This Lullaby

by Sarah Dessen

  “So what do you wear to dump somebody?” she asked me, twirling a lock of hair around one finger. “Black, for mourning? Or something cheerful and colorful, to distract them from their pain? Or maybe you wear some sort of camouflage, something that will help you disappear quickly in case they don’t take it well.”

  “Personally,” I told her, pulling out a pair of black pants and turning them in my hands, “I’m thinking dark and slimming, a bit of cleavage. And clean underwear.”

  “You wear that every night.”

  “This is every night,” I replied. I knew I had a clean red shirt I liked somewhere in my closet, but I couldn’t find it in the shirt section. Which meant somebody had been in there, picking around. I kept my closet the way I kept everything: neat and tidy. My mother’s house was usually in chaos, so my room had always been the only place I could keep the way I chose. Which was in order, perfectly organized, everything where I could easily find it. Okay, so maybe I was a little obsessive. But so what? At least I wasn’t a slob.

  “Not for Jonathan,” she said, and when I glanced at her she added, “I mean, this is a big night for him. He’s getting dumped. And he doesn’t even know it yet. He’s probably eating a cheese-burger or flossing or picking up his dry cleaning, and he has no idea. No inkling.”

  I gave up on the red shirt, pulling out a tank top instead. I didn’t even know what to say to her. Yes, it sucked getting dumped. But wasn’t it better to just be brutally honest? To admit that your feeling for someone is never going to be powerful enough to justify taking up any more of their time? I was doing him a favor, really. Freeing him up for a better opportunity. In fact, I was a practically a saint, if you really thought about it.

  Exactly.

  A half hour later, when we pulled up to the Quik Zip, Jess was waiting for us. As usual, Chloe was late.

  “Hey,” I said, walking over to her. She was leaning against her big tank of a car, an old Chevy with a sagging bumper, and sucking on an Extra Large Zip Coke, our drug of choice. They were the best bargain in town, at $1.59, and served a multitude of uses.

  “I’m getting Skittles,” Lissa called out, slamming her door. “Anybody want anything?”

  “Zip Diet,” I told her, and reached for my money, but she shook me off, already heading inside. “Extra large!”

  She nodded as the door swung shut behind her. She even walked perkily, hands jauntily in her pockets as she headed for the candy aisle. Lissa’s sweet tooth was infamous: she was the only person I knew who could discern between Raisinets and chocolate-covered raisins. There was a difference.

  “Where’s Chloe?” I asked Jess, but she just shrugged, not even taking her lips off the straw of her Zip Coke. “Did we not say seven-thirty sharp?”

  She raised an eyebrow at me. “Calm down, anal retentive,” she said, shaking her drink. The ice rattled around, sloshing in what was left of the liquid. “It’s just six right now.”

  I sighed, leaning back against her car. I hated when people were late. But Chloe always ran five minutes behind, on a good day. Lissa was usually early, and Jess was Jess: solid as a rock, there right on the dot. She’d been my best friend since the fifth grade, and was the only one I knew I could always depend on.

  We’d met because our desks sat side by side, per Mrs. Douglas’s alphabet system. Mike Schemen the nose picker, then Jess, then me, with Adam Struck, who had bad adenoids, on my other side. It was practically required that we be best friends, seeing as we were surrounded by the booger twins.

  Jess was big, even then. She wasn’t fat, exactly, just like she wasn’t fat now. More just large, big-boned, tall and wide. Thick. Back then, she was larger than any of the boys in our class, brutal at dodgeball, able to hit you hard enough with one of those red medicine balls before school that it left a mark that lasted through final bell. A lot of people thought Jess was mean, but they were wrong. They didn’t know what I knew: that her mom had died that summer, leaving her to raise two little brothers while her dad worked full-time at the power plant. That money was always tight, and Jess didn’t get to be a kid anymore.

  And eight years later, after making it through some hellish middle school and decent high school years, we were still close. Mostly because I did know these things about her, and Jess still kept most stuff to herself. But also because she was one of the only people who just didn’t take my shit, and I had to respect that.

  “Looky look,” she said now in her flat voice, crossing her arms over her chest. “The queen has arrived.”

