Girls on Fire

by Robin Wasserman

  She’d unplugged my phone and was monitoring the ones downstairs.

  “No, Hannah can’t come to the phone,” I heard her say that Saturday morning. “Please stop calling.”

  Lacey, I knew, would never stop calling.

  Maybe this was it, the catalyst we needed to escape. Maybe I could finally shake off my suburban shackles, fuck high school and college and my permanent record, climb into Lacey’s Buick, slam my fist on the dashboard, and grant the permission I’d withheld for so long, say Go west, young man, and chart a course to freedom.

  When I packed for school that Monday, I slipped my escape fund, all $237 of it, into my backpack, along with my copy of Stranger in a Strange Land and the first mix Lacey had made me, the one with HOW TO BE DEX scribbled across it in permanent marker—all the essentials, just in case. I waited for her in the parking lot, desperate for proof that she existed, and as I waited, I composed revenge plans in my head, a gift for Lacey, because before we escaped we’d need to avenge ourselves against the enemy. We would sneak through Nikki’s window and shave her head; we would slit the seams of her prom dress, just enough that the gown would dissolve as they placed the crown on her perfectly coiffed head; we would frame her for cheating; we would find someone to break her heart.

  They were lame schemes, cribbed from Sweet Valley High books and half-remembered teen movies, but evidence of my will. Lacey would supply the way.

  Except that when Lacey finally showed up—not a half hour early, as I had, bouncing with eagerness and certain she was feeling the same way, but twenty minutes after the start of homeroom—and I cornered her in the parking lot, she didn’t want to hear about my revenge schemes, and she wasn’t full of sympathy for my weekend of torment. She didn’t, in fact, seem particularly concerned about my problems at all.

  “How worried do I have to be?” she said. “Is your mother the kind who’s going to call mine?”

  “Depends whether she thinks it’ll torture me or not.”

  “Fuck, this is serious, Dex. You have to ask her if she’s planning to tell. Get her not to.”

  “That’s going to be hard when I’m not speaking to her.”

  “So fucking speak to her. What is wrong with you?”

  “I don’t know, Lacey, maybe being a prisoner in my own home has driven me crazy? Maybe it’s been a little difficult, having my own mother look at me like I’m some criminal who’s going to shiv her in the night? Maybe I’m a little worried that she’s forbidden me from seeing my best friend, and I thought my best friend might be a little worried about that, too.”

  “You’re seeing me right now.” She sounded distracted, as if there could be anything more important to think about.

  “How are you not getting this?”

  “How are you not getting it, Dex? I can’t have the Bastard finding out about this. I can’t.”

  “Oh, but it’s totally fine when I get caught?”

  “That’s not what I meant. But, okay, yeah. You seem pretty fine to me.”

  “Oh, I’m awesome, Lacey. Everything is fantastic.”

  “You don’t get it—”

  “I get that it’s okay for me to get in trouble as long as you don’t get in trouble. Even though this whole fucking thing was your idea.”

  “Can you for one millisecond entertain the hypothesis that not everything is about you, Dex?”

  I heard myself spit out the world’s ugliest laugh. “Tell me you’re fucking kidding me.”

  She didn’t say anything. I willed her to. Say something; say anything. Fix this.

  “Well?” I said. “Really? Nothing?”

  “Please ask your mother not to tell mine.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  SCHOOL HURT WITHOUT LACEY THERE, even more because she was there, just no longer mine.

  I was the angry one. I was the righteous one. I was the one avoiding her in the halls and getting on the bus after school instead of waiting for her car. So why did it feel like she’d abandoned me?

  Temporary, I told myself. She would apologize, I would forgive, all would be the same. But when I saw Nikki, I couldn’t say anything. It felt different, not having Lacey at my back. All the things I wanted to say, all the fuck you, how dare you, what gives you the right curdled in my throat, and I knew how they would come out if I tried.

  You won.

  I DID SPEAK TO MY MOTHER that week, just once, just to ask her not to tell Lacey’s parents what she suspected. Because there was no evidence Lacey had done anything, I reminded her, and being my mother only gave her the right to ruin my life.

