Frenemy of the People

by Nora Olsen

  I really wanted to talk to Clarissa. I didn’t know how to assess my own feelings. Maybe I was just being too cynical. I knew I could trust Clarissa because I knew now Clarissa spoke from the heart if anyone ever did. But what if Clarissa started spouting nonsense about Slobberin’ Robert being a martyr like some of the other girls had?

  When I got to the cafeteria at my lunch period, Clarissa was standing by the line, anxiously scanning the crowd. Her blossoming smile when she saw me made me feel like a million bucks. I was the one Clarissa had been looking for.

  Clarissa embraced me. It seemed like every time we said hello or good-bye now, we hugged. But unlike last time, today I didn’t feel sexual energy so thick I could almost bite into it. Now it was just a soft warmth. Clarissa’s hair had a distinctive lavender shampoo smell I was growing to love. I thought if someone waved that smell under my nose it would make me happy before I knew why.

  “Will you come eat with me in the crevice?” Clarissa said. “I can’t take how crazy it is here. I got us some Hostess Fruit Pies for lunch.”

  “Okay,” I said. I hadn’t eaten a Hostess Fruit Pie since elementary school. Could they really be vegan?

  The crevice was the small anteroom outside the art room. I didn’t go there much because it was really a place for people to meet in groups. Mostly art chicks hung out there, but they didn’t seem to be very possessive about the place.

  There were a couple of girls gossiping intensely, sitting on a bookshelf right next to the door of the art room, but the little round table with chairs was miraculously unoccupied. Clarissa forked over my Fruit Pie. It was lemon.

  “Everyone is losing their minds,” Clarissa said.

  “That’s what I’m thinking too.”

  “I think Slobberin’ Robert would be almost offended if he knew what people are saying about him. Also, people are referring to him as Robbie. I’ve never heard him called Robbie in my life. People keep coming up to me and pawing me and saying how sorry they are. I am really upset, but I’m not, like, his widow. And their weird behavior is not helping. This girl Haileigh Askegaard who I know from equestrian was, like, sobbing in my arms, and talking about him like they were really close. And I know for a fact Slobberin’ Robert didn’t like her. I heard him say more than once that she was a brainless zombie and he was just waiting for her limbs to start rotting off. Which, by the way, is exactly the kind of thing he says. He’s not the saintly Robbie Gelisano that people are discussing.”

  “I’m so glad to hear you say these things,” I said. “I don’t know why all these people are faking it.”

  “Yeah,” Clarissa said. “It’s odd. It almost seems like some kind of crazy mass delusion.”

  “That can really happen. I read about this girl in England almost a hundred years ago who believed she could levitate herself,” I said. “And all these other people believed it too. It was like group hypnosis. And then one day the crowd trampled her to death.”

  “That’s awful,” Clarissa said. “I wonder if she really could levitate herself.”

  “I don’t believe in that kind of thing,” I said. “I’m a rationalist. I believe in empiricism, in the scientific philosophy sense.”

  “Rationalist, empiricism,” Clarissa repeated. As if she were memorizing essay topics or book titles.

  “What about you?” I asked. “I mean, do you believe someone could levitate?” Hanging around Clarissa made me vaguely aware of how often I spouted my opinions in a dogmatic way. And didn’t even ask Clarissa what she thought. Also it was like some part of my brain was interested in talking about levitation and empiricism, but the rest of my brain was just screaming, Take me in your arms!

  “I try to keep an open mind,” Clarissa said. “It would be an amazing world if there really were miracles. The pastor at my church thinks they’re real. But I don’t know, sometimes he’s a little bonkers.”

  “Let me ask you this,” I said. “If this girl really could levitate herself, then how did she get trampled by a hysterical crowd?”

  “Good point,” said Clarissa. “How did you hear about this levitating girl?”

  “I just read it in a novel. You know, not for school.”

  “Wow,” Clarissa said. “I hardly ever read. Although I just got some library books—” She stopped abruptly. “Why are you doing so bad in school if you’re so smart?”