  Chloe pulled up beside us, cutting the engine on her Mercedes and flipping down the visor to check her lipstick. Jess sighed, loudly, but I ignored her. This was old news, her and Chloe, like background music. Only if things were really quiet or dull did the rest of us even notice it anymore.

  Chloe got out, slamming her door, and came over to us. She looked great, as usual: black pants, blue shirt, cool jacket I hadn’t seen before. Her mom was a flight attendant and a compulsive shopper, a deadly combination that resulted in Chloe always having the newest stuff from the best places. Our little trendsetter.

  “Hey,” she said, tucking her hair behind her ear. “Where’s Lissa?”

  I nodded toward the Quik Zip, where Lissa was now at the counter, chatting up the guy behind the counter as he rang up her candy. We watched as she waved good-bye to him and came out, a bag of Skittles already opened in one hand. “Who wants one?” she called out, smiling as she saw Chloe. “Hey! God, great jacket.”

  “Thanks,” Chloe said, brushing her fingers over it. “It’s new.”

  “Is that surprising?” Jess said sarcastically.

  “Is that diet?” Chloe shot back, eyeing the drink in Jess’s hand.

  “All right, all right,” I said, waving my hand between them. Lissa handed me my Zip Diet, and I took a big sip, savoring the taste. It was the nectar of the gods. Truly. “What’s the plan?”

  “I have to meet Adam at Double Burger at six-thirty,” Lissa said, popping another Skittle into her mouth. “Then we’ll catch up with you guys at Bendo or whatever.”

  “Who’s at Bendo?” Chloe asked, jangling her keys.

  “Don’t know,” Lissa said. “Some band. There’s also a party we can go to in the Arbors, Matthew Ridgefield has a keg somewhere and, oh, and Remy has to dump Jonathan.”

  Now, everyone looked at me. “Not necessarily in that order,” I added.

  “So Jonathan’s out.” Chloe laughed, pulling a pack of cigarettes out of her jacket pocket. She held them out to me, and I shook my head.

  “She quit,” Jess said to her. “Remember?”

  “She’s always quitting,” Chloe replied, striking a match and leaning into it, then shaking it out. “What’d he do, Remy? Stand you up? Declare undying love?”

  I just shook my head, knowing what was coming.

  Jess grinned and said, “He wore a nonmatching outfit.”

  “Smoked in her car,” Chloe said. “That’s got to be it.”

  “Maybe,” Lissa offered, pinching my arm, “he made a major grammatical error and was fifteen minutes late.”

  “Oh, the horror!” Chloe shrieked, and all three of them burst out laughing. I just stood there, taking it, realizing not for the first time that they only seemed to get along when ragging on me as a group.

  “Funny,” I said finally. Okay, so maybe I did have a bit of history with expecting too much from relationships. But God, at least I had standards. Chloe only dated college guys who cheated on her, Jess avoided the issue by never dating anyone, and Lissa—well, Lissa was still with the guy she lost her virginity to, so she hardly counted at all. Not that I was going to point this out. I mean, I was all about the high road.

  “Okay, okay,” Jess said finally. “How are we doing this?”

  “Lissa goes to meet Adam,” I said. “You, me, and Chloe hit the Spot and then go on to Bendo. Okay?”

  “Okay,” Lissa said. “I’ll see you guys later.” As she drove off, and Chloe moved her ca
r to the church parking lot next door, Jess lifted up my hand, squinting at it.

  “What’s this?” she asked me. I glanced down, seeing the black letters, smudged but still there, on my palm. Before leaving the house I’d meant to wash it off, then got distracted. “A phone number?”

  “It’s nothing,” I said. “Just this stupid guy I met today.”

  “You heartbreaker,” she said.

  We piled into Jess’s car, me in front, Chloe in back. She made a face as she pushed aside a laundry hamper full of clothes, a football helmet, and some knee pads of Jess’s brothers, but she didn’t say anything. Chloe and Jess may have had their differences, but she knew where to draw the line.

  “The Spot?” Jess asked me as she cranked the engine. I nodded, and she put the car in reverse, backing up slowly. I reached forward and turned on the radio while Chloe lit another cigarette in the backseat, tossing the match out the window. As we were about to pull out onto the road, Jess nodded toward a big metal trash can by the gas pumps, about twenty feet away.

