The Princesses of Iowa

by M. Molly Backes

  “Did you guys do a homecoming bonfire?”

  He squinted. “I don’t think so. . . . We definitely had a dance, and I think we had a half day with a parade and a pep rally, because my friend and I skipped out to go to a diner and then got rear-ended, and it was as though the School Spirits themselves were mad at us.”

  “Well,” I said, “this would be your chance to make it up to them. Good karma and whatnot.”

  “Good point. I make it a personal policy to piss off as few spirits as possible.” He pushed the door open and held it for me, nodding to the wide sky. “Looks like rain, huh?”

  I followed his gaze to the broad white canvas stretched out above the sullen highway. “Yeah,” I said. “This has been a weird fall.”

  “Wild nights — wild nights!” He grinned to himself. “I’ll do it.”

  “You will?” I asked. “Really?” He nodded. “Okay, cool. Thanks, Mr. Tremont.” It took me a second to realize that I was standing half in and half out of the school, awkwardly close to his outstretched arm. He smelled like soap, with a hint of sandalwood. I hopped backward over the threshold, catching myself on the shiny floor. “Okay, great. Thanks.”

  Mr. Tremont looked amused. “Hey, Paige?”

  “Um, yes?”

  “In all seriousness, would it be inappropriate to bring a friend?”

  Friend? Like . . . a boyfriend? My heart thumped in my chest. Shut up, I told it. Settle the hell down. “Of course not,” I said without breathing. “No problem.”

  Mr. Tremont smiled. “Awesome.”

  “See you tomorrow,” I said, waving like a dumb girl until the door closed between us and I could safely flee. I hurried down the empty hallways toward the other end of the school, my cheeks hot. Mr. Tremont probably thought I was . . . God, I didn’t even want to think about it. I’d been askew all year, like I was standing just off center and couldn’t catch my balance, and now I was forgetting how to talk to teachers without completely embarrassing myself. I used to be good at this. I used to be charming, convincing, smiling, fun. I used to be like Lacey . . . but, then again, so did she. She used to be smiling and fun; now she was brittle glass, unyielding. No wonder Nikki was freaking out. We’d both changed.

  I slowed, my feet measuring steps in inches. Who knew it would all come to this? All those years of working and strategizing and showing up to the correct parties and never saying too much or too little and paying strict attention to the cut of our jeans and the texture of our hair and being nice to everyone to their faces and then cutting them down with a single observation the second they left the room, and wooing the teachers and the administration and holding one another up and checking one another, constantly, for stray hairs and uneven hems and smudged lip gloss and cakey foundation and food in our teeth and things in our noses and weird breath and clumpy mascara and the slightest hint of body odor . . . all the business of popularity, and in the end, it had eclipsed our actual friendship. What had happened to the house of Lacey and Paige, built on a foundation of shared secrets and inside jokes, of notes signed LYLAS, of late-night confessions and endless walks through the dusky spring streets, and of promises never to let a boy get between us?

  “Hi, babe.” Jake materialized from nowhere, appearing before me in the empty hallway.

  I jumped. “Jesus!”

  “No, Jake. But I can see why you’d get confused.” He kissed me on the cheek. “What are you doing down here? You’re like, just standing in the middle of the hallway.”

  “Um.” I blinked twice. “Sorry. Lost in my thoughts.”

  Jake leaned against a bank of lockers, spreading his fingers in a fan against the aqua metal. “Planning tomorrow’s outfit in your head?”

  “No,” I said, more forcefully than I’d intended.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “What?”

  Abruptly, he reached out and grabbed my face, his hands rough against my cheekbones, and kissed me.

  I wobbled when he pulled away, but managed to find my voice. “Where did that come from?”

  He shrugged, staring into my eyes. “I miss you. I feel like I haven’t seen you in forever, between school and working at my dad’s office and everything.”

  Everything meaning Lacey, my mind whispered, but I ignored it. “I miss you, too.” I reached for his wrist, which was wider and flatter than Mr. Tremont’s. Junior year, we used to drive around for hours, talking and listening to music and pulling off the road in secluded clusters of trees to make out. Everything seemed so simple back then: Jake liked me and I liked him, and nobody hurt anyone else and nobody kept secrets. Maybe it wasn’t too late to reclaim those days, and the simpler, happier person I’d been. Maybe it was like my mother said: it was up to me to make things right with us.

