The Princesses of Iowa

by M. Molly Backes

  In the living room Prescott is sitting on the arm of the ugly couch, leaning against the wall. “Hey,” he says, “maybe I could give you a call sometime?” Lacey shoves him and says, “She has a BOYFRIEND,” and he looks at you like he wants to say more but Lacey’s there between you, holding up Nikki who’s half asleep and daring you to choose her brother over your best friends, over your boyfriend, over your whole life. So you shrug unhappily and leave without saying a word, wandering out into the quiet Iowa City night.

  You spend the two-block walk to the car encouraging Nikki to keep walking, while Lacey repeatedly refuses her requests to be carried. When you finally get there, Lacey digs the keys out of her purse and throws them at you, but you don’t catch them and they fall in the street. “Dammit, Paige,” Lacey says, and you’re fumbling around trying to find them and it occurs to you that you’re not really in any state to drive. “Maybe I shouldn’t — Prescott was making —”

  You realize your mistake immediately but Lacey jumps all over it. “Prescott was what? I can’t even believe you were kissing my brother. That’s so wrong. Jake is going to be crushed.”

  “You’re not going to tell Jake. You can’t tell Jake.”

  She’s under the streetlight and her face is full of shadows. “I think Jake has a right to know, don’t you? I know I would want to hear if my boyfriend were making out with another chick. . . .”

  Nikki complains about how cold and tired she is, and you finally manage to unlock the car and help her crawl into the backseat, where she curls up like a dog and promptly passes out.

  Lacey stares at you, waiting. “Anytime now.”

  “Wait, I’m driving?” you ask. “But I was drinking. . . .”

  “Oh for fuck’s sake, Paige. You’re the designated driver, so drive. Get in the goddamn car.”

  “I don’t know, Lace. I don’t think . . .”

  “What did you drink? Half a Corona? You never could hold your liquor.”

  “Pres — your brother kept spiking my Cokes. I didn’t mean . . . but you and Nikki were missing, and . . .”

  “Fine,” she says. “I’ll drive. Give me the keys.”

  “Have you been drinking? Are you drunk?”

  “Give me the fucking keys, Paige.”

  “Are you drunk? Maybe we should just call someone. . . .”

  “We’re not fucking calling someone. If we’re not home by the time my mom gets back from Meskwaki, she’ll flip out, and I can’t even deal with that. Give me the keys.”

  “My dad always said we could call him anytime and he’d pick us up, no questions. . . .”

  “Give me the keys, Paige.”

  I gave her the keys.

  Ethan had disappeared. Shanti hadn’t seen him. Jeremy hadn’t seen him. I followed some student council members down the hall, hoping to find the dead. When I saw my sister, I shrieked and threw my arms around her, surprising both of us. “Don’t you ever do that!”

  “Do what?”

  “Die! You can’t die! I need you! Who else understands how crazy Mom is?”

  Mirror laughed. “I’ll see what I can do.” She touched the fake blood by her temple. “Isn’t this makeup cool?”

  “No, it’s creepy!” I said. “Just — don’t die. Okay?”

  She held up her hands, laughed again, and promised. Clearly, she had no idea how awful she looked, or how upsetting it was to see your sister be fake dead.

  “Listen, Mir, have you seen Ethan?”

  “Not since he got carted off in that hearse.”

  I shuddered involuntarily.

  “It wasn’t real, Paige.”

  “I know that,” I said. “But it still freaked me out. After . . . you know.”

  “Sorry,” she said, more gently. “All the dead kids have the rest of the day off, so that it seems more real — he might have taken off already.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Right.”

  “I’m going to wash my face,” she said. “If I see him . . . ?”

  “Tell him I’m looking for him.” My voice was strained, and even I could hear the edge of desperation in it.

  My sister smiled. “Yeah. Of course.”

  I found Nikki in the back hallway, near the auto shop. “Paige, you’re not supposed to be back here.” She rubbed her wrists where the handcuffs had been.

  “Sorry, I was just looking for — are you okay?” Her eyes were sunken into her face and ringed in dark circles. She looked as bad as my sister, but she wasn’t wearing any makeup.

