Another Place You've Never Been

by Rebecca Kauffman

  Shelly’s mother hooked up the karaoke machine in the living room. The microphone crackled, and when Kimberly sang, she danced so hard that she accidentally pulled the cord right out of its socket. When Shelly sang, her mother said, “You have such a nice singing voice.” All of the girls took a turn except for Tracy.

  When it was time to do presents, Laura went to the basement to retrieve her bag for Shelly. She sifted through her backpack, setting aside her toothbrush with a square of toilet paper wrapped around the brush, travel toothpaste, a half bar of soap and navy washcloth.

  She remembered as she looked over her nighttime things that while packing that afternoon, she had chosen to leave Marshall at home. She now pictured the small stuffed terrycloth walrus slouched on her nightstand in her dark bedroom. It was the first sleepover she hadn’t brought him to; it would be the first night she hadn’t slept with Marshall since getting him five or six years ago at SeaWorld.

  Laura pulled out Shelly’s gift bag and fiddled with one of the corners that had been crumpled beneath her other things. It was the right decision not to bring Marshall—none of the other girls had brought overnight animals, that she’d seen. A girl who was nearly ready for a boyfriend shouldn’t be sleeping with a stuffed animal anyway. She was old enough to know that Marshall was just a toy without feelings. He didn’t need her at night. And, as she thought about it more, she realized that she didn’t need Marshall any more than he needed her. It was the right decision, and she didn’t even miss him. With this knowledge Laura felt very grown-up and a little bit guilty, as though she ought to apologize to Marshall and to her own childhood self for abandoning them both so easily.

  The girls went outside after presents so Shelly’s mom could take their picture together on the back porch. A soupy dusk settled in like warm breath. A dog approached the porch and Shelly’s mother grabbed its collar to keep it out of the picture until she was finished. The dog was handsome and gray, wolflike with light eyes and small pupils. After the pictures were done, Tracy went to the dog and she knelt down and curled his ears around in her fingers. She reached for the faded tennis ball from its teeth.

  “Give it, Caesar,” she said.

  The dog released the ball, leapt a few feet back from her and bounced on its hind legs, gasping in anticipation. Tracy threw the ball and Caesar dashed after it. Tracy wiped the palm of her hands on her shorts.

  “Did you guys see that scar on Caesar’s nose?” she said. “It’s from Shelly’s cat. It bled real bad. I hate cats.”

  “Me too,” said Kimberly, “Dogs are so much better.”

  Several other girls agreed, right in front of Shelly, but not Laura. She thought Shelly might appreciate that, if she noticed.

  The bathroom in the basement was unfinished, with floor tiles scattered across the base of the shower, the hot faucet handle missing, exposing a single gleaming pencil-sized post, and the top lid of the toilet propped on its side against the counter, its rust-colored underbelly facing out.

  The girls crowded into the bathroom. Tracy lit a thick candle in a jar that smelled like cinnamon and set it on the counter, then she turned off the light. There was a thin line of yellow at the base of the door, so Tracy grabbed a towel from the shower rod and shoved it into the crack so that the candle provided the only light in the room.

  “Bloody Mary,” Tracy said, addressing the girls by way of the mirror, “was the Queen of England. She killed a bunch of people, ordered them to be burnt at the stake and had a bunch of babies stabbed onto the end of spears and hoisted up for everybody to look at while they rotted and smelled.”

  A few of the girls giggled.

  Tracy continued, “They say Bloody Mary’s ghost can be summoned by saying her name thirteen times in a dark room in front of a mirror. That if you do that with a group, all chanting her name together with your eyes closed then open your eyes together, her face will be in the mirror.”

  Kimberly said, “Holy cow.”

  “Yeah,” nodded Tracy. “I know.”

  “This seems sort of bad, though,” Shelly said. She was looking sideways at the girls next to her rather than in the mirror. “I didn’t know this was gonna be so bad. Did you guys?”

  “Bad?” Tracy scoffed. “Bad. What do you mean, bad?”

  Laura knew what Shelly meant by bad, but she didn’t say anything.

  “Remember,” Tracy continued, ignoring Shelly and eyeing them all in the reflection of the mirror. “We say Bloody Mary thirteen times. Count in your head. OK? Eyes closed now, and nobody peeks until we get to thirteen otherwise she won’t be summoned.”

