I nod because I can’t speak, and she smiles, that warm smile, tells me to get dressed, then closes the door behind her.
I jump off the table, kicking one of the stirrups aside in the process. The metal poles clang against each other as they ricochet back and forth. I snatch my jeans off the chair. I don’t even put on underwear. I just shimmy my jeans on, hiking one foot into each leg and jumping a few times.
Zip up.
Button up.
Closed shut.
* * *
* * *
In the car ride home, I’m numb.
I have only a few words. Something happened to me. I want to say it to my aunt Marce, who’s telling me that it’s okay that I want to reschedule. That there are plenty of girls like me who get really scared the first time they go to a gynecologist. That it’s perfectly normal. That we’ll try again in a few weeks.
She reminds me that I can tell her anything.
That I’ll never be in trouble for telling the truth. That Dr. Diaz recommends counseling. That maybe there are other things going on.
Something happened to me?
Something happened to me.
13
BLYTHE
Come over, I text Dev. We go for a run. Nighttime. It all feels safe with him. Not crazy. At the same pace. Him turning to me. His smile. His warm smile. We stop at the old cemetery, both of us out of breath.
“Sean’s freaking out,” I say. It just sputters out of my mouth.
“Come here,” Dev says.
“I’m all sweaty.”
“Even better.”
“Dev, gross.”
He whines, making fun of me. “Dev, grossss.”
His neck tastes like salt and sweat. His body is so warm. I lean against the black iron cemetery gate and he presses into me.
“Nessel gets himself into these messes and you’re such a good listener. You’re so good at talking him down. And you’re so nice to all these girls. But you don’t have to be his caretaker.”
Over the summer, there was a freshman. Sean swore they didn’t have sex, but Dev asked me to check up on her. She looked confused afterward, disoriented, like she wasn’t supposed to be there. And what did I say to her? I asked her if she was okay. I told her she could call me. I pressed my hand against hers. Gave her empathetic eyes. She never did, not that I expected her to.
* * *
* * *
We walk back to my house. My mother’s in her room watching TV. My father’s home, in the kitchen drinking whiskey and reading. He waves and goes back to his book.
Dev is behind me on the stairs, rubbing my hips as we walk up to my bedroom. Sweat and slippery lips. I lock the door. I lead him onto me. Dev’s strong fingers dig into me. Usually I have to tell him to pull back, to calm down. But this time I want it harder. My body becomes this crushing wave. Everything lights up.
My eyes are closed the whole time as I think of Sean. Sean. Sean. I wish I could get him out of my mind. Does he do this with all these girls because of some unbridled love for me? This is ridiculous. I’m being ridiculous. But his face. I can’t stop imagining his face. I want to wrap my arms around him and make everything go away.
* * *
* * *
Dev’s running his fingers through my hair.
“All these strands. Just coming right from your head. And your lips. Where do they come from?”
“Science.”
He scoots into me, his shirt off, and I run my hand across his collarbones. His hair drooping over his eyes. It reminds me of the first time we kissed, just a few days after that party down the shore. At Cate’s house. He and I on Cate’s bed. Just talking and kissing. Just like that. He didn’t want anything. He didn’t try anything else. I told him about the Initiation that night. “You know about it, don’t you?” I said.
He nodded.
“Do you judge me because I did it?”
“Judge you? Of course not,” he said. Then his face scrunched up. “Lucky those guys aren’t still in this school. No, man, I hate that shit. I promise you that I’ll never do that Initiation. I’ll never be one of those guys. I don’t care how many guys are doing it—I won’t be part of it.”
“What if the girls want to do it? How about then? To get it over with. To hold the power, like Amanda Shire told us.” I don’t know why I said this. Maybe I was testing him. Maybe I wanted to know if he’d see me that way. The way those guys did that day. Looking down on me that way.
After the Initiation, I felt like people were staring at me. Not just because we were considered royalty all of a sudden. But because it felt like the whole school knew what I did. Like they knew what I was asked to do to those guys.
I was floating around so confused and angry when I was a freshman and sophomore. Hooking up with older guys. Bashing freshman girls. Being with Dev did something to me. It stunted some of my shame. Not all of it, but a lot.
Any of the feelings I’ve been having for Sean lately—I’ve got to erase them. I’m embarrassed for even thinking about him. I’ve got to crush them, even if it’s just for Dev.
* * *
* * *
Sean and I are in my bedroom. There’s a white glow between us. A warm light. Like spring. Like the way the sun shines on you in a hot meadow. But then it starts to feel dangerous, and I can’t breathe. Sean is sitting on top of me, and I’m saying, Sean, Sean, I can’t breathe. I can’t get up. Someone grabs my hair from behind and people are laughing. Sean is laughing. Why are you laughing? I scream. I look over and see Donnie on her knees crying.
I open my eyes.
I’m in my room.
The clock says three A.M. I hear my mother sniffling in the hallway. I jump out of bed and run to her.
Her face is a mess. White and puffy. Like she’s been sitting there for a long time.
