by Rene Steinke
Downstairs she heard her dad’s cheerful “Hi, sweetheart” echo in the kitchen, and then the murmur of her mother’s voice. His purposeful steps on the tile, then “What?” Willa knew he was loosening his blue tie, pulling it quickly from his collar.
She wished Jana were home—when there were two of them, her parents didn’t watch so closely, but alone with them in the house, Willa felt like they could see through her hair and scalp to what she was thinking.
All along she’d only believed half of it (the spoon against her heart worked harder), but she stupidly hung on to the half that noticed his eyes lingering on her face, the softness in his voice like a country singer’s, that time he’d made her late for class telling her how he’d got his truck out of the ditch—not the half of him that usually looked past her shoulder to some other girl or buddy of his.
She peeled down her jeans to look again at the writing on her hip. Slut. She tried again to wipe it off with her finger. If he’d cared about her, he would have stayed there with her. She imagined a hand against her hip bone, the green shirt or red plaid shirt. And then in her mind, a great black mud rose up like a curtain.
She slid out of bed, went into the bathroom, and locked the door. She soaped up the washcloth, rubbed it against the writing until her skin turned red. She doused a cotton ball with alcohol, then tried makeup remover and bleach, but it didn’t make any difference. It looked like permanent marker, but she was afraid it might be one of those homemade tattoos, the kind people had in prison. She took a bath and lay trembling in the hot water for a long time. The red and stinging skin around the blue letters seemed to enlarge the word.
She went back to her room, not wanting to remember, but forcing herself to try. The moment that kept coming back was Cully opening a door for her, the scratch of his calloused hand at her elbow. “Here now.” A beer bottle broken off at the neck, filling up with black water. When she’d walked into the house with him, four guys sat on the couch; another two stood in the kitchen, drinking beer; and outside a few lingered at the pool, throwing bottle caps into the water. Where were the girlfriends? she’d wondered, and panicked just as a tall guy with a red nose stood up from his chair to say hello. She should have left then, but Cully was holding her hand. She didn’t know why she’d assumed there would be other girls there. “Let me get you a drink,” said Bishop Geitner, brushing at the top of his overly short hair. “You like Red Bull?” After the drink, the time was in splinters. The faded back of his jeans as she followed Cully up the stairs. “What does she want?” Light wrinkling on the blue surface of the swimming pool. It wasn’t really warm enough to swim.
Downstairs, her mother clanged pots in the kitchen. The bedroom curtains illuminated briefly by the headlights of a passing car.
When Jana got home, they had dinner. Her dad wouldn’t look at her, but told her as she sat down, his eyes on his plate, “You need to be in school when you’re supposed to be in school, hear me?”
“Yes, sir,” she said, passing him the rolls, a pain in her throat. She hated acting fake with him, but it seemed what he expected.
“What did she do?” Jana wore rainbow-striped knee socks, two aprons—one tied in the front, the other in the back—and a headband with two curly Martian antennas that wiggled over her head.
“That’s not your concern,” said their mother. “Put those aprons back in the drawer when you’re through with them. They’d better be clean.”
“One week,” said her father. Willa already knew she’d be grounded. Eventually, Mrs. Thompson might call again to tell them what she’d seen, but she also might not, and then they wouldn’t have to know anything, and then it would be over.
THE NEXT MORNING she woke up, lifted her pajama top, and saw the inked block letters had faded, but she could still read the word. She couldn’t make herself stand up. To have to go back to school and pretend her life was normal.
Finally, she got dressed among her familiar things, the photo of her frizzy-haired grandparents smiling by the lake, her pink iPod, the circle-faced rag doll, the ceramic cowboy boot that held pens, and downstairs, the sounds of her parents talking softly in the kitchen, the clink of cups and bowls in the sink. She had to take this familiar feeling with her out into the world and hang on to it, squeeze it into her palms and paste it to her eyes and stuff it in her ears.
