Whores on the Hill Page 14

  Then Juli raised her head, smiling. “Deb Scott’s birthday?”

  “You better believe it, sister.”

  Juli shifted into gear and peeled out of the Dorothea Dix parking lot. Her black hair flapped behind her like wings. “You have to wear a mask,” Juli said over her shoulder. “Everybody does.”

  “ ‘Deb Scott’s Birthday Party.’ ” Astrid laughed. “The senior girls throw it every year. On the anniversary of Deb Scott’s disappearance. I mean, ghoulie, right?”

  Astrid, Juli, and I stopped by the Walgreens after school and picked up three Princess Leia plastic masks with matching double hair buns. Three rectangles were cut into the flesh-colored plastic: one oblong rectangle for the mouth and two PacMan slits for the eyes. When we slipped the masks over our heads, we looked blank as crash-test dummies, expressionless, in the rearview mirror.

  “Righteous,” Astrid said and the word came out slurred, “rrithous,” from her Princess Leia mask.

  Juli drove with one hand on the wheel. We didn’t have any white robes at home, so we wore white nightgowns instead. Juli had yellow carnation roses all over hers. Astrid picked at the scrim of torn lace around her collar, and I borrowed my mother’s ankle-length white flannel worn so thin you could almost see through the soft, muslin fabric to my freckles. We slipped the plastic Princess Leia masks over our heads and struck a Charlie’s Angels pose. Astrid said, “Bitchin’.”

  “Where is this party anyway?”

  “Marybeth Fischer’s, on Lakeshore Drive. Her parents are in Paris, and not, like, Texas.”

  From the back, I poked my nose through the seats. “I told Devin to meet us there.”

  “Snore,” Astrid yawned. “You’re such a good little housewife,” she said, punching in the cigarette lighter and laughing. “Aren’t you, Jellybean?”

  “Whatever.”

  We slammed all three doors and ran for Marybeth Fischer’s brick Colonial mansion perched above Lake Michigan like a visor, winking in the night. It was a late March night, freakish and warm, just the tease of summer on the air one minute, and the next it’d be gone, a freezing blast coming off the lake.

  In the kitchen, girls in masks made mixed punch drinks, their voices a hive of noise. We slouched our way into the circle in midconversation and fished around for drinks in the stainless-steel refrigerator.

  “Deb Scott’s dead, for sure, she has to be,” a small, diminutive girl with pigtails and a purple mask said. “The things she did? Where else could she be?”

  “Quiet. Deb Scott’s alive,” Astrid said, picking up a salt-shaker and a shot of tequila. She sprinkled Juli’s neck with salt, licked it, and downed the shot. She lifted her lips so we could see her gums. Then she slid her Princess Leia mask down to cover her face. She said, “Deb Scott’s alive. I met her once.”

  “Really?” the pigtailed girl asked. “You saw Deb Scott?”

  “Sure,” Astrid snorted. It came out “shhurt,” from under her mask.

  Juli took one look at Astrid and slid her Princess Leia mask down over her face too.

  “She dances in a strip club in Chicago and makes piles of cash,” Astrid said, glancing at me. I knew I was supposed to pull down my mask too, but instead I twirled it by its string, nervously, on my finger. “Everybody knows that,” Astrid said hollowly.

  “What were you doing in a strip club?” somebody asked.

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?” Astrid laughed. With the mask down, all I could see were the whites of her eyes.

  “Come on, Princesses,” Astrid said, offering Juli and me one skinny, nightgowned arm. “Pretend I’m Han Solo.”

  We could hear the masked girls fall to whispers behind us as we walked through a series of doorways, hallways. “I knew it,” one of the girls whispered. “I knew she wasn’t dead.”

  We charged down the hallway, almost running, with Astrid and Juli laughing echoes behind their masked faces.

  “Liar,” Juli said.

  “Come on, I’m just saying.” Astrid turned her Princess Leia face to us and stared, expressionless. “I can’t let that pigtailed pussface talk trash. Deb Scott dead? Please, it’s just a rumor.” Astrid sighed. She threw open the back door to the party. The music hit us in the face. In the backyard, across the sloping, manicured lawn, flames licked the air. A bonfire burned in the center of it, twelve feet high, and masked girls danced around it.

