We Were Promised Spotlights

by Lindsay Sproul

  “What are you doing here?” she asked, picking herself up off the rug. In Corvis’s house, they didn’t have wall-to-wall—they had hundred-year-old Turkish rugs everywhere, in all shapes and sizes and color combinations.

  I stayed on the floor.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” I said. “Why were you crying?”

  “I wasn’t.”

  “Yes, you were.”

  I looked her up and down. She wore long pajamas and a red bathrobe. Her hair was, as always, a mess.

  “What are you writing?” I tried, hoping for a different response.

  “A letter,” she said.

  “To who?”

  “Kristen, okay?” said Corvis. Fresh tears swelled in her eyes, and she clenched her jaw, trying to hold them in.

  “It’s okay,” I said, looking at her. “You can cry.”

  She sat on the floor again, facing me.

  “I broke up with her yesterday,” said Corvis. “I decided to go to Sarah Lawrence early. You know, take a summer class. Get out of here.”

  “Okay,” I said. A twinge went through my stomach, imagining Corvis somewhere else. Even though I was leaving, too, I still felt abandoned.

  “She wanted to come, like I said, but that’s a terrible idea. She needs to go be on her own, to find a boyfriend, to forget about me. But she begged me not to break up with her. She begged me. Then she turned our friends against me.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. It was difficult not to reach out and touch her, to comfort her.

  Corvis shrugged and wiped her cheeks with the palm of her hand.

  “This was always going to happen, but it still feels awful.”

  I thought of their friends—the kids from band, art class, and drama. They were either too skinny, too short, too fat, or too sweaty, wore ill-fitting dark clothing dotted with holes, and dyed their hair blue or purple. They pierced body parts that had no business being pierced. But they were just as petty, just as backstabbing as we were—and, just like us, they looked alike. They wore the same clothing. They left people out.

  “You’re going to Sarah Lawrence,” I said. “You’re going to meet people that are so much cooler than everyone here. It’ll be okay.”

  “I know that,” she said, “but it doesn’t stop me from feeling bad.”

  “Everyone’s against me too,” I said. “Only they’re pretending not to be just because my dad is Johnny Moon and he’s coming here. I don’t want to do this photo shoot. I don’t think I want to be on the cover of a magazine.”

  “Why not?”

  “People don’t take him as seriously as he wants them to,” I said. “Now they’re making this into a big reunion, to help get him more publicity, and it feels like a scam.”

  Corvis nodded.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Fuck that.”

  “But I have to do it,” I said. “I just wanted . . .”

  “A dad?”

  I took a deep breath.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “You don’t have to do it,” she said.

  We sat in silence on the rug for a few minutes. It didn’t feel right to touch her, even though she was still crying a little. I didn’t think I had that privilege. Then I thought of something.

  “Listen,” I said. “We’re both about to leave, and it’s almost my birthday, and we’re both feeling like shit. Let’s do something crazy—let’s go have an adventure.”

  “What do you have in mind?”

  “Scottie’s car,” I said. “Let’s go mess it up.”

  Corvis narrowed her eyes.

  “Nothing permanent,” she said. “No keying . . . nothing that will actually do damage, okay?”

  “I pinky-promise,” I said, holding out my pinky finger.

  She linked her pinky in mine and shook.

  “Got any Oreos?” I asked.

  Corvis smiled.

  * * *

  —

  We walked through the dark streets, plastic shopping bags of Double Stuf Oreos in our arms.

  Scottie’s truck was parked by The Mooring, where everyone would see it in the morning.

  Corvis wasn’t crying anymore. Her face was still blotchy, but she was suppressing laughter. In her pajamas, with her messy hair, she looked young.

  “Okay,” I said, pointing to Scottie’s truck. “Spotted.”

  Corvis shot me a look.

  “Ready?” I asked.

  “Ready.”

  We dug into the Oreos, ripping the packages open with our teeth like dogs. One by one, we pulled the cookies apart and stuck them, frosting side down, to his windshield. The whole time, we laughed, and everything felt electric, and it felt like we were outlaws.

  “Save the other halves,” Corvis said.

  We kept going until the glass surfaces on his truck were completely covered. It was balmy outside, and the cookies stuck easily.

  By the end, we had a whole shopping bag full of other halves.

  “These are going to be such a pain in the ass to get off,” Corvis said.

  “Scottie’s so dumb he’ll probably turn on the windshield wipers and break them,” I said.

  We sat on the ground, surveying the damage. It looked great. And once the sun came up, which would be pretty soon, the frosting would stick even better.

  We lit cigarettes, looked out over the water, and ate the other halves of the cookies between drags. It was a good combination, even though without the frosting it was more noticeable that Oreos taste like cardboard.

  “Corvis?” I asked. “What were you writing in that letter?”

  Corvis sighed and ate another other half.

  “Nothing. I don’t know,” she said.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I won’t tell anyone.”

  “I guess I was trying to explain to Kristen why I broke up with her, but I’ve already said it all to her face, and it didn’t get me anywhere. I thought if I wrote a letter, she’d have to hear me out. She couldn’t interrupt me.”

