Beautiful

by Amy Reed

She takes a swig and flinches. “This is disgusting.”

  “But it works,” I say, and I light some incense and open the window and we smoke a joint and share my pack of cigarettes until the liquor doesn’t make us flinch.

  We are lying on the bed playing a game I used to watch the girls on the island play, where you write things on each other’s back with your fingers and the other person has to guess what you’ve written. I trace letters onto Sarah’s back slowly, feeling for the ridges of her scar.

  “Macaroni,” Sarah says, laughing so hard she drops her cigarette between the bed and the wall, and we have to move the mattress to find the hole burning though the box spring.

  “Oops,” she says.

  “My turn,” I say.

  We lie back down and Sarah just makes circles for a while, tracing a spiral into my back. It is the best feeling I have ever felt.

  “O,” I say. “A lot of O’s.”

  “Hold on, I’m thinking.”

  After more O’s, Sarah makes dots.

  “Come on,” I say.

  After a while, she starts writing. I-M-S-C-A-R-E-D.

  I feel the bed move as she rolls over to her other side. I turn over. W-H-Y-?, I spell.

  We turn over again. M-Y-F-A-T-H-E-R.

  I turn over but Sarah stays where she is. We are facing each other.

  “He’s going to find me,” she says. “He’s getting out of jail soon.”

  “But he can’t,” I say.

  “A lawyer made a mistake. They’re letting him out.”

  “They can’t let him—”

  “They can’t do anything,” she says without feeling, like it is something she has known for a long time.

  “Sarah,” I say.

  “Do you want to know what he did to me?” she asks.

  No.

  “Yes,” I say.

  “The social workers told me. I don’t really remember.”

  “Okay.” I can smell her breath. I can smell alcohol and pot roast and cigarettes. It smells disgusting but I want to breathe it in. I want it inside me.

  “They said he’d been raping me since I was little.”

  “Oh, God,” I say. Her face is blank, like she’s possessed, like someone’s put this information in her and she’s simply reporting it, a machine, with no feeling. The “I” and the “me” could be anybody.

  “They said the doctors could tell from the scars.”

  “Stop.”

  “Scars can tell you how old a wound is.”

  “Stop.”

  “When I stopped going to school, they came and found me. They found me in the closet.”

  “Sarah.” I put my hand over her mouth. I put my other arm around her waist and pull her close to me, pull her so close that there’s no air, no room for air, no room for hands, no room for anybody but us. And my hand is around the back of her neck and my mouth is on hers, saying, “Stop, please, stop.” I am dizzy. I want to go to sleep.

  “I’m sorry,” she says.

  “Don’t be sorry,” I breathe into her. I say it with everything inside me.

  And she cries. She is silent, but I can feel her sobs shaking both of us. Her eyes are closed but there are tears seeping out and her fingers are tearing into my back. Her tiny, brittle nails are cutting though my pajamas, bruising my skin beneath.

  “It’s okay,” I keep saying, even though I know it is not, even though I know I have no right to say it. I move my hand beneath her pajama shirt, rest it on the ridge of the scar across her spine. I feel her heart beating through her back, fragile and fast like a bird. I kiss her forehead and pull her close. I say, “Breathe,” and she does, and I never want to move again.

  We fall asleep like this, on top of the covers, drunk and stoned. I wake in the middle of the night and cover us with blankets. She has her eyes closed tighter than any eyes I’ve ever seen.

  (ELEVEN)

  “Where’s Sarah?” I say.

  Alex is walking fast and it’s hard to keep up because her legs are twice as long as mine.

  “I don’t know,” she says.

  “Slow down.”

  “You hurry up,” she says without even looking at me.

  I am practically jogging to keep up with her. It is hard to jog in heels, especially when you have a hangover.

  It’s eight o’clock now and we just bought drugs from a guy in a car with tinted windows. I don’t know what we got, how Alex got the hundred dollars she bought it with, or even where we’re going, because Alex keeps pretending she doesn’t hear me whenever I ask her anything, or she gives me an answer that doesn’t really answer anything at all.

