Those Girls

by Lauren Saft

  But I kept my eye on the prize. This prom wasn’t just a dance: it was a mission. I pictured myself in a James Bond montage, carefully zipping my red dress, clasping my bracelets just so, and strategically placing the pills in my bra. I fixed my hair in a slick low bun, in a way that made me look severe and dangerous. If I’d had a gun, I’d have strapped it to the inside of my garter. If I’d had a garter, which I sincerely wished I did. I stood in front of the mirror and slid my red nails over my red dress and felt hot and tight and not fat or anxious, for the first time maybe in my life. I felt sexy and powerful—like I’d want to fuck me if I were Sam.

  I heard that Stephanie Black had asked Sam to the prom at the last minute. What a whore. She hated me, because she was the hot senior and she and Sam dated in eighth grade. She always flirted with him and gave me dirty looks but kissed my ass while we were dating. I wondered if they’d been fucking behind my back, too. My stomach twisted again, but I was determined to stay focused and ardent. I was not going to fall apart at this prom. I started out on top, and I was going to come out on top, too, goddamn it. I had Alex and Jesus on my side.

  The pre-party was at my house and awkward as all hell. Alex and Josh came first. She looked awesome, and thin, like she hadn’t eaten in weeks, either. Bitch. Her dress was really simple, long, black, strapless, typical neutral, don’t-look-at-me Alex, but with a new feminine, sexier kick. I could tell she thought she looked good, even though she told me she felt like an obese Morticia Addams when I told her she looked hot. It was like she went out of her way to make you forget or talk you out of how pretty she really is. Josh handed me a corsage. I smiled and put the box in the kitchen. A corsage. Seriously? Sam would have known better.

  Fernando came shortly after her, looking cute and Latin, and then our B-list friends. I wondered why he hadn’t picked Alex up. He handed her white lilies, and I wondered if that was a lucky guess or if he really knew her well enough to know that she had a thing with white flowers. They kissed, and he stood with his arm around her. She looked uncomfortable having it there, but they looked cute together. Drew showed up next, looking nice, but like he was wearing his dad’s tux.

  Veronica, of course, was the last to arrive. I wasn’t sure she even would at all, but the limo was on her credit card, and if she decided not to share a limo with us, she would have had to tell Drew why, so bully for her for throwing herself willingly into the lion’s den. And I guess she knew what time to show up, because no one had taken her off the e-mail chain. She rolled up busting out of some corseted animal-print hooker nonsense. It was probably expensive, but with her South Philly fucking updo and tits hanging out, she looked like she could have been working Las Vegas Boulevard, per usual.

  She gave me a hug and told me she loved my dress. I accepted the hug with limp arms, gave her a toothless smile, and walked away. We hadn’t spoken since I found out. Not a word. Just dirty looks in the hallway. I even asked Nikki Clayman to switch lab partners with me. I knew Veronica knew I knew, and I couldn’t believe she hadn’t at least tried to apologize. I would have told her to go fuck herself, but she could have tried.

  The moms were all running around taking pictures. All the girls, all the boys. Alex and Drew, me and Josh, Alex and Fernando, Fernando and Drew and Josh, Drew and Veronica, other rando girls and their rando dates in various combinations, and so on and so on. I wanted to rip my teeth out. I heaved at the thought of Sam posing with Stephanie, at the thought of her college dorm room next year plastered with pictures of him holding her and smiling with her like she’d been the one sucking his smelly balls for the last two years.

  The limo was comically quiet. We just passed around the bottles of vodka and champagne and took long, self-loathing chugs. Fernando held Alex’s hand and Drew put his arm around Veronica, who attempted to make jokes about getting wasted and occasionally did a little tit shake to whatever Kesha song was playing on the radio. Josh gave up trying to talk to me or make me laugh after the pre-party, which I appreciated. He just leaned to his left and talked to Drew about video games or rap music or something. Clearly, I wasn’t listening. I didn’t care.

