They’re difficult to explain. Basically, he misses her.
“What’re you thinking about?”
“My grandma’s upset that I’m missing this Sunday at the country club.” Mackenzie feels weird. They both talk to each other when both just listen to Sykosa. With Tom, everything has a way of being about Sykosa. She knows there’s something between them, yet he never mentions it. “I’m debating having another special tryout for swim this year.”
He’s dead pan. He feels sorry for her.
M has a legacy at the Academy.
Her two older sisters are alumni, were captains of the swim team and won state championships. It’s basically unspoken that Mackenzie will do the same. However, she’s not as talented as her sisters, nor is the team the same since Donna Harly—swim team captain—disappeared last year. M feels a lot of pressure from these expectations. It’s why she slaves at academics and will probably be valedictorian; to compensate and be accepted into Stanford, where her sisters are also alumni.
“That’s what you were thinking about?”
She apologizes. “It’s lame. What do you want to talk about?”
“I don’t know—something interesting.”
She counts on her fingertips. “Let’s see here, you like beer, pizza, girls, and video games. So it’s gotta one of those, right?”
“I also like girls.”
“I said girls.”
He’s perplexed. It’s a cute perplexity. Both notice Sykosa noticing. “Let’s talk about those things. Or we could combine them. Like, we could talk about video games with girls in them or we could talk about eating pizza with beer.”
Mackenzie shines. She hopes Sykosa is watching this part. Yes, Sykosa’s watching his part. “Why don’t we talk about girls playing video games while eating pizza and drinking beer?”
“Genius!” It is genius! Sykosa’s more interested than ever! “You’re a genius, M!” He shouldn’t have called her a genius while looking at Sykosa. That was mean; also Sykosa’s noticed his noticing and stopped caring. He recounts his day. “You tried to help me with that test and nothing stayed in my head. Then Sykosa tried and nothing stayed in my head. My mom’s having a fit. She says I’ll never get into college. She wants to lock up N64. She’ll let me have it after my homework’s done.”
“Oh no!” Really, Mackenzie worries about his grades, too. He’s always teetering on academic probation, but it’s unlikely he’ll face any disciplinary action for it. The Administration gives him special treatment because of the scars on his hand. “Well, it might do you some good.”
He stops noticing Sykosa long enough to notice Mackenzie pull her jeans forward. He thinks it’s Timmy and Clyde. New boys make Mackenzie nervous. Last year when Mike Holler and Lonny… He’ll put it this way, he knows Mackenzie’s a lot of things, and not all of them are good. He also knows she was never a doormat. And he hates anyone who’d hurt Mackenzie— or Sykosa. He hates it so much sometimes he wants to punch something over it.
He did punch something over it.
It ruins his buzz. “How was your day?”
“Same ol’, same ol’. I’m glad to be out here though.”
“What would this weekend be without my best bud?”
For a long time, maybe twenty-five or twenty-seven minutes, nothing happens. Except Niko announcing that she’s heading into town to spread the word about the party tomorrow and the prerequisite bash tonight. She returns with a flock of fancy automobiles at her tail like an army of foot soldiers. They park along the drive, on the grass, and then further down by the street. Like followers on an Abercrombie and Finch pilgrimage, scores of muscle-bound college guys and their pretty college girlfriends herd themselves through the thrown-open front doorway.
On cue, Sykosa feels like being social, and she indulges like Tom indulges her panties, to find that she subconsciously allows Polo shirts to chat her up about competitive internships, beach homes, and trust funds. She smiles and she smiles and she smiles and they keep talking! Always eventually telling her she’s “gorgeous,” “sexy,” “beautiful,” “perfect,” “an angel,” and what she overheard one guy whisper to another, a “cum bucket.” These descriptors intensify her emotions, both negative and positive, and she drinks alcohol to compensate. She wonders if one of these handsome jocks, not the cum bucket one, will take her to the lagoon, tell her to “shut up” (but, nicely, like maybe add a “please”) when she gets scared and then fucking take care of it and keep taking care of it even though it hurts her. She thinks you have to be a bit mean to take a girl’s virginity, like those people who pierce ears and make baby girls cry all day.
