The Stone Girl

by Alyssa B. Sheinmel

  Sethie wonders when Janey got Doug’s keys from him. She wonders exactly when she became the third wheel on their first date; was it the minute he opened the door to his room? Sethie knows she’s supposed to stand up, take her coat, and leave. It feels strange just leaving Janey like this, going back to Janey’s house without her. But Janey’s looking at her expectantly, so Sethie stands.

  “It was nice meeting you, Doug,” she says, taking her coat. Doug stands up to say good-bye to her, and Sethie thinks maybe he’s nicer than she’s given him credit for. “I’ll see you later,” she adds to Janey, more a plea than a good-bye.

  “Later,” Janey says, sitting back down on the couch with Doug. Sethie wonders how many minutes they will wait before they start making out, once she’s gone. She wonders whether they will start on this couch or go up to Doug’s room. She wonders whether Doug’s frat brothers will make fun of him in the morning, for hooking up with a high school girl, or give him triumphant high fives for achieving the feat in such a short amount of time.

  At first, the outside air feels amazing against her hot skin, and Sethie feels perked up. But then the cold snakes its way to all the places where she’d been sweating, and her teeth begin to chatter.

  “Dude, where have you been?” Shaw calls to her. He’s standing on the corner. “I had to let the guys go in a cab. Janey said you’d be right out.”

  Sethie is confused. Has she done something wrong? She was only just given her coat; she only hesitated a second before leaving. She notices the boys didn’t seem to have any qualms about leaving Janey at the party. Maybe Jeff Cooper knows Doug. Maybe he told them all that he was a nice guy.

  “Does Jeff Cooper know Doug well?” she asks Shaw, once they’re settled into a cab.

  “Huh?”

  “The guy Janey and I hung out with. Does Jeff know him?”

  “I don’t know,” Shaw says irritably. “I guess. I mean, they’re in the same fraternity.”

  “Okay.” Sethie wonders why Shaw seems like he’s in such a bad mood.

  “Did you have fun?” she asks carefully.

  “I was.”

  “Huh?” she says dumbly.

  “Dude, I was having fun. But you spend the whole night talking to some random guy, and then you tell Janey to come get me because you want to come home?”

  “What?”

  “Look, Janey wasn’t going to lie and pretend she wanted to go home too. So I had to take you.”

  “I never … I didn’t say that.”

  “I didn’t want to leave yet.”

  “I’m sorry,” Sethie says, not entirely sure why this is her fault. But she’s also a little excited, because it sounds like Shaw was actually jealous that she spent the evening talking to Doug. But then, why didn’t he come get her? She spent the whole night purposely not hanging out with him, purposely giving him space. She thinks she’s completely bungled being the cool girlfriend she wanted to be.

  “I’m sorry,” Sethie says again, and she really does feel sorry. She wishes she’d done better.

  “Let’s get some food,” Shaw says, and instructs the cabdriver to let them out on Lexington, a couple of blocks away from Janey’s house, where there’s a pizza place that’s open late. Sethie doesn’t want to eat, but she doesn’t want Shaw to be angry at her. So she eats the pizza he puts in front of her, the whole thing, except the crust, she never eats the crust, and she thinks Shaw knows that, so surely he won’t be angry at her for not eating everything he’s given her.

  Janey’s doorman lets them up without asking for an explanation: maybe Janey told him to expect them without her. In the elevator, Shaw begins to kiss her and Sethie sinks against the wall, bending her knees toward each other to touch so that she won’t lose her balance. Shaw is taller than she is and he bends over Sethie so that she has to lean her neck back far, until it feels like the back of her head is between her shoulder blades. When he runs his hands down her body, she can feel how cold they are through her jeans. When she shivers, her jeans don’t feel so tight. Shaw holds her arms on either side, and Sethie thinks that if he squeezed just a little bit harder, his fingers might go right through her, as if her flesh and bone were nothing more than a piece of thick cake.

  “Come on,” he says softly, leading her by the hand (does this count as hand-holding, she wonders) toward Janey’s parents’ bedroom. Sethie doesn’t hesitate at the door, just follows him. As he lays her back on the bed, she stares at the ceiling wondering whether Janey’s parents would mind, and whether Janey would mind, whether this was the room Janey had in mind when she said they could stay over.