When she walked to her first class, the hallway seemed impossibly the same, the long white wall painted with a billboard-sized emblem of a galloping blue mustang. Lockers slammed, a boy laughed too loudly, girls touched their perfect hair. Near the water fountain, she saw her friends conferring, Amy tugging at the hem of her minidress, Miranda with a finger hooked in her belt loop. As she got closer to them, Willa fished around in her bag for the notebook she had to return to Amy.
“I have bad news,” Amy said.
Willa felt as if the ceiling were pounding gently on the top of her head.
Amy told Willa she couldn’t spend the night on Saturday, because her mom was having one of her meetings then. Willa had forgotten about that plan they’d rigged so she could stay at a party until midnight instead of having to come home at ten.
“Oh,” said Willa, handing her the red tablet. Soon enough, her friends would hear what had happened. “Thanks for these notes.”
A flutter of blue-and-white cheerleader uniforms streamed toward them. Willa recognized Alicia, walking with another girl, and remembered Alicia’s boyfriend was a friend of Ben Lawbourne’s. By now, she could have heard something, but there was nothing in her face that meant she knew.
Miranda pointed to a bruise just above Willa’s elbow. “What’s that?”
“It’s nothing. I hurt my arm.” Willa held her arm behind her back and tried to think of something else to say.
“Well, ladies, I’ve got a test,” said Amy, turning away, her purse swinging. Miranda followed. They didn’t know yet, but they would soon. It was only the morning. She couldn’t think about them, though—she kept her mind on the moment, vigilant at the indifferent faces passing by, the plaid shirts, the T-shirts with slogans, the sparkly headbands.
Willa went down the hall and turned in to the classroom, sat down next to the bulletin board full of construction paper triangles. Mrs. Westhauser took roll and then sat at her perch. “We need to prove that angle one is congruent to angle two.” She drew an X with arrows on the four corners. “It’s given that angle one and angle two are vertical angles.”
Willa looked out the window at the parking lot, the neat lines of cars, a guy she didn’t know walking out with an army-green backpack slung on one shoulder, the strict yellow lines in the pavement oddly pathetic, worn away by so many tires.
“Step Three. Now,” Mrs. Westhauser cleared her throat. “It wouldn’t be the end of the world, if you forgot this step and went directly to four, but it would be technically incorrect and sloppy. Too many of you have been forgetting steps like that, rushing on with your logic.” She would now and then proclaim the beauty of triangles and well-done proofs, flinging her arm like a modern dancer. “But I still have hope that you understand the direction of the logic. It’s not the end of the world.” She said the last statement so faintly, Willa barely heard it. Her father said “the end of the world” like a prayer.
He’d point to the headlines and say, “See that?” Or he’d erupt from the deep cushion of his easy chair in front of the television to say, “Of course that’s what happened. It’s all in Scripture. After the battle, the Jews take Jerusalem. The Rapture’s coming, alright—I’m not surprised one bit to see all that fighting over there.”
Mrs. Westhauser assigned them a problem. Will Kent sat in a desk near the front. Willa tried to remember if he was one of Cully’s friends. Pencils scribbled on workbooks, desk legs scraped against the floor, someone was coughing, and Willa heard her own loud and rapid breathing.
The round clock on the wall gave a click, clapped th
e minute and hour hands together. The TV monitor that hung high in the corner turned on suddenly, and Principal Johnson’s stern, elderly face and bow-tied blouse filled the screen. “Students, teachers, a couple of announcements.” There would be a pep rally tomorrow. Permissions slips for the field trip to NASA were due.
Willa’s fingers wouldn’t stop shaking when she picked up her pencil, and she had to press hard against it to keep it in her grip. She felt the soreness in her eyes, the extra muscle in her vision spasming. Red and green lights streamed at the edge of her sight line when she moved her head too quickly.
Later, in biology lab, she was dissecting an earthworm with her partner, the pink organs unfixed and shiny in the tray, when in the corner of the table, light fell in a diaphanous veil over a pair of wet-looking horns. The fixture stood there like worms twined together into antlers, while all around her, people busily wrote things down.
