Whores on the Hill Read online

  —Astrid Thornton, 15,

  Milwaukee, Wisconsin

  HOLY ROLLERS

  Everybody knows the chapel is the best makeout spot on campus. So there I was, rolling under the pew with this metalhead from Thomas Aquinas. Everything was going okay, very hush-hush, when I look over and there’s the used condom, lying way over by the kneeler, like a wet gold thing pulled out of the ocean. I mean, it just shot off at some point. Slippery. Watch yourself. That’s all I’m saying.

  —Juli Sung, 16,

  Milwaukee, Wisconsin

  WHY US?

  We got pregnant, we got herpes, we got genital warts and cervical cancer and we got lost and came back again. We’re fine, is what I’m saying. We’re A-Okay. Don’t you worry now. We are you. Isn’t that a joke, a gas, a fucking laugh riot? Laugh machine? Listen. We’re your daughters, mister. We’re your girlfriends, we’re your sisters, we’re your precious baby girls. Goddammit, listen.

  —Whores on the Hill,

  Milwaukee, Wisconsin

  TURN YOUR MONEY GREEN

  Astrid said, “I want a boy so drunk he can’t even talk.”

  It was after Christmas but before New Year’s, that nowhere time when kids are on vacation and have nothing better to do but drink and drive around. We got to the party late. Lost in a tangle of circular, suburban dead cul-de-sacs. Parked in a string of thin pines.

  Astrid wiped her nose on her sleeve. Her black eye was almost gone, the skin just ringed with a greenish-yellow halo. She tilted her head back so the tears wouldn’t fall. Like a nosebleed, some dumb sport injury. It was a new thing for her. The sudden onslaught of tears. They came on her suddenly, silently, and scared the shit out of all three of us.

  “You sure you want to do this?” I asked.

  “How many times do I have to tell you, Jellybean, I’m fine.” Astrid sighed. “Look. It’s the Amazing Leaking Girl. What’s this water on my face?”

  Laughing, she linked arms with Juli and me. We wore short, matching pleather miniskirts and striped sweaters. “Very meow,” Astrid had said in Juli’s bedroom. “Very hot.” Now we pointed our chins at the sky, at the North Star, and headed through the pine needles for the hive of noise coming from the porch where the party spilled out.

  A fistful of boys stood on the porch sill, the toes of their Converse low-tops dangling dangerously over the edge. They held beers in their hands and stared, their baseball caps pulled low over their eyes.

  “Just as I expected.” Astrid sighed. “No heroes, no love, no glory.”

  A kid wearing a rectilinear John Deere cap hawked a lugie and spit between the tips of his Converse low-tops.

  “Whores . . . Whores on the Hill.” It passed between them, slowly, like a note folded into a square.

  Astrid flinched and said, “Yeah. And don’t you forget it.”

  “Jesus,” I whispered. “Will that never get old?”

  The boys laughed wetly.

  We trudged up the hill to the house, past the guys perched birdlike on the sill, past a boy pressing some girl into the door frame with his body, twisting his hips into her like a sharp little tool.

  “You ever notice, sooner or later, all love begins to look like violence?” Astrid asked, folding her shoulders in at the corners so we could squeeze past the couple making out.

  “Please God let there be someone interesting in this place,” Juli said, nervously braiding her black bangs together.

  It was one of those prefabricated mansions, with an impressive center staircase that curled up to the second floor, where a crystal chandelier hung imposingly over the foyer. But for all that, the house was still new, no more than three years old, made of walls thin as grass, and voices carried. Kids in ski jackets and stupid baseball caps were everywhere. All the girls showing their stomachs and laughing, widemouthed and loosely.

  We looped through the kitchen and Astrid grabbed three clear plastic cups. “Hand me that gin,” she said, splashing a sliver of tonic water into the cups and topping it off with three fingers of gin.

  “Holy fucking Christ, I don’t believe it,” a girl’s voice exclaimed before grabbing my shoulder and flipping me around.

  “It’s like seeing a ghost.”

  “We thought you died.”

  They swarmed like a buzzing hive around me: Becka White, Carly Applewhite, and Nicole Kramer, the most popular girls from Thomas Aquinas.

  “Nobody knew what the fuck happened to you when you didn’t come back to Thomas Aquinas.”

  “Is that pleather?”

