Beautiful (6 page)

“How nice,” Lenora says, and then turns so she is facing me. Her leg touches mine and I feel lightning surge through me, something warm inside, outside, spreading, everywhere. She looks into my eyes and I feel my face turn hot and everything solid inside me turn to thick liquid.

“I should have had a girl like you,” she says. She raises her hand and slides her palm down my cheek. I close my eyes and feel the warmth expanding. “Sensitive.”

“Let's go,” says Alex, almost shouting, and I open my eyes. She is not smiling. She is walking over. She is behind me, tugging on my shoulder. “Let's
go.
”

I get up. I follow her to the stairs. My feet move my body, but part of me is still on the couch, still warm and melting.
I look back and Lenora's lying down with her eyes closed, the cigarette dangling from her red lips, like I was never even there. The air is hazy with smoke and dust and setting sun through dirty windows, and I have a sudden urge to curl up beside her, to press against her, to absorb her. I want to wear her black clothes and lipstick. I want to scare girls like me.

But I let Alex pull me downstairs to the cold, unfinished basement. The walls are concrete and lined with piles of boxes, rusted bikes, and other broken things. Alex opens a door to a small, carpeted room with a stained mattress on the floor and graffiti the color of blood on the wall. “This was my brother's room,” she says, matter-of-factly. She points to a broken light fixture on the ceiling. “And that's where—drumroll, please—my dad hung himself.”

I look at her in disbelief. “Are you serious?”

“Yeah. Pretty cool, huh?”

No,
I am thinking.
That is the least cool thing I have ever heard.

“When?” I ask because I don't know what else to say.

“I don't know,” she says, kicking a broken skateboard. “A couple years ago.”

“That's when your brother left?”

“Yeah. He just left him up there and packed up his shit and was gone. The funniest part is he left a note right next to
the suicide note. It said, ‘Dad's hanging in the basement. I'm leaving. Bye.' What a weirdo.”

“What'd the note say?”

“I just told you.”

“No, the suicide note.”

“Oh, that. I don't know. I never read it.”

Alex keeps kicking the skateboard and I want to grab her and make her stop. I want to grab the skateboard and hit her with it. But she would probably just laugh. Even if her jaw were broken and she was covered in blood, she'd just smile at me with her big crazy eyes and make me feel like there is nothing I can do to hurt her.

“Did you really do that with the cats?” I finally say.

“What do you think?” she says, smiling.

If I say no, she'll laugh at me. If I say yes, she'll do something worse. So instead I say, “Let's get ready to go,” and she smiles like she knows exactly what I was thinking.

The bathroom smells like mildew and old piss and there are strands of green hair stuck everywhere. A box of tampons is spilled on the floor and the towels look like they haven't been washed in months. I am tracing the outline of my lips with bloodred pencil and I can see Alex behind me in the reflection. She is sitting on the toilet, peeing, and her thighs are covered with bruises.

“What happened?” I ask her.

“To what?” she says, wiping herself.

“To your legs?”

She laughs at me like I'm a stupid child. “Wes just likes it rough.”

“Likes what rough?”

“Sex, stupid,” she says. “But you wouldn't know anything about that, would you? Not Cassie, the sweet little virgin.”

I don't say anything. I turn around and start curling my eyelashes.

“How much money did you steal?” she says as she gets up and flushes the toilet. She grabs a pair of fishnets that were hanging on the doorknob.

“Huh?” I say.

“For Portland, dummy. So we can move to Portland.”

“Oh,” I say. “I didn't think you were serious about that.”

“Of course I'm fucking serious,” she says, her voice hard. She's looking at me like she wants to kill me. “Are
you
serious? Or are you a fucking chicken?”

“I'm serious,” I say.

“Because I can find someone else to come with me.”

“No,” I say. “I'm serious.”

“Then start getting some money. And have a bag packed so you're ready whenever it's time.”

“How will we know it's time?”

“I'll figure that out,” she says. She sprays some hair spray and it makes my eyes burn.

