The Girls Are All So Nice Here

by Laurie Elizabeth Flynn

  He slings his duffel bag over his shoulder. His mouth is a straight line, eyebrows pulled down. No dimples, no crinkles around his eyes. I didn’t let him know the real me, the girl who never wanted the right amount.

  “I love you,” I say to his back. “I really do love you.”

  That makes him pause in the doorway, but it isn’t enough to make him turn around. “You don’t know what love is. I don’t think you ever did.”

  He leaves the door ajar, even though he has every reason to slam it in anger. I should run after him and fight for him, for us. But he deserves honesty, and if I sat him down and told him everything, he would leave me.

  Maybe it’s better that he leaves thinking I’m a cheater and a liar, not a killer.

  Maybe he’s better off without me.

  I’m on the floor now, my dress ridden up around my thighs. I lean back and stare at the ceiling. This must have been Flora’s last view, boring beige, before her eyes stopped seeing anything. Or maybe Sully hovered over her, watching the life seep out, and the last thing she saw was that knowing smirk. I hope not.

  There’s a gentle knock at the door. I wipe my face. Adrian. He’s back and he wants to make us work. We’ll go to couples’ counseling. Billie and Ryan did it a few years ago, when, she told me, they “legitimately hated each other.” We can get through this.

  “I fucked up,” I say. “Let’s talk about it.”

  The door slowly opens and I see the shoes first. They’re not even shoes—they’re slippers, bunny ones. Their eyes face the walls, goggling at the room. Flora’s slippers, her perennially shuffling feet. Pink bunnies, bobbing on her bed as she watched movies on her laptop, as she talked on the phone with Kevin, as she wrote long emails to her sister.

  Her sister, who always wrote back. Who, jaw trembling, told the media that the person who hurt Flora would pay for it, eventually. The world assumed she meant Kevin.

  “At least you’re finally willing to admit it,” she says sweetly, face so much like Flora’s, except so much more severe.

  It’s eventually.

  NOW

  To: “Ambrosia Wellington” a.wellington@wesleyan.edu

  From: “Wesleyan Alumni Committee” reunion.classof2007@gmail.com

  Subject: Class of 2007 Reunion

  Dear Ambrosia Wellington,

  Have you enjoyed all of our planned activities, and maybe taken a few spontaneous detours? Hopefully being back here has taught you something about yourself. Maybe you’ve atoned for a wrong you haven’t stopped thinking about.

  Or maybe you’re about to.

  Sincerely,

  Your Alumni Committee

  “Ambrosia Francesca Wellington. There you are.” She shuts the door quietly behind her. Then she locks it, a click that turns my skin into a tight rubber band.

  “Poppy.” I push limp hair behind my ears, trying to force down a fresh wave of terror. “I wanted to talk to you at the dedication, but things got really weird today. I had this big fight with my husband.” I don’t know why I tell her. She didn’t come to hear anything I have to say.

  “That’s too bad.” Her red lips twist, a licorice smile. “He’s cute, your husband. Such a nice guy, too. I talked to him this afternoon, did he tell you that? I told him I’ve heard so much about you. But you never even mentioned my sister to him. I guess it would have put a damper on the honeymoon period to mention the girl you killed.” She sits cross-legged on the bed.

  “I didn’t kill her.” My nails dig into my palms.

  She cocks her head at an almost unnatural angle. “That’s what we’re here to find out, isn’t it? The mystery of who killed Flora Banning. Because my sister didn’t kill herself.”

  I bring my legs underneath me. I try to calculate how fast I could be out the door.

  “I wouldn’t, if I were you,” she says. “You wouldn’t get far. Besides, I think your cute husband took your car. Adrian will be so beat up over this. It’ll be hard for him to trust anyone ever again, right?”

  Over this. Over what?

  “You’re still thinking about it.” She gets up, shrugging out of her jacket and setting her purse beside it on the bed. She’s wearing one of Flora’s dresses, or something exactly like Flora used to wear. Flowery and cute, with a Peter Pan collar. I hid when the family came to collect her things.

