Everything Must Go

by Jenny Fran Davis

Subject: Weird shit

  March 23, 5:12 p.m.

  Hey, dude. I just pulled over (I’m Ubering on Wednesdays now for some extra cash) to give you a heads-up. I just drove these two chicks to about two blocks from your apartment. I lied and told them I couldn’t get closer because of the rain because I wanted to give you a heads-up. The shit they were saying in the car was crazy. Something about getting you to confess to abandonment or something? I don’t know, dude. Just don’t open the door.

  Sent from my iPhone

  My application for the Young Innovators’ Promise Awards

  THE YOUNG INNOVATORS’ PROMISE AWARDS (YIPA)

  APPLICATION FORM

  MARCH 25

  The Young Innovators’ Promise Awards (YIPA) are the oldest and most prestigious form of recognition for young artists and writers in the United States. We welcome your submission and encourage you to keep creating even in the likely event that you do not receive an award. We aim to notify you of the status of your application by the first of May.

  NAME: Flora Goldwasser

  CONTACT INFORMATION:

  Flora Goldwasser

  Pigeonhole 44

  The Quare Academy

  2 Quare Road

  Main Stream, NY 12497

  CATEGORY: Writing

  GENRE: Dramatic Script

  TOTAL LENGTH: Fifty-two pages

  SUMMARY:

  When sixteen-year-old Ursula Webber gets pregnant on a retreat with her elite private school in Manhattan, she is shipped off to the Convent of the Illuminated Eye, a farming community for wayward teens in rural Pennsylvania.

  If it weren’t for a certain soft-spoken, Emily Dickinson–reading, virginal drug addict named Caleb, Ursula would be on the next wagon out of the Convent. Her mission—to deflower Caleb, born of a dare by the convent’s secret society, to which Ursula is desperate to be admitted—soon takes over her life, eventually prompting her to realize that sex is more complicated than she’d initially expected.

  This play is unique in that it is told completely in voice-over: actors stand offstage and speak lines—either dialogue or asides—into microphones. The set changes frequently, however, as noted in the script. Most prominent, the play involves the performance art piece Vending Machine, or Everything Must Go, which has recently gained media attention.

  PLEASE ATTACH A SHORT (20- TO 25-PAGE) SAMPLE OF YOUR WORK. NOTE THAT THE SUBMITTED MATERIALS WILL NOT BE RETURNED.

  Lael Goldwasser

  Harvard College

  2609 Harvard Yard Mail Center

  Cambridge, MA 02138

  April 1

  Lael,

  I don’t even know where to begin.

  After closing night of Luella’s play (I’ve been busy with my own project, so I just stage-managed), Juna decided to have a Guild party. I agreed that a party was what everyone needed, and Juna immediately began scribbling on a napkin. Things between us have been the slighest bit tense since the whole “fuck off” incident for which I actually feel really bad given how supportive she’s being, but she’s been laughing at herself more and more in rehearsals for my play, for which rehearsals began the other week, so we’re not on as shaky ground.

  “No smoking weed or drinking alcohol, obviously,” she said. “I’ll tell Gary he can make cupcakes if he wants, but I’ll advise him strongly against it. And I’ll make some cookies after the dining hall empties out from dinner tonight, and we can serve bubbly cider with the stuff from last year.”

  “Sounds good,” I said.

  Juna was barefoot, in an oversized black flannel shirt and just white underwear on the bottom. She looked like a character in a movie, one who walked away from a steamy sex session without an ounce of self-consciousness.

  “I hope it won’t make it worse if Sam comes,” she said.

  “It’s okay.” I tried to keep my tone light. “Things are bad already.”

  “God.” Juna pranced about a little bit more. “You and Sam were destined to be friends. God, I can’t think of anyone else who would be your best friend.”

  Which sounds mean when I write it, but when Juna said it, it was really quite tender, in a surprising way.

  “I do have Sinclaire,” I said.

  Juna stood in front of the mirror, propped up against the dresser, and studied her bare legs, turning this way and that.

  “You do,” she said. “But, like, Sinclaire is weird and quirky in this totally charming way. With Sam, it’s more a match, because he’s more … prickly. An acquired taste. An outsider.”

