by Jenny Lee
Dustin didn’t argue his point any longer, because it was obvious his father’s mind was made up. He had called and texted Nicholas numerous times but never got a response. This worried him, but he hoped that his brother’s radio silence meant he had caught up with the girl, Natalia, as opposed to his other love, heroin.
Dustin was also relieved not to leave Steven in the lurch with his schoolwork. These days Dustin was tutoring him every day because midterms were fast approaching. Lolly often joined them, but she never mentioned Kimmie’s name, probably because Steven had told her not to. He still thought about her, even though he wished he didn’t. The pain of her rejection stung less with the passage of time, but when she popped into his head, he still felt a hollowness inside him, as if all the rabbits of his infatuation had burrowed through him and fled, leaving behind an abandoned warren where his heart once thumped for her. (He briefly tried journaling and writing poetry to get her out of his head, but so far it wasn’t working.)
He let out a big sigh over the sound of pencils scribbling and pages flipping, but neither Steven nor Lolly seemed to notice. Dustin was doing his own homework, and he had just read the same paragraph of Wuthering Heights three times. Why was it when he worried about his brother that Kimmie always appeared in his head?
“Lolly, can I ask you something?” Dustin’s voice sounded strange to him in the grand dining room of Steven’s apartment. “Never mind, forget it.”
Lolly put down her pencil and pulled the band out of her hair, retying her ponytail again. She had arrived twenty minutes ago from a SoulCycle class, and her cheeks were only now losing their pinkness. “Just ask me, Dustin.”
He shook his head, already regretting the can of worms that he had meant to keep closed.
“What’s your sister been up to?” he asked, unable to speak her name. “Last I heard she was sick. Is she feeling better?”
Steven stood up abruptly. “I’m hungry … who wants a snack?” He saw Lolly and Dustin raise their hands without looking at him, as they were focused on each other. Steven knew that Dustin wasn’t going to like what he heard, and he didn’t want to be there when Lolly spilled the beans. Steven had finally found a little peace these days after the drama of V-Day and the hubbub surrounding Anna’s boyfriend’s car accident, so he left in search of comfort food.
“Kimmie’s been away, Dustin,” Lolly reported. “My mom took her to a wellness center in Arizona. I thought it was a spa trip, because she had been so … under the weather. But then my mom returned alone and told me Kimmie was in a program to get help.”
Dustin nodded even though he didn’t really understand what Lolly was talking about. He was confused, concerned, and cursing himself for letting his curiosity get the better of him. “What kind of program?” he asked. “I mean, obviously it’s none of my business, so if you don’t want to tell me, that’s fine.”
“My mom said Kimmie’s depressed. My dad was against putting her on medication, so this program is pretty intensive, I think. Honestly, I don’t know. My mom told me Kimmie didn’t want to hear about anything, so when I talk to her, we really only discuss how she’s feeling. I spoke to her yesterday and she sounds better. Stronger.” Lolly was speaking the truth, because Kimmie had sounded more confident and self-assured on the phone, but she still seemed weird to her. Kimmie told Lolly that she had dyed her hair purple, but she couldn’t send a picture because she wasn’t allowed to have a phone. Lolly was shocked to hear this, but her mother told her to be positive when she spoke to her little sister, so she’d said, “That sounds awesome, Kimmie. I’m sure you look amazing.”
Kimmie had told her that she’d met a friend in group therapy, and the two had become besties. She also told her not to tell her mother, because Danielle would not take the news of her youngest daughter hanging out with an ex-methhead very well. The other thing that Lolly noticed about Kimmie was there was a steely edge in her voice, and her sentences were peppered with therapy-speak. Empowerment. Victimhood. Emotional highways. Honestly, it all sounded like nonsense to Lolly, so she kept up a steady refrain of positive adjectives and eagerly anticipated the moment when she could get off the phone. The most disturbing thing was when Kimmie said she intended to confront Vronsky for what he did to her. “He needs to take responsibility for his actions, and I can’t let go of my pain until he gives me the apology I deserve.”