  “Sarah didn’t want to come?” I ask her now.

  “She wasn’t invited,” Alex says.

  “Why not?”

  “Why do you care so fucking much?” She stops walking and turns around. Her nose is practically touching mine and I can smell her sour breath and cheap perfume. “You’re my best friend, not hers,” she says.

  I don’t say anything. I have made her angry.

  “Right?” she says. She looks like she wants to kill me.

  I say nothing. I can feel the tears welling up. I can feel my chest and throat hot and tight like someone’s standing on me.

  “Right?” she says again. She pushes my shoulder hard, and I step back. “Say it,” she says.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, and now I am really crying. The tears are running down my face and smearing my makeup and there are thick, dull nails hammering into my chest.

  “Say it,” she says again, her voice low, growling. She is holding me by the shoulders, her big hands crushing me.

  “You’re my best friend,” I whine through snot.

  “Say it again.” Her hands move to my throat. I can feel her thumb on my vein, my pulse magnified by the pressure, pounding in my skull. My breath is stopped. My voice is trapped under her hand and throbbing.

  “You’re my best friend,” I cough, and it sounds like someone dying.

  She lets go and I breathe and she lights a cigarette. She starts walking and I stumble after her, tasting her trail of smoke and perfume. I feel the skin around my neck with my hands, checking to make sure everything’s intact. People walk by us, looking straight ahead or out at the water, anything to not catch my eye, anything to not acknowledge that they see me.

  I feel my face and it is wet. I run my finger across the bottom of my eye and it is lined with black mascara, each one of my eyelashes imprinted with tiny brushstrokes. I look at my hands and they are smeared with foundation, like paint the same color as my skin, and it looks like I am melting, like the palms of my hands are turning into jelly, like they have given up on being solid.

  Alex slows down so she is walking next to me. She hands me her cigarette. “Want the rest?” she says.

  “Thanks,” I say. I take a drag and it burns my throat, but I feel calmer.

  “You look like shit,” she says. She opens her purse, takes out her mirror, and hands it to me. “Here,” she says.

  “Thanks,” I say again. I check my face and rub away the tearstains. I apply more makeup as we walk. I make it look like nothing happened.

  The party’s in a part of town I’ve never been to. It’s not even in Kirkland. It’s past the arcade and over the hill that separates us from the big strip malls and the streets like highways, all the way over in Juanita in a run-down apartment building, next to the giant church the size of a stadium and the two-story neon sign that says jesus, light of the world. By the time we get there, the balls of my feet are numb and my ankles feel like they could crumble into a million pieces. All I want is a drink and a joint and a quiet corner to sit in until Alex decides it’s time to go home.

  Wes is standing outside drinking a forty. Alex throws her coat off in my direction, runs up to him, and throws her arms around his neck. They stick their tongues in each other’s mouths while I stand at the curb, holding her jacket and watching people I don’t know smoking cigarettes and drinking out of paper b
ags. They are all older and they are almost all black, and I feel younger and whiter than I ever have in my whole life.

  It is only now that I notice that there’s something different about Alex, that she has replaced her usual combat boots and fishnets for Adidas shell tops and baggy pants that hang so low you can see the top of her G-string. Instead of a ripped up T-shirt, she is wearing a red halter-top that barely clings to her tiny chest. Her hair is covered by a black bandanna, only showing her roots that are no longer green. I feel like an alien in my outfit, a baby, a white-trash alien. The guys leaning against the apartment building look at me with their droopy, stoned eyes, whispering things and making each other laugh.

  “Cassie!” Alex yells, and I walk over, feeling the heat of eyes following me. The bass of rap music from inside the apartment makes the ground shake.

  “Hey, girl,” Wes says.

  “Hey,” I say.

  “This party’s tight, huh?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Is Ethan here?” and all of a sudden I want nothing more than to be in the back of his car behind the reservoir, looking at the ceiling while I let him fuck me. It is not fun, but it is predictable and it is not here. It’s a kind of script I have memorized. I know what to do when I’m with him.

