“Her friend on the street.”
“I’m off to love, huh?” I could see why Goth Sarah liked this.
“Right. And then she was gagged to death by her outfit.”
I wondered for a moment what I wanted my last words to be. “I’m off to love” was a pretty good choice.
“What did the mechanic do?”
“I don’t know,” Goth Sarah said. “He probably screamed. Or called an ambulance. Tried to unwrap her? He must have freaked out, right?”
We spent the rest of the afternoon in Sarah’s room, gossiping about D’Arts. She hated Chessie and Carrie and Amanda, said they were all total bitches who belonged in a B movie. I said Carrie had been nice to me and Sarah shrugged. “Whatever, watch your back.”
Then I ate the first of what would turn into countless dinners at Sarah’s house with her family. Her parents were mellower than mine, not low involvement exactly, but laid back. When they asked questions, they weren’t the kind my parents asked, probing, social, embarrassing. They were like, what we thought of health care reform. Literally.
They called us when the pasta was almost ready, asked us to make a salad, but didn’t boss us about how. I spun lettuce in a plastic white spinner while Sarah sliced red peppers into slivers. She made sure to cut all the white stuff out of the insides, and washed off every seed, then cored a tomato and chopped it into pieces as tiny and even as jewels. Sarah’s a meticulous person, that’s the funny thing about her. You wouldn’t have thought so to look at her, because of her whole ripped fishnets thing, but even those were artfully constructed. She tore them up herself, deciding first exactly where the holes would go and then cultivating them. Whenever the tears were the wrong size, or in the wrong places, or just too numerous, she threw the tights out.
Goth Sarah’s dad was a pale blond giant, lumbering around the kitchen in a friendly way, joking and small-talking while he handed stemless mushrooms to Ann. He threw the stems out, washed the cutting board, wiped the counter, and opened a bottle of red wine, saying he would “let it breathe” on the counter. He surprised me by putting five wineglasses on the table. Apparently, Sarah and her pimply, totally silent, chess-playing brother were adult enough to have wine. As soon as I met Josh, I thought he would benefit by meeting Sam, even though Sam was younger by at least a year. Sam wasn’t cool either, but he was so much cooler than Josh that it was sad.
We all sat sipping wine and eating pasta and salad while her parents talked about politics and a trip they were planning to South Africa for Christmas. They both taught at U of M, her dad history and her mom environmental science. It turned out her little brother was an actual chess nerd genius of some sort, so they spent part of the evening planning out a tournament they were taking him to in October, while he scarfed his food like a wolf and then bolted from the table without saying a word. Sarah asked if we could be excused, and we went back to her room and watched old Michael Jackson videos on YouTube until it was time for me to go, when she drove me home in her mom’s car. I was interested that they let her, considering we’d sipped some wine, but it had only been thimblefuls. I didn’t say anything, of course. Sarah said on the way to my house that she thought her parents were about to surprise her at Christmas by giving her the car for her own, but she wasn’t sure yet. She had to prove she could drive it around for a few more weeks without crashing or anything. I told her I thought my parents were going to get the pedals in our car raised soon, so I could drive too.
At home, I went straight to my bedroom, happy, the promise of my new friend and a week of D’Arts and Kyle Malanack floating above me like a pink candy cloud. It was nice to have had a distraction from thoughts of Kyle, but now that I was alone in my room, I was thrilled to be able to go back to thinking about him again, safely and quietly. I hummed Rickie Lee Jones’s “Lucky Guy” while I packed homework and books in my leather backpack. Then I set out a yoga mat so I could stretch in the morning, and hung my Monday outfit up—jean skirt, red tights, and a soft, striped sweater.
The week flew. I was at least an assignment ahead in every class except AP bio, and I had so much to think about that I spent the days in a happy fantasy. Goth Sarah and I sat together every day at lunch, and on Thursday, Molly joined after volunteer-tutoring someone in precalc. D’Arts was big into “students as teachers,” which meant smart people helping stupid people during lunch. When Molly arrived at lunch, she was like, “Why can’t people just work harder?”
