It hurt. It hurt far worse than she had imagined, and when she looked back over her shoulder at him she could see that he had a spot of her shit on his shirt. She had been so nervous she had had diarrhea for a week. She didn’t know shit would come out during sex, and she hoped he hadn’t noticed. She didn’t know if it stained and if she had ruined his T-shirt, which was so much cooler than any shirts she owned. After a few minutes she told him it hurt too much, and he was very sweet about stopping. He didn’t push her to try a little longer at all.
Girl decided to move four thousand miles to live right down the road from this boy, even if it meant she had to live in her father’s house. When she was with him she wasn’t hungry. Her stomach churned and she didn’t eat for days. Her heart flooded with love for this pimpled, slightly chubby boy whose hair smelled of hairspray and whose clothes left trails of fragrant Downy in her bedroom.
Girl wrote a letter to her parents, telling them that she wanted to move to Alaska. They called her immediately.
“We got your letter,” Mother said. She and Stepmother were both on the phone. “You remember the rule, though, right?”
“Yeah,” Girl said. The family rule was that the children couldn’t just call and say they were not coming home from Alaska. They had to come back and discuss it in person, and have a waiting period of at least a month to make sure they didn’t change their minds.
“I don’t know if your mother will be well enough for you to go. We need you here,” Stepmother said.
“We’ll talk about that later,” Mother interrupted. “I’m getting better.”
Girl was flooded with fear. Could they make her stay in New York to be Mother’s caretaker? For how long? Would she ever escape?
“I think you should stay here and start school in Alaska,” Father said. “And maybe we should go to court. I called my lawyer. We could switch it so I have full custody.”
Girl was uneasy. Father knew the rule about returning home, and it scared her that he wanted to break it. And custody? She didn’t want to do anything that couldn’t be undone. She trusted her mother implicitly, but Father was someone less trustworthy, a parent that she might need to escape from in the future.
“You know the rule,” she said. “And we don’t need a lawyer. Mother won’t fight me moving here.” Something about her father scared her. She didn’t trust him—something was off. She went back to New York in time for school. Mother and Stepmother agreed that she could move in mid-October.
Girl started high school in New York. Every morning all the grades gathered in the cafeteria, and she tried her hardest to be late as often as she could.
“Come on, Girl, it’s time to go!” Mother called. “And you need to eat something.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“At least some peanut butter on toast.”
“Okay, okay.” She slathered some peanut butter on wheat toast and carried it out the door wrapped in a napkin. She ate it as she slowly walked the four blocks to school. Brother was going to School of the Arts this year, so she didn’t have anyone to walk with. Girl had spent most of her life walking to school with Brother, and she missed having an ally. They were the kind of kids that made easy targets for bullies. Maybe I’ll get hit by a car, she thought. She had to cross four streets on her way to school, and she could picture stepping out in front of a moving vehicle. Bam—blood and a bright light. She figured if they killed you with the first hit it probably didn’t hurt too much.
No such luck today, though. She entered the school and walked into the loud cafeteria where all students had to report before homeroom. Her shoes squeaked on the shiny asbestos tile floor as she walked past long Formica tables of rowdy teenagers, the waft of soured food and the antiseptic bite of floor cleaner strong in the air. Girl had to walk past the senior table to get to the freshman table. Chuck was sitting there—the blond skateboarder who was quite possibly the cutest boy she had ever seen. As Girl walked by Chuck, all the boys barked at her. She had thought the kids shouting “Lezzie” at her the year before was the worst that could happen, but she was wrong. This was even worse. “Ruff, ruff, ruff!” The room was too bright. Her stomach sickened as she kept her eyes on the shiny tile floor. She was a dog—an ugly, worthless mutt. Girl looked up and met Chuck’s eyes. He was barking, too. When she moved to Alaska no one would know she was one of the biggest nerds in ninth grade. She could be anyone she wanted. Until then, she’d try harder to be late to school.