  “She can’t be dead. That kind of wild, it doesn’t die. Deb Scott could eat bullets. You know what I’m saying. Metaphorically, right?” Astrid nudged her Princess Leia mask up onto her forehead with her thumb. Her cheeks were wet. “Jesus, it’s hot under that thing.”

  We walked towards the bonfire. Orange flames flickered, twisted red, then blue. It was girls, everywhere, dancing like animals, and boys from Fenwick. A tall, familiar-looking guy with a funny, corkscrew nose stood off to the side, drinking a beer. He saw me and winked.

  “Shit, the party’s already started.” Astrid tossed her cig butt over the towering ledge to the lakefront, where the water broke upon the shore. “Let’s go,” Astrid said.

  Bodies danced around the fire, knees high and kicking. Heads tossed back, mouths open. Masked girls danced around the fire, kicking up their heels, everyone seeming to get smashed. Crouching, spitting, chanting, singing. Wearing black masks around their eyes, ski masks over their faces, girls chanted, sang their way around the fire, wild with anonymity and desire.

  “Come on, Jellybean, this’ll be fun,” Juli said. She scratched at the tape around her scabby wrists. “It always is.”

  We pulled the bulbous white masks over our heads and held hands, running for the fire.

  Inside, with the dancing girls, I joined the sea of masked faces. Flames flickered shadows across bodies, illuminating a piece of skin, the laughing mouth of a plastic mask. Like a fever, the dancing, the rush of it, girls everywhere, it caught me up swirling. I danced, kicked my legs, and thought of Deb Scott, her long, black hair winding around her like a smudged sheet. I felt like a lion, roaring.

  Some girls wore Mardi Gras masks with feather fringes on them, others were in Groucho Marx glasses and mustaches. A few borrowed their dads’ blue paper doctor masks and wore them hooked over their ears. A girl with a delicate black mask around her eyes twirled in her uniform skirt on the edge of the hill, spinning like a bell.

  Every once in a while, a bare-faced boy picked his way through the masked girls. We pawed his baggy jeans, laughing, tore at his flannel shirt, running our hands over the shape of his skin. Boys just stood there, tongue-tied, while we teased them. Girls with white Jason masks poked their faces through the boys’ arms, screaming, “Boo.” Others whispered, “Precious,” pretty as a song. Astrid in her Princess Leia mask danced with her hands over her head.

  “Come on, Thisbe,” Astrid said. She slipped her arms around my waist and we danced, twirled, we lit the night on fire. Boys moved between us, all of them handsome and young and sweet-smelling. And then the familiar-looking boy from before, the one with the ruined nose, was between us and dancing. Astrid slid up against him and twisted her arms up the back of his neck. I followed her lead and snaked myself across his back. He turned to me, I could feel the erection beneath his jeans and it felt fine there, between my legs. It came upon me slowly, remembering who he was, maybe from his smell, a cologne like peat moss and rubber, the inside of a gymnasium. Brett Smith, I realized. It was Brett Smith from Thomas Aquinas and I was leaning my neck back, laughing, while he licked my neck.

  “What did I tell you, Jellybean?” Astrid laughed, dancing beside me. “We’re the new breed of the new girl. We stand alone and take no prisoners.”

  I was Deb Scott on the back of a blue Norton, flying through the night, who could stop me now? Brett Smith danced against me, our bodies just a pulse of song, of movement, slick with sweat. He grabbed my hips and pulled me close against him. Everything felt like a dream. It was a fire of girls, beautiful and perfumed, all long legged and gorgeous. Howling crazy, s
inging free, glorious to be young and beautiful on a night like that night.

  Brett Smith edged me out of the dancing body crush. We found our way through the mess of trees, running in the dark, just the sound of the waves breaking behind us and the party buzzing. He pushed me up against a tree and lifted my mother’s nightgown over my head quick. I was high, drunk, and flying inside, the thunder of it, the force. I wrapped my legs around his waist and raised my neck to the night.

  When it was over, he said, “Thank you. Jesus, thank you.”

  It descended on me quickly. Panic washed over my feet first and then up my knees. I felt like my mouth was stuffed with cold, dry stones. I dressed quickly, pulling the nightgown over my head, the mask, to avoid Brett’s grey eyes or the necessity to speak. Brett grabbed my arm, saying, “Damn, what a rush.”

  But I was already flying, running, through the trees.

