The Princesses of Iowa

by M. Molly Backes

  He ignored me and grabbed a bottle of water from the refrigerator door, setting it next to his beer on the counter. “You don’t need ice or a lemon, do you?” I shook my head. “No, you’re low maintenance. It’s a rare quality in a woman, I tell you what.”

  He passed the water bottle to me and leaned against the sink, tapping his fingers against his beer.

  “Jake will be right down.”

  I nodded. The bottle was wet with condensation in my cold hands.

  Mr. Austin’s voice was sudden in the empty room. “You don’t like poetry, do you? You want something concrete: flowers, chocolate, jewelry.”

  “Um.” I took a sip of water. Something outside triggered the motion-sensor light, and sudden shadows skipped across the wide kitchen window. A raccoon, maybe. Or a cat.

  “When I was your age, I was working my ass off to get into college. I had focus. I was going pre-law and then law. We wrote papers. We had to study Latin for chrissakes. We didn’t have time to lie around writing poetry.” He spit the word out like it was poison.

  “Well . . .” I said.

  “My brother used to write poems. He was always inside when we were kids. We were running around the neighborhood, whatever, but he stayed inside and wrote little stories. And then he goddamn went off and disappeared, never even called until the day he got sick.” He shook his head, staring out the window, and I wondered if he was even talking to me anymore.

  I took a step toward the dining room. “I’m just —”

  Mr. Austin turned back toward me. “Jake shouldn’t be wasting time trying to ‘express his feelings.’ He can’t even spell. He’s eighteen and he doesn’t even know how to spell ‘you’ or ‘to.’” He looked at me. “Do you do that? Abbreviate everything with letters and numbers? Teenagers.” He slammed the bottle down on the counter near the sink and grabbed another one from the fridge.

  “Maybe I should —”

  “Why don’t your teachers teach something worthwhile, like how to spell a damn word? We had to diagram sentences and read the classics. Tom Sawyer. The Old Man and the Sea. Goddamn Moby Dick.”

  I set the water bottle on the counter. “I’m just going to —”

  Mr. Austin beat me to it, striding over to the foot of the stairs. “Hey, Allen Ginsberg! Your girlfriend’s here! Get your ass in gear!”

  I kept my eyes glued to the kitchen floor, hoping it would keep Mr. Austin from continuing our conversation. The tiles were perfectly clean, perfectly shined, except for a toe print just in front of my feet. I inched my right foot forward and pressed my big toe down on top of the print. It matched perfectly.

  Jake clattered down the stairs and I looked up, seeing him much younger in the shadowed hallway. He was twelve, thirteen, eager to show me and Lacey his newest game console. He was in baggy blue shorts, ready to teach me how to sink a layup. He was surreptitiously checking his face for zits in the hallway mirror; he was shoving books into a duffel bag. He was damp from the shower; he was sneezing into a paper towel; he was tugging at a new tie. He was tired, uncertain, proud, nervous, eager, disappointed, pleased. He was everything I’d ever known him to be. He was five years of Jake all at once.

  Mr. Austin shook his head. “See if you can do something with him.”

  Jake scowled, but I smiled my first genuine smile of the night. “I will.” I held out my hand to Jake and he crossed the room to meet me. He looked tired and grumpy. I slid my fingers into his hard hand and held tight.

  “We’re taking the truck,” he told his father, and pulled me out the door.

  In the truck he didn’t talk, and I pressed my fingers against my knees. Jake drove through the neighborhood and turned onto the slow country highway that stretched between the gates of Sauvignon and the edge of town, twelve miles of empty hills and paper stalk cornfields. The moon hung low over distant trees, a circle of deep orange.

  Jake slapped the steering wheel. “Goddammit!” His voice was deafening in the quiet night, and I imagined entire fields of geese waking to startled flight. “That fucking . . . He had no fucking right.” I wanted to reach over and place my hand on his leg, to comfort or maybe distract him, but in his voice I heard something of his father, and I stayed still.

  “Fuck!” he said, and pulled over to the side of the road. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay.”