  I didn’t speak to Lacey.

  I didn’t call anyone, for that matter; I didn’t go anywhere. I came straight home after school and watched TV until it was time for bed. Life grounded was a lot like life before Lacey, and it terrified me.

  “Like old times, right?” my father said, during a commercial, while we waited to see which inbred family would win their feud. And my face must have revealed what I thought of that, because he added, “I know. I miss her, too.”

  This did not help.

  What did: Friday afternoon the phone rang, and after he answered it, he handed it to me. My mother was down at the Y, tapping into her inner artist at a pottery class—and the customary liquor-fueled wallow that followed—that would reliably keep her occupied through midnight. We were alone in the house. No one to stop him from breaking her rules; no one to stop me from saying, cautiously, hello, and finally breathing again when I heard her voice.

  “I’m sorry.”

  I wanted to wait for her to say it first, but I was too puppy dog eager, and so we chimed together, overlapping, desperate, both of us so, so sorry, both of us so quick to dismiss and fast-forward, whatever, it was nothing, ancient history, stupid, inessential, inconsequential to the epic and never-ending story of us.

  “I have it, Dex,” she finally said. “The perfect revenge.”

  “Nikki?”

  “Of course, Nikki. You think we let her do this to you and get away with it?”

  “So, what’s this perfect plan?”

  “Not now. Tonight. You heard about the foreclosure party, right?”

  Everyone had heard about the foreclosure party. An abandoned house at the edge of a half-built development, guaranteed empty, out of the way, and equipped with ample bedrooms. Nikki’s father worked at the villainous bank, and every month or two she managed to snag an address and a key. Lacey and I were supposed to be above such things.

  “I’m grounded,” I told her, even as my father mouthed, It’s okay, and nodded.

  “Sneak out. I promise, it’ll be worth it.”

  It’s not that I didn’t want to see her. I didn’t know what it was. “Lacey—”

  “Pick you up at nine.” She hung up before I could answer.

  “I don’t want to know where you’re going,” my father said. The dial tone was still droning in my ear. “Plausible deniability. Just be back before your mother.”

  So I was going to a party.

  By nine P.M., I had laced myself into the black corset, which I hadn’t worn since the night of the Beast. Lacey said it made me into a warrior, ready for battle. It did; I was. She didn’t show. I sat on the porch steps, waiting, lipstick congealing, hair wilting in the humidity, time ticking, heart beating, cars passing and never stopping, none of them her. I’d poured some of my parents’ scotch into a water bottle—our own private pre-party, or that was the plan.

  I drank most of it myself.

  Nine, nine thirty, ten—no Lacey. No answer at her house when I called. No fucking way I was going back inside, changing into pajamas, explaining to my father why I’d chosen rules over rebellion, staring at the ceiling, wondering why Lacey had flaked. The party was only a couple miles away, and I had a bike.

  BECAUSE I WAS ANGRY. BECAUSE I was tired. Because I was sick of being the tagalong, the one things were decided for. Because I had something to prove. Because I was curious. B
ecause I looked hot, and I knew it. Because I’d seen enough movies where the mousy girl goes to a party and changes her life. Because I hated Nikki and thought if I drank enough beer maybe I’d be able to buzz up the courage to spit in her face. Because Lacey would hate it, or maybe she would love it, or maybe I should stop fucking caring one way or another what Lacey would think. Because I was embarrassed, and sad, and that made me angry all over again, and the rage felt good against the pedals, pumping through the dark, toward a strobing shadow, toward what felt that night, with the wind in my ears and my parents’ ancient scotch burning in my throat, like destiny. Because anything, because who knows, because it wasn’t a night or a week or a year for because, no why, only who what when where:

  Me.

  A mistake.

  After I should have known better.

  Here. The husk of a McMansion, bodies moving across windows lit by the flicker of candlelight. On the grandiose porch, two guys in low-slung jeans taking a final slug of beer before going inside.

  “Yo, let’s get stupid.”