  “I just hate school,” I said. “Doesn’t everyone? It’s so awful. I’m not willing to waste my time studying and doing the homework.”

  Once again, I sounded like a snot nose. I wondered if Clarissa even really liked me. She knew I liked her—on the phone last night she had said, or almost said, that I cared about her. But did she care about me?

  “I guess most people don’t like school. But everyone else just does it anyway. Maybe you have some obscure learning disability,” Clarissa said.

  I shrugged.

  “Listen, speaking of hating school, I can’t handle it here today,” Clarissa said. “It’s too creepy. I’m going to skip. Take a mental-health day. You want to come with?”

  “Sure,” I said, pleased. It’s always good to skip school, but especially with a pretty girl. Spending the rest of the day alone with Clarissa was an unexpected present after this tough morning.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Clarissa

  We ended up going to Lexie’s house, with my bike in the back of her car. Even though Lexie had a wrench set, which she claimed was a must-have for lesbians, it took a long time to figure out how to get the wheel off to fit it in the trunk. When we went inside, a woman was cooking in the kitchen. The food looked way too healthy to taste good. I smiled and said hello to her, but she ignored me. She did say hello to Lexie. I realized she was some kind of domestic servant, not a member of Lexie’s family. I thought all my horseback-riding friends came from fancy families, but none of them had servants who cooked for them. It made me uncomfortable.

  “That’s Mrs. Álvaz,” Lexie explained as we headed up the stairs. “She’s the housekeeper. I wonder what she thinks we’re doing here.”

  Suddenly I wondered what we were doing here.

  In Lexie’s room we settled ourselves into the same configuration as before: she sat on the bed and I sat in the chair.

  “Do you wonder if Slobberin’ Robert was trying to kill himself?” Lexie asked hesitantly.

  “It’s so awful, but I do kind of think so,” I said. “I mean, driving too fast at night, maybe he crashed into Dead Man’s Curve on purpose. It’s not like he doesn’t know it’s there. He’s been around it a hundred times. We used to go to the McDonald’s in Millerton a lot, or the Mexican taco place. Or maybe just unconsciously he wanted to hurt himself. If you’re doing all that self-destructive stuff, what’s really going on in your head? I did find out when the visiting hours are at the hospital.”

  “I don’t know if I want to visit someone in a coma,” Lexie said. “I think I’d be too creeped out. And how would it help?”

  “He might be aware of your presence,” I said.

  I was hyperaware of Lexie’s presence right then. Her body was calling to my body, like those little magnetic Scottie dogs. If I didn’t get out of her bedroom, I was going to climb right on top of her, and I still hadn’t resolved any of my doubts about her.

  “Maybe we need to go outside,” I said. “You know, the calming effects of nature and everything.”

  “That’s a great idea. I can show you my new compost pile.”

  “Um, okay.”

  We didn’t have to pass Mrs. Álvaz to go out into the backyard, which was good because I’d started to feel guilty about skipping school. It was pretty nice out, and I felt just right in my jeans and cashmere sweater. Lexie showed me the compost pile, which didn’t even have any bugs or smell bad. It was just dirt with some food scraps in it. The garden was beautifully manicured. Even though most of the flowers were dead because it was fall, I could tell this was some kind of showplace.

  An orange-and-black butterf
ly flew by, coming to rest on a rock with its wings outstretched. “You must have seen that one before,” I said to Lexie. “That kind is really common. What are they called again?”

  “Oh, that’s a monarch.” Then she frowned. “But a lot of them have left for Mexico in big packs by now.”

  “What, they go on vacation?”

  “Kind of. They fly thousands of miles. Trees in Mexico get literally covered in butterflies as they gather together. They go back to the exact same trees in the Sierra Madres every year, even though it’s actually different butterflies because their lives are short. They just know somehow.”

  “That’s crazy,” I said.

  Lexie was still scowling at the butterfly, going closer to get a better look. “There’s something wrong with this one’s wing. Maybe it can’t keep up with the others and that’s why it’s still here. I’ve got to fix it.”

