“What do you mean if? I thought you had to stay. I thought that was like the thing.”
“Kristle’s leaving,” Taffany said.
“Leaving?” I asked. “Where’s she going?”
“She’s leaving,” she said. Her voice was firm and her eyes were sharp. “The kind of leaving where you don’t come back. She’s going—” Her voice wavered. “She’s going, like, to the place of great uncertainty. The place of final uncertainty. We all go there eventually. Even you. But I’ll be going a lot sooner. And Kristle’s going tonight.”
I didn’t quite see what she was saying.
“It’s her birthday,” Taffany said. “Twenty-one. It’s a big birthday, all right? Haven’t you ever noticed that none of us are older than twenty-one?”
It started to dawn on me.
“You mean?”
“On our twenty-first birthday, we go back to the water. We can’t help it; it’s just something we do. We’re always drawn to the water, but when we turn twenty-one it just gets to be too much. Just one little problem.”
“You can’t swim.”
“Bingo. And what happens in the ocean to girls who can’t swim?”
Suddenly I understood. Kristle was going to die. Tonight.
“Oh,” I said.
We just looked at each other. Taffany held my eyes so long that I had to look away, but when I averted my gaze, it settled on Kristle, which was even worse. She was now nestled into my brother’s shoulder with her eyes closed. He was looking down at the top of her head with a distant fondness. He knew. Why hadn’t he told me? Why hadn’t I figured it out? I was fucking stupid, that’s why.
“Aren’t you fucking upset?” I asked. I wanted to scream.
Taffany looked at me. “Upset? Of course I’m fucking upset. But you don’t understand. You have no idea. I mean no idea. Kristle will be the third this summer. Fontaine went at the beginning of June. Or was her name Aquavit? Kristle’s first birthday was really a going-away party for Fiesta. We get used to it. The parties at the end of the summer are more low-key. It just gets to be overkill.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Next year there will be six of us,” Taffany said. “That’s Chantarelle, Blair, Serena, Tressemé, and Visa. All twenty-one. And me, of course. My birthday’s the Fourth of July. Send me a present if you want. No books or gift certificates.”
“There’s still time,” I said. “You could still—”
“Nah,” Taffany shrugged. “It seems impossible now to think that there’s time to stop it. Nothing much happens after August here. Anyway—I don’t want to play the game. Call me a conscientious objector.”
“I’m sorry,” I said again. “I can’t even—I don’t know. I’m sorry.”
“I’m sure you are,” Taffany said. “Why shouldn’t you be? Everyone’s always sorry. But there’s nothing anyone can do about it.” She turned her back to me and started arranging bottles. “This is how we live. We try to make the most of it.”
Then it came to me. “I can stop it,” I said. “I can—I mean, Kristle. I could totally . . .”
“You could,” Taffany said. “But you probably shouldn’t. And you won’t. Like I said, I’ve seen it all before. That’s why I get to be the bartender. Kristle understands too. She tried to fight it. That’s why she gets to be Kristle. She knows better than anyone that there’s no fighting it, but she fights anyway.”
“Yeah,” I said, thinking about Kristle naked over me in my bed, about the way she’d looked at me. About her on the porch, a gin and tonic in her hand, sweat on her chest, and hair glittering in the summer sun, brittle and determined. They were always talking about how they were the same, how there was barely any difference between them, but it was the furthest thing from the truth.
“I mean, this could be the first time she’s ever failed. When Kristle puts her heart into it, she usually gets what she wants. It’s what makes her a bitch, but it’s also why she gets to have the big bed. Maybe her heart wasn’t actually into it after all, come to think of it. Look, even your brother understands.”
The jukebox had flipped over to some shitty synth-country ballad, and Kristle and Jeff had stood and were dancing, her head against his chest, his hands on her hips, both of them swaying back and forth, looking oddly peaceful, oddly at ease with each other. Normally I would have thought it was ridiculous. He looked like a total schmuck. But he was not a schmuck at all. It was hard for me to decide whether he had been one in the first place, or whether the summer had changed him. I supposed it had changed everyone.