  “You damn right, son.”

  “You know it, son.”

  It was the thing, that year, for the whitest of boys to talk like they weren’t, to sling awkward slang and let their pants sag like the rappers they saw on TV, and they were going where I was going, and that could have been my cue to get back on my bike and ride home, but instead I took the water bottle out of my bag and finished the scotch. I was a delinquent, I reminded myself. The cops were after me. I was grounded and sneaking out—albeit with paternal permission. I was dangerous.

  The more I drank, the easier this was to believe.

  It would have been the nicest house I had ever been in if it hadn’t been so clearly left behind. Left in a hurry, it looked like, couches and tables and rugs all in place, which, despite the mass of bodies gyrating to bad music on stained carpet, gave the house a whiff of Pompeii. Someone lived here, once, and fled in a hurry, set down breakfast spoon and morning paper, ran out the door and didn’t stop until far enough away to be safe from the thing that was coming. The bad thing.

  Nikki Drummond was waiting in the foyer as if she were the grand dame of the estate. “Seriously? Hannah Dexter? Gracing us with her presence.”

  “Seriously. Present.”

  “I figured you’d be shipped off to a military academy by now. Or at least grounded.”

  I wasn’t yet drunk enough to spit on her, so I shifted my attention to the jock drooling beside her, Marco Speck, who’d been Craig’s shadow and was apparently now looking to be his replacement. “I think you should watch out,” I said. “The last guy had to put a bullet in his head to get away from her.”

  Marco looked at me like I’d just sucker punched her. “Jesus, Dexter. That was cold.”

  I felt cold.

  Nikki only smiled and handed me a shot, which I tipped back without hesitation, thinking maybe it was enough and we were even. Then she pushed Marco at me, saying we deserved each other, and if I wanted to embarrass myself she wasn’t going to stop me. When he said he barely recognized me in those boobs, and also dude, whoa, I let one hand play at my cleavage and the other wrap itself in his, because Nikki was watching. Maybe Lacey would have said, Don’t be one of them, but then again she’d also said What’s the big deal and What are you waiting for and Don’t be so fucking precious about fucking, and anyway she wasn’t there. The shot tasted like lemon and sugar and fire. Marco tasted like peanuts. His breath in my ear was like the wind on my bike, like coasting downhill in a whoosh of summer. Like letting it happen. Broken glass crunched beneath our feet, everything gritty and sticky and layered with filth, and it smelled like sex to me, sex as I imagined it, smoke and dried beer and rotting fruit. There was music pounding, hard-core rap; there was a crush of strangers doing the things strangers did in the dark. Marco sucked my neck. Marco’s hands were in my hands, and then in my pants, Marco was grinding against me, chest to chest, groin to groin, what passed for dancing, and I could feel him hard against me and almost believed I could do this on my own, without Lacey, I could be what the night demanded, push myself into its live and beating heart.

  What the fuck are you doing?

  I thought I heard her voice in my head, and I answered out loud, “Shut up.”

  “Not a chance.” That wasn’t my head. That was Lacey, really her, standing behind me, hands on my waist, pulling me away from Marco and his hot sweat, pushing me through the bodies, up the stairs, into a child’s bedroom, a sad parade of zoo animals peeling off its wall.

  “What the fuck, Dex?”

  She wasn’t dressed for a party. White wifebeater and gym shorts, she wasn’t dressed for anything. No makeup. No boots. That was the weirdest part. Lacey in sneakers.

  “I didn’t even know you owned sneakers,” I said.

  “Are you drunk?”

  “Started without you.” Then I was hugging her, hugging her and saying how much she sucked for flaking out on me, but now she was here, and sneakers or not, everybody dance now—I sang it, took her wrists in my hands and waved her arms in the air.

  She shook me. “Sober up, Dex. What the hell were you thinking?”

  “You love me drunk.”

  “When you drink with me. When I can watch you.”

  “You’re late,” I said, and we shook each other off. “And in the wrong place.”

  “And you’re sticking your tongue in Marco Speck. We’re both having off nights.”