  “Hey,” I said, running my hand up the back of his neck. “We have a whole afternoon in front of us. We could go back to my house, if my mother isn’t around, bribe Miranda to get out . . .”

  He sighed. “I’d love to, but I have to run,” he said. “Extra practice.”

  “Really?” I pouted, twining my fingers through his hair. “We haven’t hung out in forever, and you have a bye tomorrow. Can’t you skip?”

  He smiled at me, tugging on the edge of my shirt. “I wish.”

  “What about after?” I leaned into him, trapping his hand between us.

  He squinted and glanced somewhere behind me. “I can’t, babe. I told Lacey —”

  My bones calcified beneath my skin, turned to stone. I pulled back. “Oh. Lacey.”

  “Paige, don’t be like that.”

  “I’m not being like anything.”

  “She’s just really having a hard time lately.”

  If one more person said that, I was going to scream. I took a breath. “Well, I actually have plans anyway. So it’s cool.”

  “You do?” He sounded surprised. “With who?”

  I crossed my arms. “Just a friend.”

  Jake seemed suddenly present, a laser of attention pointed at my face. “A friend? Which friend? Nikki?”

  “Shanti Kale.” He didn’t react enough, so I added, “Maybe some other people, too. Like Jeremy Carpenter, Ethan James —”

  Jake raised his eyebrows. “That freshman dude?”

  “He’s not a freshman,” I said, and looked at him slyly. “Are you jealous?”

  “Should I be?” he teased. “Are you going to leave me for a freshman?”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “Well, I guess I’ll just have to kick his ass, then,” Jake joked. His voice softened. “God, babe, I really do wish I could hang with you. Lacey’s drama is getting old.” He ran a finger down the inside of my forearm, making me shiver. “But she really needs a friend right now.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  Jake looked at me with all the intensity of the first time, and for a moment it was that day on the bleachers in the sun, and no one else existed.

  “I have to go. Call me later, okay?” And though I actually reached out to hold him there, he turned more quickly than I could grasp, and was gone.

  Shanti was sitting cross-legged on top of a lone cafeteria table, scribbling in her notebook. At my footsteps, she looked up and grinned. “Yay!” She jumped from the table and took off down a side hallway, tucking her notebook into her bag as she walked. “I just have to grab something,” she said over her shoulder. I followed without paying attention, eager to be gone. At the blue dot, she swung through the open doorway of the newspaper room. “Hi! Sorry — sorry — excuse me.” She wove through kids hunched over computers in tight rows and stopped behind Ethan. “Hey, Jeremy!” she called.

  Jeremy looked up from a computer near the front of the room, where he was sitting with Nikki, of all people. She sat with her back to me, staring intently at the screen, where a video of what looked like a car accident was playing. “What now, Kale?” Jeremy asked.

  “I have to borrow your op-ed man,” Shanti announced.

  Jeremy grinned. “You
mean kidnap?”

  “Toe-may-toes, toe-mah-toes,” she said, and poked Ethan in the back as he shut down his computer and grabbed his bag.

  “Be careful, Paige,” Jeremy warned. “Them’s crazy folk.”

  At my name, Nikki glanced up in surprise and caught my eye. I gave a stupid, sheepish half wave, embarrassed to be seen leaving with Shanti and Ethan — and hating myself for feeling that way.

  “Anyway,” she said, turning back to Jeremy. “The bonfire’s Friday night and the dance is the next Saturday. Should we do the funeral on Friday morning? Or Saturday night?”

  “Saturday night? Girl, you crazy.”

  Shanti excused her way back through the tangle of legs and backpacks and reappeared at my side, flushed and smiling, with Ethan following behind. “We’re kidnapping him, too.”

  We all piled into Ethan’s beat-up old Jeep, though Shanti insisted on driving. “I’m an excellent driver!”

  Ethan laughed, teasing her. “I’m an excellent driver. I like to drive in the driveway. I’m an excellent driver.”

