The Girls Are All So Nice Here

by Laurie Elizabeth Flynn

  She jumps into the passenger seat of a rusty brown truck parked in the lot. There’s somebody in the driver’s seat already—a man, broad shouldered. He’s wearing a red baseball cap, so I can’t see his face. Sully’s hands are immediately in the air, like they always were when she really needed to make a point, as if by taking up more space she could prove anything to anyone. As if she needed to.

  Now the man seems to have deflated, with no fight left, slumping against the wheel. He takes his hat off and slides his hand through his hair before putting it back on, and it’s in that one second, maybe two, that I know who he is. A scream splits my head in half.

  Sully is with him. Sully is in his truck. He’s here. Of all the people who shouldn’t have shown up this weekend, he’s at the top of the list. There wouldn’t even be a list without him.

  Another sick thought unfurls like a flag. He was the one she was talking to last night. She has no idea. The two of them, with their own plan. Sully wouldn’t do that to me.

  My brain commands the rest of me to leave, but my body doesn’t get the message. I turn around too late. Because now they’re both looking straight at me.

  Sully and Kevin.

  THEN

  Things changed in the days after Dartmouth. Whatever power I held in my original emails to Kevin—whatever element of mystery I wielded—was replaced by a neediness I hated but couldn’t shake. My emails were tinged with urgency. Just thinking about you, I’m here if you want to talk!! His replies were sluggish and vague, a handful of words where I used to get paragraphs. I’m good thanks well talk soon

  Then there was the thing Sully told me on our drive down I-91 after the party at Kevin’s frat, both of us mainlining cheap coffee to keep from falling asleep. “I got his phone, Amb.”

  “What? Please tell me you’re lying.” The panic was instant and acute.

  “Relax. I just wanted to have a look. I gave it back. Don’t you want to know what was on it?”

  “No,” I said instantly, trying to focus on the road. “Yes.”

  She propped her feet up on the dashboard. “You said you emailed him. Well, he texts other girls. Look, I’m sorry, but you know I wasn’t going to let him pull that shit. Now you can write him off as another douchebag and move on.”

  I was silent for a long time. When I did find my words, I said the wrong thing. “Maybe they’re just friends. What did the messages say?”

  Sully’s sigh was heavy. “I didn’t read them all. I just thought it was a pretty big coincidence that he had so many girls in his phone.”

  I decided it was a coincidence, no matter how big. Sully was annoyed that I was making excuses for him, and even more annoyed when she found out I was still emailing him a few days later.

  “You’re wasting your time,” she said. “He’s not a good guy. I’ll prove it to you. You’re going to look back and feel like an idiot.”

  I knew that feeling well. But I heard Kevin’s voice in the Barn, felt his kiss. He was in love with me. And I had work to do.

  I was supposed to go home that weekend for fall break, but I told my parents I wanted to stay at school and get caught up on my reading. Billie was harder to pacify. “Is this because of the guy?” she asked over the phone. “What’s even happening with him after you guys kissed? I feel like you’re not telling me everything.”

  “It’s kind of complicated,” I replied. My eyes strayed back to my laptop.

  Just super busy lately with classes I hate, Kevin’s last email said. It was sent at five a.m., which meant he was either just going to bed or just waking up. If it was the former, I had a real reason to worry.

  That’s the worst, I wrote back feverishly, deciding to cut to the point. When do you think you’ll talk to Flora?

  I knew I should be studying—most of the girls had gone home for break, including Flora. Sully was going to stay on campus with me, but at the last minute she’d changed her mind and caught a train back to the Upper East Side, kissing me on both cheeks before she left.

  “Don’t do anything fun without me,” she said.

  “Same,” I told her, even though I was sure Evie would be there, willing to do everything I wasn’t.

  I didn’t hear from Kevin for an entire day. Fear plucked at my skin like an insect. When an email did come in, I could practically feel his frustration.

  Sorry can’t really deal with this right now got so many exams to study for. We can talk later OK?

