Something Happened to Ali Greenleaf

by Hayley Krischer

  “I’m also on the dance committee,” she says. “You probably didn’t know that either.”

  “You? I can’t imagine you on a committee of anything.”

  “Basically I get to add ‘dance committee chair’ as an extracurricular for doing nothing. Except show up. And I have to bring people,” she says. “I know it sounds obnoxious, but if people are like, ‘Oh, Blythe Jensen is the chair,’ then more people go.”

  “So it’s like a paid gig? And you’re the out-of-work reality star who shows up at the club?”

  “Exactly,” she smiles, so much excitement in her eyes. “So you have to go.”

  “Why do you want me to go?”

  “Because you’re my new bitch.” She smirks.

  But there’s more to this. I know it. “Just say it—it has to do with Sean Nessel.”

  “Not everything has to do with him, Ali. Haven’t we gotten past that already in our friendship?”

  Our friendship.

  I forget that I’m here with Blythe, aimlessly driving down neighborhood roads, because we’re friends. Because she’s choosing to be with me over Donnie, Cate, or Suki. Or Devon. It’s also possible they were busy. But no one is busy for Blythe. People make time.

  “Cate’s mother is going to have a party beforehand. The whole night will be like one big dance party. Think of it like that. What’s more innocent than a dance party in a school gym? I kind of love how kitschy it is.”

  I sink into the seat. Open my window. My hand zips lifelessly through the air.

  “Will Sean be there?” she says. “Yes. But who cares? Though I will tell you. He wants to make things up to you, Ali. He doesn’t want it to be weird between the two of you.”

  I know this is going to sound sick. And I hate myself for thinking this.

  Part of me wants to go, wear something amazing. I want Sean Nessel to think I look hot.

  Why do I want that?

  I don’t want him near me. I just want him to want me. To follow me with his eyes.

  That way I can dream of what it feels like to say: You can’t have this. This is mine.

  “Sure, I’ll go,” I say. The houses on the street sailing past. My eyes glazing over the streetlights.

  I’m not going to Cate’s house beforehand, I tell her. I’ll meet her at the gym. With Raj and Sammi. On my terms.

  21

  BLYTHE

  Today is the day I’m taking my mom dress shopping with me. I watch her in the bathroom as she takes her meds. My parents’ bathroom looks like a pharmacy. My mother has boxes of samples of all different kinds of medication from her doctor. For her anxiety. For managing her bipolar. For her asthma. For her blood pressure. For when she can’t sleep at night. For when she needs a muscle relaxer for her back.

  She can’t drive on all these medications, obviously. I’m supposed to understand this and be empathetic, this sacrifice of hers. That she takes her meds because she’s committed to our family. To me. But I hate her for it. That slur she gets in the car. I cringe.

  “I’m really glad you invited me to go with you, Blythe.”

  “Are you? I’m surprised to hear this.”

  “Well, I know you like my input on clothes. I can at least give you that.” She pushes her sunglasses above her head. Her hair is beautiful in the sunlight. Her thin arms. Her black camisole with her long wide-legged linen pants. She looks like a movie star. “I want you to talk to me, Blythe. I want you to talk to me like you used to. Remember when you were in fourth grade and you had that whole drama with all those cliquey girls and how we’d talk every night about how you would handle it? You don’t tell me about your friends anymore.”

  Rarely is my mother apologetic. I throw her a bone. “I’ve made a new friend. Her name is Ali.”

  “And how did Ali come into the picture? You have such a tight group.”

  “She came by way of Sean.”

  “She’s a girlfriend of Sean’s? I thought he goes from girl to girl.”

  “He does.”

  “Oh, I see. So he brought you in to do a cleanup job.”

  “What? No. I’m just being a good friend.”

  “Hmm. I suppose you learned that from me. Cleaning up after emotional messes,” she says. “So what does your therapist say about all this?”

  “About Ali?”

  “No, Blythe. About me.”

