It’s okay, Sethie thinks. She looks right enough for the both of them. Shaw says they should walk to Janey’s building. It’s only ten blocks. Sethie is freezing, but she agrees. She didn’t think they’d be outside much tonight; Janey said they’d take a cab up to Columbia. So Sethie had decided to wear a light coat; her warmer one isn’t nearly stylish enough.
“Why aren’t you wearing gloves?” Shaw asks after a few blocks of walking side by side.
“You’re not.”
“But the cold doesn’t bother me like you.”
Like it bothers you, Sethie thinks, correcting his grammar in her head.
“I don’t like gloves.”
“Come here,” he says, putting his arm around her. “You can put your hands in my pocket.”
Now Sethie is very happy they have decided to walk to Janey’s instead of taking a cab. Walking, Shaw is holding her close. She could never tell him that he doesn’t actually keep her warm, that it would be easier, and warmer, to keep her hands in her own pockets, and really it would help more if he would just carry her purse for her. She would never say that; she would prefer to be cold because his arms feel so good around her. He wants to make her warm, and that makes Sethie happy.
After walking in the cold, the heat in Janey’s apartment hurts. Sethie’s fingers feel like they’re burning, and she goes straight to the bathroom and runs water over them, starting with cold water and warming it up slowly, until her hands feel normal again. Shaw joins the group in the living room: Janey, and two other guys who must have known Jeff Cooper too.
In the bathroom, Sethie looks at her face in the mirror above the sink. The wind wore off her lip gloss, but her cheeks are pink and glowing. Her eyes are red, but they look very bright and shiny. Sethie reapplies her lip gloss and wipes her nose. She opens and closes her hands a few times. She wonders how late they will be out tonight. She’s told her mother she’ll be staying at Janey’s.
When she emerges from the bathroom, Janey is fixing Shaw’s shirt.
“A shirt like this should not be tucked in, buddy,” she says. Her blond hair is pulled into a tight ponytail. Sethie thinks Janey’s cheekbones look expensive. Cheekbones like Janey’s are exactly the kind a plastic surgeon would give you.
“All right, all right, thanks, Janey,” Shaw says. Shaw doesn’t blush, and he doesn’t seem embarrassed or even bothered that Janey is fixing him and touching him. Sethie always waits for Shaw to touch her first. It’s only polite, she thinks, since she knows she always wants him touching her, but can’t be sure when he wants her touching him.
“Wait, something else,” Janey says, reaching for Shaw as he is about to step away, maybe toward Sethie.
“Your belt,” she says, grabbing for it, shifting it to the side like it should be. Easily identifying what had been wrong with it. Sethie inhales; her throat is tight, her skin itches. Janey’s fingers fold over Shaw’s waistband carelessly, without any sense of the intimacy of it. Sethie isn’t sure whether she’s jealous that Janey is touching Shaw’s waist, or that Janey was able to identify what was wrong and fix it so easily.
“There,” Janey says, satisfied, mussing up Shaw’s hair as though for good measure. Then she turns to Sethie. “Honestly, how can you let him out of the house like this?” A question that Sethie understands is Janey’s way of giving Shaw back to her, having taken him for just a second. And a gesture for which Sethie is grateful, since it makes clear to everyone that Shaw belongs to her. That even though Janey fixed him, really she was just doing it on Sethie’s behalf.
Janey walks over to Sethie now. Sethie wonders if she’s about to be fixed, too.
“You look fantastic,” Janey announces. Sethie blushes. “Those jeans are perfect,” she says, and Sethie is grateful for this. Warm now, she’s become very aware of the denim on her legs—literally touching her legs. She’s used to feeling some air between her body and the cloth of her clothes, every touch of that air confirmation that she is thin. These jeans definitely don’t allow for air. Janey says clothes should be tight, not loose. Maybe she thinks that Sethie used to be heavier, and that’s why all her clothes are too big. She might not know that Sethie buys them that way because she likes the way loose clothes feel. And certainly, Janey doesn’t know how it feels when you do gain weight, when your clothes become the other kind of tight, too tight, grabbing onto your fat like grubby, angry hands. Sethie needs to buy her clothes loose because she needs the insurance for when she does gain weight, as she is always frightened she will.
