by Karen Rivers
“Fine. Whatever.” He wipes his face again on his sleeve.
“Air-conditioning is a thing,” I say. “Or are you crying?”
“Yeah, well, I can’t exactly afford it,” he says, ignoring the question. “This is my car, not my mom’s. I’m saving for stuff. A stereo. Air conditioner. All that.”
I shrug. “Well, I’m hot. I’m sorry.”
“I know this is weird,” he says. “Right?”
“It’s not only that it’s weird! It’s that she’s dead! She’s dead! If we hadn’t—”
“You can’t do that,” he interrupts. “You can’t think like that.”
“It’s impossible not to! We were drunk. It was the last thing she saw. She died mad. It’s a big deal!”
“We’d broken up,” he says, so quietly I can’t really hear him.
“What?” I say.
“Right before that, when we were upstairs. We broke up.”
“It doesn’t make any difference,” I decide. “We still did it.”
“We didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Are you insane? We totally did! She’s my best friend.”
“But there isn’t a rule that says that people can’t, like, fall in LOVE.”
Soup’s shouting and then he stops, and the silence in the car is unbearable. I can’t believe he said it, that he put that word out there, in here, with us.
I don’t answer.
I can’t.
Not for a few minutes, anyway. Then I do. “This isn’t love, you idiot,” I say. “It was alcohol.”
I don’t believe myself; how can he?
It’s love, I want to say to him. It is.
This is it.
You are the One.
But I’m mute. I’m silent.
His face caves in, exactly like hers did when she saw us.
His face crumples.
It’s me.
I’m a crumpler of faces.
I sit up straighter. “I really need a drink or a cigarette or something. Can we stop somewhere? Anywhere?”
“Yeah,” he says. “Sure.”
Both of Soup’s hands are on the wheel now. None of him is touching any of me. My body wants to lean into his, but it can’t. This can’t happen now. I have to tell him. I have to say it. I have to say it out loud. I know James Robert Wilson. I did something. This is about me.
It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever had to say. Because once I say it, I’ll have to tell the police. I’ll have to tell everyone. One day, I’ll be on the stand and I’ll have to say it. And the media will make me out to be a slut.
I totally don’t care about that.
But if I’m a slut, then so is she. And they’ll end up trying her and not him.
Mom’s a lawyer. She works these kinds of cases more often than anyone would believe. Not murder, but rape. Rape where the victim is tried for having had sex. Rape where the victim is shamed for wearing a tank top with no bra.
Like Piper was.
I had sex with the man who murdered my best friend. What does that make me?
I’m shaking all over. Soup either doesn’t notice or doesn’t say anything.
He pulls into the parking lot of a 7-Eleven. I go inside. The cold air smells like refrigeration and some kind of industrial cleaner. I buy cigarettes. Suddenly, I’m starving. I buy candy and chips. Gummies and nachos. I get the biggest Slurpee cup that I can find and I fill it with the familiar blue.
I take it back to the car.
“Picnic?” It’s a peace offering.
Soup shrugs. “I’m not hungry.”
“Where are we going, anyway?”
“Nowhere,” he says, but I know he’s lying. He had a place in mind. “Home.”
“Liar,” I say. “Take me wherever we were going.”
“I don’t feel like it now,” he says.
“Screw you,” I say.
“Sloane, I can’t. I don’t know how to do this. I don’t even know how to talk to you! You’re so—”
“So what?” I say.
“I don’t know,” he says. “Ferocious?”
“I am not,” I protest.
He pulls out onto the highway going back the way we came. I’m not hungry anymore, but I start eating. The food tastes like plastic, like something unreal. I crunch and chew and swallow and smoke and the whole time, he doesn’t look at me. He doesn’t eat anything. He stares straight ahead and what we don’t say to each other is the clouds that are filling up all the blue, blurring out the sharp edges of the sun, of everything, of us.
He drops me off at the bottom of my driveway.
“See you at school,” he says.
“Yeah,” I say, “see you.”
