We Were Promised Spotlights

by Lindsay Sproul

  Other kids’ fathers left them, but mine didn’t even know about me. That glimmer of hope—that he might want to know, that he might let me go live with him in California—that was all I had if I didn’t want to be a dental hygienist.

  I went upstairs and stood in the doorway of Sandra’s room, which smelled like dust, drugstore perfume, and superiority. She faced the wall, her red hair spilling across the faded pillowcase, and a man lay in bed beside her. I couldn’t see his face, but his legs were tangled in hers, and he was balding a little.

  “I got queen,” I said.

  Sandra was also the Hopuonk homecoming queen, but in 1978.

  She didn’t say anything, but I could feel her listening.

  Outside, Brad’s Datsun crunched over the gravel as he pulled away.

  I walked into the bathroom to do my morning ritual. I’d read about it in one of Sandra’s issues of Cosmo.

  Use yourself as perfume, it said in slinking pink cursive. It drives them wild!

  Watching my reflection, I slid a finger inside myself. I moved it in slow circles, removed it, then dotted my temples with it.

  My hair and eyes were just brown, and I tried to figure out what other people thought was so special about me. I remembered something Heather said to me once in the bathroom at school, while she applied frosty lipstick to my lips, and I pictured her voice in the pink cursive from the magazine.

  “Your features are impossibly perfect. Everyone wants you, Taylor. Be careful.”

  The Spiderweb

  The next day at work, I spent most of my time grinding coffee beans. Since I was fourteen, I’d been a coffee girl at Emmylou’s. Heather worked there too. I was the only employee without blond hair.

  Heather arranged a bunch of Saran Wrapped cinnamon buns and neatened the scratch ticket rolls. The top button of her uniform shirt was undone, showing her cleavage.

  Emmylou’s doubled as a convenience store, with shelves full of instant noodles, one-dose packs of Advil and Pepto-Bismol, and penny candy. We also sold single rolls of toilet paper, expired gum, and last week’s issues of the Hopuonk Mariner and the Boston Sunday Globe. On every copy of the Mariner we had in stock, I was featured on the cover.

  Brad and Scottie were there, drinking their second cups of coffee, basically harassing us. Brad drank black coffee, but Scottie ordered Twix-flavored, just so he could comment on how disgusting it was. We specialized in coffee that was dessert.

  Scottie leaned over the counter, pouting at Heather. He reeked of alcohol. He wasn’t even hungover yet—he was still drunk from the night before.

  “Come on,” he said to her. “Don’t be gay. Just let me touch your boobs. Just for one second.”

  Heather put the Saran Wrap down, crossing her arms over her chest. Since they weren’t officially together, Scottie felt like he constantly had to chase her, which she liked.

  “Get away from me, fuckass,” she said, but she was smiling.

  “Three seconds.” Scottie pushed because of Heather’s smile. “What size are they?” he asked.

  Heather answered, “D,” and seemed both like she was used to being asked this question and like she didn’t necessarily mind answering it.

  There was an understanding that only hot girls worked at Emmylou’s, and also that they would give free coffee to their friends. The coffee girls were between the ages of fifteen and twenty (I was hired young), but the girls on the older end usually only worked a few shifts, because they were enrolled in beauty school. We appealed mostly to the other high school kids in our social group, middle school girls who wanted to be like us, and dads. The dads were gross.

  Half of the fluorescent overhead lighting was broken, giving the whole place a dismal feel. The floor had black-and-white checkered tiles, and everything else—including the walls and ceiling—was hot pink. Our uniform—black booty shorts and pink aprons—went with the walls.

  Just then, Corvis walked in with Kristen. My eyes widened when I saw them—like I said, Emmylou’s was understood to be a popular-kid sanctuary. Besides that, Corvis thought the uniforms were sexist. I’d overheard her saying it once.

  Scottie noticed them next. He elbowed Brad, cupped his hands over his mouth, and shouted, “Get out, lesbos!”

