by Nora Decter
“No, dummy. He found me at school today and asked me where you work. How’d you think he found you? And why weren’t you in Sinclair’s class this afternoon? I took notes for you, but then I got paint on them. I think they’re mostly still legible though.”
He found her at school and asked about me. I want to ask why he would do a thing like that, but I don’t want her to know how unheard of this is for me.
She laughs. “Stop playing coy. It’s annoying. Gimme some dirt.”
“No dirt. He just asked if I wanted to go to this show Monday night.”
“Oh, he just asked if you wanted to go to the show Monday night. No big deal. Tuck, you’re too much.”
I shrug, but she can’t see that.
“I was hoping that was it,” she says. “I mean, I was going to invite you anyway, but this is better.”
“Really? Well, I dunno if I’ll go.”
“Why not?”
“It’s just…well, it’s kind of weird, isn’t it? I never thought I’d see him again after the way I acted last night.”
“What do you mean? You were a hit!”
I groan. “Drunk and awkward is more like it.”
“You weren’t!” she assures me. “Really. Or maybe you were, but guys are into that.”
“Don’t humor me, please. I’m embarrassed enough already.”
“No, seriously. You have this amazing broody thing going on. It’s excellent.”
“Broody?”
“Yeah, and it looks good on you, so shut up about it.”
“I’m never leaving the house again.”
“You’re nuts. I’m telling you, you were totally charming. Graham liked you, and Graham doesn’t like anyone.”
“What does what mean?” It comes out a wail. Howl rolls her eyes. She’s good at that, for a dog.
Ivy takes a deep breath. “It’s not like he’s an asshole. He’s actually pretty nice, I think. He just seems really serious about the band, and maybe he isn’t as social as Drew? Drew’s always bringing people back to their place after shows, but Graham’s a bit older and mostly keeps to himself. Comes off as kinda cold sometimes. Like you!”
“Oh.”
“Don’t worry,” she says again, “I know you’re not cold, just a bit…different. That’s cool. I like different.”
I’m worried she’s getting tired of reassuring me, so I try to think of another subject to talk about, even though I want to ask her why and why and why again. Why does he like me? How can she be so sure? And what do I do with that?
“In any case,” she says, “it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t have to be a love connection. Just come hang out with us. If you’re not there, Drew and I will just talk about stuff that happened five years ago. It’ll be no fun without you.”
“Any night that is relying on me to make it fun is not one I’d place my bets on,” I say, and she laughs, like she was waiting for me to say something like that, and I realize that’s my role in this thing—to be charmingly self-deprecating and a bit alien, but not too alien. And her role is to show me around planet Earth and teach me the customs of young humankind. It’s a relief to know what’s expected of me. We talk about other things, and by the time we hang up she’s talked me into it. We agree to meet at the venue at nine on Monday.
I sleep in the basement. I do everything down here now.
SEVENTEEN
A strong spring wind blows grit into my eyes as I round the corner and head toward school. When the snow melts it leaves behind a layer of dirt, salt and sand, residue from a winter’s worth of effort to keep cars on the road. City crews spend the first few weeks of spring scouring the streets at night with high-powered vacuum machines, but until they do and sometimes even after, it’s hard to walk down the street without wincing. I narrow my eyes and put my head down as I approach.
Check me out, showing up on a Monday. Not even late. Early even.
It stayed warm through the weekend, and the snow is nearly gone now. What remains of it lingers in the shade at the edges of buildings, along the boulevards where the plows piled it high all winter and underneath cars that haven’t been moved since freak spring sprung.
There’s a frenzied feel to the temperate air. The smoking crowd at the western doors is three times thicker than normal, and as I come up behind the building I get caught between a couple of jocks tossing a football around with no regard to the flow of traffic. I step around Darren, the turbo-jerk in my English class, as his throw goes long, sending his buddy scrambling backward. Lesser students scatter, but one skinny niner guy isn’t fast enough. The field became marshland over the weekend, and Jocko sends him sprawling into the muck. The kid scrambles to his feet, going, “It’s all good, it’s all good,” not that Jocko thought to ask.