  But we didn’t talk for the rest of fall break. I couldn’t concentrate on my reading, so I spent the time trying on Flora’s clothes, painting my stubby nails with her rainbow of colors. I had sunk to a new low, but I still had a long way to fall.

  Flora came back from Fairfield visibly upset and I was sure that Kevin had called her and finally said something. I tried to quell the heat rising in my chest and play the doting friend.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked. “Did you not have a good break?” Or breakup?

  She flopped onto her bed, hair thatched across her pillow. “I hate going home. All my parents ever do is fight. Now my mom and my stepdad are fighting all the time, too. She snaps at him for every little thing. I feel awful for Poppy. She cried when I had to leave. I honestly wanted to smuggle her back here with me.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Want me to make us some hot chocolate?”

  She gave me a wan smile. “I’d love that. Honestly, I just want to forget this ever happened and focus on something good. Like Halloween. It feels like I haven’t seen Kevin in forever.”

  “It’s going to be fun,” I said. It was. Sully and I had bought our tickets to the huge Halloween party at Eclectic already, and I knew Flora had bought them for herself and Kevin.

  “It’ll be my first frat party,” she said. “I’ll get to see what I’ve been missing.”

  My smile hurt. I decided Flora deserved what was coming to her. She was always so righteous, makeup off and tucked into bed, never in a rush for class, always measured and calm and so damn nice. She existed in a state of silent gloating.

  “You’re not missing out on much,” I said sweetly.

  Kevin didn’t call her that night, or the next night. I stayed home just to monitor what was happening, observing Flora like she was some kind of exotic species at the zoo.

  She cried the next day in our room, the tip of her nose petal pink. “Maybe I’m just being paranoid. But you know how Kevin calls me every night? Well, he keeps blowing me off. Says he’s busy studying for midterms, but I think it’s more than that.” Her blue eyes, wet and watery. “What if he’s sick of me and found someone else?”

  I rubbed her back in circles, like my mom did when I was upset. “I’m sure there’s no other girl. He’s totally into you.” Inwardly, I beamed. Who’s trying so hard now?

  Flora pushed her bangs off her face with a plastic headband. “I’m not adventurous enough. Or smart enough. I always knew he could do better. After his graduation, I overheard these girls talking about me. They were saying how they were surprised a guy like Kevin could end up with a girl like me.”

  “That’s not true,” I said, shocked that Flora had an insecurity. “People love you.”

  “People like me. There’s a difference. I just—I thought Kevin and I would be together forever.”

  I stared at the girl in front of me, with her hands on her blotchy cheeks, and tried to reconcile her with the Flora in my head. She wasn’t perfect, and she wasn’t pretending to be. Maybe her struggle was the opposite of mine. I fought to make myself look flawless. She fought to get people to see under the flawless veneer.

  “Do you think I should ask him? We’ve always been able to talk about everything, and we promised each other that we’d be honest, even if it hurt the other person to hear.” Mascara pooled under her eyes, enough to make her tragic.

  “No. Don’t ask him. You don’t want to seem suspicious. He’ll be here soon for Halloween. If things still seem weird, you can bring it up then. I feel like you only get a good rea
d on someone when you see them in person.”

  It was important that Flora didn’t call Kevin out, because under her glare, he might break down and tell her everything I had said. So much hinged on their not communicating. Every time guilt crept in, I reminded myself that it was love, this willingness to hurt anyone necessary. Flora was a casualty.

  She nodded, perking up. “You’re right. Halloween isn’t too far off—I can wait to talk to him then. I’m probably being paranoid. I swear, my brain is a scary place sometimes. It gloms on to one bad thought and turns it into a flesh-eating virus.”

  I rolled that line over and over in my head. Of all the things Flora said to me, it’s what I remember most.

  * * *

  Sully asked me repeatedly if I was still in touch with Kevin. I didn’t lie. “Is he going to dump her?” she said the morning of the Halloween party, impatient, while we were sitting in Olin. “If he’s so into you, why is he taking so long?”

  “He’s going to dump her,” I said. “I just don’t know when.”

  “Well, is he coming today?” She inched up her skirt as a group of boys walked past.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “He told Flora he was.”