  Laura looked at Shelly last before closing her eyes. Shelly looked miserable. Laura wondered if she was going to peek.

  “Bloody Mary,” Tracy spoke in a raspy, ominous whisper.

  “Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary,” the others joined and the chant grew.

  Laura felt cold and jumpy. She wanted to open her eyes.

  “Bloody Mary,” the girls murmured, “Bloody Mary.” Their voices collected into one pitch and one rhythm. The pace quickened, led by Tracy, whose voice was thicker and lower than the others.

  “Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary,” Laura made sure she was speaking loudly enough to be heard, so they would know she was doing it too, that just because she was younger and did church, that didn’t mean she was more scared.

  After the thirteenth Bloody Mary, Laura opened her eyes, her heart rattling in her ears with a pure and intense adrenaline. The reflection in the mirror snapped and trembled into place in front of her. She met the eyes of the other girls, all of them darting back and forth, some more scared than others, some quick to laugh with relief.

  Tracy, a head above everyone else, glared into the mirror at the reflection. “Who peeked?” she said.

  The girls were silent. Tracy picked up the candle and held it at her chin so her face was illuminated red. Her eyes rested on her own reflection in the mirror for just a moment and Laura watched as Tracy self-consciously adjusted her expression to be model-like, her chin up, eyes wider, lips pursed.

  “I know somebody peeked,” Tracy said, her gaze returning to the other girls. “Who peeked?”

  She extended her arm so the candle was inches from the mirror and she swayed it back and forth fast enough that the flame flickered and followed the wick in a sleek golden trail, but it didn’t go out.

  No one spoke.

  Tracy scowled. “Then we’ll do it again.”

  Shelly was standing next to the door and she flicked the light on. The immediate brightness made big colored splotches behind Laura’s eyes when she blinked.

  Tracy barked, “What the hell?”

  “I’m done,” Shelly said. She snatched the candle from Tracy’s hands and blew it out. The smoke rose in a single twisty white swirl.

  “See,” Tracy said nastily, “I knew it was you.”

  “I didn’t peek,” Shelly said. She licked her thumb and index finger and pinched the wick of the candle. It hissed and stopped smoking. “But I think this game is bad, and it’s my birthday and I don’t want to play anymore.”

  “Shelly, don’t be such a lesbian,” Tracy said.

  Kimberly said, “Yeah, don’t be a lesbian, Shelly.”

  Shelly looked like she had just been slapped.

  “I’m just kidding, of course,” Tracy said. “But if you guys are too scared to do this, I’m just going to have a smoke.”

  She pushed by Shelly, stepped over the towel on the ground, and walked out of the bathroom, her flip-flops clapping noisily against the cement floor.

  “I was kidding too, Shelly,” Kimberly said. “I know you’re not a lesbian.”

  “I know,” Shelly said.

  The girls filed uncomfortably out of the bathroom.

  There was a little glass dish of cinnamon hearts sitting on the lid of the washer, next to the box of powdered detergent. Shelly picked up one heart and sucked on it noisily. She passed the dish to Laura, who did the same thing. It was so spicy it made Laura
’s eyes water. When Shelly wasn’t looking, she spat the heart into her palm where it made a bright red smear. Kimberly plucked a cinnamon heart out of the dish and crunched it down like it was a Skittle. She nodded toward the stairs where Tracy had just disappeared and said, “I want to watch her smoke. Can we watch from the kitchen?”

  “It’s not that cool,” Shelly said. “She goes into her yard and it’s just, well, let’s just play karaoke again or something.”

  “No, let’s watch,” the freckled girl said.

  Laura really wanted to watch too, but she kept quiet so she wouldn’t upset Shelly.

  The other girls didn’t wait for Shelly’s permission. Laura lagged behind with Shelly to show she was on her team, and at the top of the stairs, Shelly turned to her and said, “Don’t tell your mom about Bloody Mary, OK? Or she might not let you come over again.”

  Upstairs, the other girls were gathered around the kitchen sink and peering out the window.