  I looked for Devin everywhere but couldn’t find him. He wasn’t at the gazebo, not by the cars, not around the tapped keg, not in the dancing, moving, breathing body crush of dancers. For a second, I felt a rush of relief. He wasn’t at the party. It would be like it never even happened, just something from a dream, from the legend of Deb Scott.

  I took the winding stone path from the top of the hill to the lake. The waves broke against the shore like strips of white lace. I walked a while before I found him. Devin lay on the sand, down on the beach, by the big, black rocks, with his head thrown back. Something white moved between his jean legs. I moved closer. I saw his olive eyes close, I saw his mouth open, I saw him gasping for air while the white thing moved between his legs.

  “Devin?”

  I saw him flinch and shudder, his whole body shake. My breath stopped. It just stopped. I could hear that sound, that clicking sound in his throat, like something clicking over, the sound he made, in bed, with me. The sound clicked. He said, “Oh.”

  “Devin?” I whispered, just a breath of sound, so quiet even I could barely hear it.

  The white thing between his legs shuffled backwards. Princess Leia raised her head with her black double buns, square eyed and unblinking. She looked eerie as a ghost, straightening the torn lace at her collar. Quietly, she stood. Expressionless.

  “So, how was Brett Smith?” Astrid asked.

  Devin looked over his shoulder at me, standing on the rocks in my matching Princess Leia mask, my rectangle mouth, my square eyes. My flannel nightgown blew in the breeze around my ankles while Astrid stood between Devin’s legs, smoothing her lace-trimmed nightgown between her knees, her legs naked and bluely white in the dark.

  “Thisbe?” Devin said, now, dazed, flipping between me and Astrid in our matching masks, our white nightgowns.

  “We are young and out for glory,” Astrid said. “Isn’t that right, Jellybean?” Her blank, penny eyes burned holes in the night.

  “Stop,” I said. “Just, really, don’t even talk.”

  “W-w-wait,” Devin fumbled with the zipper on his jeans. He tried to stand. “Thisbe, wait,” he said. “Wait.”

  But I was already gone, sprinting up the stairs, soaring down the black street in my bare feet, streaking back into the black night. My tattered, torn plastic mask slid off my face onto the back of my neck while I ran, like a flag, a kite, a tribute to Deb Scott, until I tore it from my neck and tossed it, gone, lost to the night.

  LATE - NIGHT PHONE CALL TRANSCRIPT

  ASTRID: Just listen to me for a second.

  [Silence]

  ASTRID: It’s important.

  [Silence]

  ASTRID: Jellybean?

  ME: You broke my heart.

  ASTRID: Oh come on. You aren’t that innocent.

  ME: You planned it? You planned the whole thing?

  [Laughter]

  ME: Astrid?

  ASTRID: I’ll take credit for Devin. The rest was all you, Jelly-bean.

  [Silence]

  ASTRID: Do you hate me?

  ME: Yes.

  ASTRID: So why’d you take my call then?

  ME: You wouldn’t stop calling me. My mom said I had to or she’d kill me.

  ASTRID: Tough love, huh?

  ME: What’s wrong with you?

  ASTRID: Come on. I did it for you, Jellybean. To show you.

  ME: You did it for kicks. You did it for fun.

  ASTRID: You think that little of me?

  [Silence]

  ASTRID: We’re frontline soldiers, the bearers of a new race.

  ME: Stop. Please.

  ASTRID: I’m just trying to do you a favor here.

  [Silence]

  ME: I thought you were my friend.

  ASTRID: I am your friend, Jellybean. That’s why I did it.

  ME: You could have told me.

  ASTRID: What have I been trying to tell you all along? Do you listen?

  [Silence]

  ME: Why are you like this?

  [Laughter]

  ASTRID: Like what, Jellybean?

  ME: This.

  ASTRID: You’ll thank me for it later.

  ME: I wish I never met you.

  [Silence]

  ASTRID: Yeah. You’ll probably feel that way for a while. But you’ll change your mind. You’ll see.

  A TEN-LETTER WORD FOR LOSS

  “C-come over,” Devin said on the phone. “Please.”

  I pulled my hair back with an elastic band and walked forty-two blocks to his mother’s apartment. It took more than an hour. When I got there, my neck was sweaty. The hallway still smelled like Hershey’s chocolate.