“Where’s Daddy?” I say.
“He took a sleeping pill. I shook him and shook him, and he can’t get up. He was drinking earlier. He shouldn’t have done both.”
“Well, Jesus, Mom, is he breathing?”
“Of course he’s breathing, Blythe. I would have called 911.”
“What about you, Mom? Did you take your medication?”
“I took it, but it’s not working.” She’s rubbing her hands through her hair, but then they just land on the crown of her head like they’re stuck and she can’t move them. “My body chemistry is changing again, Blythe. None of the meds are working anymore. Everything is just falling apart all over again.”
I sit down next to her, even though I don’t want to. I don’t want to touch her. I don’t want to kiss her. But she’s crying and she can’t stop. I can’t do anything but help her. I can’t do anything but tell her it’s okay. I feel like this is my new saying lately. This is what I’ve been telling everyone. My mom. Ali Greenleaf. Sean. Everyone.
Who is going to tell me?
Before the medication, my mother was so unpredictable. When I was younger, she was exciting in a way even though it was a roller coaster being around her. I thought it was cool when she woke me up at one A.M. to go on a night walk when we had a place in Upstate New York because that’s the only time you can see the stars, in the middle of the night when all the lights are really, truly off. It didn’t matter that I was in my pajamas, or not in any shoes at all. Or that the ground was cold, or that I was stepping on rocks. Keep going, Blythe. Keep going. Keep pressing on.
Then there was the time she brought me to this big adventure park down in South Jersey when I was eleven years old and left me there.
“It’s time to teach you about materialism. See all these people here with their short shorts and their cotton candy and their SpongeBob rides? They’re all falling into something called consumerism. The only way for you to not be anywhere near that is to immerse yourself in it without me. I want you to be sc
ared of it, Blythe. I want you to be fearful of it because no one should live like this.”
I walked around for a while buying myself popcorn and juice and then, after going on something called the Dare Devil Dive four times in a row, I finally puked right next to a young mom and her daughter.
“Who are you here with?” she said, wiping my mouth. That’s when I said, “My mother left me here.” So she called the police and then my father came.
It was breathtaking how concerned people were. You can’t just leave your daughter at a park, apparently. My father and my grandmother excused it up to the hilt, but the police don’t deal with incidents that way. They pressed charges against her. That was the first time my mother was hospitalized. Bipolar.
My father started taking me to my shrink then. The same person I’m seeing now.
“It’s okay that you feel bad that your mother is in the hospital, Blythe. But no matter what you think, it’s not your fault,” my therapist told me at the time.
I never thought it was my fault, by the way. They say this to kids a lot. It’s not your fault.
“I don’t think it’s my fault at all,” I told her.
“Oh? Okay. Good.”
“I was glad not to be around her,” I said. I think I was hoping for a reaction, but she only gave me a twitch. “I had those few hours there by myself at the park, alone without her acting nuts or starting a fight with someone because she thought they ripped her off. Do you know how many fights she starts with everyone? Do you know how embarrassing it is to be around her?”
That’s when I started screaming and crying. That’s when I raked all my dolls across the sand tray. That’s when I kicked over the pottery lamp in her office. It broke into triangular pieces all over her black-and-white chevron rug.
My father came running in from the waiting room. “I heard a commotion,” he said. “I heard things breaking.” His face looked freaked. He had a lot of looks like that during those days.
My therapist was on the floor cleaning up the pieces of her lamp, saying, “It’s all right. Honestly, it’s all right.”
“Oh, now you’re coming in,” I yelled. “Now you decide it’s time to step in? Father of the year, aren’t you?”
“Blythe, it’s not like that, honey. None of this has been easy on any of us.”
“I wish I could just leave. I wish I could just leave all of you,” I said. I threw myself onto the couch and cried and cried.
I heard my therapist coaching my father.
“Tell her that you’re going to do your best to protect her.”
So he walked over to me. I could hear his feet creak across the room, his footsteps so quiet and calculated. He was so concerned. Not sure if it was about me, or about how to handle this situation. This tween girl falling apart at the seams.
I sat up. Wiped the tears from my face. My cheeks burning.
“Don’t worry, Daddy. I’ll be fine,” I said.
I let him off the hook again. And that was probably the end of my childhood right there.
“Blythe, you don’t have to say it’s fine.”
And they talked and talked. But I faded out into nothing. I felt all my memories of my mother slipping past me in a fuzz, like the kind you pick off your pillow. You have to deal with bad things in life like that sometimes. Like lint. And so that’s how I learned to deal with a lot of painful things. Like lint.
14
ALI
I’ve been going to the C-wing bathroom with Blythe Jensen for about a week now, which is causing problems between me and Sammi.
Sammi wants to know if I’m going back to the gynecologist. Sammi wants to know if I got the STI test back. (I did. It was negative.) Sammi wants to know if I’m sleeping. If I’m eating. If I want to get disco fries at the diner. If I’ve talked to someone about the thing that happened, because we can’t name the thing that happened. I won’t let her. I won’t let her tell Raj. I won’t let her tell anyone. And I don’t want to answer any of Sammi’s questions because I don’t want to think about that night. I don’t want to think about anything at all.
