by K. M. Walton
“Oh, there’s my friend Lisa.”
Corinne tried to see where she was pointing but when she looked back, Sadie had spun away from her in the gigantic house.
Shit. Don’t freak out.
Another fragment of that night at Penn State floated back to her. We can’t go to the fucking emergency room, Marg. We are way too high right now. Like they’re not going to see that. And Margit: She needs help! She seems really sick. Then Jen, as if Corinne couldn’t hear them: Damon is here. Do you know how long I’ve been trying to get with him? I’m not leaving.
No one here knew her. And that was a good thing, wasn’t it? They hadn’t seen her embarrass herself.
Corinne passed through one room and then another. Maybe she was supposed to talk to other people, but she was here to hang out with Sadie. Hadn’t Sadie said they would laugh at everything together? By herself, it didn’t seem nearly half as funny.
The guys were wearing plaid shorts even though it was winter. The girls were in crop tops and boots, caught up in jokes she didn’t understand. She had nothing in common with them, and neither did Sadie. Sadie liked good music and had a tattoo of an Oscar Wilde quote on her back. She read poetry books. Why were they even here?
It had to all be some joke, she decided. Sadie would reveal that she’d pretended to be a different type of person to get in with these people but that she really couldn’t stand them. She’d only brought Corinne to the party so they could make fun of the whole scene. As she repeated the idea in her head Corinne almost felt calmer.
On her way up a staircase, she slammed into a tall skinny girl carrying three beers and two shots.
“Watch what you’re doing,” the girl sniped. “This is hundred-year-old scotch.”
“Sorry,” Corinne said.
She thought of her parents in the little neighborhood restaurant they went to every week, how they were probably eating chicken piccata and planning for the kitchen painting project, and how here she was at this party with these millionaire kids who were dragging their dirty high-tops over the oriental rugs and drinking booze that cost as much as her dad made in a month. How angry her mom would be that she was mixing her meds with beer. How she’d lied to be here, just so she could hang out with Sadie.
She didn’t even want to be here, she admitted to herself. And now she was trapped. She had to act like she was having fun, or else she would seem even more lame and messed up than she already did.
Finally at the landing she thought she heard Sadie’s voice floating above the music and unrecognizable voices. She half-expected to find her surrounded by guys, but when she went into one of the rooms, Sadie was sitting on a massive bed with a girl with long blond hair in a loose side braid. They pulled apart when the door opened, and Corinne couldn’t be sure she hadn’t walked in on something.
“What’s up?” Corinne said, trying to keep her tone neutral even though she was rattled by the discovery of them.
“Nothing?” Sadie said, holding up a joint and releasing a cloud of smoke. “This.”
“Oh,” Corinne said. So maybe they had just been smoking together. “Are you Lisa?”
“I’m Jackie?” the blond girl said, confused by Corinne’s confusion.
“We were just talking about this other party last summer,” Sadie said. “It was so ridiculous.”
“It was the most,” Jackie agreed.
Corinne didn’t have anything to add, so she just stood there. No one offered her a seat on the bed. Sadie had never said anything about the party they were talking about, or Jackie. Had it happened before or after theater camp?
Which made her wonder: How much about did they even really know about each other? She’d known Jen and Margit for five years. Five months was nothing. And most of that time they’d spent in coffee shops and in Corinne’s room. She and Sadie had hardly stepped foot into the real world together.
But it didn’t matter when you got someone, really connected. They knew the most important things, didn’t they?
Not all of it. She hadn’t told Sadie everything.
Holy shit. What did she take? What did you take, Corinne? Goddamn it, tell me.
“You don’t have to stand there. You can go talk to other people, you know,” Sadie said.
“I don’t know anyone,” Corinne said, feeling her throat constrict. Why was she being like this?
“Go meet them,” Sadie said. “Everyone’s really normal.”
“Is that real fur?” Jackie asked.
“No, it’s fake,” Corinne said, looking down. The outfit had seemed so cool in her house, but now that she looked at it again, she could see how silly it was. “I’m gonna get another beer.”
“Can you get me one?” Sadie asked.