“We're ready,” she says, and it's time to go.

Lenora is passed out when we leave, so Alex steals a pack of her cigarettes and a bottle of vodka, just puts them in her backpack like it's no big deal, like she's not even afraid of getting caught. We walk to the lake and it's freezing. I drink fast so I'll get warm, so I don't have to think about that house and the things that happened in it, so I won't be scared of where we're going.

“My half sister's moving in next week,” Alex says, her voice torn by the shot she just drank.

“How old is she?”

“Eighth grade.”

“Is she cool?”

“She's all right.”

“Why's she moving here?”

“Her dad's fucking her,” she says, and the vodka gets stuck in my throat, gagging me, pulling everything inside me out.

“We have the same mom,” she says. “But Sarah's dad was some guy my mom had an affair with so my dad made my mom get rid of her.”

“Oh,” I manage, trying not to throw up, trying to make sense of what Alex just said.

“Now the stupid social workers say she has to come live with us even though we don't want her.”

“Oh,” I say again because I can't think of anything else. I'm not anywhere near drunk, but my stomach feels like it's full of poison, like there's a fist inside moving it around. I am doing everything I can to keep from puking. I am clenching my teeth, my fists. I am walking fast. I am thinking of summer and beaches and sun on my face.

We crest the hill and see Lake Washington, dark and choppy, Seattle sparkling behind it. We get closer and can see the shadowed group of boys, none of whom I recognize.

“Who are those guys?” I ask.

“High schoolers.”

I want to turn around. The vodka's not working. I drink more and it's still not working.

“Where's Ethan?” I ask.

“Right there.” Alex points and he is lit by moonlight, standing on top of a bench in his baggy pants and giant sweatshirt, balancing on it like a tightrope. We get closer and I can hear the other boys cheering him on. I feel something in my stomach that is not nausea, a pleasant, heavy numbness. The fear is not gone, but it is somehow softer.

A tall boy with a pierced lip turns around and looks us up and down. “What do we have here?” he says. Ethan hops off the bench and smiles and the numbness turns to melting.

“Hi,” he says to me, ignoring Alex. “I'm glad you came.”

“Yeah,” I say.

“Do you want to sit down?” He motions toward the bench covered with his dirty footprints. I sit and he sits next to me and everyone else sits and soon we are all in a circle, and Alex is passing around the bottle of vodka and it is getting emptier and emptier and I am suddenly very angry. I am furious.
That is
our
vodka
, I want to tell her. They are drinking it and it will be gone and there won't be enough for me.

Everyone's talking except me. I drink extra when the bottle comes around so I won't think about the fact that I'm not talking. It does not take long for me to get drunk enough so my mind does not have to be here anymore. I am thinking of tropical islands and warm water and I feel okay even though I'm sitting here with a bunch of high schoolers and I haven't said anything in thirty minutes. I haven't been paying attention to what anyone's been saying because I've been somewhere else, and all of a sudden everyone but me is up and Alex is screaming because the guys are carrying her over to the embankment and threatening to throw her into the lake.

“Hey,” says Ethan, and I think he's going to save her, although I wouldn't mind if he didn't. And I'm surprised at this thought and I look around to make sure no one heard it, but everyone's laughing and not at me. “It's time to go,” he says, and he's the boss so they let her go. She's laughing like she was in on the joke, but I don't think she was. Ethan gets up and I am suddenly very cold. They all grab their backpacks and skateboards and I'm relieved but feeling pathetic, and I want to crawl into a little ball and hide in a cave and never come out, not until I'm old and all of this is done with.

I am sitting on the bench, and Alex is standing by the water, and everyone else is walking away. Ethan hangs back and sits back down next to me. “It was nice seeing you tonight,” he says with his soft lips and long eyelashes, like he didn't even notice that the only thing I said all night was “yeah.”

“You too,” I say.

“It'd be nice to hang out just you and me sometime,” he says, and the warm, spreading feeling comes back. “I'd like to get to know you better. Maybe you wouldn't be so shy if it was just you and me.”