  “Okay, Rain Man,” Shanti said, rolling her eyes. She pulled the seat all the way forward and adjusted the mirrors. Clearly, this was not the first time she’d driven the Jeep. Ethan offered me the front seat but I declined, preferring to observe from the back. Shanti flipped through a mess of jewel cases in Ethan’s glove box, then pulled a CD out and popped it in the CD player. “Do you like Dar Williams?” she asked, glancing at me in the rearview mirror.

  “Yeah, sure,” I lied. I’d never heard of it. A voice filled the back speakers, soft and crooning and entirely unlike the music I usually listened to. It sounded like the singer was just singing the word “Iowa” over and over again.

  I watched the silver-green corn flash by the window, the red barns somehow more striking standing against the deep-gray sky than they would be against summer blue. Telephone poles blinked by as steadily as the rain that Mr. Tremont had predicted.

  The Iowa song ended, and the next song began with a simple guitar line. Ethan sang along, his voice matching the singer’s perfectly. Shanti harmonized on the chorus.

  “So, where are we going?” I asked.

  Ethan deepened his voice like a game show announcer. “Where are we going, Shanti?”

  “Um, did you not hear me state quite clearly that you are being KIDNAPPED? And when you kidnap someone, you do not TELL them where you are going, because then they might call their rescuers to come find them, and then you do not get all the glorious lovely ransom money.” Downshifting, slowing the car, she waved through the window toward a broad bank of trees, a low valley among woodsy hills. “Obviously!”

  Ethan stage-whispered, “She has no idea.”

  “I do so!” Shanti protested. “I know exactly where we are going! And it’s going to be amazing!”

  Ethan shook his head slowly, mouthing, “No. Idea.” I laughed.

  Shanti merged onto the highway without signaling, sweeping in front of a giant semi before darting into the next lane while the truck flew by laying on the horn. I gasped loudly and was immediately embarrassed, dropping my head so my hair fell across my face. My fingers twisted around the middle seat belt, turning white.

  Ethan glanced back at me and turned to Shanti, his voice light but serious. “Could I ask you a favor? Could you maybe not get us killed today?”

  “I’m an excellent driver!” she yelled.

  Ethan turned back to me and mouthed, “Sorry,” rolling his eyes. “I’ll drive on the way home . . . if we live that long,” he said aloud, and Shanti yelled, “Look at these hands! Ten and two!” but she eased off the pedal and kept her eyes on the road. “I am an excellent driver!” she said again.

  I took a deep breath, forcing myself to relax and listen to Ethan and Shanti sing. Shanti seemed to be channeling the ghost of Ethel Merman, while Ethan crooned in an excessively twangy cowboy voice. It made for a strange duet, but they seemed to be enjoying themselves. It was strange: they both seemed to take each other as they were. I’d never heard either of them comment on what the other was wearing or doing, and when they teased each other it was always friendly, without a razor’s edge of warning underneath. I tried to remember the last time I’d allowed myself to say everything that was on my mind without worrying what someone would think.

  The Jeep crested a hill and suddenly a whole field of gold rose in my vision, hill after hill of tangled sunflowers. They were so bright against the blue-slate clouds, raising their dark-brown faces to the sunless sky like hope. “Wow,” I whispered, and Ethan reached back and tapped the ashtray near my feet, a silent agreement.

  The Merman/cowboy duet came to an earsplitting finale, and Ethan turned to me. “Hey, how was the homecoming committee meeting today?”

  “What?” I asked. “How did you know about that?”

  “I’m on student council.”

  Shanti hooted. “Loser!”

  “Shut up, Shan,” Ethan said easily. “I was drafted.”

  “How did that happen?” I asked.

  “I have drama lit first period,” Ethan said.

  “Ohhhh.” The theater crowd wasn’t exactly known for its school spirit.

  “Ila Grayson nominated me, and apparently everyone in that group does whatever she tells them to.”

  “Lacey nominated me.”

  Shanti’s eyes flicked up at me in the rearview mirror. “You sound less than enthused.”

  I shrugged. “It seems kind of pointless.”