Father wrote Girl multi-page letters filled with longing for their upcoming life together, words about the culmination of love long obstructed. His cursive words made her stomach queasy and she hid the letters from her parents, but Stepmother somehow knew anyway. “He’s wooing you,” she said, “just like he woos his girlfriends.” Girl pretended she didn’t believe Stepmother, but she knew it was true. She threw away Father’s letters as soon as she read them. “Your mother always nagged me, what I like about you is that you don’t … you are so much smarter than #Five ever was … you understand me so much better than any woman I ever married …” Girl felt his tone was slightly disturbing, but she wasn’t going to give up his newfound attention by questioning it. Choosing to move in with Father bumped Brother out of his role of favorite child.
Girl wore her best outfit on the eleven-hour plane ride: peach lace blouse, ruffled denim miniskirt, snakeskin shoes. She looked out the airplane window, but instead of clouds she saw only daydream-movies of her beautiful new life. Father picked her up at the airport and took her home to his apartment. Once she was settled in to the apartment, Father left to spend the night at his girlfriend Daisy’s house, leaving Girl his hospital pager number in case of emergency. Daisy didn’t have a phone installed yet. Girl stared at her father’s red jacket and his bald spot peeking through his brown hair as he walked out the door. He didn’t look back. Her bedroom mirror, stagnant and dark, reflected only an empty wall.
This became his habit—every night he would leave after dinner and not return until morning. In this void, Girl would lose her virginity, fail school, cut scars into her body. None of that was enough to make her father notice her. She could not make him stay.
Father came back to the apartment every morning to make her cinnamon toast and chit-chat as she got dressed for school. “Girl-Girl!” he’d call, walking in with a plate in one hand and a glass of milk in the other. He sat at the end of her bed and watch her strip down to nothing, never looking away, but never acting like it was a big deal. Father was a doctor; he saw naked bodies all the time. What right did she have to privacy, to not wanting her breasts and bush frankly stared at by her father every day? It wasn’t like anyone wore clothes at her mother’s house. Maybe if his eyes weren’t such a cold, unblinking blue it would have been different. She didn’t know how to ask him to turn his head away.
youth group
Girl was Unitarian, and Father had been too, when he was married to Mother and then #Four, but #Five had turned him into a Methodist. Father still went to #Five’s old church, even though he had left her for the new youth minister. Girl was not supposed to tell anyone that Father and Daisy had been dating since she came up from Texas for her job interview months before. Father had shown Girl the love notes he and Daisy had sent back and forth in the months between when they met and when she moved to Anchorage, reusing the same envelope. Father had rented a secret mailbox so #Five wouldn’t see the letters. Everyone liked to pretend that he just happened to fall in love with Daisy after his divorce was final.
Daisy was a mountain of a woman: close to six feet tall and shaped like a very large and fluffy bowling pin. Father had a thing for ugly women. He liked to say that he saw the beauty inside, but Girl had a feeling it had something to do with liking women who had poor self-esteem. It gave Father the upper hand. Girl and Brother called Daisy “Beluga” behind her back, after the white whales that swam in Cook Inlet, but it was more about sounding cool than meant with any real malicious intent. Daisy had shoulder-length, frizzy
blond hair and a gap between her front teeth. Girl could see how batshit crazy she was about Father, but Daisy also seemed excited about being a stepmother and always called Girl “Baby Girl” with her sweet southern accent and it made Girl feel warm and small and loved. Daisy joked that if she ever married Father, she would insist on being referred to as “Mrs. C. B. Lillibridge the Sixth.”
Girl was not Christian at all, and she thought the Methodist service was boring and long and the music was stupid, but Jack ran the sound board and taught her to do it, too. She liked running sound, pushing the levers up and down and making sure there was no buzzing and that everyone could hear the sermon. Plus, she had to sit through both services every week since Daisy was a minister and Father wanted to watch her “do her thing.” Running the sound made time go by faster.
