I noticed the spark in Ariana’s eye, a silent pleading. She didn’t want to be alone with her parents any more than I did. I mouthed a sorry in Ariana’s direction and explained that I’d made other plans.
“Maybe you could meet us for ice cream, then,” Ariana’s mom pressed. “We’re going to go to that cute place in town, the one with the giant cone on the marquee? Maybe around nine?”
I smiled. By nine o’clock, I hoped to be in Joe’s Honda, the windows fogging from the heat of our kisses. “I’ll definitely try.”
* * *
I changed clothes five times before meeting Joe, deciding on my most flattering jeans and a shirt that was tight across the chest and too sexy to wear around Keale. We’d planned to meet at Slice of Heaven, and Joe was already there when I arrived, breathless from my bike ride into town.
He whistled, spotting me through the window. We hugged, same as we’d done the last few times we’d seen each other, but this one lasted a few beats longer, and our bodies were pressed just a bit closer.
“I hope you don’t mind. I got here a bit early and ordered for us,” Joe said, gesturing to the glass of soda in front of him, the empty glass in front of my spot. “Just regular pepperoni and breadsticks.”
“Just regular pepperoni and breadsticks sounds great,” I said.
“I was trying to beat the rush,” Joe said, nodding to the line that had formed at the register, snaking halfway to the door. Most of the booths were already full. “I mean, this town is typically overrun with WASPs, but during Parents’ Weekend, the BMW-to-human ratio is especially skewed, if you know what I mean.”
I laughed at his description.
“Well, what about you? Don’t you have parents, Midwest?” When I hesitated, he covered quickly. “Did I put my foot in my mouth? Sorry. It’s none of my business.”
“No, it’s fine. It was just too far for my mom to come.”
“What about your dad?”
I shook my head, my throat suddenly clogged. Since coming to Keale, I’d managed to avoid any mention of my dad. It was easier that way, although the omission implied that he’d never existed at all.
“I am an ass,” Joe said. “Remember?”
I stood up quickly, grabbing my frosted red cup. “Be right back.”
By the time our pizza came, we’d already refilled our bottomless sodas twice. Joe laughed as I blotted the top layer of grease from the pizza with a handful of napkins. It’s not a real date, I told myself. It’s pizza and Coke. Beneath the table, his leg brushed against mine, but instead of pulling away like a reflex, it lingered there. Or maybe it is.
While the restaurant filled up, we talked about our jobs. I mentioned the woman who called the switchboard fifteen times in one night, insisting that there must be a problem with the phone lines since her daughter hadn’t picked up. Joe said that a former coworker at the body shop had opened a place in Michigan, and he’d offered Joe a job.
He shrugged. “But, I don’t know. Michigan. It’s pretty far away.”
“Right,” I said, picking off a pepperoni. I felt his loss as keenly as if he’d already packed up the Honda and left. So far, Joe was the only good thing about Scofield. “And you’d have to leave all this.”
“Some things would be harder to leave than others,” he said, and although he wasn’t looking at me when he said it, my cheeks burned. “Anyway—it might not pan out. There are a lot of things to figure.”
“Right,” I said again. Someone at the next table stood, jostling my elbow. The restaurant was crowded now, the line out the door. I recognized some girls from Keale with their families and felt a stab of longing for my own family, back when it had been intact and perfectly imperfect. We would never again order a pizza, bicker over our choice of three toppings, then load up our leftovers to eat later that night in front of the TV.
“Whoa,” Joe said, tapping me on the arm. He gave a subtle head tilt in the direction of a family standing by the door.
I half turned, pretending to casually glance at the line. “Who are we looking at?”
“The guy in the button-down shirt.”
“You’ll have to be more specific.”
Joe laughed. “With the lady in the sweater.”
“Again, you’ll have to—”
“And the dark-haired girl with legs up to her neck.”