  Ethan shifted so he could see us both, sitting sideways. “I don’t know,” he said. “My committee is working on this presentation that will actually be pretty good, I think.”

  “Really,” I said.

  “Yeah, actually. You know Nikki Rosellini?”

  I laughed. “Yes. She’s — yes. I definitely know her.”

  “She’s doing this thing,” he started.

  “DIEDD,” Shanti interrupted. “With three Ds.”

  “I heard,” I said.

  “That’s not even how you do acronyms,” Shanti said. “What does it stand for again? Dude, I Eat Dunkin’ Donuts? Doctor, I Examine Diseased Dogs?” She laughed.

  “Don’t let friends drive drunk.” Ethan and I said it at the same time, and I shot him a grateful look. Nikki might be annoying sometimes, and maybe she wasn’t a superintellectual, but she meant well. And she was still my friend.

  “It’s really going to be a cool thing,” Ethan said. “Nikki’s gotten the police and fire departments to come in, and there’s going to be this all-school assembly, and —”

  “And it’s all a bunch of emotionally manipulative bullshit so she can parade her guilt in front of the whole school,” Shanti said. “It’s sick. And sad.”

  I opened my mouth to disagree, but then closed it, thinking. Did everyone in the school feel the same way? The Jeep hung empty with quiet until Shanti finally asked, “What?” She sounded defensive.

  “I mean, she’s trying to do something positive,” Ethan said. “She sees a problem and she’s doing something to try to fix it. So her solution’s a little weird — at least she’s doing something. It’s better than cynical hipsters who sit around complaining and making fun of everyone without ever doing anything to help make the world better.”

  “Cynical hipsters?” Shanti asked, keeping her eyes straight ahead. “Speaking generally or specifically?”

  I sat back, revising my theory about people who didn’t judge. Maybe it was a universal problem after all. Maybe no one lived up to the expectations of their friends.

  “I’m just saying that it’s easier to criticize than it is to put yourself out there and try to do something,” Ethan said. “You know I’m right. We’re all guilty of it sometimes.”

  “Do you disagree that spending hundreds of tax dollars on a danse macabre designed to manipulate the emotions of a bunch of stupid high schoolers while you reenact your own guilt complex on a public stage is a little fucked up?”

  “All I’m saying is �
�”

  “Do you disagree?” Shanti pressed.

  “It’s better than doing nothing. I mean, it’s something.”

  “But it is fucked up.”

  Ethan caught me in the rearview mirror and rolled his eyes, but he was smiling. “Yes, it’s a little fucked up.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Do you have to have the final word? Is that, like, a remnant of your privileged childhood?”

  Shanti grinned. “Hey, it’s not easy being right all the time, but I make it work.”

  A minute later, they were singing to the radio again, this time with opera voices on an ’80s power ballad. I marveled at the jumps from banter to argument and back again, amazed that they could disagree so vehemently and still be friends.

  Almost an hour after leaving Willow Grove, Shanti announced, “We’re here!”

  “A truck stop?” I asked.

  “A truck stop? A truck stop?” She cranked the wheel and we rumbled off the highway, turning from off-ramp to overpass almost without slowing.

  Ethan and I braced ourselves against the doors. “Whoa, Shan,” Ethan said. “Go easy on my car; it has to last me the rest of the year, at least.”

  “It’s fine,” Shanti said. “You worry too much.”

  “Would you like to buy me a new one? Because in case you thought otherwise, I don’t actually work for the sheer pleasure of making lattes.”

  She ignored him, angling the Jeep across two spaces. She pulled on the parking brake, dropping the clutch so the engine died with a jolt. “My dear Paige, this is not a truck stop. This is the truck stop! The Iowa 80! Glorious cathedral to Kitsch Americana!”

  “The World’s Largest Truckstop in Walcott, Iowa,” Ethan read. “Does that mean it’s the largest truck stop in the world, which happens to be in Walcott, Iowa, or is it the largest truck stop of all the truck stops in Walcott, Iowa? And if so, just how many truck stops are there in Walcott?”

  “I have never actually been here,” I said as we jumped from the Jeep. “I’ve driven past it a million times and never once stopped here.”