Sean Nessel will forget. One day someone will ask him about it and he won’t even know what they’re talking about. Not me. I’ll always remember. And I’ll always remember that Blythe was part of it.
Maybe I’m a terrible person. I can’t decide.
* * *
* * *
My room is dark, the light from my laptop a blue glow. I’m searching for plane tickets to Albuquerque because I want to see my mother. I don’t know if my dad’s going to understand this. It’s not a scheduled trip, but I feel trapped here by Blythe and her friends, Sean Nessel, even my father. Especially him, how he’s been looking at me lately, like he wants me to say more and like I have so much to hide. I thought writing the article would help make me feel better, but it’s still in me, all the hiding and secrets and shame. There’s this nagging need for my mother. Or maybe it’s just a nagging need to escape.
I reconcile it. I have to.
* * *
* * *
I walk into my father’s room. Edge onto the side of his bed and whisper for him to wake up. He rubs his face and squints into the white fluorescent glow of my computer. The bed creaks in harmony.
“This better be something incredible,” he says.
“I want to see her.”
“Who?”
“Mom.” He sits up in bed and scratches the fuzz around his chin.
“You have plans to go over spring break, honey.”
“No. I mean, now. Over Thanksgiving break,” I say, and I know that this could hurt him because he should be enough. But I spit it out. “I want to see her, Dad. I need to be around her right now.”
I see it in his face. The wheels moving. He takes my computer and slips his reading glasses on to look at the prices. He does the rest quickly. On his phone. Calling my mother at one o’clock in the morning. I can hear her voice from the phone, worried. Yes, she’s saying, Yes, of course, send her out here.
I have two connecting flights. I’m flying all day Monday. But I don’t care how long it takes.
* * *
* * *
Saturday morning.
My father goes outside to get the paper and that’s when he sees it. The hot pink spray paint in front of our house. The white spray paint on the street.
He’s sitting downstairs waiting for me. I come down bleary-eyed and tired from too many bad dreams.
“If I could only get you out of here sooner,” he says.
My neighbor has a power-washer and she’s already getting the Ali Greenleaf sucks cocks off the sidewalk and the street. It comes off in tiny strips. Like it had never even been there.
It’s like I knew. I knew they were coming for me.
That dream was a premonition. I don’t believe in dreams as premonitions generally, but this one I can’t deny. That I felt it. Maybe I felt Blythe’s guilt.
Blythe didn’t write those things, I’m sure. But she approved of it. She orchestrated it. She stood by watching. They wouldn’t do anything so destructive without her.
This is what happens when you get the wrath of Blythe Jensen.
I feel sick. I’m tempted to call her. How could you? Part of me, and I know this is sick, but part of me understands why Blythe did it.
I couldn’t just let you get away with disobeying me, could I?
Isn’t that what she’d say to me?
How could I not, Ali? How could I not?
* * *
* * *
Monday. I’m flying over the desert outside Albuquerque, New Mexico. It’s always a jolt flying over the desert each year. Brush, settled dust, and patches of green.
My mother is wearing a long pink skirt with bells and cowboy boots when she picks me up at the airport. Her hands stretch open, and she rests her fingers across my cheeks. “Let me look at you.” Then she wraps her arms around my body. We stand in this long hug as people grab their luggage. Her bells jingle as I shift.
I climb into her car, a small used four-door. “One day I’ll get the white Jeep,” she says. This is what she always says. There’s always an unfulfilled dream with her.
We bump along the highway for two hours through the desert with the windows open because that’s how long it takes to get from Albuquerque to Truth or Consequences. The mountains that seem to line the horizon here no matter where you look are striped with ragged colors of red and yellows. Some of them are flat on top like a crew cut. Miles and miles of bramble.
My mother lives in this little peach house with a pink door. The peeling paint looks worse in the glare of the sun. The crystal blue sky. Big and wondrous. Yellow-and-white-striped fabric blocking her yard from the street hangs outside on a twig fence, blowing in the wind. Little pots of cacti and desert plants surround the front of the house.
“It’s very dry, Ali. You have to drink a lot of water.”
“You say this every time, Mom.”
She takes my hand and leads me inside. There are all sorts of pillows strewn about. Silky, cozy-looking pillows. I sit on my knees and then stretch out.
She comes closer and caresses my head. I look up at her. Her soft hair. The way her mouth curls up when she smiles. Her deep-set brown eyes. It’s like a mirror of myself.
47
BLYTHE
In school on Monday with Suki and Cate.
A girl whispers as she passes us. Ali Greenleaf, she whispers. Then another girl next to her, glaring at me. Faces I never noticed before. They’ve always been here but never looked at me like this. Not with such contempt.
Everyone is talking about the article she wrote. You can hear them talking in class. Everyone knows it’s Sean. That Ali and Sean were in the kitchen at that party before they even went upstairs. They all know that I was the girl who tried to persuade her not to tell. That I was the girl who, in a stupid, drunken evening, spray-painted trash in front of her house. No one says a word, but they all know.
