Beautiful (11 page)

Jarvis rolls up a dollar bill, snorts a line, and doesn't die. He runs his finger across the glass and rubs his teeth. He closes his eyes and says, “Come on, baby.” He passes the dollar bill and everyone takes their turn. By the time it gets to me, I imagine the bill covered with snot, but I do like everyone else did—put my finger on one nostril, put the dollar bill in the other, lean over, and breathe in as hard as I can.

It feels like little thin needles in my nose for two seconds, then nothing. Then a terrible taste in my throat like liquid chemicals dripping. I pull a cigarette out of Alex's purse, light it, take a drag, and wait for something to happen.

One of the guys says, “Uh-huh.”

Another guy whoops like he's rooting for a sports team.

One of the girls has her eyes closed and is moaning softly like she's just eaten something delicious.

I hear Alex whisper into Wes's ear, “Cocaine makes me horny,” and that's when it hits me, when the lights suddenly seem brighter and the bed is softer and everyone's more beautiful, and my body is lighter and stronger and sexier and more awake, and the hangover's gone and the music is beautiful and everything is perfect.

Wes and Alex are making out on the floor. Jarvis and another guy are talking about how one of their teachers at school is a child molester. The green-eyed girl is explaining to another how she made the blouse she's wearing.

“It's beautiful,” I tell her.

“Thank you,” she says, surprised at my voice, like she didn't even know I was there.

“How'd you get all those sequins on there?” I ask. It is a masterpiece. It is something that belongs in a museum.

“Oh, I had to hand-sew all that,” she says. “It took forever.”

“You're really talented,” I say, and I love her.

“Thanks,” she says, and she starts talking to the other girl again.

There is a buzzing inside me as I look around the room.
I am surrounded by beautiful people and white light, sparkling, the texture of cellophane. It cuts through the mattress, the floor, the table, Alex, Wes, and all these people I don't know. But it is soft. It is like dewdrops, like a ball of liquid mirrors, reflecting all the light on me. I am shining, squeaky clean, sparkling.

I gulp down my cheap, warm beer and it is the most wonderful thing I have ever tasted. I take a drag from my cigarette and feel the smoke lift me. I stand up, float out of the room, and enter the noise outside. The bass from the music changes my heartbeat. It grabs me and squeezes my throat, my chest, my heart, pulsing, like all my life is centered there.

The lights are out and everyone is dancing. I move my way into the crowd and feel the bodies moving against mine. I see a couple of the gangster girls from school and they nod at me and I nod at them. I dance like I've seen on TV. I dance with my eyes closed, my feet planted firmly on the ground, my hips pumping back and forth to the upbeat, downbeat. I am not dressed wrong and I am not an alien and I am not a white girl from an island. I am one speck in this crowd of pulsing bodies. I am part of this thing that is huge. I belong here. It would not be the same without me.

There is a body against mine that feels different from the others. It is not a temporary bump. It is not an elbow or a hip
or a hand. It is a whole body. It is a man, older than junior high or even high school, at least a foot taller than I am. He is smiling. His head is bald and his teeth are white and his T-shirt is starched, hard and cold against my skin. His hands are around my waist. My hands are around his neck.

He says something into my ear.

“What?” I yell.

“I'm Anton,” he says.

“Cassie,” I say.

“What?”

“Cassie.”

And we keep dancing. And he keeps lighting cigarettes and joints and putting them in my mouth, and the song changes, and the song changes again, and this one is slower and everyone's slower and I am slower and I start to notice how low the ceiling is and how everything smells like stale beer and cigarettes, and suddenly Anton is too close and too tall and too old and all I want is to go back into Jarvis's bedroom.

“Come with me,” I tell Anton.

“What?”

“Come with me,” I say again.

“What?”

I grab his hand and pull him after me. Little me is dragging this six-foot-tall man through a sea of sweating bodies
and I can't go fast enough. I am pushing my way through. A girl says, “Bitch,” and I don't care. All I want is to get to that door. All I want is that doorknob in my hand and the cool air inside. I want everything else muted.

