We Were Promised Spotlights

by Lindsay Sproul

  After I finished writing the letter, I brewed two pots of coffee and drank one and a half of them. To calm myself down, I had a glass and a half of Sandra’s rosé. I couldn’t tell if that combination was making me crazy, or if I already was.

  Then I got in my Volvo, planning to go to Heather’s house to smoke some of her sister’s weed. Instead, I took a sharp turn toward Juniper Hill Road, where Susan lived, my wheels screeching over the sand-covered pavement.

  Susan’s house looked unassuming when I pulled up to it—not the kind of house in which girls had sex in the living room.

  I pulled into the driveway so fast that I almost ran straight into the garage. When I turned the engine off, I sighed, and my breath fogged up the window, like the sex scene in Titanic. I looked at my lap. I had Sandra’s clothes on—a violet-colored crushed-velvet dress and a pair of black pumps—maybe in the hopes that they would transfer some of her fuck-everything attitude onto me.

  I wanted to take my adrenaline and hand it to someone else—someone who needed it, like Brad.

  Instead, I rushed to the living room window, and saw Susan and her mother sitting on the couch, watching television. They weren’t touching, and each of them held a glass of blood-red wine. They stared at the television without blinking. Somehow, they hadn’t heard me coming.

  “Susan!” I shouted, banging a fist on the window.

  She looked up. So did her mother.

  “Susan, come here!”

  She didn’t. They both looked at me wide-eyed, blinking.

  “Please!”

  Her mother made a dismissive motion with her hand, asking me to leave. Susan leaned into her mother, like a child, burying her face in her mother’s red terry-cloth robe. I could tell from the dramatic music from the television that they were watching Lifetime, and that the volume was turned up too loud, like they were trying to drown out the world.

  “I need to talk to you.” I kept banging my fists against the glass.

  It just didn’t feel right, us not talking. I knew something had cracked between us, something that couldn’t be repaired, but without her, I wasn’t sure who I even was.

  Finally, her mother got up from the couch and came over to the window. Because the house was so old, they had single-paned windows like I did, which you could hear through.

  “Taylor,” Mrs. Blackford said sternly, looking at me through the glass. “Go home.”

  “Susan!” I called again. “Susan!”

  Susan looked guilty, but she turned away from me.

  “I love you!” I knew I sounded crazy, but it didn’t matter. I was.

  I’d read in Cosmopolitan that love turns you crazy.

  “Go. Home.” Her mother’s voice was both stern and tired.

  I wouldn’t.

  Finally, Susan came over to the window too, bringing her wine with her.

  “I’ll handle this, Mom,” she said, sliding the window open.

  “I’ll do anything,” I said to Mrs. Blackford’s back at the same time that she said, “Close the window. It’s freezing in this house.”

  I wondered what she knew. Probably not much. Probably nothing.

  “What.” Susan’s voice was tired, but stern. She looked at me through the open window, her cheeks flushed.

  “Please talk to me,” I said breathlessly. “I can’t keep it in anymore. I can’t hold in what we did in the fort that night.”

  “I don’t remember anything,” Susan said, taking a long sip of wine.

  “Bullshit,” I said. “You do. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be avoiding me.”

  “Close the window!” her mother shouted from the kitchen.

  I stuck an arm through the window, grazing the front of Susan’s sweatshirt.

  “Just, please.” My voice was desperate. “Can I just come in?”

  “You need to leave me alone,” said Susan. Her face was stony, absent. I wished with every bone in my body that I didn’t still think she was beautiful, but I did.

  I felt anger blooming in my stomach, a fire burning down trees and houses, entire towns.

  “Look,” she said, her voice low. “I’m not going to talk about that night with you, or anyone else, and if you do, I’ll never forgive you.”

  We stared at each other, a kind of challenge.

  “You’re just jealous,” I finally said. “You’ve always been jealous, because you’ve always liked Brad and he always wanted me and not you.”

