“How far did they say it was?” Zack asks as he pulls open the driver’s side door.
“Twenty miles or so. Not so far.”
“In the dark. In the snow. Through the mountains,” Zack says. “I’m not sure Miss Ruka can handle that.”
“She can’t or you can’t?” I ask.
“Maybe he’s right,” Charlie says. He’s looking out at the road, where the snow makes rainbow prisms in the streetlights. “Maybe we should tuck it in for the night.”
“This is your mission,” I say. I know he’s right, but I never intended to spend two nights away from home. “Where exactly do you suggest we stay? I mean, I bet I could curl right up on the glitter floor back there, and maybe I could convince them to take Zack, but I don’t think they want you at all.”
Zack shuts his door and trots back toward the bouncer. He’s kind of graceful. He jogs back, the air puffing white out of his mouth. “Guy says there’s a motel up the road. They rent by the hour or the night.”
“Do you think it would be cheaper if we just did six hours or something?” I ask, perplexed. Charlie and Zack laugh.
“Just when I think you might be turning into a real live girl about town, you say something like that,” Charlie says. He flips the seat forward so I can get in back.
“You know, a gentleman wouldn’t laugh at a girl for not knowing something. And he would let me sit up front.”
“You’re my sister, not a girl I’m trying to impress. Chivalry is dead. I thought that’s how you wanted it, mini-feminist. And they rent by the hour so people can have sex.”
Though the notion of a motel that rents by the hour has never occurred to me, the Sunset Motel looks just as I’d imagine an hourly motel would. The guy behind the front desk is maybe nineteen and has pimples across his chin and cheeks like an acne beard. He doesn’t look at us while he talks. Just rattles off the rates and the rules and makes Charlie sign something since he is over eighteen and the only one who can legally rent the room. “There’s a pool,” the boy says as he hands Charlie the key.
“I bet he thinks this is some sort of weird threesome,” I say once we step back outside and start walking toward our room.
Charlie shudders and Zack says, “It would actually probably be a normal threesome compared to his usual clientele.”
“Gross,” I say.
Charlie unlocks the door and we all step through a time warp. The floor is orange carpet with cigarette burns and an ominous stain at the foot of one of the full beds. Each bed has a royal blue coverlet, tan sheets, and two pillows, flat as tortillas. The bathroom mirror is cracked, and the sink and counter are some weird form of white and gold marble that’s peeling up at the edges. There are two thin towels, and a toilet paper roll that’s nearly gone.
I wish my phone wasn’t dead so I could take pictures. No one will believe me.
The hourly rate is twenty-five dollars, but the whole night is only fifty-seven, further depleting my stack of cash. I’m not sure how we’re going to get home, really. We need to fill up the tank again, soon, and of course we have to eat. Neither of the guys seems too concerned about it. Instead they stand stock-still in the middle of the room. “So,” Zack says.
“So,” Charlie agrees.
And once again I feel like they understand something I don’t. I watch where they are both looking. The beds. Two beds, three people. “Oh for Christ’s sake,” I say. “It’s a simple math problem. I can sleep with you, Charlie, because it’s not like we haven’t had to do it before. Or I can sleep with you, Zack, because I know you won’t try anything. Or you guys can sleep together, but I know you both will be all weird about it, but then try to be not weird. So eliminate that. So we have two choices. And since I know that Charlie kicks, I’m sleeping with you, Zack.”
“Okay,” Zack says. But he doesn’t move.
I flop down on the bed farthest from the door on the side closest to the wall. “If a serial killer comes in, he’ll get both of you first, and hopefully be too tired by the time he gets to me.”
“That’s lovely, Lexi,” Zack says.
I notice a phone on the table between the beds. It’s the old kind of phone, with big push buttons and a curly cord that hooks the mouthpiece to the receiver. Glued to it are instructions for making a collect call. I pick up the receiver and dial.
A computer instructs me: “Please state your name.”