As she turned away she definitely heard Sadie say: “Corinne’s just a little possessive. She needs to learn how to chill out.”
The words, the reality of them, crushed her chest, and now she really couldn’t breathe. There was no foundation. The stairs were swaying beneath her feet. She tried to slow down and inhale more oxygen but thinking about breathing just made her feel more panicky. She needed to get out of here.
Was Sadie messed up already? That was the only explanation.
She made it down the stairs and started looking for a way out—a door, a window if she had to. She would get some fresh air, drink a little more beer, and then figure out her next move. She had to get it together. She thought of just getting in her car, but she couldn’t run away like that. That would be silly, and even more embarrassing. How would she tell the story to Dr. Mittleson?
The speakers rang out with a few chords of plaintive guitar and Corinne heard joyful screams as she approached the kitchen.
A girl skittered in front of her. “Oh my God, I love this song!”
It was “Wonderwall.” And somehow the room had become a karaoke bar. People were singing into their beer bottles. People were swaying on the marble tiled floor. People were standing on the tables and chairs. And as they shouted out all the lyrics, Corinne cringed. They were stealing all its truth from her, they were making it some cheap party song.
Then Sadie was in the kitchen, too, a dark shape in the doorway. The one person she cared about. Corinne looked up into her eyes and wanted to see apology, maybe, some hope, maybe mockery of the scene. Definitely recognition. This was their song.
One glance. One acknowledgment. They could laugh about it later, about these silly girls and doofy guys, and listen to a lesser-known track from (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?
But all Corinne saw was a flash of Sadie’s gray-green irises, flat and unconnecting. And then Sadie turning away to hug some other person she didn’t know, the two of them singing along together.
All Corinne saw was the ways she had been wrong. What had been special between them wasn’t a permanent thing. Corinne wasn’t special. It was Sadie doing something she needed to do, and now she had moved on. Everyone is boring and normal, she heard Sadie saying in her head.
Was that why Sadie had brought her here? To show her that?
The party, coming here, wasn’t a big joke after all. This was Sadie’s real life. Corinne was just some distraction, someone to comfort her when she needed help. Her boring, reliable friend.
And the song…it belonged to everybody. Nothing was hers alone. Corinne bit her lip and felt tears blooming in her eyes. She wanted to believe in so much more, about Sadie, about herself, about everything.
She grabbed Sadie’s wrist. “I have to go home.”
“We just got here,” Sadie pleaded. “Don’t tell me you’re scurrying home already.”
“You can stay.” Though she wanted her to want to go. She wanted Sadie to choose her over this. She wanted things she couldn’t name, and she knew they were too much to ask for. And now Sadie made her feel like a frightened animal. But it was true. That’s what she w
as. Wasn’t that what had happened to her before?
Why didn’t you just tell us you were having a panic attack? My God, Corinne, you totally freaked us out, you ruined the whole night. It’s so embarrassing—we almost got everyone in trouble. I mean, I thought you were seriously dying. Her friends had been so angry. They thought she was a drama queen.
“Hey, what’s wrong?” Jackie asked Corinne as she tried to push past her into the foyer. “Are you okay?”
“Nothing,” Corinne mumbled, feeling worse that the girl was actually being kind of nice, and that she was wrong yet again.
When she got home Sadie’s car was still in the driveway, and her parents were home, too. She could see the blue glow of the TV in their bedroom from outside.
Her mom would say something about Sadie not coming home with her. She would say something either knowing or relieved or even worse, sympathetic—which would really wreck Corinne now. She didn’t want to be lumped in with her mom, who was forty-four years old and still was never sure of anything.
She snuck up the stairs as quietly as she could. Then her mother’s voice drifted out from their bedroom: “Have fun, girls?”
“Yeah,” Corinne said, choking back all her disappointment. She silently prayed her mom wouldn’t come check on her.
She didn’t know when Sadie would come back for her car, but she hoped she would just take it and not knock on the door. She hoped she would just take it and go.