  Alex and I exchanged one more conspiratorial glance before we exited the limo. We walked into the hotel and the chaperones were all lined up to shake our hands and smell our breath for alcohol. Morons.

  “Hello, Mollie,” Mr. Boardman said, shaking my hand with his clammy paw. “And who is your escort this evening?”

  “This is Josh Holbrook of the Crawford School for Boys,” I said, pulse ticking like a time bomb.

  “Pleasure to meet you, sir,” Josh said.

  “Are you perchance related to Miss Alexandra Holbrook?” Mr. Boardman asked. I wanted to die. He now knew I couldn’t get a real prom date, fucking perfect.

  I pretended like I hadn’t heard him and yanked Josh’s arm onward.

  We made our way through the hotel lobby, which was mauve and corporate and filled with dusty pink flowers, into the elevator, and up to the ballroom. The room didn’t look half bad, hats off to the decoration committee, which I think I was technically on, despite having never been to a meeting. The theme was some sort of Japanese Garden/Orient Express something, so there were chintzy lanterns and fans and kimonos and bamboo shoots strewn about the room. The tablecloths were red, and the centerpieces were fake orchids with fake dragonflies swarming them. Cute. Cheap, but cute. Kinda like Veronica.

  The DJ was already playing, and people were on the dance floor. It’s always strange to see your classmates, who you’re used to seeing in kilts and ratty sweaters, all dressed up. Some of the girls really looked surprisingly beautiful, and some I just wanted to tell to go home, put on sweatpants, and get back to playing field hockey.

  I spotted Sam sitting next to Steph. I could see from across the room that he was already drunk. I wondered if he’d try to talk to me, if I’d try to talk to him. If he’d be sweet, ask me to dance, and apologize or if he’d be an asshole, totally ignore me, and be all over Steph the whole night. You never knew with Sam; it could always go either way.

  We sat down at a table, and everyone threw in their two cents about the decor or someone’s dress or who was here with whom or how dense the teachers must be to think that no one was drinking. Alex and Fernando were getting psyched to meet the ginger hobbit twins and set up with the band.

  Veronica and Drew were close-talking, and I needed her to get up so I could slip the pill in her punch, which she’d already spiked with vodka. Perfect.

  Good old Alex asked Drew if he’d help with the equipment. Obviously, he obliged. Obviously, Veronica said she’d help, too, because obviously she wasn’t going to be left alone at the table with me. I told Josh to go with them.

  And that was it. It was time.

  I stared at her glass of punch and wondered if maybe this was a stupid idea. If maybe she could really get sick from these drugs or if she could somehow end up in the hospital and it could all end up being traced back to me. If maybe I should try to talk to her first, see what she could possibly have to say in her own defense. If I could really do this to someone, really physically hurt someone, even though she really emotionally hurt me. Maybe it wasn’t the same. Maybe this was going too far.…

  The night I lost my virginity, I ran right over to Veronica’s afterward. We ate cookies and drank champagne, and I told her that I felt different. That I felt this raw little pinch inside me, and I asked her if that would always be there now. She said it would go away, and that she was really proud of me and excited for me. She asked if it hurt, and I told her that it did. She said her first time didn’t hurt at all, that she felt like there was something wrong with her, because she barely felt anything. I told her she was lucky. That was the thing about her, that she didn’t feel anything—nothing ever affected her, she maintained an even keel all the time. No matter what was going on around her, her parents, boys, rumors, trouble, whatever. She never got mad and she never got depressed or hurt. Never got down on herself. She didn’t care what
people thought or said. She was made fun of, rejected constantly, but it didn’t matter. She still walked around like she was the shit, and I’m pretty sure she genuinely believed that she was… thus actually making it sort of true. How did she pull that off? How could a person and her entire sense of self-esteem be completely isolated like that? I was like a ripe peach, eternally bruised by a stiff breeze. It wasn’t fair, and it was frustrating, but it was impressive. And made me sort of understand how the Sam thing could have happened—because she just didn’t think. She just didn’t understand how something like that could affect someone else because she was never affected by anything. It didn’t excuse it, but it somehow made me take it slightly less personally. It wasn’t a move to hurt me, like the move I was about to make. Maybe this wasn’t an eye for an eye, maybe I was taking this too far.…