  “If he really cares about you, he’ll show up.” She bit the end of her pen. “This should be interesting.”

  I didn’t tell her that I had emailed Kevin last night to ask if he was coming. He and Flora had spoken on the phone—I’d had my headphones on and pretended not to pay attention, but I knew from her repeatedly pleading, “Just tell me what’s going on,” that it hadn’t gone well.

  “He’ll be here,” I told Sully.

  But when I checked my email after lunch, I knew he wasn’t coming. I can’t do it yet, need more time and space to think thru it all. It was a message that made me want to shatter my laptop screen. Don’t you want to see me? I almost wrote back, but I stopped myself.

  I totally understand, I replied. I’m here anytime. You can call me if you’re sick of typing. I wanted to hear his voice, but he didn’t take me up on my offer. Disappointment shuddered through me, but so did realization. I could use his absence, make it a weapon in my arsenal.

  That evening, Flora wouldn’t stop crying. She had veered beyond smudged mascara into big tears, each one rolling down her cheek in slow motion. “He says he’s studying, but you know there’s going to be some huge Halloween party at his frat, with girls wearing next to nothing. I keep picturing him taking one of them up to his room. You know, I haven’t even been in his room this year. Why doesn’t he break up with me and put me out of my misery?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. I wasn’t.

  “It’s like he’s a stranger. We barely ever talk anymore and when we do, we fight. I’m sure you’ve noticed. I’m sorry you have to hear that.”

  She was apologizing, but I was the one with a running tally of missed calls and angry conversations in the margin of my Acting I notebook. “Look. It’s Halloween. You can’t stay in alone. So forget about him for the night, and come to the party with me and Sully.”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I should just stay here. In case he calls and changes his mind.”

  “Stop giving him so much power. We’ll go, have a few drinks, and come home. It’s what you need.” Flora always seemed to know what I needed. This was me turning the tables.

  Someone knocked on our door. Sully, already wearing her slutty blue-and-white dress. She was Belle, the “Provincial Life” version, except instead of carrying a basket and a book, she had a bottle of Stoli.

  “Time to start this party, slut,” she said. Her eyes swept the room, obviously looking for Kevin. “Why aren’t you dressed?”

  Flora wiped her face. She didn’t trust Sully to see her undone, but she trusted me. That made me soften, briefly. I shook it off.

  “Flora’s coming with us,” I said. “Her boyfriend is being a dick.”

  I worried that Sully would be disappointed, but if she was, she didn’t show it. If anything, she seemed excited. I couldn’t make Kevin show up, but I was bringing the ultimate lamb.

  “They all are,” Sully said. “If you’re coming out with us, you need to drink.”

  “She doesn’t drink,” I said, unsure of where the instinct to protect came from, but Flora had already accepted the bottle in Sully’s outstretched hands, unscrewing the cap and bringing it to her lips. Her face contorted immediately.

  “God, this is awful,” she sputtered.

  “Just wait,” Sully said. “It’ll get better.”

  I put on my own costume—slutty Cinderella, a dress I had found in a thrift shop that I was pretty sure had once belonged to an eight-year-old trick-or-treater, paired with plastic heels undoubtedly worn onstage by a stripper. Sully insisted on sweeping my hair into an updo, her hands lingering at the base of my neck. She whispered something in my ear. “Showtime.”

  “So your boyfriend’s an asshole,” Sully said to Flora. “What did he do?”

  “Nothing.” Flora tucked her legs underneath her. “We’re just dealing with long distance. It’s hard.”

  Sully ran her fingers through Flora’s hair. At first, it made her flinch, but I saw her settle into it. Her immunity to Sully’s charm was wearing off. “He’s an idiot, then. He doesn’t know how good he has it.”

  Flora didn’t want to wear her Scarlett O’Hara costume. “It doesn’t make sense without Rhett Butler,” she said.

  “I have an idea,” Sully said. “Let’s ask Gem.” It was widely known that Gemma had the most expansive closet of any girl on our floor, a wardrobe that took up all of her closet plus half of Clara’s, frothy dresses that peeked out from suitcases still covering her floor.

