Pulp

by Robin Talley

  “Have a seat.” Ms. Sloane shut the door behind them.

  Abby sat down and fixed her eyes on the wedding photo on Ms. Sloane’s desk. She and her wife were staring happily into each other’s eyes, both of them looking as though they were about to burst out laughing.

  Was that the future that awaited Abby someday? A life of cheerfully settled lesbian bliss?

  She used to think so, when she and Linh were still together. Now she wasn’t so sure.

  “Ms. Taylor spoke to your parents on the phone today.”

  Abby’s head jerked up. “What? Both of them?”

  “I believe she spoke to your mother—and told her you’re behind in three of your classes. Did you realize that? Not to mention that you’ve missed two editorial meetings for the literary magazine.”

  Abby exhaled. That was why the principal had talked to her mom? That was nothing. She’d thought—it didn’t matter what she’d thought. “It isn’t three classes. I got an extension on that paper for French. Plus the lit mag meetings are no big deal, I—”

  “I’m not the one you need to explain this to.” Ms. Sloane held up a hand and looked straight at Abby without blinking. It was unnerving. “I volunteered to talk with you about it because Ms. Taylor had another meeting this afternoon, but I’m not in a position to bargain with you, and I wouldn’t even if I was. You’ve been working diligently on this senior project with me, and you’ve taken on additional work even beyond the writing itself in trying to track down this author, but it can’t be at the expense of your other classwork. College applications will be due very soon, and you can’t allow yourself to slip further behind in courses that will appear on your first-semester transcripts. Not to mention, these are courses you need to graduate, Abby.”

  When Ms. Sloane finally stopped talking, Abby asked the only question she really cared about. “Do you know what my mom said to Ms. Taylor when she called? Did she say anything about talking to my dad?”

  Ms. Sloane didn’t blink. “I didn’t get all the details. Why do you ask?”

  “No reason.” Abby shrugged.

  Her mom would’ve had to tell Dad about this. Right? He was in New York, but Mom had probably called him there as soon as she got off the phone with Ms. Taylor.

  Maybe he’d take the train home that night to help figure out how to punish her. At least then both her parents would be on the same side for once.

  Maybe, in a weird way, Abby screwing up her homework would make things better.

  “I can give you extra time on your senior project if that would help you get caught up.” Ms. Sloane still hadn’t blinked. “You could take a break for a while and let the story rest. That can help the creative process, believe it or not. You could go back to it in a month or two with fresh eyes, and it’ll be easier to see what revisions you need to make.”

  “Oh, no, I don’t want to stop writing. I’ll figure something out about the other classes, don’t worry.”

  Ms. Sloane sighed. “Frankly, Abby, I think you could produce a better result if you did take a break. The pages you’ve sent me so far have a lot of strong elements, but your characters are too static. Your protagonist needs to have an arc over the course of the story, to learn and grow. Your main characters both seem to be stuck in a rut, Henrietta in particular. It’s fine that she starts the story angry, but she also needs to develop, to change.”

  Abby tried to keep the hurt from showing on her face. Ms. Sloane didn’t know what she was talking about. Henrietta was the best thing about her book, and she had every reason to be angry. She wasn’t the one who needed to change—it was the world around her that sucked. “Um. I’ll try to work on that, I guess.”

  Ms. Sloane nodded slowly. Something on her laptop beeped, but she ignored it. “Abby—I have to ask again. What’s going on? I’ve gotten a very strong sense that something’s been bothering you this year.”

  Abby’s fingers itched to take out her phone and turn back to Paula and Elaine. “It’s nothing.”

  “If there’s something you’re bottling up, you’d be surprised how helpful it can be to talk about it out loud.”

  Abby felt her lower lip tremble. Stupid worthless emotions.

  “I’d like to help if I can, Abby.” Ms. Sloane was looking right at her. Abby darted her eyes into every corner of the room to avoid her gaze. “I can be a lot more helpful if you’re open with me.”

  She wasn’t going to back down until Abby said something. That much was clear.