  “Every therapist says the same thing, Mom. ‘Sit with your feelings, Blythe.’ That’s what she says.”

  “My therapist says the same thing.”

  “Why does everyone always have to sit so much with their feelings?”

  My mother laughs. It’s nice to hear her laugh.

  “For one, when you don’t sit with your feelings, and you act on them instead, you turn out like me.”

  It’s a red light, and she turns to me and smiles. I see tears in her eyes. She lowers her sunglasses again. I think about what my therapist says, that I can’t make it better. I can’t make her better. That I shouldn’t try to make it better. When my mom says things like this about herself—vulnerable, honest, self-deprecating things—I should let her say them. And then I should sit with my feelings. All I want to do is tell her it’s all right. I want to tell her not to blame herself. Not to shame herself. But I don’t.

  “Are you sure you want to go to the mall for a dress?” she says.

  “Where else should we go?”

  “I’m thinking of Bergdorf in the city. Something more highbrow. Something more avant-garde. The mall is for creatures of habit. For the cattle. Girls like Cate Sandoval. Girls who follows the herd.”

  I look at her, surprised. Eyes back to the road. Her mania still there. The grandiosity not completely squashed.

  “Listen, doll, Cate’s never been one to think for herself. Her mother used to drive me crazy. Every goddamned top you’d wear, she’d come over to our house about a week later with the same shirt. The same barrette. The same sneakers. It never failed. I don’t think I ever told you this, but I finally confronted Lucy Sandoval at the end of the year. I think it was that same weird year. Fourth grade.”

  “Wait—what?”

  “Cate is an autobot. You program her like an old-fashioned windup toy. She followed you around like a puppy dog, Blythe. She still does. This isn’t a secret about her. And it irritated me to think that people might believe you intentionally dressed like her little twinsie. It bugged me.”

  “So what did you say to Lucy?”

  “I told her that her daughter should focus on originality.”

  That’s why Cate stopped dressing like me once we got to fifth grade. One day I called her in the morning to wear the same shirt as me (I liked that she always had a matching outfit to me back then), and she told me that her mother gave away that shirt—and all the other shirts that were like mine. Such a strange answer. I was too young at the time to put it together, that Lucy Sandoval gave away those clothes not because she didn’t want Cate to dress like me, but because my mother instructed her not to dress like me.

  I pull into the Bloomingdale’s parking lot. My mother turns to me and slides her arm around the driver’s seat. “Do you want to be one of the followers, or do you want to be a true leader?”

  This is a dare that I can’t escape. I don’t want to go into the city with my mother. This was supposed to be a predictable shopping trip. Not an adventure with unstable Mom. She starts out so empathetic. Now she’s goading me. She’s waiting for me to say, Mom, we really shouldn’t. It’s too much for you. But there’s a light in her eye that hypnotizes me. I like her when she’s a little manic. At least she’s alive in there.

  And then I remember that Sean is in the city today with his grandmother. Everyone can say he’s an awful person and uses girls. But really, this is a person who, after soccer practice, spends the afternoon with his grandmother. She has a
townhouse in Chelsea. Four floors. Six bedrooms. It’s like a mansion, but in New York City. She used to be a big art collector in the ’80s and ’90s. Now she sells paintings every few years and lives off the money. Sean’s taken me and Dev there twice, this majestic place with weird sculptures and books and paintings that make no sense. It’s only forty-five minutes from my house in New Jersey, but it feels like a world away.

  I can text him to meet us. It’ll be a little adventure. Me, mom, and Sean. And Sean’s grandmother. And maybe a dress.

  And so I peel out of the parking lot like her good little Queen Bee.

  22

  ALI

  I don’t tell Sammi about how Blythe is pressuring me to go to the dance. I’m not exactly lying, but I’m also not telling her the truth. Let’s go to Black Cat Vintage, I tell her. We can buy weird dresses and make fools out of ourselves at the school dance. It’ll be fun. She likes that idea.

