We Can't Be Friends

by Cyndy Etler

  • • •

  I’m going to Club 12 tonight. Alone. I don’t even care. I can’t sit in the house with that envelope taunting me like the telltale fucking heart.

  My eyes were already crispy red yesterday when I shuffled from the bus to the mailbox. I’d spent the day weirdly crying out front of the guidance office. I had heard the announcement and was trying to get inside to “meet with available counselors,” but I stopped when I saw the picture of him they had taped up in the window. Mack, the happy Deadhead. Mack, the dead Deadhead. I saw his smile, and I lost it. I mean I. Lost. It. It was like the last unbroken crayon from the box getting stepped on.

  He’d been driving down that long steep hill to Beacon Falls—he was the first of the Beacon Falls kids to get a license and a car—when he swerved to not hit a squirrel. The squirrel lived. His friend in the front seat lived. The tree he plowed into lived. Mack didn’t live.

  I’m basically an idiot for freaking out. It’s not even like we were friends. It’s just…he was happy and nice, and he was around, you know? He was around somewhere, out in the smoking pit probably, kicking a hacky sack around. He was maybe the only happy, nice thing in the state of Connecticut. And now he’s just…not around. I don’t know. I couldn’t handle it.

  And then, after school, I got to the mailbox. There was exactly one envelope, floating like a cream-colored comet in the big, black emptiness. Floating, because it was too light. Too thin.

  I didn’t want to touch it, ’cause I knew what it was. I knew what it would say. It would say REJECT. It would say YOUR FATHER AND MOTHER’S COLLEGE DOESN’T WANT YOU. It would say YOU’RE NOT GOOD ENOUGH FOR SMITH.

  And I was right. That’s exactly what it said.

  So I’m going to Club 12. By myself. And I’m parking in a spot far away from where Grant’s Suburban was parked last week. I don’t even look at that spot. I don’t even see it. I just go right in the door and hand over my five and start dancing to the Paula Abdul song they’re playing, “Straight Up.” It doesn’t make me think about how Paula and Deanna are lookalikes, or how much I miss Deanna, or how I saw this video at Shane Gallway’s house, or how stupid I felt when I was there. Not really. And when Paula sings, I don’t think about if anyone’s ever gonna love me or how I have no friend, no boyfriend, no sponsor, no nobody to come to Club 12 with. I only have myself, so I don’t think. I hear and feel and ride the horns and drums with my eyes closed. I dance until I’m gone.

  The DJ switches it up, flooding the room with the musical version of a sunset, the synthesizer opening of “Night and Day.” I don’t know if I’m dancing with Al B. Sure! or being him, in my mind, but I see and feel his shiny, curly hair and his thin little mustache and his big, gray, acid-wash jean jacket. I feel his ecstatic “Whoo!” all down my front, and I’m dancing like he does in the video, when he snaps his fingers and holds his hands in an O over his head like a ballerina, then throws them down and open to really make his point.

  I’m acting out the lyrics as I dance, and when I run my fingers through my hair, my elbow bonks somebody. I open my eyes and this guy is dancing with me. Like, close enough that I can see his face in the darkness. It has the color and shine of melted candle wax. He has small blue eyes and a mouth that, when he sees me seeing him, doesn’t smile. It smirks. I can tell the difference.

  He’s older; that’s obvious from his loafer shoes and his carefully combed hairdo. I want to go back to where I was, back into the song, so I close my eyes again. Al B. is at that part where he’s really smooth-swinging it, and this guy puts his arms around me and starts spinning me like we’re at a sock hop. And holy shit, it’s more fun than a carnival ride. I open my eyes again and smile at him. He smiles instead of smirks this time, and we dance the rest of the song, and it’s fucking awesome. Because I’m not alone at this dance anymore. And when you’re dancing in this way, where the guy is kind of pushing you around, it feel like you’re on wheels. It feels like you have wings.

  Then my friend the DJ puts on “Secret Rendezvous,” and from the very first drumbeat, this guy is holding my hand and twirling me out and rolling me in and dipping me way, way back in a back bend. I feel like that girl everybody wanted on Saturday Night Fever. I feel like the prettiest girl in the room.