She quickly took off her dumb outfit and put on her pajamas and got into bed under the covers. She felt something crunch beneath her. The bag of backup Oreos. Her consolation prize. She took one out and bit into it, letting the crumbs fall on her sheets.
In the morning she would put on her old jeans and paint-stained hoodie. She would pretend everything was just fine; she wouldn’t even mention Sadie, because then she might have to admit out loud what was already becoming evident in her head: two wrong people don’t make a right. She wouldn’t even mention it to Dr. Mittleson—what was the point?
Eventually her mother might wonder, after a few weeks, why Sadie wasn’t coming around. But tomorrow she could still act like nothing happened—that was the easiest. She would get her brushes and help her parents cover up the kitchen with their fresh coat.
Author photo
by Elisa Ludwig
Elisa Ludwig is the author of the Pretty Crooked trilogy and Coin Heist, now a Netflix Original movie starring Sasha Pieterse. When she’s not writing about teens committing crimes, she’s writing about teens in angsty relationships. And when she’s not writing about teens in angsty relationships, she’s writing about food. She lives outside Philadelphia with her family. Visit elisaludwig.com and follow her on Twitter at @elisaludwigYA.
YOU KNOW SOMETHING’S HAPPENING HERE
(BUT YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT IT IS)
A PERSONAL ESSAY INSPIRED BY BOB DYLAN’S “BALLAD OF A THIN MAN”
By Jonathan Maberry
I picked Bob Dylan’s iconic “Ballad of a Thin Man” because it was the first song that encouraged me to stop, listen, consider, and then dig deeper. And it sparked a process of introspection that allowed me to understand the forces at work in my life as a troubled kid in a dangerous world.
—Jonathan Maberry
I know I’m different. I’ve always been different.
I know it and accept it.
I didn’t always accept it, though. For a long time being different was like having a disease, the kind that make you ugly, the kind where people don’t want to touch you. Like that.
It took a long time to accept that I was different, and a longer time to accept that I always would be.
It was longer still before I realized that different was not the same thing as worse, bad, or wrong.
Understanding came because of a song.
I’ll explain.
First, let’s go stand on some common ground together.
Song lyrics are a form of poetry, and poetry by its nature is open to interpretation.
A song or poem can mean one thing to one person and something entirely different to someone else. This is well known in certain literary, scholarly, or creative circles, but is often disputed elsewhere. I know, I’ve been part of those arguments.
It’d be nice to say that these disputes are always friendly, that it’s two friends sharing their personal insights and defending their views through reasoned argument. It would also be nice if there were actual pots of gold at the end of rainbows, but let’s be real. People can’t seem to agree on much these days. Just look at politics, vaccinations, race, gender equality, reproductive rights, immigration, wages, evolution, religion, and…well, pretty much everything else.
There are some people who don’t even agree that the Earth is round.
I grew up in a house and in a family where shared understanding was not a given. Which is a nice way of saying I was born into a bad family. They happen. Families come in all shapes and sizes. Mine was big. I was the youngest of six kids. We lived in a three-bedroom row home in Kensington, a low-income factory neighborhood in Philadelphia. I had one older brother and four sisters. I had parents, and we had a border collie, and we all shared one bathroom. My grandmother lived two miles away. Every family in our neighborhood was just as poor as we were, and most of them had just as many kids. Some had more. I was born in 1958, and the sixties were my childhood years, the seventies were middle school and high school and college. In the early eighties, I was working jobs that put me in the path of violence and anger and conflict.
Fun times.
That’s a joke, and a bad one.
I’m not sure if I was born different or became different. I can build a stronger case for the latter because I can actually remember a couple of moments where my internal gears shifted so dramatically that I was not the same afterward.
The first time was when I was six years old.
Young, yes. Innocent…not so much.
My father was a monster. A predator who preyed on anyone he could hurt. My sisters, our cousins. Me. We were weak, and he was of the kind who thought inflicting harm on the weak proved that he was strong. It was the bully mentality taken to an extreme. He set rules—often pointless and ridiculous—which he enforced with enthusiasm. Not because he thought the rules made sense, but because he knew we would have to break them. It gave him a veneer of justification to take us down into the cellar for consequences.