  “And that’s how you see me?”

  “Well.” Juna smirked. “It’s how I DID see you. Last semester. Now you’re pretty much the darling of Quare.”

  “Thanks to Sam.”

  She didn’t deny it. “What he did was wrong,” she said, shrugging, “but are you going to stay mad forever?”

  I gaped at her. Juna, of all people, should haven been the last person to suggest forgiveness, especially for a crime as heinous as Sam’s.

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  She shook her head. “I’m not saying all should be forgotten,” she said. “And I’ve gone back and forth on this. But practicing radical forgiveness can feel pretty amazing. It gets complicated when you take into account the gender politics, of course, but I don’t know. It’s worth considering.”

  “Don’t hold your breath,” I said.

  Our cabin isn’t big enough for six people, let alone sixteen, but that was okay, because we were all right with being suffocated, and also we weren’t all in there at one time. It was a nice night out, and people flooded onto the steps and the patch of grass outside, just talking and snacking on refreshments. Juna played a tape of some classical Mexican singer as loud as it would go, and thanks to Gary’s pot brownies stored safely underneath my bed to regulate access, people began to dance to the music. Juna turned off all the lights except for the fairy one in the corner, basking everything in the dusty light, and the music really was catchy.

  I wandered over to the top of Juna’s dresser, which was filled with plates of food, and picked up something chocolate, not sure if it was something Juna had made or a second batch of brownies Gary had concocted (he’d been in and out of the kitchen all night, running in with more food—who knew he was such a good baker?). It was warm inside the cabin, so instead of looking for Juna to ask her, I bit into it. It was delicious.

  Then I started to dance with Agnes, a little bit, and when he started to rub his pelvis on mine through my blue satiny flapper dress, one of the last things I’m planning to put in the vending machine, I didn’t pull away. My brain was on a seesaw, flying up and floating down as the weight on either end shifted. I laughed loudly, and Agnes persisted with his grinding, even nuzzling his face into my neck and the top of my shoulder. I thought about kissing him.

  Agnes shouted something into my ear, but we kept on dancing, banging into the bedposts and the dressers and people and just laughing. Outside the window, people were dancing and laughing and talking just outside the cabin. All was right in the world—except with Sam. I’d still have to figure out that situation. Every time I thought of him and what Juna had said, my muscles stiffened, a little, until Agnes shifted into me at a different angle, at which point I laughed and loosened up again.

  But then I was sweaty, and I pried myself away from Agnes and pushed past people to move toward the exit of the cabin. I stumbled down the steps—coordination was suddenly difficult—and collapsed onto the little stump outside the A-frame.

  That’s when I caught sight of Sam. He must have been standing inside the cabin, directly in front of the window—my vision was off, and I couldn’t quite tell where things were—but I didn’t remember seeing him go in.

  I stood shakily and mounted the steps, with no plan other than to say hello and be a good hostess. For some reason I was feeling benevolent. Inside was hazy. People staggered all over and lounged on the floor and the beds—my bed, Juna’s bed. I convinced myself that it didn�
�t bother me that people’s dirty feet were on my clean sheets or that their greasy hair was rubbing into my cotton pillowcases. Rae and Jasmine were sitting on my bed, backs pressed up against the wall, just talking, and sure enough, Sam was standing with his face to the window, sipping from a Mason jar of coffee and sliding his bare foot over and over again on the smooth panel of wood on the floor—this piece of wood that’s an anomaly, black and shiny and not like the dusty, splintery panels that cover the rest of the cabin.

  The corners of Sam’s mouth twitched when he saw me.

  “Hi,” I said, unaware of the sound of my voice.

  “Hey,” said Sam, taking another sip of coffee.

  “Should you be drinking that this late?” I asked. “With your insomnia, I mean.”

  Why was I trying to reconcile with him? Lael, I have no idea.

  “It’s decaf.”

  “Oh.”

  I tried again. “You don’t want anything to drink?”

  “Like alcohol?”

  I nodded.

  He shook his head.

  We were silent.