  “Fix it? What are you, a butterfly surgeon?”

  She didn’t even smile. “Yeah.” She darted toward a cunning little shed. Soon she was back, holding a butterfly net. Swish, the net came down on the butterfly. She grabbed the bottom of the net as the butterfly pattered its wings against the top. Now that the butterfly was trapped in the net, she headed for the house.

  Mrs. Álvaz was cleaning the entryway. “Oh no, Alexandra!” she said. “Your mother said no more bugs in the house.”

  “No, it’s okay,” Lexie said vaguely. We went to the kitchen, where she got a glass and trapped the butterfly inside. I couldn’t believe it when she popped the glass in the fridge. “This will slow the butterfly down and make it sluggish so it’s easier to work on,” she explained.

  “I didn’t know your name is Alexandra,” I said.

  “She’s the only one who calls me that,” Lexie said.

  After a few minutes Lexie took the butterfly out of the fridge, and we headed back up the stairs to her room. She pulled down the blinds, further setting the scene for seduction.

  “That will make the butterfly think it’s evening, and it will be more relaxed.”

  I told myself to get my head out of the gutter and focus on this poor injured, refrigerated bug.

  “Now we have to operate,” Lexie said. “Will you be my assistant?”

  “Sure.”

  She picked up the butterfly by the wings. “Part of one wing is missing,” she said. “It must have gotten torn off somehow. The wings have to be symmetrical to work right. If less of it was missing, I would just cut the other wing to make them match, but there’s too much gone. I’m going to have to glue on a new wing.”

  This sounded crazy.

  Lexie pulled a tote bag from under her desk. Out of it she brought a towel and a wire hanger with the hook part twisted into a loop. She cleared a space on the desk, laid out the towel, put the butterfly on the towel, and plopped the small wire loop over the butterfly so its body was pinned with wings at either side. Now I could see that one wing ended too soon in a jagged edge because a big hunk was gone. She gently tugged on the wings until they were both splayed out. Then she weighted down the hanger with a stapler that was lying on her desk.

  “Okay, everything I need is in there,” she said, gesturing to the tote bag. “Can you give me the butterfly wings?”

  Feeling like I was losing all connection with reality, I looked in the tote and found a Ziploc bag filled with wings. Gross. “Where did you get these?” I asked, handing it to her.

  “Butterflies only live about a month, so I collect these from the dead ones.” She picked a wing out of the bag. It was black and yellow, not orange, and it didn’t match the butterfly she had pinned under the coat hanger at all. “I’m all out of monarch wings,” she said. “This one’s a tawny crescent wing. It’s okay if they’re not the same kind of wing as long as they’re basically symmetrical.”

  “It kind of clashes,” I observed.

  “Scissors,” she said, holding out her hand. I snapped the pair of scissors handle first into her hand, feeling like an OR nurse.

  “The edge of the wing needs to be straight to repair it,” she said, snipping off the end of the damaged wing. “Don’t worry, it doesn’t hurt them.”

  “How do you know?”

  She laid the new wing over the old and cut it so it just barely overlapped. I was struck by how deft and sure her hands were with the delicate wing. “Glue,” she barked. “And a toothpick.” I handed them to her. The glue was a contact adhesive like my dad used to repair the ceiling upholstery of cars. Very carefully Lexie applied the glue with the toothpick onto the back of the new wing.

  “Tweezers!” She held the wing in the tweezers and laid the new wing precisely where it needed to go. The body of the butterfly flapped, but it was trapped by the coat hanger. It was kind of disgusting. Lexie pressed down on the wing.

  “Cornstarch, please. I need to soak up the extra glue.” She sprinkled this on the wing. The wing looked pretty strange now that it was two different colors and dusted with powder. She lifted off the coat hanger and picked up the butterfly by both wings. Its tiny legs cycled furiously. She gently pressed the wings, making sure the repair was complete. Then she let it go. It floated onto her hand and sat there, flapping its wings slowly.