  We sat in silence for a moment, staring straight ahead. The engine murmured beneath us. Jake reached across me and flipped open the glove box. Inside, a silver flask glinted in the low-wattage light. He grabbed it and took a long swallow, and another, and then handed the flask to me. I drank without thinking. “Jake,” I said. “Is everything —”

  He shook his head, staring through the dark. A last, late firefly glowed briefly and disappeared. “He found my — I was trying to — I wanted —”

  For one crazy second, I thought of Ethan in his Jeep, staring out the window and talking about his mother’s boyfriend, his little brothers. Is this how boys confess? Staring through windshields into darkness? But thinking of Ethan made me feel guilty. I turned my focus back to Jake.

  “It’s so fucking stupid. I was just . . . I wanted to write something . . . for you. . . . I know how much you like that stuff, and Lacey said . . .” He shook his head. “He fucking ripped it up.”

  “God,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  He punched the steering wheel. “Never mind. It’s so fucking stupid. My dad’s right.”

  I spoke quietly. “No he’s not.”

  “Yes, Paige, he is. Poetry is for chicks and fags.” His voice was heavy with disgust, and he sounded like his dad.

  “Jake —” I ached to think of his first, fragile attempts at writing, real writing, ripped apart and sagging in strips against the sides of his wastebasket.

  He didn’t look at me. “Lacey says some girls just go for gay guys, but I thought if I could —”

  Lacey? She was behind this? I suddenly wanted to punch something myself.

  “Fuck it,” Jake said. He shifted the truck back into first gear and revved the engine.

  I wanted to make him feel better, but I didn’t know any words that could temper the strange severity of his tight fists and sharp voice. My hand reached for his and faltered in the space between us, hanging, until it felt unhinged from my body. The headlights stretched down the dark road before us, catching bits of leaf and dust blowing through the blustery night. “At least let me drive,” I said, but he shook his head.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Jake,” I said softly, choking on my own voice. He didn’t look at me, just moved the flask to his lips again and again until there was nothing left.

  We pulled into the orange-lit student lot, parking in the far corner where Jake always parked, to minimize the potential damage that came with parking among the masses. He clicked off the ignition and sat still for a moment. “Do you have gum?” I asked. “If anyone smells alcohol on your breath, you’ll get benched for the next game.”

  “I know.” He reached across me and popped open the glove compartment. “See?” he asked, pulling out a tin of mints and a tiny bottle of cologne. He popped a mint into his mouth, spritzed the cologne on himself, and then turned to me with a sudden realization. “Hey, where were you yesterday?” His voice was already thicker, slower.

  “Nowhere.”

  “Lacey said she saw you with that freshman. Evan.”

  Guilt washed through me, and I searched my mind for an excuse. “No, I was —” But then a thought struck me: What if Lacey somehow had evidence, if she’d snapped pictures of us with her camera phone or something? What the hell was she doing in Iowa City anyway?

  “Yeah,” I said, trying to keep my voice even. “I was hanging out with some people from my creative writing class. I told you that.”

  “You picked them over me,” he said.

  “What? You said you were too busy to hang. You said you had plans with Lacey.” I fought the urge to add Again.

  “She ditched
me. Said she had to help her mom with something. Lawyer stuff, I don’t know. I called you, but you didn’t answer.”

  “So you get ditched and then come looking for sloppy seconds?”

  He looked stung. “No! I just wanted to see you. Things have been so messed up lately.”

  I softened. “I know.”

  “You like him more than me.” He sounded surprised, like he’d plugged everything into an equation and come up with a different answer than he’d expected.

  I sat back, feeling my face burn. “What? That’s ridiculous.”

  “Yeah. You like him more than you like me. Because he can write poetry. You think I’m a dumb jock.” He looked away, and I imagined those strands of scribbled lines, tentative phrases and measures to match up to some ideal in his head, ripped and thrown to waste. Shit.

  “You’re not —”

  “Lacey says you’re going to leave me for him!”

  “What?” My mind whirred. We hadn’t done anything in Iowa City that would arouse suspicion. Except for skipping stones, I’d spent more time with Shanti than I had with Ethan. Unless — oh my God. The night of the party. Had she been there? Had she seen us? How was that possible? She’d been too drunk to leave the house, much less sneak silently through the dark forest. How did she know?

