Lucky Girl

by Amanda Maciel

  I just smile at her. I’m bouncing on the wide front steps, wishing I’d stopped to pee or just not guzzled an iced vanilla latte the size of my head on the way here. As nervous as I am, it’s surprising how the need for a bathroom can make you brave. Or something.

  “Yeah, no, I just needed to talk to her? And maybe use your restroom, if that would be okay? I’m sorry to barge in like this, I know it’s early, but Maddie’s always leaving around now for her SGA meetings or whatever, right? Or does she not have one today? I’m sorry, I don’t really know, that’s why I wanted to talk to her; can I see her? Is she home? Maybe I could just come in for a minute?”

  I would definitely keep babbling except Mrs. Costello finally steps back into the house, an alarmed look on her face, and lets me jitter into the entryway. There’s a guest bathroom on my right. She and I both point at it at the same time with matching question-mark faces. I laugh crazily and then rush inside, accidentally slamming the door behind me.

  This wasn’t part of the plan, to start off by emptying my bladder. But there’s a kind of comfort in all the familiar things, the old smells. The shell-shaped soaps on the sink that look like they’ve never been used; the cornflower-blue hand towels folded perfectly on their brushed-platinum hangers. Everything clean, in its place, reminding you that some people’s lives are more orderly and also way better than yours.

  I wash my hands with one of the seashells and mess up a towel, then mess it up even more when I try to refold it. Finally I take a good, long look at myself in the mirror.

  I don’t look great. My hair is falling out of the bun I put it in this morning, and the top strands are a little greasy. Yesterday’s mascara is pinching half my eyelashes together. I have a lip balm in my pocket, so I put some on, but still. I look pathetic.

  Maybe that’ll help.

  Stepping out of the bathroom, I stop to listen. Mrs. Costello is in the kitchen talking, and then I hear Maddie’s voice. I can’t tell what either of them is saying. It’s obvious they’re bickering, though.

  I creep through the big entrance area, past the sweeping staircase that spirals down like some kind of Disney castle. There’s a short hallway with a regular ceiling, and then it opens up again when you reach the kitchen, which has these massive two-story-high windows looking out at the woods behind the house. I used to be really jealous of this house, and then for a while I wasn’t, because I practically lived here, too. Now I wonder why Maddie and I never, not once, tried to slide down the banister. We easily could’ve fallen to our deaths on the marble tile floor, of course, but we should have at least thought of it.

  “Because I want to, Mom. It’s basically rude to say no.”

  “I don’t see how this helps your résumé at all—”

  “It does! It’s school participation!”

  Mrs. Costello snorts. In a very prim sort of way, of course. “You have more than enough school participation at this point. If we free up your time, I think I can get you into another class at UNO, and we need to talk about taking at least two in the spring.”

  There’s a very thick silence. I lean against the wall, between a photo of Maddie as a baby, sitting up and smiling perfectly in a little bow headband, and one of those everyone-wearing-white-on-the-beach shots of about fifty Costellos. I can’t see into the kitchen, but I can hear Mrs. Costello’s mug being set on the granite countertop, a spoon scraping a bowl. A sigh.

  “Maybe we could just talk about this later,” Mrs. Costello says, her voice soft and conciliatory.

  “I have to tell them today. I’m going to tell them today.” Maddie sounds as mad as I’ve ever heard her, and my heart sinks painfully. My plan is not going to work. And from the sounds of it, Mrs. Costello doesn’t approve of Maddie being nominated for Homecoming Queen, and Maddie is super upset about it. So my timing is basically a nightmare. As usual.

  I’ve just resigned myself to turning back around and sneaking out when Maddie comes storming into the hall and sees me.

  The first thing I think is, She looks weird, which isn’t very nice, but is kind of true. She has on a long, flowy skirt and really dangly earrings and what looks like a handknit sweater on—all of it seems chic and expensive and European, but also like a total disconnect from the whole house around her. It’s like she’s trying out a Rebellious Daughter costume for Halloween, but wasn’t quite brave enough to go full-on goth.

  And the next thing I think is, Oh, shit. Maddie really hates feeling like she’s been spied on.