  “Bet me?” she asked, and I craned my neck, judging the distance, then picked up her mostly empty Zip Coke and shook it, feeling its weight.

  “Sure,” I said. “Two bucks.”

  “Oh, God,” Chloe said from the backseat, exhaling loudly. “Now that we’re out of high school, can we please move on from this?”

  Jess ignored her, picking up the Zip Coke and pressing her hand around it, flexing her wrist, then stuck her arm out the driver’s-side window. She squinted, lifted her chin, and then, in one smooth movement, threw her arm up and released the Zip Coke, sending it arcing over our heads and the car. We watched as it turned end over end in the air, a perfect spiral, before disappearing with a crash, top still on and straw engaged, in the trash can.

  “Amazing,” I said to Jess. She smiled at me. “I never have been able to figure out how you do that.”

  “Can we go now?” Chloe asked.

  “Like everything else,” Jess said, turning out into traffic, “it’s all in the wrist.”

  The Spot, where we always started our night, really belonged to Chloe. When her dad and mom divorced back in the third grade, he’d left town with his new girlfriend, selling off most of the property he’d amassed in town while working as a developer. He only kept one lot, out in the country past our high school, a grassy field with nothing on it but a trampoline he’d bought for Chloe on her seventh birthday. Chloe’s mom had banished it quick from the backyard—it didn’t match her English garden decor, all sculpted hedges and stone benches—and it ended up out on the land, forgotten until we were all old enough to drive and needed someplace of our own.

  We always sat on the trampoline, which was set up in the middle of the pasture, with the best view of the stars and sky. It still had some good bounce to it, enough so that any sudden movement by anybody jostled the rest. Which was good to remember whenever you were pouring something.

  “Watch it,” Chloe said to Jess, her arm jerking as she poured some rum into my Zip Coke. It was one of those little airplane bottles, which her mom regularly brought home from work. Their liquor cabinet looked like it was designed for munchkins.

  “Oh, settle down,” Jess replied, crossing her legs and leaning back on her palms.

  “It’s always like this when Lissa isn’t here,” Chloe grumbled, opening up another bottle for herself. “The balance of weight gets all out of whack.”

  “Chloe,” I said. “Give it a rest.” I took a sip of my Zip Coke, now spiked, tasting the rum, and offered it to Jess purely out of politeness. She never drank, never smoked. Always drove. Being a mom for so long to her brothers made it a given she’d be the same to us.

  “Nice night,” I said to her now, and she nodded. “Hard to believe it’s all over.”

  “Thank God,” Chloe said, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “Not a second too soon, either.”

  “Let’s drink to that,” I said, and leaned forward to press my cup against her tiny bottle. Then we just sat there, suddenly quiet, no noise except the cicadas starting up in the trees all around us.

  “It’s so weird,” Chloe said finally, “that it doesn’t feel different now.”

  “What?” I asked her.

  “Everything,” she said. “I mean, this is what we’ve been waiting for, right? High school’s over. It’s a whole new thing but it feels exactly the same.”

  “That’s because nothing new has started yet,” Jess told her. She had her face tipped up, eyes on the sky above us. “By the end of the summer, then things will feel new. Because they will be.”

  Chloe pulled another tiny bottle—this time gin—out of her jacket pocket and popped the top. “It sucks to wait, though,” she said, taking a sip of it. “I mean, for everything to begin.”

  There was the sound of a horn beeping, loud and then fading out as it passed on the road behind us. That was the nice thing about the Spot: you could hear everything, but no one could see you.

  “This is just the in-between time,” I said. “It goes faster than you think.”

  “I hope so,” Chloe said, and I eased back on my elbows, tilting my head back to look up at the sky, which was pinkish, streaked with red. This was the time we knew best, that stretch of day going from dusk to dark. It seemed like we were always waiting for nighttime here. I could feel the trampoline easing up and down, moved by our own breathing, bringing us in small increments up and back from the sky as the colors faded, slowly, and the stars began to show themselves.

  By the time we got to Bendo, it was nine o’clock and I had a nice buzz on. We pulled up, parked, and eyed the bouncer standing by the door.