  “She says I’m too much man for you,” he said.

  Fucking Lacey! I reached for Jake’s hand. “Lacey’s just a . . . she’s confused.” I leaned across the truck’s bench, pulling at his face to make him see me. “Jake, listen. I’m not going to leave you. I love you.” The kiss with Ethan flashed before my eyes, but I shook my head. That had been a mistake, it didn’t count.

  He held my gaze. “Lacey said she saw you in his classroom. Alone. With him.”

  “With — wait, with Mr. Tremont? You think I’m going to leave you for Mr. Tremont? That’s ridiculous,” I said.

  “You weren’t alone in his classroom with him?” Jake asked.

  “No!” I said. “I mean, yes, I was, but I was just —”

  Jake pushed my hand away. “So you lied.” His voice sounded suddenly like his father’s. Dangerous.

  “What? No! You’re confused. This is crazy.”

  “I’m crazy?” Jake asked menacingly.

  “No, I didn’t mean —” My heart was hammering my throat. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. “He’s gay!” I blurted.

  Jake sat up. “He’s what? No way. How do you know?” He narrowed his eyes. “Are you fucking with me?”

  I took a breath, hating myself. “I mean, it’s kind of obvious. He’s so . . . clean.”

  “Oh, shit! No way, man, that’s crazy! I mean, Randy and those dudes said it, but I thought they were just being dicks. Mr. fucking Tremont’s a queer!”

  “God, Jake,” I said, but he was already reaching for the door handle, jumping down from the truck.

  I was a terrible person. I was just as bad as Lacey, spreading rumors to manipulate people. Worse! Because unlike her, I actually had a conscience; I knew it was wrong, and I did it anyway. I prayed to everything and anything holy that Jake would forget about it before we reached the back lot, that he wouldn’t immediately tell every person he saw. That it wouldn’t get back to Ethan and Shanti and Jeremy and my sister that I’d joined the dark side, that I could possibly spread rumors like this.

  Suddenly, an even worse thought hit me: What if it was true? Mr. Tremont was very clean! He had asked about bringing a friend to the bonfire — what if he brought a guy? Jake and his friends would kill him!

  “I can’t believe it,” Jake said, shaking his head. “Lacey said something, but then she said you . . .”

  He slammed the door and walked around to my side, opening my door for me. “It’s crazy,” he summarized, and held out his arm. “You ready, babe?” I nodded and pushed myself out of the cab, wobbling the moment I stood up. He caught me. “Careful.”

  At least he wasn’t thinking about his dad anymore, I thought weakly. “Jake —”

  “Yeah?”

  I had to distract him. Make him forget. I pushed him against the truck, leaning the length of my body against his. I could feel the square outline of the flask in his jacket pocket. “Hey,” I said.

  He inhaled sharply. “Whoa.”

  “I would never leave you for anyone,” I whispered, and ran my tongue up the side of his neck to the base of his ear until he shivered. “You’re the only one. You.”

  His hands moved down my back, pulling me even closer. “Are you sure?” His breath was whiskey hot on my bare skin, and I shivered in the cold night air.

  “I love you,” I whispered, and kissed him until I was convinced.

  Jake was the first to pull away. “We should go.”

  I was shivering still, rubbing my arms as I lost his heat. “We don’t have to,” I said, and for a moment I really believed it. We could go — not back to his house, where his father was drinking alone, and not back to my house, where my mother was constructing centerpieces like a terrorist building letter bombs, but somewhere — somewhere alone, where we could forget about the rest of the world, forget Lacey and Mr. Tremont and Ethan, where we could stay wrapped in each other’s arms and perfect and happy for the rest of our lives. We could skip the rest of our senior year and drive to Mexico, find a little house on the beach and do only the things that made us happy and ignore everything else, fall asleep together at night and wake together in the morning, sweaty and happy and together.

  “I promised Lacey,” Jake said, and Mexico disappeared. The night was still cold, I was still shivering, and I had no choice but to follow him around the side of the school.