  I prayed that Susan’s face would show me something, some indication that she loved me back, that it meant something to her, but all I could read was disgust.

  “He loves me more than you, and he always will,” I added. “No one will ever love you like I do.”

  She leaned in close, checking over her shoulder that her mother wasn’t in the room.

  “You actually are a bitch,” Susan said. “Just like everyone says.” She wiped her nose on her sweatshirt sleeve, blinking back tears.

  I was already crying, which I hadn’t realized. I’d never heard Susan call anyone a bitch before.

  “So are you,” I said. “You’re just a different kind of bitch.”

  “I never want to talk to you again.” Her voice was so sturdy, so sure. I felt like fainting.

  “Close the window!” her mother yelled again.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered as Susan slammed the window shut, almost banging my fingers against the frame, but I don’t think she heard me. She disappeared into the house.

  “I love you,” I whispered into the air. My words turned into a cloud, then disappeared.

  I stood outside their house staring into their living room until I couldn’t feel my hands anymore. We’d sat on that couch together a million times, watching romantic comedies and sometimes the news, but only if it was juicy. I would have done anything to sit next to her again in the permanently indented spot where the springs gave in from too much use, to feel her body lean into mine, her head on my shoulder. I wanted to smell her.

  I wanted to be anyone else in the world besides myself.

  The Millennium

  On New Year’s Eve, we sat around Scottie’s house, drinking and passing around a crooked joint.

  Susan and Brad were together more and more frequently in public, and I knew that their closeness was at least in part to get back at me. In hurting them, I’d bonded them together. Brad was pissed-off at Scottie, too, so they showed themselves at the party but ignored the two of us. Still, Heather, PJ, Scottie, and the others clustered around me, like Brad and Susan were still in the solar system but no longer close to the sun.

  “Two thousand years, man.” Scottie held a tallboy in his lap, his other arm slung over Heather’s shoulder.

  “I know, right?” someone said.

  Heather passed me the joint, and I took a hit. I was already high. Everything looked pixelated. The wallpaper in Scottie’s living room, which had little flowers on it, was crawling with bugs. This stuff was definitely laced, but I didn’t care.

  I was afraid of the millennium. Just the word millennium, it sounded like the name of some galactic war.

  “It must have sucked,” said Scottie. “I mean, being alive two thousand years ago. I feel bad for Jesus.”

  Heather snorted.

  “I don’t know. Maybe it was kind of cool,” I said. “Like, killing your own food, wearing fur. Caves are sweet.” I didn’t really know what I was talking about.

  “I do like a good cave,” said Scottie.

  In the background, there was a game of beer pong. It was 11:17. I’d bought a little Y2K clock at the drugstore that counted down the minutes until the New Year. I was waiting to see what it did when midnight came. I was hoping for it to blow up, maybe shoot out some confetti and glitter or something. I placed it on the side table and glanced at it every few minutes.

  Everyone talk
ed about who they would kiss at midnight. I planned on kissing no one.

  Susan was on the losing beer-pong team. Her dad never made it to the millennium, and she was still ignoring me. If I couldn’t kiss her, I didn’t want anyone. I had the clock.

  “Your room looks like a cave,” Heather said to Scottie. Scottie’s eyes crinkled.

  “Dude,” he said. “I know it.”

  Did cave people sit around like this, talking about nothing? Probably not, I guessed. They were too busy worrying about what their next meal would be. I mean, the wheel wasn’t even invented yet.

  “Garland, your haircut is wack,” Scottie said out of the blue.

  Heather shrugged. “I think it looks sort of cool,” she said, giving me the side-eye.

  “Me too,” PJ said. As always, she was the copycat.

  “Why’d you do it?” Scottie pressed.

  “I thought it would make me feel more alive,” I said, “but I’m still bored.”

  When we were eleven, we spent New Year’s Eve at Heather’s house—Susan, Corvis, and me. At midnight, we walked down to the beach and jumped into the freezing-cold ocean in our underwear.

