Beautiful (10 page)

“She just moved here,” I say. “She's Alex's half sister.”

“Oh,” Mom says. “The mysterious Alex, who Cassie's always going someplace with but who we've barely met.” She looks at me like a caricature of a stern mom, like she's practicing, probably something else she learned on TV.

“Where did you move from?” she says, smiling to herself about her performance.

“Mukilteo,” says Sarah, her smile suddenly gone.

“What made you move here?” Mom says, and Sarah looks down at her plate and pushes mushy carrots around with her fork.

“Her dad's in the military,” I say. “He had to go overseas,
so she came to live with her mom until he gets back.”

“How interesting,” Mom says. “Where's he stationed?”

Sarah looks at me, pleading.

“Somewhere in the Middle East,” I say. “Right, Sarah?”

She nods her head slowly.

“Oh, honey, you look so sad,” Mom says. “You must miss him.”

Sarah nods again, like a robot.

“We'll stop talking about it then,” Mom says. Sarah is looking out the window like she wants to disappear.

“Can we be excused?” I say.

“You're already finished?” Mom says.

“Yes.” I look at Sarah. She nods her head.

“There's ice cream,” Mom says.

“Maybe later,” I say.

I grab Sarah's arm to take her to my room, leaving Mom alone at the empty dinner table staring at the fake fireplace. “Thank you,” Sarah says as I drag her away, and Mom looks up, her eyes full of weak gratitude.

“Sorry,” I say when we get to my room.

“Your mom hates me,” Sarah says.

“Why do you think that?”

“I don't know,” she says. She's quiet for a moment. “She's nice. You have a nice mom.”

“She's not always like that,” I say. “She was on her best behavior tonight.”

“But it's nice that you have her. It's nice she's like that sometimes.”

“Yeah,” I say, and I realize that my parents at their worst are probably better than anything Sarah's ever known.

Sarah sits on my bed and pats the blankets around her. “I like your room,” she says. “It's better than my room.” She sleeps in the room where Alex's father hung himself, in the room covered with graffiti and filled with broken things.

I open my closet and find the water bottle hidden behind the backpack Alex told me to get ready for Portland. All I've managed to pack are some clean underwear and socks and a toothbrush. All I've managed to steal is forty-three dollars.

I hand Sarah the water bottle full of clear liquor I've stolen from Mom's liquor cabinet, the rum, vodka, and gin she doesn't drink but keeps around in case of company we never have.

She takes a swig and flinches. “This is disgusting.”

“But it works,” I say, and I light some incense and open the window and we smoke a joint and share my pack of cigarettes until the liquor doesn't make us flinch.

We are lying on the bed playing a game I used to watch the girls on the island play, where you write things on each other's
back with your fingers and the other person has to guess what you've written. I trace letters onto Sarah's back slowly, feeling for the ridges of her scar.

“Macaroni,” Sarah says, laughing so hard she drops her cigarette between the bed and the wall, and we have to move the mattress to find the hole burning though the box spring.

“Oops,” she says.

“My turn,” I say.

We lie back down and Sarah just makes circles for a while, tracing a spiral into my back. It is the best feeling I have ever felt.

“O,” I say. “A lot of O's.”

“Hold on, I'm thinking.”

After more O's, Sarah makes dots.

“Come on,” I say.

After a while, she starts writing.
I-M-S-C-A-R-E-D
.

I feel the bed move as she rolls over to her other side. I turn over.
W-H-Y-?,
I spell.

We turn over again.
M-Y-F-A-T-H-E-R.

I turn over but Sarah stays where she is. We are facing each other.

“He's going to find me,” she says. “He's getting out of jail soon.”

“But he can't,” I say.

“A lawyer made a mistake. They're letting him out.”

“They can't let him—”

“They can't do anything,” she says without feeling, like it is something she has known for a long time.

“Sarah,” I say.

“Do you want to know what he did to me?” she asks.

No.

“Yes,” I say.

“The social workers told me. I don't really remember.”

“Okay.” I can smell her breath. I can smell alcohol and pot roast and cigarettes. It smells disgusting but I want to breathe it in. I want it inside me.

