Girls in Trouble: A Novel

by Caroline Leavitt

  “Anne,” Sara said. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  There was no place to sit except the bed, which seemed far too intimate. There was an old wooden chair orphaned in the corner that looked as if it would crash to the floor if you dared to sit on it. “This is strange, isn’t it?” Sara said quietly. “But I’m glad you came.”

  Anne’s tongue lay thick and heavy in her mouth. Her breath came in pinches. Outside, a car spit gravel in the parking lot. “Get some ice,” she heard a guy shout.

  “I don’t know what to say,” Anne said. She kept standing, folding her arms about her chest, holding on to herself, as if any moment she might fly away in all directions.

  “You don’t have to say anything yet if you don’t want to,” Sara said.

  Anne shook her head. “Want to sit?” Sara motioned to the bed, but Anne backed away, leaning against the far wall. She felt as if she were under a hot light. The way Sara was looking at her made Anne feel as if everything about her was wrong: her hair, her clothes, her face. “You’re staring at me,” Anne finally said.

  “I can’t help it.”

  Anne tried to smooth her shirt, pasted along her back.

  “Did your parents tell you anything more about me?” Sara asked.

  “No.” Anne couldn’t bring herself to look back at Sara, to meet that gaze, as intense and pointed as a laser beam. Instead she shifted her weight, staring at the far wall, at a pastel picture of mallard ducks, all in flight, and for a moment, she wished she could join them. “You can ask me anything,” Sara offered.

  “How old are you?” Anne blurted.

  “Thirty-two.”

  Thirty-two! Younger than anybody else’s mother. Anne did a quick subtraction in her head. Thirty-two meant that Sara had gotten pregnant when she was fifteen, only a little younger than Anne was now. Anne couldn’t imagine herself pregnant, couldn’t begin to think what she’d do if the same thing happened to her, though it wasn’t likely since she had never even really kissed a boy, let alone slept with one. She didn’t know any girls her age who had gotten pregnant, though she had heard vague rumors, followed by even vaguer rumors of abortions. Everyone had to take sex education class, everyone knew about condoms and pills. “There’s no excuse for an unwanted pregnancy,” the sex ed teacher had told them, and now, thinking about it, Anne reflected: There’s no excuse for me. Fler hand rested on her belly, and abruptly she took it off.

  “You don’t know how long I’ve imagined this,” Sara said.

  “Why? You gave me up.”

  “Don’t say that,” said Sara, “I didn’t give you up, not the way you think. I loved you. I loved your house. I even loved your parents.”

  “You loved my parents?” Anne said, astonished.

  “I was family.” Sara leaned forward, as if she were going to tell Anne a great secret. She started to tell Sara how she and George and Eva had done all these things together, how they had gone miniature-golfing and to plays, how Eva had taught her how to make creme brulee, how George had taught her to drive, and Anne flinched, because all she could remember was how Eva had whisked her out of the kitchen when Anne asked if she could cook something, how George had given her one lesson and then, when she had banged up the car, wouldn’t teach her again. “You came back to see them,” she said.

  “I came to see you.”

  Anne was quiet for a moment. “Who’s my father? Does he know about me?”

  “It’s complicated. He’s married. He has a whole other life. But you have me.”

  Anne stared down at the floor and then back at Sara. “Do I have grandparents?”

  Sara nodded and looked weary. “What?” said Anne. “Why do you look that way?”

  “Because it’s hard. It’s always been hard for everyone. I was only fifteen when I got pregnant, sixteen when I had you, and my parents wanted none of it to have happened.”

  “They don’t want to know me?”

  Sara didn’t say anything and Anne felt something chipping deep inside of her.

  “I have to go,” Anne said, and Sara moved toward her, upset. “Oh no. Please.”

  Anne looked toward the door. “Why did you come here? What do you really want?”

  “I want to see you. I wanted to know you.”