  She doesn’t want to be a girl who thinks like that when a boy like this is kissing her. She wants instead to concentrate on Shaw, pushing her shirt under her armpits, kissing her belly and making her, just for a second, glad for the softness there, for the way it feels when he presses against it; right now, it just feels like soft, not like fat.

  And so she thinks about his kisses, and his hands giving her goose bumps, and when it’s over she gets up to go to the bathroom, and only then does she turn the light on, and only then does she see her nakedness in the light, and she remembers the first time she was in this bathroom, and what she did here. Looking at herself in the full-length mirror next to the sinks, she runs her hands over her rib cage. She isn’t skinny enough to count her bones there, the way she’s heard some anorexics do, and she can see how counting the bones would be comforting, a reminder of where your efforts to lose weight must end: bones that jut out defiantly, saying You cannot get any thinner than we are. Sethie pinches the skin over her ribs. She could still be thinner.

  It doesn’t count, she thinks, as she leans over the toilet. I was drinking so much, so really, it’s just so I won’t have a hangover in the morning. And I didn’t even want that pizza, I didn’t need it, so it’s not fair that I should have to have those calories in me.

  Even though she’s only done it once before, and months ago, she knows she must do it quickly, before Shaw notices she’s been gone very long. She limits herself to just two tries. She is delighted when soon she sees the pink of the drink she had at the beginning of the night. That’s hours’ worth of calories.

  Shaw falls asleep first, which doesn’t surprise Sethie. His arms are around her, but she’s cold so she disentangles herself, moves over toward the edge of the enormous bed, deeper under the covers, so that they are around her head like a hood, with only her face peeking out. She doesn’t mind not being able to sleep; she hadn’t expected to be able to sleep. She doesn’t mind watching the walls, and the way that the pattern on the wallpaper kind of looks like thorns, even though it’s just supposed to be vines. Janey’s parents have expensive taste, it’s clear to her, even in the dark. She wonders how much goose down is packed into this comforter; what a waste it would be to fall asleep when the bed feels this good: the sheets crisp and clean but warm; the pillows so thick that they bounce back into shape when you lift your head.

  This, Sethie thinks, is a big grown-ups’ bed in a big grown-ups’ house. Shaw and I would never have a place like this, we’d never need all this. Sethie is embarrassed to have even had that thought. That was ridiculous. I know better than to plan a future with my high school boyfriend. I even know better than to call him my boyfriend. No one uses words like that anymore.

  Well, some people, she thinks. One of Shaw’s friends has a long-distance girlfriend, and he never comes out with them, and never comes over to smoke; he’s too busy calling his girlfriend. And that annoying girl in her physics class, she has a “boyfriend,” and they’re even talking about going to the same college, even though everyone knows that’s a mistake. Girls aren’t supposed to choose schools based on where their boyfriends go. No girl stays with her high school boyfriend once she gets to college. There are always breakups. Sethie knows that she and Shaw will become just friends once it’s time to leave for school next year, since they might go to different places. They were really just friends before they got to
gether, so it should be easy to do. Still, she can’t really picture it, can’t quite imagine it. So lately she doesn’t think about the future much. She got her college applications done early, so it’s all out of her hands now; she doesn’t have to think about it at all. She just has to lie in this bed with Shaw, cozy under these grown-up covers, careful not to wake him up.

  Sethie likes finishing things early, though she wonders whether her applications will be on the bottom of the admissions pile, just by virtue of having arrived at each of the colleges so early. One college asked her to write about her greatest achievement for her essay. She actually began writing an essay about staying under 111 pounds; she wrote about how good her hip bones felt on the floor when she did her daily leg lifts, about how carefully she sipped her coffee and spread her peanut butter. She would never have used the essay. At White, you have to go over your admissions essays with the college advisor before submitting them, and an essay like that would have set off alarms throughout the school. They’d have told her mother; they’d have sent her to therapy. Clearly, weight loss was not an appropriate achievement, even if it was the most honest one. So Sethie wrote about last year’s yearbook production, back when she used to go to meetings, back when she actually thought that mattered more than how much she weighed.