  “What the fuck, girl, I mean, aren’t you dead?”

  The Thomas Aquinas girls muscled me up against a Dutch chest with their chatter. All three of them looked exactly the same: permed banana-colored hair, acid-washed jeans with bows and zippers in the back, wobbly in their Peter Pan boots. Panicked, my mouth went dry as cotton. I just stared when Astrid palmed me my drink over the body crush and then turned to leave. She winked over her shoulder before she and Juli got swallowed by the crowd, mouthing the words, “Have fun.”

  “So, lemme guess. You’ve been in Dorothea Dix, right?” Nicole Kramer poked me in the ribs with one Swatch watch–laden limb, laughing. “Or juvie? You always were a weird-ass one.”

  “What?” I asked, blindly. “We moved,” I said. “I transferred. You know.”

  “Sure you did.”

  “Whatever.”

  “What’s your name again? Tabitha? Tami?”

  “Tam-Ta-Tam-Tami.” Becka laughed and sort of danced, putting her face right up next to mine. I could count the oily pores on her nose.

  “No, it’s . . . wait—what?” I tried to laugh, but the laugh twisted in my chest and came out like a kicked mewl.

  “I remember now. I remember you.” Nicole waved her pink drink around in the air, most of it sloshing up and over onto her suede boots. “Are you still with the not talking?”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Oh wait, you are.”

  “Tam-Ta-Tam-Tami.”

  “Everybody misses you. Especially Brett.”

  “They have to pick on Monica King now, which just isn’t the same.”

  “She’s got one of those lame flipper arms.”

  “Fat ass.”

  I put my shoulder blades back against the wall and just stared at them, the three of them, linking arms with one another and laughing, all skinny wrists and teal-colored lashes. And me, the same old me from Thomas Aquinas, the girl I thought I left behind when I moved out of Pewaukee, useless and staring.

  “Who do you think you are? What is this, Halloween?” A wave of Love’s Baby Soft rolled off Nicole when she lurched towards me to finger the slick, shiny pleather of my skirt. I could feel it, the taste of her, the sweet, sickly smell of her on my teeth. “Whoa, what did I say?”

  “Shut up, Nicole,” one of her friends said.

  “I have to go find my friends.” I edged out of their death grip gasping for air.

  “Sure, you do.”

  “What the fuck are you doing here anyway? This is my house.”

  Nicole and her friends exploded into laughter while I staggered off through the party, past hundreds of sweaty faces laughing and leaning in too close to each other. Still, the girls’ laughter carried, “Tam-Ta-Tam-Tami.”

  Past the living room, through the kitchen, a pit stop in the bathroom, and back into the pool room, I looked. I felt desperate, like I had to find Astrid, like maybe then I could put myself back together. We could do something funny, like slip into the bathrooms and pour Nair in Nicole Kramer’s shampoo, Saran Wrap the toilet seats, then blow the fuck out of there.

  I found Astrid and Juli leaning against the plush green felt of the pool table, stretching their long legs out in front of them and laughing.

  “We’re leaving,” I said, feeling desperate and itchy as ants. “We gotta go.”

  “What?” Astrid asked, swirling her gin drink with the tip of her pinkie and then licking it. “But this party was just starting to
get good. See that guy?”

  At first, I thought it was a trick of the light, the way this suede-haired, dusty-skinned boy looked illuminated, standing against a shelf cut into the wall for the wet bar. He leaned with his elbows behind him, soft brown bangs in his eyes, running a thumb along the stubbled line of his jaw. His hair was flat curls. He had lopsided dimples and enormous, startling hands. Of course, it was candles and incense burning that made his skin glow, that turned the filaments of his hair into fire.

  “Okay,” I said. “Okay, maybe just a minute.”

  It made my knees weak, my mouth go dry just to stare at him. I wanted him to stare at me. I wanted him to notice me. My skin alive, electric tonight.

  “Hey, gotta light?” Astrid asked, tapping Billy, a junior from Fenwick, on the shoulder and pointing. “And who’s that cutie-pie?”

  “The new kid?” Billy said while Astrid leaned into Billy’s cupped hand, running her leg along his leg just for fun. “Devin. He’s from, like, Florida or something. Hey, stop that. It tickles,” Billy said, swatting away her leg. “Doesn’t talk much. But girls think he’s something.”