“Ah,” I said, glancing again toward the door. The man was tall with a full head of salt-and-pepper hair, a striped shirt with sleeves rolled up to his elbows. The woman wore a patterned sweater set, a giant diamond glinting from her finger. They didn’t look familiar, but I recognized the tall girl from Stanton Hall. I associated her with the summer camp crowd, as I’d come to think of them, girls who played lacrosse and rode horses and moved around campus in tight cliques. “That’s Lauren somebody. She lives in my dorm, but not on my floor.”
Joe leaned forward, conspiratorially. It was hard to hear him over the general noise of happy families. “Her last name is Mabrey.”
I raised an eyebrow. “And?”
“Her father is Senator Charles Mabrey of Connecticut.”
“Seriously? A senator?” I craned around, getting another look.
“Be cool,” Joe said, his thumb and forefinger reaching for my chin, steering me to face him. “People will think you’ve never seen a senator before.”
I burned under his touch. “I haven’t.”
“Well, I suspect they’re just like you and me, only they live in a nicer home—or more likely homes, plural—and they drive better cars if they drive themselves at all, and they’re on a first-name basis with the president of our freaking country, but other than that, no reason to stare.”
“Got it,” I said. We were close enough for me to see a tiny red fleck caught between Joe’s front teeth. “Did you learn all this in your civics class?”
Joe released my chin and reached for his tumbler, taking a long swig. “They’re probably all douchebags, but Mabrey at least seems to be a douchebag of the people.”
I snorted, choking on a bite of cold pizza. “You should volunteer to write his campaign slogans.”
“You know what?” Joe said, wadding his napkin into a ball. “Want to get out of here? There’s a better place down the road, one that won’t be overrun with all these hoity-toity types.”
“Do me a favor,” I grinned. “Say that again. Hoity-toity.”
Instead, he stood up and pulled me to my feet, threading his fingers through mine. I shot a last glance over my shoulder and saw Lauren’s father, the senator, bantering with a cashier. It was the same way married men had talked to me at the Woodstock Diner, as if he were saying, Look how young and virile I still am. In that split second, Lauren turned and our eyes met. She smiled in a faint, pleasant way, as if she didn’t recognize me at all. And why would she? Girls like that moved in their own circles, existed in their own worlds.
* * *
We ended up at a place called Moe’s, too shady for the Keale crowd with its dim, low-ceilinged interior and the haze of smoke that hovered just above our heads. Joe navigated the rowdy crowd at the bar and returned to our table with a pitcher of beer. I thought briefly about pointing out that I was nineteen, and then let it go. It seemed like an incongruous fact, unrelated to this experience. I felt older and wiser, like a more mature version of Megan Mazeros, one who didn’t have to worry about basic rules and regulations.
For a while we drank and watched a vigorous game of darts unfolding between a tiny, dark-haired woman with dead aim and her towering, tattooed companion; with each throw, they razzed and taunted each other. It was like watching an elaborate mating ritual, one based on catcalls and innuendos. When she won, he pulled her onto his lap and whispered into her ear. She stood, tugging him toward the door.
Joe drained his glass. “Do you play?”
“Do I ever.” I slid off
my stool, feeding off the charge in the air. We were an extension of the couple who had just left, playing off their energy, becoming more sexualized versions of ourselves. Between throws, Joe’s hand lingered on my elbow, my waist, my hip.
I hadn’t played darts since before Dad got sick, but we used to have a dartboard in the garage, our throw lines taped to the cement. Once I got good enough to be competitive, I’d lost the handicap and he’d eliminated my line once and for all. After a few warm-up shots, Joe and I were evenly matched, going head-to-head, throw for throw. We brushed against each other deliberately, laughing, when we retrieved our darts. When he beat me by three points, I conceded the loss with a mock bow.
“An honor, sir,” I said.
He hooked an arm around my neck, pulling me into him. Our kiss felt effortless, a natural progression of the evening. He trailed one finger down my spine, coiling it in my belt loop. “Want to play another round?”
“Not particularly,” I said.