  “Nah,” Wes says. “He went tagging with some dudes from Redmond High.” I don’t know why, but this seems like the saddest news I’ve ever heard.

  “Let’s go inside,” Alex says, and I follow.

  The apartment is small and cluttered and crowded with people. No one is dancing, but all the bodies seem to be moving, pulsing to the beat of the music. Forties are piled on a table, and Wes hands each of us one. Most everyone looks even older than high school. I hear a girl a few years older than us say, “Nah, dude, this is my moms,” about a woman next to her who looks only a few years older than she is. This is just like a rap video, I think, except there are no expensive cars or champagne and everyone’s a little less beautiful. I wonder if I am racist for thinking that. I keep hearing my dad’s voice in my head saying, Those fucking people, when there is news about a gang shooting on TV, and I remember always being mad at him for it. I wonder if I’m a racist for being scared now.

  Wes leads us to a door at the end of the hall, knocks three times, and opens it. It is cleaner and quieter inside and there are only a handful of people sitting on the bed and on the floor around a low glass coffee table. The music from the living room is still loud enough to hear, but the mellow R&B playing from a stereo in the corner drowns most of it out. The people sitting seem like they are closer to our ages. The girls look at us and smile and the guys say, “What’s up?” and I hope we stay in here for the rest of the night.

  A beautiful girl with big green eyes scoots over on the bed and I sit down. Wes and Alex sit on the floor and everyone introduces themselves. I am not so scared in this room with the party muted, but I still feel white.

  “Did you get it?” Wes says to Alex.

  “Of course I did,” Alex says.

  “That’s my girl,” Wes says as she dumps out a pile of white powder on the glass table. The boy named Jarvis takes out his school ID card and starts chopping it up. Wes and another guy do the same, and the rest of us sit and watch and listen to the tap, tap, tap of white powder becoming finer. Wes makes lines for all of us and they seem enormous, bigger than the ones I’ve seen in movies. I wonder if he knows what he’s doing, if he’s just guessing how much is the right amount, if anyone knows what’s the right amount, if we’re all going to overdose and die.

  Jarvis rolls up a dollar bill, snorts a line, and doesn’t die. He runs his finger across the glass and rubs his teeth. He closes his eyes and says, “Come on, baby.” He passes the dollar bill and everyone takes their turn. By the time it gets to me, I imagine the bill covered with snot, but I do like everyone else did—put my finger on one nostril, put the dollar bill in the other, lean over, and breathe in as hard as I can.

  It feels like little thin needles in my nose for two seconds, then nothing. Then a terrible taste in my throat like liquid chemicals dripping. I pull a cigarette out of Alex’s purse, light it, take a drag, and wait for something to happen.

  One of the guys says, “Uh-huh.”

  Another guy whoops like he’s rooting for a sports team.

  One of the girls has her eyes closed and is moaning softly like she’s just eaten something delicious.

  I hear Alex whisper into Wes’s ear, “Cocaine makes me horny,” and that’s when it hits me, when the lights suddenly seem brighter and the bed is softer and everyone’s more beautiful, and my body is lighter and stronger and sexier and more awake, and the hangover’s gone and the music is beautiful and everything is perfect.

  Wes and Alex are making out on the floor. Jarvis and another guy are talking about how one of their teachers at school is a child molester. The green-eyed girl is explaining to another how she made the blouse she’s wearing.

  “It’s beautiful,” I tell her.

  “Thank you,” she says, surprised at my voice, like she didn’t even know I was there.

  “How’d you get all those sequins on there?” I ask. It is a masterpiece. It is something that belongs in a museum.

  “Oh, I had to hand-sew all that,” she says. “It took forever.”

  “You’re really talented,” I say, and I love her.

  “Thanks,” she says, and she starts talking to the other girl again.

  There is a buzzing inside me as I look around the room. I am surrounded by beautiful people and white light, sparkling, the texture of cellophane. It cuts through the mattress, the floor, the table, Alex, Wes, and all these people I don’t know. But it is soft. It is like dewdrops, like a ball of liquid mirrors, reflecting all the light on me. I am shining, squeaky clean, sparkling.