  “Me? Yeah, I’m fine. I just — put a lot of work into this thing, you know? Like, I’ve been up until one or two in the morning every night for the last two weeks, going over details, getting all the permission slips from everyone, watching online videos of how other schools did it, emailing with SADD people from other schools. . . .” She stopped and waved her hand. “Well, you don’t care.”

  “I do, actually.”

  She shook her head. “No you don’t. You think it’s stupid.”

  “Nik, I —”

  I stopped, remembering all the times I’d refused to participate, teased her about her acronym, didn’t listen when she tried to tell me what she was doing, didn’t speak up for her when other people made fun of her, accused her of being a hypocrite. Shit. I was an asshole.

  “Nikki, I seriously don’t think it’s stupid. I think it’s great.”

  “You don’t have to say that.” She slid down the wall until she reached the radiator, settling her weight on her skinny elbows and knees. She looked so little.

  I squatted beside her. “I’m not just saying it, Nikki. Really. I think . . . well, it’s hard to put yourself out there and actually try to make a change for the better.” With a pang of regret, I heard Ethan’s words in my own. Why hadn’t I listened more closely? Why hadn’t I paid attention?

  “Then write Mirror’s eulogy.”

  “What?”

  “If you really care, help me out by writing your sister’s eulogy. Jeremy was supposed to, but he got overwhelmed by the whole Mr. Tremont thing and flaked on me.”

  “Oh,” I said. “I don’t know . . .”

  “We’re doing the mock funeral tomorrow night, before the crowning of the homecoming king and queen. I’d need you to deliver Mirror’s eulogy then.”

  “You’re doing the funeral at the dance?”

  Her face was set. “The whole town turns out to see the crowning ceremony, and I want this message to reach as many people as possible.”

  I thought of Nikki at Lacey’s party, not so long ago, how fragile she’d seemed. She seemed so forceful now. She’d changed so much. We all had.

  “Nikki —” I started, and then stopped.

  “Yes?”

  “It wasn’t your fault, you know. You weren’t driving that night.”

  She nodded. “I know.”

  “You do?”

  “Yeah. It took a while, but I remembered. I wasn’t driving.”

  “Nik, I’m so sorry,” I said. “I don’t know how —”

  She held up a hand, stopping me. “It wasn’t my fault. But it could have been.”

  I sat back on my heels, studying her, and then nodded. “I’ll write my sister’s eulogy.”

  The afternoon sky was dark and colorless as I trudged out to where the homecoming float was parked, behind the football field. I’d stumbled through the day in a haze. Ethan was nowhere to be found, and classes seemed weirdly empty without the missing kids. Nikki had actually been taken to court where she would be yelled at by a real judge, and I heard Jeremy was going to film it for her. And so, after everything, she wouldn’t even be on the homecoming float with us.

  Only four princesses climbed up on the trailer, and we settled ourselves carefully atop the giant papier-mâché beehive. I sat on a little bench with Jenna, who looked beautiful in a white wool coat and perfectly tailored gray wool slacks. I felt like a slob next to her in my old black peacoat and jeans. A month ago, my mother would never have let me out of the h
ouse looking like this, but since she’d lost her job, she hadn’t been getting up in the mornings with us. I wondered if she’d even be watching the parade today.

  The wind started to pick up as we rolled down the street behind the wheezing marching band, and I watched the teachers and parents along the sidewalks look at the sky and mutter to one another while the kids waved their hands and yelled for candy. Down in one of the chairs closest to the trailer hitch, Lacey waved regally to the crowd, letting the football player next to her throw candy for the both of them. As always, her hair was perfectly curled and falling just so over her school-spirit-yellow sweater. She had white gloves and white earmuffs but no coat. She was probably freezing, but she didn’t show it. Elbow, elbow, wrist wrist wrist. Serene, secure, waving to the crowd just as we’d always imagined.

  I watched the people clustered along the curb, searching for two girls, middle schoolers, holding hands. One keeps her eyes fixed on the float, her face strong and determined. The other tries to focus on the parade but her eyes keep darting back to her friend. One day they’ll be up there, they promise, riding the float down the center of Main Street, surrounded by good-looking boys in letter jackets, perfect hair and perfect smiles, waving to an adoring crowd.

