Purity

by Jackson Pearce

“Christ, Shelby, since when are goodie bags more than some candy and pencils?”

  “Since they became Princess Ball–themed, I’d wager. So, just put one of each item into the bags…. Which box is the bags?” I murmur to myself as I kick the boxes over to read the shipping labels. “Ah, this one. Anyway, just one of each item into the bag.”

  “Right,” Jonas says. He flips on the television to Animal Cops and rips the tape off a box of “fresh n’ clean”–scented perfume. I think it smells more like pipe cleaner than the lilies and clouds on the box, but whatever.

  “There’s something really sick about candy in the shape of a cross,” Jonas says, holding up one of the white chocolate crosses—they were made special, with the church’s name molded onto them. His eyes are dark brown—I mean, they’ve always been dark brown, but suddenly all I can think about is how different they are from Daniel’s or Ben’s. And maybe Jeffery’s. Can’t forget about Jeffery—I wonder what color his eyes are. I look down.

  “I know,” I say, my voice a little stilted. Jeffery, think about Jeffery. I inhale and force words from my lips. “So… since Ben didn’t work out, I’m on to guy number three, I guess.” I smash a few silk flowers into a bag.

  Jonas frowns. “Any idea who?”

  “There’s a guy who works with Ruby. His name is Jeffery. She said he was interested in me.”

  “Are you sure you want to sleep with a total stranger, Shel?” he asks, raising his eyes to mine.

  “I have to. You know that,” I say calmly. Jonas’s eyes waver. It gives me some sort of sick satisfaction to know the LOVIN plan still bothers him.

  “Yeah…” Jonas drifts off and fills the silence that follows by crinkling the cellophane bag of princess-themed rubber bracelets.

  I sigh. This isn’t what I want—isn’t what I need, to irritate, even hurt, my best friend. I need to do what my dad said. I need to talk to him. There’s a tiny part of me that, stupid as it sounds, feels like if I never hear Jonas admit to sleeping with Anna, it won’t be true. But I can’t just stay silent.

  “I…” I don’t know what to say. Jonas looks at me, waiting for me to go on.

  “You…?” he says when I can’t find the words.

  “Anna,” I finally spit out. “Anna said something to me at the party.”

  “About?” he asks.

  “You.”

  They slept together. I mean, I already knew, but the look on Jonas’s face confirms it. His eyebrows sink, lips part, breath shortens, like he’s afraid to speak. He finally looks back down at his goodie bag and licks his lips.

  “You slept with her and didn’t tell me?” I ask, though I didn’t mean to. The question found its way out of my mouth on its own. I try to smile, make the question light, but the resulting expression is forced and awkward. I look down.

  “Shel, I…”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask quietly.

  “I didn’t even mean for it to happen,” Jonas explains. “You were with Daniel and I was just… lonely, I guess? And she wanted to and then it just… it just happened. I’m sorry.”

  “But why didn’t you tell me?” I repeat, and any attempt at lightness in my voice is gone.

  Jonas inhales and shakes his head, meets my eyes across the room. “I was afraid you’d be mad at me.” I don’t say anything, so he continues. “And by the looks of it, I was right.”

  “I’m not mad,” I lie. “I mean, I’m not mad you slept with her. I’m mad you kept it from me.”

  “You’re not mad I slept with Anna?” Jonas asks doubtfully.

  “No,” I say, a little shriller than I intended. “Why should I be?”

  “Because…” he begins, but he can’t figure out what to say. He tosses a shirt into the bag and then pushes it away from him.

  “I don’t care,” I say. “It doesn’t matter to me that you slept with her. Just don’t keep secrets from me. But seriously, fuck whoever you want.”

  “Shelby,” Jonas says, confusion in his tone. “You don’t mean that.”

  “Why wouldn’t I?” I ask. “We aren’t together, Jonas. You’re allowed to have sex with whoever you want. I mean, you aren’t mad I’m going to have sex with Jeffery, are you?”

  There’s a long silence. Jonas finally sighs and shakes his head. “No. You have to do it to keep the Promises. It’s fine,” he says shortly.