  “Yeah?” Astrid said, blowing smoke out of her nose, dragon-lady style. She caught me staring and winked. “Well. Tell him mama likes.”

  We circulated, pumped beer into plastic cups from the keg, talked to kids we knew. I kept my distance from Nicole Kramer and her friends, pointing them out to Astrid when they threw back their permed banana-colored hair to laugh.

  “Those bitches?” Astrid asked. “Please, we could snap them in half.”

  We watched Devin lean in and whisper to his friends. He signaled them with three fingers and they all walked outside. We heard growling engines and peeling rubber tires. A kid in a ratty Quiet Riot T-shirt stood up, looked out the windows, and called, “Here we go.”

  “Well?” Juli asked.

  We left the party and stood on the curb, staring at the blue smoke of car exhaust and taillights streaking off down the street. The air smelled like fire, burnt rubber. And beneath that, the ice and slush of December.

  We got in Juli’s car and followed the stream of taillights, turning left, turning right, snaking through the night.

  “Where are they going?”

  “How should I know?” Astrid lit up a cig and blew her smoke out the window in a plume.

  “I don’t see anything. There’s nothing out here.”

  “Thank God we’re out of there.”

  “Crappy party, but hot, hot guys, am I right?”

  Juli peered over the steering wheel and propped her elbow on the door handle. She followed the trail of cars, past the Kmart, the Handy Andy, the mini-mart strip malls lining the avenue.

  I leaned my head out the window and stared at the sky, shot through with stars. Your hometown never seems that small, that bad, on such a beautiful night, when you’re out, howling through the night. It feels like the center of the world because you are in it and you are hopeful and you are free of who you once were and suddenly, the world is enormous and filled with surprises, all for you.

  “Hey, look, I think they’re heading for Hollywood Cemetery.” Juli turned right into the soldiers’ cemetery behind Holy Angels.

  A line of cars, three or four, got in a row. We slammed the doors and sat perched on the hood.

  “Look at me, disaster face,” Astrid sighed, picking a pimple on her chin. “Think he’ll notice?”

  “I’m freezing,” Juli said, flipping up the furry hood on her parka.

  We hopped up on the hood of Juli’s Audi to watch the tailpipes smoke, to listen to the engines pop and fire. Astrid picked at her pimple, watching a driver pull donuts up ahead, wasting time.

  A kid in a denim jacket, tight jeans, and a baseball cap stood between the line of cars. He dropped a flag. The cars went flying, all smoke and grease, down the headstone-trimmed lanes of Hollywood Cemetery.

  “Look, it’s your Florida cowboy.” Juli elbowed Astrid when a Chevy Nova looped around the track, passing us in a blur. My heart kicked up a strange, draggy beat, like a one-legged man limping down the street. It was work to breathe. Directly in Devin’s path, the Camaro spun donuts, spastically, out of control. The spinning Camaro tapped Devin’s Nova enough to turn him ninety degrees and sent him skidding into the grass. His brakes screamed. The Nova snapped to a stop, just a breath away from a giant headstone with an angel curling its wings over it.

  “Now this.” Astrid hunched over her knees, staring. “This is getting interesting.”

  Devin got out of the Nova. He peered over, checked out the headstone, still intact, and exhaled. We were too far away to hear him, but we watched him lean down, brace his hands against his knees, and laugh.

  Later, when everybody was parked and drinking beer out of cans, sitting on the hoods of cars, Devin passed us sprawled out on Juli’s lemon-colored Audi, chatting.

  “Careful there, killer,” Astrid called. “You had us worried.”

  “N-no big thing,” Devin slightly stuttered, smiling out of the corner of his mouth. He took all three of us in, first Astrid, then Juli, then me. Blond hair, black hair, red. I could swear his eyes lingered, just for a minute, on mine.

  “We hear you’re from Florida. How’s Milwaukee after that?” Juli asked.

  “Buh-brilliant. Beautiful. Better-looking g-girls.” Devin smiled shyly and leaned against the grille. He wore a skinny leather strap knotted around his neck, resting on his clavicle. “Seriously. And—and everything smells like beer.”

  “That’s Milwaukee for you,” Astrid said, tilting her head slightly at Devin’s stutter, surprised.