  Anne yanked at the door, and suddenly she felt Sara’s hand on hers. She tried to jerk her hand free, but Saras grip tightened, holding her in place. “Will you come back?”

  “I don’t know—” Anne said.

  “We don’t have to meet here if you don’t want. We can meet at a diner, go to the movies, or for a walk. Whatever you’d like, whatever would make you feel comfortable.”

  “I said I don’t know.”

  “I’ll be here,” Sara said. “You can call me anytime.”

  And then Anne was off, out the door and down the hall, and the one time she dared to look back, there was Sara, standing in her doorway, lifting her hand up in a wave, but when Anne tried to move her own arm, it stayed stuck at her side.

  Outside the hotel, everything looked different. The sidewalk had a huge jagged crack she didn’t remember from before. The sky was a weird metallic-orange color and none of the clouds looked real, but like Styro-foam. Everything familiar now seemed strange and new and terrible, as if her old life had been ripped apart. Her parents weren’t her parents. Fler father was missing in action. Her mother was a stranger. And now she felt like a stranger, too.

  Anne had hoped for an empty house, but as soon as she got home, she could hear Eva talking on the phone, bright patter like pennies spilled in a jar. “Oh, she’s here, I’ll call you back—” Eva said, the shine suddenly gone from her voice, and then, before Anne could even settle herself, Eva was in the room with her, her face a map of concern. “How did it go with Sara?” Eva asked. Anne just shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about it.” She went right to the bathroom and locked the door, rushing the water in the shower, while she sat on the toilet and tried to think.

  “Anne?” Eva knocked on the door a few times and Anne put her head in her hands, shutting her eyes, and then she heard George coming home, and he came and knocked on the door, too. “Come out now,” he said, and she slowly got up and opened the door. George and Eva were standing there. “Come talk with us in the kitchen,” George ordered, and she followed them, reluctantly, sitting down at the table. Her parents scraped their chairs closer to her. “What happened with Sara to get you so upset?” he said.

  “I don’t know.”

  Eva and George exchanged glances. “What did she tell you?” George said.

  “She said she loved you.” Anne felt tense and miserable. “That she lived with you.”

  “She didn’t live with us,” Eva said. “It was an open adoption. She was over a lot.”

  “But why did that all stop?”

  “Well, because—because it had to. Because Sara did something really terrible.”

  “What did she do?” said Anne.

  There was that funny look again between her parents. “Tell me,” Anne said. “I have a right to know, don’t I?”

  Eva exhaled. “Fine. What does it matter? If I don’t tell you, she will.” Eva rubbed her forehead. “She tried to kidnap you.”

  Anne sat up straighter. “She did what?”

  “She took you on a Greyhound with her. With no money and no food,” Eva said.

  “She took you across state lines,” George said. “You could have died!”

  “I might have ended up with her—” Anne said in wonder.

  “It was a crime!” Eva said. “If we were anybody else, we could have put her in jail, we could have ruined her life if we wanted. But we didn’t. We let her off the hook, even though all our friends said we were crazy. We did what was hardest for us, leaving the practice, moving down here, and maybe it was difficult, but at least everyone got a new start.”

  Anne leaned against the wall. What must it have felt like to be on that bus, young and terrified and on the run, a baby jostling on
your lap? It was better than any story she herself could have come up with. And it was a story about her.

  “Anne? Honey? We know it’s terrible, what she did,” George said. “You don’t have to see her again. You’re not obligated.”

  “I want to see her,” Anne said, and then before she could see her parents’ expressions, she left the room.

  The next day, right after school, instead of going home, Anne showed up at Sara’s. Her parents would probably give her grief about it, they’d put her on the hot seat wanting to know every detail, but she knew they wouldn’t stop her. Not that they could, anyway.

  Sara didn’t seem surprised to see her. Her hair was held back by a red bandana headband and Anne couldn’t take her eyes off how cool it looked. “Oh great, you’re here!” Sara said, as if they had actually made plans. “Want to see a movie?”