  “What are you doing here?” she yelps.

  My eyes dart past her toward the kitchen, wishing that—what? That Mrs. Costello would come out and explain? Like that wouldn’t make this a million times worse?

  “Wh—” Maddie stops herself. “You know what? Who cares? I have to go.”

  “Wait!” I finally say, though she’s already stomping upstairs. “Wait, I just need to talk to you!”

  “Now?” she spits, not even bothering to look down at me or pause for a second. I start chasing her up the stairs and even that doesn’t get a reaction, though she does keep yelling at me. “How are you even awake this early?”

  “What is that supposed to mean?” I cry.

  She doesn’t answer me, just runs into her room and slams the door in my face.

  I forget everything in my desperation to get her to listen. I start pounding on the door with all of my strength and yelling, “You have to let me talk! You never even let me explain what happened!”

  The door flies open again, and I nearly fall onto her.

  “Then explain!” she screams.

  From downstairs I hear Mrs. Costello calling up, wondering what’s wrong. I guess Maddie hears it, too, because she grabs my wrist and, with surprising strength, pulls me into her room. The door slams again and she whirls on me, her arms crossed and her cheeks bright red with fury.

  It’s crazy. It’s all extra, insanely crazy, and I’m still a little hopped up on latte, and that’s the only reason I can think of for the fact that I start to laugh. Just a little. But I definitely crack up.

  “You have got to be kidding me,” Maddie says, her voice dangerously low.

  I hiccup, covering my whole face with my hands, and hold my breath. “Sorry,” I whisper from behind my palms. “Sorry.”

  “I have to go.”

  I let my arms fall and nod. “I know. I’m sorry. I thought if I came over first thing—no, hang on, that’s not it. I just couldn’t wait any longer.”

  Maddie leans back against the closed door and glares at me. “Seems like you waited a pretty long time to me.”

  I nod again. “But I didn’t know, before. I didn’t—I didn’t understand.”

  “That you’re pathetic?”

  I feel my face crumple, betraying how hurt I am. For a moment Maddie looks like she regrets saying it, but then she seems to decide that she has to be strong, and her jaw sets in a hard line again.

  My legs go all rubbery and I look around, wondering if I should just sit on the floor. That’s the first time I notice that Maddie’s room is a mess. It looks like my room, it’s so messy. Clothes and books everywhere, the bed unmade, one set of shutters open and the others still closed.

  “Wow,” I murmur. “Your mom must hate this.”

  I catch Maddie’s smirk before it disappears, but otherwise she doesn’t react to me at all. Finally I just sink straight down, cross my legs on the carpet, and sigh.

  “I didn’t want to kiss Cory that night,” I say. I can feel Maddie stiffen, and I know she’s going to interrupt, so I rush to get everything out. “But I flirted with him a little. I think it was just a habit, sort of, or it was that I was jealous of you.” I hear her snort, much less gracefully than her mother, and I shake my head. “You got back from Spain all, like, amazing. I didn’t know how to be around you anymore. I know it’s not fair!” I hold up a hand, stopping her from interrupting. “I know that was shitty. I know I shouldn’t have flirted with him, or anyone you liked, just to feel . . . be
tter. About myself.”

  I’m staring at my knees, but out of the corner of my eye I see Maddie slide down against the door, sitting down across from me. My breathing gets more even, just knowing that she’s listening, but I still have to close my eyes to get the next words out.

  “So I just want you to know, I wasn’t lying when I said I wasn’t into him anymore. And he was being so nice to you, and it made me happy to see you happy. That was all true. And then at the party, I guess I hung out with him a little, but we weren’t sneaking around or anything. I barely even talked to him, I swear.”

  I pick at a speck of dried paint on my jeans. It pops off, disappearing into the carpet, and I force my hands to be still. Maddie is being completely quiet, and I know I have to keep talking, whether I want to or not.

