“Check out these walls,” he said, and Lucy did. The walls were lined with sparkly black carpet, meant as a crash guard for the skaters. “It’s like a porno movie,” he said. “It’s like we could all just lie down and fuck anywhere, if gravity suddenly went haywire.”
Melissa giggled and gave him a slap on the arm. “You’re so bad,” she said.
They rented skates and put them on. Before Lucy could get the feel of them, Melissa took her by the hand and pulled her out onto the wooden skating floor. Lucy stumbled along, trying to keep her balance. She’d hated skating ever since she was a kid. She’d never wanted those white skates with pink pom-poms like the other kids had. She’d never tried to win the games at skating parties. Now her arms and legs felt numb from the whiskey, and the music was a dull throb inside her head. Jack kept giving her a heavy-lidded look as they skated, a half smile meant to be sexy. She wanted to jab her fingers right into his eyes and watch him double over in pain. The worst part was that when she let her mind go, she was still imagining him apologizing to her, on his knees even, telling her how sorry he was, what an asshole he was, and it was really Lucy he wanted to marry and take to California.
Lucy caught up with Melissa and pulled her toward the girls’ room. Melissa was laughing, pushing strands of her ponytail out of her face and adjusting the lace tops of her thigh-highs. They both skidded when their skates hit the girls’ room tiles.
“These tights are going to be totally wrecked,” Melissa said, “but it’s worth it.” She leaned against the wall and pulled a crumpled cigarette from her pocket. When she tried to straighten it out, it broke. “Fuck,” she said. “Do you have any?”
“No,” Lucy said.
Melissa threw the cigarette away and checked her eyebrows in the mirror. Then she turned to Lucy and smoothed her curls with one cool hand. “You look like shit. And you smell like whiskey.” She laughed. “You know what I always thought?” she said, leaning against a sink. “I thought I could take you and make you into a totally new girl. When I met you at that convention, I said to myself, That girl’s kind of pretty but she dresses lame and acts immature. I bet I could make her so cool.”
“I’m not immature,” Lucy said.
“Oh, I know, I know,” Melissa said. “Your job and all that, doing good deeds for the pregnant teens. Plus I think you lost some weight lately.”
Lucy thought about the gun, about the weight of it in her hand, and the smooth sheen of the barrel, and the arc of the trigger against her index finger. She imagined aiming, squeezing, then the explosion and the peppery smell of gunpowder, like when she used to shoot rifles at summer camp.
“Our friends are
so
going to freak when you tell them,” Melissa said. “Think about two weeks from now at Nationals! Everyone’s going to be like, She did
what
? Oh, my
God.
Her and
Jack
? You have to tell everyone we were seeing each other for months and it was this big secret.”
The restroom door banged open and a group of younger girls skated in. They wore tight glitter jeans and pastel-colored tank tops, and they were all talking about someone named Connie: Connie better get her hands off Trey. Connie didn’t know who she was messing with. Connie was going to regret she ever came here. The girls leaned toward the mirror to reap-ply their lip gloss. Every now and then they glanced at Lucy and Melissa as if to make sure they were paying attention.
“Any of you have a cigarette?” Melissa asked.
“Are you crazy?” Lucy said. “They’re like twelve.”
One of the girls rolled her eyes. “We’re fourteen,” she said.
Another girl opened the door. “Come on, you guys,” she said. “It’s the couples’ skate.” The lights had dimmed, and there was a slow song playing. The younger girls finished putting on their makeup and filed out.
“There’s no way those girls are fourteen,” Melissa said.
“I know,” Lucy said. “It’s depressing.” She thought of a girl she’d been tutoring earlier that week at the shelter, a skinny, dark-eyed girl named Tiana Woods. She was trying to pass pre-algebra, but her baby had an ear infection and wouldn’t stop crying. The girls in the glitter jeans had looked about Tiana’s age. “Listen to me,” Lucy said. “Just don’t go out to California. I know what I’m talking about.”
Melissa sighed. “How could you understand?” she said. “Imagine if your mom had run off with some asshole. Imagine if your dad was married to the world’s biggest bitch-on-a-stick, who always tried to treat you like a nine-year-old. Imagine your house feeling like a jail.” She looked at Lucy, her eyes large and dramatic.
