by Julia Drake
“Tobias Rudolph is your family, right? From the bakery? We were supposed to meet, but he never got back to me,” Liv said.
“Ooh, can you get us free blackberry pie?” Mariah gasped.
“Toby’s my uncle, and maybe on the free pie. Sorry he never got back to you. He’s not the most responsible. But you should come poke around our house if you want. There’s bound to be some stuff lying around.”
Liv’s eyes widened. “Seriously?”
“Sure. I’ll be at the aquarium during the day, but otherwise, yeah.”
“I told my parents I’d see a movie with them tomorrow. But next Saturday? One week from tomorrow?”
“She’ll show up,” Mariah warned.
“Sure,” I said. “I am embarrassingly free.”
Felix propped himself up on his elbows. “I don’t think you realize this, Miss Violet, but you just made Professor Stone’s life.”
Felix lifted himself into bridge pose, then did a back walkover.
“Show-off,” scolded Mariah.
“Nice work, Lewis,” Liv said.
She reached over and slapped a mosquito on Orion’s calf. She didn’t even stop talking as she did it, or warn him. Just slapped his calf and carried on.
The night grew dark and the sky fell in a starry dome around us, so panoramic and dizzying it hurt my eyes. I craned my neck back so far my vertebrae crunched. The conversation meandered, then puttered, and Felix and Mariah went to pee in the woods. I was left alone with Orion and Liv. They were playing slaps now, their hands hovering over each other, quick reflexes and stinging heat. I felt like I was in one of those tourist-trap vortexes where marbles rolled uphill. They weren’t together, according to Orion, but I still felt like a third wheel.
“I’m gonna get a better look at the stars,” I said.
“Just don’t go too close to the edge. It’s a far drop,” Orion said, and Liv smacked his hands.
Away from Orion and Liv, I stretched my eyes wider, and then, when they couldn’t go as wide as I wanted, I literally held them open with my fingers. I was weirdly aware of my eyeballs as eyeballs, moving and wet. I wondered if the stars were this good in Vermont. Mom and Dad probably couldn’t see anything besides the moon, which was full-ish, waxing or waning, who knew. I wished that I were the sort of person who could identify constellations, point to the sky and declare, Cassiopeia.
“Glass half-full, Chatterjee.”
“No way she’ll ever say yes. You heard her—she hates a love story.”
Felix and Mariah, talking in low voices, closer to me than they realized. Sound carried well across the rock.
“But their love story was our beginning!” Felix said. “Lewis is a fox. I’d keep him on the hook, too.”
“You don’t have her willpower. You’d make out with him after ten minutes.”
“Poor guy has gone without action for so long.”
“Oh, fuck off, Felix, she doesn’t owe him access to her vagina.”
“That’s not what I meant. Come on, Mariah, you know I’m a feminist.”
“Fair-weather feminist, more like.”
“Hi?” I called cautiously.
“Oh, shit,” said Felix, “we forgot to swivel.”
A phone flashlight popped on: They were on the edge of the woods. Felix patted the ground beside him.
“Sorry—I wasn’t trying to—”
“Eavesdrop?” Mariah said.
“C’mon, Mariah, she’ll learn about the Orion-and-Liv saga soon enough. I’m telling you, if we all just talk about this, get it out in the open…”
I glanced toward Orion and Liv. They had a way of being together that made me ache. During the Year of Wild, there had been lots of bedrooms, lots of tongues and mouths, lots of hands up my shirt and down my pants—but there hadn’t been anyone who’d looked at me the way Orion looked at Liv Stone. There hadn’t been anyone who realized I was being bitten by a mosquito before I did.
“How long have they been a thing?” I asked.
“A thing for years. A couple for never. The heart craves the familiar,” Felix said.
“It’s not really any of our business,” Mariah said, not meanly, just to move us along. She gestured for me to sit and I joined them, feeling suddenly shy.
“So,” Mariah said warmly, “where’re you from?”
“New York City,” I said.
“Ah! New York is my destiny!” said Felix.