  “In the middle of the day?”

  “Sure. Why not?”

  They walked a few blocks to the triplex and bought tickets for a movie called Good Gone. They looped their feet over the back of the chairs and shared popcorn and Raisinets. Through the whole movie, a thriller about a man trying to convince himself his wife isn’t a secret agent, Anne couldn’t concentrate. She was too aware of Sara beside her. Instead of watching the film, Anne watched the hole in the knee of Sara’s jeans, she watched the way Sara’s feet tapped on the floor. Every time Sara laughed, her hair bounced, but Sara didn’t bother to try to hold it back the way Anne would have.

  Afterward, they walked on the sidewalk, stopping to look in windows, and when they passed an ice-cream place, Sara stopped. “Hungry?” she said, and they went inside. The parlor was gleaming black and silver chrome with plush black booths with minijukes in the center. The waitresses were all in snappy checked uniforms. “Let’s grab a booth,” Sara said. As soon as they sat down, Sara began talking. The only time she stopped was to order, but when Anne’s sundae came, she couldn’t touch it. Anne sat there, clumsy, eyes glued to Sara, listening to stories about Danny, about George and Eva, and the whole time Sara was talking about her parents, Anne felt as if Sara were talking about people Anne had never met before. She couldn’t imagine Eva anxious and unsure of her mothering skills the way Sara was telling it.

  “Oh, she was,” Sara said. “She barely put water in the tub because she said you could drown in three inches. I filled the tub and got in there with you, bubbles up to our chins. We could lie beside each other on the daybed for hours, not saying a word. She worried because you were so quiet but I knew you were saying volumes.”

  “It still bothers her that I’m quiet.”

  “I’m quiet, too. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

  Anne shifted in her chair. “Did you love my father? My real father?”

  Sara looked down at her hands and then back at Anne. “More than anything.”

  Anne shredded a piece of her napkin, studying it carefully. “What was he like?”

  Sara was still for so long, Anne was sure she wasn’t going to get an answer, and then Sara glanced at her hands and then back at Anne. “He was smart, but not book smart. Funny. He’d stand outside my window nights and I’d just know he was there. I’d feel a change in the air. Do you understand?”

  Anne nodded.

  “When you were a baby, I’d lay you down on the bed and study you,” Sara said. “I just wanted to find something of his in you—his eyes, an expression, something, anything, but I never could. And then I just fell in love with you for yourself.”

  “I don’t look like him at all?”

  “You have his eyes. Exactly his eyes. And you have beautiful features all your own.”

  “Are you married?” Anne blurted. “Do you have other kids?”

  “No, not married. And no other kids. You’re my only one,” Sara said quietly.

  “Do you have a boyfriend?”

  “Well, I thought I did. I thought I was in love, that I might even get married, but now I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

  “Why? How come?” Anne asked, and then Sara grew quiet. “I think my coming here—” She stopped talking. “Maybe it’s over now,” she said. “I don’t know.”

  “Is it because of me? Are you sorry you came?” Anne said, alarmed.

  “Never,” Sara insisted. “I’m not going to lose you for anything or anyone. Not ever again.” She glanced down at the napkin in her hand and crumpled it into a fist, tossing it into the ashtray. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Anne began seeing Sara as much as she could, and when Anne couldn’t see her, she called. She couldn’t believe her good fortune! Sara was so young and hip. Everything about herself she had always hated was transformed in Sara into something special, as if Sara were a fun-house mirror, and every time Anne looked at her, all she saw reflecting back was her own best self revealed like magic. The hair Anne despaired over became something unbelievably cool. The pale skin that made her friends badger her about hiding it under fake tans became strikingly exotic, something to show off rather than to hide.

  She felt her parents watching her, but they never said one thing when she got on the phone, when she grabbed her jacket and went out the door, not coming back until hours later, her cheeks flushed. Still, she heard them talking at night. “What does she want?” she heard her father say, and Anne wondered, did they mean her or Sara?