Her first week in Alaska she was sent to youth group on Wednesday night. Girl was excited about youth group, because although the Unitarian Church she attended back home had a solid gang of kids, they had no official youth group and no way to get together during the week. Jack picked her up in his grandfather’s gold car, and they entered the parking lot fishtailing and doing donuts, like Jack always did. Girl pretended she wasn’t scared and wordlessly clamped her eyes shut tight, but she felt like a movie star when she got out of the car and saw all the other kids watching them. Cool. That’s all she had ever wanted to be. Jack gave her a ride because his parents made him, but as soon as they walked in he went over to the preps and left her alone.
“You know not to tell anyone we screw around sometimes,” he said before they got out of the car. “You’re a nice girl, but I can’t be seen with you.”
“I know,” Girl said defensively. She knew she wasn’t cool enough for anyone to be seen with. She would never embarrass him—who did he think she was? She knew her place.
Youth Group started with a prayer and a song and she could tell that none of these kids—who didn’t say hi or even smile at her—were going to be anything like the Unitarians. First off, no one skateboarded or wore fedoras or dressed in tie-dyed T-shirts. They were all boring preps except for Jared, a long-haired kid wearing a jean jacket and a T-shirt that read YNGWIE WHO? YNGWIE FUCKING MALMSTEEN, THAT’S WHO! Girl sat next to him. She didn’t know who Yngwie was, but she was in favor of shirts that said fuck.
After church, a tall, geeky kid named John came over to talk to her. He was kind of chubby and cross-eyed, but he invited her to party with him and his friends that Friday, and Girl said yes. She hadn’t ever partied or gotten high before, but it was on her list of things to do as soon as possible.
John picked her up in a red camper van. She wore her airplane outfit again—it was still the coolest thing she owned. He introduced her to his friends: Mason, the driver; Connor, a cute brown-haired sophomore; Randy, an ugly, sullen kid. The van’s back seat was sideways, facing the sliding door, and they had a mini-fridge in the back. Their first stop was a liquor store, and Girl handed John her money to add to the pot.
After some deliberation, it was decided that John should try first. He was only sixteen, but his burly frame and collared shirt made him look older. Girl watched him stand in line through the car window. What would they do if he got caught? Sure, she had snuck sips of vodka from her mother’s liquor cabinet, but she never tried to buy any.
John came out of the store holding a brown bag above his head in victory, and everyone cheered. Girl took a Bartles & Jaymes wine cooler with everyone else. She liked the burgundy color of it, and it tasted pretty good. Connor was sitting next to her, and he was relatively cute—a lot cuter than John—so she kissed him. “Is this guy okay?” John asked her, and Girl nodded, not caring if John’s feelings were hurt. Girl was always acutely aware of her standings on the teenaged attractiveness scale, and even if she was just a six, John was a three. He wasn’t cute enough for her, and he must know it, just like she wasn’t cute enough for Jack.
Mason wanted to score some weed and it was his van, so they headed downtown. The teenagers slid around on the sideways seat in the back. Mason parked downtown somewhere. Girl had no idea where she was, but there were tall buildings so it must have been close to the city center. Anchorage didn’t have many buildings over five stories because they were on the Pacific Ring of Fire and got earthquakes all the time. Mostly little ones, but Father had explained how modern and smart the city planners were, and how Anchorage was built up in the seventies when they had the technology to make buildings earthquake-proof.
Mason and Randy left the van for a few minutes and came back with a baggie. The van was filled with cigarette smoke and the windows steamed up from everyone breathing. It was October, but in Anchorage October was cold like Rochester’s winter. Mason used the streetlight coming in the windshield to pack his brass pipe. Suddenly there was a knock on the window. Cops. Fuck. Girl had never, ever been questioned by the police or even known someone who had. She was a geek, and geeks didn’t do anything cool or dangerous or police-worthy. Father was going to kill her.
“Fuck, there’s a warrant out for my arrest,” Randy said. “If they ask, I’m my twin brother, Ricky.”
Girl snorted. “Nice brother.”
“No, it’s cool, he said I could. Ricky has never been arrested.”
The cops made everyone get out of the van.
“Ricky!” Randy hissed as they piled out the side door.