  But of course I didn’t see them. Those girls existed in memory only. I tried to make myself feel something, tried to enjoy the moment we’d dreamed of for years, but all I felt was emptiness. After a few blocks I stopped waving, and I tried to focus on writing my sister’s eulogy in my head. I had no idea where to start. How the hell do you sum up your sister in three minutes? She’s your twin and your polar opposite. She’s your constant companion and your competition. She’s your best friend and the biggest bitch in the world. She’s everything you wish you could be and everything you wish you weren’t.

  Halfway down Main Street the sky started spitting rain. Two blocks later, there was a deafening CRACK of thunder. And then it started hailing. We princesses jumped out of our chairs and tumbled down the float, running for cover. The football boys followed suit, and frazzled elementary school teachers herded their charges toward any shelter they could find. Up and down the street, garage doors opened and neighbors called to the children through the blinding rain and stinging hail. I followed the other girls toward the lights of the gas station.

  Inside, it was surprisingly still. Customers stood frozen, listening to the snare drum rat-a-tat of rain on the metal roof. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, and behind the register a woman clicked her teeth as the hail bounced against the plate-glass windows. My hair lay heavy and wet against my neck, and my heart pounded from the run. A second later, the door pushed open again and Lacey fell breathlessly into the store beside me.

  “Hey,” I said.

  She leaned her cane against a donut case and stood on one leg while wringing her wet hair like a dish towel. She must have lost her earmuffs in her flight.

  Another crash of thunder shook the windows, and Lacey and I both jumped. I grabbed her cane and handed it to her. “So . . .” I said. “Was it everything you always dreamed it would be?”

  Lacey glanced at me. Her mascara was running down her face in dark streaks, and I realized that mine was probably just as bad. We both reached up to run fingers under our eyes at the same time, using each other as mirrors, just as we’d done a thousand times before. For the first time in weeks, I smiled at her. She shook her head and smiled back. Outside, the ridiculous papier-mâché beehive float listed to the side, slumped over the edge of the flatbed trailer, and finally collapsed in the street.

  I started my sister’s eulogy a hundred times. A hundred lines scribbled, a hundred lines scratched out.

  Drinking and driving can lead to terrible consequences. . . . You shouldn’t drink and drive because . . . When I first met my sister, she was a baby. . . .

  Nothing was right. Nothing would do. I tried exercises from Mr. Tremont’s class:

  I remember . . .

  I remember seeing my sister lying dead on the pavement, blood spattered across her white tank top. The next class period, I was hugging her in the hallway . . .

  I remember when she picked me up because no one else would, and in the end we have to be there for each other. . . .

  My sister is the nicest . . .

  My sister . . .

  An hour later I was lying on the floor of my bedroom, staring at the ceiling and remembering how I used to imagine it was the floor. You would have to climb over the walls above the doors to get in and out of rooms. You could sit on the ceiling fan like a merry-go-round, and the ceiling lamp would be like a little electric campfire where you could warm your hands in winter. The ceiling was so appealingly bare, without rugs or furniture. It invited you to roller-skate across it, do cartwheels, have a ceiling dance party, make ceiling angels.

  I was losing my mind.

  Downstairs, my mother’s heels clicked across the floor, back and forth, back and forth, as she paced and talked to her sorority sisters from Northwestern. She’d been on the phone all afternoon. When one sister got tired of talking to her and hung up, she dialed the next one. Her voice curled up through the vents like smoke, the words indistinct but the tone perfectly clear: both her daughters had failed her, she’d failed as a mother, nobody loved her and she’d die alone.

  My mother’s voice floated up again, and I scooched across the floor on my back and slid under the bed. It was built higher than a normal bed to fit a rolling trundle under it, but for some reason I’d never actually gotten a trundle. Underneath it was like an abandoned fort, dusty and stuffy and littered with objects that had fallen behind the bed or gotten kicked under it. I sneezed once and hit my head on a spring, but then settled down and breathed deeply. It was quiet. Peaceful.

  Mirror and I used to lie under our parents’ bed, side by side, on our backs, staring up at the dusty bedsprings. Later they traded in their bed for a Japanese-style bed that was too close to the floor to hide under, and Miranda and I grew up and stopped hiding together, and then we stopped talking. I remember my sister, hiding under the bed with me. . . .