“Lexi,” I say. And then, in case it’s for some official business, I say, “Alexandra Green.”
“Thank you.”
The phone rings only once.
“Hello?” My mom’s voice is panicked.
Before I can say anything, the computer says. “You have a collect call from—” There is a pause and then my voice: “Lexi. Alexandra Green.”
I sound forlorn. Like my voice has been all hollowed out. How long has it sounded that way?
“Do you accept the charges?”
“Yes! Where are you, Lexi?”
“We’re in Pennsylvania. We went to a strip club.”
“Lex!” Charlie calls from his bed.
“Pennsylvania, you said? You’re all crackly.”
“Well, we’re in this totally sketchy motel. I think the phone is even older than you.”
Nothing.
“Mom?”
“I don’t like this.”
“I was only kidding.”
“Is Charlie there? Is he okay?”
“Yeah, he’s fine. I mean, he’s a little miffed since they wouldn’t let him in the strip club, but he’s fine.”
“It sounds like you keep saying ‘strip club.’”
“We’re all fine. Zack, too. Can you call his mom and dad?”
“Can I talk to Charlie?”
“This is like in one of those hostage movies and you ask to talk to him to make sure I haven’t actually killed him already.”
“Lexi,” Mom says.
“Fine, here he is.”
I reach the phone out to him, and he takes it. “Uh-huh . . . uh-huh . . . I will.”
“Wouldn’t you rather talk to me than him?” I ask Zack.
Zack just shrugs, but I can see a little smile.
“I’m sorry about what I said back at the amusement park,” I tell him. “It’s just that—it’s still a little raw. A lot raw.”
Charlie hands the phone back to me. “Hey, Mom,” I say. “You should see this motel. The remote control for the television is chained to the bedside table.”
“That’s great. Listen, you need to keep an eye on him.”
“I am, Mom. But let’s not forget that he’s the older one, so maybe he should get the lecture every once in a while.”
“We’ll talk about it when you get home.”
“Wait, does that mean I’m in trouble?”
“No, honey. Just that we have a lot to talk about when you get home.”
“Okay.”
“And, honey.”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t use the pillows and sleep on top of the sheets. If you bring bedbugs home, I will murder you both.”
“Aye, aye, captain.”
“I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
The indoor pool is surrounded by all these fake plants that are like palm-tree shrubbery, nothing that exists in real life. The ground around it is pebbles glazed over with some thick shellac that has taken on the color of boogers. The pool itself is lit with blue and green underwater lights that make it look like a lagoon. But not like a romantic-movie-style lagoon. More like a dank and potentially eel-infested lagoon. I don’t know if eels actually live in lagoons. There’s a river that runs through our town, the Lamprey River, and sometimes kids jump off the bridge and go skinny-dipping. I did it once. With Gwen, before Seth. We were swimming in the silky moonlight when I felt something both cool and warm brush against my thigh. “Don’t try anything, Gwen,” I said. Her chin was underwater, and the ripples of the water seemed to be reflected in her big eyes. “What ar
e you talking about?” she asked. And it was like in that moment, perfect clarity. There was a reason this was named the Lamprey River. Lamprey eels. Eels in the river. I scrambled for the edge and climbed out far from my clothes, not caring who saw my naked body. “Eels,” I called to Gwen. “Eels!”
“I’m not going in,” I say to Charlie and Zack. “I don’t have a swimsuit.”
“Go in your underwear,” Charlie says. “You can be sure that Zack and I won’t be looking.”
“I might look,” Zack says, “but I won’t judge.”
“What’s to judge?” I ask. But my body is not the same since I quit field hockey. It is mine and not mine.
“You always go in the motel pool,” Charlie says. “Always.” He pulls off his shirt. He has the tiniest tuft of chest hair, and there’s something obscene about it. It’s not just imagining Penelope running her fingers through it. I look away from him, down at the snot rocks. I hear one splash and then another: the boys are in the water.
I sit on a lounge chair, the straps pressing against my jeans. The guys are just floating in the water, soft swishes of sound.