  “Nice moves out there,” I said and squared my jaw, embarrassed. “I’ve never seen a street race before. You get this started?”

  “NASCAR country.” Devin tugged at the leather strap around his neck. “You know, bad habit. Y-you won’t hold it against me, w-will you?”

  In the car light, his eyes were like olives, green at the edges and brown in the center. I’d never seen eyes like that, huge, swallowing, soft.

  “H-hey listen, I’m D-Devin,” he said.

  “We know,” Astrid said, laughing. “I’m Astrid, that’s Juli and Thisbe. But we call her Jellybean.”

  “Jellybean,” Devin said, clearly, cleanly.

  We stood there, all four of us, grinning like ghouls at each other. The chatter of the party suddenly went silent and it was just the four of us, standing in a deserted cemetery at the edge of a cornfield, sitting in the glare of headlights, smiling.

  My mouth was dry with desire and he just stood there, kicking the dust with the tip of his boot.

  I’d found, in my limited experience, that most boys don’t know how to look at a girl. They’re scared of her so they avoid her eyes. Or they don’t give a shit and look through her. Maybe they teach boys different in Florida. Maybe they give them lessons, like, This is how you look at a girl: her eyes, her mouth, her face. You look at her like she’s a person. At least, that’s how Devin was looking at us. First Astrid, then Juli, then me. And then, surprise, he winked.

  “We go to Sacred Heart,” Juli said, pointing to the back of our school, looming like a spectacled schoolteacher off in the distance, past the cornfield and its thick, brown stalks.

  “Really? I-I-I never would have guessed.” Devin grinned. “I’d take that over Florida any day.” He twirled his empty beer can and whistled through his teeth. “Be seeing you.”

  Devin slipped his hands inside the soft, leather pockets of his jacket and stepped out of the glow of the headlights. He slouched off for the line of cars behind us, kicking up dirt in the dark.

  We were quiet in his wake. Thinking. Dreaming. Just like girls do. Juli opened and shut the car door. I pulled loose threads out of my scarf, one by one. Until, softly, Astrid whispered, “Yeah. I’ll turn his money green.”

  BLUE CHATEAU MOTEL

  Juli lived on the East Side in a stucco mansion from the twenties. The Sungs had four and a half bathrooms, parquet floors,
plush Oriental rugs, a black baby grand piano, a Macintosh XL computer, two Ming vases, three rice cookers, a guesthouse over the garage, a black gardener, a cleaning lady every Tuesday and Thursday, and a fourth-floor efficiency apartment with a cooking stove and minifridge that Juli laid siege to on her twelfth birthday, like her own private club.

  Sometimes, Juli would lay flat on her back on the white shag carpet. A halo of light would flicker from Juli’s Virgin Mary night-light, her exposed pink heart like a strawberry.

  “As the knife punctures your chest, you feel your legs get heavy as wood.” Astrid would rub Juli’s temples while I’d sit sidesaddle, waiting my turn. “Blood fills your mouth. Your heart jerks one last time. Then stops.”

  Astrid would scuttle over to Juli’s right side. We’d both slip two fingers, the index and the third, underneath her back. Astrid would arch one eyebrow and give me the nod. We knew what to do.

  We’d whisper, “Light as a feather, stiff as a board.” And again, “Light as a feather, stiff as a board.”

  Juli’s skinny, paper-thin body would rise easy under our digits. First an inch off the floor, then two. “Bones,” her father called her. “Bony bones.” We’d get her knee-high, her black as ebony hair touching the ground like pulled taffy, before Juli’d pop open her eyes and whisper, “Oh shit.”

  She’d hit the white shag rug with a thud. Laugh and rub her head. “Sorry.”

  Bedroom hypnotists. This is what we did for fun when we stayed in. But nights out were a different story.

  “Give me the key,” Astrid said. “I stuck it in your purse somewhere.” She teased her bangs with her fingers.

  “Jesus, fuck, I’m frozen,” Juli said, her words whispering clouds of breath in the dark, vacant car lot.

  The wind picked up our skirts and froze our knees raw. It was a bitter night in January, when the whole world seemed sheeted with ice. The rooms at the Blue Chateau Motel faced a deserted car lot first and then the salted twin lanes of Route 65. Headlights caught the Queen Anne’s lace at the side of the road for a minute and then it was black night again.