As she went from one class to the next in the hallway, she watched with nervous attention as peoples’ faces streamed past. She looked out for Cully’s loping walk and longish blond hair, the slump of his shoulders, and for his friends too. If she saw any of them and didn’t have time to turn and walk in the other direction, she’d pretend to drop her purse and bend down to get it.
She passed the bulletin board that said ALUMS SERVING OUR COUNTRY, photos of the five men and women in uniforms pasted beneath, and over the head of Bobby Laker, a construction paper cross. She wanted to find Dani.
The hallway began to clear. About ten feet ahead, near the trophy case, she saw the white piping of the back of a Western shirt, that blond hair stuck up from his collar, the familiar stooped slant of Cully’s tall frame. He moved around the girls next to him, lifted a book over the head of someone, and seemed to be looking at something through the glass. The black shirt finally turned around, and something hard and salty came up in her throat. It wasn’t Cully, but a guy she didn’t know with glasses.
In the cafeteria, Dani grabbed her hand and pulled her down beside her at the empty table. Most people were eating sandwiches and fries, but there was also a kind of stroganoff, which had the creamy acidic smell of vomit. “Sit down, quick.” Her breath was hot against Willa’s ear. “Okay, don’t let your face move when I tell you this.” This was the rumor: fifteen guys invited to lunch, Willa gone out on the balcony of the house, stripping off her clothes. “No one really believes it, and I’m telling everyone that’s just crazy.” Willa stared at the black lizard-skin toe of someone’s cowboy boot at the next table, relieved to finally hear what they were saying. She had said to Cully, “I don’t even like you,” flirting, leaning back against the kitchen counter with her drink. She let him hook his finger in the belt loop of her jeans.
Dani held Willa’s arm. She was tougher and louder than Willa’s other friends, and if anyone could protect her, she could. “But where did they get that story?”
“Well, I was with Cully.”
“Yeah. Was there some other girl there?”
“No.” A flattened stray piece of paper lay among dusty footprints on the floor.
“Oh.”
There were big windows on three sides of the cafeteria, but the glass was clouded and gray. “I guess I lost a few hours.” She heard the forced casualness in her voice, as if it were just bad luck, like losing a jacket or a wallet.
“Shit! What do you mean lost?”
“I mean I can’t remember. He left me there at the Lawbournes’. My mom had to come get me.”
“God, she had to— What did she say?”
“You know, she was mad.”
Dani’s eyes veered to the side. “They said you were drunk.”
“I only took a couple of sips, but I guess it was strong.” Willa tried to gather in the harmless things around her. There were the plain fluorescent strips on the ceiling; there was the moving belt of dirty trays; there were the blue circular tables.
“What was it?”
“Vodka and Red Bull.”
Now all of the words Dani said seemed wooden and impenetrable. “When Polly drank those, she threw up all the next day. You must be freaked. Are you still . . . you know—”
“It’s like I wasn’t even there.”
“Look, all I care about is you. What do you want me to do?” Dani’s eyes were sad. “I should start another rumor, that’s what I should do.”
“Don’t say anything.” Willa stood up. “I’ll see you in the bathroom after fifth period.” It was their usual meeting place.
In the last bit of locker clatter and rush before people got to their classes, she felt dizzy, and when she turned, at the periphery of her vision, strange lights flashed like signals.
In English class, Ms. Marlowe wore red. She was talking about Faulkner and the natural metaphors in “The Bear” when a student aide came to the door with a note. Willa watched Ms. Marlowe’s flat, wide hips move from one side of the room to the other.
Just before class ended, Ms. Marlowe quietly called Willa over to her desk. “The guidance counselor would like to see you before sixth period. Here’s a pass.” Did the counselor know, or was it just that her forged note about her absence had been found out?
She passed the auditorium doorway and heard voices singing in unison. Inside, on the lighted stage, people stared up at the choir director. And there, as she turned, at the edge of her sight line, was a blurry flash of fur. She rushed down the hallway to the counselor’s office.