  The sky was dark, with tall wispy clouds sweeping in front of the nearly full moon, catching and releasing its light as they rolled over and over themselves like ocean breakers. I half expected to see some ghostly clipper ship appear through the parting shadows. There was something in the air, a wildness in the breeze as it whiffled through the trees, snatching at the driest leaves and sending them spinning to the ground, pushing at my hair and the hem of my dress so I had to hang on as I walked, slightly off balance.

  We turned the corner and saw the bonfire, leaping orange against black skeletons of trees and shooting sparks up into the rolling night sky. Shadows of students, teachers, and parents swarmed like evil spirits and witches dancing around a fire. The sky suddenly flashed twice and thunder ripped through the heavy air, unapologetically loud.

  I jumped and gave a short scream. Jake leaned over and whispered into my ear, his breath warm. “You’re drunk.”

  “No I’m not,” I whispered back, suppressing the urge to grab his hand and run — fly — away from our classmates and into the night.

  Laughter floated from behind us, and I turned to see Lacey and Nikki crossing the parking lot with Randy, Chris, and Geneva and her suck-up friends. Lacey looked perfect, in stark contrast to when I’d seen her last: every hair in place, dress clinging in all the right places, eyes glittering dangerously.

  “What up, man,” Randy called to Jake. “Post party at Jensen’s!”

  Chris nodded. “It’s gonna be dong. Three kegs, no ’rents.”

  I laughed. “Dong? Who says that?” Out of habit I glanced at Lacey, but she stared straight past me. Nikki just stared at the ground. The junior girls looked everywhere but at my face, and I marveled at how quickly Lacey’s machine worked. Only the boys acted like nothing was wrong. “You know what I mean, Paige. It’s gonna be hizzle.” I could have sworn I saw Lacey roll her eyes.

  Jake found my hand and pulled me toward the bonfire, and I had to trot in my ridiculously high heels. As we approached, the laughing and yelling turned to murmurs, and a few random people clapped. And then Lacey and Nikki stepped into the light, and the clapping turned to cheers and screams. The girls waved and blew kisses.

  “Oh God.” I felt suddenly panicky, but Jake put his arm around me and we moved closer to the fire. Off to the side, the pitifully small pep band had set itself up in the b
ed of a pickup truck, just next to the flatbed trailer where Dr. Coulter stood with his hand shading his eyes, apparently staring directly into the fire. The pep band was butchering a Journey medley, and a few people were dancing ironically, or not so ironically, near the truck. I scanned the crowd for Ethan, even though I knew he was working.

  I should have been standing next to Lacey and Nikki, blowing kisses to the crowd. I should have been thrilled to be here at last, after so many years of planning. So why did I keep thinking about stones skipping across water in the afternoon sun?

  “I’ll be right back!” I untangled myself from Jake’s embrace and pushed through the jungle of arms and faces and letter jackets and beer breath and cologne and hair and heels and elbows and expectations and desires. Behind me, Jake was swallowed up in seconds, my trail erased as if I’d never been.

  From the fringes, I saw a side of the school I’d rarely seen before. There were the geeks and weirdos you might expect, but there was drama, too: groups of girls rushing off together, couples making out in the shadows, people on cell phones with fingers in their ears to block the ambient noise, a couple of boys kicking around a hacky sack. Teachers stood on the edges of the circle, laughing with one another and ignoring the students. Closer to the flames, Mr. Berna was trying to polka with the home ec teacher, Ms. Hoeschen, while she laughed hysterically. I saw flirting and fighting, relationships renegotiated, love, hate, and indifference. All this on the outside of what I’d known, beyond the edges of anything I’d cared about before, and tonight it seemed more interesting than whatever was happening in the center.

  Then I spotted Mr. Tremont. He was dressed all in black and was scribbling notes on a legal pad, glancing up at the bonfire and down at the page, up and back, up and back.

  Oh God, was he alone? I had to warn him. I would tell him that Lacey was spreading rumors. It was Lacey’s fault!

  “Hey, Paige.”

  I shrieked. Jeremy stood beside me, and I put my hand over my pounding heart. “Jesus Christ!”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Oh my God, Jeremy! Lacey! She is telling everyone that Mr. Tremont is gay!” The ground tilted and I reached for his sleeve.