  We dance that way the rest of the night, four straight hours, without saying a word to each other. When the DJ puts on the last song—a slow jam, Journey, to make everyone feel sleepy—I want to slap him. Because this night cannot end. I can’t go back to that house, that envelope, that dead-end-what-now-I’m-trapped crypt. I can’t. I won’t. I’ll drive into the ocean before I’ll—

  “Let’s get out of here.” He says those words right next to my ear.

  I turn my head and we’re almost lip-to-lip. He’s wearing the smirk again. He turns and walks out, so I follow him. Out the door, through the smokers, across the parking lot, past my mother’s cop mobile, to a sweet little red sports car. He puts his key in the driver’s door like he’s about to leave me here, alone with my savage thoughts and poltergeist memories.

  “Don’t go. Please.” The words blast out like diarrhea. I can’t stop them, because I don’t feel them coming.

  He turns back toward me and I can see him way better now in the bright streetlight. He’s got a pointy nose and thin lips. He’s got wrinkles and small hands. He uses them to pick up both of mine.

  “What’s your name, beautiful.”

  “Cyndy?”

  “Mine’s Damien. Get in.”

  He slides into the driver’s seat, turns on the engine, and revs it. I race around to the passenger side, so he won’t leave without me. And we go back to not talking as I close myself into his car. He punches it into reverse. He skates backward a little, then rockets into drive—shift-shift-jerk—and we’re out of the parking lot, around the curve, and sizzling onto Post Road.

  It feels like I should’ve had to tell somebody I was leaving. I should’ve had to say bye to someone when I left the club. But to who? There’s nobody. Nobody knows I was there, nobody knows I left.

  The car is vapor locked, tight as a spaceship. Nothing outside can get in, and nothing inside can get out. We’re sealed in here with bass and drums and speed as we leave the world behind, screaming through red lights and past dark storefronts and skidding a hard left into the woods, where it’s hills and curves and dark, headlights showing, then hiding, the tall thread of trees and nothing else. Where are we?

  Damien pushes a new tape into the stereo and Information Society’s sharp chemical sounds take over the oxygen and my heartbeat. I don’t have to be dancing to escape. I can be in a fast car with loud music to forget everything. When the acid beat of “What’s on Your Mind” takes over the speakers, my seat is throbbing and he’s shifting and pushing the car faster and higher, and I need to scream or explode because my skin can’t contain me. If he could hear me, I’d beg him to please keep driving fast and hard and loud like this forever.

  And he does. He drives and drives for the whole album, and it’s ecstasy until he jerks the car into a dark driveway and stops.

  “Where are we?”

  “Weston,” he says. He switches off the car and gets out, so I do too.

  Weston is quiet. Weston is dark. Weston is rich. Weston is far.

  “Um…what’re we doing here?”

  “It’s two o’clock in the morning. I’m tired.”

  That’s his whole answer. He opens a door and goes in the house.

  But I don’t. I stand there in my home economics skirt and my black pumps and my freezing bare arms, and my thoughts come back. They come back like, Where the fuck am I?

  And like, Weston, idiot.

  And like, Yeah, but why am I here?

  And like, Because you’re fucking stupid.

  And like, But it felt so good! It was so fun! I needed an escape!

  And like, Every party’s got
ta end.

  And like, So what do I do now?

  And like,

  And like, Hello? Help?

  And like,

  He’s turned lights on in the house, so I can see everything, because the house is made of all windows. It reminds me of this movie my mother loved when I was younger. Sleeper, it was called. Woody Allen was the only human in this outer-space future world, and everybody was out to get him, but he didn’t know why. He only knew he had to be scared all the time.

  I go up to the door and knock, which seems stupid and weird. Then I open the door and go, “Hello?” which also seems stupid and weird.

  He appears in the doorway leading to the next room, wearing, swear to God, a paisley silk robe.

  “What are you doing out there, sitting zazen?” he asks.

  “Ummm…could you…could you take me back to Club 12?”

  “Tomorrow I will. I’m tired,” he says, and goes into the other room. The light in that room goes off.