  At five a.m. (Sethie had been watching the time on the digital clock on her side of the bed, which she assumes must be Janey’s father’s side, since the clock on the other side of the bed is prettier and old-fashioned-looking), Sethie hears footsteps. High heels on the marble in the entranceway, she thinks: Janey’s home.

  Janey stops outside her parents’ room and opens the door. From the bed, Sethie can see her outline, silvery with the light from the hallway behind her, and Sethie knows she is supposed to get up and follow Janey to her room, to talk with her about Doug. Sethie keeps the covers around her while she looks for Shaw’s Polo shirt and boxers to slip on. Shaw is so much bigger than she is that the waistband of his boxers is loose around her belly, and Sethie feels deliciously thin as she slips out of bed.

  Janey doesn’t turn the lights on in her room. She opens her window and props herself on the sill, lights a cigarette, and offers one to Sethie. There’s only a little light coming in from outside, but Sethie can imagine that Janey’s collarbone is still aglow. She lights a cigarette too, exhales the smoke out the window, looks down onto Park Avenue. It’s a moment before she looks over and notices Janey’s teeth, bright in the light coming in from the street, just like Doug’s at the party. Janey is smiling widely: even when she brings her cigarette to her lips, the smile stays.

  8.

  SETHIE WAKES UP before Shaw. She lies still in the bed, listening to his breathing. With the shades drawn, it’s still dark, even though it’s nearly eleven. She really should, she knows, go home. Even though she’s just woken up, the day is nearly half over. She has an English paper to finish, and French homework to do. She wishes she’d brought some work with her here to Janey’s; that way she could get it done while Shaw and Janey sleep. When she was a little kid, she was always the first to wake up at sleepover parties. She always packed a book along with her sleeping bag, and she remembers finishing countless Baby-sitters Clubs and Boxcar Childrens while everyone else slept. She doesn’t even consider waking Shaw, since she knows, from having stayed with him this summer, how angry he gets when he’s woken up against his will. A girl in her class told Sethie how she once woke a boy up by giving him a blow job. Sethie doesn’t think that’s the kind of thing that would go over with Shaw.

  Shaw’s back is to her anyway; he’s curled almost into the fetal position. Sethie slides to the edge of the bed and tiptoes to the bathroom. She closes the door and turns on the light. Her eyes are bright red; it looks like she cried last night, but that’s just the vomiting, she thinks. She gets dressed. She wants to wear Shaw’s shirt home like girls in the movies do, but then Shaw would have nothing to wear when he wakes up.

  She walks toward Janey’s room. She’s surprised to see that Janey is awake, lying in bed on the phone. Janey waves when she sees Sethie, who comes inside and sits on the edge of the bed. Janey covers the mouthpiece. “Doug’s going to bring over coffee—you want anything?”

  Sethie shakes her head. “I should go home.”

  Janey nods. Sethie turns away as Janey gives Doug her order, flirts, and says good-bye.

  “Shaw still asleep?” Janey asks. Sethie nods. Janey stretches her arms over her head.

  “I can’t believe you’re not asleep,” Sethie says. “You were up just a few hours ago.” So very few hours ago, Sethie thinks, that the smell of cigarette smoke still hangs in Janey’s room, despite their best efforts to blow it out the window.

  Janey smiles. “So were you.”

  Sethie shrugs. She thinks Janey is smiling the same smile that she smiled at five in the morning, her smile for Doug.

  “You really have to go?” Janey asks.

  “English paper.”

  “Ugh,” Janey moans, “I can’t wait until this semester is over and our grades don’t count anymore.”

  “Me too,” Sethie says, though she can’t imagine not trying to get As.

  “Well, I’ll wake Shaw up in a little while. You don’t have to wait for him. No reason for his crap sleeping habits to affect your excellent work ones.”

  “Right,” Sethie says. She wonders whether Shaw will be grumpy when Janey wakes him.

  Janey walks Sethie to the elevator and gives her a hug. Sethie can smell the frat house in Janey’s hair.

  “I’ll call you later,” Janey promises as the elevator door slides shut.