Fuck it.
I take off my clothes and with three steps I dive into the water. It’s warm and salty. I stay under for as long as I can, blink my eyes open, and I’m staring right into one of the green lights. It’s fuzzy, like I’m going into that tunnel of light you’re supposed to see when you die.
And then the light goes out.
I sputter to the surface. We are in complete darkness. The smell of chlorine fills my nose and, I don’t know, this sounds crazy. It is crazy. But it’s like I’m transported. Back to the first time. With Seth. The first time with Seth.
I scramble out of the pool. “I’m going back to the room,” I tell them. There’s a stack of stiff towels on a shelf. I grab one and try to wrap it around me, but it’s too small and as I walk back down the hall, every time I take a step, the edge of my underwear shows. I feel certain that someone is going to come out of a room and see me. Someone will emerge and they will see me and they will know just by looking at me the kind of trash that Seth thought I was.
BEFORE
November
Sloppy Sue’s was not really a bar. It had been one, but it had so many liquor violations for serving minors that it was about to be closed down. So they decided to just become a liquor-free club and serve those same patrons. And if those minors chose to sneak in a flask or a bottle of Coke with half the soda dumped out and replaced with rum, well, the owners didn’t look too carefully. What they did care about was the music. All the best local bands played there. One legend held that Adrian Wildes had played the club, before he went all commercial. A second legend held that he had come back in disguise, as part of a band called Kinky Slide, a band that only ever played one, mythic show. But Seth swore he had been there that night, and no way no how was that Adrian Wildes.
We went to Sloppy Sue’s the weekend after Halloween to see Vaginas of Steel, an all-girl punk-rap-ska band from Dover. Seth said they actually thrashed pretty hard and anyway they were so damn hot in those leather bras and rubber shorts. “It’s a statement, right? On the male gaze,” he said as he gazed.
The singer had a ring on each finger and bracelets up her arm. She looked familiar, but I couldn’t place her. Seth was right up at the stage, which was three feet above the ground, which made him eye level with her crotch.
I had a club soda with lime in a plastic cup. I stood against the side wall, out of the throng of thrashing bodies.
Seth had snuck in a flask and added a heavy dose of vodka to my cup.
The windows behind the band were gray fog.
Vaginas of Steel really worked the crowd, up and up and up, and I wondered what it was like to control a whole group like that. I wondered if the singer even realized her power.
The throng lurched toward me and I made myself as flat as faded wallpaper. Heat came off the crowd.
There were some straight-edge skinheads in the center, spiraling their fists as the singer caterwauled an OH! sound over and over and over.
I thought: she is wailing.
I thought: it is too hot in here.
The singer threw herself on the mass of bodies and they received her. It was all guys, I realized, men whose hands grabbed and tugged and pinched and pressed.
She moved toward me, this broken body on a sea of grasping hands. She floated above the heat waves.
I could not breathe.
She was almost on top of me as I sank to the ground, and before I closed my eyes, I recognized her.
“Holy shit, Lexi. I mean, really.”
Debbi, my former babysitter, had one hand on each of my knees. “I thought I was having some sort of drug-induced flashback, although, like, I don’t use at all.”
I rubbed my eyes. “It’s really me.”
We used to listen to Taylor Swift and play tennis rackets as guitars and made Charlie be the drummer in the background.
“Shit, girl, what happened?” Even when she was our babysitter, Debbi swore too much.
“I was hot. I got overheated.”
“No, I mean, look at you. You grew up. I must be ancient.” She turned over her shoulder to her bandmate. “Are we ancient? I used to babysit this girl.”
We were backstage in a tiny room with yellow-green walls covered in handwritten messages and signatures. Seth sat in a fraying armchair at the far side of the room. His beanie was pushed back on his head so some curls were showing. I smiled, but he didn’t smile back.
“How old are you anyway?” Debbi asked.
“Fifteen,” I said. I bit my tongue to keep from adding “and a half.”