  Why was that not the answer I wanted to hear?

  The conversation ends there, and the room fills with the sounds of the TV and the slow, irritating cadence of bags being filled. There’s more I want to say, but I’m not sure exactly what it is. Whatever it is, it’s eating at me from the inside out. I bite my lips and cram a pair of pink nail polishes into a bag.

  Jonas sighs and sits back, then meets my eyes for a long time. “Do you want me to go?” he asks slowly.

  “Why?”

  “Because I…” he looks at me meaningfully. But I don’t move, don’t blink, don’t look away. He presses his lips together, and when they part he speaks fast. “I lied. I don’t want you to sleep with Jeffery. And I don’t want you to go through with the LOVIN plan. I think you’re taking the Promises too far.”

  “You know I have to keep them,” I snap.

  “Not like this,” Jonas says.

  “Why do you care?” I ask slowly. “Why does it matter to you if I get laid?”

  There’s a flicker in the back of my mind, a want for him to be the one to say it because I don’t think I can—that we are more than just friends.

  “Because you’re better than that, Shelby!” he says. “You’re too good to sleep with some guy just to keep a Promise.”

  “But you’re not too good to fuck Anna Clemens? She’s just a social climber. How can you even like her?”

  Jonas looks taken aback, like I’ve struck him. He exhales and rises.

  “You’re sleeping with someone for a Promise. I slept with Anna because I wanted to at the time. The fact that your mom died doesn’t mean your reasons are better than mine or you’re better than Anna.”

  He gives me a strange look—part pity, part angry, all cold—then walks toward the door. I hear him pause in the foyer for a moment, then the door open and shut. I crawl across the living room to peer out the blinds, and I watch Lucinda pulling out of my driveway.

  I shouldn’t have said that. I rise and go to the door, maybe I can catch him, call out, we can talk, we can fix this. But I freeze when I see it on the table in the foyer. Wrinkled and soft-looking, folded up with the title facing me: Life List, written across the top in bubble script.

  What do I do?

  You’ve gotta be honest with the people you love.

  Maybe Dad’s right about that—no, not maybe. I know he’s right. I know I should have told Jonas the truth, that something has changed, that the idea of him with Anna made me feel sick. I should have told him because I love him, definitely as a friend, maybe as more.

  But I’m afraid. Especially now, because I know Jonas was right about one thing at least—I’ve called girls like Anna whores, judged them, hated them, but I’m not better than them. I’m not better than Jonas. I’m trying to have sex, just like they are. Does that mean I’m a slut?

  I don’t know.

  So what do I do now, Dad? I need advice to go with your advice.

  I take the list delicately in my hands and retreat to my bedroom—I put it on my desk and stare at it, like I’m trying to figure out a way to save its life. Trying to find a way to save Jonas and me.

  7 days before

  Two days after my fight with Jonas, I eat all of the cross-shaped chocolate from the goodie bags. If I can’t get laid, I’m going to get fat. I leave a chocolate for Dad on the dining room table; he never mentions it, but I notice it’s gone when we’re walking out the door for our second and last dance lesson together.

  The feeling of dread that washed over me when we arrived at the first dance lesson is conspicuously absent this time around—I guess knowing what’s inside Madame
Garba’s lair makes it a little less terrifying. Dad pays the girl at the front counter, and we make our way to the back of the studio, where once again the little kids are finishing up a Latin dance class. I wonder how Jonas and I would have handled a class like that as children. I wonder how many of these kids will grow up to be friends with their dance partners.

  I wonder how many of them will grow up to be more.

  And then I hate myself for wondering all of that when Jonas is the last thing I want to think about. Focus, Shelby, I think as we file in and begin our waltz class, Madame Garba barking out the count structure. Don’t think about Jonas. Focus on anything. Focus on the waltz, even.

  This time around, Dad and I are able to keep the beat decently, but it seems we’re forever destined to stomp on each other’s feet. We clumber around, snickering at our equal lack of grace and drawing a few sideways glances from the other dancers who wonder what the laughter is about. It attracts the attention of Madame Garba, who creaks her way over to our side of the studio.