  I looked over at Sam. He was ripping leaves off the centerpieces and throwing them at people at his table. He grabbed Steph and spun her around, and I watched as the two of them giggled and convulsed. And then he kissed her. A wet, sloppy one. Just for a minute. No tongue. He may as well have punched me in the throat.

  Fuck him.

  And fuck Veronica.

  I reached into my cleavage and pulled out the small sack of pills. I slid Veronica’s plastic punch cup toward me and dropped in one pill. It fizzed and bubbled and disintegrated immediately. I stirred it with my finger. I pushed the glass back toward her seat and made sure to put it right next to her purse so that there was no confusion as to which drink was hers.

  VERONICA COLLINS

  I found myself wishing Mollie would just be mean to me. Not that she was being nice, but a dig, an insult, or a punch in the face would have at least showed me that she still felt something toward me, even if it was anger. I could work with anger—anger meant she still cared. When we were friends, she was mean and I couldn’t stand it. I resented her, was hurt by her stupid comments, and fucked her boyfriend to show her that she could make as many backhanded remarks as she wanted and she still had nothing on me. But now that she wasn’t speaking to me, I ached for a snide comment about my hair, a loaded question about who made my shoes, how much they cost, or if I knew that some D-list celebrity had been put on a worst-dressed list for wearing them. Anything of this nature would have let me know that she was still Mollie, I was still Veronica, and there was still something between us. But nothing. Her wilted hug and you look pretty was like a poisoned arrow through my chest.

  I think I thought that going to the prom with them would somehow jolt us back into being us again. Even though we weren’t talking right now, it was the PROM, and this was bigger and more important than any little squabble we’d had, and we’d all know that and things would snap back into perspective. Also, not going to the prom with them would have required me to tell Drew why we weren’t going to the prom with our best friends, and I wasn’t ready to do that yet. I needed to smooth things over with the girls (and also get a little distance behind the whole dad dying thing) before I could let Drew go. Because then I’d really be all alone. Even though being with Drew like this, under this web of lies, made me feel lonelier than I’d ever felt in a lifetime of feeling alone.

  The hotel looked amazing. The whole thing was set up like a Japanese tea garden. Cute little Asian stuff everywhere. I hoped Harwin was classy enough to spring for sushi. I couldn’t believe this was actually our prom. We’d actually made it. We’d been looking forward to it for so long. And it could have been so beautiful.

  As soon as Drew got up to help Alex and Fernando with the band stuff, I followed, because there was no way I’d be left sitting at that table alone with Mollie. I did want to talk to her, but not there, not then, not like that, and not while she looked so intense with her devil eyes in her scary red dress. We went back through some secret service hallway behind where the stage was set up, which I thought was pretty badass. In all the hotels I’d been to, I never knew hotels had secret passageways like that. There were laundry bins and kitchen supplies and millions of housekeeping carts filled with soap and shower caps and all sorts of fun hotel stuff. We got to a loading dock. The twins stood there by the van straightening each other’s ties.

  “You’re all too late. Everything is done.”

  “Fuck,” Alex said. “I’m sorry. I’m a shitty bandmate.”

  “We set up everything this afternoon while you were busy primping. You look very pretty, by the way,” Ned said, to her, I presumed.

  She blushed. “I’m going to throw up, I’m so nervous,” she said.

  “Oh, stop,” Drew chimed in, patting her back. “You’re practically a pro now.”

  I smiled and took Drew’s arm, not sure why I was there or what I was supposed to do to help, but trying not to look as awkwardly useless as I felt.

  “Veronica, you look hot, too.”