  I’ve never seen a taxi in Weston. I’ve never seen a taxi anywhere in Connecticut. I reach my hand in my bag to feel for my car keys, to know I’ll be able to get myself home. Just, tomorrow. To know I’ll be fine. Tomorrow.

  There’s a little thump-thump behind me, and a cat starts rubbing against my legs. Cats are good. Cats are safe. She lets me pet her once, then she walks out of the room. So I follow her. She leads me to a bedroom. Where he’s lying in a bed.

  “I, um…” I say from the doorway.

  “I know. I’m not going to try anything. Remember me saying I was tired? I meant that. Come on.” He pats the bed. “You’re safe.”

  The cat jumps up next to him, which seems like a sign. So I step out of my pumps and lie down on the far-far-away-from-him edge of the bed. Because it’s like 3:00 a.m. now. And I got myself into this. And I don’t have a way out.

  He turns off the light and turns over on his side with his back toward me. The kitty comes up and pushes her face against mine. I pet her. She purrs. His breaths go deep and even. I guess he wasn’t lying. I guess I’m really safe.

  I fall asleep knowing my mother’s house is double locked. I fall asleep in a bed, not in a car’s backseat. I fall asleep with my hand in soft kitty fur.

  I wake up with him on top of me. “Damien.” His face is even whiter, even waxier, in the daylight. He’s not kissing me. He’s not looking at me. But he’s touching me. Hard. He’s squeezing my boobs like they’re not-ripe-enough fruit and he’s mad about it. He’s ripping my stockings to get them open. He’s holding me down by the shoulders. I’m trying to go Hulk. I’m trying to get him off me. But I can’t.

  He pushes himself against me down there, where he tore my stockings. And it hurts. It feels like a brick. I’m crying and telling him, “I’m not! I’m scared! I only—stop!”

  He doesn’t look at me. He doesn’t listen. He doesn’t stop. He holds me in place with an arm bone across my shoulders, my neck; he holds himself up with his hand hard-squeezing my fruit. And he bricks me. He breaks me. I stop trying to fight him and I go away. I go away. I’m forgetting this already.

  I come out of my trance when he slams his car door. We’re at the Club 12 parking lot. There’s a Volvo full of people in the spot next to us. I get out of his sweet little red sports car. He’s leaning into the trunk and then he’s standing back up, holding a pair of ice skates.

  “You guys are going skating?” I say around all the desperation, the scared, the please-please-please in my throat.

  “Yup,” he says.

  “Can I go?” I ask.

  “Nope,” he says.

  He gets into the Volvo, which backs out and drives away. And I stand there with cold wind blowing into the ripped-open hole in my stockings.

  31

  STILL MARCH 1990

  THREE YEARS AND TWO WEEKS OUT

  Maybe I’m stupid, maybe I’m crazy, but when my mother’s gross boyfriends come over, I am not staying in that house. And going to meetings doesn’t cut it anymore. At meetings, you quietly examine your feelings. At sober dances, you loudly escape them. I’ve done enough examining for one lifetime.

  So I’m back at Club 12 with a plan. I’m not looking at anybody. I’m not talking to anybody. I’m not even wearing a skirt, okay? I’m wearing jeans and sneakers. And I’m dancing. Nothing else. Just dancing.

  But when I go outside to take a breath of moon, ping! There’s a guy at my side. Dark hair, fancy jacket. Mean eyes.

  “Hi,” he says, moving in and caging me between his body and the car I was leaning on. “My name’s Jacob.”

  “Hi.” I tilt my head back from him, like, No thanks, Jacob.

  “What a neck,” he says. “I wish I was a vampire.”

  “Um, yeah,” I say, snapping my head back and smashing my chin into the flat bone over my boobs. “I, ah—I gotta get back inside. My friend’s waiting.”

  “What, I’m not your friend?” he says, putting his other hand down on the car roof. I’m trapped in a prison of Jacob.

  “Yeah, ha. Actually…” I pull my keys out and jingle them, even though it’s not even eleven. “I gotta be getting home.”

  I go to duck under his arm, but he catches me under the chin and lifts and pushes me back against the car. He’s leaning in to kiss me and I go, “No!” Like, loud.