  Gemma did have something for Flora. A pink open-backed dress that Sully decided would be perfect for Sleeping Beauty. Flora said it was too short, but we convinced her to wear it anyway. There was a moment, when Flora was checking out her reflection in the mirror, that I saw in her eyes what I knew lived in mine. The realization that she could get away with things. The knowledge that she was attractive, that her legs looked amazing, even better with a pair of Gemma’s towering heels.

  We drank in Sully and Lauren’s room. Lauren was dressed like Uma Thurman from Pulp Fiction, a costume that looked ridiculous—her face was too round to pull off the black wig. Sully did bumps of cocaine off a key. I snorted a tiny line away from Flora’s prying eyes, and when Sully offered some to her, Flora shook her head adamantly. After she’d had a few increasingly less modest sips of vodka, I could tell she was drunk.

  “You should probably slow down,” Lauren said, almost maternal. When Flora ignored her, I wanted to gloat. Lauren had tried to exclude me, and now she was the one being boxed out. When she left to meet some of the Butts A girls, I was glad to see her go.

  “Take care of Flora,” she told me and Sully. She must have known we would do the absolute opposite.

  “I heard that,” Flora muttered when Lauren was gone. “I’m so sick of people treating me like a porcelain doll. Everyone knows what’s best for me but none of them listen.”

  We’re the same, I thought briefly in my coke-spun high. I never said it out loud.

  The three of us took pictures with my camera, Sully in the middle, me on the left because my arms were the longest for picture taking. We smiled and pouted and made silly faces with our tongues out, and in the last photo, Sully kissed me on the cheek. “I’m sorry,” she said. She was drunk too, because she never apologized for anything.

  Later, when I had the roll of film from that camera developed, I had forgotten about those stupid pictures and was unable to breathe when I saw them in their glossy four-by-six form. I couldn’t bring myself to tear them up, but I really should have.

  * * *

  At Eclectic, we gave our tickets to a boy dressed as Chewbacca, then had our hands stamped and wove ourselves into the tapestry of the crowd, a daisy chain of girls linking arms. Flora’s grip was hot and unrelenting. The ballroom was glitter and lights,
legs and boobs and asses glistening, lipsticked mouths wide, guys watching us, their gazes more expansive than our costumes. There was a band onstage, boys with spiky hair and dog collars. Flora wanted to dance, and she did, with Ella, who managed to make Penny Lane look completely uncool.

  “She’s had way too much to drink,” Ella said a few minutes later. “We should get her home.”

  “Relax,” I said. “She’s having fun for once.”

  “She’s wasted. I have a bad feeling about this.”

  “Stop being such a buzzkill,” Sully chimed in. “She’s loving this.”

  Flora liked the attention, liked the eyes that detoured to her body. I could tell by the way she tossed her hair back over her shoulders, the way her fingers went occasionally to her mouth, as if to make sure her lipstick was still there. Sully slung her arm around Flora. I swallowed a current of jealousy. Flora wasn’t one of us. She was just pretending, wearing our costume for one night.

  We made our way into the lounge. Sully and I snorted the rest of her cocaine—she would get more, like she always did, never asking me to pay a cent. Flora drank. I kept filling her cup, making sure it was bottomless. I wasn’t going to be the friend who told her she’d had enough to drink. I was going to be the other friend, the one who wasn’t a friend at all.

  Suddenly, there were three of them and three of us. A pilot, a lumberjack, and Slash. I didn’t know how long they had been watching, waiting for the perfect group of three girls. They probably assessed each trio, determining ours had the right ratio of hair to lips to ass to boobs to legs. When Slash leaned in and kissed me, I let him, because it was easier than pushing him away, even though Kevin pulsed in the back of my head like a second heartbeat.

  Flora stiffened, visibly uncomfortable. The pilot was dancing behind her, arms circled around her like a life preserver. I could practically read her mind. Is this cheating or just being friendly? I made eye contact with her, briefly, before going back to Slash, whose name I didn’t know. Whose name I would never know.