You Know I'm No Good

by Jessie Ann Foley

  “Ta-da!” She sweeps her arms to reveal a stack of shoeboxes piled up in the middle of the gym floor.

  “You got us . . . new shoes?” somebody asks. “That’s the surprise?”

  “Not exactly! Go take a look, girls! Find your size! Happy Thanksgiving!”

  “I have wide feet,” says Ariadne, a Wiccan-identifying redhead who lives in Conifer. “And fallen arches. I really can’t be expected to wear mass-produced—”

  “Oh my God!” shrieks Madison, who has just lifted the lid off a box of size nines. “They’re figure skates!” She lifts the pristine white boots reverently from their bed of tissue paper and hugs them to her chest. She squints joyfully around at us from behind her outdated pink glasses. “I used to skate competitively when I was a kid! I gave it up in sixth grade when I couldn’t land my axel, but still . . . Oh, I love skating!”

  “What’d you do, Mary Pat,” says Trin, skeptically approaching the stack, “rob a truck?”

  “They’re from an anonymous donor,” Mary Pat says, tossing her a box. “They’re all brand-new!”

  “Are they ours to keep?”

  “Well, yes and no.” She clears her throat. “They’ll have to be kept here in the gym. Safety purposes.”

  “Suicide by ice skate,” says Vera, lifting a boot out of its wrapping and pretending to slice her throat with its blade. “Just imagine the headlines.”

  “Really, Vera.” Mary Pat pinches the bridge of her nose. “Is that necessary?”

  “Is this mandatory?” asks Bronwynne, our other Conifer Wiccan. “Because I have conscientious objections to organized sports.”

  “I’m from Southern California,” says Soleil. “What do I know about ice-skating?”

  “I, too,” adds Freja, “have no experience with this sport.”

  “But I can teach you, Freja!”

  Freja’s face pinches up with the faintest hint of distaste at Madison’s proposition. “You do not need—”

  “I can teach all you guys! My old coach used to say that figure skating is like riding a bike—you might be a bit wobbly at first, but once you get the hang of it, it’s a skill you’ll have forever!”

  “Madison, I think you’ll make a wonderful coach,” Mary Pat says with a smile. She points at those of us who are slouched sullenly against the mat-covered gym wall. “This is going to be fun, girls. Okay?” She looks around at each of us, her face stretching with the intensity of her smile. “Okay?”

  “Do me a favor,” Vera whispers over to me, testing the sharpness of her toe pick with the pad of her finger and drawing a drop of dark blood in the process. “If I ever become that earnest about anything, take me out into the woods and leave me to the fucking wolves.”

  32

  THE WEATHER OVER Thanksgiving weekend is fine and cold and bright, and despite our initial hesitations, we spend almost the whole of it on the ice. As we practice, members of our weekend staff sit on the log near the shore to cheer us on. Mary Pat, in particular, observes us with such satisfaction that I’m half convinced the “anonymous donor” is Madison’s mom and that this whole thing is just an elaborate plan her parents hatched with the Red Oak staff to help promote her self-confidence and get her maturated by the spring, cured and healthy, just in time for junior prom.

  It’s cool to see this side of Madison, though. Off the ice, she’s still an awkward hand-eating weirdo, but when she laces up her skates it’s like she morphs into this different person, this athlete, who instinctively knows how to move her body through the world. Watching her glide forward and backward, showing off her spins, teaching us the names of each: the scratch, the change-foot, the layback, the sit, the camel—it’s a nice reminder that everybody’s got more inside them than you can ever see at first look, and that some of the time, people can surprise you in a good way.