  “Look,” Kimberly whispered, pointing into the lawn beyond Shelly’s backyard. You could see precisely where Shelly’s backyard ended and Tracy’s began, where the grass went from short and green and tidy to dry and weedy, littered with dog piles and a few aluminum cans.

  Tracy stood next to a white plastic deck chair. She smoked with long, cool, lazy movements and smooth breaths, like she’d been doing it her whole life. She ashed her cigarette against the top of the chair. Caesar was at her thigh. She absently rolled her foot over a Nerf soccer ball.

  On the other side of the kitchen, Shelly was rooting around noisily in the refrigerator and she said, “Does anyone want some Pepsi?”

  “Doesn’t her mom see?” one of the girls asked.

  “Yeah,” said another girl. “Shelly, doesn’t her mom see?”

  “No,” Shelly said, sounding miffed, “because her mom works the night shift so she’s always away. And when she is home she takes these pills that make her sleep all the time so she doesn’t even notice when Tracy watches bad television, or when she smokes or her boyfriend comes over. She does whatever she wants.”

  Kimberly said, “That’s so cool.”

  Shelly sniffed. “I guess, except that there are other things like she always has to do her own laundry and meals. Her house is a dump. She doesn’t even have a bicycle. So it’s not that cool, she’s not really that cool so much as she acts like she is.”

  A few of the girls turned to look at Shelly, who sipped her soda from a straw and continued, “In fact, I don’t know why she told that story about the penny and the big numbers. The money from her dad, the allowance. That doesn’t happen. Her dad doesn’t send her anything. He’s out of the picture.”

  Kimberly said, “He doesn’t send her money every week like she said?”

  “No,” said Shelly. She gazed triumphantly at the group. She had their attention now and her expression was serious but animated, like she was both burdened and pleased to be delivering such important news. “I don’t know why she even told that story, because her dad’s never sent her anything, not even for Christmas. Even my dad sends me stuff for Christmas.”

  “Not even for Christmas?” Kimberly said.

  “No,” said Shelly. “In fact . . .” She clapped her hand over her mouth. “I shouldn’t. But the one thing Tracy’s dad ever sent, he sent her this gold bracelet for her thirteenth birthday. But he didn’t even buy that for her—he just found it on the beach. He’s got one of them metal detectors. When Tracy pulled the bracelet out of the box, it still had sand on it.”

  “It still had sand on it?” Kimberly said.

  Shelly nodded.

  Laura looked back outside. Lightning bugs winked slowly across the lawn. Shelly’s cat was pouncing after something small beneath an evergreen bush. Caesar was watching the cat but he didn’t leave Tracy’s side.

  The girls watched in silence as Tracy finished her cigarette, put it out, and dropped it into a big gray ceramic birdbath.

  Laura had extra room next to her because Tracy didn’t return that night. Once the lights were off, there were a few short bursts of conversation, then the silence in between them grew longer and longer, and eventually she heard the heavy sounds of sleep around her.

  Laura was so happy about the way the night had gone that she wasn’t tired, even though it was nearly midnight. It seemed as though Shelly was going to invite her over again, that Shelly would be a friend at real school now too. Laura thought that would almost surely mean other new friends and maybe even an older boyfriend for her this fall.

  She thought of Tracy’s part-Indian boyfriend from Cheektowaga and wondered if he was over at Tracy’s house right now, if that’s why Tracy hadn’t come back, if they were doing something bad while Tracy’s mom was fast asleep because of the pills.

  She wondered if Tracy’s boyfriend knew the stuff about her dad, how he was out of the picture and sent her a bracelet that still had sand on it.

  Laura pictured that piece of paper still resting upstairs on the kitchen counter with Tracy’s Allowance written across the top. She pictured the list of dollar signs, the row of numbers doubling in size until they went the whole way across the stationary. She pictured a big chalkboard with those numbers, and she thought of how, if Tracy kept going, how fast those numbers would fill up a chalkboard. Then the numbers would fill a whole wall, a building, a block. The whole way across Lackawanna and over the lake, jumping across two states then four, soon so big they went beyond the planet Earth, doubling forever to infinity.

  Laura tried to make her mind understand this. And as she thought about it more and more, she began to feel very grave and small and empty, like nothing was real and nothing mattered.