“They said he'd been raping me since I was little.”

“Oh, God,” I say. Her face is blank, like she's possessed, like someone's put this information in her and she's simply reporting it, a machine, with no feeling. The “I” and the “me” could be anybody.

“They said the doctors could tell from the scars.”

“Stop.”

“Scars can tell you how old a wound is.”

“Stop.”

“When I stopped going to school, they came and found me. They found me in the closet.”

“Sarah.” I put my hand over her mouth. I put my other
arm around her waist and pull her close to me, pull her so close that there's no air, no room for air, no room for hands, no room for anybody but us. And my hand is around the back of her neck and my mouth is on hers, saying, “Stop, please, stop.” I am dizzy. I want to go to sleep.

“I'm sorry,” she says.

“Don't be sorry,” I breathe into her. I say it with everything inside me.

And she cries. She is silent, but I can feel her sobs shaking both of us. Her eyes are closed but there are tears seeping out and her fingers are tearing into my back. Her tiny, brittle nails are cutting though my pajamas, bruising my skin beneath.

“It's okay,” I keep saying, even though I know it is not, even though I know I have no right to say it. I move my hand beneath her pajama shirt, rest it on the ridge of the scar across her spine. I feel her heart beating through her back, fragile and fast like a bird. I kiss her forehead and pull her close. I say, “Breathe,” and she does, and I never want to move again.

We fall asleep like this, on top of the covers, drunk and stoned. I wake in the middle of the night and cover us with blankets. She has her eyes closed tighter than any eyes I've ever seen.

“Where's Sarah?” I say.

Alex is walking fast and it's hard to keep up because her legs are twice as long as mine.

“I don't know,” she says.

“Slow down.”

“You hurry up,” she says without even looking at me.

I am practically jogging to keep up with her. It is hard to jog in heels, especially when you have a hangover.

It's eight o'clock now and we just bought drugs from a guy in a car with tinted windows. I don't know what we got, how Alex got the hundred dollars she bought it with, or even where we're going, because Alex keeps pretending she doesn't hear me whenever I ask her anything,
or she gives me an answer that doesn't really answer anything at all.

“Sarah didn't want to come?” I ask her now.

“She wasn't invited,” Alex says.

“Why not?”

“Why do you care so fucking much?” She stops walking and turns around. Her nose is practically touching mine and I can smell her sour breath and cheap perfume. “You're my best friend, not hers,” she says.

I don't say anything. I have made her angry.

“Right?” she says. She looks like she wants to kill me.

I say nothing. I can feel the tears welling up. I can feel my chest and throat hot and tight like someone's standing on me.

“Right?” she says again. She pushes my shoulder hard, and I step back. “Say it,” she says.

“I'm sorry,” I say, and now I am really crying. The tears are running down my face and smearing my makeup and there are thick, dull nails hammering into my chest.

“Say it,” she says again, her voice low, growling. She is holding me by the shoulders, her big hands crushing me.

“You're my best friend,” I whine through snot.

“Say it again.” Her hands move to my throat. I can feel her thumb on my vein, my pulse magnified by the pressure,
pounding in my skull. My breath is stopped. My voice is trapped under her hand and throbbing.

“You're my best friend,” I cough, and it sounds like someone dying.

She lets go and I breathe and she lights a cigarette. She starts walking and I stumble after her, tasting her trail of smoke and perfume. I feel the skin around my neck with my hands, checking to make sure everything's intact. People walk by us, looking straight ahead or out at the water, anything to not catch my eye, anything to not acknowledge that they see me.

I feel my face and it is wet. I run my finger across the bottom of my eye and it is lined with black mascara, each one of my eyelashes imprinted with tiny brushstrokes. I look at my hands and they are smeared with foundation, like paint the same color as my skin, and it looks like I am melting, like the palms of my hands are turning into jelly, like they have given up on being solid.

Alex slows down so she is walking next to me. She hands me her cigarette. “Want the rest?” she says.

“Thanks,” I say. I take a drag and it burns my throat, but I feel calmer.