I don’t need to draw you a picture.
But there were other kinds of punishment, too. For small infractions of rules he said we ought to know. As if we were telepathic.
Books were one of those things. We weren’t allowed to have any unless he said so. And if we were, say, a minute late to the dinner table, or too slow getting home from school, we’d have to stand in the living room and tear up our books in front of everyone else. Page by page.
One of my sisters said that it was better than a beating.
I didn’t agree. Not then, and not now.
If we played the radio too loud he’d make us break our records in half. That hurt every bit as much. There were worse physical punishments, but somehow that damaged me more. It felt like he was making us accomplices in the murder of thought and imagination.
When I was six I began spending a lot of time at my best friend’s house, and two amazing things happened. First, my friend Justin and his dad were studying martial arts. Japanese jujitsu. I think Justin’s dad knew what was happening at our house, so when he offered to start teaching me some martial arts, he suggested we make it a secret. We did. That would matter in a big way later. It was the first of several points at which my life pivoted, though at six I was too young to realize it.
That would change.
The other thing that happened at Justin’s house was the presence of so many books and so much music. Back then people listened to records. There were no perso
nal computers, no iPads, no iPods, no internet streaming, no CDs. None of that. People went to music stores and bought vinyl records. Singles were called 45s because the disks revolved forty-five times per minute. Albums were 33s for the same reason, but everyone called them “albums” or LPs, for “long-playing.”
Justin’s dad was into a lot of what my parents called “hippie” music, but which was really a blend of British invasion, domestic pop, early psychedelic, blues, soul, funk, and folk-rock. The Beatles owned the airwaves, but they weren’t the only band making everyone jump. We had the Rolling Stones, the Righteous Brothers, Curtis Mayfield, Gary Lewis and the Playboys, the Supremes, the Kinks, Leonard Cohen, Freddy and the Dreamers, Tom Jones, Herman’s Hermits, the Searchers, the Zombies, Petula Clark, Gerry and the Pacemakers, James Brown, the Temptations, Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs, the Byrds, Marvin Gaye, the Beach Boys, the Four Tops, the Turtles, the Moody Blues, Sonny and Cher, the Yardbirds, the Four Seasons, Barry McGuire, Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding, Simon and Garfunkel, the Hollies, Donovan, the Animals, the McCoys, and the Who. We weren’t short of new music by new talents.
But the stuff in heaviest rotation at Justin’s house was the music of Bob Dylan.
I remember the first time I heard Bob Dylan sing, I thought, “Wow, he’s awful.”
If you’ve listened to Dylan, you’ll understand. His genius was in songwriting, not in the quality of his vocals. His voice often sounds off-key, which I’m told it actually isn’t. But it sounds that way. It sounds like nails on a blackboard, or a rusty hinge. It sounds raw, like a cawing crow trying to sing. It didn’t sound anything like the smooth singers on the radio, or even the harmonies of John, Paul, George, and Ringo. But, once you get used to Dylan—and trust me, it’s worth it—his singing style becomes both familiar and perfect for the words he’s singing. They, too, are raw and grating, but in the most brilliant ways.
A year later, when I was seven years old, a new Dylan album—his sixth—came out, and that was another of those pivot points. The album was Highway 61 Revisited and it would go on to become his most highly regarded album, which is saying a lot. It was a landmark album that combined folk storytelling with electric rock. It blended some blues stylings with new sounds unique to Dylan. The songs were not love songs. They weren’t the kinds of songs I’d ever heard. This was before my sisters were allowed to play their records while our father was at work. I’d never heard the phrase “protest song” before, and it would be years before the mainstream press was talking about psychedelic rock, protest rock, abstract rock, or anything like that. Maybe the newspapers in New York, New England, and the West Coast were exploring those themes, but not in blue-collar Philadelphia. Not in my neighborhood and not in my home. Those conversations wouldn’t start in our neighborhood until 1967, when the draft notices began arriving and so many teens from my block got sent to Vietnam. When my brother went over there…well, that’s when my sisters played a lot of Dylan and other rockers who were using music to express their anger.