“You know,” she whispered, conspiratorially, “being a writer is basically like being God. You can control all the people you create, and they live in your world, which you also created.” She got loud again. “ISN’T THAT BANAY-NAY???”
“Jesus Christ,” Yvonne said, sticking her nose into the empty envelope. “She’s as high as a kite.”
“Nutmeg makes you high?” Tiffany crinkled her nose. She clearly knew a lot less about “holding” than the character she’d played earlier.
“If you eat enough of it,” said Indy as they all watched Puja help herself to one of the bathrobes that hung outside the shower stalls. She put it on, then topped off her guru look with a string of gauze she wrapped across her forehead and tied in the back like a hippie headband.
“Let. Us. Go. SWIMMING!” Puja shouted.
“Sure!” exclaimed Eleanor, who Indy realized hadn’t even tried to make eye contact with her since she came into the bathroom wearing matching pajamas with Yvonne. Leave it to Eleanor to freeze you out before you even got a chance to put her in her place.
Soon, with the encouragement of a lucid Eleanor and a hysterical Puja, all the other girls agreed that night swimming seemed like a great idea.
“Follow me, my disciples!” Puja shouted, and led the way out of Ferlinghetti toward the heated pool for an impromptu group baptism at the hand of a spice-fueled prophet. Indigo followed, in part to save face among her peers as a follower, and in part because she had nothing left to lose.
21
By the time the girls left the bunk, they were trailed by the rest of the Beat cabin residents. Word had gotten out that Ferlinghetti had weed they were going to smoke down by the pool, and that Puja, that dorky Indian playwright, was tripping on copious amounts of ’shrooms and acid that her dealer parents had sent her in a care package. By the time Indy, Eleanor, Yvonne, and Puja got to the pool and scaled the fencing that kept it confined during non-lifeguarded hours, the girls from Ginsberg, Burroughs, and Kerouac were right behind them, wearing swimsuits, pajamas, sweats, UGGs, or some sort of combination of all four.
“FIRST ONE IN IS A PLAYWRIGHT WITH GODLIKE POWERS!” Puja screamed before belly-flopping, bathrobe and all, into the deep end of the Olympic-size heated pool. Water splashed onto several of the girls, causing them to shriek in excitement. Campers from different bunks added to the ridiculousness of it all by jumping into the pool behind her, one by one.
There was shouting, splashing, and the requisite amount of awkward doggy-paddling, even by varsity-level swimmers, in the shallow end of the moonlit lanes. Some of the girls from the Modern Expressionist cabin removed the lap dividers and others fetched foam noodles from the shed to throw down into the onyx and ochre shimmer of moon on night undulating in the water’s reflection. Puja, still raving like a loon, tried to grab whatever pool toys landed in her vicinity. “OFFERINGS! OFFERINGS! From my disciples! FRANKINCENSE! MYRRH! BRIDE OF FRANKINCENSE! MURRAY’S CHEESE SHOP! I kiss you! I thank you! I bless you! GESUNDHEIT!!!”
Indigo marveled at the chaos. She couldn't help but smile. Whatever anger or sadness or jealousy or alienation she felt back at Ferlinghetti began to drain away. It felt nice to stand back and watch these silly maniacs frolic, knowing it was likely her second-to-last night ever at Silver Springs.
“Marco!”
“Polo!”
“Polo Ralph Lauren!”
Campers from the Ensor and Munch bunks shouted to one another across the water, and whoever was left on the sidelines dove in. Suzie McLandish floated by, her breast implants pointing up toward Orion’s belt in the sky as she backstroked toward Megan Stein, who doggy-paddled past the deep/shallow end marker, making sure to keep her color-treated hair dry. Desi the dancer, who did laps like she was getting a workout in, was wearing baggy clothes even in the pool.
And then Indy saw Lucy approach the pool from the other side of the fence with Tiffany Melissa Portman. They both wore hoodies over bikini tops and PINK sweats with flip-flops. Tiffany must have left Ferlinghetti to go collect Lucy and change clothes for the night swim. They were laughing and squealing, clearly still sharing a high from tonight’s performance.