It made no sense, what Kimmie was saying. Yes, Vronsky was guilty of a pump-and-dump, but it’s not like he forced Kimmie to have sex. She was the one who’d lied to him pretending she wasn’t a virgin, so how could she blame him for being insensitive when she was so insecure? The whole thing made Lolly uncomfortable, but she was powerless to express her feelings. Maybe this anger was part of Kimmie’s therapy process, one of the stages she had to go through. This girl on the phone sounded nothing like her little sister, and it made her sad. “I’m worried about her, Dustin,” Lolly said, her voice trembling. “I hope those doctors know what they’re doing.”
“I’m sorry, Lolly,” Dustin said, his voice barely above a whisper. “I had no idea you were dealing with so much. And I’m sorry Kimmie has been having a hard time.”
“Should I tell her you said so?” Lolly asked. “I mean, when I talk to her next? I could tell her you were asking about her.”
Dustin hated himself for his coldness, but he needed to stay in survival mode when it came to Kimmie. He already knew more about her than he was comfortable with. He shook his head. “No, please don’t. I’m trying to put all that behind me. I’ve moved on.”
Lolly knew he was lying to himself, and, unable to help herself, decided it was time to tell Dustin the truth. “I know something happened between you two the night of Jaylen’s party, but Kimmie’s never told me what it was about.”
“It was nothing. I asked her out and she said no,” Dustin said, speaking more harshly than he meant to. “She chose Vronsky. End of story.”
“Dustin, c’mon. Don’t be like that. It’s true, back then she had eyes for Vronsky, but he wasn’t interested in her. Nothing happened between them that night.” Lolly wasn’t exactly lying, because nothing had happened between Vronsky and Kimmie the night of the party. Their unfortunate hookup was the week before and was none of Dustin’s business.
“She said she was in love with him,” Dustin said. “That doesn’t sound like nothing to me. Please, Lolly. I don’t want to talk about this. I just can’t go there.”
“I’ll just say one more thing and then I promise this conversation is over, okay? Please?”
He sighed and nodded, knowing he deserved this since he’d brought it up in the first place.
“Kimmie is very young and because of her skating, she was far more naïve than most girls her age. She didn’t know what she was talking about when she said she loved him. She had a crush. Love isn’t a light switch you can just flip on and off. It’s not fair of you to hold her inexperience against her. You’re too smart for that. C’mon, I know she thinks highly of you, so perhaps if you saw her again…”
Dustin stood up so abruptly his chair flew back and hit the floor with a bang, which brought Steven running back into the room. Dustin scrambled to pick up the chair and then immediately started tossing his books into his backpack. He needed to leave. He felt like there wasn’t enough oxygen in the room. He needed air. “Sorry, guys,” he muttered. “Steven, I’m heading out. Text me if you need me to proofread anything for you. Lolly, I know you mean well, and I’m sorry I’m acting like a baby, but I can’t talk to your sister ever again. I do hope she feels better, and of course, I only wish her the best.”
Dustin ran out the door and suffered a mild panic attack in the elevator. He used the inhaler that he always carried, the first time in months. He took two big puffs, and it helped him catch his breath, but it did nothing for his heart, which ached for the girl he loved, who hadn’t loved him back.
VIII
It had been fifteen days since Kimmie shed a tear and she felt like she deserve
d something to commemorate the occasion, like how Natalia got her thirty-day orange chip from Narcotics Anonymous and how her bf, Nick, had a ninety-day red medallion that he kept on his key chain. Since their first outing a little over a week ago, the three of them had been seeing each other almost every day. Kimmie and Natalia had bonded that first night over their fancy Italian meals, after Nick put the kibosh on them eating at Raoul’s, where he worked. Nick said he liked to keep the different parts of his life separate and felt that showing up as a patron would send a weird message to the guys he worked with.
After dinner, true to her word, Natalia spent the next two hours dyeing Kimmie’s long blond hair an electric purple ombre that faded into lavender at the ends. Kimmie loved her new hair and told Natalia that she wanted to get a tattoo, too. Natalia said she knew a guy who’d give her one, even though legally she had to be eighteen. Nick, who had been playing Fortnite on the secondhand PC they had in their tiny one-bedroom apartment, spoke up sharply and said no.
“What do you care if Kimmie gets a tat?” Natalia asked her boyfriend.
“She’s too young,” he said. “Tats are forever, not the same as changing your hair color.”