  “You can’t make people listen,” I said, surprising myself. Talking to Susan, especially this year, had begun feeling like I was talking to a brick wall—no matter what I said, she heard what she wanted to hear. “It’s not your fault.”

  “I know it’s not my fault.” Corvis looked close to tears again, but she swallowed and regained the expression of determination. This was something I’d seen Heather do many times, and it occurred to me that Corvis and Heather had a lot in common, that they actually would have been friends if they’d been allowed. If they would have allowed themselves.

  “So,” Corvis said in a small voice, “it’s not my fault?”

  I reached for her hand and squeezed it. She squeezed back.

  Corvis McClellan was my best friend.

  “It’s not your fault,” I said again. “You’re one of the good ones.”

  * * *

  —

  Veronica Michaels called later that morning, with even more suggestions about how my life should go.

  If the photo shoot went well, Johnny Moon and his publicist wanted me to play the hot girl who dies first in a horror movie called At Dawn They Bite. If that went well, they wanted me to play the hot but spoiled older sister in a TV series called Homecoming, about a family where the mom, who was married to this fancy criminal defense lawyer in San Francisco, gets a divorce and moves back to her hometown in Wyoming. They would shoot the pilot in Vancouver, starting in August.

  He also gave me his cell phone number. He had a cell phone.

  I thought of what Brad said, about everything already being decided for us. As it turned out, he was partially right in my case, though the outcome wasn’t what I’d dreamed of. I was both the center of attention and an object, something to be fixed up and moved around. Like a cake topper you throw away after the wedding.
Like a token.

  Now that I had a new father, I also had a new name: Taylor Garland Moon.

  “We just can’t wait to see the splash you make,” Veronica continued. “You can come out here this summer, and we’ll get everything started. Once the Vanity Fair issue hits the stands, people will know your face.”

  So before even meeting me, Johnny Moon had already decided I could go to California and be with him. I’d wanted to win him over with my personality, but once again, my face was the important thing.

  “Stop,” I said to Veronica, shooing Sandra out of the kitchen with my hand. “I’m not doing this.”

  “What do you mean, you’re not doing this?” Veronica asked, her voice changing. She always sounded both cheerful and mechanical, but for once she sounded kind of human.

  “This isn’t what I signed up for,” I said.

  My insides were exploding—I couldn’t believe I was turning this down, especially since I had no idea how else to leave Hopuonk. Still, I just couldn’t do it.

  “This is what it feels like, all the time,” I said. “Everyone watching me, everyone expecting something, but at least here it’s just one town. I’m not about to let the whole world see me that way. Plus, I haven’t even met him yet. I haven’t even talked to him. Why hasn’t he called me?”

  “I don’t understand.” Veronica’s voice sounded panicked now. She didn’t answer my last question. Instead, she said, “This is every girl’s dream.”

  “I want to meet him,” I said. “Just not like this.”

  “I don’t understand,” she repeated.

  “I’ll keep the name,” I said, “but cancel the photo shoot, and everything else.”

  After I hung up, I dodged Sandra in the hallway and shut myself inside my bedroom. I knew Sandra would be disappointed that I wasn’t going to be on the cover of a magazine, and I didn’t know what else I would do with my life, but I took the plane ticket out of my purse and ripped it into shreds over my trash can.

  Wherever I was going, I needed to do it on my own.

  The Pinecone

  While I sat there in my folding chair at graduation, I thought about Sandra, and what she must have felt in one of these same chairs, back in 1979. It was May 30th, 2000, a date that had been unimaginable to me not long ago.

  My cap kept slipping down my forehead while PJ sang “Fields of Gold,” the graduation song. The valedictorian, some tech kid named Matt McDonald, who I’d never spoken to, gave a speech about friendship and knowledge, which made my hands sweat. Friendship and knowledge were so big, like impenetrable stone walls.

  The “diploma” Principal Deftose gave me at the ceremony would be an empty sheet of paper. The administration decided I could walk at graduation, but that I needed to complete summer school in algebra and biology to earn my actual diploma. The sheet of paper was symbolic, meant to save me from embarrassment, but also to keep me in Hopuonk a little bit longer.

  But I wasn’t embarrassed. I was kind of proud, to be honest. My other secret was this: I threw the packet from Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences in the trash that morning without checking if I’d been accepted. Sandra, and everyone else, should have known better. I barely remembered to floss my own teeth. I didn’t care if I graduated from high school. I thought it was kind of funny that they couldn’t claim their shining star as an actual graduate.

  Kristen Duffy was sitting almost directly in front of me at the ceremony. There was an entire pinecone stuck in her hair. I reached out to remove it, and as soon as I touched her, she spun around.

  “How can you not notice that there’s a pinecone in your hair?” I said angrily. I snatched it and handed it to her.

  She took it, and instead of throwing it on the grass, she put it in her pocket.

  “It’s things like that, you know,” I said. “Keeping pinecones that came out of your hair. Wearing safety pins as earrings. That’s why everyone thinks you’re weird.”

  Kristen looked like she was about to cry—her chin crinkled up like a walnut.

  “That,” I said, “and the fact that you wear pit-bull collars as jewelry.”

  “Why are you such a bitch?” she whispered.

