But she looks like a million bucks. Like the girl next door who will play touch football, then slam a beer and doll up a little bit to go out to dinner. Why can’t she just have one obtrusively large pimple right in the middle of her face like everyone else?
“Hi,” she says cautiously.
“Hey,” I say. “Can I talk to you?”
“Um, yeah, sure,” she says, but she doesn’t open the door any farther, so I don’t ask if I can come in. She’s like the people who will feed a stray cat all summer but not let them in their house when winter comes.
Those cats die, by the way.
“Okay, well . . . Alex said that the other night out at the church that you helped her”—no, that’s not right—“that you helped me. And I wanted to thank you for that. So . . . thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Branley says.
“I was kind of surprised, honestly,” I admit, when she doesn’t add anything else. “After I . . . well, after what happened in Hendricks’s room.”
“When you almost punched me?”
“Yeah.” I drop my eyes. “Sorry about that.”
“It’s okay,” she says. “You’re not the first girl who’s wanted to punch me.”
I doubt I’ll be the last either, but I don’t say that.
“It wouldn’t have mattered who it was, just so you know,” Branley continues. “It could’ve been your friend Sara, or one of my friends, or some chick I don’t even know. I would’ve helped. My cousin went to college last year and . . .” She lets the sentence die, the awkwardness between us growing thicker. “I would’ve helped,” she says again.
I think about how I felt that night, watching Branley with her perfect body on display for the boys to ogle and the girls to envy. I wonder if I’d seen her being carried out if I’d have interfered, and I just don’t know.
“So your friend Alex . . .”
“What about her?”
Branley watches me closely before going on, one hand on the doorframe, her finger tapping as she thinks. “You know what she did after you passed out?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s all you’re going to say?”
“I also know what those guys were going to do to me.”
“I think she’s crazy,” Branley says.
I feel my blood kick up a notch, my heart skipping a couple beats when I think of Alex, unquestioning in her own bathroom doorway as I lay crying in my underwear. “She’s not crazy,” I say, keeping my tone as level as I can.
And then I spot the edge of a hickey peeking out of Branley’s sweatshirt, perched precariously right on the edge of her collarbone. The same place Adam always liked to leave them on me.
“You just don’t like her because she’s got Jack,” I add, throwing some of the hurt that just bloomed in my belly onto her.
Her eyebrows shoot up, the relaxed girl-next-door face sliding away as every muscle she has tenses and the Branley I know comes out. Eyes half slit, a little color high on the cheeks, nose a centimeter too far in the air for the commoners to try to approach.
“Why would I care about that?” she asks. “I have Adam.”
It’s a challenge, and she’s got her chin stuck out, begging for me to crunch it back into her teeth. And I want to. I want to pop that perfect jawline out of place and tear some of her hair out by the roots and inspect them to see if that’s natural color she’s flaunting or if there’s some chemical assistance at work. But that’s not who I am, and I know that playing the fantasy out in my head and actually doing it are two very different things.
And it’s also not why I came here. I unclench my fists.
“Hey, you know what, Branley?” I say, and her eyebrows go up even farther, waiting for whatever cut I’ve got next, her own response probably lined up and ready to fire as soon as I finish.
“You’re really pretty,” I say, and her perfect mask falls in a pile of confusion.
“Seriously,” I go on. “I always thought your looks were all in the makeup, like you try too hard or whatever. But you don’t need it. You’re naturally really good-looking.”
“I . . .” She just kind of stands in the doorway, mouth hanging open as if I’d informed her I’m pregnant with the next Jesus. “Thank you,” she finally says, eyes slipping back into slits as if expecting a backhand tacked onto the compliment.
“That’s all. Thank you for the other night,” I add quickly as I head for the porch steps, back toward the safety of my car and the predictability of four-four time. I’ve cracked the driver’s side door when Branley calls my name and I turn to see her standing on the porch, barefoot, arms huddled against the cold.
“I’ll see you Monday,” she says, her words sapped of all energy by the time they cross the distance between us, the frigid bite of the air stealing any intended warmth.
But she still said them.
“Yeah, see you in school,” I say.
And maybe on Monday I won’t feel like punching her.
And maybe she won’t try to make me.
31. ALEX
I have a boyfriend.
I have said the word aloud only once, at Anna’s grave. I went to tell her because she’s someone who should know. Claire knows; Jack knows. My circles don’t extend farther, so I stalled at the end of my run, picking my way through the monuments until I found hers.
I haven’t been back since the funeral, since the day my dad called me a firecracker and reduced my wrath into an adorable nickname. I know that the parts of Anna’s body they could recover are six feet below, as sheltered as can be from the worms and the ruin, resting on satin and in an utter darkness that even I can’t contemplate. But I know that’s not her. Whatever makes us flew from her with only one witness to the moment, someone who should have never known her at all.
But I told her anyway, pronouncing the word boyfriend carefully, like it might break in my mouth, or chip my teeth on its way out. Her stone stared back at me, blank and uncomprehending, which I imagine is exactly what her face would have looked like in real life if I were able to tell her in person.