  “It’s totally stunned,” I said. “It has no idea what just happened.”

  “I feel like Dr. Frankenstein,” she said, cracking a smile now that surgery was over. She pulled the shades back up and opened the window. “Go, little patchwork monarch, go. Maybe now our little friend will make it to Mexico.”

  “You must really love butterflies,” I said.

  “I really do.” Her pale face lit up. “They’re so beautiful. All they do is bring happiness and pollinate plants.” The butterfly flew off out the window, and Lexie closed it and went to sit on her bed.

  The last defenses in my heart finally softened to Lexie. Her true nature was now displayed to me. She couldn’t be bad or mean if she loved defenseless little creatures so much that she would spend her time healing an animal that only lived for a few weeks. I liked animals that could show affection, like horses and dogs. It would never occur to me to help an insect. Lexie had a gruff exterior, but she had a heart of gold.

  Now I really wanted to kiss her.

  So I said, “I really want to kiss you.”

  “Awesome,” she said and patted the bed. “Come here.”

  “But wait!” I said. I was nervous. “I have a few questions for you.”

  Now she looked nervous too. “I don’t have any diseases or anything.”

  “Why do you have a misspelled tattoo on your hand?” I blurted out.

  “What?” She looked at the sXe on her hand. “It’s not misspelled! That means straight edge. Straight edge is a kind of punk rock where you don’t smoke, drink, or do drugs.”

  “It’s a kind of music?”

  “It’s a whole lifestyle that goes along with the music,” Lexie said.

  “I never knew punks could be such clean citizens,” I said.

  She patted the bed again. “Come sit next to me and I’ll tell you all about it.”

  “What if you change your mind someday? What will you do about your tattoo?”

  “Oh, that will never happen,” she said, and her naïveté made me feel even more gooey toward her.

  So no misspelled tattoo, that was good. I went and sat beside her on the bed. She put one hand on my shoulder. Her touch seemed to go right through my skin to the deepest parts of me.

  “I have another question,” I said. “Are you a Communist?”

  She laughed. “No, and that’s your last question.” She leaned forward and time seemed to slow down. Our faces drifted closer and closer. I saw that Lexie’s eyes were closed. I smelled her breath—minty fresh—and then her lips brushed mine. We kissed, and I wrapped my arms around her. Lexie was so warm, she was throwing off heat like a stove. I felt so good it was like I was coming unglued. Our kisses became slow and lingering, and I could feel the heat through my whole body. I stroked Lexie’s chee
k and couldn’t get over how soft her skin was. I couldn’t help comparing her smooth cheek to Slobberin’ Robert’s stubbly one.

  My phone rang. I theoretically heard it but it seemed like it was coming from another dimension because I was completely enmeshed in the wonder of being in Lexie’s arms. Her lips against mine were more than everything. She was running her hand down my back. Her hand slipped into the back pocket of my jeans.

  The phone rang a bunch more times. Finally we stopped kissing long enough for me to fumblingly turn it off without even looking at it. Then we got back to it.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Lexie

  At some point we took a break from kissing and just lay on the bed, staring at each other. Clarissa looked super cute with her hair all messy and falling out of her ponytail. There was something about Clarissa that made me feel protective and tender. When I was with Ramone, we had been like tigers, two feisty lady tigers. Nothing tender.

  Clarissa was gazing at me with an intense expression, her hair framing her face. With my eyes, I traced each little tendril of hair. We held each other’s gaze, and it was almost like we were talking to each other without saying a word. I was communicating to her that she was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen, and weirdly she seemed to be beaming that right back at me.

  I was super self-conscious of the fact that Clarissa had kissed Ramone, that Ramone was the only other girl either of us had ever kissed. Ramone was like some horrible vector. I touched Clarissa’s incredibly soft hair, trying to focus on the girl who was actually in front of me and not my ex. It was crazy to me that all of a sudden I could actually kiss Clarissa and stroke her hair.

  “I really like you,” Clarissa said.

  “I really like you too,” I said. We smiled at each other like we were saying brilliant things.