  “Are you having fun?” I asked.

  “Not really. I’m not into this whole scene. You know, merrymaking. Look.” He gestured around at the chunks of tinfoil littering the floor, the empty Mason jars and bottles stationed on every available surface. I hadn’t noticed it before he pointed it out, but it gripped me, suddenly, that Juna and I were responsible for this. I’d become one of those suburban kids who throws raucous parties when their parents leave town, the kind who stays up into the wee hours of the morning shoving pizza crusts and beer bottles into garbage bags. “The detritus of revelers makes me anxious.”

  “Then why did you come?” I grabbed the wall for support.

  “I didn’t want to sit in my room alone.” This with a touch of bitterness, which he covered up by swishing the coffee around in his jar.

  “Sam,” I said. “I might be able to forgive you one day.”

  I was being so benevolent! But he just stood there, refusing to look at me and drinking his coffee. A twinge of annoyance shot through me. I was planning to forgive him; shouldn’t he be a little bit happier?

  “Of course you’ll forgive me,” he said. “Things have never been better for you. You’re Quare now.”

  “What? I’m not Quare.”

  He stared at me for a minute.

  “You don’t get it, do you?” he asked.

  “Maybe I don’t. Why don’t you enlighten me?” Now I was annoyed.

  “Flora.” He took a long, reluctant breath. “Just look around.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You’re becoming just like them.”

  I could hardly breathe. “You don’t know anything about me or what I’m doing,” I snapped. Suddenly the music stopped, and we were the only ones talking in a room that had gone dead quiet.

  Everyone was staring, so I wrenched Sam’s arm, marched him outside like he was a disobedient fourth-grader, and dragged him behind a tree. It was so dark that I could only see the faint glimmer of his eyes.

  “You listen to me,” I seethed, angrier than I’d ever been. Adrenaline surged through my limbs, and my arm shook. “Don’t you ever imply that what I’m doing is fake. Maybe you’re jealous, or whatever, that people are rallying around me now, but you had no right to create this messy situation for me.”

  Sam punched the tree. Then he recoiled in pain, bending at the knees and shaking his hand out. When he stood straight again, he was almost screaming, but in a whisper.

  “I have no excuse,” he hissed. “It’s the most fucked-up thing I’ve ever done. Jesus Christ, how many times can I apologize? I was your FRIEND, Flora. It really upset me to see you all catatonic after he left. He was a flaccid putz, but he really got under your skin, didn’t he?”

  I just nodded. I was trying not to cry, because yeah, Elijah was—and is—a flaccid putz. I get that now. But it still really hurt to think about him.

  “I think what you’re doing is great, but it kind of seems like you’re pandering to the Quares, or something,” he said. “And they’re all eating it up. I just want to make sure you’re not trading trying to please one person for trying to please all these people.”

  I gaped at him.

  “ME?” I asked. “What about YOU? You’re the one who pretends to hate it here, but in reality you’re performing for them, complaining about everything and being all neurotic.

  You’re a character, just like everyone else here is.”

  He shook his head. “But it’s not the same bullshit deepness.”

  “BULLSHIT DEEPNESS?” I screamed, no longer caring who heard. “YOU CREATED THIS WHOLE THING! I AM AN ARTIST OUT OF NECESSITY!!!”

  My head felt light, suddenly, and I felt the unmistakable urge to dance. I pulled myself away from Sam and went to find Agnes. It was easy: he was shouting something about the Mexican singer to everybody in his immediate vicinity, and I grabbed him and thrust against him as the music swelled. To be honest, this is all a little hazy, but I do remember that when I tired of that, tired of the Agnes smell seeping into my nose and Agnes pressing up into my derrière, I detached myself from his hips and went in search of Juna to tell her that we were out of bubbly cider and that someone—preferably someone who hadn’t gotten high on the brownies—should run to the dining hall and fetch some more snacks.

  Juna didn’t appear to be in the cabin, so I pushed my way down the steps—past non-Guild people swinging and dancing and shouting—and looked around. Sam was gone, but Juna wasn’t outside either, so I turned back around and returned to the cabin.