“Hi, honey, will you have a seat?” Ms. Ryan said. “That’s a pretty necklace.” She had long hair that draped against her face and large, empathetic eyes.
The office light was dimmed, not fluorescent, lit by lamps and a window with a latticed blind.
“Thanks.”
Ryan said, “You’re on the honor roll again. Which classes do you like best?” They talked about oil painting and Emily Dickinson. Willa’s hand trembled as she moved it from the arm of the chair to her leg.
Finally, Ryan clicked her tongue. “Well, I have to tell you, there was a call to the Christian hotline yesterday about an incident.” The last time Willa had heard about the hotline was in the spring, when Beth Ambroy told someone she was going to drink bleach. “You know I’ve been at this school for years, and one thing that always makes me sit up and take notice is when a girl starts acting not like herself. It looks to me like you’re headed for a good college, right? It’s not like you to skip your classes.” She stopped, seemed to be listening to the muffled sound of a male teacher shouting instructions in the next room. “Willa, I’m not here to judge. Do you want to talk?” Her patience was unnerving, the kind Willa remembered from a dream of a fire, someone shrugging their shoulders in the middle of the flames, saying, “What’s the matter?”
“Not really.” She looked away at the shelves of books, the test prep manuals and career guides. The career counselor had just given a lecture about their futures. Willa’s father thought she should be a pharmacist because she got an A in chemistry, and whenever she chose “poet” as a career path on the questionnaires, the chances of making a living at it came up as something like ten thousand to one.
“Okay.” Ms. Ryan looked disappointed. “You know I’ve seen a lot of things here—nothing would surprise me much.” Willa studied her face, and wondered what she might already know. She gripped the sides of her chair, pressed down so hard that the pads of her fingers stung. On the carpeting, in the green and blue fibers, a red thread on the floor made a C.
“A lot of times I see girls who drink alcohol and lose track of themselves. And then they think whatever happened was their fault.”
“I don’t even like the taste of it,” she said.
“So you weren’t drinking, that’s good.” Ryan folded her hands and brought them in to the tip of her chin. “Honey, I can’t help you if you won’t talk.” Her voice was throaty and gentle. “I don’t know what happened over there,
but I sure would like to help, Willa.”
“I don’t remember.”
Ms. Ryan covered her lips with the tips of her fingers. “You don’t remember leaving school with Cully Holbrook, or you don’t remember what happened after?”
Willa looked away, and felt her face grow grotesque and giant, as if it took up half the room.
“Well, I’ll tell you what. We may not know exactly what happened, but there was drunkenness, and when incidents like this one occur, the rumors . . .” She paused, seemed to catch herself. “I mean, well, to be safe, for your own good, we think you should go home for now, take a couple of days. How does that sound? That way, you’ll have some time to think about things away from all this. And if you want to come see me, you can.”
Willa couldn’t focus on what she was saying. “I don’t really know what you’re talking about.”
“Do you need some water?” Ryan stood up, nodded gently to Willa. “Let me get you some.” She went out the door.
Willa pressed her fingers to her eyelids. The pressure made her see orange and red blobs, and she could suddenly smell something rotten in the trash. She opened her eyes, and a shadow slipped out of the corner. She didn’t want a vision. She wanted to hang on to this room, to the flat carpet, the scratched metal desk, Ryan about to come back. Near the edge of the bookshelf, in the watery dimness, a shape emerged. She willed it back to the corner, but it kept coming, horns unfurled like waterways on maps, branching up to the ceiling in quick, silverish leaps. “What does she want?” The words weren’t spoken exactly but flung out into the air, and she tasted the vodka again in her mouth. In a burst of dark fur, the breath went out of her, and the whole shape was gone.
Ms. Ryan came back in a rush, handed her a cup of water, and touched her shoulder in a practiced gesture of sympathy. Willa drank the water, but the vodka taste was still there. She couldn’t stop shaking. It felt as if something was pressing open her heart—as if it was only the fake heart shape cut out of paper, and someone was holding it open with two hands, and anything might fall into it now.