  Abby exhaled. “Marian’s dead.”

  Ms. Sloane blinked at last. “Marian?”

  “Marian Love. The author who wrote Women of the Twilight Realm.”

  “Oh.” Ms. Sloane frowned. “How did you determine that? I thought no one knew her identity?”

  Abby explained about the meetings with Ken and Professor Herbert. Ms. Sloane’s eyes widened, and they widened even further when Abby told her about the car crash.

  “That’s terrible.” Ms. Sloane’s shoulders drooped. “She was so young.”

  “Almost the same age as me.”

  “That’s true. Do you think that’s why it’s affecting you so much?”

  “No.” Abby shifted in her seat. “It’d be affecting me anyway. It’s an incredibly sad story, even apart from her being young.”

  “Well, but this all happened a very long time ago. You must have realized there was a good chance she was no longer living, even if she’d died of natural causes.” Ms. Sloane frowned again.

  Abby didn’t like where this was going. She decided to change the subject. “I’ve been wondering if Marian Love might’ve left more writings behind. They found the manuscript of Women of the Twilight Realm in the car when she died, but there could’ve been other papers with it. Letters, or something. I think I’m going to email that other author, Claire something, and ask her.”

  Ms. Sloane tapped her chin. “That would be interesting, but I wonder if continuing to look into all this is the best use of your time. After all, you’re behind in your classes, and this isn’t class work.”

  “Okay, but—” Abby clenched her hands into fists, the nails digging satisfyingly into her palms. “I only—I need to know what else Marian Love thought about aside from what she put in the book. I need to—” talk to her, she didn’t say.

  “You need to know what she thought about?” Ms. Sloane tilted her head to one side. “Abby, I’ll try one more time. Is there something going on with your friends—or your family, maybe—that’s bothering you?”

  What wasn’t bothering Abby? Ugh, why would no one ever leave her alone? “Can I please just go? Everybody’s waiting for me. We’ll be late for the protest.”

  Ms. Sloane watched her for another moment. “Sure, go on, but I meant what I said. You need to get a better handle on your assignments. You won’t be happy if the principal has to call your parents a second time.”

  “Understood.”

  A knock on the classroom door made them both jump. It was Linh.

  “Sorry.” She glanced from Abby to Ms. Sloane and back, her eyebrows furrowed. “We’re supposed to leave.”

  “That’s fine.” Ms. Sloane stood up. “Excellent protest-wear, by the way. Both of you.”

  Linh was wearing jeans and a hand-stenciled T-shirt that said My Parents Didn’t Come Here from Vietnam to Help You Build a Wall, You Racist Jackass Cheeto-Face. Abby didn’t have an immigration-themed shirt so she was wearing her #RESIST tank top with a pair of high-waist navy blue shorts, since it was still weirdly warm for October.

  “Thanks,” Linh said. “It’s a big one today.”

  Ms. Sloane smiled. “Stay safe and raise hell, you guys.”

  Abby ran upstairs to get her poster and met the others outside. Linh looked as though she was going to ask Abby something, but then Savannah came running over with Ben and Vanessa close behind and Linh shut her
mouth.

  “Oh, there you guys are.” Savannah smiled. “You both disappeared. Ben was about to send a search party up to the fourth floor.”

  “I was not!” Ben protested. “What my friends get up to in the privacy of the senior lounge is absolutely none of my business.”

  Abby could already feel the blood rushing to her face. She didn’t dare look at Linh’s reaction.

  She couldn’t have told them about the other day, could she? That would be so utterly unlike Linh that Abby wouldn’t know how to handle it.

  “Oh, relax, you two.” Vanessa put a light hand on Abby’s arm. “Seriously, it’s fine. You’ll tell us what we need to know when we need to know it.”

  “Hush,” Savannah said. “Look, they’re all embarrassed. Somebody change the subject.”

  “Okay, but come on, it was bound to come up sooner or later.” Ben waved his Dreamers Make America Great sign for emphasis. “The elephant in this room’s the size of a woolly mammoth.”