He pulls out in a squeal of tires. The cloud of dust rising up behind his car gets in my eyes and I’m crying.
Maybe I’ll be crying forever now.
Piper is still dead.
“Eff you, Soup Sanchez,” I shout. “I don’t need you.”
The gravel hurts under my bare feet but I left my shoes in his car. I’m still holding my Slurpee cup. It has no vodka in it but needs vodka and I hope Mom and Dad aren’t home yet so I can top it up.
I start walking. The gravel chips at my nail polish.
I have to tell him.
Don’t make it matter more than it does, Piper says. We’re too young for love. Anyway, it’s a construct, remember? Chemicals. Lies. Friction.
“But I love you,” I say.
Liar, she says.
I step off the gravel and walk on the lawn, which is soft under my feet and cool. The sprinklers have left it damp. When we were little, we’d run through those sprinklers in our clothes, soaking wet. We’d turn cartwheels in the rainbow mist. We’d sleep out there in sleeping bags and shiver under the stars and stay up all night, scared, but brave.
I’m not brave anymore.
I don’t know when it stopped.
I don’t know how to get it back.
SOUP
I make a portrait of Sloane, using tiny handwritten Sloanes, black ink on white paper, her eyes closed, each eyelash its own Sloane, as though if I write her name enough, I can purge her out of me.
It takes the whole weekend, and afterward my wrist is so seized up, I can’t bend it.
Sloane and I drove right by the house where my dad lives. It’s small and white, but the paint is peeling off in a lot of places. There’s a sofa on the front lawn. It looks like a college-kids rental house. I guess playing in the Asteroids doesn’t pay well.
I didn’t slow down when we passed it. I’d already memorized it anyway, the blue curtains in the front window, the way the chimney looked a bit crooked, the hole in the chain-link fence big enough for a kid to crawl through if he wanted to, big enough for an animal to escape.
* * *
One weekend, Piper and I spent a whole day walking the length of the old train track that wound its way through a tunnel that started near the school. I hung out there, a lot, in the tunnel. It was my hideout. My secret place. But I didn’t usually go through and out the other side; I stayed in one spot, which became like a room.
It was Piper’s idea to go farther. That kind of thing was always her idea.
It was a cardboard-and-gasoline-smelling day that was lined with damp skies and gravel. The tunnel echoed with our voices. We were goofing around. Laughing.
“Hang on,” I said when we were at the turn, the place where an open manhole let in light, shining a spot on the wall like an art gallery spotlight. From my pocket, I took a tin of red, a tin of black. Shook them up, the ball bearings clattering as they stirred the paint. I’ll never get tired of that sound, the feel of that.
“What are you doing?” Piper whined. “Come on, let’s go!”
“Wait,” I said. “This is for you, you’ll like it.”
I sprayed for a few minutes, here and there. I’d practiced first. It wasn’t my first try. Finally, I stepped back. She wasn’t watching. She was texting.
“I’m c
old,” she said, barely looking up.
“For you,” I said, gesturing. I tried bowing. I was trying to be charming. I thought I was being the character all the girls would love in a book or a movie. A guy who would spray-paint a rose on the wall of a rat-infested tunnel and deserve to be kissed for it.
“Roses are such a gross symbol of the patriarchy,” Piper said finally. “God, Soup, don’t you know anything?” I didn’t know what to say. I passed her the tin of black and she sprayed over the whole thing, blanking it out. Only then did she laugh and kiss me.
I tried to pretend it didn’t hurt my feelings. The way I figure it, at least half of any relationship is faking your way through it. Laughing when you’re actually pissed. Not showing that you’re mad or sad, even though inside, you’re seething. Inside, you know that it’s all wrong.
* * *
If you go far enough through the Tube, you get to a trestle bridge that crosses over the river gorge that is terrifyingly high. You have to climb over barricades to get onto it and then you wonder why you want to be there at all, the vertigo pushing you back. On the barricades, there are signs that read, DANGER, STAY BACK, UNSTABLE BRIDGE.