  Like most of the other girls here, I was never much of a sports kid myself. Well, that’s not exactly true: I played soccer in elementary school. I loved it, and I wasn’t terrible at it, either. But the problem is, when you’re a kid, sports are just sports, and you can play them for the simple and wonderful reason that they’re fun. But when you get to high school, sports become more than sports; they become connected to identity, baked into the ecosystem of your social world, a signifier for other people for how to place you. By the time spring soccer tryouts came around freshman year, I’d already been branded—the slut who seduced a senior girl’s boyfriend, who gets drunk at parties, who gets high, who gives blow jobs to near-strangers. Girls like that don’t play soccer. Everybody knows that, so what was the point in even trying out? Now I wonder, as I circle Lake Onamia, practicing my wobbly, newfound skills, could my entire shitstorm of a high school career have been avoided if I’d just shown up on the practice field that rainy March afternoon instead of going over to Marnie’s to steal weed gummies from her arthritic grandma? What if I had made the team? Maybe the discipline of all those early morning practices, the accountability to my teammates and coach, the need to pay close attention to what I was putting into my body . . . maybe all those things would have kept me honest. Kept me good—maybe even good enough to reclassify me in the social hierarchy. I could have been jock identifying. I could have been a fresh-cheeked good girl with French-braided pigtails threaded through with school colors. Muscled legs encased in swishy pants and Adidas slides with socks. Team spaghetti dinners prepared at somebody’s house by somebody’s mom. Taylor Swift–soundtracked bus rides to all-state tournaments. Chaste, sober parties with the freshman boys’ team.

  I guess Vivian has a point about how I’ve allowed other people’s opinions of me to become self-fulfilling prophecies: maybe if I had just shown up for those stupid tryouts, I never would have ended up here.

  But, I mean, there’s not a whole lot I can do about it now, except to skate around the lake until my legs burn, until I remember that I can still use my body the way I once used it when I was a kid: for the singular purpose of my very own pleasure.

  33

  “I’D LOVE TO PICK UP where we left off before the holiday,” says Vivian at our Monday session.

  “Where’d we leave off again?” I stretch out my legs, wonderfully sore from my weekend on skates.

  “We were talking about whether you’d had emotionally and physically satisfying sexual relationships with your partners.”

  “Oh, yes. Now I remember. And I said I’d rather talk about my dead mom than talk about my sex life with you.”

  “But, Mia, if you don’t talk to me, then I can’t help you. And if I can’t help you, then I can’t track your growth. And if I can’t track your growth—”

  “—then you can’t maturate me, and I will be stuck here until I die of boredom or turn eighteen, whichever comes first?”

  Vivian simply smiles at me.

  “Fine.” I sit back in my chair, pull my aching legs to my chest. “What do you want to know?”

  “Thank you.” She picks up her pen. “Why don’t we start at the beginning?”

  “The beginning?”

  I’m good at pretending to be dumb and not know what people are talking about—I did a lot of this in elementary school, when I was trying to blend in as just normal smart, not weird smart. Vivian, of course, knows that I’m just stalling.

  “Yes. The beginning. Why don’t you tell me about your first sexual experience, Mia?”

  “Ugh. Fine. His name was Scottie. He was an older guy.”

  “How much older?”

  “Oh, not, like inappropriately older. He was a senior; I was a freshman.”

  “So you were, what, fourteen? Fifteen?”

  “Fourteen.”

  “Ah. That’s pretty young, huh?”

  “I mean . . . it’s not that young.” I glance up at her. “Is it?”

  “Well, it’s a lot younger than eighteen.”

  “He might have been seventeen. He didn’t tell me when his fucking birthday was. We didn’t trade, like, astrological signs.”

  “Do
you want to tell me about it?”

  “There’s not much to tell. The whole thing was about ten minutes from start to finish.”

  “So it shouldn’t take too long for you to tell me about it.”

  “Yeah, but I just—don’t want to. Why don’t you give me another one of your boring etymology lectures instead? That’s what I’m in the mood for.”

  “Mia,” she says gently. “You’ve got to let me help you.”

  I read her kindness act as a threat: Either open up to me, or you ain’t going nowhere, kid. And so, because I can’t imagine lasting a whole winter here without going Jack-Nicholson-in-The-Shining level stir crazy, I relent. I tell her the story, the whole story, of me and Scottie Curry and the things that came after, and I even cry a little bit because I figure maybe she’ll take my tears as a sign of sincerity, that I’m really doing the emotional work. When I’m done talking, she hands me a tissue.