Girl had taken off her shoes when they were driving around, and now she couldn’t find the left one. She hadn’t worn a coat because she didn’t own a cool one, just a big puffy blue winter jacket that she would rather freeze than wear. The pavement was cold under her bare foot, so she tried to stand on one foot, resting the unshod one on top of the other.
“Where is your other shoe?” the cop asked her.
“It’s in the van somewhere,” she said.
“I need to see some ID.”
“I don’t have any ID, I’m only fourteen,” she said.
“It’s the law that everyone has to carry ID, and you are out after curfew,” he told her.
“Curfew? What’s curfew? I just moved here,” she said. Was this a Nazi state? She had never heard of curfew. It was un-American.
“All youth under the age of eighteen cannot be outside after eleven o’clock,” the cop explained. “And you better get an ID.”
Girl shivered and wobbled on her one shoe as they questioned the guys.
“Do any of you have any warrants?” he asked the half-dozen kids. Everyone was silent. Randy sighed.
“My name is Randy Smith, and there’s a warrant out for my arrest. You can take me away,” he said, holding his hands up by his face. Girl suddenly loved him so much she wanted to cry.
“Okay,” one of the cops said to Mason, pocketing his bag of weed and pipe. “We can bust you, or go after the dealer. Your choice.”
“Go after the dealer, go after the dealer,” Mason repeated enthusiastically.
“What did he look like?”
“Um, he was black. Tall.”
“Any distinguishing marks?”
“Uhhh, a red baseball cap.”
“Okay, we’re gonna let you go, but you kids better get out of here, and we better not see you down here again. That van will be pretty easy to remember.”
They got back in the van—even Randy—and peeled out of the parking lot, the tires kicking up gravel. Connor tried to kiss Girl again, but she pushed him away. He was so dumb, she thought, and moved over next to Randy. Randy was butt-ugly but he was so brave.
Mason dropped her off at Father’s apartment. After the near-miss with the cops, everyone was done for the night. She looked all over the back of the van, but she never found her shoe.
the descent
East Anchorage High was huge compared to Girl’s old school, with over two thousand students. They had fifty-five-minute “hours” instead of forty-five-minute “periods” and eleven whole minutes between classes. At first, Girl just walked the halls in loops during lunch period after she b
ought a cinnamon roll in the cafeteria for $1.40 at the take-and-go window. No way was she standing in the hot lunch line filled with jocks shoving each other and laughing at people. She had had enough of cafeterias.
There was a cute boy in her Earth Science class named Walter. He was as muscled as a jock but wore a smooth leather jacket and had a mullet that just reached his shoulders. She knew he was out of her league but she liked him anyway. When he offered to sell her a quarter ounce of weed for twenty-eight dollars, she agreed.
“This is bud?” she asked him—not because she was questioning his product, but because she had actually never seen marijuana before. Her friend Jim had described “buds” he smoked when he went away to college at sixteen.
“Well—it’s shake,” Walter said, pocketing her money. It looked like oregano but she took it anyway. There was only one problem—she didn’t know how to smoke weed. She’d smoked cigarettes before, but this was something different. She went to the smoking area and went up to the first guy she saw.
“Do you wanna get high?” she asked a kid with long blond hair and too big of a nose to be attractive.
“You got any?” he asked. Girl held out her bag.
“Put that away!” he said, looking quickly back and forth. “Meet me here after school.”
“I don’t have a pipe,” Girl said.
“I’ll take care of it.”
After school Danny, Leonard, and two of his friends came over to her house.
“Do you have a coke can?” he asked Girl. She fished one out of the garbage and handed it to him. Danny squashed it in the middle and took a fork and carefully made a series of holes in the indention. Lastly, he poked a hole in the bottom of the can.
“That’s the carb,” he told Girl. Danny pinched some of the shake weed onto the holes and showed Girl how to light it and put her lips to the can opening, one finger closing off the carb hole, then releasing it. Girl tried it, but coughed out a cloud of smoke.
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