  In the water, Susan’s head popped up next to mine. We were screaming, and I could see little droplets of water on her eyelashes. We splashed to the shore, where our towels waited along with our winter clothes: long underwear, snow pants, Carhartt coats, puffy hats, Turtle Fur. We stumbled home, waiting to catch colds, our noses running.

  That night, we thawed out in our sleeping bags on Heather’s bedroom floor, talking in the dim glow of the Christmas lights that hung on the walls. We watched reruns of the ball dropping on the small television on her bureau. It was 1994.

  In kindergarten, I asked our teacher when 1987 would come back. She laughed and said it wasn’t coming back. Not ever. My stomach had dropped. I’d assumed it was some kind of circle, that the numbers turned around at some point and we returned to where we started.

  “What does your prom dress look like?” PJ asked Heather now, and when I saw her gearing up to describe hers, I didn’t think I could stand to hear about it one more time.

  “Hey,” I said to everyone, changing the subject. Scottie and Heather turned. “Hey!” I called louder, until everyone was looking at me.

  The beer-pong game halted, the ball rolling across the floor.

  “Let’s go jump in the ocean,” I said.

  “You’re crazy,” Heather said.

  “Let’s go!” I shouted.

  Scottie stood.

  “I’m in!” he screamed, ripping off his shirt. If there was an excuse to rip off his shirt, Scottie took it.

  “Me too!” said PJ.

  Soon we were all running out the door, scrambling the one block to Humming Rock Beach, to make it before midnight.

  We started stripping when we got to the beach, even though younger kids were there. I could feel the underclassmen staring, but we ignored them. This was our beach.

  Maybe it was the drugs, or the fact that everything was ending. This was our last New Year’s. Everyone had been talking about it for months, how all the computers would crash, how the world would end.

  I left my underwear on. I hoped the computers did crash, and that we would have to start everything over again.

  Heather started counting down the seconds until midnight, and everyone else joined in, then we ran into the ocean.

  The water was shocking. I mean, freezing. I couldn’t feel anything.

  Heather popped up next to me and grabbed my shoulders.

  “Jack!” she screamed, her voice wavering. “Hold on to me, Jack!”

  We’d seen Titanic together two years before. Susan cried the whole time. I remember thinking, How many times will they say “Jack” in this movie?

  Walking back onto the beach, I couldn’t feel my feet.

  “Never let go!” Heather shouted, pulling me down into the sand.

  We were both shaking uncontrollably. I grabbed Heather, burying my face in her chest without even thinking about it. It was so cold that our nakedness was irrelevant.

  Someone threw us a blanket. Heather caught it, and we fought each other for it, until we settled on hugging—the only way for both of us to fit.

  “Stop trying to feel me up, Garland,” Heather breathed.

  “You’re an idiot,” I said.

  Neither of our voices was back to normal yet. We both whispered breathlessly. This was the first time I’d ever hugged Heather.

  It was 2000. From the beach, you couldn’t tell what the computers were doing.

  Back at Scottie’s house, my countdown clock just turned into a regular clock. I would see no confetti. Nothing blew up. Scottie gave us pajamas to wear, and we sat around in the living room.

  Susan got too drunk, probably on purpose, and I watched Brad lead her down the hall to the bathroom.

  PJ had her guitar out. She was playing that Lyle Lovett song, “If I Had a Boat.” I felt kind of swimmy. Everyone sang along, in this desperate kind of way. We needed each other, but not for much longer.

  That song, it’s about going away. But the thing is, most of the kids at the party really did have boats—escape vessels—and all they did was take them along the brackish South River and dock them at Humming Rock Beach again.

  I heard Brad and Susan’s voices from inside the bathroom, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying.