  “Come on, man,” said Brad. “Shut up.”

  Corvis looked Scottie straight in the eye and clasped Kristen’s hand.

  “We just want a cup of coffee,” she said.

  “Go to Dunkin’ Donuts, dyke,” Scottie said. He was laughing maniacally, unsteady on his feet.

  “Dude,” said Brad, elbowing Scottie. “Shut up.”

  I thought of the note Corvis passed me in seventh grade, and I thought of how she helped me in the bathroom at homecoming, and I wanted to tell Scottie to shut up too.

  But I didn’t.

  Corvis shot me a disapproving look, like she felt sorry for me.

  “Come on,” she said to Kristen. “Fuck them. Let’s go.”

  “Wait!” I called after Corvis. I didn’t mean to say it out loud.

  She spun around and looked at me impatiently.

  “What, Taylor?” she demanded.

  There was so much I wanted to say. I didn’t want to go with them, but I also did. I was about to ask Corvis to take me with her, but then I felt Heather’s eyes on me, and Scottie’s, and my heart started pounding.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Never mind.”

  I watched their backs as they left, and an elevator in my stomach dropped and kept going, all the way to hell.

  “You’re an asshole,” Brad said to Scottie, who wasn’t listening.

  Scottie went back to pestering Heather.

  Brad shook his head. If I just went ahead and became his girlfriend already, I thought, at least I’d know I was with someone nice, someone way nicer than me.

  I pictured our life together, if we had one. Maybe I could get him to switch from Cheerios to Froot Loops. Maybe I could get him to grow his hair out and chop mine off with the edge of his weed whacker. Maybe I could be a landscaper, too, but the kind who shaped bushes into lions and mermaids, and I would own one giant powerful tiller, and one pair of delicate clippers for tails and noses. Maybe Susan could live with us, and we could share her.

  “Brad,” I said, leaning over the counter. I gestured for him to come close.

  Brad leaned in.

  “You can be my boyfriend,” I whispered into his ear.

  * * *

  —

  Later on, just before we closed and the place was dead, Heather finished counting out the cash register and turned to me.

  “Wanna go smoke a square?”

  “Sure.”

  We grabbed our peacoats and went out back by the dumpster and sat on the concrete steps. Heather handed me a Salem and lit one for herself. She was going to be a cosmetologist, and she already looked like one. Her makeup was flawless—somehow, her lipstick never rubbed off, and her black eyeliner complemented her eyes, which were bright blue flecked with green.

  The next day was payday. I used my checks for gas and things, but the rest went into this empty Russell Stover box, bills laid flat, smelling like chocolate. There was already almost five grand in there—I was saving it in case I needed getaway money. If I stayed, I could spend it on landscaping tools, and on Susan.

  Heather spent her checks on makeup and leather boots. She only took the job to solidify her hot-girl status. She didn’t need the money. She lived in Arrowhead, where the houses were expensive—way more expensive than the old houses—and you got to choose what went inside them before they were built for you. You could add dishwashers, home theater rooms, in-ground swimming pools, saunas. Heather had a pool and a sauna.

  We used to play in the woods they chopped down to build the Arrowhead development, and the families who moved into the cheap mansions started to seem garish,
like they had no respect for what had once been standing where they stood now, microwaving their vegetables and filling their giant bathtubs.

  Heather didn’t miss the woods. She preferred her pool and sauna.

  “Brad’s officially my boyfriend,” I said, trying to sound hopeful.

  She looked at her feet and sighed, wiping her pumps with the sleeve of her peacoat even though they weren’t dirty.

  “You really shouldn’t be fucking with Brad,” she said. “Susan is in love with him, and you aren’t.”

  “What if I am?” I tried to pull down my top to cover more of my stomach, but that only made it show more of my boobs. I crossed my arms over my chest. Those uniforms were the worst.

  Heather rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”

  “He made me a mixtape,” I said, hoping I sounded convincing.