I cut drama class and head to Donnie’s locker.
“We messed up. We were too sloppy. They’re all staring at us,” I say.
“They always stare at us, B.”
“Not like this. They’re staring at us now like they want to hurt us. Like they want to attack. Like they hate us.”
“They probably always hated us. This is nothing new.”
Raj comes down the hallway. Coming right for me. His face pinched, his jaw clenched. “How can you live with yourself, Blythe?”
“I was just a friend to her,” I say.
“You weren’t a friend to her. Jesus, is that what you think?” he says. “She went to New Mexico, did you know that? She ran away because she couldn’t be here.”
“Wait a second. To be with her mother? That’s so—that’s not like her.”
“How would you know what anything about her is like, Blythe? You don’t know a thing about Ali.”
“You have it all wrong. It’s more complicated than that,” I say, whispering now. “I knew her. I know her. And what about what she did to me? What about what she wrote in that article. What’s breaking the internet now?”
“You’re pathetic,” he says, and walks away. He turns his back and just goes.
“See? See what I mean?” I say to Donnie.
“How could you not have expected this, Jensen?” she says. “Of course people are going to act like this.” She stares at me hard. “They don’t understand. Why should they? They don’t know what it is to be like us.”
Us. I don’t even know what that means anymore. Who are we together? Destructive and angry and resentful. Like stones. So shut off from emotions that we have no feelings of repercussion? I’ve done so much damage that I’ve pushed Ali to run to her mother. Her mother? The woman in the desert with the crystals and the hot springs and the AA meetings? I look up at the hot fluorescent glow from the ceiling and my eyes well up. Can’t breathe. Like everything has
changed right in front of me and I’ve lost control of it.
What have I done? What have I done?
Donnie takes my hands. Her forehead to my head.
“It’s going to be okay, B,” she says.
“No, it’s not,” I say. “The police are going to come after us for our little stunt. They’re going to question me after they read Ali’s article. We’re on a sinking fucking ship. We’re like the Titanic right now. I’m Jack and you’re Rose. Just let me fucking go so I can float away in the icy tundra and die my deserving death.”
She’s got her hands on my shoulders now. Draws me in.
“You are Blythe fucking Jensen. You don’t do self-pity. I’m not going to tell you that you’re Jack. We’re not drowning. We’re not sinking. You’re not floating on a door somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean.”
“Donnie, there’s probably going to be a team of police officers at my house tonight.”
“Maybe you’ll get lucky. Maybe she won’t have even called the police. My guess, from what you told me about Ali, is that she just wanted to write her little story and now she wants to be left alone. My guess is that she’s not going to do a thing because it would have been done by now.”
I take a deep breath. Maybe Donnie’s right. Maybe it would have happened already.
“Now we’re even. She knows now that dragging you into this was wrong. Let’s just leave it at that. It’s over.” She hugs me tight, and it feels so good. Even though her body is so thin and she feels like she’s wasting away, this right now feels like me and her back together again like it was. And for a minute I feel safe.
A woman calls my name. I turn around and it’s Ms. Tapestry, the school social worker. I don’t even know her real name. That’s what everyone calls her.
“Hi, Blythe. I’d like you to come to my office. Can you do that right now?”
“I have science . . .”
“Just tell me which teacher, and I’ll get you a note.”
My mind floats a million miles a minute. Ali Greenleaf sucks cocks.
“I have a science test that I can’t miss,” I say. A lie. More lies. Lies on top of lies.
“Oh—okay, well, then we can do the period after. Fourth period. Sound good?”
I nod. I don’t have a choice.
“I’m going to invite your other friends too, but first I want to talk to you.”
“Which friends?”
“Oh, you know, the Core Four. That’s your crew, isn’t it?” she says, and points to Donnie. “Donnie Alperstein, right?”
“How do you know my name?” Donnie says, defensive.
“Everyone knows you girls. Everyone.”
So this is how they’re going to do it. They’re not going to call the police. They’re going to get one of us—me, the band leader—to admit how I covered up the whole thing with Sean to the school social worker.
* * *
* * *
Ms. Tapestry is being so nice to me. Probably wants to rip my eyes out. But being fake is her job.
“I want to talk to you about what’s going on with Ali Greenleaf,” Ms. Tap says. She tells me to call her that: Ms. Tap.
“I already have a therapist,” I say. “I’ve been seeing her since I was eleven.”
“Okay, that’s wonderful. But this isn’t a traditional therapy session; this is more like talking. Because there are some problems going on in the school—you’ve obviously heard about some of them, like the graffiti in front of Ali Greenleaf’s house, the article that’s being passed around on a student’s blog—and I need to talk to all my girls to find out what’s happening.”
I want to be defensive. I want to say that all these things happened off school property, and that she has no jurisdiction over me. But saying anything will blow my cool. I need to pretend I’m a dumb popular girl. A girl so high above it all that I have no interest in high school drama.
“So I’m one of your girls? I didn’t know.”
