I stared in the water, hoping for a reflection.
I saw nothing. But I knew exactly what I looked like: a little girl playing dress-up. Like I’d never outgrown my pageant days, after all.
Tyler’s arms curved around my middle and pulled me upright. I tried to pry them off. “I need to find Mandarin!” I meant to sound forceful, but my voice cracked.
“Calm down. We’ll go find her, all right? In just a minute.” He yanked me closer and pressed his body against mine, bunching my dress around my hips. I dropped my arms to cover my underwear, but he caught them and didn’t let go.
Grab, kiss, pull away. An endless cycle. I’d never even kissed a boy before—and now this? This wasn’t romance. This wasn’t what it was supposed to be like.
And yet Mandarin did this and more, all the time, over and over again. While already I felt like I’d been there forever, numb-faced and slobbered on, in the dark places of the Tombs.
Maybe this was my purgatory.
“No!” I shouted. I wedged my arm between our chests and pushed Tyler as hard as I could. He slammed into the ground. I hesitated, amazed by my own strength. That gave him time to jump up again, like someone had jabbed a rewind button.
“You little bitch,” he snarled, lunging for me.
I hit the ground without any awareness of my fall. My vision shifted, then righted again. I tried to scream, but Tyler cut it short by collapsing on top of me. Now I was choking on sobs, and his hands were everywhere. Beyond him, the stunted trees seemed to shudder and twist.
Then I heard a crack somewhere just outside my closed eyes. Tyler rolled off me, cursing furiously.
I peeled my eyes open.
Mandarin was crouched on a ledge above us, her face contorted with rage, one arm slung back to hurl another rock. When it slammed into Tyler’s shoulder, I scrambled away on my hands and knees. From the edge of the river, I watched dazedly as Mandarin savaged him with stones, slamming them into his neck, his back, his forehead. She had great aim. I shouldn’t have been surprised. Tyler tried to shield his face, but I saw blood leaking between his fingers.
“For fuck’s sake, knock it off, you crazy bitch!”
“Then get the fuck out of here, you creep!” she screamed. “You fucking maniac. You know how old she is? Barely fourteen years old. You’re fucking sick!”
Fourteen?
Tyler took advantage of the pause in her attack to hop to his feet. “You’re insane! What the hell’s wrong with you? Why’d you tell me to bring her out here in the first place?”
Why’d you tell me …
It took a moment for me to understand. I looked up at Mandarin still crouched on the ledge. Her eyes caught mine, then darted away. Just like mine had earlier, in the parking lot of the Benton High auditorium, when she’d feigned leaving town for real and I’d been found out.
“Just … get the hell out of here,” she ordered Tyler, the fury draining from her voice. “Or I’ll tell everyone at school you’re a fucking rapist.”
With his arms still wrapped around his head, Tyler turned and lurched off toward his truck. He flung open the door and dived into the front seat. The tires scraped over the gravel as he backed into the road, then took off in the direction of the party.
Mandarin came over and stood a few feet from me. Her knee was freshly skinned, probably from climbing down the boulder. I stared at her knee instead of her face.
“Gracey …,” she began.
“Take me home,” I told her knee.
I sat in the passenger seat of Mandarin’s truck, leaning as far from her as possible. She was driving much more slowly than usual, but I didn’t comment. Washokey passed outside my window, the same stores, the same dreary, monotonous houses. When we passed Solomon’s, I closed my eyes.
When I opened them, I discovered that Mandarin had pulled to the side of the road. She’d left the truck running. I could tell she was waiting for me to speak.
Finally, she cleared her throat. “Gracey, he didn’t …”
“No,” I said.
“Thank God.” She sounded genuinely relieved. “Because I told him …”
She cleared her throat a second time. When she spoke again, her tone had changed. And she sounded—of all things—self-righteous.
“Y’know, Gracey, if you hadn’t—”
“I don’t want to hear it,” I said, interrupting her. “I heard enough. All I needed to hear was that you planned this, Mandarin!”