“You look like shit,” she says. She opens her purse, takes out her mirror, and hands it to me. “Here,” she says.

“Thanks,” I say again. I check my face and rub away the
tearstains. I apply more makeup as we walk. I make it look like nothing happened.

The party's in a part of town I've never been to. It's not even in Kirkland. It's past the arcade and over the hill that separates us from the big strip malls and the streets like highways, all the way over in Juanita in a run-down apartment building, next to the giant church the size of a stadium and the two-story neon sign that says jesus, light of the world. By the time we get there, the balls of my feet are numb and my ankles feel like they could crumble into a million pieces. All I want is a drink and a joint and a quiet corner to sit in until Alex decides it's time to go home.

Wes is standing outside drinking a forty. Alex throws her coat off in my direction, runs up to him, and throws her arms around his neck. They stick their tongues in each other's mouths while I stand at the curb, holding her jacket and watching people I don't know smoking cigarettes and drinking out of paper bags. They are all older and they are almost all black, and I feel younger and whiter than I ever have in my whole life.

It is only now that I notice that there's something different about Alex, that she has replaced her usual combat boots and fishnets for Adidas shell tops and baggy pants that hang
so low you can see the top of her G-string. Instead of a ripped up T-shirt, she is wearing a red halter-top that barely clings to her tiny chest. Her hair is covered by a black bandanna, only showing her roots that are no longer green. I feel like an alien in my outfit, a baby, a white-trash alien. The guys leaning against the apartment building look at me with their droopy, stoned eyes, whispering things and making each other laugh.

“Cassie!” Alex yells, and I walk over, feeling the heat of eyes following me. The bass of rap music from inside the apartment makes the ground shake.

“Hey, girl,” Wes says.

“Hey,” I say.

“This party's tight, huh?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Is Ethan here?” and all of a sudden I want nothing more than to be in the back of his car behind the reservoir, looking at the ceiling while I let him fuck me. It is not fun, but it is predictable and it is not here. It's a kind of script I have memorized. I know what to do when I'm with him.

“Nah,” Wes says. “He went tagging with some dudes from Redmond High.” I don't know why, but this seems like the saddest news I've ever heard.

“Let's go inside,” Alex says, and I follow.

The apartment is small and cluttered and crowded with people. No one is dancing, but all the bodies seem to be
moving, pulsing to the beat of the music. Forties are piled on a table, and Wes hands each of us one. Most everyone looks even older than high school. I hear a girl a few years older than us say, “Nah, dude, this is my
moms
,” about a woman next to her who looks only a few years older than she is. This is just like a rap video, I think, except there are no expensive cars or champagne and everyone's a little less beautiful. I wonder if I am racist for thinking that. I keep hearing my dad's voice in my head saying,
Those fucking people
, when there is news about a gang shooting on TV, and I remember always being mad at him for it. I wonder if I'm a racist for being scared now.

Wes leads us to a door at the end of the hall, knocks three times, and opens it. It is cleaner and quieter inside and there are only a handful of people sitting on the bed and on the floor around a low glass coffee table. The music from the living room is still loud enough to hear, but the mellow R&B playing from a stereo in the corner drowns most of it out. The people sitting seem like they are closer to our ages. The girls look at us and smile and the guys say, “What's up?” and I hope we stay in here for the rest of the night.

A beautiful girl with big green eyes scoots over on the bed and I sit down. Wes and Alex sit on the floor and everyone introduces themselves. I am not so scared in this room with the party muted, but I still feel white.

“Did you get it?” Wes says to Alex.

“Of course I did,” Alex says.

“That's my girl,” Wes says as she dumps out a pile of white powder on the glass table. The boy named Jarvis takes out his school ID card and starts chopping it up. Wes and another guy do the same, and the rest of us sit and watch and listen to the
tap, tap, tap
of white powder becoming finer. Wes makes lines for all of us and they seem enormous, bigger than the ones I've seen in movies. I wonder if he knows what he's doing, if he's just guessing how much is the right amount, if anyone knows what's the right amount, if we're all going to overdose and die.