  “I can explain—”

  “Don’t.” She cuts me off. “Flora told me she did something unforgivable. The boy she had sex with on Halloween. She was disgusted with herself. She said she never would have done that if she hadn’t been drunk. I asked her if she ever said yes. She didn’t answer, but that meant no.”

  “I didn’t see what happened.” She can’t possibly know that I did.

  Poppy clears her throat. “Maybe. But she said you were there. You knew she was drunk, and you let her go off with some guy she didn’t know. You knew she had a boyfriend. She was terrified to tell Kevin what happened. Flora always thought everything was her fault. I guess you wouldn’t know anything about that. Nothing is ever your fault.”

  “I was drunk too. I don’t remember what happened.”

  “How convenient.” Poppy rolls her eyes. “I told her to report it, of course. Then she snapped and said it was none of my business. She told me he didn’t use a condom. The guy who raped her.”

  I never allowed myself to think that word. Rape. To feel what it really meant, because then I would have had to admit that I could have prevented it.

  I open my mouth, but Poppy interjects. “I told her to get tested. She made me promise to never tell. We have a fucked-up family dynamic as is. We had to be perfect, to keep things from collapsing. So I kept my mouth shut. I shouldn’t have.” She touches her lips. “I hate myself every day for that.”

  “She never told me any of this. I would have helped her.” I never even learned how to help myself.

  Poppy laughs. “I told her to talk to you. I figured if you were a decent human being, and an actual friend, you’d go with her to a clinic or something. But you blew her off, didn’t you?”

  “I wasn’t perfect.” My fingers edge toward my purse. “I had my own stuff going on. I should have been a better friend. I feel bad about that.”

  She shakes her head. Wispy hair flies everywhere. “You don’t feel bad about a single goddamn thing. Except that Kevin didn’t end up with you. You honestly think I don’t know about that?”

  “I wasn’t—”

  “I never trusted Kevin. He was the only thing Flora and I argued about. She thought he was this great guy. He had a way of making girls feel special. I bet he made you feel special, too. You probably had this love story in your head, right?”

  My phone is on the bed, but I can’t reach for it. Poppy will notice. She hasn’t gone this far, done all this, without noticing everything.

  “I wasn’t in love with Kevin. I wasn’t in love with anyone. My high school boyfriend cheated on me, and I went a bit crazy when I got here. Hooked up with a lot of guys. I was lost.”

  If she heard me, she isn’t letting on. “Here’s the thing. Before I even started at Wesleyan, I knew about the ACB. There’s a lot of information on there. Lots of people say they saw AW go into a bathroom with KM. Some of them said AW was running from the Butts. I’m here to figure out which girl you were.”

  “It wasn’t me. I was with another guy that night.”

  She stands up. “Wrong answer. Because if you weren’t with him—if I put the night together correctly—that means you were the girl running away. The one who killed my sister.”

  “Flora killed herself. The police would have found out if she hadn’t. She was drunk and upset. It’s horrible. But it wasn’t me.”

  I could end this now and tell her it was Sully. Maybe she would believe me. But she’d ask me how I know, and then I’d have to admit my own role.

  “At first I was sure you and Sloane did it together,” Poppy says. “And that’s why you stopped talking. Because you couldn’t handle the guilt. Bu
t I changed my mind. One of you was outsmarted and left out of the loop by the other. So here’s my theory. You got Kevin’s phone and sent the texts. Sloane did the dirty work.”

  “Kevin sent the texts,” I say.

  “Come on,” Poppy says. “Let’s face it. They weren’t Kevin’s style. They were too perfect. And they were too mean. Yes, he was a cheating asshole who broke my sister’s heart. But he wasn’t capable of that.”

  I fixate on was. Kevin was.

  “My sister was wrong about you,” Poppy continues. “You aren’t that good of an actress. Ironic, because your whole life is a lie. Your husband wants kids, and you’re trying to lead him on to make him think you do too. Flora wanted kids.” Poppy chews one of her thumbnails. Her nails are baby blue with sunflowers on them.

  “I do want them.” The baby will soften her. She won’t hurt me if she knows. “Actually, I’m pregnant. I found out today.”

