an old boyfriend from high school. When Joyce had rushed over to hug her, Bailey had tried to reciprocate, but truthfully, she was still pissed off at her.

  Carmen’s mom, Elena, didn’t have any reservations, and she was sharing tea cookies and even a shot of bourbon in the tea with Joyce and generally having a grand old time when Carmen and Bailey showed up.

  “You’re back,” Elena had said in surprise.

  Joyce had momentarily frozen as well, then rushed over to Bailey as if to make up for the half second of shock at seeing her daughter. Though Elena and Joyce’s friendship had lasted through thick and thin, the Reverend Esau Proffitt still had problems with the fact that Joyce had left her husband. A wife cleaves to her husband and all that. Though Bailey wasn’t as old-fashioned and hard as the reverend, she, too, had struggled with her mother’s defection, seeing her less and less this last year and a half, even though she’d only moved about forty-five minutes away to Vancouver, Washington, across the Columbia River from Portland.

  “My, your hair’s grown,” Joyce said, fluffing at Bailey’s ponytail.

  “It does that,” said Bailey, swallowing a bite of cookie on a dry throat.

  “Oh, you’re mean. Don’t be mean.” Her mother smiled at her indulgently but was already turning back to Elena. “How did my girl get so mean?”

  Elena wasn’t as blithe as Joyce and offered a tentative smile in return.

  “Bailey’s not mean,” Carmen defended. “Give us a break. We’re just heading toward graduation and a whole new world. It’s crazy scary.”

  “Oh, I’m just kidding,” Joyce said.

  Oh, sure, Bailey thought.

  “Weren’t you going to Zora’s?” Elena asked as Joyce waggled her
cup in the direction of the bourbon bottle.

  “Amanda’s,” Carmen corrected. “Zora took us there, but Amanda had some kind of audition, and then we just didn’t have plans, so we came back here. We can leave, if you’d rather be alone.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Elena said, picking up the bourbon and bringing it to where Joyce was sitting, pouring a generous dollop into her mug.

  “I’ve got to get home anyway,” Bailey lied.

  “Pooh,” said Joyce. “You’re an adult.”

  “Not eighteen till August,” Bailey pointed out.

  “And you’re with your mother,” she singsonged.

  Who’s drinking and laughing with her friend and doesn’t give a damn about me.

  The words were on her tongue, but she reined them in. Nothing good ever came of arguing with either of her parents, though her dad was really easier to talk to, quicker to realize he’d maybe stepped in it with his youngest daughter. Joyce never seemed to get any wiser, which was completely fine in Bailey’s estimation. She’d left them with hardly a backward glance. Running into her at the Proffitts’ on the occasional Friday was more heartache than joy. Bailey had worked very hard on becoming inured to her, and for the most part, she’d succeeded. Her mom couldn’t get to her like she could to her older sister. Bailey warned Lill to toughen up, but Lill didn’t pay attention to Bailey and spent a lot of time still trying to be with their mother, setting herself up for disappointment time and time again.

  “What kind of audition?” Joyce asked now.

  “Mom,” Bailey said, pained.

  “What?” She threw up her hands. “Can’t I ask anything?”

  “I just . . .” For one terrible moment, Bailey thought she might actually tear up. She’d prided herself on being able to handle her emotions.

  “Hey, c’mon,” Carmen said, sliding off her stool. “Let’s go to my room.”

  “Don’t get on the Internet,” Elena warned.

  Carmen snorted in exasperation as she led the way up the stairs to her bedroom. The Proffitts watched over their children’s online time like hawks. It drove Carmen half-crazy, but Reverend Proffitt was fiercely concerned with the behavior of teens and making certain they didn’t head down the wrong path.

  Bailey appreciated her friend looking out for her. Joyce tried to stop her from leaving with a “I never get to see you anymore” plea that sounded like a whine, but Bailey covered her ears, physically putting her hands over them, to block her mother out.

  “I can’t stand it,” she said, once the bedroom door was closed behind them.

  “I don’t want to think about anything but the overnight,” Carmen said, stretching out on her twin bed. Bailey took the beanbag chair, the only other place to sit in the tiny room. Carmen’s bedspread was pink checks with ruffles, a remnant from girlhood that no one in her family seemed the least inclined to change, and when Carmen had complained about it, she’d been ignored completely. The reverend and Elena had no clue what went on inside Carmen’s head. Bailey could have told them she was obsessed with Tanner Stahd, and they would have fallen over themselves trying to deny it. It wasn’t a subject Bailey and Carmen talked about much, as Bailey thought Tanner was cute and all, but maybe overrated for all the fuss about him. But Carmen’s every other thought revolved around him. Though Carmen hadn’t said it, Bailey knew she was kind of counting on the overnight above the river as a way to be near him.

  As if divining Bailey’s thoughts, she asked, “Do you think Tanner and Delta will break up?”

  “Do you . . . want them to?”

  “I don’t know. They’ve been together forever. I just wondered. . . you don’t think he and Amanda are really hooking up, do you?”

  There was an edge of desperation in her voice, as if she could live with Tanner being with Delta, but the thought of him with Amanda was anathema.

  “Nah. Amanda’s never serious about guys.” Bailey actually had no idea what Amanda’s thoughts were. The girl was a cipher, only showing what she wanted to be shown. But Bailey wanted the subject to change to steer Carmen away from her obsession, no easy feat.