  She files through the racks of velvet dresses because she’s looking for something green. She pulls out three that sparkle like the Emerald City. I’m talking bright. As in Oz. The dresses look like they’re from the 1970s.

  “Tell me the truth. Why do you want to go to this dance?” Sammi says.

  “You’ve been talking about it for years. It’s not just me.”

  “I said that when we were freshmen, Ali. Have totally changed my mind now.”

  I pick out this black chiffon thing with thick ruffles on the sleeves. I hold it up to my body, modeling.

  “I think I want to wear it with red tights.”

  It’s the first time I’ve noticed myself in the mirror and I’m not disgusted. It’s like I’m wearing a costume. A game. I can do this.

  “I know this has to do with Blythe Jensen.”

  “Maybe.”

  She whips her green dresses against the dress rack.

  “God, Ali, how did you become so predictable?”

  “You’re the one who said it! And she’s not the only reason,” I say. “I just want to be normal again and do normal shit like other people. Like go to a school dance with my best friend. Or am I going to be punished for that too?”

  I can’t explain to Sammi that going to the dance, the dance that will be filled with the same people from that awful party, will somehow allow me to get over the humiliation of what happened. That if I show up at this dance where I know he’ll be, where all those people will be, I can somehow relive the night. That I can show everyone that I’m not wasted like a freak running out of a party.

  “I don’t understand what you see in her,” she says. “Because underneath it all, she’s still best friends with him. The guy who did that to you.”

  I grab my black dress and head to the fitting room, slamming the door behind me. I don’t want to think about what she said. I clamp my hands over my ears and squeeze my eyes shut.

  Sammi is standing outside the door apologizing. And I know she’s right because everything she says is what I’m already thinking. But it’s also what I don’t want to admit to myself.

  “Come out once you have the dress on,” she says, and hollers that she’s in a dressing room just a few doors down.

  I hate looking at myself in the mirror now. My purple bra, so damaged and affected. It’s the bra I was wearing that night and I’ve been avoiding it for so long. Now I wish I hadn’t worn it. I take it off and stuff it under the bench. I wonder if other people like me feel like they need all new clothes.

  Sammi’s head pops under the bottom of the dressing room door.

  “You’re like a dreamy witch girl,” she says. Her eyes sparkling.

  “Get off the floor, you loser.”

  I open the door and she gets up. She’s wearing a teal knee-length dress with a short cape. Her fists on her hips. Looks up at the sky.

  “You’re fucking Captain Marvel.”

  She shakes her hair out. She’s so pretty. A different pretty than Blythe. A different pretty than Donnie. They’re like a perfect pretty—the kind of girls who don’t look damaged. The kind of girls who can keep all their secrets on the inside. All their pain.

  I pull out my phone. Tell her to pose against the door.

  “Don’t post this, Ali. I swear—I will hurt you.”

  “No, it’s just that I haven’t collaged in a while. And I want to make some different pictures. Pictures of people that I, you know, love. And who, uh . . . love me back.”

  Sammi stands super close to me. “Can I hand-hug you?”

  “Oh my God, Sammi.”

  “I didn’t want to seem cheesy just straight-up hugging you.”

  “Hand-hug is fine.”

  She takes my hand and we cup each other’s fingers. We look nothing alike, but sometimes when I stare at her, like now, I feel like she and I are the same person.

  “Hand-hug over,” she says. “It’s time to play dress-up.” Like we did when we were younger. Until I gave away all my glittery princess dresses. Told my dad to give them to the babies next door. His face, devastated. It’s weird to want to be little again, but I wish I could go backward.

  Sammi lifts her cape and tears out of the dressing room, down the aisle of the store.

  The woman behind the counter stares at us. She has silver hair slicked back in a small ponytail. Red lips. Catcus and bird tattoos up her arm.

  “That cape dress is my favorite. What’s it for?” she says.

  “School dance.”

  “Those are some cool dresses for a school dance,” she says.