She took a cigarette from the pack on the dash. Instead of lighting it, she picked at it with her thumbnail, shaving off tobacco flakes. “I didn’t plan for it to go that far,” she said quietly.
“A real friend wouldn’t have planned anything at all.”
“I would never let anything happen to you. You know that.”
“Just a second ago, you weren’t sure if anything had. What were you thinking—that handing me over to some Washokey creep would make me trust you? Why couldn’t you have just explained it all to me? I didn’t need to experience it myself. You should have told me. I would have listened!”
“You wouldn’t have.”
“I would!” I kicked the dashboard, like a little kid throwing a tantrum. Mandarin’s pack of cigarettes fell to the floor.
Mandarin sighed and steered back onto the road. We drove the last few blocks to my house in silence. When she pulled into the bottom of my driveway, she turned off the engine and looked at me.
“Gracey, listen.… You’ve got to let me explain.”
I opened the passenger door and started to climb out.
“I needed you to leave with me,” she continued anyway. “I still need you. But I always felt like there was something keeping you here, some reason you couldn’t let go. And so I knew I had to show you how Washokey really is. How the people here, the guys …” With one hand, she folded the cigarette over her index finger, tearing it in half.
“I knew you needed to see for yourself.”
I shook my head. Her explanations were empty. Meaningless. Nothing but mosquito noise. Because that night, I had learned the third truth about Mandarin Ramey.
Sleeping with men she hated wasn’t ironic. It wasn’t one of her carefree fuck-yous, flipping off the people she claimed to hate. She wasn’t in control. Not her. Not really. Some deeper, damaging part of her was in charge. A part so intent on filling her empty spaces it was destroying her. And that night, it had come close to destroying me.
It was ugly and appalling. It was pathetic.
Why hadn’t I seen that before?
“Well, your plan backfired, didn’t it?” I slid all the way out and slammed the door. Then I screwed up my face and, through the open window, shouted words I thought would feel good—but in reality, they felt like knife pangs, not in her chest, but mine.
“Because you’re nothing but a goddamn selfish liar, Mandarin. And now I won’t go anywhere with you!”
Mandarin stared blankly back.
I didn’t shower, or wash my face, or even wipe the mud from my calves. I peed with the light off so I wouldn’t have to look in the mirror. I stuffed my dirty dress into the trash. Then I crawled into bed without pulling down the covers, curling up with my knees against my chest. I squinched my eyes shut.
But I couldn’t sleep.
I rolled out of bed, knelt beside my shoe box of rocks, and pried the lid open. I unfolded the paper bundle and dumped Mandarin’s arrowhead into my hand. Or rather, Mandarin’s mother’s arrowhead, regifted to me.
I went to my window. For a moment, I stood there, recalling the time I’d climbed out and let go, weeks earlier, millions and millions of years before.
And then, although I knew it was melodramatic, I hurled the arrowhead outside. I hadn’t aimed for the baby pool, but it fell right in, scarcely making a splash in the circle of murky water.
When I woke the next morning, I felt like I’d been stomped on by a giant cement jackalope. I had to unglue my mud-caked legs from the top of my comforter. The back of
my head ached and my elbows stung—probably from when Tyler had knocked me down. My brains seemed to overflow in my skull.
The worst pain, however, was the one in my chest. It throbbed with my heartbeat, blurred my eyes. It made me want to roll over and sleep forever.
But my headache drove me from bed at last. I pulled on my longest sweatpants and padded downstairs.
“Momma, do we have any aspirin?” I called blearily.
“I just want an explanation.”
My stomach sank, which made me feel even more nauseous. “What do you mean?” I asked as I rounded the corner into the kitchen, where I discovered that Momma wasn’t speaking to me at all—her words were directed at my sister.
Taffeta sat on the kitchen counter with her arms crossed, her head bowed. She scowled so ferociously she looked like a little old woman. Ghosts of the past night’s makeup still haunted her face, faint lipstick staining her mouth as if she’d been slurping a red Popsicle.
We probably look like sisters, I realized, remembering the mascara smudges circling my own eyes. But I didn’t want to think about it. Thinking hurt.