I find the door and suddenly I can breathe. I push it open and everyone's still sitting where they were, except Jarvis is at his stereo trying to figure out what to play. It is too quiet. People aren't talking. The girl with green eyes is biting her fingernails. Alex is leaning on Wes and smoking a cigarette. No one seems to notice me enter.

“This is Anton,” I say.

They look up and everyone seems happy all of a sudden.

“Anton, you came,” one of the girls says, and he leans over and hugs her and kisses her on the cheek. One of the guys slaps him on the back and says, “Good to see you, man. We missed you.”

“What's going on in here?” Anton says. He is staring at the pile of white powder on the table.

“You want some, man?” Jarvis says from the corner.

“Yeah,” he says. “It's been a while.”

“Me too,” I say, and Anton laughs.

“Hold on, girl,” he says.

Everyone's perked up and waiting for Anton to cut the lines. I realize that my nose is dripping and I wipe it with the
back of my hand. He is not going fast enough. I drink the remains of the forty I left on the floor and he is still not done. I light a cigarette and finally it is my turn. He lets me go first. He is a gentleman.

The line he cut is not big enough. I pick up the card he left on the table and pull out more from the pile that has gotten much smaller.

“Take it slow, Cassie,” Wes laughs.

“You just calm down, young man,” I say, and everyone laughs like it's the funniest thing they've ever heard, and I snort the two lines I've made for myself and pass the dollar bill to Anton and savor the chemical sludge in the back of my throat.

“This white girl's funny,” one of the guys says, and I realize that this is the best night of my entire life.

They are talking about something but I am not listening. I am noticing how soft my teeth feel as they rub against each other. I hear snippets of conversation, words floating through the air and meaning nothing: “out,” “six days,” “two years,” “time,” “parole,” “trouble,” “hole,” “piece.” None of it is as interesting as the tingling feeling in my hands or the fact that my feet don't hurt or that the smoke inside my lungs is making me weightless.

“Shit, man,” someone says, and I look up. Everyone's eyes
are pointed toward me, and I look down to check if my skirt is up around my waist. I make sure there is no snot running down my face. I look around the room and realize that they're all looking at Anton. They are looking at the gun in Anton's lap.

I start laughing. This is not my life. It is a movie. I am high on cocaine and sitting next to a six-foot-tall black man who just got out of prison and has a gun in his lap. I hear my dad's voice narrating:
Those people, those people,
he keeps saying.
All they do is prove the stereotypes true.

But no one else is laughing. I look around the room again, and things are not like I first saw them. Anton is turning the gun around in his hands with a broken look on his face, like he's only holding it because he has to. The guys are solemn, nodding their heads. The girls look worried, like little mothers. I am not laughing anymore. This is not a movie. This is a guy I just danced with who is willing to do something terrible because he thinks he has no choice.

All of a sudden, I'm sober. The light feeling in my chest has turned into concrete. The music sounds hostile. All the chemicals inside me are swirling around my empty stomach, making me dizzy. I get off the bed and crawl over to Alex.

“I don't feel good,” I tell her.

“Lightweight,” she says.

“I want to go home.”

“Then go,” she says.

“Will you come with me?” I ask her. There's no way I can find my way home alone.

“Hell no,” she says. “The party's just getting good.”

Everyone else is talking among themselves in low, serious tones. All I want is to be home in bed. I want everything to not be swirling and turning grotesque, everyone's face becoming sludge, melting. If I don't get up, I will pass out here on the floor and everyone will see. If I get up, I can hide. I can die in private.

I use Alex's shoulder to pull myself off the floor. “Get off,” she says, pushing me away. I get up and stumble into the party, shove my way through the sweaty, smoking crowd. I get outside and it is freezing, but the cold makes the melting stop. It makes my body solid. It makes me see straight.