I walk out of my third period class, and Blythe’s standing there waiting for me like she said she would be. The hallway is chaotic between periods and so many kids and schlumpy teachers bump into each other, and there’s Blythe, this lone spirit, standing right under the MUSTANG PRIDE signs, watching me. Her greenish-blue eyes shimmer as I step closer. I blush. I’ve never had this kind of attention from another girl before. Not like this. Not like Blythe.
She nudges me with her elbow. Wraps her hand around mine.
“Stand against the locker,” she says.
“Huh?”
“You heard me. Stand against the locker—I want to show you your posture. You’re a sloucher, Greenleaf.”
Blythe is Eliza Doolittle–ing me. She’s going to turn me into her little smooth-armed robot. Her little fashion princess. She’s going to dress me up like a doll next and curl my hair. I back up against the metal locker, trying to get my body straight. Blythe pushes my shoulders back.
“Relax,” she says. “Drop your shoulders.”
I do what she says. But I slept funny last night. Every night since the party. I stretch my neck to the left. Then to the right.
“Ugh! What are you doing?”
“I’m loosening up my neck.”
“You’re going to give yourself fucking whiplash, Greenleaf.”
“I don’t think you get whiplash from standing.”
She softens her face, her perfect teeth white and gleaming like she has the answers to everything, and maybe she does. “We’ll work on it. Getting your shoulders down,” she says, and then zeroes in on my triceps. Blythe has a hot-pink reverse French manicure. Her nails are clear and the half-moons are neon. She runs her nails down my arm. It tingles. “Then we’ll work on the pimples on the back of your arms.”
My skin is bumpy. A little freckly, but I don’t have pimples. I don’t think I have pimples. At least I never thought I had pimples until this moment.
“Touch my triceps.” Blythe hooks her elbow toward me and makes a muscle. I laugh, a nervous laugh because it sounds so strange, like she’s showing off. “I’m not going to bite, Greenleaf.”
So I touch her skin. And it’s so smooth. So shiny. So much softer than mine. I’m in a trance from her arms. And I stare back at mine. How did my arms get so ragged? How did mine become so neglected?
“See how smooth I am, Ali? See how shiny my skin is?”
I touch her because she asks me to, and I want to, just to be closer to her because Blythe’s skin glows like every other part of her. None of it seems real, except it all is.
“How do you get your elbows so pale? And how do you get all those bumps off?”
“You have to exfoliate. You gotta dry loofa that shit out. Then alcohol. Then almond oil.”
“Wait, doesn’t alcohol burn?”
“Of course it burns. What are you, a pussy?”
“Hell no.”
“Do you ever go to yoga, Greenleaf?”
“Not really.”
“You should take a class with me one night. It’s really good for your posture, and your mind too.”
“I know what yoga is, Blythe. I don’t live under a rock.”
Blythe’s face gets crumply and weird. She’s not used to someone being irritated with her, or snarky. They’re all yes girls. And I’m supposed to be a yes girl too. A fangirl. She doesn’t know that I’ve watched her for years. I’m not alone. Who hasn’t watched Blythe Jensen? How do you not stare?
“The only time I stopped doing yoga was when I hurt my ankle. And I had to walk around on a cane for a little while—”
“I remember that,” I say, but it’s too quick. I shouldn’t remember that. I shouldn’t have been so quick to admit that I noticed her cane. An old brown ca
rved cane. She walked around with it for at least a month.
“You remember that?”
“I mean, it was a pretty unusual cane.” Trying to shrug it off.
“My dad got me that cane in Africa.”
“He travels a lot? Your dad?”
“Yeah—he’s away a lot. I’m, like, the house babysitter,” she snorts.
“Oh, do you have a younger sister or brother?”
She looks away. I want to ask her where she’s looking, but maybe I already know. It’s the anywhere-but-here look.
“My mother is sick. She has an illness. I shouldn’t say babysitter. I’m just needed around my house.”
“What kind of illness?”
“She’s fucking crazy,” Blythe says. “No. I shouldn’t say that either. That’s mean. She’s bipolar.” She slows her walk down to a stroll. Everyone else is speeding up, but we’re slowing down. She’s told me something now that she can’t take back. I’m supposed to give up something private and secretive about myself in return.
“Well, my mother’s fucking crazy too,” I say.
“Everyone’s mother is crazy,” she says. “But unless you have a crazy mother, a real honest-to-goodness, clinically crazy parent, you just don’t understand what that’s like.”
And so now we’re at a standstill, kind of. And I wish I had a joke. Anything to break that silence.
“You want to have a crazy-off with me? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?” I say and smile. I drop my hands down like I’m about to fight her. Rock my body back and forth. Hop up and down. “Let’s have a crazy-mom-off. Let’s do it.”
She stops. So I stop too. And everyone walking behind us trips over themselves because when Blythe stops walking, everyone stops walking.
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