Everything Beautiful (7 page)

14
Healthy Animals

All the way back to camp I sat in the back of the minibus stewing. Fleur was snuggling up to Craig and she kept turning around in her seat to laugh at me. Now I really, really wanted to punch her. But worse than Fleur’s flappy mouth were Sarita’s sorrowful eyes—Sarita looking sorry for ME! I couldn’t stand it. And Bird kept staring and then looking away. My boob-flash had him thrown into a world of sex and confusion, I was sure. Anton had given me a warning. I was supposed to tremble and quake when what I wanted to do was bitch-slap him to Christmas. What day was it? Tuesday? When was I leaving? Wednesday. Tomorrow! But tomorrow felt like a long way away.

Craig left Fleur to sit down next to me. He stretched his legs out and sighed and smiled. He said, “Riley—”

“What?”

“Anton’s a prick.”

“Wow. How’d you figure that?”

He laughed. “You did really well, though.”

“Yes. I flashed my boob.”

“Nothing wrong with that.” He looked at me. “
Really
.”

I stared at the back of the seat. I said, “You’re a little … liberal for one of God’s children. What about setting a Christian example?”

“We’re all God’s children,” Craig said without a trace of irony. He grinned. “I’m a healthy creature with a healthy appetite.”

Now we were sizing each other up. He looked at the yellow nicotine stains on my fingertips.

“Kissing a smoker is like kissing an ashtray.”

“Who’s kissing?”

Craig looked over the seat. I followed his gaze. Fleur was staring at us with a face like thunder. The bus stopped and she jumped out of her seat and came straight for us.

“Here comes your girlfriend.”

“Aw, we’re just hanging out.”

I started to say: “Does she know that?” But actually, I didn’t care. I realized I had two reasons to pursue Craig: one because he was hot, and two because Fleur thought he was hers. She was nearly on us when Craig nudged his shoulder into mine. “You ever done it on a merry-go-round?”

I arched an eyebrow. “Who hasn’t?”

We smiled. We were both healthy creatures with healthy appetites.

Craig stood up, nodded at me. “Laters.” He waltzed over to Fleur. She clutched his arm and glared at me.

I had to cross my legs because I felt delicious.

I had to check my head to see if little red horns had grown.

15
The Tail of a Q

Back at the smokers’ bench—my spiritual home—I dreamed and dazed. I painted my toenails seaweed green and ate my emergency chocolate. Time was crawling. I consulted wristwatch and schedule. The Word was coming up. Scripture-based activities. Ugh. In the distance Roslyn was laying yoga mats in a circle under a tree. Most of the Honeyeaters had surfaced. I saw Dylan wheel over. He had his earplugs in; his face showed nothing. I ditched my cigarette and wandered over. Roslyn fairly pounced on me.

“Riley, isn’t it?”

I nodded. Her hair fascinated me. It was piled on top of her head in a high ponytail, reminiscent of a date palm.

“Have you got your personal possession?”

“Sorry?”

Roslyn sighed. She took my arm and guided me away from the group. “Didn’t you read your program? We’re playing a ‘get to know you’ game. I’ve asked everyone to bring a personal possession: something that says something about you. Sort of a show-and-tell, okay?”

I stared into her hair. There was life in there, I was sure.

“Why don’t you run along to your cabin and pick something out. Ter-rif-ic.” She took a few steps backward. “I’d better—” And she did the jazz hands as if to say that, left unsupervised, the Honeyeaters would start lighting fires or playing porno charades, but all they were doing was lolling and talking. Everyone was sitting cross-legged, or with their legs curled up or stretched out in front of them—all except Dylan, who was just out of the circle like the tail of a
Q
.

I opened my cabin door to a shriek. Sarita was standing by my bed. She whirled around and covered her throat with her hands. She looked so scared I almost laughed. And then I saw the flash of green between her fingers. She closed her eyes and moved her hand away. My sea-glass necklace glittered against her brown skin.

I stared at her, feeling my blood go hot. “Take it off.”

“I was j-just—” Sarita sputtered and struggled with the catch.

“My mother made me that necklace.” I practically spat the words. In the next few seconds my anger bounced from Sarita back onto myself, because I’d started something now. I’d opened the door, just a crack. I should have been more careful.

Sarita cowered by the bunk. “It’s beautiful.” She was babbling, buying time. “Is she an artisan?”

“No. She just did a lot of short courses. She’s dead.” I grabbed her arm. “Turn,” I instructed. She obeyed. I was rough with her. I dug my finger into her neck as I lifted the catch. I gripped my necklace. “What else did you take?”

“Nothing!” Sarita cried.

“Thief. Liar.”