“Yeah,” I say, even though I doubt it. I will never be able to talk to him. But I can do things other than talk.

“I have to run,” he says. “Can I have a hug?”

“Okay,” I say, and I cannot remember the last time someone hugged me.

There are arms around me, a hard chest against mine, hands on the small of my back, breath in my ears. This is when I'm supposed to put my arms around his neck, when I'm supposed to put my face close to his. This is when I'm supposed to kiss him, when he's touching me and his warmth is getting inside my clothes. I'm supposed to do it now or he won't be interested later. I must kiss him because what he wants is not my voice. He doesn't really want to talk. He doesn't really want to get to know me better, not really know me, not get inside my head where the hidden things are. I must kiss him because what he wants is my mouth, my hands on his back, my body, close, closer. I must turn my head, feel his breath on my face, move my lips to his mouth. Open. Tongue in. Out. Close my eyes. They like it when you close your eyes.

“
Damn
, girl,” he says, licking his lips.

“What?” I say, smiling, my head cocked to one side. I am looking him straight in the eye. I am a different person. I am not scared. I know what he wants.

“Just
damn.
”

“C'mon, man,” someone yells from across the street. The others are laughing their always-laughs that never seem to be directed at anything.

“I gotta go,” he says, backing away and looking me up and down.

“See you later,” I say. I am still looking in his eyes. Brown. Shallow.

“Definitely,” he says, then, “Mmm,” and this must be what it feel like to be a piece of meat, to be wanted by someone hungry. This is all I have to do. This is easy. I am delicious.

Alex and I walk away from the lake. She has a big grin on her face but isn't saying anything and I'm just waiting for her to tell me I fucked up somehow, that I looked like a fool in front of the high school boys. All of a sudden, she stops walking and looks at me and puts her hands on my shoulders.

“I can't believe you did that,” she says, smiling at me like I've made her proud.

“What?” I say.

“Just kissed him like that.”

“Why?” I am smiling now, too. I have done something right.

“What happened to the sweet little virgin Cassie?” She is laughing.

“I don't know.” I laugh back. I am giddy.

“She's gone,” Alex says.

“Yeah,” I say. We are running down the street now. We are laughing so hard we're screaming.

“The fucking bitch is gone,” Alex says.

“Bye-bye,” I say.

“Bye-bye, Cassie,” she says.

“Bye-bye.”

Sarah is nothing like I expected. She's not beautiful, but she's something close to pretty. She's small and blond and quiet and looks younger than I do, like something made her stop growing. She's not small like I am, not like a miniature woman, but small like a large child, as if her body's not strong enough to hold her and there's nothing between her skin and her bones. Everything that should be solid is brittle. You could break her in half with your hands.

She gets this blank look on her face, like she's frozen, like all life has been sucked out of her. She doesn't even blink, just sits there looking out into space like she thinks that's where she belongs. You could blow on her and she'd fall over and crumble into a million pieces.

“Sarah,” I say. She doesn't move.

“Sarah,” I say again. She is sitting on the edge of Alex's bed, looking out the window even though it's all steamed up and all you can see are drippy blobs of color, green where the trees are, gray for the sky.

“Sarah!” Alex yells. “Wake up, you fucking freak.”

Sarah blinks and looks at us. “What?” she says, like nothing's wrong, like she doesn't even know she was a zombie for three minutes.

Alex's room is as messy as the rest of the house, full of dirty dishes, piles of clothes, and old, ripped magazines. The floor is covered but the walls are completely blank. There are no posters, no photos, no cutouts of rock stars or actors. It's as if this is a garbage dump, a storage room, a place to pile unwanted things, instead of a teenage girl's bedroom. We're sitting on the floor, passing a joint around, and we want something stronger.

“Doesn't that nasty kid in your smart class take Ritalin?” says Alex.

“I love Ritalin,” says Sarah, and her face lights up. It's the most animated I've seen her.

“Call him,” says Alex.