  “Mia,” she says. “Did you ever tell an adult about what happened between you and Scottie?”

  I let out a dry, barky laugh. “Who, like my dad? Because that wouldn’t be awkward at all.”

  “Mia, I know you’re trying to be flip about this. But I’m here to tell you: your experience wasn’t typical.”

  “Ah. I should have had the jazz music and the silk sheets, huh?”

  “Mia.” She balances her notepad on her lap, then reaches across the space between us to take my two hands in hers. I look down, doubtfully, at her fingers wrapped around mine.

  “Uh—did you forget about the Rule of Six Inches, Viv?”

  “Mia,” she says again. “What you just described to me: that’s sexual assault. Scottie assaulted you.”

  “Sexual assault? As in, rape?”

  She nods. I yank my hands away from her.

  “Oh my God. Here we go. Look, I’m not some fucking victim, okay?”

  “Rape isn’t just something that happens to girls in alleys with strangers.”

  “God, Vivian. Did you listen to a word I said? I made the first move; I dressed up for him. I thought ‘stop,’ but never bothered to say ‘stop.’ That’s not rape. That’s just a freshman idiot girl doing idiot things and getting exactly what she deserves in the process.”

  “Did he ever ask you if you wanted to do what you were doing?”

  “I kissed him first! Of course he thought I wanted it!”

  “Did he ever ask if it was okay? If you were okay? Did you say that word, ‘yes,’ ever?”

  “No, but—”

  “An older boy in a position of relative power invited you to his empty home, had sex with you despite your utter silence and clear discomfort, and then afterward stood by silently and allowed you to be bullied and mocked, allowed your life to fall apart, and he never spoke to you again. He assaulted you, Mia. And he left you, alone, to bear the consequences. Think about the repercussions this has had in your life. And then the repercussions—if any—it’s had in his.”

  “This is the dumbest shit I’ve ever heard. You’re trying to tell me I was raped and I didn’t even know it. I’m not fucking stupid, Vivian.”

  “No, you’re not stupid. You just— Let me put it this way. So, at the start of World War II, the Jewish philosopher and journalist Raymond Aron fled his home in Paris. He moved to London and joined the Free French forces. Years later, when asked whether he’d understood the evils the Nazis were committing against his people back on the European continent, he said: ‘I knew, but I didn’t believe it. And because I didn’t believe it, I didn’t know.’”

  “I don’t want one of your stupid history lessons right now.”

  “Scottie raped you, Mia. This is something you’ve always known. You just didn’t want to believe it. And because you didn’t want to believe it, you didn’t know.”

  Whore.

  Slut.

  Pig.

  Cum dumpster.

  White trash.

  Punch line.

  Warm hole.

  If words can reach a saturation point, where you say them so many times they cease to have meaning, then maybe bodies can, too. If I share my body with enough people, it ceases to belong to me. It belongs to the world and the world can do what it wants with this body that was once mine.

  Whore. Slut. Pig. Cum dumpster. White trash. Punch line. Warm hole.

  Whoreslutpigcumdumpsterwhitetrashpunchlinewarmholewhoreslutpigcumdumpsterwhitetrashpunchlinewarmholewhoreslutpigcumdumpsterwhitetrashpunchlinewarm—

  “Deep breaths,” I hear Vivian’s voice, muffled, coming from somewhere. My head is in my lap, my hands are pressed over my ears, and I can’t breathe, but at least no one is touching me.

  “Deep breaths. From your belly. Deep breaths from your belly.”

  But I can’t—

  I can’t seem to—

  “Your life doesn’t need to be—”

  What’s wrong with me?

  “Your life doesn’t—”

  Why am I so—

  “Your life—”

  Why am I like this? Why didn’t somebody tell me there are no trial runs; that everything you do in your life counts; that you can drink or smoke enough to forget what you did and what was done to you but you can’t do anything to forget the way it made you feel?

  “Allow yourself to imagine something better.”

  But—

  “Something that is deserving of who you are. Something better than what you’ve had.”