I climbed the ladder to her bunk and started pushing through her things. It didn’t take very long. She didn’t seem to have any personal items. Even her toiletry bag was free of fancy products—just a bottle of Pert and a toothbrush and toothpaste and some soap. Her limited wardrobe consisted of boring beige and lilac items with that hand-hewn vibe.

“Oh, nice!” I scoffed at a pair of granny pants. “Sensible
and
super-absorbent.” I threw them at her head and started prodding her pillow. My fingers fell on something sharp. I held up a small, jagged rock.

“Are you planning to stone me in my sleep?”

Sarita looked pained. “It’s my prayer rock.”

“What the—?”

“I put it in my pillow and when it hurts my head it reminds me to say my prayers.”

“Why do you need reminding?”

“Because I’m thinking of myself too much. I get caught up in what happened during the day and in my problems and I forget.”

I jumped down from the bunk. “Prayers don’t work.” I put the rock in her palm. “So is that your item?”

Sarita shook her head. “It’s not unique.” She clutched her rock in one hand. In the other she wrenched her granny pants.

“Those are.”

I stood in front of the mirror and put my necklace on.

“It’s really pretty,” Sarita ventured.

I grunted and started powdering my face. Sarita was like a mannequin in the background, still and indistinct. “You know, magpies do that,” I told her. “They steal shiny things. They look boring as fuck but they covet.”

“You swear a lot,” Sarita noted.

“I’m colorful.”

“I’m sorry about your mother. And I’m sorry about your necklace. I just wanted to see what it was like to wear something pretty. My mother calls jewelry the devil’s baubles.”

“Jay-sus.” I laughed. “My mother used to say that accessories were the only things that separated us from the animals.”

Sarita watched me make up in the mirror. Her eyes were sad and serious. She said, “When I was ten I really wanted to get my ears pierced. I pleaded and pleaded and so my mother finally said yes, but instead of taking me to the store she said she would perform the procedure herself with a leather-stitch needle.” Sarita hung her head. “I never told anyone this. My parents wanted a boy, only now my mother has had a hysterectomy and she hates me. I have no place in the world.”

I remembered. “What about the shroud?”

“What do you mean?”

“Roslyn’s shroud. You took it.”

Sarita was trying to keep her face straight, but her chin started to wobble. “I was going to give it back. And then I thought maybe it would give me luck.” She hung her head. “I’m so ashamed.”

She would have stayed standing that way forever if I hadn’t grabbed her shoulders and given them a tight shake.

“Sarita,” I said. “Sarita, you need to lighten up.” I turned back to my bag and pulled out a belt made of silver discs.

“Here.” I thrust it at her. “Put this on. It’s from
Méhico
. ”

Sarita looked unsure. I frowned at her, so she knew I wasn’t playing a trick, and she bit back a smile and put the belt around her waist.

“Wear it lower—it’s supposed to sit on your hips.”

“Like that?”

“Exactly like that.”

Mom said, “Sea-glass is special.” It shouldn’t be, but it is. It’s just broken glass: bottles smashed at beach parties, fishermen’s whiskey left in the rocks, champagne cracked over ships’ prows, missives flung from the starboard deck. It’s just remnants buffed to infinity by a billion, trillion grains of sand, and you will never find two pieces of sea-glass that look the same. “
Riley, no one looks like you. No one is like you. You are unique
. ”

16
Fatal Flaws

“My personal possession is this belt,” Sarita told the Honeyeaters. “It’s from my Mexican penpal, Paco. He’s in prison in Juarez. He was caught trying to cross the border. His English is dire, but he is an excellent silversmith.”

“
Bull!
” Richard coughed into his palm.

“In all honesty!” Sarita protested, blushing.

“Okay, and what does your personal possession say about you?” Roslyn coached.

Sarita held one of the silver discs in her fingers. She turned it over and said softly, “It is not the kind of thing that I ever would have picked out for myself. But when I wear it I feel special. Like I have my soul on show, and it’s all shiny and intricate, and so it makes me feel like there’s more to me than everyone thinks. That is all.” She hung her head and I could see beads of sweat on the top of her forehead.

Roslyn broke the silence. “That’s really beautiful.” She looked thrown by Sarita’s response, and it was funny because I knew it wasn’t true, but at the same time, it was honest. “Really … great. Riley?”

“Oh, I don’t have anything.” I strung my little finger along my necklace.
Try making me talk, sister.
I hadn’t been the first person to foil Roslyn’s party game. Dylan had been my inspiration. When Roslyn had called on him, he’d shaken some pills out of his little vial and rolled them around his palm like they were diamonds. “I call these my drifties,” he’d said. “One gives you a kind of fuzzbox effect. Two make your eyelids feel like they’re made out of cement. Three is the magic number. Three’s when you start to drift away. After four, it depends on your tolerance. Start counting backward from one hundred and see how far you get.” He squared his shoulders. “Prescribed for pain relief. Street value—”

Craig cut him off. “Thanks for the how-to. Real responsible.”