It’s like the Wild West out here. A circle of tenth-grade toughs smoke a joint over by the bleachers, which are almost inaccessible because of Lake Football Field. A stoner guy teases a stoner girl, making like he’s going to toss her in, and she laugh-screams like it’s the best, funniest, most terrifying thing that’s ever happened to her.
The hallways are worse. A crowd has formed around the school’s token break-dancer, a white guy named Ryan whose parents let him put down one car’s worth of linoleum in their three-car garage so he can practice his moves. He and the school’s lone beatboxer bring a little suburban flavor to the school talent show every year. The rest of the time, their talents go unappreciated, except in mob-mentality moments like this. “Ry-an! Ry-an!” they chant as he executes a lopsided headspin. Administration is trying to break it up, which seems to consist of yelling, “Break it up!” at regular intervals. It merges with the “Ry-an!” refrain to become something that sounds like an amateur remix of a club track.
English is half empty, and the half that did show didn’t do the reading, myself included. Ms. Groves seems to have exhausted her reserves of giving a shit.
“Finish the reading and…uh…answer the questions on the handout.” She waves vaguely at us from behind her desk.
“Ms. Groves?” asks a girl in the front row. “What handout?”
“Huh?” she says, staring out the window.
“What handout do you mean?”
“The one I handed out last class.” The room is silent. “Did I not?” She blinks. We blink back. “I’ll go copy that now, then.”
The bell rings before she returns. I move to a seat at the front of the room and wait.
“Well, that was a bust,” she says, dropping a stack of paper onto her desk. “They should just cancel class when the weather is like this. No one pays attention anyway.”
I’m running drills in my head for tonight, trying to think through all the ways it could go.
“Jolene?”
“Huh?”
“I asked you how you’re doing.”
“Oh. I’m good. School good, family good. Good, good, good.”
“You seem distracted.”
“I guess a little.”
“Want to talk about it?”
“Maybe. I dunno. Maybe not.”
Thankfully, she seems amused. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure,” I say, with obvious reluctance.
Groves gets up and starts digging through her desk. “Do you play poker?”
“Yeah. I mean, I haven’t in a while, but—”
“Great!” she says, clearing the plants and some papers off her desk to set up the game.
Thirty minutes later I’m starting to reconsider Groves.
“I see you,” she says, tossing a chip into the pot, “and raise you another fifty.”
I glance at the small stack of chips in front of me. The surge of competitive feeling is foreign. When was the last time I played a game with anyone? Must’ve been before Matt left. I toss another chip into the pot. “I call.”
We throw down our cards.
“Shit,” I say.
Groves laughs a laugh that can only be described as a cackle and scrapes the pot toward her side of the
desk.
“Do you always beat your students at cards?”
“Only when they let me.”
“What if it’s, like, hurting my self-esteem?”
“Do you have self-esteem issues, Jolene?”
I eye her warily. “No more than the next girl.”
The cards are a comfortable blur in her hands as she shuffles. “It’s not easy, being a girl these days.”
I snort. She finishes dealing and turns on her electric kettle for the second time this hour. “You said it was your brother who taught you to play poker?”
“Yeah,” I say, looking over my cards.
“You two were close?”
“Yep.”
“What happened?”
“He moved to Victoria.”
“That’s pretty far away from here.”
“About as far away as you can get without a passport.”
“Had you two ever been apart before?”
I shake my head. I finally have a reasonable hand, and she decides to get deep. Figures.
“You must have been pretty mad at him.”
I bet 100. Time to go for broke. “I guess I understand the impulse.”
“What happened to him out there?” She sees my bet and raises another 100. That’ll clean me out. I weigh the risks.
“He met some hippies, and they converted him to their bohemian lifestyle.”