  “It was after the power went out, and the house was dark. I was drunk and upstairs, I wanted to get my stupid shirt, and Cory started kissing me. I don’t know why. We didn’t have some plan, I didn’t ask him to. I wasn’t kissing him back. And he—he pushed me onto that couch, and I couldn’t get up. I—”

  My voice just stops. I lift my eyes, checking Maddie’s face. She’s watching me. Most of the anger and suspicion is gone. She looks like she just wants to hear what I’m saying.

  If it had been anyone but Cory, I realize, I would’ve run to Maddie a long time ago. She might’ve even understood that night—maybe she wouldn’t have assumed I was hooking up with him on purpose if she hadn’t been so angry, so convinced I was betraying her.

  But it was Cory. And the person who listened to me was Alex. More than anything else, this is the thing that makes me realize how much it’s all changed. My friendship with Maddie, my whole world. I’m not the same anymore. I’m braver. Just a tiny bit, maybe, but I think it counts.

  Still. I wish so much that I didn’t have anything else to say. For both of us, I wish so hard that the end of the story was something about a drunk mistake that I could just apologize for. Maddie’s version of the story is wrong, but God, it’s so much easier. I wish it was really that easy.

  “He hurt me. Not, like, a lot. But I couldn’t really breathe. And when I tried to, um, push him away, he didn’t—he wasn’t stopping. I don’t think he would’ve stopped if you hadn’t come in. And I wanted him to. I was trying to stop him.”

  I swear I see Maddie’s pupils dilate from here. I feel prickles of sweat break out on the back of my neck, a nervous reaction to what she might say to me now. I’m suddenly so sure that she’s going to accuse me of lying. It’s still just my side of the story—what if I’m wrong?

  Why should anyone believe you?

  But I know I’m not wrong about this. I’ve been trying to believe a different version of this story for days, and it’s not working. Because Cory didn’t care whether I wanted to kiss him or not. He didn’t care that I wanted him to stop taking off my clothes, he didn’t care about Maddie, and he still hasn’t apologized.

  “I’m sorry,” I say again.

  “Stop saying that.”

  I blink at her.

  “Jesus, Rosie. Is that really what happened?”

  I nod. She rocks forward onto her knees, then stops.

  “So the lights came back on, and I found you, and that’s—that’s what I walked in on? Was he raping you?”

  “No!” I yelp, but hot, fast tears burst out of my eyes at the same instant. Maddie starts moving across the floor to me, but she’s just a blur. The tears hurt, they’re so hot, and everything behind my eyes feels like it’s burning, too. “No,” I say again, and Maddie has her arms around me.

  “God, Rosie,” Maddie whispers, patting me on the back while I cry. “I’m sorry.”

  “No,” I sob. “I’m sorry. He’s so nice to you, and I ruined everything.” The words spill out with the tears, and I don’t know if she can even understand me with my head tucked into her elbow, ruining her fancy sweater.

  “Just stop,” she says softly. “Just—stop.”

  I hold my breath, trying to make the tears shut off, and her arms tighten around me.

  “Don’t stop crying, you weirdo. Stop apologizing.”

  The tears keep coming, but I force myself to gulp down some air and sit up. Water is streaming down my face in total free fall, but I can look at her now. I can see her.

  “I didn’t want to hurt you,” I say.

  “You didn’t hurt me. He did. I was just too stupid to see it—and he hurt you, too, by the way, so stop apologizing for him.”

  Exactly.

  The voice in my head is a whisper. It’s a gust of wind lifting my chin just a tiny bit.

  Maddie sits all the way down on the floor with a big sigh. She runs her hands through her hair and stares at me, her eyes getting big. “This is really bad,” she says. “I knew he was kind of—I don’t know. Pushy. Entitled. But this is bad.”

  “Not anymore,” I say. “Not if you forgive me.”

  Her face softens into something that looks like pity. “He assaulted you,” she says slowly, like I might not understand.

  “No,” I say automatically. “It was just—”

  “God, Rosie, stop!” She looks up at the ceiling and laughs without any happiness. “You know what he told me? Well, I mean, first, at the party, he wanted to sneak up to one of the rooms. And I wouldn’t go with him.”

  I remember Maddie saying something about Cory getting what he wanted, right after she caught us. It hurts, but now I guess I know what she meant.