“I got my first ink when I was younger than her,” Natalia said.
“That’s because your mom sucked and didn’t look after you properly,” Nick said, his eyes fixed to the computer screen. “You want her mom raising holy hell with the program? Those people have been good to you.”
“Oh, please,” Natalia shouted. “You don’t know! What, you got some sort of crystal fucking ball where you can see the future and shit?”
“Trust me, I know her type. I grew up around rich girls just like her.”
The fight escalated quickly from there. Kimmie thought about intervening, but she didn’t dare speak up, mainly because everything Nick was saying was spot-on. If she came home with a tattoo, her mother would lose her mind. It wasn’t just because she was Jewish and a tattoo would prevent her from being buried in a Jewish cemetery, but because her mother always said tattoos were low class and trampy. Two months ago, if you had asked Kimmie if she would ever get a tattoo, she would have scoffed at the notion. But that was two months ago, and Kimmie was hell-bent on going back home a totally different girl. It was just like Taylor Swift’s hit song: “I’m sorry, the old Kimmie can’t come to the phone right now. Why? Oh, ’cause she’s dead!”
The most fascinating thing about watching Natalia and Nick fight was the escalation and sudden drop-off. At its peak the two of them were standing up facing each other dropping f-bombs like two nuclear powers at the end of days. They were so loud Kimmie was afraid someone might call the cops. At one point Natalia shoved Nick in the chest with both hands and he looked pissed enough to hit her. But he didn’t. Actually, it was her push that seemed to snap him out of it and the very next words out of his mouth were, “Baby, I’m sorry. I’m such an asshole. I straight-up love you.” Natalia followed suit and then the two of them started making out like crazy, which did get a little physical when he picked her up and sat her down on the kitchen counter, a shower of empty Red Bull cans raining to the floor. Kimmie was mesmerized by the spectacle and was sad when they carried their lovefest into the bedroom, returning ten minutes later as if nothing had happened at all.
The only thing Natalia said about the whole thing later was that maybe Nick was right and Kimmie should wait on getting a tattoo because she had some she regretted herself. Kimmie nodded and thanked her for the new hair and said she was going to Uber back before her curfew. Natalia gave Kimmie a fierce hug good-bye and slipped her a half pack of menthols and a lighter so she could practice her technique. She made a point of saying good-bye to Nick, too, but he was back to playing his video game again, and only gave her a cursory nod farewell.
While she waited for her Uber at the front of their tiny apartment building, Kimmie leaned against Nick’s Volvo and lit up. She couldn’t help but dwell on Nick’s statement about growing up with girls like her. He’d said it so contemptuously, she would have ordinarily been offended, but on this particular night she wasn’t. She was currently hating on the type of girl she used to be, too. Natalia and Nick seemed so cool and real to her, saying whatever they wanted whenever they wanted at whatever volume they pleased. She especially admired how Natalia didn’t let Nick tell her what to do or think and how she was willing to get in his face and let him know he wasn’t the boss of her. Natalia was the ultimate badass, and Kimmie couldn’t get enough of her.
After that, Kimmie and Natalia were attached at the hip. Once, when Nick took a double shift at the restaurant, he gave Natalia the keys to the car, and the two girls went to the local mall, got pizza, and ended up piercing each other’s ears with ice and a needle that they sanitized with a Bic lighter, using a technique Natalia’s Vegas bestie, Sarah, had taught her. Kimmie now had three piercings going up her right earlobe, while Natalia had seven.
It was on that night that Kimmie finally confessed to Natalia about what had happened back in New York and how she ended up in Arizona. Natalia was a good listener and after hearing the story, she agreed that Kimmie should go through with her plan to confront Vronsky and give him a piece of her mind. Natalia told Kimmie that she loved being a girl, but that she often felt like boys had it way easier. They could screw around all they wanted and be lauded by their friends as a true hero. But if a girl fucked around and, God forbid, enjoyed sex, then she’d be labeled a total whore. It wasn’t fair. The only way to fight back against gender inequality was to not give a shit and not apologize. “If Nick yells at me, I’m gonna yell louder. If he hits me, I’m gonna hit him back harder.”