  “Lacey. Laaaaaaaaaaacey. Lighten up. It’s a party.”

  “I have to fucking talk to you.”

  “Right. Revenge,” I said, open for business. “Vengeance. Monte Cristo–style. Bring it on. What’ve you got?”

  “What?”

  “Nikki Drummond. You said you had the perfect plan. So, go on. Make this worth it.”

  “Because you’ve got better places to be? Like in Marco Speck’s pants? Like I’d let that happen.”

  I would have gone back down to the party then, maybe not to fuck Marco Speck but at least to make a good effort, if she hadn’t stepped in front of the door.

  “Fine,” she said. “You want revenge? Here’s the plan. We burn the fucking house down. Right now.” She pulled out a lighter. I didn’t know why she would have a lighter, or why she was lighting it, taking one of the kids’ pillows and setting it on fire, both of us staring, mesmerized, at the flames.

  “Jesus Christ!” I knocked it out of her hands, stomped on the fire, hard, desperate, stop, drop, and roll spinning through my head, and all those panicked nights I’d spent in fourth grade after Jamie Fulton’s house burned down and the school sent home a checklist of clothes the family needed in the aftermath, including girls’ underpants, size small. If my house burned down and my clothes turned to ash and the other kids in school had it confirmed in black-and-white that I required their spare girls’ underpants, size small . . . better to die in a fire, I’d thought.

  The flames went out. Docs were good for stomping.

  “Are you trying to kill us?”

  “The house burns down and what do you think will happen? Nikki’s party, Nikki’s fault, and everyone will know it,” Lacey said, something wild on her face, like she would have actually done it, like she would still do it, if only I said yes. “It’d be all over for her. And think of the fire, Dex. Flames in the night. Magic.”

  “Since when did you turn into a fucking pyro?”

  “That’s the plan, Dex. In or out?”

  “Either you’ve gone truly insane, or you think this is all a big joke, and either way, fuck you.” I snatched the lighter out of her hands. “This stays with me.”

  There was a feeble laugh. “I wasn’t actually going to do it. Jesus, Dex, learn to take a joke.”

  I believed her; I didn’t believe her. I was tired of trying to figure it out.

  “Just making sure there’s still a little Hannah in my Dex,” she said. “Where would I be without that little voice telling me, No, don’t do that, Lacey, that�
��s dangerous?” It was the sorry, pinched way she said it, like a bank teller rejecting a loan.

  “I’m not your fucking conscience.”

  She must have seen it then, how angry I was, how drunk and how done. “Come on, Dex. Come on, it was a joke, I’m sorry. Look, this was a mistake. This party. This week. Everything. Let’s erase it. Start again. For real this time. Burn our lives to the ground—” She held up a hand to silence me before I could object. “Metaphorically. Let’s really do it this time, Dex. Get away. Go west, like we planned.”

  “Now?”

  “Why not now?”

  “I’m grounded,” I reminded her.

  “Exactly. You’ll be grounded for life when your mother figures out you were here. Fuck her. Fuck all of them. Let’s go, Dex. I mean it.”

  “Tonight.”

  “This minute. Please.”

  For a heartbeat, I believed her, and I thought about it. To jump into the Buick, aim ourselves at the horizon. To begin again. Could I be the girl who dropped everything and walked away? Could I be Dex, finally, forever?

  Could I be free?

  One heartbeat, and then in the thump of the next, I hated her for making me believe it could happen, because what could this be but another test, some wild dare I was supposed to shoot down, because—hadn’t she just said it?—that was my job, the wet blanket on her fire.

  “Enough bullshit,” I said. “I’m going back to the party.”

  She shook her head, hard. “No. Dex. We have to go.”

  “If you want speed off into the sunset, you do it, Lacey. I’m not going to stop you. I’m going to have another drink. I’m going to have fun.”

  “You don’t have to decide about leaving for good, not in the next thirty seconds, I’m sorry, that was crazy.” She took my wrist, squeezed hard. “But at least let’s get out of here. Please.”