Lucy wondered if anyone could feel sorry for Melissa. She’d been to Melissa’s house, that iced white cake on a cul-de-sac in Cincinnati. She’d met Melissa’s stepmother, a small harried woman with two children of her own. Melissa’s stepmother had made a low-fat vegetarian stir-fry for Melissa so she wouldn’t have to wreck her diet with manicotti, which was what everyone else was eating that night.
“I guess I can’t imagine,” Lucy said.
“Now, here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to fix my lipstick, and then I’m going back out there to skate. And then we’re going back to Jack’s house, and maybe we’ll have a few drinks and watch a movie. In the morning Jack and I are going to load my stuff into his car and get on the road, and you’re going to drive my car back to my house, and then you’re going to take the Greyhound home.” Melissa opened her purse and took out a folded envelope, from which she pulled two twenties and put them into Lucy’s hand. “And you’re going to do it so no one sees you, and if they do see you you’re going to have sudden total amnesia.”
“And then what?” Lucy said. “What happens tomorrow night, when your parents start to freak?” She thought about Melissa’s father, who’d come to pick her up from youth group conventions—a narrow man in a beige golf shirt and gold glasses, huffing as he carried Melissa’s suitcases. Hanging from the rearview mirror of his car was a Lucite photo holder with a picture of Melissa as a kid, playing a tiny violin.
“Are you going to help me?” Melissa said. “Or are you going to fuck it all up?”
“Let’s just go home now,” Lucy said. “
Home
home. Come on.”
Melissa leaned toward the mirror and redid her lipstick. “Don’t fuck it all up, Lucy. I mean that so seriously, you have no idea.”
Lucy went into a stall and sat down. She heard the music swell as Melissa opened the restroom door, and then go quiet again as the door swung closed. She couldn’t believe how stupid they all were. She should call Melissa’s father right now. She should kick Jack’s ass or shoot it off. What was she doing in this roller-rink bathroom? She stared at the back-of-the-door nail salon advertisement, at the gritty tile floor, at the smoked plastic Rollmastr with its eternal roll. All she wanted was to get out of there. She flushed and washed her hands and went to find Melissa.
There she was, on the far side near the railing, holding Jack’s hand, leading him out onto the polished floor. He staggered a little at first, but then got his balance and began to skate. The Lurex fibers in his shirt caught the light. Melissa skated beside him, her ponytail swaying. Lucy stepped out onto the rink, meaning to catch up with them, do something, pry them apart, but as she started to skate another girl plowed into her. They both stumbled into the carpeted wall of the rink, trying to keep their balance. High-pitched shrieks of laughter came from the sidelines. There, pointing and calling out, were the younger girls from the restroom. The girl who ran into Lucy took a step back and straightened her pink tank top, her face streaked with tears. Lucy wondered if this was Connie, the Connie who had better watch out. “It’s okay,” she said to the girl. “We didn’t even fall.”
“Fuck you,” the girl said, and skated away.
At Jack’s house the volume of his mother’s snoring had increased to a roar. Even with the door of Jack’s room closed, Lucy could hear her going. She listened to the snore as they sat on a sleeping bag on the air mattress, drinking peach schnapps and watching a soft-core movie called
Wet and Wild
West.
Lucy’s head felt stuffed with wool. She couldn’t take her eyes from the TV. Onscreen, two women in cowboy boots and Western shirts stood naked in a barn, licking each other’s breasts and rubbing against each other. They looked bored enough to fall asleep. The sound was turned down low in case Jack’s mother woke up, but not so low that they couldn’t hear the soundtrack of sighs and moans. Jack had a hand up Melissa’s skirt. Lucy could see it moving beneath the fabric. Melissa’s eyes were closed and she was breathing fast, but Jack wasn’t watching her. He was watching Lucy, giving her a secret smile. He put his other hand on her thigh and made a slow circle with his thumb. Lucy stared at his hand.
“I want to make you both happy,” he said. “I want to make you both feel good.”
Melissa’s eyes snapped open. She looked at Jack’s hand on Lucy’s thigh. “What the fuck?” she said.
Jack removed his hand from Lucy’s thigh.
“What the fuck, Lucy? Were you going to sit there and let him do that?”
Lucy shrugged. It was a good question.
“Shit, Jack,” Melissa said. “Can’t we go somewhere private?”
“But we’re all comfortable here,” Jack said.