  “Perfect,” I said, pulling down the visor to check my makeup. “It’s Rodney.”“Where’s my ID?” Chloe said, digging through her jacket. “God, I just had it.”

  “Is it in your bra?” I asked her, turning around. She blinked, stuck her hand down her shirt, and came up with it. Chloe kept everything in her bra: I.D., money, extra barrettes. It was like sleight of hand, the way she just pulled things from it, like quarters from your ear, or rabbits out of a hat.

  “Bingo,” she said, sticking it in her front pocket.

  “So classy,” Jess said.

  “Look who’s talking,” Chloe shot back. “At least I wear a bra.”

  “Well, at least I need one,” Jess replied.

  Chloe narrowed her eyes. She was a Bcup, and a small one at that, and had always been sensitive about it. “Well at least—”

  “Stop,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  As we walked up, Rodney eyed us from where he was sitting on a stool propping the door open. Bendo was an eighteen-and-up club, but we’d been coming since sophomore year. You had to be twenty-one to drink, though, and with our fakes Chloe and I usually could get our hand stamped. Especially by Rodney.

  “Remy, Remy,” he said as I reached into my pocket, pulling out my fake. My name, my face, my brother’s birthday, so I could quote it quick if I had to. “How’s it feel to be a high school graduate?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, smiling at him. “You know I’m a junior at the university.”

  He hardly glanced at my ID but squeezed my hand, brushing it with his fingers as he stamped it. Disgusting. “What’s your major?”

  “English lit,” I said. “But I’m minoring in business.”

  “I got some business for you,” he said, taking Chloe’s ID and stamping her hand. She was quick though, pulling back fast, the ink smearing.

  “You’re an asshole,” Jess told him, but he just shrugged, waving us in, his eyes on the next group of girls coming up the steps.

  “I feel so dirty,” Chloe sighed as we walked in.

  “You’ll feel better after you have a beer.”

  Bendo was crowded already. The band hadn’t come on yet, but the bar was two deep and the air was full of smoke, thick and mixed with the smell of sweat.

  “I’ll get a table,” Jess called out to me,
and I nodded, heading for the bar with Chloe behind me. We pushed through the crowd, dodging people, until we got a decent spot by the beer taps.

  I’d just hoisted myself up on my elbows, trying to wave down the bartender, when I felt someone brush up against me. I tried to pull away, but it was packed where I was standing, so I just drew myself in a bit, pulling my arms against my sides. Then, very quietly, I heard a voice in my ear.

  It said, in a weird, cheesy, right-out-of-one-of-my-mother’s-novels way, “Ah. We meet again.”

  I turned my head, just slightly, and right there, practically on top of me, was the guy from the car dealership. He was wearing a red Mountain Fresh Detergent T-shirt—NOT JUST FRESH: MOUNTAIN FRESH!—it proclaimed, and was smiling at me. “Oh, God,” I said.

  “No, it’s Dexter,” he replied, offering me his hand, which I ignored. Instead I glanced around behind me for Chloe, but saw she had been waylaid by a guy in a plaid shirt I didn’t recognize.

  “Two beers!” I shouted at the bartender, who’d finally seen me.

  “Make that three!” this Dexter yelled.

  “You are not with me,” I said.

  “Well, not technically,” he replied, shrugging. “But that could change.”

  “Look,” I said as the bartender dropped three plastic cups in front of me, “I’m not—”

  “I see you still have my number,” he said, interrupting me and grabbing one of the beers. He also slapped a ten down, which redeemed him a bit but not much.

  “I haven’t had a chance to wash it off.”

  “Will you be impressed if I tell you I’m in a band?”

  “No.”

  “Not at all?” he said, raising his eyebrows. “God, I thought chicks loved guys in bands.”

  “First off, I’m not a chick,” I said, grabbing my beer. “And second, I have a steadfast rule about musicians.”

  “Which is?”

  I turned my back to him and started to elbow my way through the crowd, back to Chloe. “No musicians.”

  “I could write you a song,” he offered, following me. I was moving so fast the beers I was carrying kept sloshing, but damn if he didn’t keep right up.