  I knew that it took a lot of work to make a mixtape, because I made them for Susan all the time. If you owned the CDs, it was a little easier, but there were still songs you had to catch while they were playing on the radio. Rushing to hit the RECORD button almost always meant that the beginning of the song was cut off, and the end was interrupted by the radio voice.

  Heather raised her eyebrows at me, taking a drag of her cigarette.

  “It doesn’t have much variety, though,” I said. If you asked me, Brad’s mixtape had way too much Third Eye Blind on it.

  Heather sighed.

  “You’re making a mistake,” she said, “but I guess it’ll be fun to watch it go up in flames.”

  “Just try and tell me you love Scottie,” I said.

  “That’s exactly it,” said Heather, nudging my leg with hers. I jumped a little. Her skin was so smooth. “I never said I did. That doesn’t matter.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. “How can you have sex with him constantly if you don’t love him even a little? Or is he just really good in bed?”

  I didn’t mean to sound judgmental. I was actually curious. I wondered if she had any advice that I could use for Brad. Maybe I didn’t need to love him.

  “I’ve never even had an orgasm,” she said. “At least, I don’t think I have.”

  “Um, you’d know if you did,” I said. “Trust me.”

  Even though I hadn’t had sex, I knew how to give myself an orgasm, so I knew what it felt like. Cosmo wasn’t completely useless.

  “Sometimes it feels good,” she said, frowning. “I mean, sometimes there’s this kind of, like, building feeling? But it’s more for them than it is for me. They just don’t know it.”

  She looked ashamed after she admitted this, and she quickly rearranged her face.

  “You’ll see what I mean when you do it,” she said in a superior voice. She loved reminding me that I was a virgin.

  I didn’t want to see what she meant. It sounded awful.

  I flicked my cigarette into a spiderweb by accident, and then the spider appeared and started picking out each fleck of ash, one at a time, and flinging them away. I felt guilty for ruining its house.

  “Look at this spider,” I said.

  Heather looked.

  “Gross,” she said.

  “It’s not gross. It’s kind of beautiful.”

  Heather checked her watch, then looked over at the empty parking lot. There was a boom of faraway thunder but no rain. She lit another cigarette.

  “I haven’t gone home in three days,” she said.

  I thought of Heather’s dad, who worked at the Gillette office in Boston, and her mom, who made cookies in the afternoon for her three daughters, who were on perennial diets.

  “They come look for you?” I asked.

  “Nah,” said Heather. “They don’t care where I am.”

  “Is that why you’re such a bitch?” I asked.

  Heather smiled.

  “Maybe,” she said.

  I looked again at the spider, which was never going to be able to get rid of all the ashes. There were too many.

  “I made a mess,” I said, still looking at the spider.

  Heather stood to leave, brushing ashes off her lap.

  “Don’t worry,” she said coolly. “Somebody will clean it up.”

  The Mall

  On Monday morning, I passed Corvis in the hall. We made eye contact, and I looked for something in her face that told me she’d heard about my jump off Fourth Cliff. She carried a large binder and a French textbook. I carried a tiny purse that held a pack of cigarettes and a stick of gum. I smiled at her involuntarily, but she didn’t smile back.

  I ducked into the secret bathroom and realized, with shame, that I was waiting for Corvis to join me. I wanted to ask her if scissoring was really a thing, and what it was like to have sex with a girl—but I knew that was out of the question.

  I didn’t know what was wrong with me. What did I want from her? I looked down at the toilet, where a skid mark clung to the bowl beneath the water.

  I shuddered, and reminded myself who I was.

  I found Susan in study hall and convinced her to skip the rest of the day to go to the Hanover Mall with me to look for Halloween costumes for Heather’s party the following week. I hated the mall, but Susan loved it.