  But—

  “And then forgive yourself for the mistakes that came afterward. Forgive yourself and let it go.”

  34

  I DON’T SLEEP WELL.

  I feel that word—“rape”—like a small, cruel animal, hunched and pressing on my chest all night. Maybe if I shouted it enough times, I could destroy it, but the shape of that one syllable feels dirty in my mouth, and anyway, I don’t want to wake Madison, who’s been sleeping like a champ ever since she started her skating program.

  The next afternoon, which is both brilliantly sunny and cold as fuck, Coach Leslie marches us out to the lake for PE, and it’s just the wake-up call I need. Out here, it’s so frigid that my eyes won’t stop leaking and my skin vibrates. The cold floats up from the frozen water, snaking up my legs and into my head like a full body shot of espresso. My brain itself feels like a rough ice sculpture, with sharp thoughts carving into it, clear and potent. One such thought: I’m glad I’m here, at least for now. My life at Red Oak is as rigidly choreographed as a symphony. There are no variables, no x. I do not have choices anymore. But here’s the tradeoff, and I surprise myself by considering that maybe it’s a fair one: at least I know I’m safe here.

  All of us, even the sports-averse Wiccans from Conifer, can now wobble our way from one end of the lake to the other without making total clowns of ourselves. Madison, meanwhile, has been meeting Coach Leslie on the ice during constructive relaxation to practice her jumps, and today she unveils them for us—the salchow, the toe loop, and the lutz. As she spins and leaps across the surface of the lake, we reward her, after each perfect landing, with raucous applause.

  “They’re just singles,” she says shyly, but her eyes shine with exertion and pleasure. “It’s not a big deal.”

  That’s when Freja suggests that Madison try her axel, the jump she could never land, that brought her skating days to an end.

  “If you can do all these other jumps, Madison,” Freja says, “why can you not do this one?”

  Nodding, whoops of agreement from both Birchwood and Conifer and the staff gathered on the log.

  “You guys don’t get it.” Madison’s hands wave before her mouth as she turns in nervous little swizzles up and down the ice. “An axel is the only jump that takes off going forward. It’s like a whole thing with physics.”

  “Perhaps,” says Freja, “it has never been a problem of physics but of confidence.”

  “No, but, like, it’s really hard, even if it doesn’t look it. And I could never land it because I’m too heavy. If I had more of a
skater’s body—”

  “Your body is beautiful,” Freja says simply. “What is wrong with your body?”

  “You think my body is beautiful?” Madison’s hands, ever fluttering, still themselves against her heart.

  I’m afraid for a moment that she might faint.

  “Yes. It is a strong body. A healthy body.” Freja puts her hands firmly on her hips. “You will do this axel for us.”

  Somebody in Conifer starts the chant: “Mad-i-son! Mad-i-son!” And everybody joins in, but our cheers aren’t really necessary. It is Freja who has decreed that Madison will do her axel, and for Madison, Freja’s opinion is the only one that matters.

  “Confidence,” she says slowly. “You’re right. I mean, skating is more of a mental sport than people realize. If I believe I can do it . . .”

  “Exactly. Then you can do it.”

  We move out of the way, gather in a crowd at the shore of the frozen lake to give her enough space. Madison bites her lip, and a glaze comes over her eyes, so that her face is frozen into a facade of pure grit. She is clenching her teeth, pumping her arms, building momentum. Whistling past us, her arms reach up, her leg swings out like the hand of a clock, and then she is airborne, tight and spinning, an arc, a calculation, across the sky. I don’t say this lightly: she is magnificent.

  She turns her leg out, preparing for her landing, but even I, a person who knows next to nothing about ice-skating, can see there isn’t enough room between the sky and the ground, she has overshot it, and she hits the ice hip-first, a jarring crash that sets my teeth clacking. Something skids across the surface of the lake, then, and at first I think it’s a bird, maybe a spruce grouse startled by the crash, before I realize that it’s her wig, which has come free of its hairpins during the impact and is skidding away across the slicked plane of Lake Onamia.