I start walking in the direction we came from and nothing looks familiar. All I see is concrete and abandoned parking lots. There is no life anywhere, not a bird or cat or even a tree. I keep walking and walking until I don't even know how to get back to the party. The spinning comes back and I puke behind a dumpster. I stay there for a while. I think about not leaving. I think about freezing to death behind this dumpster in a miniskirt and high heels. I wonder who would find me. I wonder if I would be dead or just barely alive, if I would end
up in a hospital bed or a cemetery. I imagine my parents frantic, mourning me, my mother weeping, my father swearing silently to himself. I imagine them blaming themselves, and this thought makes me warmer.

But I am not dead. I am not even dying. I am cold and lost and miles away from home, but I can't be forgiven because I am not close enough to death. There is no excuse for me unless I'm dead.

There is a 7-Eleven across the street with a pay phone. The pay phone will call my house. My mom will answer the phone. She will pick me up. She will hate me, but only temporarily, and she will pick me up.

I make it across the street. I put a quarter in the hole. I call my phone number. I don't know what time it is, but I know it is late. I know everyone in the world is sleeping except people who are getting into trouble. I try not to notice the guy in the red truck sucking his teeth at me. The phone rings. Once. Twice. Three times. Someone answers.

“Hello?” It is my father.

“Dad?” I say, and I start crying. I don't want it to be him. I don't want him to be the one I have to explain to how stupid I am. I can deal with my mother because she has nothing to do but love me, but my father doesn't want me even when I'm good. He is going to be mad at me. He is going to yell. He
is going to leave me here, stranded and freezing, with no one around but the man in the truck.

“Dad,” I say again. I am not loud when I cry. He did not hear me cry. “Can you come pick me up?” I sound normal. I sound like nothing's wrong.

“Where are you?” he says.

“I don't know.” My voice breaks. I sound like I am crying.

“Are you okay?” He does not sound mad. He does not sound like I've ever heard him.

“Yeah.”

“Are you hurt?”

I am calming down. He is not going to leave me here. “No. I just need a ride.”

“Where are you?”

“7-Eleven.”

“By the arcade?”

“No. In Juanita.”

“What's the address?”

“I don't know.” The tears are coming back.
What if he can't find me?

“Look at the building. Look for numbers on the building.”

I look. They are there. A whole address is there, white paint on glass. “7644 Juanita Boulevard.”

“Okay, I'm on my way,” he says, and hangs up the phone.

I stand there for about fifteen minutes. The guy in the truck gets tired of me and drives away. Some guys I recognize from the party drive up and I hide behind the phone booth. I stay there until my dad comes, watching people drive up, walk in, walk out, drive away. I am invisible behind the phone booth. No one knows I'm here.

Dad drives up in his crappy old car and I don't move for a second. I think about hiding forever. But I am cold and it looks warm inside the car, so I leave the shadows behind the phone booth and walk toward the streetlamps and his headlights. I am looking at the oil stains and gum littering the parking lot. I am counting the white lines that designate parking spaces. One. Two. Three. Four. The walk is a mile long. It is slow motion. I can feel him watching me, like the windshield is a movie screen, like this is a movie about the dumbest girl in the world.

I get in and sit down and his big winter coat is on the seat.

“I thought you'd be cold,” he says.

I don't say anything as I wrap the coat around me. It smells strongly of something I don't recognize, and I realize that I don't really know what my father smells like, that I've never been this close to something that has been so close to him.

“Are you okay?” he says softly.

I nod my head. I still can't speak. He pulls the car out of the parking lot and we drive home on what might be the same route that Alex and I took to walk here. But everything looks different from the inside of a warm car. Everything looks different wrapped up in my father's coat, sitting in silence when he should be yelling at me.

“Do you want a milk shake?” he says, and I nod my head again. Even though I haven't had anything since a bowl of cereal this morning, eating is the last thing I want to do. But I could get a milk shake down. I could drink something cold and sweet.

We pull up to the late-night McDonald's drive-through. The lady shouts through the speaker to take our order and it makes me jump.

“What flavor do you want?” he says.