“Not me,” said Melissa. She got up and left the room, and Jack followed her. Lucy heard the bathroom door click shut. They were inside together, talking in low voices. Then Melissa began moaning, as if she were performing in the movie herself. Lucy rolled herself into the sleeping bag and closed her eyes. The snores echoed in the hall. Onscreen, the girls climbed coarse-looking ropes. From the bathroom came a series of sharp cries, Melissa’s, rising in pitch. Lucy sat up and drank a glass of water with some ice. She knew why she was there that night: She was there because Melissa wanted a spectator. What good was it to elope to California if no one watched it happen, if no one could go to Nationals and spread the news? It would be the most spectacular thing anyone they knew had ever done. And who better to tell everyone than Lucy, that less-than-pretty girl who had no life of her own?
It wasn’t just about telling their friends, though; Lucy knew that too. It was about Melissa’s family. When her parents had been fighting, they’d been fighting over her: who would get custody, who had hurt her worse. Now, no one was fighting over her. Her mom was happy with the Minnesota businessman. Her dad had his new wife. Melissa was just one of their kids now, a picky teenager worried about her diet.
Lucy pulled herself to her feet. She found Melissa’s keys and her own bag of unacceptable clothes, including the satin pajamas she’d bought to tantalize Jack. She went down to the car. Outside everything was dead silent, the small Tudor houses stretching along the curve of the street. She could hear the highway a few blocks away, a constant riverlike hum. The windows of the car were fogged. She opened the door and climbed into the driver’s side, then slid the key into the ignition.
She thought about what would happen if she turned the key, if she pulled out into the street, if she drove all the way to Cincinnati and then took the bus home. She thought about what that would mean for Melissa. Melissa would have to go to California. There could be no backing out, after she’d made all those plans and then bragged about them. Lucy wanted to make her do it. She thought about how things would go for Melissa once she was living in Jack’s ratty bungalow near the beach. Within weeks they’d hate each other. If they lasted, it would be worse. She imagined Melissa with a crying baby on her hip. Meanwhile, Lucy would have graduated from high school and gone on to college. Maybe Melissa would send a postcard from some miserable town out West. Lucy would spread the word, all right. She couldn’t wait to do it.
Then she thought of the girl who’d crashed into her at the skating rink, the girl in the pink tank top who might or might not have been Connie. How Lucy had tried to let the girl know it was okay. How the girl had glared at her and said
fuck you.
That was what happened when girls treated each other the way those girls had treated Connie. They got to the point where they couldn’t recognize help, where every other girl seemed like an enemy.
Lucy slid over to the passenger seat and opened the glove compartment. Inside, cool and solid, was the gun. She took it in her hand. It made her feel better just to hold it. What strange power, to be sitting there in a car on a quiet street, sleeping neighbors all around, with a gun in her hand and millions of things to shoot. She opened the door and aimed at a light post, at a bush beside the drainpipe of Jack’s house, at the weathervane on the roof.
Bang,
she whispered.
Bang,
bang, bang.
She put her hand up under her sweater, pressing the gun flat against her belly. She had to remind herself that it was real, a weapon, a thing that could make someone die. She imagined aiming at the ceiling of Jack’s room, the pistol jolt and then plaster falling.
She got out of the car and went up the walk, into the house, and stood in the middle of the living room on the turquoise-rose and gold-scroll carpet. The house was quiet now. Outside, a streetlamp flickered. Squares of yellow light fell through the window and onto the carpet like scattered cards. Lucy climbed the stairs, the gun cocked before her, and edged down the hallway toward the bathroom. The sex noises had stopped. There was just the sound of the shower and of Jack talking. She listened. He was describing a problem he’d been having with his toenails. She could hear Melissa’s faint
uh-huh.
They both sounded exhausted.
She went into Jack’s room and lay down on the air mattress, holding the gun tight against her chest, beneath her shirt. The porno tape had ended, and the TV screen glowed blue. It had been hours since Lucy had eaten. She wondered what kind of food Jack’s mother kept in the house, if there was cereal or a bagel. She would eat lox and cream cheese when she got home, lots of lox, lots of cream cheese, on an everything bagel with capers. Oh, she was tired. Maybe she could just take a little nap.
But down the hall there was the sound of a door opening and closing, and all the muscles in Lucy’s back went tight. She pulled the covers over herself, keeping one eye half open. Jack came in, a towel around his waist, his hair wet from the shower. He knelt beside Lucy and touched her face. She breathed in through her nose in a way she hoped suggested deep sleep. There was a soft dull thump, his towel hitting the bedroom floor, and he climbed in beside her, naked. He was saying her name, shivering, pressing himself hard against her thighs.