“Holy shit, has Nick hit you?” Kimmie asked. “Because that’s really not okay, Natalia.”
Natalia swore Nick had never laid a finger on her, which made him her first boyfriend who hadn’t. “Nick’s been clean for a while, but junkies are unpredictable. So who knows what he’s like when he falls off the wagon. No way I’m letting my guard down. But something tells me he doesn’t have that in him.”
“He seems like he really loves you,” Kimmie said, not caring that her voice sounded dreamy and wistful. She had seen the way Nick looked at Natalia and even though she had been making a real effort only to move forward these days, there was something in it that reminded her of the way that Dustin had looked at her when they went to Serendipity 3 for hot chocolate. It seemed so long ago, but the memory of it was as clear as a church bell on a quiet Sunday morning.
Her therapist had told her that it wasn’t good to label your memories as either good or bad, but to be able to see them from an objective viewpoint where something could be positive and negative at the same time. So even though she had been lumping that hot chocolate night with Dustin as a bad memory because of Vronsky, she was now able to see it was okay to remember it as good memory, too. She then told Natalia about Dustin, marveling at how she had been so clueless when it came to boys, but knowing it was pointless to want a “do-over.”
“Don’t beat yourself up. You don’t even want to know the number of dickheads I’ve been with. And I’ve had tons of boys tell me they loved me, but Nicky’s the only one I’ve ever really believed. I wake up in the middle of the night and catch him staring at me. It’s sweet, but also a little psychotic. I find it hot AF. You can’t blame a girl for whatever rando thing she finds romantic. Some girls like flowers and chocolates, while others get off on having their bf get the high score on Ms. Pac-Man at a shitty pizza place and putting in NLN, for ‘Nick loves Natalia,’ instead of his own initials.”
Kimmie laughed with Natalia, and she realized how long it had been since she laughed with a friend and how much she missed it.
IX
Kimmie’s father was supposed to fly out, pick her up, and bring her home, but the night before he was set to leave, Kimmie’s Stepmonster broke a heel coming out of a restaurant and face-planted into the sidewalk, busting her collagen lips and breaking several teeth.
“I wish
I could come out and get you, darling, but I can’t very well send David to go see Guns N’ Roses on his own when I’m the one who gave him the tickets,” Kimmie’s mother told her over the phone. “You understand, right? I booked you on a red-eye that leaves tonight at eleven P.M. Daddy will pick you up at the airport. You were supposed to be with him for your first week back, but now that your Stepmonster broke her face, you’ll be here with me instead.”
Kimmie stood in the front office of Desert Vista talking to Danielle. She hadn’t officially been discharged, so she didn’t have her phone back yet. “Mom, can’t you get me a hotel room and I’ll just hang out here until Dad can fly out and get me? I hate red-eyes.”
“Everyone hates red-eyes, Kimmie,” her mother replied with an unwavering tone. “But I upgraded you to first class so I think you’ll survive. Text me later from the airport. Love you.”
Kimmie handed the phone receiver back to the secretary and went to pack. She finished in a hurry, dropping her one suitcase off at the front office and letting them know she’d be back in the evening to catch a cab to the airport. She had already said her good-byes to Natalia and Nick the night before, but now that she had six free hours to kill she had something she wanted to do. The other night when she and Natalia cruised the low-rent mall, Natalia had seen a black leather motorcycle jacket she loved in a store window. She was so taken with it, she had pressed her whole body against the windowpane and made out with the glass, leaving smeary wet tongue prints on it. “If you love it, just buy it,” Kimmie had told her.
“Yeah, like I could ever afford a jacket like that,” Natalia said. “Please, that baby’s gotta be at least two hundo, if not more. That’s more money than all my clothes combined.”
Kimmie wanted to buy the jacket for her friend right then and there. Two hundo was so not a big deal in Kimmie’s world, Lolly spent more than that on eyelash extensions every month, but she wasn’t sure if Natalia would take offense or not. Natalia’s moods and opinions seemed to fluctuate by the minute. The jacket was three hundred and twenty dollars and Kimmie charged two of them to her father’s credit card, one for Natalia, the other for herself. The leather jacket wasn’t exactly Kimmie’s taste, but she knew Natalia would wear it all the time, so she wanted one to remember her friend by.