  Anne never asked Sara what her plans were, but she didn’t have to. She saw Sara looking through the want ads, and every Sunday, Anne looked through them herself, wanting to help, and when George nodded at her and said he was proud she was looking for a summer job, Anne sighed, and thought how little he knew about her. Or Sara.

  One day, Anne and Sara were shopping, trying on clothes in a huge dressing room, and Anne pulled her jeans back on, and Sara said, “Whoops, those are mine.”

  Anne looked down at the jeans. “We wear the same size.”

  “Keep those jeans, if you like them better.”

  Anne ran her hands down the denim, soft and faded. “I like them better,” she decided. Anne wore Sara’s jeans every day. She stopped drying her hair with a dryer and let it dry naturally, scrunching it to make it as curly as Sara’s, and when she came home from school one day, she stopped at Kmart and impulsively bought herself the same kind of red bandana Sara wore. She spent half an hour in the bathroom at home, trying to tie it around her hair just the right way. She studied herself. She was starting to like her coloring, starting to want to grow her hair, too. Presto chango, she thought. Transformed.

  When she came out of the bathroom, Eva blinked at her. “You like your hair like that?” Eva asked, reaching up to smooth Anne’s hair down. “I love it this way,” Anne said, moving out from under Eva’s fingers, and quickly fluffing her hair out.

  “Where did those old jeans come from?”

  “From Sara,” she said. “Aren’t they fabulous?” And Eva flinched.

  That night, Anne couldn’t sleep. Stories kept traveling through her mind, waking her: A baby fussed on a bus. Two people became so close they were communicating telepathically, and then they began to morph into each other. Same hair, she thought. Same eyes. Same person. Finally, Anne got up, turning on her light, and went to her desk, and it seemed as natural as breathing to pick up her journal and start to write again. Never mind that that stupid Mr. Moto had told her about her lack of talent, never mind the way he had sized her up brutally and dismissed her as if she were no more important than a dust mite floating by him. She could no more stop writing now than she could stop breathing. But her writing felt different. Now her heroines weren’t orphans. Now they had another person along with them. A confidante.

  A best friend.

  She had written six pages when she heard a noise. Talking. An undercurrent she couldn’t quite make out. She tucked her notebook under her mattress and padded into the hall and saw her parents’ door was open, but the front door was open, too, and for a moment she was afraid. Then she saw them, sitting on the front
porch, sipping tall drinks, and looking so old and frail that she suddenly felt terrible.

  “Mom? Dad?” she said. “What are you doing up so late? Couldn’t you sleep, either?” She wanted to sit out on the porch with them, but Eva brusquely stood up. “It’s late, honey, go back to bed.”

  “I don’t need much sleep anymore.”

  “We all need sleep,” George said. “Come on. We’re coming in soon, too.

  And then her mother bent and kissed her. Her father stroked her hair back, and rippling through her was a strange, awful feeling, as if she were being pulled in two different directions and there was only enough of her to be in one. “Good night then,” Anne said and then she went into the other room and quietly dialed Sara’s hotel. Call me anytime, Sara had told her.

  The next day, in first-period math class, Bob Shoulton, who had once asked Anne, with great concern, if she had overdosed on her ugly pills that day, complimented the dress she had on, a short black mini she had borrowed from Sara. “Socko dress,” he decided. Startled, she looked closer at him, to see if he was making fun of her, but he was smiling, his face relaxed. Later that day, she was in the girls’ room, washing her hands, when Crystal Lafarge, the head cheerleader, came in and Anne felt Crystal’s gaze sliding up and down her, centering on the bandana in her hair, but all Anne had to do was think about Sara, and the look slid off her as if she were made of Teflon. Two days later, to Anne’s surprise, Crystal came to school with a bandana headband, and a day after that, another girl did, too, and then another.

  After school, Flor caught up with her. “Are you doing someone?” Flor asked. “Because you have that look.”