“Aspirin?” I asked again, turning to Momma.
She wore her baggy blue muumuu and had her fists on her hips, so the satin ballooned in an hourglass shape around her. Her face was makeup free, and she’d pulled back her hair in a sloppy ponytail. Her eyes were narrowed. The vein in her forehead throbbed.
Momma was at the end of her rope.
“Taffeta, how could you? After all the time and money we put into your pageants—how? After everything I’ve done for you?”
“Tylenol would be fine,” I said. “Or Excedrin.”
“The pantry,” Momma replied without looking my way.
Ducking to remain out of striking distance, I found a bottle of aspirin on the top shelf of the pantry. I tipped too many tablets into my palm. When I tried to cram them back into the bottle, several spilled through my fingers and pinged on the floor.
“All I want is an explanation.” Momma turned to me. “You won’t believe what she did!”
I was suddenly positively, absolutely certain Taffeta had sung a dirty song, just like I’d suggested during Candy Land. “What happened?”
“She didn’t sing! She got up there, and just … didn’t sing.”
I glanced at Taffeta. Her chin was wrinkled like a dried-up fruit. Tears leaked from her immense brown eyes. So she hadn’t sung. That wasn’t like taunting the judges with a dirty song, or flipping up her dress and mooning the crowd.
All of a sudden, I remembered the way she’d seemed to pick me out of the audience as I’d followed Mandarin out of the Benton High cafeteria.
I had abandoned her.
Taffeta’s throwing the pageant was all my fault.
I placed a pair of aspirin tablets in my mouth and tried to swallow. I didn’t think I could feel any worse. I should have known: no matter how bad you felt, you could always feel worse.
Momma was still ranting. “I’ve put every ounce of energy I have into your looks, your voice. Making you beautiful, making you important. You knew how hard I’d worked. Last night was a slap in the face, Taffeta, a slap in my face! This pageant was going to be it for us, the real beginning, and you ruined everything.
“How could you do that to me?”
For a moment, I didn’t know who I pitied more—Momma or Taffeta. Then Momma turned on me.
“I thought Taffeta was going to be different,” she said, “but the two of you are exactly alike. And now there’s no chance left! None!”
Without thinking, I hurled the bottle of aspirin.
It hit Momma’s chest, right in the center of a fuchsia hibiscus. The white pills ricocheted off the countertops like tiny bullets, bouncing all over the floor.
Momma gaped at me, stunned.
“Taffeta’s not a doll, Momma. She’s a real person. She may be six years old, but she’s got a mind of her own.…” I trailed off when I remembered the quarry party. How mindlessly I’d walked into Mandarin’s scheme. Who was I to talk?
“Grace Carpenter,” Momma sputtered, “I didn’t ask for your opinion!”
“Well, she needs somebody to speak up for her.” I went over to Taffeta and held out my arms. “Let’s go play Candy Land. I’ll even let you make the rules—”
“No!” Taffeta screamed.
I reeled in my arms as if she’d slapped them. She hopped off the counter and kicked the empty aspirin bottle as she ran from the room.
Momma and I stared at each other, both of us too thunder struck to speak.
School emerged like a pirate ship from a bank of storm clouds. I had no choice but to face it, even if it meant walking the plank.
I spent extra time getting ready Monday morning. I couldn’t wear one of Mandarin’s undershirts, or my jeans slung too low, because it would disregard all that had happened. But if I wore my normal clothes, everybody would suspect that my friendship with Mandarin was over. In the end, I wore my jeans at half-mast, under a simple gray T-shirt.
Fortunately, Mandarin didn’t show up to math.
She didn’t show up on Tuesday, either.
On Wednesday, Ms. Ingle asked me to stay after history. She had a new poster behind her desk: Rosie the Riveter in a red bandana, flexing her bicep. We Can Do It!
Do what? I wanted to ask.
“I hate to bring this up with you, Grace,” Ms. Ingle said. “But I don’t know who else would know. Have you any idea what’s going on with Mandarin?”