  There’s no real place to hide in there except for the tiny crawl space where Juna and I keep our folded-up suitcases. And then I saw it: outside the crawl space were our bags, flung every which way by the person who had tossed them aside to force her body into the little cellar. I dropped to my knees and inched toward the crawl space, struggling to stay focused and wobble in a straight line. I parted the legs of the people blocking the doorway, and then I opened the cellar door. And there, folded up as tight as could be, knees at her mouth, was Juna.

  “Juna?” I shouted, competing with the music. The words were like marshmallow fluff oozing from my mouth. “Come out!”

  Juna’s head was shooting back and forth. I searched in the darkness for Juna’s hand, quickly feeling her pulse to make sure that she was stable, and with considerable effort I heaved her out of the crawl space. Juna sank against the wall of the cabin, her eyes tightly closed, head grazing the wall where it sloped down low.

  “What’s wrong?” I managed, putting my mouth right next to Juna’s ear so that I could be heard without having to shout.

  Juna was quiet for a minute, and then she screamed, “I ATE THE BROWNIE!”

  Then she began to hyperventilate, choking and coughing and sucking in air like a vacuum cleaner. But then she fell still. “I’m not even that far gone,” she said, suddenly calm. “I just feel so light, like I’m going to pass out.” I thought about calling someone else over to address the situation, but then I realized that I was as capable of handling it as anybody else.

  “It’s okay!” I shouted at her. “It can be fun!”

  “NO!” Juna screamed, doing a shimmying motion on the floor, legs splayed, flopping open like two big flounders. “I … DON’T … DO … THIS!!!!!”

  She was so distraught that I didn’t know what to do. I leaned in and hugged her, thinking that maybe the pressure of my body on hers would be calming. Her body was firm, stable. She wore a black crop top and high-waisted black pants, her Marxist party outfit evidently. A strip of her flat stomach was visible between the top, which really covered only her breasts and some of her ribs, and the pants, and her eye makeup was smudged with sweat and tears. She was earnest. She was a good roommate. She was so intentional that I leaned in and kissed her lightly on the mouth.

  That’s right. I kissed JUNA! My roommate! A girl (woman?)! I mean, whom the fuck am I
even ATTRACTED to?

  But I was even more surprised when Juna, despite her disheveled state, kissed back.

  We kissed for a while, making out sitting against the cabin wall. Juna’s lips were soft, her hand light on my thigh. She pulled my hair, slightly, which felt oddly nice. It wasn’t like kissing Elijah—it was better. Juna didn’t cup my face in her hands like he did, and she smelled different too, but it was kind of fun, her breath in my face and her little tongue darting in and out. And I felt a different, more interesting stirring, my body warmer and kind of softer around the edges. I didn’t want to stop.

  Oh my God. I guess I’m queer, or whatever. Is it normal to have these random surges of attraction to other girls?? God almighty. My freaking LIFE right now.

  Finally Juna pulled away.

  “Bed,” she croaked.

  I jumped to attention, glad for a task, and cleared her bed of people, who got up haltingly, resentfully. Then I heaved Juna up, deposited her into the bed, and tucked her in.

  “Party’s over!” I shouted, shutting off the record, and people began to swarm out, mumbling that they still wanted to dance. Juna was a deflated mound on her bed. But my own bed was stripped naked. Someone, I realized, must have taken my blanket outside. I let out a huge sigh and headed out to find it, probably caked with dirt. The scene had emptied out, but there, sitting on the stump, was Sam. I stopped short when I saw him.

  At this point, my head was pounding and my body felt like syrup.

  “Sam,” I said.

  He turned to look up at me.

  “Flora?” he asked.

  “Do you have my blanket?” I worked to keep warmth out of my voice.

  He looked around in confusion for a second.

  “Oh,” he said. “I think I’m sitting on it.”

  He lifted my blanket out from under him. I accepted it and wrapped it around my shoulders, suddenly cold.

  “The vending machine looks cool from this angle,” he said.

  I followed his gaze. The machine DID look pretty cool, all lit up and glowing and thrumming in the middle of the night.

  “The shoes,” he said. “You’re selling them.”