  Poppy crouches down on the floor. Her expression slackens and she reaches out, like she wants to touch me. Then she pulls back, balling up her hands and letting out a long exhale. When she speaks, her voice is soft. “Flora was too.”

  Something bubbles in my throat. Nausea. Or a scream. I bite my knuckles to get rid of it. What she’s saying—it isn’t true. Flora wasn’t. There’s no way.

  “I’m the only person she told. She made me swear to never tell our parents. Our mom had Flora when she was nineteen. She gave us so many lectures about not becoming teen moms. Maybe that’s why Flora was so big on keeping her virginity. I kept my promise and didn’t say a word, but our parents found out anyway during the autopsy.” She glares at my shell-shocked face. “They kept it quiet. We’d already been through enough.”

  “I had no idea,” I practically whisper.

  Poppy closes her eyes, like the memory is too painful to confront. “Maybe she wouldn’t have known either. But when I told her to get tested? She went and bought a pregnancy test instead. She called me after she took it. She couldn’t stop crying.”

  The times I came back to our room to see Flora asleep in the middle of the day, facing the wall, sleep mask pulled over her eyes. Her tears in the bathroom, witnessed by Ella. The pregnancy test, hot in her sweaty hands. I was actually hoping I could talk to you about something.

  “I said she had to get an abortion. She was raped—she didn’t do anything wrong. I told her to tell you about it. Her new best friend would be able to talk some sense into her. She said she would talk to you—she was glad to have you.”

  “I would’ve helped—”

  “I’m sure people thought she was just another cautionary tale. Don’t trust the wrong guy.” She studies her nails. Flora taught her how to paint them with that precision. “Kevin was the wrong guy. And now he’s paid for his role in this. But it was trusting the wrong girls that killed my sister.”

  I debate what would happen if I screamed. If anyone would hear me, or if anyone would care.

  “What did you do to Kevin?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Poppy says. I hear the shake in her voice. “You won’t be around to figure it out anyway.”

  There’s a click in the door, and we both turn to look as Sully spills into the room. I should have screamed. It might have made a difference.

  * * *

  Sully covers her mouth when she sees Poppy. “You,” she says, somewhere between scared and defiant. “You did it, didn’t you?”

  Poppy stands up and tucks her hands into balls, but not before I notice they’re trembling. “Welcome to the real party, Sloane. I guess I shouldn’t have expected you to be on time.”

  She’s here. She came back. She came back for me.

  “You killed him,” Sully says, slow and measured.

  “Can you prove it? He had so much to drink. And all those pills on his nightstand. I’m sure the two of you made him suffer a lot more.”

  “Kevin’s dead?” I choke out. Sully nods. She isn’t upset as much as calculated. She’s planning a way out of this, so that we don’t meet his same fate.

  Now I understand that Sully was never going home. She headed for the hotel, and when she saw whatever Poppy did to Kevin, she could have kept driving. But she wasn’t leaving me behind. The loyalty that rises up is sudden and potent. I want to protect her too, no matter what she did to Flora.

  When I look at Poppy again her hands aren’t balled up, and they’re not trembling. She’s sliding a knife out of her purse, long and white handled, just like the Wüsthof kitchen knives Adrian and I registered for at Williams Sonoma and never properly used. I start to shiver uncontrollably as I realize exactly how she wants tonight to end.

  Sully sways in the middle of the room. “You won’t get away with it.”

  The knife blade darts up and down when Poppy moves her hand. “I have you to thank for letting me know where he was staying. Your drive last night—what was it, a booty call?”

  Sully inches toward her. “What the hell do you want?”

  “What do you think? I want the truth.” She points the knife at me. “You’re the one who has a way with words.” Now the knife is aimed at Sully. “You have a way with violence. But whoever killed my sister made a huge oversight. Flora would have left a note. That’s how I knew she didn’t do it.”

  Turns out Poppy and Kevin agree on one thing. Agreed on one thing.