Our faces were so tight together that I saw his beautiful, crooked grin up close. It was like looking at him through a magnifying glass, all his good parts becoming even better.
* * *
According to the clock on Joe’s dashboard, it was just after nine. He agreed to drive me back to campus, so I could leave a note for Ariana. I didn’t know what I would say, just Sorry I didn’t make it to ice cream or Don’t wait up. I planned to stuff my backpack with toiletries and a change of clothes, just in case. The night was ripe with possibility. At each stoplight on our way out of town, Joe and I kissed like we were perfecting what we’d started earlier. In the parking lot of my dorm, we reached for each other again, his hands inching beneath my sweater, palms hot on the small of my back.
“You know what I like about you, Midwest?”
I murmured, “No.”
“What I like the most is—”
“I meant no, don’t talk,” I said.
“You see? That’s it.”
The car windows began to fog, and Joe’s hand was on my bra, my nipple hard beneath his thumb. It was so close to what I’d imagined that it hardly felt real. Nearby, a car started, headlights springing to life.
“Hold on, cowboy,” I said, pulling back. “Give me five minutes.”
He groaned. “Five minutes is eternity.”
I gave him a teasing kiss and grabbed my backpack from the floorboard. “Five minutes.”
The night was cool, but I felt warm and reckless and happy. I took the side stairs and was breathless by the time I reached the third floor, where I paused to look down at the parking lot. Joe’s car was there, idling with its headlights on. I spotted my reflection at the same time—blond curls wild, cheeks flushed. I’m doing this, I thought. I’m doing it.
In the hallway, I waited for a group of parents to pass. They were chatting loudly about how college had changed since they were in it, how the cafeteria food was better, the exercise facilities first-rate. After I passed, I heard one of the men say, “And the girls are prettier, too.”
Our door was unlocked, although the lights were off. Ariana and her parents must have come and gone, forgetting to lock it behind them. I flicked on the light switch, moving fast. Fresh underwear, a tank top to sleep in, a clean shirt for the morning—if that was how it played out. I hesitated, momentarily frozen by the practicalities. Would he have condoms? Of course. This experience wasn’t the novelty for him that it was for me. Still, I cursed myself for not refilling my birth control. It had seemed a silly, extravagant expense to pay thirty dollars a month for pills I wouldn’t need at an all-girls school.
I was zipping up my backpack when I caught the movement from Ariana’s side of the room and jumped a foot. She was in bed, her body a slight hump beneath the covers. Maybe she’d skipped out on ice cream and come back early, exhausted by her parents’ constant nagging.
Then she moaned, a ragged and gasping sound that made me look closer. Her head was turned to one side, hair plastered against her face and half-covering her mouth. Across her pillowcase was a trail of vomit.
Fuck. Not now.
“Ariana?” I asked, then repeated her name louder. When she didn’t respond, I dropped to my knees, shaking her shoulder. “Are you okay? Should I call someone?”
Her head flopped backward, mouth open. Flakes of white powder stuck to the corner of her mouth.
“Did you take something?”
I had to put my ear almost to her face, wincing from the stench of her breath, to understand what she was saying. Your pulse. Yourpilse. Your pills.
My pills.
* * *
Later I told the paramedics about the generic bottle of ibuprofen I kept in my desk drawer, taking a pill here and there for a headache. There had been a hundred pills initially, and I wasn’t sure how many had been there earlier that night. Seventy? Eighty? Ariana had taken whatever was left, as evidenced by the empty bottle on her nightstand. I tried to imagine her swallowing the pills, one by one or two by two, washing them down with water from her Peanuts mug, the one that read The Doctor Is In, 5 cents.
After the lecture, Ariana had told her parents that she needed to study, and they’d gone out for dinner without her. She’d already taken the first pills by the time I met Joe at Slice of Heaven, and she’d finished them by the time we’d begun our game of darts at Moe’s, when her parents were having ice cream sundaes without her. She must have been unconscious by the time Joe and I kissed; she’d vomited later, when Joe and I were in his car, when I was being reinvented by his touch, inch by inch. And I’d found her in time, so lucky, everyone noted. Only I wasn’t sure if Ariana meant for me to find her earlier, or hoped I would only find her after it was too late.