Dylan didn’t respond. I started to wonder if maybe he had taken a couple before coming to class. No one knew what to say, they were all just looking down, picking at their toenails, pushing dead leaves around the dirt.

Roslyn held her hand out. “Let me see.”

Dylan tossed her the vial. She read the label and then tossed them back.

“Did you know I used to be a nurse?” Roslyn said smartly. Then her face softened. “Dylan, you’re not a wild boy. You don’t have to pretend here. We’re your friends.” Dylan went red. He shoved his vial back into his bag. Roslyn shook her head and looked to the clouds.

Now she was shaking her head at me.

“Really,” I insisted, “I had a look and I don’t have anything.”

Roslyn sighed. “Riley, this is your time to tell us about yourself.”

“I just did.”

“Riley.”

I smiled. Roslyn started to say something, then stopped. “Fine,” she said.
Another bad apple
. She clapped her hands together. “Who’s next?”

Apart from outing Sarita’s spin ability, Roslyn’s game held few surprises. Fleur’s personal possession was a “friendship ring” given to her by “someone special” (she went all doe-eyed when she said it, but her toes were pointing straight at Craig); Lisa and Laura shared the same personal possession, a signed photograph of Del Sebastian, Christian soul superstar (
To two special girls, PeaceLoveJesus, Del Sebastian
); I felt sure Bird would say his binoculars, but he picked his sneakers. He said he liked the lights because they made him feel calm; Richard’s personal possession was a science fiction paperback called
The Mansions of Space
(“It’s about the hunt for the Shroud of Turin in the twenty-fourth century.”); and Ethan’s was a Swiss Army knife, which Roslyn promptly confiscated.

Craig went last. He took off his Youth Leader vest and shook his head a few times, looking at it with pride, and then he went into this unexpurgated ramble about him and Dylan and the good old days.

And I couldn’t imagine them.

Craig ended with: “It’s so cool, looking over and seeing that Dylan has the vest, too. I’m stoked. When we were twelve, we started this book where we wrote down all the Youth Leaders. Remember, D? We used to write their names, and everything about them—their attributes, what we could learn from them. Like, Mark Monroe could spot a bed wetter at fifty paces, but at the same time if you had a problem you could tell him and he wouldn’t laugh at you, he’d just be straight up. And Dylan used to write their fatal flaws. You know, room for improvement.”

At this Ethan interrupted him. “What’s your fatal flaw?” It sounded more like an accusation than a question.

Craig stopped short. “Shit. I don’t know.”

“Language!” Roslyn interjected.

Then Bird spoke up—and Bird
never
spoke up. “What’s his?” He nodded to Dylan but wouldn’t look at him.

Dylan smiled a sad, flat smile and pointed to his legs.

The Word ended with “meditation.” Roslyn had us all hold hands while she read from a little green book.

“This is just something to go away with:

‘A firemist and a planet;

A crystal and a cell;

A jellyfish and a saurian,

And caves where cavemen dwell;

Then a sense of law and beauty,

A face turned from the clod—

Some call it Evolution,

And others call it God.’ ”

The bell rang, and we all let go and wiped our hands. Roslyn said, “God is behind everything. Behind the trees and the earth and the sea. That’s pretty awesome, isn’t it? I want you to think about this for tomorrow’s discussion.”

I put my hand up. “Roslyn?”

“Yes, Riley.”

“I call it evolution.”

“Save it, Riley.”

Roslyn closed her little green book.

The Honeyeaters walked as a group to the mess hall for lunch. My silver belt gave Sarita a new swagger. I wondered what Dylan would make of it. She wasn’t doing her usual head-down, stumble-bum wander, she was
sailing
. I was smiling at this when Richard and Ethan fell into step beside me. Ethan elbowed me in the side. “You’re going to hell,” he said. Richard jabbed me in the other side. “Slut.” They stormed off ahead. I was too stunned to respond. I stopped walking. I felt a tightness growing in my chest. I knew that feeling. It’s the start of tears that never come. The first time I felt it was at Mom’s funeral, when I couldn’t cry. That was all hands on deck—everyone rubbing my back and going, “I know, I know,” and “It’s okay,” and “Let it out, love,” but no tears ever came. Call me Concrete Girl.

“Riley—are you okay?”

I looked up. Dylan was looking at me like I was a case.

“Fuck off.” I said it without thinking. He stared at me, then jammed his hands down on his wheels and shot off ahead.