I laughed at the thought, the sound echoing in the cold evening, bouncing off rocks whose names have been rubbed out by time, silent testament that someone lived and died, but we no longer know who. My laugh came back at me from the snow-covered ground, frozen beneath my feet, the bare trees with black fingers reaching toward the darkening sky.
It echoed back off the stone from a grave behind me, one that I filled, the sound breaking across my shoulder blades accusingly. I stopped laughing, the sound cut short by my throat closing over the fear.
I ran. I bolted from the cemetery and back to my path, my pace bearing nothing of a runner’s stride, no calm, measured beat to my steps. I ran like one pursued, with the conviction of my unworthiness fast on my heels.
The conviction that I don’t deserve this.
32. JACK
Alex Craft is my girlfriend.
This is a statement that has to be examined, turned over carefully, and marveled at even as the days we’ve been together accumulate into weeks. Alex is my girlfriend, but the word doesn’t do justice to what is between us. It’s been applied to other girls—okay, lots of other girls—and it’s always been appropriate, an indication that this is the female I call or text, the one whose hand I hold in the hallway, and the name that gets tossed around in the locker room when we’re talking pussy.
Alex and I are past that. Alex and I have never been there.
I have things to say with her, things I want to share. I call her because I want to hear her voice, especially the cautious way she says hello, like she’s trying not to care too much that it’s me. I liked the guarded way she controlled her enthusiasm at first, unsure about making the leap. But I like even more that it’s gone now, the quick uptick in her tone when she answers telling me that her heart just skipped a couple of beats when she saw I was calling, just like my fingers still shake a little when I dial. There is nothing routine about having Alex
Craft for a girlfriend, and I’m not just logging my time when we talk.
The guys take their jabs in the locker room, for sure, but they’re more careful than they have been in the past. I don’t know if it’s out of respect for what happened to her older sister, or if enough of them remember what Alex did to Ray Parsons to know better than to pry me for details about getting any.
And I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t something that I’d thought about. I’m her first boyfriend. I haven’t been somebody’s first boyfriend since Branley and I moved on from sharing candy bars to sharing mouths, and even then I don’t know exactly what our relationship was. But I know what Alex is to me, and I hope I know what I am to her, and if that means I’m not going to be getting laid for a while, that’s okay.
And the best part is that’s something I can just say to my girlfriend and she doesn’t try to pick apart my sentence and find an insult in there to get pouty about. In fact, she laughs.
“I know it’s okay,” she says back to me.
We’re at Park’s house. His mom and dad are gone for the weekend, so he had some people over. Not a ton, a couple of guys from the basketball team, couple of girls from their team. Peekay is roaming around, and I know Branley is here because she squeals somewhere upstairs and asks who dropped an ice cube down the back of her shirt.
Her high-pitched yelp pierces right through drywall and cinder block, right down to the basement, where I’ve finally got Alex to myself. We’re cozy on a beanbag, the lights are off, and I told the guys we were going to watch a movie, which everyone knows means leave us the fuck alone for at least two hours. And for some reason I interrupted our heavy makeout session to tell her that if she’s not ready to do it, that’s okay.
“I know it’s okay,” she says again, totally confident in being a virgin. And damn if it isn’t the sexiest thing I’ve ever heard her say.
I worried that Anna would be with us whenever we were alone, a shadowy voice of caution that would put itself between us anytime I tried to get closer. If Anna is there, I think she’s more in my head than Alex’s, because my girlfriend likes to touch and be touched. But I’ve gone slow, still reveling in the fact that this girl, who was an utter mystery to me at the beginning of the year, lets me kiss her now, whenever I want. I know her body, maybe not thoroughly but definitely more than anyone else, and when I touch her I feel how strong she is, yet I can’t ignore the voice insisting over and over: don’t hurt her.
Right now her hands are all over me, and mine on her, and with any other girl it’d be time to bring out the condom, but with Alex I don’t even consider reaching for my wallet. Instead I pull back to put some space between us. Because I’m not exactly thinking with my heart right now, and my dick is trying to undo my zipper from the inside.
Another girl might ask me what’s wrong, a little bit of a whimper in her voice like she hasn’t lived up to something I expected. Instead of that I get Alex’s palm, flat against my bare chest, an unspoken question in the amount of pressure she exerts.
“Need a minute,” I tell her. Honestly, I need about a year and six feet of bricks in between us to keep myself under control, but I go for the next best thing.
“I think you should meet my parents.”
She laughs again, this one coming out in kind of a snort that might embarrass other girls, but not Alex.
“Why is that funny?” I ask her.
“It’s not a situation I ever imagined myself in,” she says, her own breath still coming a little heavy. There’s a naked bulb at the top of the staircase and enough light reaches us that I can see her breasts going up and down, the ridge of her bra pressing against them.
“Well, imagine it,” I say, pulling my eyes back up to her face, which is flushed and happy. I made it that way, and that’s enough to keep my gaze from wandering.
“Okay, when?”
“There’s a home game next week. Maybe after that?”