  Heather sat next to me and looked at me with bloodshot eyes. She was drunk enough or high enough, or both, to wrap the blanket around me and scoot close. Our thighs touched. When she leaned in real close to my face, I could smell the alcohol on her breath.

  “New Year’s resolution,” she said, turning toward the bathroom door along with me. “Let them go.”

  Something sharpened in my stomach. All along, I’d thought Brad losing his virginity to Heather meant they had some kind of special connection, when maybe it was just proximity that pushed us together. I wasn’t sure exactly how Heather felt, or in what capacity she would be letting them go. I just knew I’d misjudged her.

  PJ’s voice was so beautiful. I kept imagining her on Broadway, which made me sad, because she’d already turned in her application to beauty school.

  I tightened the blanket around us—Heather and me—and I almost started crying, but I didn’t.

  “I don’t know if I can,” I said.

  It’s funny how people think a holiday can erase everything—that you can make a resolution and it will matter.

  This would be the first year since kindergarten that Susan wasn’t my friend.

  The smile left Heather’s face, and she looked at me with rare seriousness. She touched my cheek, gently turning my head around to face her.

  “You still have me,” she said.

  The Frisbee

  On Valentine’s Day, I was sitting on the seawall at Humming Rock when I saw Stinky Lewis, Brad’s wiry little mutt, running across the beach with a tangle of seaweed hanging out of his mouth.

  Then I saw why he was carrying it—a present for Brad, who stood there holding a Frisbee that Stinky Lewis seemed to have forgotten about.

  My first instinct was to hide, but Stinky Lewis saw me and bolted, shifting his direction completely, coming straight for me.

  His tiny head bumped my ankle, and I reached down to pet his chin. I loved his beard, his underbite. He had an air of confidence that no human possessed, and given how funny-looking he was, this confidence was endearing.

  Brad jogged up, stopping six or seven feet from me, like I had a disease. Which I did, I guess. But it wasn’t like he didn’t have it too.

  “No Frisbee?” I asked, not knowing what else to say.

  Brad shrugged.

  “He likes things that are alive.”

  We looked at each other awkwardly for what felt like seventeen mill
ion hours, while Stinky Lewis rubbed against my calf.

  “How is she?” I finally asked.

  Brad shrugged again.

  “She’s not great,” he said, which answered none of my questions. I couldn’t tell if he knew what Susan and I had done in the fort, or if he was referring only to her dead father. Susan could have lied to him about why we weren’t speaking—why she wasn’t speaking to me—but Brad’s face didn’t give anything away.

  “I miss her,” I said, still searching his face for some kind of clue.

  He looked out at the choppy water, then let his arm fall to his side.

  “Well,” I said. “Take care of her.”

  Brad nodded. “I will.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay.”

  A wave crashed against the shore and broke, pulling rocks back with it. I loved that sound. Actually, that’s why the beach was called Humming Rock—because of that sound.

  “Taylor?”

  “Yeah?”

  “She misses you too,” he offered.

  “Well,” I said again. “I’m right here.”

  Brad considered this, then shot me a look of disappointment.

  There is a power people get when they tell you they love you. It’s a thing that can’t be unsaid, a thing that forces you to consider them. You would think it would be the opposite, that the one on the receiving end had the power, but I was beginning to understand that it didn’t necessarily work that way.

  He leaned over, struggling with Stinky Lewis’s leash.

  “He wants to stay with you,” he said to his shoes.

  Stinky Lewis jumped up on my thigh, stretching his skinny legs against me. He made a noise that was halfway between a cry and a sneeze, then barked.

  “I wanted to love you,” I said to Brad.

  “I know,” he said.

  Without completely giving it away, I think this was his way of indicating that he knew about me—of letting me off the hook. I didn’t know if I deserved that.

  “You’re going to see her now?” I asked. Probably, he was bringing her chocolates.

  This question hurt, but I had a morbid need to ask. I imagined it felt the same for Brad when we stood in the hallway the day we broke up, when he asked me if I loved him.