  My teeth chatter. That knife—I recognize the handle, can visualize where it’s missing from its wooden block in my kitchen. Poppy has been in our building, inside our apartment. She studied me, the same way I used to study the cool girls like a science. Sully once called me paranoid, but I was right all along. I knew someone was watching. The validation would be a relief if the terror behind it weren’t numbing my entire body.

  All the times I convinced myself I was seeing a ghost. All the times I saw a blond girl turning away. The sensation of being followed. It’s because I was.

  “What are you going to do to us?”

  “I’m not going to do anything.” She drums one of her bunny feet. “I’m done. Now the two of you can turn on each other. The one thing you both think you never did all those years ago.”

  Sully and I remain still. Now is the moment when we’re expected to become two caged animals and rip each other apart. But I’m not ready to deal the first blow.

  “You’re insane,” Sully says. “Neither of us had anything to do with it. Just go. If you leave, we’ll pretend none of this ever happened. We won’t tell.”

  “Of course you won’t.” Poppy traces the tip of the knife over her own collarbones. “You’re good at keeping secrets, aren’t you? Well, not good enough.”

  My phone dings from its location on the bed. Poppy reaches for it, her eyes scanning the screen. “Oh, Billie wants to know what’s going on with the guy you cheated on your husband with. You don’t mind, do you?” She puts down the knife as she clacks out a message. “Someone else took him from me, Billie. You don’t know the whole story. I’m about to do something very bad.” She winks at me. “Whoops! I hit send. I was going to ask you to check it for spelling and grammar first. You’re always so diligent with that.”

  My phone is in her hands. The knife isn’t. I try to make eye contact with Sully, to tell her to grab the knife. But Sully isn’t looking at me.

  “I took Kevin’s phone.” Sully’s voice rumbles in her throat like thunder. “I took it. Flora was so upset that night. I told her to check his phone for evidence he’d been fucking around. She wouldn’t do it, so I did. She didn’t believe me when I showed her the other girls’ names.”

  “Sully—” I plead, but she ignores me.

  “Please, elaborate.” Poppy clutches my phone. Wherever Billie is, I beg her to call the police, to send them here. She’ll be at home, maybe opening a second bottle of wine, Netflix and baby monitor on, scrolling through Instagram. She has to see my message. She has to.

  “Then Amb grabbed the phone and ran off with it.”

  “No,” I say. No. This isn’t happen
ing.

  “I was pretty wasted, but I saw her run upstairs, so I followed her. I didn’t see her anywhere. And eventually, I stopped looking. I guess I figured, what was she really going to do with Kevin’s phone? Probably snoop through it, maybe enter her phone number in there.”

  “That’s not what happened. She’s the one who took the phone. And she told me what to say.”

  “So you were her puppet.” Poppy looks from me to Sully, from Sully to me. “Well, I can’t say either of you inspire much confidence at this point. But go on.”

  Sully does. “When I saw her again, she put the phone in my hand. I asked her what she did with it, and she said it was nothing. So I put it back in Kevin’s jacket pocket. I figured since I was the one who took it, I’d put it back. Then she started being all over Kevin. I said to her, ‘That’s your roommate’s boyfriend.’ Then I asked her where Flora was. She said she didn’t care.”

  Poppy’s gaze falls on me, heavy and stifling. I can’t breathe. I’m supposed to defend myself, to think of a better lie than Sully’s. But she can still one-up me at anything.

  “They went somewhere together. Then I saw some friends, and did some shots, and lost track of time. I messed around with this guy. When Amb came back, she told me she fucked Kevin. I didn’t say anything. I was so drunk. I just wanted to go back to the dorm. And when we got there, that was when we saw all the sirens.”

  “Interesting,” Poppy says. My phone bleats, but she doesn’t look at it, just rubs it against the fabric of her dress. “Amb, is that an accurate retelling of history? You sent the messages, then fucked my sister’s boyfriend at the party?”

  My life might depend on my ability to lie but I can’t think of a lie that fits, one slippery enough to fill the cracks in Sully’s story.

  “Yes,” I say, hoarse. “But it was her idea to send the messages. I followed along. And yes, I was the girl in the bathroom with Kevin. But I didn’t kill her.”