“New York’s not a bad idea for you, actually, Felix,” Mariah said. “I read about this psychic a few years back who scammed the shit out of these rich New Yorkers. City dwellers are the true suckers,” she said, sounding quite happy about it. “And what brings you here, Violet?”
“Um—my mom grew up here.”
“She wanted you to experience the torture firsthand?” Mariah said.
“Is Lyric that bad?” I asked.
“Not if you have friends. Which you do,” she said. She patted me on the knee, and I felt, in the best way, like we were in kindergarten, our friendship decided with one easy exchange.
“Yeah, at least you found us in this wack town, which is evidence, Mariah, that energy in the universe has a pattern and we meet the people we need to meet through its seemingly random energy.”
“That was barely English, and correlation does not imply causation.”
“She says I can’t start a coven.”
“I said you should think about what it means, as a man, to start a group that’s traditionally female.”
“But the whole point is inclusivity!”
“I really can’t have this argument with you again, Felix.”
“So we are arguing.”
“God. No. What I’m saying is…”
In the dark, far from us and beside each other, Orion and Liv were so close they might’ve been one person.
When I got home, Toby was on the phone. By the all-too-familiar way he was mashing the heel of his hand into his eye socket, I knew he was talking to my mom. He saw me and practically threw the phone at me, saying, “Hold on, Margaret, here she is,” before rushing off.
Mom (suspicious): Where were you?
Violet (trying hard to cooperate): Out with people.
M (long pause): What kind of people?
V: Heroin addicts, Mom.
M: Heroin’s a huge problem in this country, Violet, particularly in Lyric. Toby volunteered for a while at the needle exchange, I believe. I’m sure he’s got some stories to share. Would you care to talk about the dangers of opioids? What it does to a body? What I see every day at the hospital?
V: You’re a pediatric surgeon, Mom.
M: My point exactly.
[That shuts Violet up.]
V: They were normal people, Mom. Kids from work.
M (sighs): I’m sorry. I’m just worried. Why did you turn your phone off?
V: I don’t have service.
[silence]
M: We miss you here.
[silence]
M: We spoke to Sam last night. I think he’d really like to hear from you.
V: He hates the phone.
M: Why don’t you write to him? You know how much he loves letters. You’re not that far away from him, you know. You could even go visit. Toby would take you, I’m sure.
[silence]
M: Toby told me you’re trying to disappear.
[Silence, shocked this time. Violet’s forgotten this was her goal. How has she forgotten? She’ll start now, on this phone call. She won’t say another word.]
M: Honey…that made me so sad to hear. Disappearing? That’s not you. You take up so much space. You walk into a room and people pay attention. Boys, girls, young, old. Not because of how you look, but because of who you are. Dramatic and charming and big. You have such a presence, honey. And when people look at you, you light up!
[Violet thinks of the perfect Halloween costume: Attention Whore. Maybe she could rig up a spotlight, somehow, and dress like a Cabaret dancer.]
M: Write t
o Sam, honey. We miss you. Don’t disappear.
[Violet says nothing and hangs up softly, so softly she bets her mom doesn’t even notice. Mission accomplished.]
Toby was doing the puzzle. I hated puzzles. Especially this one.
“Why did you tell my mom I wanted to disappear?” I said to him.
“Because I was worried,” Toby said honestly. “I’m still worried.”
“Well, don’t be. Just ignore me, okay? Better yet, just pretend I’m not even here.”
IN WHICH OUR HEROINE SPENDS THE ENTIRE NEXT WEEK ATTEMPTING TO WRITE ONE MEASLY LETTER TO HER BROTHER
DRAFT #1
Saturday, June 18
Dear Sam,
Remember me, your long-lost sister?
DRAFT #2
Tuesday, June 21
Dear Sam,
Remember that Halloween we went as a pair of dice? It was such a good costume.
Today, I’m writing you from the Lyric Aquarium gift shop. Slow day. Every day is slow. I continue to be the world’s most useless employee. This morning, a kid named Andy came in—he comes in a lot, according to my coworker. He’s about eight, and a complete brainiac, and asked me what was effectively an exam question about the gender roles of the potbellied sea horse (NB: we don’t even have potbellied sea horses). When I didn’t know the answer, he stared at me a long time and said, “How did you get a job here?”