  “Actually, woolly mammoths weren’t any bigger than modern elephants,” Vanessa said. “That’s a common misconception.”

  “Okay, well you just messed up a joke I’d been working on for a while, so thanks. What’s bigger than an elephant, since you’re a walking Wikipedia?”

  “I don’t know, a blue whale?”

  “Well that doesn’t work for my joke at all.”

  “It’s not my fault the animal kingdom’s failing you, dude.”

  Ben and Vanessa could clearly keep running down that conversational rabbit hole for a while, but at least they were off the subject of Abby and Linh.

  Abby tried to breathe normally. It sounded as if Linh hadn’t told them about the other day after all. Still, she studiously avoided Linh’s gaze for the rest of the walk to the metro.

  They met up with the other twenty-odd Fawcett students heading to Foggy Bottom and boarded the train in a big bunch, passing around signs and water bottles and posing for pre-protest selfies. At Metro Center they got out to transfer to the Orange Line, and their group made so much noise as they paraded through the station that they got dirty looks from the commuters with their power suits and briefcases, which only made them wave their posters higher. Abby tried to forget everything else and get her head into protest mode.

  “Hey, so...” Linh caught Abby’s elbow while they were waiting on the platform. “We should probably talk about that thing the other day. I still feel bad.”

  Abby shook her head so fast she stumbled and bumped into someone’s backpack. “It’s no big deal. We don’t need to talk about it.”

  Linh’s pretty brown eyes were wrinkled in concern. It was exactly the way she’d looked at her back in May after the thing with her parents. The pitying expression that made Abby want to throw up.

  “It’s seriously fine.” Abby would say it as many times as necessary to get Linh to stop making that face at her. “We’re supposed to be moving on, right?”

  “I mean—look, things are probably hard for you now what with your parents and everything, and I don’t know if we should...” Linh sounded as though she was going to say more, but when Savannah waved at them from a few feet away she dropped her voice to a whisper. “I guess—yeah.”

  The train slowed to a stop, and the crowd on the platform surged toward the doors. Abby plunged straight into the melee without waiting for Linh, ignoring the annoyed looks of the other passengers until she was on the far side of the train car. Only when three lobbyist-types in suits and clipped-on name badges stood between her and Linh did Abby let herself breathe.

  But it was too late. The memory had already started playing in her mind.

  It had happened on a Friday afternoon, a few weeks before the end of the school year. Dad had just gotten back from another trip to New York. It was the first time he and Mom had both been in the house in months. It would be the last, too.

  Linh and Abby were upstairs watching a show when they heard Mom and Ethan come through the front door. They went downstairs, because that was the rule—they could hang out together as much as they wanted, as long as they didn’t do it in Abby’s room. It was an unbelievably stupid rule, since they’d already been having sex on the regular for six months by then, so they only bothered following it when one of Abby’s parents was home.

  The main door of the house was right at the bottom of the staircase, so they saw Mom and Ethan right away. Ethan was in his dance clothes, as usual, and Mom was glaring down into her purse.

  Abby had assumed she was frustrated because Ethan had kept her waiting while he took his sweet time leaving class. He always did that, hanging back to talk to Mr. Salem or do extra stretches at the barre or awkwardly attempt to flirt with the girls in their leotards. When she looked closer at her mother’s face, though, Abby knew this was about more than Ethan being annoying.

  Then Dad came in behind them, his nostrils flaring, and Abby understood.

  “The decision was already made.” Mom wasn’t looking at Dad, but it was clear from the tension in her voice she could only be talking to him. “There’s no use discussing it.”

  Behind her on the stairs, Linh caught her breath. Abby did, too.

  This wasn’t a normal fight. There was an edge to Mom’s tone she’d never heard before.

  “You mean you already decided.” Dad’s eyes were tight. “I thought we agreed we’d both have a say in these decisions.”

  Ethan climbed up the stairs past Abby, but instead of going all the way up to his room he turned around and stood behind her, watching.