  “Elbows up, Sara. Lift through the chest,” Garba snaps. It takes me a moment to realize her hawkish eyes are on me and she’s merely confused my name.

  “It’s Shelby,” Dad tells her, but Garba flips her hand at him and moves on. He shrugs at me and we continue to spin around the room; I catch flashes of my own eyes in the mirror every few steps. Sara. That’s the name of the character in A Little Princess, Sara Crewe. I smile a little at the mistake and think of Mom reading the story to me.

  Madame Garba teaches us some fancy steps that Dad and I are afraid to try more than once—dips and turns that Mona and her father pick up almost immediately. Watching them spin around each other doesn’t bother me as much as it did at the last class—yeah, they can do that fancy little arm thing, but… it doesn’t matter. After all, Dad and I aren’t doing so terribly at the basics anymore. I guess that’s enough for me.

  The music dies down and everyone stops; Dad and I step away from each other. The room applauds and Madame Garba gives a yellow-toothed smile, then complains loudly to the male assistant that she needs a cigarette break before the next class.

  “I guess I’ll see you at the ball, Shelby! I’m so excited to see what everyone’s dress looks like. It’ll be a sea of white,” Mona says, giggling as she gathers her purse from the back of the room.

  “Not entirely,” I say, shrugging. “My dress is blue.”

  Mona tries her best not to look horrified, but her best isn’t quite good enough—I see her eyes flicker from me to her father. To my surprise, he looks more delighted than horrified.

  “Blue, Shelby? That sounds lovely!” he says warmly, and gives my dad an approving nod.

  “I supposed Shelby’s always marched to the beat of her own drummer,” Dad says, smiling at me briefly. Mona is also smiling now, but it looks so forced and tense that I think she might burst a blood vessel in her eye. I imagine her as one of those cartoon robots, head spinning and smoking. Blue! Blue, not white! Shelby is wearing blue! KAPOW! EXPLOSION! Jonas would get a kick out of that image.

  Wait. No. You’re mad at Jonas. Don’t forget. Don’t think about him, I remind myself, though I’m not sure why I’m still mad at him now—is it because he slept with Anna, because he called me out on being a hypocrite, or because he didn’t choose me?

  Maybe all three.

  “Well, that’s pretty much it, isn’t it?” Dad says as we make our way to the dance-studio parking lot. “We’ve got the questionnaires, but there’s nothing else to make or plan or learn or… anything.”

  “I guess not,” I say, shrugging. As we pull out of the parking lot, I see Madame Garba leaning out the back of the dance studio, smoking a long cigarette. I think about her calling me Sara Crewe instead of Shelby Crewe.

  I know this is some sort of blasphemy, being my mother’s daughter and all, but I’ve always liked the movie version of A Little Princess better than the book. For one, in the movie you get to see that scene when the Indian guy fills Sara’s attic with all sorts of cool decorations and foods and things. But also, I like that in the end, you discover that Sara’s father—who everyone thought was dead—has been living right across the street from her. He had amnesia and couldn’t remember who she was, but then he sees Sara and it all rushes back to him, and they live happily ever after. In the book version, it isn’t her father living across the street; it’s her father’s old friend. He takes her in and is nice and all, but I always felt like that was sort of a consolation prize.

  Mom and I sometimes argued when A Little Princess was up in the bedtime story rotation. I wanted her to tell the movie’s ending, and she insisted on reading the story as it was written. But there was nothing magical about the book ending, if you ask me. One of my favorite parts of the movie is the scene when Sara realizes her father was there all along, right across the street. Living with that awesome Indian guy who could make things float.

  That’s real magic.

  4 days before

  Less than a week before the ball, Dad has gone into paperwork-related overdrive and I’m stuck running a million ball-related errands. The decorating committee needs more pink crepe paper, the music needs to be put together on a playlist, the cake needs to be paid for. I still haven’t finished my questionnaire—though I think Dad and I have totally given up on finding time to finish those, much less go over them together. I still need to pick out the passage or quote or something to read in front of everyone. I went through To Kill a Mockingbird, but I can’t figure out what passage Mom used, so I think I’ll need to look elsewhere….