I tried to look nonchalant. “No. Why?”
“This is the third day this week Mandarin has missed history. And I had a talk with Mrs. Cleary this morning.” I pictured the two of them gossiping in the teachers’ lounge, Mrs. Cleary tapping her yellow nails on a chipped mug of coffee. “Mrs. Cleary says she hasn’t been showing up to math, either. And finals are next week.”
I stalled, rolling my palm over a wooden apple on Ms. Ingle’s desk until I realized what I was doing. I put my hands behind my back.
“I’m just concerned about her,” she said. “Mandarin’s missed some of the most critical prep sessions. And you’re the closest thing to a friend she’s got.”
How does she know?
“Small town,” Ms. Ingle explained, as if reading my mind. “Everybody knows.”
I tried to concentrate on maintaining a straight face. I wasn’t sure if I was about to burst into tears or hysterical laughter.
“Have you talked to her father?” I asked.
Ms. Ingle just looked at me.
“Never mind,” I said. “I guess it wouldn’t make any difference.”
“Then there’s the service project.” Ms. Ingle tipped her head to the side. “Is there anything you’d like to tell me?”
I thought of all the times I’d tried to initiate choosing a project with Mandarin, especially that time in her room, right before our fight. She’d always wanted to put it off. And now? There were ten days left until graduation. Without my assistance, Mandarin would never complete the project in time to graduate.
I knew I could defend her. I could lie and say she was working on something top secret, give her one last chance. In that moment, I had the ability to save her.
I closed my eyes when I spoke.
“Mandarin hasn’t even picked a service project. I don’t think she ever planned on doing one.”
The next day, Mandarin showed up to geometry. I knew she’d arrived when I sensed some subtle shift in the atmosphere, but I never turned to look. For once, Mrs. Cleary didn’t call her out for being tardy. Maybe she had some compassion after all.
At lunch, I headed for the end bathroom stall, like I had all week. No one was inside the bathroom when I knocked my English textbook to the floor. As I leaned over to pick it up, I noticed the red words scrawled along the very bottom of the stall door.
School is Horseshit.
Despite the hours I’d spent in the stall, I had forgotten about it. A person could only read the phrase from
ground level—sprawled out on the tile, or leaning over, like me. For some reason, it bothered me like it never had before. I rummaged around in my tote bag until I found a pen. I leaned forward and drew a fat black line over the first word. Then I hesitated, my hand hovering uncertainly. I wasn’t sure what to write.
Before I could make up my mind, I heard the outer door creak open.
I froze, trying my best to remain silent and motionless. I waited for the intruder to go into one of the stalls beside me.
Instead, the faucet turned on. I heard intermittent splashes and, indistinctly, a low humming. Strangely familiar.
Prince’s “Little Red Corvette.”
Every day after school that week, I’d been forced to avoid the places Mandarin and I used to frequent—which made up practically our whole town. I couldn’t grab a milk shake at the A&W or brood in the empty school yard. I didn’t go to the Sundrop Quik Stop, because it was across the street from Solomon’s. What if I passed Mandarin outside while she was on a cigarette break? The library was too close as well. And after what had happened with Tyler, I didn’t want to go to the Tombs. Maybe someday I’d be ready to return. But not yet.
All Mandarin’s fault.
If it was really her humming out there, I should fling open the door of the bathroom stall, confront her, tell her everything I was thinking.
But even after all this time, I was still too much of a coward.
At last, the faucet shut off. I heard paper towels cranking from the dispenser. Then nothing, for a moment, as the person seemed to hesitate.
I held my breath.
Then the outer door creaked open and shut. Silence. I exhaled shakily, lowering my crossed arms to my knees.
Life, I wrote above my fat black line. I stared at it, frowning.
Every moment of that endless week, I had to live with the awareness that somewhere within the confines of Washokey, Mandarin existed without me. And the return to my ordinary life without her, to the lonesome, solitary Grace I’d been stuck with for years and years, was almost debilitating.
Like Mandarin Page 19