  “You already had your say.” That weird new tone in Mom’s voice made Abby want to cry. “Remember? When you said no, absolutely not, under any circumstances, without bothering to ask what I thought?”

  Abby expected Dad to start apologizing after that. Whenever her parents used to fight, Dad was always the one to stop and apologize first. Especially if he could tell Mom was really upset, like she clearly was now.

  Dad didn’t stop and apologize this time, though. Neither did Mom.

  “Because I already knew very well what you thought.” He sounded as if he was mocking her. Abby shivered. “You weren’t exactly subtle about it. And you obviously aren’t interested in being reasonable now.”

  “Oh, sure. Reasonable.” The volume on Mom’s voice had been creeping higher with each word, and by that point, she was shouting. “Because you’re always so reasonable about everything. You’re the one who gets to decide what’s reasonable in the first place, right?”

  Dad’s face was tomato red. He started shouting, too. “At least I try to think things through instead of throwing money I don’t have at every problem that comes my way!”

  “Stop it,” Ethan murmured behind Abby.

  “Oh, that’s hilarious, coming from you! Tell me again how much we spent retiling all the bathrooms because the grout was offending your delicate sensibilities?”

  “God, would you please listen to yourself, Natalie?”

  “Would you please shut up, Bob?”

  “Stop it!” Ethan screamed.

  Mom and Dad looked up. Mom’s face went pale, as if she was seeing the three of them on the stairs for the first time.

  Dad’s face stayed red, though. As though he was still too angry to care.

  “Kids—” Mom started toward them.

  Ethan turned and started running up the stairs. Dad lifted his hand to cover his mouth, finally looking stricken. Mom looked back and forth uncertainly from Ethan’s retreating back to Abby, glancing at Linh a few times, too.

  Abby stood up and reached back blindly. “We’ve gotta go.” She found Linh’s wrist and wrapped her fingers around it tightly. “We’ve got to, um—”

  She didn’t bother trying to think up a reason. Instead she pulled Linh down the stairs behind her, brushing past Dad and dashing out the still-open front door.

 
She started running when they were halfway down the wide set of steps to the sidewalk. They were almost at the end of the block when Linh pulled back. “Hold on! Abby, slow down!”

  Only then did Abby begin to understand what had just happened.

  Linh had seen everything. Her parents, screaming at each other. Abby, running away like a little kid, dragging Linh behind her like her favorite teddy bear. And the neighbors and nannies and dog-walkers out on the street had seen her running, too.

  Had they heard her parents shouting from inside the house? It seemed impossible that the whole world hadn’t heard that.

  “Are—um. Are you okay?” Linh tugged on her ear without meeting Abby’s eyes. “That was—I mean, it was—”

  “That was no big deal.” Abby could hear how hysterical she sounded, but maybe Linh wouldn’t notice. “I mean—sorry, I know I was dramatic with the running, but it isn’t anything important.”

  “Abby...”

  Abby hated that worried note in Linh’s voice. She didn’t want Linh to say anything else. She didn’t want to say anything more herself, either.

  So Abby kissed her instead, right in the middle of the sidewalk.

  She didn’t stop to worry about who might be watching. She just...needed someone to hold her.

  And so they went to Linh’s house, and they slept together for the last time. And a few weeks after that, they broke up, and Abby lost the one person she could go to when she needed to be close.

  Now they were friends. Not girlfriends. Not friends-with-benefits who could occasionally kiss in the senior lounge without it being weird. Just plain friends.

  Abby hated that word.

  They got off the train at Foggy Bottom and started walking down 23rd. Linh didn’t look Abby’s way again. She’d sped up to walk with Ben and Savannah, and soon they were talking about college applications, again.

  Abby hung back with Vanessa, who was silently looking up something on their phone. Up ahead, Abby could hear chanting. She tried to focus on that. Maybe she could lose herself in it.

  “Love! Not hate!” The chanting reached their block, and she and Vanessa joined in with the crowd. “Makes America great!”