  One thing at a time, I think, exhaling. Dad is gone, something to do with figuring out the table setup, but he asked me to look at the playlist used at the last Princess Ball, to see if there were any songs I wanted to add. He said it would be “on the table, in plain sight,” but given that there seems to be about four thousand different forms, packets, and contracts on this table, it’s sort of like looking for a needle in a stack of needles. I carefully shuffle through everything, trying to make sure everything gets put back in whatever stack it belongs in. Nothing resembling a playlist anywhere—I lift a stack of Princess Ball brochures to check under them.

  Mom smiles back at me.

  I freeze, set the brochures down carefully. It’s the picture of her at the Princess Ball, crisp and glossy, I guess because it’s been sitting in a box or frame instead of being handled frequently. She’s wearing that dress with the sleeves whose puffiness is rivaled only by her hair. My grandfather is on her right, tall and young-looking with tinted glasses, and they’re in front of a baby-pink backdrop with white roses in vases around them.

  I sit down in Dad’s chair slowly, still staring at the photo. It isn’t quite how I remembered it—I was so focused on the puffy sleeves that I never saw the way the bodice of the dress is actually really pretty. I didn’t remember the roses, and I certainly didn’t remember there being a little cross necklace around her neck. Mom wasn’t very religious, and religious jewelry definitely wasn’t her style… but was it then? Did something change, or did I just never understand my mom’s beliefs to begin with?

  Maybe it’s just a piece of jewelry. Something my grandfather gave her, something she owned that was pretty more than iconic. But still, I can’t help but wonder… did Mom think about God the way I do? Did she go to church, wishing she fit in and could say, without a doubt, that God loved her? Did she have questions that couldn’t be answered with scripture?

  Or do I have those questions only because of losing her?

  Maybe even Mom wouldn’t get it—why I doubt. Why I question. Maybe no one can understand what this feels like but me. I touch my neck, the spot where the cross charm hangs on Mom’s neck. No one can understand because… they really don’t know any better than I do. No matter what they think, how sure they are they’ve got everything figured out, they’re as in the dark as I am.

  They might know Bible verses and hymns and stories and history, but no one can ever really underst
and God—no one can ever really know why he took my mom, why he lets bad things happen to good people. And no one can really know what I need from God, or what God needs from me—more prayer, more faith, more devotion… no one really knows.

  Dad might get it—he’d be the closest to understanding, I think. He knows what it was like to lose her. Is the promise that “Mom’s in a better place” enough for him, or does he question, too? I wonder what he’d say if I told him all this, how no one can answer my questions, how I’m not always sure what I believe. Would he side with the Princess Ball committee, the church, Pastor Ryan? Or with me?

  I wouldn’t ask him to choose sides, though. I don’t want him in the middle of me and anyone—it might hurt him, and I don’t want to hurt him. Not because of the Promises.

  Because I’m his daughter.

  I still need the Promises. I still need them to grab onto. But maybe not being able to grab onto God isn’t the worst thing after all. Maybe I’m not meant to grab on. Maybe I’m meant to grab on later, or onto a whole different religion, or quietly. Maybe I’ll never be able to go to a church and believe like everyone else does, and maybe I’ll still be angry sometimes, still feel like things were unfair. Or maybe someday I’ll have jewelry with a religious icon on it.

  And maybe—no, not maybe, definitely—Jonas was right about more than just Anna. She had sex for her own reasons. Mona believes for her own reasons. Mom wore a cross necklace for her own reasons. Even Pastor Ryan is a pastor for his own reasons.

  And I doubt. For reasons no one else can understand. And maybe that’s okay.

  1 day before

  The doorbell rings at seven thirty Saturday night. I take a moment to run my fingers through my hair and straighten my shirt before going down. I went all out and bought the bra that matches the panties Ruby got me. If that’s not dedication, I don’t know what is.

  “Shelby? There’s a boy here for you,” my dad’s voice rings up the stairs. I cringe—Dad meeting my one-night stand wasn’t exactly in the game plan. There’s nothing to be done about it now, though, I guess. I swallow and head to the door.