For some reason, these guys decide her virginity isn’t worth it and abandon her. She matriculates to a circle of girls who all dress like Niko, talk like Niko, listen like Niko, and lazily let drop the shoulder strap of their tiny black tops like Niko. She tells all the girls they are beautiful and asks them for tips about their hair and makeup. They, in turn, tell her that she is beautiful, and everyone, in turn, hugs and kisses each other on the cheek. One of the girls, unprovoked, drunkenly says to her, “Do you know what guys like?” She’s interested, as this girl is exactly the type she feared cornering Tom. Let us not mince words, a Goddamned whore. “What do they like?” “They like getting their dicks sucked.”
Yep, Goddamned whore.
Luckily, not all the girls are.
One is skinny, beautiful, becoming a doctor, and holds out her engagement ring. “He asked when we were vacationing. He got down on one knee in front of my whole family!” “That’s amazing.” “Yeah, he’s definitely ‘the one.’” “I hope someone loves me like that one day!” “Oh, it’ll happen, it just takes a while.” “It does?” The girl laughs. “Yeah, you shoulda seen the guy I dated in high school.” Never mind, this girl sucks, too. What’s wrong with high school boys? Then, by some process, they migrate onto the deck where everyone strips to their skivvies and jumps into the pool.
Being felt up by random guys scares her.
Plus, the lagoon is full of people. That makes her sweaty.
Back in the house, she’s alone again.
Those girls never saw her exit and those boys are over there, but they’re not coming over here so they’re useless. This does not surprise her. She has no money, no power, no connections, and thus they have no interest in her. Whatever, they’re not so great! She decides to aimlessly walk the chandelier lit hallways, bumping into cute boys and then waiting a second. None of them approach her. Whatever, they’re not so special! She wanders back to the kitchen stool where her bottle of wine waits. She drinks by herself and lights up smokes. She watches people interact and thinks that watching these people is like watching a great TV show, which, for socioeconomic reasons, she cannot join.
Then, she feels lonely.
Whatever, they’re not so…blah!
Tom lifts himself onto the neighboring stool. His beer is on the counter, the label bloated from bottle sweat. It sweats on her hand. “Do you mind if I have some?” He says to do so, and she does. “You aren’t all freaked out, are you?”
“Why would I be freaked out?”
She points to the bottle. “It’s like a second-hand kiss.”
“Why would that matter?”
She feels lonely again. Boys and their inability to love anyone but themselves! “It’s supposed to be a joke.”
He’s silent. His eyes are stuck on her hand, which runs the rim of the bottle along the wane of her lip. He heard once that, when girls do that, they’re thinking about giving head, which means she may be thinking about giving head. God, he wants her to give him head. Like girls in porn do. Or what if they have sex? Like girls in porn do. No, any sex is enough. He just needs to not screw up. She has to be thinking about having sex with him. She has to be. The only thing that can get in the way of said sex is himself, which he’s not gonna do.
Nope, not gonna happen.
The problem is that not screwing up is paralyzing him and…
It’s making the pressure big, and she’s so hot and he wants her so much and how many weekends does a guy get to have a girl like Sykosa to himself? Not many. This has to go well, it… Jesus Christ, he needs to fuck her already!
Ugh, he didn’t mean it like that! It’s…
He’s disrupted by Clyde who plays his guitar somewhere.
Why does she like him?
“You’re sure you’re fine?”
“Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?”
“I don’t know.”
She returns to her wine.
Resignation overcomes her; she appears more serious than she actually is. Really, she wants to play like yesterday. Why won’t he do something? She expected to stave off his advances all weekend. She didn’t think he would ignore her.
“What’re you talking about?”
“That guy, you’ve been talking with him for hours.”
What? “You’ve been talking to Mackenzie for hours!”
“That’s different.”
“How?”
“Mackenzie’s my friend. Clyde isn’t your friend.”