Everyone is drinking Janey’s parents’ booze. Top-shelf, Sethie thinks, though she’s not entirely sure what it means. They’re all buzzed by the time they leave the apartment. The cabdriver groans when he sees that there are five of them; four is the limit, he insists.
“We’ll give you a big tip,” Janey promises, and the cabdriver waves them into the backseat.
Sethie sits on Shaw’s lap. Janey sits in front with the driver. No one ever wants to get stuck sitting up front with the driver, and Sethie is disappointed none of the boys volunteered in Janey’s place. They all piled in. Even Shaw didn’t wait for Sethie to go in first. Sethie wonders if boys raised in other places—places where there isn’t such an emphasis on rushing, where you don’t have to scramble for a seat or be left standing, gripping a pole on the subway—have better manners, or if chivalry really is dead, everywhere. But then, she thinks, sitting up front with the cab driver would be a very New York–specific kind of chivalry.
Shaw’s hands rest on her waist; he slips two fingers under her waistband. Shaw’s fingers are so cold that Sethie inhales sharply, but then she is grateful for the reflex, because now she’s sucking in her belly.
The frat house isn’t like the houses in movies. It’s a tall, skinny town house just like the ones on side streets on the Upper East Side—not as nice as the ones closer to Fifth, but no more run-down or beat-up than some of the ones farther east, near Second Avenue. The boys go in first, and Janey and Sethie hold hands and follow. Janey’s fingertips poke through her gloves.
“Cut the tips off,” she explains when she sees Sethie looking. “That way I can smoke without taking them off.”
“Very cool,” Sethie says, and Janey grins.
It’s stuffy inside the house; almost immediately Sethie is aware of sweat forming on her upper lip. There’s no place to put their coats; it looks like everyone else lives so close by that they didn’t bother wearing coats for the walk over. Sethie unwinds her scarf, unbuttons her jacket, but she can’t imagine just leaving them somewhere here. The floors feel sticky; the sofas look grimy. Maybe she can just keep them on. Maybe they won’t be here that long, or maybe she’ll get used to the heat. She can fit her clutch into one of the pockets. She notices that none of the girls here are carrying purses.
“Come on,” Janey says, pulling Sethie toward the stairs. The boys have walked beyond them already, into the party, and presumably closer to the booze.
“Wait, are we supposed to go up there?”
“I don’t know, but we’ve got to find a decent place to put our coats, right?”
They walk up one flight, then another. The higher they get, the less grimy it looks.
“I guess the more important people live up higher,” Janey says. Sethie shrugs. On the third floor, they see a boy coming out of a room, closing the door behind him.
“Hey!” Janey says.
“Yeah?”
“That your room?”
“Yeah,” he says, raising his eyebrows.
“Is it clean?”
“What?” he says, laughing. Sethie guesses he must be at least a sophomore.
“Is your room clean?”
“Why?”
“Look, dude, it’s a yes-or-no question.”
He laughs. Sethie wonders if he can tell they’re in high school, or maybe he thinks they’re cocky freshmen. She’s happy to let Janey do the talking.
“It’s not.”
“It’s dirty?”
“No, it’s not a yes-or-no question. It’s too strange to be a yes-or-no question.”
Janey opens her mouth, but nothing comes out. Sethie’s never seen her stumped for a good rejoinder, and even the boy she’s been talking to seems to know that he’s done something unusual—stumped the strange girl with the bright lipstick, even though no one wears that kind of lipstick these days.
He throws Janey a rope. “It’s clean. I’m a chemistry major.”
Janey still doesn’t say anything, so Sethie speaks. “What does being a chemistry major have to do with having a clean room?”
Janey grins like she’s proud of Sethie for asking the question. Later, she’ll tell Sethie: “I love when you’re a smart-ass.”
The boy says, “Dunno. Just seems like it does, I guess.”
“Can we use your room?” Sethie asks.