  I gulp down my cheap, warm beer and it is the most wonderful thing I have ever tasted. I take a drag from my cigarette and feel the smoke lift me. I stand up, float out of the room, and enter the noise outside. The bass from the music changes my heartbeat. It grabs me and squeezes my throat, my chest, my heart, pulsing, like all my life is centered there.

  The lights are out and everyone is dancing. I move my way into the crowd and feel the bodies moving against mine. I see a couple of the gangster girls from school and they nod at me and I nod at them. I dance like I’ve seen on TV. I dance with my eyes closed, my feet planted firmly on the ground, my hips pumping back and forth to the upbeat, downbeat. I am not dressed wrong and I am not an alien and I am not a white girl from an island. I am one speck in this crowd of pulsing bodies. I am part of this thing that is huge. I belong here. It would not be the same without me.

  There is a body against mine that feels different from the others. It is not a temporary bump. It is not an elbow or a hip or a hand. It is a whole body. It is a man, older than junior high or even high school, at least a foot taller than I am. He is smiling. His head is bald and his teeth are white and his T-shirt is starched, hard and cold against my skin. His hands are around my waist. My hands are around his neck.

  He says something into my ear.

  “What?” I yell.

  “I’m Anton,” he says.

  “Cassie,” I say.

  “What?”

  “Cassie.”

  And we keep dancing. And he keeps lighting cigarettes and joints and putting them in my mouth, and the song changes, and the song changes again, and this one is slower and everyone’s slower and I am slower and I start to notice how low the ceiling is and how everything smells like stale beer and cigarettes, and suddenly Anton is too close and too tall and too old and all I want is to go back into Jarvis’s bedroom.

  “Come with me,” I tell Anton.

  “What?”

  “Come with me,” I say again.

  “What?”

  I grab his hand and pull him after me. Little me is dragging this six-foot-tall man through a sea of sweating bodies and I can’t go fast enough. I am pushing my way through. A girl says, “Bitch,”
and I don’t care. All I want is to get to that door. All I want is that doorknob in my hand and the cool air inside. I want everything else muted.

  I find the door and suddenly I can breathe. I push it open and everyone’s still sitting where they were, except Jarvis is at his stereo trying to figure out what to play. It is too quiet. People aren’t talking. The girl with green eyes is biting her fingernails. Alex is leaning on Wes and smoking a cigarette. No one seems to notice me enter.

  “This is Anton,” I say.

  They look up and everyone seems happy all of a sudden.

  “Anton, you came,” one of the girls says, and he leans over and hugs her and kisses her on the cheek. One of the guys slaps him on the back and says, “Good to see you, man. We missed you.”

  “What’s going on in here?” Anton says. He is staring at the pile of white powder on the table.

  “You want some, man?” Jarvis says from the corner.

  “Yeah,” he says. “It’s been a while.”

  “Me too,” I say, and Anton laughs.

  “Hold on, girl,” he says.

  Everyone’s perked up and waiting for Anton to cut the lines. I realize that my nose is dripping and I wipe it with the back of my hand. He is not going fast enough. I drink the remains of the forty I left on the floor and he is still not done. I light a cigarette and finally it is my turn. He lets me go first. He is a gentleman.

  The line he cut is not big enough. I pick up the card he left on the table and pull out more from the pile that has gotten much smaller.

  “Take it slow, Cassie,” Wes laughs.

  “You just calm down, young man,” I say, and everyone laughs like it’s the funniest thing they’ve ever heard, and I snort the two lines I’ve made for myself and pass the dollar bill to Anton and savor the chemical sludge in the back of my throat.

  “This white girl’s funny,” one of the guys says, and I realize that this is the best night of my entire life.

  They are talking about something but I am not listening. I am noticing how soft my teeth feel as they rub against each other. I hear snippets of conversation, words floating through the air and meaning nothing: “out,” “six days,” “two years,” “time,” “parole,” “trouble,” “hole,” “piece.” None of it is as interesting as the tingling feeling in my hands or the fact that my feet don’t hurt or that the smoke inside my lungs is making me weightless.