Meanwhile, I’ve fallen into obsession with my off-limits coworker. He’s totally in love with this other girl, but still, I find myself having some seriously vivid dreams in which he features prominently. Dream Orion has a delicious mouth.
I’m sure this is really relevant to your life right now.
DRAFT #3
Thursday, June 23
Dear Sam,
Remember this past spring, how you helped me sneak out? Both of us walking through the apartment together, timing our footsteps so it sounded just like you going to the fridge. You had to breathe through your mouth because your allergies were so bad. My clompy high-heeled boots dangled from my hand. I think of your face as you watched me leave, on the cusp of speaking. It was in May. Do you remember what you were going to say? What if you’d said it? What if I’d asked?
When I finally got to those parties, told them the elaborate tale of my escape, people called me Fun. Even when my lipstick smeared across my face, or I fainted when I was too high, or I threw up. Violet, you’re FUN.
I didn’t want to be Fun in Lyric. Fun was thoughtless. I wanted to disappear. I shaved my head. I wore the plainest clothes I could think of, like my disappearing uniform. I turned off my phone, like everyone in the world seems to think is the answer. In Lyric, I’d be a withering wallflower. That’s why Mom and Dad sent me here, right?
Then, today, I was locking up my bike outside Toby’s bakery. His blackberry pie is so good and it stains your teeth purple, like your teeth in the hospital. I was locking up my bike, thinking of you, and someone drove by and yelled, Sick ride, dyke! and I yelled back, REAL CLEVER, PAL, projecting from the diaphragm like I’d learned on Broadway, so loud I wonder if you heard me in Vermont.
These tourists on the sidewalk stared, and I was embarrassed, but it also felt really, really good to yell like that. To have people look.
Mom told me I could never disappear, and you know what? She’s right. And at this point, I don’t even think I want to.
So screw disappearing.
Disappearing sucks.
Life’s a whole lot easier when you’re Fun, anyway.
FUN’S NIGHT OUT: LYRIC EDITION
That same Thursday night, two hours after bailing on her correspondence and sneaking past her sleeping uncle, Fun sits in the back booth of the Lyric Pub with her new friend, Rus. Or was it Gus? Fun doesn’t care—no one’s carded her and Rus/Gus is handsome enough, so the night’s off to a great start.
“You should come see my boat,” Rus/Gus says, one hand on her knee. He smells faintly of smoke and engine oil, and he’s bought her three tequilas so far. His beard is gray in patches. If the man by the vending machine was too old, this man is definitely too old. He hasn’t asked Fun her age, but if he does, she’s decided she’ll say nineteen. Older, but not yet twenty. This feels like the right amount of lying.
The Lyric Pub’s not exactly New York, but Fun’s not complaining: Thursday night turns out to be karaoke night, which promises great entertainment. There’s a vending machine in the back that sells cigarettes, which is funny. The table’s littered with lime rinds, her lips sting with salt, and she’s most of the way to forgetting herself. She’s forgotten her brother (almost). She’s forgotten the sharpness of her mother’s voice in the hospital, or at least it’s gone muffled around the edges. She’s forgotten the nice things, too: dancing with her dad to “Rebel Rebel,” how she and her mom would sometimes sit in the park, eat candy, and watch the dogs go by.
Rus/Gus moves his hand up her thigh. Fun is not alarmed. In fact, she’s pleased. Everything is going according to plan: the drinks, the guy, the touching. She’s done this a thousand times during the Year of Wild, disappeared into bedrooms while the party carries on outside the closed door. She’s liked it. Hooking up always feels good. She’s never done anything she hasn’t wanted. She knows she’s lucky.
“The boat’s just down in the harbor,” Rus/Gus says. “You want to come see?”
The edges of Rus/Gus’s molars, up by his gums, are blue, like people of her parents’ generation.
Okay, maybe Fun hasn’t done this, specifically a thousand times.