Like that matters. You know, this whole weekend, thus far, has been a total disappointment. “I can’t talk to another guy? You’re so predictable.”
“How can I be? You just met him.”
Her next words are slurred. She hates how, when drunk, she has a propensity for telling the truth. “You know she’s different when you’re not around.”
“What?”
“I said, ‘You know she’s different when you’re not around.’”
“What’re you talking about?”
“I’m saying Mackenzie’s two different people.”
He holds up his palms, kinda practiced in his reaction. He’s worried for a while this might happen. Of course, it happened tonight. He sounds diplomatic. “Please don’t get me involved in this stuff between you and Mackenzie.”
“Get you involved? What’re you talking about?”
He sounds diplomatic again. “I don’t know, but you girls and your groups, and all the pranks and stuff. Mackenzie’s my friend, and I don’t want those problems to be our problems.”
Well, there’re about to become it!
She looks hurt. “Gee, thanks for hearing me out there.” She finishes her wine in one gulp and snatches her purse. She wants to smoke on the deck by herself. “Don’t let me get in the way of your cozy friendship, in fact, maybe you should go, I’m sure ‘M’ needs you.” Her foot attempts to plant on the floor, instead it plants on an ice cube. She has a sick tremor as her knee wobbles and her arms reach out. He kicks back the stool and the rubber shoe sole squeaks. His mitts snatch both her forearms. He is very strong for a boy his age. She talks to herself. “What a great exit, Sykosa. I suppose it was possible to be a bigger loser.” She tugs on her shirt and flings her hair. His face awaits her gaze and his blue eyes don’t end. She’s frustrated. “Let’s just forget this.”
He’s confused. “What’s going on? What did she do to you?”
“Who?”
“Mackenzie.”
What’s also lame about drunkenness is losing her off switch. “What didn’t she do? You know, just because she’s puts on this good girl routine after…” Shit. Now, she’s done it. She brought up last year. Oh, I’m an idiot. “The point is she’s pretending nothing happened.” Shit. Now, she’s done it. She brought up pretending. That’s all Tom and I do. “She doesn’t care about anything but herself, and she left us all hanging, even her supposed best friend Donna disappeared.” Shit. Now, she’s done it. No one talks about Donna Harly lightly, not in this circle. Why can’t I shut up? “I mean she’s phony, and people just want to forget that, including you.”
“It’s not forgetting.”
“What is it then?”
“I forgave her.”
There’s something about that word.
Forgive.
She feels like she was supposed to do that.
Fuck it. “How could you do that?”
“How could I do what?”
“If you care about me, how could you forgive her?”
He stumbles, then ruffles his hair. “What do you want me to do? Be pissed forever?” He holds up his scarred hand. By the way, she never mentioned that, should he roll up his sleeve, his entire arm is covered in them, too. “I gotta live with this forever, so I had to let everything else go.”
“Next you’re gonna tell me you forgave Donna, too.”
He pauses. “Well—”
She interrupts. “Are you kidding me?”
“And Mackenzie hasn’t forgotten Donna. Not only were they good friends, she’s not gonna win State without her.”
Donna Harly, before disappearing last year, was the captain of varsity swim and the fastest swimmer in King County, and possibly the State of Washington. She knows these things cause she was on the team with Donna and Mackenzie. She swam for the Academy last year and was recruited to do it again this year. She chose to do Model UN instead. Not that she’s any talent in the water, but she’s better than whatever Frosh took her spot. Not like any of it matters. Tom’s right. One cannot replace a Donna Harly, she’s a once-in-a-generation swimmer.
And Mike raped her and she disappeared after.
Or that is what everyone thinks.
Mike did rape Donna, she heard Donna crying about it, but almost no one knows the circumstances of the rape and how it came to pass. Except Tom, Mackenzie, and me. The blackness will come if she talks about this more. She chooses not to and gets pouty. “Fine, you’re right.”
He knows better than that. He tries to fix it. It might be too late. Of course, he fucked up this weekend. It didn’t even take him one night. “Relax, what I meant was—I just don’t want to take sides, and I don’t want to make things worse.”