Viv, our resident advisor, kicked into supervisory mode and took charge of the situation—which meant contacting Ariana’s parents and taking care of me. “You cannot blame yourself for this,” she said, taking hold of my shocked shoulders. Until that point, it hadn’t occurred to me that I was responsible. Then guilt kicked in hard: I’d been planning a night of reckless abandon, and Ariana had been trying to end it all.
Worse, I felt just as bad for myself, for the lost possibilities of that night. By the time I’d alerted Viv and the paramedics had arrived, twenty minutes had passed, maybe more. When I finally wormed my way through the cluster of girls and their parents in the hallway to look down into the parking lot below, Joe’s car was gone.
Lauren
Although I hadn’t mentioned it once, somehow everyone at Keale knew my father was a senator. It had started out with a little joke: my resident advisor, Katy, mentioned during our first floor meeting that we all had to follow the rules—whether our fathers were elected officials or not. She said this with a wink in my direction, and I heard the general buzz around me. Who? And he’s an actual senator? Later that week, a mousy blonde girl sat next to me in the Commons and over eggs on toast mentioned that her grandfather had been an ambassador to Ghana, as if that made us related somehow, like second cousins.
“Do you have like, diplomatic immunity or something?” another girl at the table asked.
“No,” I assured her, to general laughter.
Later I thought about it and realized that a more accurate answer would have been yes.
My parents had more or less ignored me since I left for Keale, but they came for Parents’ Weekend, bustling into my dorm room with a towering gift basket from Harry & David, as if I were a client and not a daughter. It didn’t occur to me until I was giving them an abbreviated tour of campus that this was an opportunity to see and be seen. For Dad, it was an unpaid advertisement, a chance to shake hands and trade college stories with other dads, homing in on the ones from Connecticut, his constituents. More than once when we were walking across campus, I was aware of camera flashes, of people catching the three of us in motion—Mom with an arm linked through Dad’s, each of us holding bags from
the Keale College bookstore, full of the sweatshirts and visors and coffee mugs that proclaimed them the proud parents of a Keale College student.
I was sure we would show up in future brochures advertising the college, with some kind of pretentious caption: Senator Mabrey, His Wife, Elizabeth Holmes-Mabrey, and Their Daughter Lauren Enjoy Family Time during a Visit to the Fine Arts Auditorium. It wasn’t so much a visit as it was a campaign stop.
We went into town for pizza, but the line at Slice of Heaven was out the door.
“We could bring it back to my dorm,” I suggested. “There’s a little kitchen down the hall.”
“It’ll be like old times, Liz,” Dad said, draping his arms around Mom’s shoulders. She smiled up at him, and I wondered how much of this was genuine, and how much was for show, another chance to impress Scofield’s voting public. Photographic evidence of my parents in their twenties did exist, but I’d never seen snapshots of them eating pizza out of a cardboard box, sitting cross-legged on the floor. In the photos I remembered, they were at important dinners, separated by centerpieces and goblets and place settings with three different forks, Dad in a suit, Mom’s hair in a complicated updo held together by a million bobby pins.
I recognized a few other people in the pizzeria, including Cindy Hardwick, a girl from my dorm. We’d only exchanged the occasional hello as we passed in the hall, but she bounded over to shake Dad’s hand and then, for good measure, Mom’s. She lingered for longer than necessary, beaming up at them. “You must be proud. Lauren is so talented,” she said. I tried to steer her away with an arm on her elbow, but it was too late. “I love her work.”
Worse than the explanations that I would have to provide were the subtle frowns on my parents’ faces, their hesitant glances between Cindy and me, as if to confirm she was in fact referring to their daughter.
Here We Lie Page 7