She smiles. “And what does that involve these days?”
“Smoking lots of weed and playing music on the street. Dumpster diving for food and bragging about it. That kinda thing.”
I see her raise and call. We show our cards, and I groan.
“That’s not fair. You were using diversionary tactics, brewing tea and probing my psyche.”
“One more round? Or we can play a different game if you’d rather?”
I collect the cards and shuffle them with none of the deftness she displayed, then deal another round. I wonder what Graham meant when he said he wasn’t planning on going to the Cal when I’m not around. I look over my cards. They’re not bad in and of themselves, but they add up to next to nothing at all. Maybe it’s time to bluff. I suppose I’ve got nothing to lose.
“Jolene?”
“Huh?” I flip another card over. Jack of diamonds. Doesn’t help me much. Groves raises me another twenty, which is all I’ve got. I throw it in. “All right. I get it—you’re winning.”
“I asked you a question. Did you hear me?”
I shake my head no and flip the final card. Fuck.
“I asked why you think you’re such a bad person.”
“Huh?”
“Why do you think you’re a bad person? Give me some evidence.”
“I…what kind of question is that?” I glare at her, then at my cards. They’re still shit.
“I don’t know,” she says. “A good one?”
“I don’t think I’m a bad person.”
“You’re totally bluffing.”
“Wasn’t that the bell?”
“You can be a bit late. I’ll write you a note.”
“I have a test in bio.”
“Okay. But I have some homework for you first.”
“I know. I got it in class.”
“No, special homework,” she says, like I don’t know.
“Lay it on me,” I say, standing up and grabbing my backpack.
“I want you to write me a list.”
“Like, a grocery list?”
“Stop playing dumb, Jolene. It’s insulting. I want you to write a list that details all the reasons why you think you’re a bad person. Show me the evidence. Because it’s clear to me you do believe that, and I think it’s worth unpacking.”
I look at her in a way I usually reserve for my mother. She doesn’t seem bothered.
“Alternately,” she continues, really getting into it now, pleased with herself and her unconventional teaching methods, “you can say it right here, right now. I, Jolene Tucker, am a good person. If you can say it I’ll scrap the assignment and you can go home and do whatever it is you do when you’re not here. And might I remind you how often you aren’t here. And how I’ve been smoothing that over with Vice-Principal Lambert and how I could stop smoothing at any point.”
I open my mouth to tell her I’m as good as the next motherfucker, but she’s right. I can’t.
“All right then. You better get to bio,” she says, holding her cards so I can see her hand. She had nothing. I could have taken her for all she was worth.
EIGHTEEN
I try to walk home, but the temperature is dropping, and it’s back to freezing. I’m tired of battling it out against forces greater than I am, so I get on a bus and ride home with new resolve.
Groves says if one way isn’t working, then it’s wise to try a new approach. She says if you feel bad about the way things are, you don’t just keep doing the same things, the same way, over and over again. She says what’s important is that you get back up when you fall down.
I don’t think Groves knows much about falling, but I’m willing to give being wise a go.
And so, a new approach.
That I will wear my best jeans to the show is a given. They’re two years old and in their prime. I pull them on gingerly, taking care not to worsen the fraying below the back pockets. Soon they’re going to reach a dangerous level of threadbare, and I might be forced to retire them, but for the moment they’re the perfect medium blue, worn out in the knees and getting there everywhere else. I haven’t washed them in months, break them out only on special occasions, but it’s definitely a best-jeans night.
I take a swallow of the beer I snuck and consider the question of what to wear on the rest of my body. Maggie and Char have busted out the tequila and are deep into rehearsals downstairs. I don’t bother tiptoeing down the hall to Maggie’s room. The closet door is open, being too packed with shoes and clothes for it to shut. I sort through the rack, holding tops up to my chest and discarding them after a glance in the mirror. Every time I think I’ve found a plain black shirt, it turns out to have some slutty fatal flaw. I am forced to remember parent-teacher conferences in fifth grade, when Maggie showed up in a dress so tiny, some girl asked me if my mom was a stripper. I said, No, she’s a singer. This was back when I still believed in fairy tales and other things my mother told me.