“Indy!” Lucy waved and shouted across the pool. “This is so nuts, right?!”
Indigo couldn’t bear looking Lucy in the eyes, so she pretended she hadn’t heard her. It was loud, after all.
But Lucy seemed to take this as a cue to walk over. Indy crossed her arms across her torso protectively as she approached, and suddenly they were face-to-face with each other—all that was between them now was a few inches of soaked concrete. Well, that and the events of the past few weeks.
“Why don’t you jump in?” Lucy shouted, a slight, irritated edge to her voice.
“Because I don’t want to.” Some water splashed them from the pool, and they both jumped back.
“Will you go in if I go in?” Lucy was trying to use her calm “C.I.T.-dealing-with-a-difficult-child” voice.
“Look, I don’t have to jump just because you want me to jump!” Indigo shot back, surprised at the anger that came out of her. Usually, she only turned against herself with that kind of ease.
“What the fuck is going on with you?” Lucy’s face screwed up into a frown. She unzipped her hoodie and threw it on the ground, like she was making a point.
“What do you mean?” Indy sputtered back.
“You’re acting like a total bitch!” Lucy tossed her hair dramatically. “I saw you in the audience tonight; I knew you were at the play, and you didn’t even come backstage after to say hi.”
“It’s always about you, isn’t it?”
Lucy just stared.
“It’s your play, it’s your summer job, it’s your perfect blond hair and stupid gorgeous body and your acting career and all of it!” Tears welled up in the corners of Indy’s eyes as she removed her denim jacket and threw it onto the ground.
“I’ve tried to reach out to you this summer, Indy, but sometimes you get so emotional.” Lucy hung her head and spoke more calmly. “And then last week you totally disappeared.”
Indy brought her arm up to wipe her face, now wet with both tears and wayward drops of pool water. As she did, Lucy reached out and grabbed her friend’s forearm.
“Is this why you’ve been wearing long sleeves these past few weeks? Indy, are you cutting?” Lucy gestured to Indy’s arm wound. All of a sudden, she got very intense and very quiet.
“Why do you care?” Indy shouted in response. Now she really started crying as Lucy moved closer.
“Stay away from me!” Indigo sobbed.
“Why are you so mad at me?” Lucy asked, practically shouting by now. “What did I ever do to you?”
Indy turned slowly and took a deep breath.
“You,” she began, slowly and deliberately before clearing her throat.
“You. Fucked. Nick.”
“WHAT?” Lucy gasped.
“You fucked Nick!”
“I did not! I thought we cleared this up! I told you! There was NEVER anything between us. Never!”
The small, moonlit heads of the wet revelers gradually turned to the edge of the pool as the girls became aware of the epic fight taking place between one of Silver Springs’s most notorious duos.
“Knock it off with the Oscar-winning performance already, Lucy. I saw you two making out in the woods.”
Lucy shut up for a second and looked Indigo right in the eyes.
“Are you kidding?”
“No.” Indigo replied. “No, I’m not.”
“What you saw,” Lucy’s eyes were huge with intensity, “is not what it looked like.”
“What were you doing, then? Rehearsing for a love scene with my old painting teacher?” Indy said, averting her eyes quickly down to the ground. She had to be careful what she said.
“No,” Lucy said, like it pained her. She took a deep breath.
“What happened that day,” she continued, “was that Nick asked me to go to the woods with him
to smoke a joint.”
“Lame.”
“You and I smoked pot in the same place, before you got all weird this summer!” Lucy snapped. “Anyway, I met him there, and the first thing he said was that he didn’t have any pot. He said he was there because he’d gotten a text saying to meet me there, too. It was totally weird. Anyway. Then…” Lucy trailed off, and her eyes welled up. “Then he tried to make out with me.”
“He what?”
“He tried to kiss me, okay? And he put his hand under my shirt. Or he tried to.”
Indigo suddenly felt sick to her stomach.
“So, what happened?” she reluctantly asked, stepping back from the edge of the pool so Yvonne, who was totally oblivious to the drama, could do a cannonball.
“I pushed him away! I told him no, and he stopped. He said he got a flirty text from me earlier that led him to think something else, and I told him I didn’t know what he was talking about, and then he went in to kiss me again.”
What was Lucy saying? Could Eleanor have possibly set them up? And texted Indy to come to the lake so she would find them? There’s no way she was that good.
“Anyway”—Lucy wiped her eyes—“after that, I ran back to camp and swore I’d never tell you about it because I didn’t want you to think he was a creep. I know how crazy about him you are and how much he motivates you to get to the studio and work on your stuff. I didn’t want to take that away from you.”
“So you didn’t kiss him back?” Indy asked, her faith in her friend slowly edging back.
“No!” Lucy said, tears running down her face by now. “You’ve been in love with him since I’ve known you! Friends don’t do that to each other.”
“Even if I’d never have found out about it?”
“I thought you knew me better than that, Ind.” Lucy’s eyes met Indigo’s with a sincerity Indy recognized from summers past.
And just like that, her mood brightened. She even felt herself smile, involuntarily. Lucy, who was so relieved to see her best friend look happy for the first time in what seemed like ages, grinned back.
That’s all it took for Indigo to suddenly connect to the world around her. Soon, she noticed what else was going on around them this entire time.
The pool party was in full swing, and nobody was looking at them anymore, since it became clear Indy and Lucy were making up.
They looked at each other.
“I’ll go in if you go in,” said Lucy.
They both kicked off their shoes, and Lucy slipped off her sweatpants. Indigo slid her black dress over her head and stood in her bra and underwear. And then, with a smile and a wink, Lucy dared her to take it all off. Indy unhooked her bra and held her boobs in her hands, while Lucy did the same with her bikini top.
By now, for obvious reasons, all eyes were back on them. But Indy was at peace with it. She wasn’t worried about being compared to Lucy. She had nothing to lose, and she was giving herself completely to the experience, to the night, to her peers, and then to the coldness of the chlorinated water that embraced her goose bump–adorned, freckled, imperfect, beautiful nakedness once she splashed into the pool. By the time the two of them were in the water, giggling hysterically, Puja had scrambled up the steps, put her arms out like Jesus, and decreed, “SKINNY DIPPING!!!”
All bets were off.
Bras, pajama bottoms, panties, and bikini tops went flying onto the side of the pool as the distinguished young women of Silver Springs followed Indy and Lucy’s leads and stripped bare. It was a free-for-all—splashing, screaming, and a chorus of giggly gasps scored the chaotic display of boobs and bellies and tushes of all shapes and sizes, as well as the bobbing wet heads of what seemed like the entire Silver Springs Academy for Fine and Performing Arts for Girls.
As the girls around her went wild, Indy dunked her head underwater and observed as the din of the pool vanished at once. She opened her eyes and enjoyed the sting of the chlorine and the disorientation. She couldn’t see a thing in the dark pool water, besides the vague suggestion of bodies in motion. It was a pleasant kind of abyss. Like nothingness and freedom, cold and warmth—all at once.
Indy held her breath underwater, naked, and closed her eyes. She felt like a fetus in the womb—she even put her fingers in her ears to drown out the sounds that crept in from her fellow swimmers. But even then she heard screams and bobbed up to find out what the hell was going on.
As she treaded water and blinked the chlorine from her eyes, she saw Lillian come into the pool area, blowing her whistle energetically and futilely. She shone her flashlight beam across the water and shouted, “Ladies! Calm yourselves! Who started this? Ladies!”
All kinds of bacchanalian revelry continued under the glare of the searchlight. Puja, naked except for a bindi and a pair of rose-colored goggles, was doing the backstroke and chanting something about being Jesus Christ with a cuter rack. Tiffany had three or four foam noodles under each of her armpits that kept her afloat. “Look, guys, I made a raft!” she chirped happily. And Eleanor, who wouldn’t take off her Danskin leotard, was sitting on the edge of the pool wearing a sour look on her face, probably seething that Lucy and Indigo seemed to be friends again.
“Shall we get the hell out of this pool?” Lucy yelled, from only a foot away.
“Yes, please. After you.”
Lucy reached forward on the bars near the stepladder and climbed her way out of the deep end, followed by Indigo, who did the same. As they scampered naked toward their clothes, which lay strewn in clumps by the fence, Indy realized they were laughing together. It had been a really long time since they’d done that.
They grabbed their stuff and held their clothes in front of their bodies to cover themselves and dry off a little.
“It’s so good to have you back, Indy.” Lucy caught Indy’s eyes.
“I know. I’m sorry I…” Indy trailed off, then corrected herself. Should she say what she was feeling? That it was killing her that she was dumb and weak enough to listen to Eleanor? That there was a DVD of Lucy somewhere on campus? That she had completely betrayed the person who’d always been there for her? She looked back at Lucy, who smiled. It was okay. Things could go unsaid between friends who’d known each other for that long. And now she would set things right.
“I missed you so much,” Indy said.
Lucy beamed brighter than the flashlight that shone onto the pool. Dripping wet, she and Indy re-dressed and then ran together, laughing, over the fence and down the hill, into the night.
22
The next morning, Indigo woke up feeling like she had risen from a coma. She got out of bed energized and fully rested from the chaos and misunderstandings that had muddied her experience at camp until this moment.
It was only when she remembered she had a meeting with the Fairness Committee that her heart sank.
Indy glanced over at Eleanor, who was still asleep, wearing her still-damp leotard from last night’s pool party. The two of them still hadn’t talked about their serious gaffe involving the video footage. It hardly mattered now that Indy was in serious trouble for something else.
All she wanted to do was go back to the studio and get to work. To use what would probably be her last day of camp to create something beautiful. Something worthwhile. Maybe she could use the same exercise she’d used to draw that chair to work on a new piece—one for the Industry Showcase Day exhibit.
That is, if they were even going to let her show her work. If only she had more time. It figured that Indigo had finally decided she did want to be at camp now that it was about to end. To make things even worse, she was about to face major public shaming in the artistic community for ruining someone else’s work in a fit of temporary madness. Why couldn’t she have just burned her own stuff that night?
Indy rifled through Eleanor’s drawers for something to wear to the trial. All of her own clothes were dark or black and seemed to telegraph guilt. And with the weight she lost from her self-imposed quarantine in the bunk, Indy rea
lized some of Eleanor’s looser, elasticized tops would actually fit her as long as she let them open at the bust and wore a tank underneath.
She slipped on Eleanor’s white diaphanous silky blouse over a stretchy cream camisole from Theory she found in another drawer. She paired it with a wraparound skirt—those were one-size-fits-all—and topped it off with a pair of pearl stud earrings her roommate had left on the top of her dresser.
Indy looked in the full-length mirror and, for the first time in a while, loved what she saw. Even though she didn’t have anything display-ready for the art show she would likely be banned from anyway, she still had a little bit of time. She wanted to rise to the occasion and to make up for the damage she had caused. Not just for the scouts or her parents—she wanted to prove to herself that she was a true artist, not just some one-hit wonder who’d one time been mislabeled as a prodigy.
Indigo walked up the hill toward the main house with her head up high. The morning sun felt perfect on her skin, and the delicious breeze swept underneath Eleanor’s skirt. It was all made that much better by the fact that she was friends with Lucy again.
As if on cue, she felt her phone vibrate from the inside of her army-navy bag. It was a text from Lucy.
Hey! So good 2 talk last night. See u at breakfast?
Indy texted back.
Good 2 talk, for real. But I actually have a Fairness Committee trial b4 bfast, so I don’t know if I’ll make it. I might be packing my stuff by then. : (
Seconds after Indy hit “send,” Lucy’s name popped up on her caller ID. “Hey, where are you?” Indy answered.
“I’m in my room! Are you going up to the main house now for Fairness Committee? Are you seriously on trial? For what?!” Lucy asked.
“I…it’s complicated.” If only she’d been more honest with her this whole time, she would’ve been able to fill her in on the vandalism drama. Or, had she trusted that Lucy would never have had anything going on with Nick, there wouldn’t have been any vandalism drama in the first place. “Basically, I’m…being accused of destroying somebody’s artwork. And setting the studio on fire. Well, parts of the studio on fire.”
Art Girls Are Easy Page 18