  I smiled and said thanks.

  “Nando, I got the guitar, just grab the set list and I think we’re good to go,” Pete said. I think it was Pete, the taller one who talked less.

  “Can I help?” Drew asked, cracking his knuckles, trying, it seemed, to act cool in front of these guys.

  “We’re all good, bro, gonna have a quick band meeting before we go in,” Fernando said, patting him on the shoulder. “See you out there.”

  I held the crux of Drew’s elbow as we made our way back through the service hallway to the lobby.

  “God, it’s cool back here,” I said. “Who knew hotels had all these secret back hallways and rooms and stuff?”

  “I know. We should steal bellhop and maid uniforms and sneak into someone’s room, pretend we’re Russian spies, and take pictures with our tiny pen-phones.” He squeezed my arm into his side.

  “I was thinking more we’d just sneak back here and fuck later.”

  He laughed, a throaty laugh, and said, “That works, too.”

  Drew and I hadn’t had sex since his dad died. I was hoping tonight would be just the fun, fancy occasion to snap him back into the mood, snap everything back, really. Mollie was still sitting at the table by herself, prodding her cell phone, when we got back.

  Drew and I sat down, and he asked her what we missed; without looking up from her phone, she said, “Drunk seniors being assholes.”

  “Wanna dance, baby?” I asked Drew.

  “I don’t think I’m drunk enough,” he said.

  The band came out and introduced themselves. Everyone cheered. It was still strange seeing Alex up there with a mic in her hand. So poised, so comfortable, so much older than she was standing on the ground next to me. God, what I wouldn’t give to have a voice like hers and to be able to get up in front of all these people and make them love me for it. Love me for actually being good at something, something special, something particularly mine, and not just something anyone could be good at, like throwing parties or having big boobs.

  Maybe one day someone would, though. In all the time I’d spent being alone and trying to distract myself from the fact that I was alone, I realized that I wasn’t such bad company. That I did just fine entertaining myself, and one day, maybe there’d be someone who’d find me entertaining, too. And as hard as I tried to make it true, that person just didn’t seem to be Drew.

  He sat next to me, with his hand on my thigh, staring at Alex onstage, and I just wanted to tell him that it was fine. He didn’t have to keep his hand on me, that he could let go and I’d be fine. Drew and I were never really supposed to be together, I could feel it. It was a nice thought that someone like him would be into someone like me, whatever someone like me even meant anymore, because I felt that definition rapidly changing. Whatever it was, I knew it had to be a more important factor in deciding who I dated than it had been. I’d been so caught up in making sure that he was into me that I forgot to think about whether I was even into him, or if that was even something I was allowed to consider. I’d tried so hard to make it work with him, but it was never really about me or about him, it was just about being with someone, noticed, loved by som
eone—anyone. And he had noticed me, and stuck around, and that was something, right? It just wasn’t everything. Clearly.

  That distance that I thought I could fill with sex, with watching his movies and listening to his music, and just being next to him, was never going to go away. He was never going to look at me the way he looked at Alex, and I was never going to care as much as I knew I was supposed to. I looked at Mollie seething across the table, her face tight and skin on fire, and I just wanted to reach out and hug her and tell her that I was sorry, and that I was wrong. About everything.

  I accidentally made eye contact with Sam, who winked at me. I quickly turned away, nudged Drew, and poured some vodka from my flask into his punch. He gave me a wink and hooted and hollered for the band. I poured some more into my own, too, and gulped it down. I knew I had to get drunker faster if there was any hope of me having any fun at all at this prom.

  Alex started singing the song I liked, the one about not always being able to get what you want.

  And that’s the last thing I remember.

  MOLLIE FINN

  I watched her guzzle the punch. I couldn’t believe we’d—I’d—really done this. Up until that exact moment, I’d maybe thought we were half-joking. I started to get that I-know-I-just-did-something-really-wrong-I’m-fucked-if-I-get-caught pressure in my chest.