Then DeeDee appeared. Like Jeff, she was dressed for an occasion. She was wearing a simple blue dress, the kind that ties at the neck, and had smeared her eyes with eyeliner and sparkly blue eye shadow. She had braided her hair and twisted the plaits in rings around her head. Everyone turned to look at her, but she didn’t say hello to any of them; she headed to an empty corner of the room where she sat down at a table alone. Without me even asking, Taffany had already pushed another drink across the bar to me. I took it and made a move to pay and she just waved me off.
“You didn’t tell me,” I said to DeeDee, plunking the drink down in front of her and sitting. She was already lighting a cigarette, although she had supposedly quit weeks ago, and the music from the jukebox was whirling around us. “How could you have not told me?”
“I thought about it,” she said. “I almost told you. But Kristle didn’t want me to. And, really, I guess I didn’t want to either. Maybe that was selfish.”
“Maybe it was,” I said.
“We have a hard time understanding selfishness,” DeeDee mused. “It’s one of those words that doesn’t quite translate. It gets all confused with selflessness.”
“I’ve never actually noticed your English being as bad as you’re always saying it is. Kind of the opposite, actually.”
“Maybe every time you’ve understood me, I was actually trying to say something completely different from what you thought?”
I shook my head. “Nope.”
We finished our drinks and then got another round and wandered over to the table where everyone was sitting.
There wasn’t like a whole thing or anything. No one said a toast for Kristle; no one got too sentimental. Even Nalgene, who I’d heard had a reputation for being a weepy drunk, seemed happy and relaxed. Kristle was swaying along with the music and tossing her hair and brandishing her Gauloises with languorous panache. Every now and then I saw her looking sideways at Jeff as he talked. She was smiling peacefully. The last time I caught her, she looked up after a few seconds and saw me watching her, and she just took a drag of her cigarette and kicked me under the table, then tossed her head back and laughed.
After a few hours, when the songs on the jukebox were all starting to seem terrible and no one wanted to drink anymore, we went down to the beach: me, DeeDee, Jeff, Kristle, Nalgene, Chantarelle, Tressemé, Activia, Jessamee, Blair, Serena, Visa—even Taffany, who didn’t bother locking up.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
.....................................................................
WANT
What we want:
High-heeled shoes. Patent leather. Sharp enough to slit throats. We want them so tall you can’t tell the difference between our hair and the sun.
A bedroom of our own, with a down comforter and striped Todd Oldham pillowcases from Target, and a window that looks out over anything except a parking lot. With a bathroom with a door that locks. And a bulletin board with tacked-up photos of ourselves and our friends, which are another thing we want.
And a mother.
And a home karaoke system with dual microphones and lots of songs.
And a taste of snow.
And a red Camaro, a checking account with a plastic card, a trip to Paris. A break from all this work. A glimpse of clouds as they appear from above, as they appear from an airplane. And, and, and.
W
e want a name.
We want a choice.
You might say that we want a lot of things. Of course there’s really only one thing that we want. We thought we knew what it was. We were told what it was. We were deceived.
We’re not asking for sympathy. We’re just trying to explain where we’re coming from. But by now you know exactly where we come from.
For want of a home we’ve lost everything we ever wanted. We lost one another. We lost you. You: our home.
What we want. What we really wanted. What we gave up, not knowing—thinking we knew exactly what it was that we pursued.
And what we overlooked in our wanting: the absolute home of your uncertain smile. Your steady, familiar embrace in the sand before dusk when you were peaceful and near sleep; the rising and falling of your chest, with its little hairs starting to grow in their uneven spiral. The wild, dark curls at your temples, the broadness of your shoulders and ropy muscles of your arms. Even the gnarled and undersized big toe on your right foot. The glint in your eyes from one angle is mischievous and bold—reckless—and from another so vulnerable that it would break our hearts, if our hearts were capable of being broken.