  * * *

  —

  We stopped in Abercrombie for something I could wear on my first real date with Brad, even though a week had already passed and I still couldn’t bring myself to make a solid plan with him. He called twice, and I hadn’t called back. I picked up the phone a couple of times, but my hands started shaking and I placed it back on the receiver.

  I watched Susan as she pulled sweaters and button-downs from racks, examined them, and put them back, unsatisfied.

  Then I found the perfect skirt—corduroy with plaid lining. I pulled it off the rack and held it up.

  “Isn’t this sad?” I said. Sad meant “cute.” Like, so cute it kind of makes you sad. For example, when you see a baby duck and you feel like you’re either going to squeeze it to death or cry, so you have to walk away. We’d started saying it, and it spread.

  “Oh . . .” Susan said.

  “What?”

  “I wanted to get that skirt,” she said.

  It didn’t seem like her style. She was more miniskirt than corduroy. This was what always happened—Susan wanted what I had.

  “You did?”

  “Yeah, I saw it last week with my mom. I was saving for it.” Sometimes she added detail to make her lies seem more convincing.

  Susan was two sizes bigger than me. She was taller, and I was skinnier. It didn’t seem fair that I was skinnier, because I didn’t go to the gym like Susan did, or spend hours a day doing ballet, or eat nothing but carrot and celery sticks on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I could tell Susan didn’t think it was fair either.

  I really wanted the skirt. I barely ever saw clothing I wanted, but I knew Susan would look cute in it. This was also what usually happened—I gave things to her.

  I guess I felt guilty—that I wanted her, that Brad wanted me—and also, I wanted her to have things, especially something as small as a skirt.

  “Here,” I said, holding the skirt out. Without even realizing it, I’d skipped a step. I had picked out her size instead of mine in the first place.

  “Come inside,” Susan said, calling me into the dressing room with her, but we were sober and I wanted to see her in her underwear too badly.

  “I’ll wait here,” I said.

  The preppy guy working there was arranging belts and kept looking over at me.

  “Hey,” he finally said, jutting out his chin. He looked exactly like one of the models on the posters hanging all over the walls.

  “Hi.” I looked away.

  “You like parties?” he asked.

  Do you like socks? I felt like asking him. Parties and socks were both inescapable parts of life—liking them or
not liking them didn’t matter.

  “No,” I said. “I hate them.”

  He held his hands up.

  “Jesus,” he said. I could feel him staring at my ass. Then he went back to arranging belts.

  I saw a slice of Susan’s body through the slit in the curtain—her bent kneecap, her hip sliding into the corduroy.

  Susan opened the curtain. Standing there in the perfect skirt, she was everything I wanted.

  She eyed the belt guy.

  “He’s cute,” she said, “but not as cute as Brad.”

  “I guess.”

  “Well?” she asked, spinning around in the skirt.

  I stood back, pretended to think. It was tricky business, keeping my secret. You could touch only when it was appropriate—sleeping next to Susan in bed after parties, when we were both drunk, when she said she was cold, or when she cried. Other times, I had to practice a lot of self-restraint.

  “You look sad,” I said.

  * * *

  —

  We wandered around the mall for a while, Susan’s Abercrombie bag whacking her shin as we walked. For the first time, the mall looked trashy to me. The lighting was hospital-bright, and the floor was made of dull-orange fake bricks. Many of the stores were empty, their entryways covered by chrome grates. The food court was sparse, and the few restaurants had neon hamburgers or ice cream cones in front of them, and they were called things like Hamburger World. Abercrombie was one of the only stores left where we actually shopped.

  On our way to the pop-up Halloween store, we passed Hot Topic, and I saw Corvis and Kristen inside. Bass-heavy, screaming music blared from the store, which looked out of place next to Yankee Candle. Kristen sorted through a table of black fishnet tights, then she picked up a pair of Doc Martens combat boots and slid her finger along the sole.

  “Wait,” I said, touching Susan’s forearm. “Can we stop in Hot Topic?”

  Susan looked at me like I suggested we make out with a dead fish.

  “Why?”