  FORTY-DOLLAR CAB

  Tracy invited Tom and Amelia out to her car for a smoke between the ceremony and the reception. She opened the sunroof manually. Amelia fanned her face with the wedding program as she watched an elderly couple exit the church, clutching one another’s elbows down the stairs. The woman reached up to brush something from her husband’s chin and he turned away from her, then swatted her hand when she went after it a second time. Her salmon pantsuit matched his pocket square. The ryegrass was brown and crisp. The Buffalo summer had come soaring in hot and it wasn’t letting up.

  “Tommy says you’ve got a kid,” Tracy said, finding Amelia’s eyes in the rearview mirror. Tracy had a dark, wild face and she was wearing a dress that was way too short for a wedding. She was nineteen years old. She had a strong way about her, despite bad posture.

  Amelia stared at the back of Tom’s head for a second—not even his own mother was allowed to call him Tommy. He and Tracy, second cousins, had grown up on the same street, but hadn’t seen each other in almost a year, Tom said, since Tracy had moved to Florida for cosmetology school.

  “Show her one of those with the floppy hat,” Tom said over his shoulder.

  Amelia pulled a picture from her wallet. She tapped Tracy on the arm with it.

  “Cute,” Tracy said, glancing at the picture but not reaching for it. She exhaled upward then passed the joint over her head to Amelia in the backseat. Flakes of white ash drifted like snow to Amelia’s knee. She held the joint for a few seconds then handed it up to Tom. She felt a drop of sweat run from her armpit, cool down her side.

  “Nice ceremony, huh?” Tom said. “I can’t believe Chris is a married man.”

  “You wouldn’t believe the way Chris used to terrorize me and Tommy,” Tracy said. “He was such a pervert.” The joint was thin between her lips and she spoke out of one corner of her mouth. “Remember the time he gave us five dollars to kiss?”

  “Shut up, Tracy,” Tom said. He turned to Amelia. “She’s just trying to get a rise.”

  Tracy laughed like a shout then lowered her seat until she was practically in Amelia’s lap.

  “I’m just kidding, of course,” Tracy said. She blinked up at the sky through the sunroof, and swung her open palm lazily at a fly that circled the car.

  Amelia tried to gauge the le
ngth and loudness of her own laughter to match Tracy’s, and she shifted her face out of the sunlight. A year after pregnancy, the bridge of her nose was still mottled with those curious gray-brown smears that her dermatologist called “melasma.” He said the spots would fade with time, especially if Amelia stayed out of the sun and used the right products. She couldn’t afford the lotion he had prescribed.

  Tom asked Tracy if she was good to drive.

  After the cake-cutting, Amelia sipped a glass of champagne and dissected a stale little profiterole with a toothpick while she watched Tom and Tracy spin across the faux-wooden dance floor. It was scratched and gleaming beneath them, like an ice rink. The cousins were both great dancers, funny and brave. They knew the lyrics and sang intensely to one another while aunts and uncles took pictures and brought them fresh drinks.

  When they returned to the table, Tracy pried her shoes off and propped her bare feet up on an empty chair. Amelia could see a diamond of black underwear between Tracy’s legs. There was no cellulite on the back of her thighs.

  “Shelly got so tall,” Tracy said, still panting. “Didn’t she?”

  “She’s another cousin,” Tom explained to Amelia, and pointed her out across the room.

  “Shelly was so annoying,” Tracy said, turning to Amelia. “She was such an attention hog. Always telling crazy stories that were no-way true. And she’d hide in the basement, just to point out how long it took anyone to notice. Anyway, this one time me and Tommy tied her to a tree and blindfolded her and pretended we were going to leave her there all night long.”

  “Geez,” Amelia said. “You guys were rough on each other.”

  The bride and groom stopped by the table a moment later to greet the guests, and Tracy asked the bride if the flowers in the centerpiece had been spray-painted. Amelia coughed and stared intently across the room.

  The burgundy carpet of the banquet hall was blackened and matted flat in heavily trafficked areas; the entrance to the kitchen, the path in front of the buffet station. Mirrors in bronze frames lined the walls, and the one nearest their table was slightly warped. Tom had snagged a bottle of champagne and he quickly refilled all of their flutes.