  Sammi and I smile at each other. She takes my hand and twists me around. My black chiffon dress, her pink cape.

  The woman flips to a song on her phone. “Here. Try this,” she says. “The B-52s.”

  The song starts with one person banging on a high key of a keyboard. A woman sings out in breathless pain, talking to her ex. She begs him: think about how we talked when we were in love, right before you broke my heart.

  Then she screams the next lyrics with the kind of heartache that comes from deep within. I’ve never heard anything like it. Except I have. I’ve heard it because it sounds like me.

  Why don’t you dance with me?

  I’m not no Limburger.

  I don’t know what a Limburger is, but I think she’s screaming, “No. You can’t do this to me. What makes you think you can do this to me?”

  23

  BLYTHE

  My mother scoots me through the first floor of Bergdorf, where the white walls are lined with glass cases filled with colorful purses. The high ceilings, the marble floors, and the enormous crystal chandeliers make it look like someone’s Parisian apartment. No. More like their massive walk-in closet inside their Parisian apartment.

  We take the elevator to where the gowns and dresses are. They’re not as much for sale as they’re on display. This is a fashion museum, not a store. And there are stores within stores, tiny spaces and hallways filled with velvet couches and rows of gold shoes and masks and paintings. I go to a mirrored spot with a few dresses hanging and get a good glance at myself, because if you’re not staring at yourself in this store, then are you even here?

  And I pull out a nude dress. Floral embellished with sequins and beads.

  “Pick something with confidence. Something that’ll stand out. You don’t need to blend in, Blythe.”

  “I have plenty of confidence.”

  “Really? Because that dress says insecurity.”

  “Jesus, Mom.”

  “I’m just being honest,” she says.

  Before I can escape, a sales rep named Blanche wraps her arm around my waist, fawning over my hair and my height. “Is this for the Bal Des Debutantes? We have the most gorgeous gowns that don’t fit any of these short girls who come in here wishing they were Gisele. Oh my, darling, you are a dream come true. Stunning. Absolutely stunning. I want to cover you in seafoa
m and strut you down the aisle.”

  “It’s for a school dance.”

  “A dance? In Manhattan?”

  “No. New Jersey.”

  Her face is stricken. How I’ve disappointed her. That I’m not a debutante. Just a schoolgirl from New Jersey going to a dance in her gym. I know, I want to say, to comfort her. I feel the same way.

  “I’m just getting ideas,” I say.

  “Okay, because if money is an issue—”

  “Money is not an issue,” my mother says, jumping down the woman’s throat. Because God forbid we appeared like we had no money. It’s all about appearance. No mental illness. No credit cards with $30,000 in charges. No rehabs or institutions. No antipsychotropic drugs. No genetic history. No suicidal grandfather who threw himself off the Golden Gate Bridge when my mother was twelve. Keep it hidden. Keep it down. These are family secrets. This is no one’s business.

  “I was kind of thinking of something leather,” I say.

  “Leather? Excuse me. You girls have to start dressing your age and not like a desperate middle-aged postmenopausal mother of four,” Blanche says.

  She whips a strapless pink lace corset dress off the rack. Pink so light that it’s practically washed out. Practically see-through. High-low bottom. To the floor. Open back.

  “Darling. This dress was made for you. Take your hair out of that ponytail and put this on.” She pushes me toward the dressing room. Soft lighting. White velvet curtains.

  Blanche isn’t wrong. The bodice fits me perfectly. I’ve never worn anything quite like this before. Chiffon peeks out from under the bottom of the dress and wisps against my legs. I shake my hair out. All these girls at the dance will be going to the mall for their dresses. And look at me. A fucking queen.

  Oohs and ahhs as I walk out. Blanche shoves her assistant toward me. Another girl from the bag department enters. They guffaw. “You’re so lucky. No messy boobies to screw up the profile.”

  “I’m anorexic just enough for the dress to fit, right?” I say.