Even thinking about it makes me spin a little, my knees going noodle-weak.
It was sunny when we emerged from the Tube, a weak, watery kind of sunny. We crossed the barrier to the trestle. Because of the recent rain, the bridge was silvery with moisture. It smelled slick and metallic.
Piper was up over the barrier in two seconds flat. She moved with a gymnast’s swiftness. She took a few steps, twirled and bowed, ran farther. Everything she did was a performance. I never knew whether to clap or roll my eyes or what she wanted from me. (Not roses painted on a wall, I got that much.) I wanted to grab her and press her against something, stop her from spinning and moving around. She was going to fall. I knew it. I could exactly picture her body, broken and splayed out, on the ground down below.
“Hey,” I yelled at her. “If you fall, there’s no way I can catch you.”
“Didn’t ask you to,” she said back, flipping me off.
“Then I won’t,” I said. I sat down on the barrier, the cold, wet concrete clammy through my jeans.
When she got to the middle, at the scariest point, she turned back to me. Waved. Then one after the other, she turned four cartwheels, her hands on the shiny half-rotten ties, legs flipping through the blueing sky. The sun heated the track, and steam was rising. I couldn’t stand to see her, but I couldn’t look away either. “Come on,” she said. “You chicken!”
“I don’t do that,” I said. “I can’t do cartwheels. It’s not a guy thing.”
She laughed. “You don’t have to cartwheel. Come and walk with me. Unless you’re scared.”
“No thanks,” I said.
She shrugged. “I figured,” she said. “I miss Sloane. She’d do it.” She pulled her phone out of her pocket, stopped moving while she typed on the screen, then held it up to take a selfie. “Sloane Sloaney. Sloooooooane.”
I rolled my eyes. “Sorry for being me,” I yelled, louder than I meant to.
“Oh, don’t be petulant.” Piper hit the word “petulant” hard, her tongue darting out between her lips. Taunting.
I pushed myself off the barrier and forced myself to not look down between the gaps in the rail ties. Ran out to where she was, the distance between me and safety equal in both directions, and both ways were too far. My heart pounded against my bony sternum like someone knocking urgently. Knock-knock, what are you doing? Knock-knock. At the last second, my right foot slipped and I tilted sideways, hovering for a second, deciding if I would fall or not. Choosing not, the muscles in my body screaming in protest as I righted myself from an impossible angle. I was panting. The sun behind her had pushed through now with a vengeance; it made her face hard to see. She butted her hip into me. “Hey,” I said, trying to sound normal. “You trying to kill me?”
“As if,” she said. “You’re my favorite.”
“Your favorite what?” I went.
“You know,” she said. “My favorite boyfriend.”
“Yeah, of your dozens of boyfriends,” I said.
“You never know,” Piper said. “I’m pretty popular.” She stuck out her tongue. I laughed, but it wasn’t that funny. With Piper, you never knew. I kissed her hard, tasting her tongue, her lip gloss, something stale.
“Ouch,” she said, ducking away.
I crouched down, then lay flat, let my head hang over the side, vertigo making the whole world—trees, the creek, the tumbled rocks—cartwheel around me. I smoked a cigarette, pretended the smoke was everything I was scared of and watched it evaporate into the growing blue.
Then with a hard whoomp that actually bruised my ribs, Piper crashed down on me, the end of a round-off that didn’t quite work. There I was: pinned between Piper and the sky. Then I was kissing her and kissing her and her shirt was off. She was into it, too. It was good. It was so good. Things with me and Piper, even when they were bad, they were still good.
After the first time—the only time, actually—she always was into it until the last minute, then she’d stop me cold, abruptly, like I should have known not to cross the invisible, moving line.
Then we fought.
“Why do we always have to stop?” I said. “It’s not like you’re a virgin.” The rail ties were hurting my back, my head resting on the metal track. I hated the height, hated the cold wetness, hated the sun in my eyes, but I wanted her bad. I didn’t get why she’d only go so far. We’d already done it once.
“I can’t believe you said that to me,” she said. “I can’t believe you’re that much of a misogynist pig.”