  “Amanda won’t go to Oregon,” Carmen predicted. “She’ll go to some other school. Maybe back east. Something prestigious and cool.”

  Bailey didn’t respond to this. She wanted to give her friend some hope, sort of, but she also wanted her to face reality. Carmen didn’t have a chance with Tanner. He was too popular, and Carmen, even though she was one of the Five Firsts, was a little too nerdy, a little too needy, and her dad being the reverend only made it worse. None of the guys wanted to be with her. They all wanted Amanda, or Delta, or maybe Zora . . . and even Ellie. Bailey knew Carmen yearned to be in that grouping—the one the guys lusted over—and felt a little bad that she was glad she wasn’t. Bailey had no interest in giving her heart to any of the high school boys. It wasn’t that she didn’t find them hot, despite some of them saying she and Carmen had to be lesbians because they were always together and had never had boyfriends. She just knew that, as the daughter of one of the town’s policemen, if she was going to sow her wild oats, it was going to be outside of high school, somewhere far away from West Knoll.

  Carmen broke into Bailey’s thoughts with, “Don’t you just want something to happen? Something good?”

  The words sounded wrenched from her soul. “Well . . . yeah, I—”

  “I just feel like we’re waiting, you know? It’s just . . . waiting and waiting. I want it all now. Don’t you?”

  “Depends on what it is, I guess,” Bailey said cautiously.

  “It’s Friday night. We’re not going to get drunk. We’re not going to be with our friends. We’re not going to see the guys.”

  For guys, read “Tanner.”

  “We’re just waiting for the rest of our lives to start. My dad’s freaking that Amanda’s party’s an overnight.”

  “It isn’t really Amanda’s party. It’s the whole class, and—”

  “I know, I know. Coach Sutton, Mr. Timmons, and Ms. Reade . . . They’ll all be watching us. And some others, too, I think. I’ve told my dad that, but I don’t know. At least your dad gives you some freedom, but not mine. Mom’d probably let me. But she can’t go against him.”

  “Some of the kids are just going for the day—”

  “I don’t want to be one of them!” She leapt off the bed and paced the room, stopping in front of the window and throwing back the curtains. It was just getting dark, and the sky was purplish, with a crescent moon rising on the horizon. “I want to spend the night with the guys. It doesn’t have to be a sex orgy, like my dad thinks it’s going to be. I just want to camp out. Roast hot dogs and marshmallows and swim in the river by moonlight. I know. Never mind,” she said quickly as Bailey started to protest. “The river’s too high in the spring. It wouldn’t be safe.”

  “I was going to say, it would be hell getting down the cliff to the water. I know there are steps, kind of, and we’re going to do it, but in the dark . . .”

  “I just want to get out of here,” she moaned. “I just want to be with . . . a guy.”

  This was as close as Carmen ever got about admitting her deep, deep crush on Tanner Stahd.

  “I can’t believe Amanda was with Tanner,” Carmen muttered.

  “I can’t believe she had an audition tonight. She seemed really irked at her mom about it all.”

  “And then Zora just went home. I guess we’re not cool enough to be with her.”

  “Maybe we should call some of the guys?” Bailey suggested, though it was about the last thing she wanted right now. But it was what Carmen wanted, and whether Carmen knew it or not, Bailey was a better friend to her than she was to Bailey.

  “You don’t think Tanner’s with Delta?”

  “I was thinking more of McCrae or Justin Penske or . . .” She trailed off at Carmen’s snort. Her friend was back lying on the bed again, glaring at the ceiling.

  “What do you think’s going to happen with Amanda and Delta?” C
armen asked.

  “Nothing good,” Bailey said with feeling.

  “Maybe Tanner’ll decide to quit them both.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I applied to U of O,” Carmen said now, surprising Bailey. They’d both planned to take courses at Portland Community College and get part-time jobs.

  “You did? Oh.” How could she forget that Tanner had won an academic scholarship there and hoped to make the football team?

  “He’s really smart, too, y’know,” Carmen said defensively.

  “Did I say he wasn’t?”

  “His dad’s a doctor, and his mom was pre-law.”

  Bailey nodded slowly. Tanner’s dad had been a medical doctor before he got involved with drugs himself—or so the story went— and had his license suspended. His parents had divorced, and his mom had gone to work for a law firm, while ex-Dr. Stahd had turned his life around and now prescribed over-the-counter herbal supplements with his new, younger-model wife.

  “Tanner’s going to be a doctor, too,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “Bailey? Honey? I’m getting ready to leave, and I want to say good-bye.” Her mother’s voice called up the stairway.

  “Gotta go.” For once Bailey was ready to leave. She’d hoped Carmen’s obsession with Tanner would dissipate as the school year came to a close, but for some reason, their imminent graduation seemed to have only heightened it.

  “I’m going to spend the night at Amanda’s, no matter what,” Carmen told Bailey with conviction. “My dad can ground me or whatever. I’m already eighteen. He can kick me out. I don’t care. I’m going.”

  Chapter 4

  The party at Amanda’s took place three weeks before graduation. Delta stood to one side of the barbeque pit Coach Dean Sutton and one of the school counselors, Clarice Billings, had created with the help of the senior boys. Tanner had been involved in the dig as well, taking off his shirt on this unseasonably warm May day, creating a minor stir among the girls, who hooted and hollered as if he were a Chippendales dancer.