Finally I find what I’m looking for—a plain black tank top. I slip it over my head. It’s loose on me, whereas she’d be overflowing it, and just a little bit fancier than my usual. I shove the rejects back in the closet.
I need some kind of talisman, a good-luck charm. I go down to the basement and root through a box of Matt’s clothes until I find an old plaid shirt. Then I stand in front of the full-length mirror in the corner and evaluate.
My shoulders are way too broad—they don’t balance with the narrowness of my hips—my thighs are too thick by far, and my chest hasn’t gotten the memo puberty sent yet. My hair is the color they mean when they say mousy, and I’d be infinitely more attractive if my neck were an inch or two longer. But it’ll have to do. Being able to take in all my physical flaws in a glance is probably my favorite part of being a teenage girl.
I hear Howl behind me, turn around and find her watching. She doesn’t need to say anything for me to know what she’s thinking. The letter. I step around her and climb the stairs, leaving it unspoken.
Maybe it’s not a good idea to apply makeup in the basement light, but I sneak a few things from Maggie’s stash in the kitchen and come back down to try. It’s hard, putting on makeup without really seeing yourself. I put some stuff on my eyes and attempt to force my hair to do something other than what it normally does, which is nothing. Then I sit and wait for it to be time to go to the show. I feel like a bomb that might go off. I feel afraid of myself.
When it’s time, Maggie comes into the hall and watches while I put on my boots.
“You look nice,” she says when I straighten. “Where are you going?”
&nb
sp; I shrug. “Out.”
She looks me over, and I force myself not to squirm. “When will you be back?”
“I dunno. Never?”
“Come here,” she says, going back into the kitchen.
I follow reluctantly. Char is smoking by the window, which she’s opened a crack, engrossed in something happening on her phone.
“Sit down,” Maggie orders, and I sit. She grabs an eyeliner pencil and takes my chin with her other hand. “Close your eyes.”
I do. She touches the pencil in short little dashes along my upper lash line. “Open,” she orders, and I obey. Her face is so close I can see the faint bleached hairs above her lip and the filmy coating of foundation on top of her real skin. “Look up.” I look toward the ceiling, and the pencil traces along my lower lashes.
She puts down the pencil and steps back. Maggie is beautiful, if you’re into divas who hang out in dives. She watches me for a very long time before swooping in and rubbing her fingers all over my scalp, her talons raking lines across my head as she messes up my hair. Adjusts a strand here and then there, hands me the eyeliner and says, “Take this. For touch-ups. A little grungy for my tastes, but you’re gorgeous, my girl.”
“Thanks.”
She lights a cigarette. “You got something you want to tell me?”
“No,” I say. “Do you?”
“No,” she says after a while. “Good luck out there.”
“Thanks.”
In the hallway I check the mirror, ready to wipe off the eyeliner and fix my hair, but I actually look pretty all right. Go figure. On the front street I stop to put my headphones on. Patches of cloud are speeding by the moon. Char and Maggie are laughing inside. The thing about Maggie and me is that we could be strangers. We’re not. But we could be.
NINETEEN
The place is one I’ve walked by, an old-man bar I guess the cool kids are repurposing. A handful of people stand by the doors, smoke from their cigarettes hanging around them like a personal fog. None of them are Ivy, though, and none of them are Graham either, so I go in.
The light inside has a red cast that makes everyone look slightly evil. I’m halted by a girl who stands guard at the entrance to the main room in a getup that’s not unlike my own—plaid shirt layered over something smaller, hair deliberately disheveled—except she’s extremely pretty in a pop-star way, the kind of pretty that completely controls your life until one day it fucks off, and then what? Maggie was that kind of pretty once. I’ve seen pictures.