He raises his eyebrows again. “What for?”
Janey seems to come back down to earth. “Don’t be a perv. For our coats.”
“People are stacking their coats on the couch in the basement, I think.”
Janey wrinkles her nose. “Gross. We’re not leaving our coats down there. Who knows what’ll end up getting done on top of them?”
He laughs.
“Good point. Use the room.” He opens the door behind him; Sethie notices then that he’d never actually taken his hand off the doorknob.
He stands against the door so they have to squeeze past him to get inside. Sethie goes first.
“What’s your name?” Janey asks when it’s her turn.
“Doug.”
“You’re supposed to ask for our names now,” Janey says, entering the room, slipping her coat off her shoulders, unwinding her scarf. When Janey’s scarf is completely unwound, she slides out of her cardigan, revealing her scoop-neck top. Sethie notices a sheen of sweat over her collarbone; it looks like Janey’s clavicle is glowing.
Sethie grabs Janey’s coat, puts it over her arm with her own.
“Where should I put these?”
“Over there.” Doug points to his desk. Sethie lays the coats over the back of his chair. He’s holding his keys. Sethie’s worried that when they want to leave, they’ll have to find Doug to let them back in here, to get their coats. Sethie is worried they won’t be able to find him, or maybe he’ll be back in here, asleep, and they’ll have to wake him for their coats. These kinds of concerns never seem to occur to anyone else.
Janey is still standing in the center of the room, waiting for Doug to ask their names. Sethie doesn’t think he’s going to.
“I’m Sethie,” she says finally. “This is Jane.”
“Nice to meet you,” Doug says.
“You too. Thanks for the room.” She looks at Janey. “Want to go find the boys?” Sethie asks deliberately. She feels like they’ve been in this room, with this strange boy, for a long time. She wants him to know they didn’t come alone.
Janey shrugs. “I guess.” Sethie steps toward the door. “Wait,” Janey says. “Are you locking the door?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“Then how will we get our coats when we’re ready to leave?” Sethie almost grins because Janey’s thought of the same problem she has. But when Doug responds, she realizes that Janey wasn’t worried about the coats at all.
“Guess you’ll just have to stick with me all night, then.” He cocks his head toward the hall. “Come on.”
Both girls squeeze past Doug again and wait while he locks the door behind him. Sethie sees that Janey’s clavicle is glowing even harder now.
7.
SHAW’S FINGERS ARE long and thin, like a piano player’s fingers, and Sethie recognizes them when the only part of him that she can see with all the people between them are his fingers wrapped around a beer can. Sethie and Janey are sitting on a couch by the front door with Doug, and Shaw is across the room, close to the kitchen, close to a tub filled with beer and ice. Doug has gotten them “real” drinks, some pinkish substance that Sethie can only guess is very cheap vodka mixed with Kool-Aid powder or maybe Crystal Light. She hopes it’s Crystal Light: fewer calories.
“There’s Jeff Cooper,” she says to Janey, even though what she really means is There’s Shaw, standing next to Jeff Cooper, talking to him, and I think we should go over there. I’d like to go over there. But she won’t get up: tonight is for Shaw to see what a cool girlfriend she is. The kind who doesn’t hang on you at a party; the kind you can nod to from across the room and not have to check up on.
“Oh,” Janey says absently.
Sethie is hot. She should have left her sweater in Doug’s room too, with her coat, the way Janey did with hers. There are so many people crunched into this space that even the booze is lukewarm. Sethie thinks of what they normally drink, back on the east side of town; it’s better than this. But it’s all the same: it’s still something you try to swallow without tasting.
Sethie knows how she looks when she gets hot like this. Her hair falls flat and her skin gets blotchy. Sweating under her tight jeans, she is very aware of the denim against her skin, and she can’t for the life of her remember what she was thinking, buying these pants. She is not a skinny-jeans girl. Skinny-jeans girls are taller than she is, and lankier. They are flat-chested and don’t need to wear bras. Sethie knows no matter how much weight she loses, she’ll never be that kind of girl.