“Shit,” she said again.
“Is this your job now?”
She laughed. “Nah, I work at a graphic-design place downtown. And before you say that’s cool, let me clarify that I don’t get to do any actual design. Mostly I photocopy.”
“It’s still cool,” Seth said from the armchair.
“Yeah, sure,” Debbi said. “What about you? What about Charlie? I bet he’s cute now, huh?”
“That’s nasty, Debbi,” one of the other women said. “They’re kids.”
“If you’re fifteen, he’s gotta be, what? Nineteen. Not nasty.”
“He’s not cute, he’s—”
“So you’re in high school?” She leaned back so she was sitting on the floor, but she still had her hands on my knees.
“Yeah.”
“You like it?”
“I guess.”
“And this d-bag is your boyfriend?”
I couldn’t help but smile. “Yeah.”
“Right here,” he said. “Not a d-bag.”
But Debbi ignored Seth. “Still rocking the tennis-racket guitar?”
“Not lately.”
“Ever try a real one?”
I shook my head.
“I play,” Seth said.
“So what’re you into?”
“I don’t know.” I looked over at Seth. “Mostly YouTube stuff, I guess.”
“YouTube?” She looked confused.
“Yeah. Actually there’s one artist I think you would like. Her name is Possum and her songs are really pretty, but also sad and angry and—”
“Vaginas of Steel is not going to be interested in someone like Possum. She’s all cutesy and girly-girly. They’re much more likely to be interested in someone like Jackson Reeder, who is actively engaging in a feminist critique of modern society.”
“Actually, I’m interested in all female discourse,” Debbi said to Seth. She turned back to me. “Tay-Tay’s latest totally rocks, right? I do a pretty rad cover, but you cut our set a little short.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Hey, no worries. Maybe next time.”
“Sure.”
She grinned. “Next time, bring Charlie.”
“Gross,” I said.
She leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. “Night night, time for star flight,” she said
, just like when I was a kid. And I kind of wished I was home already, and that little again, and she was tucking me in and I was thinking of what kind of trippy spaceship we could take to the stars.
Seth didn’t talk much on the car ride home. As we turned onto my street, he said, “So your old babysitter is kind of a bitch, huh?”
“What?”
“And washed up. Like, she’s practically thirty and still playing all-ages clubs.”
“I thought you liked Sloppy Sue’s.”
“And making copies? She’s like an intern. Shoot me now if that’s my future.”
“I think she’s pretty cool, actually.”
He steered the car down my driveway. “Sure you do, Lexi,” he said. He kissed me on the cheek. “You’re sweet, right. Probably too sweet. But I’m telling you—washed up and dried out.” He kissed me again, for real this time. Long and hard and deep. When we stopped, we didn’t say anything and I got out of the car before the good moment changed.
NOW
“We have twenty-four dollars and nineteen cents left,” I tell them. “Our best bet is to go to the grocery store for food. It will be cheaper. I think we may need to siphon gas to get home. I’ve never done it, but I’ve seen it done in movies. We’ll need a tube and one of you will need to suck the gas out of the other car to get it going.”
“Why us?” Zack asks.
“Because it was my idea, and I’m bankrolling this whole operation, so that ought to earn me something, don’t you think?”
We drive up the road until we see a small grocery store. There are a few cars parked outside, and it’s lit up like a fancy house in the real estate ads my dad is always looking at.
Grocery stores should all be set up the same way. I mean, really. You’re hungry. You need some Pop-Tarts. You get in, you get out. But each one is different. The entrance to this one deposits us in the flower section. Buckets and buckets of flowers in improbable shades of pink and yellow and blue. The smell is overwhelming, but not like real flowers. Like those air fresheners that hang from rearview mirrors. The door hums shut behind us. I sneeze.
Charlie and Zack go to find a bathroom. I don’t know why people talk about girls having to go to the bathroom more than guys, because with those two it’s pretty much a constant stream. Whizz, whizz, whizz.
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