She isn’t relaxing. “Don’t tell me what to do.”
“I’m not doing that.”
“Then, what’re you…?”
“Just stop, okay? Stop.”
He cups her cheek and kisses her lips. It’s a strange kiss because it ends all the frustration in him. She has the ability to do that to him sometimes. She reminds him life is about more than getting laid. Strangely, after he remembers that, he isn’t upset, he’s grateful, so he opens his legs and leads her by her forearms between them, where she hugs him for a long time without having to strain her calves since she’s on her heels. He holds her close, and when he pulls away, she pulls away, and they are pulled together by their lips again. It reminds him of when they first met. He bumped into her in main hallway one morning and… What happened last year hadn’t happened, so they weren’t acquainted, but he remembers even then he’d have killed to have her like he has her now—at a cottage, alone together, herself powerless to his lips and his hand in her back pocket, taking a bite out of her wonderful ass.
When it’s all said and done, he’d be an idiot to fuck this up.
Her voice is girly. “Oh, you’re so sweet.”
“You’re drunk.”
She giggles. “A bit.”
“Hey.”
“Yeah?”
“I’ll protect you. Don’t be afraid of Mackenzie, or anyone.”
She nods like a lamb. “Okay.”
“And I’ll call you again, and I did like being in your room.”
She rolls her eyes. “Yeah, okay.”
“I really did. I thought you had a nice room.”
“You don’t remember anything about my room.”
“I remember every detail of your room.”
Sometimes it’s fun to watch him dig these graves.
“Tell me about my room.”
“Your curtains and your bedspread are pink. You have a Fievel stuffed animal that sits above the others. You stack your books by your desk based on which class you have first in the morning. Your notebooks are stacked beside them. And your planner is between them. You don’t actually close your planner. You roll it over the rings so the current day is always
on top. You stack all your other books in your closet, and they’re a mess. When you try on clothes, you leave the clean clothes on the bed, change in front of your mirror, then throw the clothes to the left, where I found that pile of underwear. You keep your smokes behind the base of your desk lamp, probably so your parents won’t notice. Your laptop is in the center of your desk. It’s probably the only computer in your house, and your parents only bought it cause the Academy requires our papers be typed. The wall has stuff on it, but what matters most is the bulletin board above your desk where you’ve spent hours placing photos of Niko and yourself in a way so it looks like you didn’t spend hours doing it.”
Did she mention that his words can sound slicked in butter?
He just did that.
A timid feeling of special significance weakens her stomach. It means that, from this moment on, if he says something mean, she’ll automatically cry. “Wow.”
“Told you I remembered it.”
She looks into his eyes and they look…something they don’t usually look. His chest is tense. She wants him to relax. “How can you remember all that, but you can’t remember a couple dates for our history test?”
“Don’t you understand?”
She becomes tense, too. “Understand what?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
Something’s going to happen. She knows it.
It’s like a giant hiccup that won’t finish.
“Wha—t?”
“I love you.”
This isn’t her story. This isn’t her life.
What. The. Fuck?
“Are you serious?”
“I said I love you. You don’t believe me or something?”
“No, it’s not that.”
“What is it then?”
She’s not sure, but now if he says anything mean, she won’t only cry, she’ll lose all sanity. “I never thought, I mean, I knew you cared, but—”
He interrupts. “Ever since last year…”
She knew it!
She brought up last year, and now like last year, he wants to fix it, but she doesn’t want it fixed, nor addressed. It’s selfish, and she feels like a bitch. She can’t worry about that. The one-year anniversary is next week, the blackness is too strong and it’s a about survival first, decency second. Also, she’s unsure if anything’s to be gained from discussing Donna Harly. Like they both said earlier, Donna’s gone now and so is Mike. They left so that this crystal globe of the Academy could continue. And she understands she has to play her part in that—that the students, the parents, the teachers, the Administration, none of them will feel safe without the lie.
Sykosa, Part I: Junior Year Page 10