The heat doesn’t seem to bother Janey. Her skin is dewy with sweat. Her blond hair was already greasy and messy in a ponytail, so a little sweat doesn’t ruin it. She didn’t blow it dry and try to make it fluffy like Sethie did a few hours ago. And Janey, Sethie realizes, is Lanky. Lanky isn’t bothered by the heat, and Lanky doesn’t have sweat building up underneath her breasts, because Lanky is flat-chested.
Janey is laughing at everything Doug says. For a while, Sethie was trying to listen too, trying to get the joke, but it’s so loud, and nothing he said seemed that funny, so after a while she gave up the effort of listening. She was sure Shaw would have come to find her by now. But he seems perfectly content, across the room, hands on his beer, talking to the boys. Sethie can wait; she is determined to be the cool, independent girl that Shaw will come find, not the other way around. So she sits squeezed between the arm of the couch and Janey, with Doug on Janey’s other side, and waits. Sethie wonders how it’s possible for Janey to be at least an inch taller than she is and yet seem so much smaller. She tries to keep smiling, so that when Shaw looks over, he’ll see what a cool, independent girl she is, and he’ll be happy that she’s his.
“Doug’s getting us more drinks,” Janey says suddenly. Sethie hadn’t even noticed he’d gotten up.
“Oh?”
“Yes. I told him we wanted beers now.”
“Okay.”
“He’s really cute.”
“Really?” Sethie corrects herself. “Really.” Sethie doesn’t think he’s that cute.
“It’s not like normal colleges, you know. I mean, we live here.”
“What?”
“I mean, it’s not like having a high school girlfriend back home. I just live across town.”
Sethie wonders when Janey became Doug’s girlfriend.
“You guys can go back without me. The doorman will let you in, no problem.”
“Wait, what are you talking about? You want us to leave you here?” Sethie shifts her weight on the couch. She thinks if the room was quieter, she would be able to hear the denim groaning against her thighs. “I’m not going to leave you here. We don’t know anything about Doug. We shouldn’t even be drinking the drinks he gave us.”
“Why not?”
“We didn’t see them get made or get poured. Who knows what we’ve been drinking?”
“Oh my God, Sethie, lighten up. They’re just normal drinks.”
“They don’t taste good.”
Janey shrugs.
“I’m gonna go tell the boys.” Janey gets up. Sethie does not want to be left on this couch alone, waiting.
“Tell
them what?”
“Just stay here for a second.”
Sethie fights the urge to follow Janey when she walks away. She knows Janey wants her to stay in case Doug comes back. She hates this kind of music. It’s hip-hop, that much she can recognize. She wants to point out the fact that there is not a single black person in the room, and all these white people look ridiculous singing along like they can relate to Tupac.
“Hey,” Doug says, sitting down next to her, holding three cans of beer. Sethie notices that they’re closed. “Where’d Janey go?”
“To talk to our friends, I think.” Sethie wonders when Doug started calling her Janey, too.
“Oh. Here.” He hands one of the beers to Sethie. She doesn’t open it. No point wasting the calories if she’s about to leave.
“Janey said you went to a different school.”
“What?”
“Janey said you and she don’t go to the same school.”
“No. Mine’s all girls.” Sethie looks across the room, watching for Janey coming back to them, trying to see Shaw.
“What’s that like?”
“I’ve never gone to anything but an all-girls school, so I’m used to it.”
“There’s an all-girls part of Columbia.”
“I know. I’m applying there.”
“So I guess you like the all-girls thing, huh?”
Sethie turns and looks straight at Doug. For some reason what he’s said seems offensive to her. Like he thinks he knows more about her than he possibly could.
“Well, it hasn’t seemed to keep me from meeting boys anyway.”
Doug laughs, his teeth looking very white in the dark room. Sethie thinks that if there was a black light, his teeth would glow.
“Hey.” Sethie and Doug turn away from each other, look up to see Janey standing in front of them.
“The boys are waiting outside for you,” she says to Sethie. “I went up and got your coat.” She holds it out.
The Stone Girl Page 5