  When Sethie gets home, she can hear her mother in the shower behind the closed door of Rebecca’s bedroom. Sethie heads to her own room, changes into pajamas, and comes out into the living room. She spreads her French homework on the coffee table and sits on the couch. The door to Rebecca’s room is right off the living room, so when she finally opens it, she sees Sethie on the couch, conjugating verbs.

  “Morning,” Rebecca says.

  “Hey.”

  It’s past lunchtime, and Sethie lets her mother assume that she must have eaten at Janey’s. Sethie’s plan today is not to eat until dinner. She thinks it shouldn’t be too difficult. On most weekdays, she gets up at seven and doesn’t eat until eleven or twelve. So today, having gotten up in the middle of the day, it shouldn’t be all that different to wait to have a single calorie until after six.

  Her mother pulls some papers out from under Sethie’s textbook on the coffee table; the FAFSA application, Sethie recognizes. She can’t remember what FAFSA stands for, only that one of the As stands for “aid.” Rebecca sits beside Sethie on the couch and begins paging through it, chewing on her bottom lip. When she is sure Rebecca won’t see, Sethie looks at her mother. Rebecca sits with her legs folded underneath her, her feet bare. Sethie stares, for a few seconds, at Rebecca’s feet. Rebecca has impossibly small feet. Sethie curls up the toes of her own—size eight and a half—and wonders why she didn’t get feet like her mother’s. A woman with size eight and a half feet will never be called dainty, or delicate, or even small.

  Sethie notices Rebecca is only glancing over the financial aid forms. “You’re going to fill that out, Mom, right?”

  “Of course,” Rebecca says. Sethie thinks she doesn’t sound serious enough.

  “You know the deadline?”

  “Yes.”

  “I can write it down for you.”

  “Sethie,” Rebecca says, sounding exasperated, “I know the deadline.”

  “Okay, but you know that you don’t have to wait for the deadline. You can begin filling it out now.” Sethie finished her college applications early, just as she finishes everything early. Rebecca is always late: late with the rent, with the tuition check to White, even though with Sethie’s scholarship all Rebecca has to pay for is books and some incidentals, like the fees for class trips and yearbooks. Sometimes Sethie thinks Rebecca would forget altogether if she di
dn’t remind her.

  Rebecca says, “Don’t worry about it.”

  “It’s important,” Sethie says. “And you shouldn’t just leave it out on the coffee table, you know. You should put it somewhere safe.”

  “You could always get another one, if we needed it.”

  “It would be better if you kept it someplace safe,” Sethie says. Sethie bought a special file folder for her application materials. Each college she’s applying to has its own slot.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Rebecca repeats.

  Sethie shifts closer to the edge of the couch, even though there’s still plenty of room between her and Rebecca. Sethie and her mother used to eat dinner on this couch, with the TV on, balancing their plates on their knees. They never really bothered with the dining room table. It never felt this crowded then, but that was before last winter, when Sethie went to the doctor for her annual checkup. Sethie thinks wryly that now she goes to the gynecologist, when less than a year ago her mother was still bringing her to a pediatrician. Even he said she was too old to keep going to him.

  Sethie felt overly large in the exam room. Intended for younger patients, the table was so low to the ground that she couldn’t even swing her legs when the doctor tried to check her reflexes. The ruler on the wall said she was 5′4″; the doctor said she was probably done growing, but not to rule out another inch in the next year or so. Sethie hoped not; she was already two inches taller than her mother, and when the doctor said her height out loud, Rebecca said that she could barely believe such a tall girl was her daughter. She’d said something similar the last time Sethie bought a bra; her breasts are larger than her mother’s, too.

  The scale in the corner sat there waiting. Sethie thought that weight was usually one of the first things they checked, but it seemed like even the doctor knew it was going to be a bad number; even he was putting it off: 132 pounds. Sethie must have looked crestfallen, because the doctor said, “Not the number you wanted to see, huh?” He didn’t even reassure her that it was a perfectly healthy weight for her height, didn’t allow for the fact that junior year can be very stressful, and who wouldn’t want to grab a snack after school before practicing SAT words? No; it was not the number she wanted to see. At her last annual, it had been 115.