“I’m sorry!” I said. “It’s just that—”
“I’m kidding!” She laughed. “You’re so serious.” She punched me in the arm so hard it hurt. I didn’t want to do it anymore, but I did, because she wanted to, and that’s how it was, the track grinding into my back, bruising my shoulders, and her face, frowning and intense, saying something I didn’t understand.
“Sloane’s turn,” she said.
She put Sloane in my mind at that exact moment. In a way, it’s like she choreographed it. I mean, I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I thought about Sloane differently after that. I did.
I totally did.
And the meaner Piper got, the more I liked Sloane.
I think she wanted me to.
I think she chose it.
I think she knew all along that this was how it would go. Not the part where she’s dead, not that. But the part where Sloane and I were together.
I think she wanted it.
She needed a reason to hate us both.
It was how she was going to break free.
SLOANE
I’m sound asleep when my alarm goes off. I’m dreaming.
I’m driving with Soup. I know it’s a dream because it isn’t hot and the radio is on and our hands are intertwined and we’re singing and I’m happy.
I’m not happy now.
I’m awake, my heart thudding in my chest.
School.
Hope comes from somewhere. I don’t know where. It’s invisible, like a puff of smoke disappearing into the gray sky, but I feel it. A small lightness. A possibility.
I go downstairs.
* * *
Downstairs looks different than I remember.
Maybe I’m getting a migraine: the rooms look both bigger and smaller than they should; the corners are too close to me but the windows yawn away, bowing toward the sky. But my head isn’t hurting. Nothing is hurting.
I stop and look at myself in the huge mirror in the downstairs hallway. Weight has fallen away; I look more like Piper than ever. Bonier than I’ve ever been. We were always both skinny but she was the skinniest. Her bones resting there so close to her skin.
I touch my hair, which is dark brown, almost black.
I’m not wearing any makeup. It makes me look younger.
It makes me look s
cared.
I’m not scared.
“Hey, you,” I say to my reflection.
Hey, says Piper. Brown? I like it.
And for a second, a tiny flash, I think I see her there, right beside me. I swallow my scream and she’s gone.
People think they understand what ghosts are until someone they love dies, and then their understanding changes. The ghost is not in a white nightdress, walking down a long corridor, wafting. Her ghost is part of me, looking out through my eyes.
Is she still mad?
Does she hate me?
“I don’t know what else I can do, Pipes,” I whisper. “I’m leaving him alone. I won’t do it. I don’t love him. Love is just a dumb rush of chemicals anyway, right?”
* * *
The carpet feels thick as mud under my bare feet. Walking the last bit to the kitchen feels hard, like walking in sand, which is always sliding out under my feet.
I wonder if he killed her on the island, on the spot he cleared to look for whales.
I wonder if he knew she wasn’t me.
I wonder why she didn’t twist free, run, swim for shore.
You don’t know that I didn’t try, she says. I tried.
Dad is sitting at the kitchen table. He’s sipping his black coffee from a large white mug. His shirt is impeccably pressed. His tie hangs perfectly. Even his hair looks ready for TV. That’s Dad: crisp and clean, like a stock-photo image of a suburban, professional father. In contrast, I feel like I’m encrusted in dirt, something that needs to be scraped away by a sharp, certain instrument.
“Sloane!” he says, trying not to look surprised and failing. “Hi, honey.”
“Dad. Hi.” I clear my throat because my voice sounds rusty and Piper-esque. Piper always rasped. “I’m—” The rasp is stuck in my voice.
Is that what happened? Is she actually in me now?
Am I crazy?
“Are you getting a sore throat?” Dad asks, concerned.
I shake my head and go to the coffeemaker, three steps to the left, like this is normal and easy, like this isn’t the first time I’ve been downstairs since the funeral last week, since the drive, since Soup. My body feels like one of those creepy marionette dolls that Piper had hanging from her bedroom ceiling when she was little, all pointy elbows and uncooperative legs, tangled string, fake facial expression.