Molly thought everyone had equal talent, and whether you were good at stuff was a question of whether you were a lazy sack of shit or not. I sometimes wondered what she thought of me. Mostly, I was glad for her company, because it was good not to spend lunches or weekends in solitary confinement or even just with Sarah anymore. I mean, even though it makes me a bad person, I was a little bummed about the whole being BFF with Sarah so fast, if I’m being totally honest about it. I still wanted to be friends with Ginger, and my friendship with Goth Sarah disqualified me for ones with girls like Ginger. Everyone the least bit glittery had lost interest in me entirely. As usual, I should have appreciated what I had when I had it. And even though it’s counterintuitive, Molly made that problem better, since when she was around, there were three of us, so it was more like we were a group, and less like the two friendless freaks had found each other and latched on. Whenever Molly wasn’t tutoring during lunch she sat with us and sang weird songs about food and people in our class, and talked about who had said what in American lit and her mysterious crushes on Chris Arpent and Tim Malone, the class fat guy.
The second time we ever hung out at lunch, she was eating tidy rows of sushi from a plastic box her mom had clearly packed and she was suddenly like, “Do you guys want to hear a poem I wrote?” So we were like, “Okay, sure,” and she took a folded piece of paper out of her pocket and cleared her throat and read this crazy thing about giant spiders that live underground and come out at night to hunt and eat chickens. The poem was called “Housekeeping,” because the spiders keep this pet frog who eats ants and mites and other bugs they don’t like. I think her point was that even though the frog is trapped, the spiders love him, and maybe he loves them, because she ended it like, “Beloved frog, you are the definition of a pet. Eat your grief quick, keep kept.”
Sarah was like, “Wow. What’s that about?”
“Brazilian spiders and their pet frog,” Molly said, smiling, and I couldn’t tell if she was being secretive or if that was just the whole thing of it.
It was a pretty good poem. Molly was like, good at being good at everything, but also bizarre and unpopular enough not to be annoying. She had gone to a private school in Atlanta called Atlanta Girls School, and apparently her dad didn’t think D’Arts was “academic enough,” so he was teaching Molly history on the weekends, kind of like homeschooling. It sounded horrible to me, but Molly said her dad was a genius, that he had written four books on American history and was a practicing lawyer and taught “the law,” too. Whenever Molly talked about what her dad did, she always said, “the law.” She was very proud of him.
When Molly invited me and Sarah over for a sleepover, we consulted and then said yes. Molly’s house was kind of like mine, except bigger and fancier. There were papers and pieces of mail on all the surfaces in the study and kitchen, but they were stacked neatly. And the living room was completely, fanatically clean, with a white couch and some expensive-looking lamps and glass sculptures on the shelves and tables. But the den was full of stuffed bookshelves and soft chairs. Molly’s mom was in the kitchen, cooking complicated Thai food and wearing high heels. When we were upstairs, Molly said her mom was a “housewife,” and Goth Sarah, unable to refrain, was like, “Um, I think, it’s ‘homemaker’ or ‘stay-at-home mom,’ ” and Molly shrugged. “My mom says ‘housewife,’ ” she said, and Sarah managed to keep quiet, although later, when Molly went to the bathroom and we were alone, she told me she thought Molly’s frog poem was actually about her mom. I wasn’t sure.
Molly’s dad came home while we were all eating shrimp curry and cucumber salad. He was very tall and formal, wearing a suit and a scarf. He had a man bag, too, that might have been a purse on someone else, but I couldn’t imagine anyone making fun of Molly’s dad.
“Hi, Robert,” Molly said to him. Sarah and I looked at each other with wide eyes. Meanwhile, Molly’s seven-year-old sister, Susanna, leapt up and knocked her chair over backwards to get to him, shouting, “Daddy!” He kissed her hello, then took his coat off, loosened his tie, and came over and kissed Molly and her mom on the tops of their heads. At dinner, he asked Goth Sarah and me about D’Arts and our life goals. Molly’s mom, whom Molly called Barbara, asked a bunch of questions too, mostly about what we were reading. She had read everything. I felt nervous, like I was at a job interview or something, because her parents were so dressed up and intense. I longed for my house, where my mom danced around the kitchen in her socks and Sam put his feet on the table and made airplanes and “food people” out of potatoes and chicken legs. Maybe Molly was worried that we might be uncomfortable, because we all ate fast, excused ourselves, and went upstairs. Molly’s room was cream and maroon, with a painting that looked like two giant boxes of color stacked on top of each other. She didn’t have the embarrassing baby-room problem Sarah and I did. Maybe because she had moved here recently. Or maybe she was born a grown-up and her first words were
Barbara
and
Robert
instead of
Mama
and
Dada
. Or my first word, which, to my mom’s great delight and pride, was
ood
, or Judy. My mom says this was because I always knew exactly who I was.