  I closed my eyes.

  I wished I could stay under my bed forever. Or fall asleep and wake up to a world where people were good and things weren’t so complicated. My stuffed dog, Zeke, was half under the bed, and I pulled him in with me, hugging him against my chest.

  I remember the accident today, how real it felt even though I knew it wasn’t real, how bitterly, horribly, awfully real it seemed, and Ethan was dead, and Mirror was dead, and how could they be dead when there’s so much I never told them. . . .

  I remember the accident last spring, how we dragged Nikki away from the party and threw her in the back of the car and drove away under the bloodred moon, and we both stayed silent when she awoke in the backseat all alone, surrounded by glass and blood and blame, and we raised up our heads for a moment to see that she was alive and dropped them back into the cold, wet grass. . . .

  “Paige?” My sister’s feet appeared beneath the bed skirt. “Are you here?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where? Under the . . . ?” Her feet moved slowly toward me, and then she knelt down, pulling at the sheets. “Oh, hi.”

  “Hi.”

  “Scoot over.” She lay down and squeezed under, next to me. “Hi, Zeke.”

  My mother’s voice haunted the pipes.

  “Mom just asked me if I’ve ever tried meth.” Mirror sighed. “This week sucks. Remember when we were little and I used to sneak into your room when they were fighting?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I remember.”

  I remember . . . there was no way we could beat her mother home but Lacey tried anyway, muttering about how Brenda was always late coming back from the casino and we could still make it. I couldn’t tell if she was drunk or not; she didn’t seem drunk, but she rarely did. When Nikki drank, she got loud and happy and giggly and clumsy. When Lacey drank, she got quiet and dangerously thoughtful.

  She leaned forward o
ver the steering wheel, as if it would help us go faster. We were already doing 75 down a two-lane country highway and I wanted to warn her about deer and coyotes and raccoons who might appear in the headlights at any moment, eyes reflecting the light like spooky beacons. Last year a boy hit a deer on this same road and completely totaled his car and broke both arms where he tried to protect his face from the air bag. He didn’t come back to school after that, and people mostly forgot about him, but something about the story haunted me, and I strain my eyes for hints of suicidal woodland creatures.

  Everything feels abstract, like I’m not 100 percent in my body.

  “I can’t fucking believe you,” Lacey suddenly says. We’re close to home now, turning onto the winding road out to Sauvignon.

  “What?” you ask, and then blush as it all rushes back and you’re embarrassed that you already let yourself forget. No, not “yourself”: myself. I can’t hide behind you, it wasn’t you. It was always me.

  I kissed Prescott. I’d never kissed anyone but Jake in years, and the worst part was I liked it. He was a good kisser, attentive and fully present, like the kissing was enough, was more than enough, like he’d be happy to stay there kissing me all night and never complain that we weren’t going any further.

  But it was wrong. I should not have kissed Prescott. I love Jake. “I love Jake,” I say.

  “What?” Lacey asks. “You take Jake for granted. You’re disgusting. You don’t even deserve him.” Her fingers are white around the steering wheel and her foot smashes down on the accelerator and the needle inches toward 80.

  “And you do? Is that what you’re trying to say?”

  “Yes!” The word explodes out of her. “I do! I wouldn’t fucking cheat on him, that’s for sure. I would know what I had and I wouldn’t just throw it away.”

  She’s staring through the windshield like she could burn a hole through it with her eyes, and I’m suddenly filled with this crazy rage, like all these little hints she’s dropped all spring and all the times I’ve bitten my tongue to keep her happy suddenly just swell up inside me and I just reach over and grab the tiny millimeter of flab under her upper arm that she’s totally self-conscious about, and I pinch it as hard as I can. “Ow! You bitch!” One of her hands flies off the steering wheel and punches me in the leg. “Fuck!” I punch her in the leg, an eye for an eye, and she reaches out to block my arm and suddenly everything is bathed in light. Her arms, my arms, the steering wheel, the gear stick, all become strange puppets in the garish light, and Lacey’s face is a mess of shadows and geometry and fear, because it’s a car coming straight at us, out of nowhere a car, and Lacey wrenches the wheel as hard as she can and we go spinning off the road . . .