  Devin stood in the doorway to his bedroom, skinny in a pair of tight torn jeans. He wore a preppy blue-and-green striped Izod shirt, one I’d never seen before. “All my laundry’s dirty,” he said, tugging at the hem.

  I shouldered my way past him, into the small, square room with the Phalaenopsis poster, its serious purple face.

  We stood there, in the early light of the afternoon, and stared at each other. “Brett Smith, huh?” he said.

  “What do you want me to say?” I asked.

  I stared at his olive eyes, his tan, dusky skin. My eyes hurt. Where could we go from here?

  “Tell me about Florida,” I said. “Tell me it’s warmer there.”

  I shuffled my shoulders, inching my way out of my oversized oxford. My skirt fell to the floor. The sheets felt cool on my skin. Devin unbuckled his jeans. He bent over to pull the legs off and I counted the brown nodes of his spine. I tried not to think about Brett Smith and his big broken face. I tried not to think about Astrid in her Princess Leia mask, standing by the beach shore with her gown flapping between her legs. But it was there, all around us and everywhere.

  “P-Pensacola? It’s sandy.” Devin lifted up the sheet and slid in next to me. “And everything sm-smells like suntan lotion.”

  My hands explored his body, the hollows between his collarbone, the sharp, winged bones of his shoulder blades, the worn paths of his ribs. I palmed the chalky balls of his feet, fingered the dust between his toes. He tried to spell the letters of his name, D-E-V-I-N, Devin, across my face, that old game, marking territory, but I shook my head now, irritable at him and curt, exhaling, “Don’t.”

  When I took Devin’s mouth in mine, I imagined Florida’s sandy beaches. I rolled the name of his hometown over in my mouth, Pensacola, and even the word tasted sweet on my tongue.

  “It’s ugly, really. An old military base,” Devin said.

  Still, I imagined white sand, blue skies. How could anyone be unhappy there? I wondered if I would be different in Pensacola, if I would wear my hair feathered and a puka shell necklace around my neck. Or if I would just find another girl like Astrid, if we’d stalk the beaches in our black Doc Martens and kohl-rimmed eyes, rosary beads clicking, chains jangling.

  Devin pulled my body across his chest. I buried my hands in his hair to keep from looking at him.

  “C-close your eyes,” Devin whispered. “Please,” he said.

  He licked the salt from my neck. He palmed the shall
ows of my bare armpits. He kissed my eyelids, he bit the tip of my ear, the bony cartilage pierced with a thin, sterling-silver hoop.

  He touched me with his hand, he took me with his mouth. “Don’t,” I said, putting my face into the sheets. “Please,” I said. He wanted to give me pleasure, he wanted to give me something. He put his hands over my face, he closed my eyelids with his fingertips, he kissed the bones in my throat, the freckles between my breasts, he attended to my body this way, with his hands, with his mouth.

  I gave myself to it, like the very first time, for the last time. I saw what sex is like when it’s a gesture, when it’s a gift, when it’s a language, when it’s loss.

  The pleasure came quickly, in shallow waves, and I sank my teeth into my tongue. It left me breathless, winded, and lonely, even with Devin kissing the bone in my hip, whispering, “There.”

  We slept for a while. I had jagged dreams, Astrid standing on the beach in her faceless Princess Leia mask. Her nightgown billowing out behind her. Her mouth a thin rectangle. She opened the square of her lips to hiss, “We are young and out for glory.” When she spoke, she had the forked tongue of a snake.

  Devin kicked my leg. I woke up with a start. His lips were pressed into the pillow. There was a fire in my chest. I stared at him until he opened one olive eye, until he said, “What?”

  It came back like a wave across my body: the anger, the shame. “I can’t do this anymore.” Somehow, the words were forced out of the fire of my throat.

  “What?” Devin’s breath was hot on my neck. His hair smelled like tangerines from his shampoo, it lay across my face in strands. My chest hurt, my throat hurt.

  “I can’t do this.” I felt sick with myself, and sick with him. He tried to touch my neck with his hands, but I swatted him away.

  “It’s Astrid, can’t you see that?” he said.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I whispered.

  “Jesus, Thisbe. You’re doing exactly what she wants you to do.”

  For a second, I thought about hitting the street for Florida, burning down the asphalt in Devin’s Nova with the fat racing stripe down the center and the painted bumper that says DON’T PUSH, all the way across the Pensacola Bay bridge.