  “You better leave Corvis alone,” I said. Then I dismissed Kristen forever.

  Corvis spoke as salutatorian, and I couldn’t get myself to pay attention to her actual words, except the end. I just watched her mouth moving, and though I wanted to, I didn’t cry.

  “Synonyms for the word ‘commencement,’” I heard Corvis say, “are ‘beginning,’ ‘dawn,’ ‘threshold.’ I wish you all, all of my classmates, a good morning. And while you’re out in the world after high school, I hope you all remember where you came from.”

  She was talking to herself, really. Most of the kids sitting in front of her were not leaving Hopuonk. But Corvis was afraid of forgetting, and so was I.

  While I listened to Corvis’s voice, I realized LA wasn’t for me anyway. I decided I would try to get to San Francisco instead: Where D.J. and Stephanie Tanner lived. Where there were mountains and gay people. Where there were coffee shops everywhere. I knew how to make coffee.

  The Last Check

  Later that night, I realized that I didn’t own a suitcase. Of course I didn’t—why would I? In my imagination, I saw myself packing a leather suitcase full of not clothes but trinkets—turkey feathers, seashells, shards of sea glass, even sand—and maybe some jewels that had been in my family for generations, though we had none of those either.

  In reality, I packed the overnight bag with a few pairs of underwear and Stinky Lewis’s dog food, examined it, and decided it looked neither beautiful nor useful, and left it behind. At the last moment, in the darkness, with the sound of the waves lapping the shore of Humming Rock Beach outside my window, I decided that I would figure out what I needed while I was moving.

  I did, for some reason, grab the prom crown and put it on, and Stinky Lewis followed me. I brought only the chocolate box of cash and his food. Then, at the last minute, I grabbed the German sex toy that Corvis bought me in Provincetown.

  I tiptoed into Sandra’s room, where she slept curled on her side. The sun was just rising, and a slant of pale yellow hit her cheek. I walked over to her bedside, lifted the hair from her face, and leaned down to kiss her cheek.

  “I have to go,” I whispered. She was angry with me for skipping out on the photo shoot, and she planned to let me live with her only while I finished summer school. I didn’t tell her about my plan to leave, or that I wasn’t visiting Johnny Moon. I didn’t want her to try and stop me, so I figured I would find a pay phone somewhere along the way, maybe in Arizona or some other unimaginable place, and tell her then.

  I hadn’t told anyone but Stinky Lewis.

  Sandra stirred but didn’t wake up. Tears burned my eyes, because she was so beautiful that it was sad, because she looked small and young, because I didn’t know whether she needed me.

  “I love you,” I whispered, running my forefinger down her arm. I saw, on her cheek, the shadow of my prom crown.

  “I love you too, honey,” she whispered back, still asleep, and rolled over.

  I would stop at Emmylou’s for my last check, and then I would drive away.

  * * *

  —

  I got to Emmylou’s just as it opened.

  Heather stood behind the counter, her eyes red, arranging the pastries. Just before graduation, her father moved into a house on the beach and bought himself a small airplane. Today, I noticed a stain on her Emmylou’s shirt, something she usually never would have let happen.

  The sun hadn’t finished rising, and I’d always thought the darkness outside gave the bright lights and color scheme of Emmylou’s a sinister feel. Now, looking around for the last time, my heart pulled slightly at my chest. I didn’t realize how great my love was for the small pockets of Hopuonk that I
felt belonged to me, and I was beginning to understand that the feeling of homesickness would hit me later, in moments when I didn’t expect it.

  “I’m leaving today,” I said to Heather. “I came to say goodbye.”

  As those words left my lips, I realized that they weren’t true.

  Holding out a plastic-wrapped cinnamon bun, Heather said, “For the plane.”

  “I’m not flying,” I said. “I’m not going to LA.”

  My Volvo was parked out front, and Stinky Lewis sat shotgun, ears up, waiting for me to come back. We stood staring at each other, and then “As I Lay Me Down” came on the radio again.

  “What do you mean?” she asked. “Where are you going?”

  The cinnamon bun hung between us. I leaned over the counter, put my hand on her wrist, and gripped her tight.

  “I was thinking San Francisco,” I said. She didn’t move her wrist, so I held it tighter. Her personality was so big that it was easy to forget how thin she was, how fragile.

  She looked at me, sighed, and said, “We all have herpes, you know.”

  “What?”

  She put down the cinnamon bun.

  “Think about it,” she said. “We’ve all been with each other. We share diseases, along with everything else.”

  I walked around to the other side of the counter, my last check forgotten by then, and took her hands in mine. She squirmed just a little, but then stopped and looked back at me. She wasn’t wearing any makeup, and her cheeks were flushed, her eyelashes so blond they were nearly white. It had been a really long time since I saw her without makeup on.

  “I know it might not work,” I said. “And there’s a real possibility everything will get fucked-up, but you’re coming with me. Don’t you want to try and do something different with your life? You know, do makeup for real?”

  She stared at me, and her eyebrows furrowed.

  And then, in a smaller voice, I asked, “Don’t you want me?”

  Tears formed in her eyes, and they looked like they were made of glass.