She nods, her cheek going up and down on my chest. And that little bit of friction gets me riled again, that and the fact that six months ago if you would’ve told me that a girl agreeing to meet my parents would give me a boner from hell, I would’ve punched you in the face. But if Alex is willing to do that, Alex who still pieces together her sentences very carefully even when we’re alone, it means she’s taking this as seriously as I am.
And that’s fucking hot.
Once I asked my dad how you know when you’re in love. He said you just know, and that if you have to ask the question then you haven’t been in love yet. And he’s right. Because there aren’t words for this. No combination of letters could ever represent what she is to me.
But the flip side is that now I worry about losing her. I worry that I’m going to screw it up, that the Jack who was in the woods the night they found Anna’s body is going to reassert himself. That guy was nowhere near classy enough to be with Alex. She is refining me every day, changing me from the person I was into someone better. And I need to be good enough.
Because I’m Alex Craft’s boyfriend.
33. JACK
Having Alex in my shitty truck doesn’t make me feel good.
When we run we’re on the same level; when we end up at parties together we know we’re going to find our own corner eventually. We expect to hear from each other every night, each of us checking our phones to see if we missed that moment somehow. But a real date hasn’t happened yet, and there’s a reason for that.
I can’t afford Alex Craft.
Hell, I can’t afford any girlfriend, but there’s an unspoken agreement that Branley pays my way wherever we go, and I’ve always managed to string other girls along until I’m bored with them as a hookup and cut them loose. With Alex it’s different because I want to take her out on a real date and my big mouth made that happen before my wallet filled me in on how skinny it is.
The truth is we’re in my busted-ass truck and she somehow blends in completely yet looks like a million bucks at the same time, and we’re headed toward a burger joint because it’s either that or a sit-down place the next town over and I don’t have enough gas to get us there. And after we’ve plowed through our five-dollar burger plates I’m going to have to ask her to pay for it, because I am a fucking loser and she’d be flat-out within her rights to call me that.
So that’s what I’m thinking about as I pull into the restaurant on our first real date—what a fucking loser I am.
We walk into the place and my mood drops even further because Brian Spurlani yells my name from the back kitchen when he spots us. Three years ago Brian was everything I wanted to be. He was a senior when I came in as a freshman, football two-a-days kicking my ass in ninety-degree weather. We’d lose five pounds in the morning, put it back on when we went home to eat lunch, then lose another seven in the evening. We smelled like ass sweat and our faces were permanently broken out but Brian kept our heads on straight, putting out fires before fights broke out, telling the guys who were about to pass out that they could make it five more steps. And then the five more after that.
Brian is truly a good guy. That’s why it kills me a little bit when he comes out of the kitchen to talk to us while we eat and he’s wearing a hairnet.
“Hey, man,” he says, flipping a chair around backward to sit at the end of our table. “What’s up?”
“Just out grabbing something to eat,” I say. “Brian, this is Alex.”
“Hi,” Alex says, and he looks her up and down.
“Alex Craft? I knew your sister. What happened to her was bullshit.”
Alex smiles. “Possibly the best description I’ve heard.”
And while she doesn’t seem to care that it came up, I hate that Anna is the first thing everybody thinks of when they see Alex, whether it comes out of their mouth or not. Like when people run into me and all they want to talk about is the winning streak of whatever sports season it is, like I’m destined to be only a stat record in their head. Always winning but never moving on. Stuck in this town fo
rever and hauled out in twenty years to hand off a basketball or a football to the kid who breaks my school record, and then that’s it. I’m done. Washed up. I’ll be like Brian, who is sitting here smiling at me, his pores full of grill grease.
“Didn’t you go to Fairmont to play ball?” I ask, and his smile falters a little.
“More like went to Fairmont to ride the bench,” he says. “That and play tackle dummy. Tore my ACL when some big asshole hit me and that was it. Came home over Christmas break and got Tammy pregnant, so . . .” He holds his hands up, like he was totally innocent of any involvement. “So that was that.”
I put down my burger, what I have eaten a lead ball in my stomach as I think of all the times Branley was in too much of a hurry and I was too horny to bother with a condom.
“But I’m going back,” Brian says, his tone too hopeful, like the way you sound when you talk about your dreams, not your actual plans. “Once little Becca gets into kindergarten, we won’t have to pay for day care, and that money can go to Daddy getting his degree.”
“Yeah, man, cool,” I say, but I know as well as he does that money is going toward putting in a second bathroom, or paying for the next baby.
“So.” Brian’s eyes wander to Alex. “I heard somebody fucked up Ray Parsons’s face—that was you, right?”
Alex takes a sip of her drink. “Yep.”
“Right on,” Brian says, and fist-bumps her. “Ray used to be a decent guy, but . . . you know.” He lays his finger on one side of his nose.
I get it. Decent guys backslide into meth and gang rape. Good guys knock up their girlfriends and flip burgers.
We get up to leave, my tray still half full because all I can think about is vomiting. Brian refuses to let us pay for our food, so that solves my money problem but doesn’t leave me feeling any less of a loser.
The Female of the Species Page 12