“Every girl in this school is one of my girls.”
She stares at me like she’s going to cut me up and feed me to the wolves. I am so not one of her girls. She’s mama bear to the underlings. To girls like Ali. Not to girls like me.
She asks me a lot of questions about Ali. And I say nothing.
I picture Ali’s face. Her brown frizzy hair. How she pouts when she’s upset. How her eyes peek out from under her bangs now that her hair has grown out more. How she doesn’t even need to wear eyeliner and her hazel eyes sparkle. Those long black eyelashes. “Blythe. I want to tell you that there’s an official bullying specialist in the school. So you can talk to her, or you can talk to me. I will tell you this. She has different rules than I do.”
I nod. I freeze up. I’m tempted to just tell her everything. Confess everything. But I have to continue this face. This apathetic face. Because this has nothing to do with me. I have to keep repeating that. Cycling it in my mind.
“She also doesn’t have much of a sense of humor,” she says. “So how about this? How about we schedule another session after Thanksgiving break? We can bring your therapist in here as well if that makes you more comfortable?”
No, I tell her. I’ll be fine. She can ask me anything she wants. I have nothing to hide.
* * *
* * *
That night, I have an emergency session with my real therapist. I don’t talk to her about what we did in front of Ali’s house. I can’t admit to that. I can’t tell her. So I go for something easier. I talk about Dev.
“I didn’t tell Dev that Sean and I kissed,” I say. “We’ve broken up, and he’s still going to hate me even more than he already does.”
“So let’s explore why you might make a choice like that.”
Sean and the long con. So much else has happened between then and now that I almost forgot about it.
The one thing I had with Dev was trust. It’s what drew me to him. It’s why I stood on the side of that soccer field all that time cheering him on. Kissing his sweaty face when it was over. I miss his texts at night before bed. How close he sat next to me. How I could rub my head against him. How he listened to me. How he wanted to protect me.
I hate myself for losing him.
“People expect me to be with Dev. I expect myself to be with Dev. I have prom dresses picked out. There are expectations,” I say.
“You keep saying expectations, which is interesting to me. What about love? What about mutual respect? I want to hear the part of you that feels torn up over breaking up with Dev.”
“Wait—I don’t get it. You want to hear me cry?”
“No, Blythe. I want to hear you speak about empathy. I want to hear you speak about sadness. There’s a lot of acting out in your world. And there’s a difference between acting out and talking out. I want to hear you say either you’re going to miss Dev. Or that you did this with Sean because unconsciously you were already done with your relationship with Dev. I want to hear feelings.”
She shifts in her chair. Moves her silvery hair off her face. She must have been so beautiful at one point in her life. And I see something else in her. This tearful look that Ali used to give me. This poor Blythe look. And I hate it. I’m so angry at it because everything feels so overridden with lies. Lies from me. My friends. From Ali. My parents. Sean. There are so many lies. I couldn’t swat them away if I tried.
“I TALKED TO ALI— I told her things! She wouldn’t listen to me!” Shaking now. Screaming. “She didn’t really care about me. She used me.”
She gets up and slowly approaches me so that she’s standing behind me. Rests her hand on the back of my neck. Full palm. She tells me to breathe. She tells me to close my eyes.
“What’s going on with you right now? In this moment.”
I imagine a jungle with floating trees that reach high above me. Winds that I can barely walk through
. Silvery trees. Thin limbs swaying over my head. Birds squawking, though they’re not happy. They’re struggling. Something is coming.
“Like I’m lost in a forest and I can’t find my way out.”
“The first thing you have to do is ask for help, and then receive it.”
“I don’t know how to do that,” I say. Tears pouring down my face now. She always makes me like this. Cry and cry until I can’t get anything else out of my mind. “I’ve been relying on myself for too long. I’ve been taking care of my mother for too long. I feel so alone.”
She sits down in the ottoman in front of my seat and I open my eyes to her. She’s staring right back at me. Her eyes bulgy, concerned, like they’re feeling so much sorrow for me.
“You’re so hard on yourself, Blythe. You know that? You don’t have to be so hard.”
“Is there any other way?”
48
ALI
My phone has only three bars in Truth or Consequences.
I text Raj and Sammi a selfie of me in the fuchsia hammock in the dusty backyard. The yellow-and-white-striped fabric blowing in the wind behind me. The sun just about to go down.
Sammi sends hearts and smiles.
It’s such spotty reception out here. No bars now. And when you can’t talk on your phone and you’re stuck in the desert, you gaze into space. The stars are bright and enormous out here, sparkling satellites, nothing that I’ve ever seen before.
I want to write things down. I want to carve it into the ground with a branch from the sage bush. I want someone to read my story years from now.
I want to tell my mother everything that happened. What it feels like to have a man on top of you who won’t let you go. Will I want to be with anyone ever again? Crickets chirping. Classical music streaming from someone’s trailer down the road. All of it, desert sounds. My own breath hot, and my face wet from tears.
Something Happened to Ali Greenleaf Page 21