  He puts the brakes on his face, stopping a half inch from mine. “Damien told me about you,” he whispers. His face looks like Jacque’s used to before he’d hit me. “You’re a little slut.”

  He lifts his arm and I run, I run, to my mother’s car. I don’t look in the rearview as I’m leaving, even though I know this is goodbye to Club 12. Didn’t those kids know they could never return to Narnia? Weren’t they all torn up about it too?

  I make as much noise as I can coming back into the house. Whatever my mother and her boyfriend are doing, I wanna give them plenty of time to stop. But they’re just watching TV, I guess, because when I yell, “Hi! I’m home!” my mother calls back from the family room.

  “Oh, there’s my beautiful daughter! Come here, Cyndy. Let me introduce you to my friend.”

  I have to say hello if I ever want to use the car again. I walk into the room, and smile, and say hi, and block my ears as my mother says, “She’s eighteen now. Isn’t she gorgeous?” I turn and walk out and thank God I’m in jeans, not a skirt, as I feel the boyfriend’s eyes go down my back to my butt.

  When I get to my room, I turn the volume all the way up on my phone/alarm clock/radio, but I can’t drown out my brain. I pray to God, but he doesn’t stop my thoughts. My thoughts about how Jacob was going to hit me because I didn’t do what I was supposed to. Which was to be a good girl and do what the man says.

  I should know by now that that’s my sacred duty. I’ve been learning that lesson since I was in kindergarten, when my mother married Jacque. When he started making me lay down for him. When my mother let it happen because she knows the rules. Because she doesn’t fight. Because maybe she gave me to get something for herself.

  And then, when I got old enough to fight back, I got hit. And when I ran away, I got locked up. And that was part of the lesson too. Because that’s not the way it works. Girls don’t fight. Girls don’t win. Girls are a pretty, sparkly lure at the end of the fishing line—Look at my gorgeous teen daughter!—used to bring men closer. Men with their money and their hands. Once the men are lured, the girl has to give them what they want. Because that’s all girls are good for.

  For—

  For—

  For sex.

  That’s it.

  Those are the rules, so how dare I fight back. How dare I say no. If I had just done what I was supposed to, everything would have been so easy.

  It doesn’t matter that there are things I want. Like, just to be around somebody. To have somebody want to be around me. To dance or listen to music or go
for a ride or go ice skating. Doesn’t matter if I want that, because my wants don’t count. Only boy-wants count. So if they want to go for a ride and listen to music with me, I get lucky. But if they want something else, I have two choices: lay flat or get punished.

  This doesn’t seem right. And maybe it isn’t right. But this is the way it is for me if I don’t want to be alone. Or get hit.

  These are the kinds of thoughts I can’t stop. These, and thoughts about how stupid I was to send Steven Ross a stupid heart. Like he’d be happy to know I just…liked him. No wonder he never frigging called me.

  I sit on my floor with my head pressed to the phone/alarm clock/radio speaker, trying to stop my thoughts. It’s a long, long night.

  • • •

  “I—I think I need to go back to the psychiatrist,” I tell the guidance counselor, but she seems a little distracted. She was putting her key in her office door when I came in; now she’s sitting but still wearing her big winter coat.

  “Have you told your mother?” she asks, leaning away from me to put her lunch bag in her desk drawer.

  “Have I? No. It doesn’t work like that.”

  “Well, that would be the first step, Cyndy. Especially since you’re eighteen. You’re not a minor anymore, so I can’t act on your behalf.”

  “What?”

  Her phone starts ringing. She picks up with her right hand while shrugging her left out of her coat.

  “Right, I know. Late start this morning. See you in a sec,” she says into the phone.

  I can take a hint.

  “I’m sorry, Cyndy,” she says, as I stand and open her door. “I wish there was more I could do. Talk to your mom, okay?”

  Her phone starts ringing again as I close the door behind me.

  32

  STILL MARCH 1990

  THREE YEARS AND THREE WEEKS OUT

  Sometimes, when my mother’s at work, I use her bathroom. And when I use her bathroom, I read the Guideposts magazines she keeps by the toilet. And when I sit on the toilet and read Guideposts, I get little messages from God. That’s where I was when I got this one: