Girls in Trouble: A Novel

by Caroline Leavitt

  “Dr. Kubin?” Sara said, but Dr. Kubin ignored her and sat down at another computer, pulling up Sara’s program. “Dr. Kubin?” Sara repeated, and Dr. Kubin waved her hand, as if she were shooing a fly, and Sara grabbed her books and ran out of the room, fighting tears, and there, leaning against a building, smoking, was Danny Slade.

  She knew him. Walk past the principal’s office and there was Danny Slade. Be late to school, and there was Danny Slade, outside, smoking, taking his time, so beautiful you could die just looking at him. He always wore the same musky patchouli oil, so strong that sometimes you could walk into an empty corridor, and you’d know he had just left it. She knew the stories about him. That except for Danny, his family was superreligious and conservative, and that Danny was the black sheep, a boy who was smart enough, but didn’t give a damn about school, a boy who actually said things like “God is dead” in class and didn’t flinch when he was sent to the principal for it. A boy whose father had died in some scandalous accident that Danny wouldn’t talk about, which made it all the more mysterious. “I want him,” the girls stage-whispered when thev saw him, and even though Danny could have had any one of them, he kept to himself and that made them all want him more. He had long, glossy dark hair and strange eyes, bright and green as a traffic go signal, and now they were staring at her, as if he recognized her from somewhere a long time ago. That look worked its way into her bones. “Sara,” he said.

  She was startled he even knew her name. He glanced at her books, taking another drag of his cigarette, lowering his head so his hair fell into his eyes. “You’re always reading,” he said. She thought he was making fun of her, the way some of the kids at school did. Every time report cards came out, someone would always jeer at her, “What’d you get, all As again?” as if being smart were a terrible disease you might never recover from. Every time her name or the name of another honors student was announced on the PA system for winning an award, there would be snickers. Eves would roll.

  “Don’t ruin those beautiful eves,” Danny said. His voice was so soft, so kind, that she knew he wasn’t making fun of her and she burst into tears.

  She tried to stop crying, but she couldn’t move, couldn’t take her eyes off his face. She was sure he was going to walk away, to leave her. He seemed the kind of boy who couldn’t stand tears, who couldn’t stand trouble not of his own making.

  He threw his cigarette into the dirt, grinding it with his heel, and then came so close to her that her heart knocked against her ribs. He touched her arm as delicately as if she were a piece of fine china. “Want to do something besides read?” he said.

  It was a question, but it got inside of her, like a command.

  She followed him. She was too upset still to talk, but he didn’t seem to mind. He did all the talking. “Detention. Smoking in class,” he said. “What was your crime?”

  “Daydreaming,” she said, and he raised one brow.

  “We both had bad days, then,” he said. She followed him to a fence, and when he climbed over, she climbed over, too, right into a lushly green backyard with a shimmering blue pool. “It’s warm today. Want to swim?” he asked.

  “I don’t have a suit.”

  He grinned at her, shucking off his T-shirt. He was lean and angular, with a faint scar on his stomach, and as soon as she saw it, she wanted to touch it. He took off his leather belt and she froze. She was thin as a soda straw, the last of the girls in her class to wear a bra, and even then she barely filled it out. No way was she going to take off her clothes, especially in front of Danny Slade. She looked around for the gate, then she heard a sudden splash, and there was Danny, in the pool in his jeans, waving lazily at her. “It’s hot. Your dress will dry,” he told her, and then she dove in, too, her dress billowing up about her, and as soon as the water hit her, she felt the whole bad day washed from her.

  “Better?” he said. They swam a little, her dress fluting out about her legs, like a pour of milk, his blue jeans turning black and heavy with water, and then they sat on the edge of the pool. He lifted up his dry T-shirt and slowly wiped the water from her face with it, and she felt a shiver of pleasure so keen, she had to shut her eyes. Her thin cotton dress dripped about her, her hair sluiced back. “You’re lucky to have a pool,” she said.

  He laughed. “I wish. This pool isn’t mine!”

  “It isn’t?” She looked around. “Whose is it then?”

  “Beats me. The only thing I know about these people is they leave the house at noon and don’t come back until after midnight and they’re a little nuts. The only time they drain their pool is winter.” He leaned toward her conspiratorially. “I’ve been coming here every hot day. If you’re careful, no one even knows you’re here.”

  He walked her back to her block and by the time they got there her dress was nearly dry. And then he turned to her. “See? I made you feel better, didn’t I?”

  “I feel great.”

  “Let me tell you a secret. You start feeling bad again, you think about the pool.”

  “Deal,” she said, though she knew it wouldn’t be the pool that’d claim her thoughts. He leaned toward her and wrapped one of her ringlets about his finger. She didn’t mind. Her hair was the one true gift her mother gave her. It set her apart, made her special, and it made other girls look at her with something close to yearning, so they’d keep trying perms and bottled color in imitation of her. “I like your hair,” he said. “It’s so wild.”

  She sat perfectly still, suddenly a little frightened. “But I’m not,” she said.

  He let her hair go, studying her. “You’re different than I thought you’d be,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You look at me when I talk to you. You really look.”

  “You’re different, too.”

  “Really? How?”

  She thought for a moment. “You look, too.”

  His smile spread. “I would have thought everyone was always looking at you, that you’d have a million boyfriends.”

  “Not even one,” she said, flushing.

  “Well,” he said, as if he were considering something, and then he waved at her, and walked away. “See you,” he said.

  Electrified, she couldn’t move until he was out of sight. Then she ran into her house, racing for the phone, calling her friend Judy. “Guess where I’ve been,” she said.

  The whole time Sara was telling her, Judy kept sucking in a breath. “You and Danny Slade?” Judy said, amazed. “Are you on drugs?”

  “He’s nice. Really nice.”

  Judy was silent again for a minute. “If you don’t tell me every detail, I’ll hurt you.”

  “There won’t be any more details,” Sara said. A cavern opened up inside of her, and she felt the enormity of that loss.

  “You just be careful,” Judy said.

  That night, Sara woke up, remembering the way Danny had stroked her face with his shirt. She got up from bed and got her dress and held it to her face, breathing in the chlorine smell. She went to the mirror and brushed her hair until it snapped with light, gazing into her own eyes, trying to see what Danny had seen there.

  The next day, when she came out of school, she felt a charge in the air, and there was Danny Slade again, waiting for her, looking at her with as much astonishment as she looked at him. “I didn’t expect you here,” Sara said, and he shook his head.

  “That makes two of us,” he said. “What is it about you? This is the first time I’ve ever waited for a girl. The first time I’ve ever wanted to.”

  They began to see each other. Every day after school, he took her someplace different. Sometimes swimming. Sometimes to a diner where they sat and dunked their fries into ketchup and wrote their names on the white plate. They sat talking when Sara should have been studying, talking when she should have been at her computer, and when she talked, he didn’t take his eyes from her. He acted as if nothing were more important than what she was saying, even if it was just, “Pass the salt, p
lease.” When she got home, with her books spread about her, she couldn’t see anything on the page except for his face.

  “What are you dreaming about?” Abby asked curiously, but Sara couldn’t tell her, Sara didn’t want to share Danny or anything about him with anyone, least of all her parents, who didn’t want her dating, who’d end it. “Concentrate on studying,” Abby said, and Sara thought how Danny took books from her hands, kissing her fingers. “When do you think you’re going to need to know calculus?” Danny asked her. “Where’s all this schooling going to get you?” He never asked her anything about school, and when she mentioned something, he interrupted her. “I just like being with you,” he said, and hearing something like that seemed like the most astonishing fact she could ever learn.

  “I want to be a therapist,” she told Danny. “I want to help people with their feelings.”

  He leaned his forehead against hers. “Help me with mine,” he said in a low voice and then he laced his fingers together with hers and kissed her so gently that for one moment she wasn’t certain their lips had even met.

  But the more he was with her, the more questions he began to ask. What was it like growing up in a house where you were the only child, where your parents doted on you? What was she learning in school and what was it like taking all these special courses, knowing your future was wide open, that you were special?

  “It doesn’t feel wide open,” Sara said. “It feels like a path I can’t deviate from if I know what’s good for me. And I don’t feel special.” Just that day, her history teacher had told her that her thesis idea was a dime a dozen, and that if Sara wanted to stand out, she had better think on it a little harder. “I feel like I’m drowning,” Sara said.

  Danny took her hand, turning it over so he was looking at her palm. “Then I’ll be your lifeline,” he said.

  He began to buy her presents. Beaded bracelets she never took off. Magnets in the shape of planets. Tortoiseshell barrettes for her hair. And once, a book of short stories by Kafka, inscribed: “This is for you, Danny” She looked at the book, and then at him, surprised.

  “Is something wrong?” he asked. “You don’t like Kafka?”

  “No, no, I do. I just—I thought you weren’t interested in books—”

  “I’m interested in you—in what you’re interested in. And I know who Kafka is,” he said, wounded. “I’m not stupid.” He opened the book, showing her where he had underlined certain parts for her: Gregor Samsa awakening to find himself a giant insect. And one line jumping out at her: “There was a time when I went every day into a church since a girl I was in love with knelt there in prayer for half an hour in the evening and I was able to look at her in peace.” A girl I was in love with! She snuck a cautious glance at him, and there he was smiling at her. The fact that he had given her this book, that he had written in it, touched her so much, she clutched the book to her chest.

  She read the book so much she had it memorized. She carried it everywhere with her. She was reading it one night in the living room when her mother passed by and nodded at Sara approvingly. “Oh, Kafka! That’s one author I haven’t read yet,” her mother said. “Maybe I should read it, too, when you’re done with it. You sure seem to love it.”

  Sara held the book tighter. “I do love it,” she said, though what she meant was she loved him. She loved Danny. That night, she tucked the book deep in one of her drawers, burying it protectively under some sweaters, and when her mother asked about the book again, Sara said she had lost it at school. “I’ll order a copy,” her mother said.

  “What is going on with you?” Robin complained when Sara broke a study date. “I’m going to have to study with someone else,” Robin warned, “and I’m not going to miss another movie because of you,” and all Sara could think was, good, it was one less thing cutting into her time with Danny. She canceled so many plans with Judy that Judy finally refused to make any plans with her at all. “Spur of the moment or nothing,” Judy said. Her friends used to call her at night to talk; but her phone was silent now, and the one time she called Robin, the conversation was tense and stilted. “I feel like I don’t know you anymore,” Robin said, and Sara had to agree with her, because she knew she wasn’t herself any longer. She was someone better when she was with Danny.

  “Why are you with him?” her friends asked.

  “Why’s he with you?” one of the tough, vocational girls asked Sara, planting herself in Sara’s path. She gave Sara a quick, measuring look. “No accounting for taste.”

  And Sara, too, asked Danny, over and over, as if he had the key to some secret, “Why me?” She tried to deconstruct their relationship, the way she might if she were a therapist. Pheromones, she thought, that chemical scent that zinged from one person to another, attracting you so much it could change the way you acted. She thought he was going to say, because he thought she was beautiful, or because she was different from his other girlfriends, but instead he just shrugged. “I feel like I’ve always known vou,” he said. “People say that no one knows why someone loves someone, but that’s bullshit. You know. Deep inside of you, right in the first few seconds you meet.” He took a piece of her hair, a curl, and swung it. “You and me, we’ll always be connected.”

  She started. Love. He had said love. And he began saying it more and more.

  They had been seeing each other every day for a few weeks when he took her to his house. It was in a rundown section of town, the lawns scrubby looking, the houses in need of paint. “This is it,” he said, and he gave her a funny look.

  “You have a bigger lawn than we do,” she said finally, and he smiled.

  “No one’s here,” he told her.

  Inside was cramped and dark, and she struggled to adjust her eyes to the dim light. She trailed her hand along the ugly brown couch by the wall. The carpet was worn and grey with a mysterious reddish stain that made her want to look anywhere but at it. Her eyes flew to the big wooden cross on the wall, to the ashtrays filled with cigarette butts.

  “Home sweet home,” said Danny dryly.

  Sara’s words knotted in her throat. She didn’t know what to say about this place, but she didn’t want to lie to Danny. A photograph caught her eye. A woman, lean and pretty in a printed dress, her hair curling about her face. “She’s beautiful—” Sara said, grateful for something she actually liked in here. She leaned closer, hoping to find something more to exclaim about it, and then she saw the hard, lonely cast to the woman’s mouth, a bitterness that made her step back as if she had been slapped.

  “My mother,” Danny said. “My dad left when I was five. Ran off with a waitress and then, a month later, he died.”

  Sara lowered her eyes. “I know about the accident.”

  “He and his new honey died coming home from Niagara Falls. Both of them drunk. Did you know that part?” Danny’s shoulders were so hunched, she wanted to touch them.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “We keep that part in the family. Our dirty little secret.”

  “I won’t tell.”

  “I know. I trust you. It’s just that it was so hard for us, for so long.” He told her that his mother didn’t believe in women working, but what else could she do, left like that? “The church gave her a job. Office work. Money. First pick of all the clothes people left off for charity.” Danny made a face. “First time I wore a wool sweater to class, someone else pointed and said, ‘Hey, that was mine.’ I took it off and never wore it or any of those church clothes again. My older brother Mike got a job to help out. He took over.” Danny told Sara that Mike had been running the house since he was eight, just like he was the man of it. Laying down the law, taking care of all the bills, controlling all the money, doling it out to Danny depending on what kind of mood he was in, which was always a crappy one.

  “My mother thought he was God’s gift and I was the Devil’s,” Danny said bitterly. “Still does. And so does he. Both of them think if I just went to church, I’d straighten out.” He shook his he
ad. “My brother’s working in Texas now, selling cars, picking the tumble weeds out of his teeth. But he might as well still be here, hovering over us like some ghost. He sends home money, he calls to check up on me, and even from a distance, he still can yell. The good son. Mr. Goddamn Perfect.”

  “You’re the perfect one,” Sara said. Tentatively she moved toward him. If she didn’t touch him now, she was sure she would die. She touched his arm and a jolt of heat flew through her fingers. She swore he felt it, too, because he turned to her, surprised.

  “My family—” he said quietly. “I told my mother about you, but she acted like she didn’t believe someone like you could like someone like me.”

  She tried to swallow and couldn’t. I more than like you, she thought, but she couldn’t say it. His gaze pinned her in place, made her breath into little shallow clips. “I’d like to meet your mother,” she said, and her voice sounded strange and faraway to her.

  “You would?” he said. “Really?”

  Sara glanced back at the photo, at the woman’s hard line of a mouth, and thought, what would she say to Danny’s mother? How could she feel comfortable under that gaze? “I’d love to,” she said, and Danny glanced at his watch. “Let’s do it, then. She ought to be here in half an hour,” he said. He was suddenly giddy, like a little kid, smoothing back his hair, tucking in his shirt, making Sara wish for a dress instead of her black T-shirt and shorts.

  They waited around that day for Danny’s mother. They sat on the couch kissing, talking, and every time a car drove past, Danny pulled away and looked up at the window expectantly, and Sara rushed to comb her ringlets with her fingers. “False alarm,” Danny said. The phone rang once, and Danny jumped up, grabbing for it, his face bright. He cocked his head, listening. “Mike,” he said finally. She heard his voice, rising and falling. “Mom told you? Want to talk to her?” he said, and he sounded different to Sara. New. Hopeful. And then she saw a pulse working in his face and his eyes grew stormy. “You never change,” he said bitterly and hung up the phone, and when it toppled from its cradle, he slammed it down again, so hard the whole phone fell off the table.