You have appeared many times, with many faces. You are always, always, always just exactly the same.
You always surprise us. It’s hard to surprise us—like heartbreak, surprise is against our general nature—but every moment with you is a revelation. The things you find troubling and the things you find funny. Your jammed-together and slightly crooked teeth and the way they blossom into a smile that is warm and unguarded and beautiful. Your unexpected freckles and your prickly gentleness, just as unexpected. And then there is the final surprise that didn’t strike us until it was too late.
This is the home we are leaving; this is what we give up. What we will miss. This is what we wanted after all. We never had a choice. Or did we? Well, we want to think we didn’t.
We never get what we want.
But who does, really?
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
.....................................................................
TWENTY-SIX
THE TEN-MINUTE WALK to the ocean somehow took the form of a procession, with DeeDee leading the way and each of us following behind her in a sloppy single file with no one speaking. When we made it through the dunes, we stood in a row, still silent for a few minutes, all looking out at the water before Jeff let out a roar and ran, stripping his clothes as he went until he was down to his pink boxers and then they were off too. He swung them over his head like a lasso and tossed them onto the sand, then cannonballed into the breakers in triumph.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Kristle laughed. The momentary tension broke and we all dispersed, Kristle to the water’s edge, where she yelled shit at Jeff while he vamped and frolicked, shouting a stupid, tuneless song he’d made up on the spot. The rest of the girls drifted together to a spot in the sand, but DeeDee came to me and took my hand, leading me ahead to where the shore was still damp.
“So this is it,” DeeDee said. “The end of the summer.”
“Summer doesn’t officially end until September twenty-third,” I said. “Autumnal equinox. I looked it up.”
“Be real,” DeeDee said. “Summer ends now. Feel the breeze.”
I don’t particularly believe in magic, but where the air had just been perfectly still, there was suddenly a breeze out of nowhere. It was cool and dry and smelled a bit like smoke. But for once, no one was smoking. Then it was gone and all I could smell was salt and fruity shampoo.
“Bye,” DeeDee said to no one, waving at nothing.
Jeff had finally stumbled out of the water and he and Kristle were a few paces off, just talking. I knew I shouldn’t watch—it was private and also Jeff was completely naked, not that you could see anything—but I couldn’t look away either. DeeDee put a hand on my hip and I could feel her staring in the same direction, watching them with me. They were saying good-bye.
They were laughing and leaning into each other, touching each other with casual intimacy, almost like it was no big deal, and then they were kissing and they lit up the beach. I realized that DeeDee and I were not the only ones staring. We were all watching. But Jeff and Kristle didn’t seem to know or care.
Then Kristle was walking off down the beach, and Jeff was standing alone in the surf.
He ran his hands through his hair, then sank to his ass, still watching her go. A wave came in and pooled around him. I wanted to go to him, wanted to say something, but DeeDee grabbed me by the elbow before I could move.
“You have to do it,” she said. “Find her. It’s gotta be you, babe.”
I couldn’t see Kristle anymore, but I knew she was moving just outside of the frame. She was going to the cove.
“I know,” I said. “But what about you?”
DeeDee sighed. “Listen. She’s the one who found me,” DeeDee said. “She’s the one who gave me clothes. She’s my sister. She’s me and I’m her. You have to do it. Just try not to think of it as some big deal, you know? Think of it like you’re doing it for me.”
I looked at DeeDee, then back up the shore into a distance I couldn’t see, where I could picture Kristle venturing forward, her feet aching, a traveler now as always, embarking on a new and strange journey, alone for the first time since she’d arrived here. She had always seemed a lot of things to me, but never lonely. There was something I couldn’t bear about picturing her like that.