Molly’s sister, Susanna, wanted to hang out with us all night. She was clearly weirded out by me, and made a lot of references to how high she could reach, maybe wanting to say that she was taller than me but realizing that it would be rude. Their mom made her put on Disney princess pajamas at 8:00, but said she could stay up until 9:00, and Molly painted her nails sparkly pink and let her play until their mom came to get her, so it was their mom’s fault and not Molly’s. Molly never said anything impatient or made her leave, even though we kind of would’ve been happier talking about D’Arts and whatnot. I liked Molly for being nicer to her sister than she was to us—that was right of her, you know? Even when Susanna finally stopped hinting about how she could get a book from the highest shelf and asked Molly straight out, “Why is Judy so short?” Molly didn’t scold her. She just said, “You should ask Judy.” So Susanna looked over and I said, “That’s how I was born,” and she accepted it the way kids do. Kids like facts.
I looked over at Goth Sarah and Molly to see if they were like, looking at each other with pity for me, but they weren’t. They didn’t even seem to think it was a big deal or that I might not like having it come up like that. They had a lot of faith in me.
Sunday morning we woke up at eleven and walked downtown. I’m probably not the first human being to have noticed that being in a herd is better than being alone and having to gnaw your leg off to escape your own loneliness. But I felt strange that morning, anxious to go home and be alone for real. Maybe because sometimes loneliness happens precisely when you’re with people who should make you unlonely.
It was freezing out, so we went to a café, and while we were waiting to order, this old lady came up and asked Molly for help. At first I didn’t get why she did it, but Molly knew immediately, the way I know when someone’s about to be like, “Oh, aren’t you cute,” to me. She assumed Molly worked there, and Molly was polite about it; she just pointed to where the counter was, so the old lady could see the person you’re supposed to order from—a blond girl in an apron. And the old lady kind of knew to be embarrassed, because she said, “Oh! I’m sorry, I thought you were helping these two,” and pointed at Sarah and me. We weren’t sure whether to be, like, horrified or apologize on behalf of the old lady, or what, but as soon as she was out of earshot, Molly was like, “Can I get you two anything? Ma’am? Ma’am? How can I help you?” to me and Sarah and we laughed, part politely, part for real since Molly was very funny about it.
After we sat and drank cocoa for a little while, I was finally like, “Well, I gotta get home,” or something equally unconvincing and lame, so we all got up. Then, on our way out, we saw Mr. Luther, our long-suffering precalc teacher, run by. He was wearing yellow terry-cloth shorts with running tights underneath and a sweatshirt that said, “Team-Building Math Camp 1996.” Before we could pretend not to see him, he waved. We all waved back. And no one said anything mean, even after he jogged away with his shorts riding up so high he looked like he was naked. Maybe simply because it would have been too easy. And all I can say about that morning is—how did we three know instinctively where the lines are between being funny and being brutal? I mean, why is it that everywhere I look, other people seem to be crossing those boundaries constantly? Jumping, falling, leaping over the line from banter into cruelty. Sometimes it’s on purpose and other times it’s by accident, but in any case, people savage each other. Maybe because they can’t help it.
6
Sarah’s parents were going to be out of town for her gangly brother’s chess tournament, so she decided to have a Halloween party at her house. Every day after senior voice, she came to discuss the details, who we would invite (it would be open, we finally decided, that was cooler), whether we’d decorate (a little, not so much that we were like in sixth grade), who would get drinks (we’d have to rely on Chad, who had a fake ID and older friends in the fraternity he was rushing at Michigan). Molly joined in on these conversations, partly because she wanted to help with the party, and partly because she liked showing up at SV so she could see Chris Arpent. She was pretty brave about it, often came right over and was like, “Hey, Chris,” even when he was standing with Carrie and Amanda and Alan. I would never have done that; I could barely bring myself to wave to Carrie, even after she was nice to me that one time.