  “And then when he was, like, explaining, he said you were drunk and all over him, and he was trying to get away, but he’d been drinking, too, and . . .” She waves a hand in the air like, etc., etc.

  “And you believed him,” I say weakly.

  She stares at me for a second, hard, right in my eyes. “I didn’t want to. Or I did want to, I guess. I believed . . . I thought you’d changed. Over the summer. I thought maybe you were sick of me being this little Goody Two-shoes, always doing her homework on time and never going to parties and just being the least fun, least interesting person in the entire goddamn world. I wanted to go off to Spain and get interesting, or grow up, or something. And all I did the whole time I was there was miss you and Ryan and worry about my parents, and I still felt like a total fool around boys, and it was so embarrassing! I was still this sad, stuck-up loser, even a whole freaking ocean away from home.”

  I wrinkle my eyebrows at her. “You’re not stuck-up,” I say, confused.

  “I know!” She throws her hands up in agreement. “I think I’m pretty nice, right?” I nod, but she shakes her head. “Apparently not in freaking Spain, I’m not. This one guy kept calling me ‘Princess’ and I thought it was a compliment for like three weeks. Some other girl had to explain it was because I wouldn’t hook up with anyone. They were making fun of me and I didn’t even understand it.”

  I feel like tiny parts of my brain are exploding with surprise and confusion. “But that’s crazy,” I say. “You’re perfect. You’re the opposite of a loser. I mean, you are a princess, basically.”

  Maddie takes a little, hiccupy breath and looks up toward the open window. Her eyes are shiny, but she doesn’t cry. “I just didn’t want to be your sad, single friend anymore. I don’t want to be the girl who gets balloons at the airport.”

  I blink, stung.

  “I don’t mean it like that. They were really sweet. I just—sometimes, like around you, I feel like a little kid, you know? Like a permanent virgin.”

  “Jesus, Mads. First of all, everyone likes balloons, so stop being a crazy person. And second, do you even want to have sex?”

  She looks at me, surprised. “Yes?” she says, though it sounds like a question. “Right?”

  I laugh. “No, you don’t! All the Midcity guys are way too lame for you!”

  “The guys in Spain weren’t,” she moans. “They were really hot. And older.”

  “And jerks!”

  She wrinkles her nose. “I should’ve just told you.”

&n
bsp; “Yeah, but I get it.” I pause and look down at my knees. “I felt so bad after everything last year. I’ve just been the most useless friend. The whole time you were gone I was trying to figure out how to be better. I thought this year was going to be so much better. And I made everything a million times worse.”

  “What are you even talking about? You’re a great friend. Just because I sometimes feel kind of intimidated by your whole—thing, doesn’t mean I don’t love you.”

  Suddenly I’m afraid I’m going to cry again. “But I’m too bitchy. I mean, you’re the only girl friend that I have. That’s weird,” I mutter.

  “Okay, well, if you feel like that’s a problem, we can work on that.”

  I peek up at her finally, wondering how she makes it sound so easy. “By the way, I’m not friends with you based on whether you like to party or not. I just like you. For you.”

  She gives me a duh look and shoves my shoulder with one finger. “I know that, you big doofus. I like you for you, too.”

  “Okay.”

  “But we still need to talk about what happened,” she says. “We have to . . . I don’t know, don’t we have to report Cory?”

  “Report him?”

  “Yes. For assaulting you.”

  I shake my head. I mean, I know Cory hurt me. But the word assault feels so . . . legal. Scary. It sounds like something people will have to know about. It makes me feel embarrassed and ashamed all over again.

  “Nothing even happened,” I say.

  “Yes, it did.”

  “I mean, he cheated on you, and I was stupid and drunk, and . . .” I feel myself backpedaling, and Maddie is shaking her head at me. “I just wanted to be friends again,” I say.

  “We are,” she says. “Which is why I’m telling you, we can’t just let this go.”

  But that’s exactly what I want to do. I glance at the door, wondering why Maddie’s mom hasn’t reminded us to go to school. I feel like I could curl up on her floor and sleep for a day and a half, but I have to get Mom’s car back. And I have to get out of here.