So I went after her. When I found her, she was standing at the rocky barrier at the edge of the cove, staring up at it, her hands on her hips like she was trying to summon the strength to start climbing. “Hey,” I said. I was sort of expecting her to jump or something, but she didn’t; she just turned around and gave me a stupid, embarrassed wave.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” she said. “I knew you’d come after me. You’re actually kind of predictable, you know?”
“Yep,” I said. This was it. I hadn’t thought to be nervous. I hadn’t actually put much thought into what I was going to do. But now here I was, and I was scared. “So, uh,” I said. “Okay, then. Here we go.”
I was blushing as I pulled my shirt over my head. Kristle just let out a halfhearted giggle. Her face was hard to interpret. Suddenly I wasn’t totally sure it was even her. It could have been any of them. She could have been all of them.
“Put your shirt on,” she said. “I’m not going to have sex with you.”
“Why not?” I asked. “It’s the only way.”
“’Cause I think you’re gross.”
She must have seen my face fall. “I’m kidding,” she said. “You’re totally a hot little number. I’m not because I’m just not.”
“Don’t you want to live?” I asked.
“Yes,” Kristle said. “But I won’t do it.”
“You will,” I said. “Come on. It’s not a big deal. It’s worth it.”
“It’s not,” Kristle said. She folded her arms at her chest. “I can’t. It’s too fucked up. It’s what he wants. I don’t want to give him the satisfaction. It’s starting to seem to me that the best way to break a curse is just to ignore it.”
“He?”
“Our father. The Endlessness.”
I was disgusted by the whole thing. All of this. It occurred to me that I probably wouldn’t even be able to pop a boner to get the job done anyway. Or maybe I would; it’s one thing I’ve never had an issue with. But I’d never been in a situation quite like this.
“Kristle,” I said. “This is what DeeDee wants.”
“I know,” she said. “I knew she’d send you. I felt her do it. But I made up my mind a long time ago, okay? Or a little while ago, at least. Anyway, I’ve been thinking, and here’s the thing: I’m pretty sure it might not work anyway.”
“What do you mean it wouldn’t work? How can it not work? Isn’t the whole point of things like this that they have rules? That they work?�
��
“The whole point of curses is that there are always loopholes. They’re always trying to trip you up. Where do you think that ‘be careful what you wish for’ thing came from? Sneaky genies—duh. And we’ve never totally understood the curse, you know. It’s not like we have it written down anywhere or anything; we haven’t had a chance to have our lawyers review it. But the older I get—the closer I get to, you know”—she gestured at the ocean—“this—it’s like my mind is expanding or something. I’m already starting to leave my body. It’s like I’m starting to have a deeper understanding. I’m losing my human self, becoming more whatever I was before. Things that didn’t make sense are starting to seem more and more obvious. Not that obvious is probably the right word. The point is that we’ve been operating under the assumption that sex with someone like you is all it takes. I don’t think it is. It’s just a feeling I have, you know; I could be wrong. But I think there has to be something more than plain old sex. There’s another component, there has to be. For it to work.”
“Well what then? What else does there need to be? What component?”
“You tell me,” she said. “I think you’re the one who knows. I’ll tell you this, though. I kind of don’t even think the sex is the most important part. I think it’s important, okay, sure, but it seems to me that it’s just the last step. It’s dotting the i. Fuck, who knows?”
Just make sense, I wanted to say. Just tell me what I need to do. I had been angry all summer, angry since we had gotten here, all at something I couldn’t identify. Now I wasn’t mad anymore and I missed it. Anger was a tool to get you what you wanted, and without it I felt powerless. So I tried to summon it back. For the first time in as long as I could remember, I couldn’t find it. It was like someone asking you your name and being unable to come up with a good answer.
“You have to live,” I said. I meant to shout it, but it came out nearer to a whisper. Still, even whispering, my voice bounced off the waves and hit me in the gut. “What about DeeDee? Fuck, what about Jeff? What about the whole fucking world? You’re just going to give up all of this?”
September Girls Page 22