“You okay, hon?” The bartendress is upon them, stacking her empty tequila glasses, looking wary. Her hair’s in a greasy bun, and she looks like the singer of a cool lesbian punk band Fun saw once, black tank top, black jeans, strong arms. She’s got that same expression her mother gets back home, when she looks at Fun, when she looks at Fun’s brother….
Nope. No. Don’t go there. Don’t forget: Fun’s a regular girl with a regular family.
“Aren’t you Toby’s niece?” the bartendress says.
“No.”
“I saw you in the bakery the other day.”
“Leave us alone, Frieda.”
“Fuck off, Rus.”
Ah! It was Rus!
She turns to me again. “I need to see some ID.”
Rus puts his arm around Fun’s shoulders. Fun hands the bartendress an excellent fake that she ordered from the internet. Frieda doubles, and Fun sways a little bit, even though she’s sitting down. Behind the bartendress, a man is setting up the karaoke microphones on a stage. The bar’s getting more and more crowded, faces Fun doesn’t recognize. Good. Fun loves a crowd.
“I have to run this,” Frieda says. “Doll. You sure you’re good? Is there anyone I can call for you?”
The bartendress’s face is so full of concern Fun almost takes her up on it. Her uncle would be mad, sure, but didn’t she want to be different? A call home would certainly be different. But if Fun goes home, the spell will be broken. She won’t be Fun anymore. She’ll just be Violet.
She’d rather go to Rus’s boat, even if he does have blue molars.
“One more round,” Fun says.
Rus kisses her on the cheek. Fun smiles. She’s glad to be back to her normal self. It feels—if not good—then at least familiar. Familiar, she supposes, is its own kind of good.
Two singers take the karaoke stage. They’ve picked a song that Fun knows. She can sing along in her head, though she’d never sing out loud. She doesn’t sing anymore. They’re off-key, but swaying with their arms around each other, having a ball. They seem like best friends. Fun doesn’t really have a best friend; she’s too Fun for that. There is some strange feeling in the pit of her stomach—what is that? Longing? They’re off-key, grinning, drunk. That one girl’s cute. But that’s not it. This feeling is like: nostalgia for something that didn’t happen. No—nostalgia for something that could’ve happened, if Fun were a different person with a different life.
; Rus watches her watch the singers. He thinks he understands.
“Let’s get you up there,” he says.
“No.” Fun doesn’t sing. Fun hates musicals. Fun’s never heard of Broadway.
“Okay,” says Rus. “No singing. How ’bout we leave, then? Right now?”
Rus has his hand tight around her wrist. Fun feels a funny jolt: her longing has turned to fear. How odd, she thinks clumsily, that she’s never felt real fear in New York, but here, in this little town…
Fun glances toward the door.
“Don’t tell me you’re changing your mind,” he says, like that is the worst crime.
His grip is painful and he pulls her from the booth. She’s not Fun anymore. She’s Violet, and like her mother taught her, she yells, makes a scene. She takes a glass from the table and throws it as hard as she can against the floor. He drops her wrist, Frieda yells, and Rus calls her a psycho bitch, and that’s fine, just fine, because that’s how she feels, plus which, she’s already out the door and halfway down the street.
It’s not even 10:00 p.m. Children are still awake, sitting with their families at the ice cream shop. Teenagers are loitering outside the movies, aimless, happy. Violet’s running. She forgot her bike. She knows who she is but she feels away from herself. This happened sometimes in the city. She’d see things from above, her eyes separate from her head, her body half-gone like the Cheshire cat’s.
She’s just about to pass the general store, when she recognizes two people in the parking lot. Orion’s carrying an armful of candy and Liv’s got a pack of cigarettes. Violet freezes on the sidewalk like a scared little bunny. Maybe they won’t see her. Orion gets in the van, but Liv looks down the sidewalk and meets her eyes. Gently, gently, she raises the pack of cigarettes in greeting.
Violet pulls a zipper across her lips.
Liv mouths: You okay?
Violet considers this. She can’t remember the last time someone her own age asked her this, really asked her. She can’t remember the last time she answered honestly. Slowly, she shakes her head no.