ROSALIE
THURSDAY, JANUARY 4
My life is negotiation. With my parents, with Carter, with Paulina, with myself. Carter’s scheduled to arrive at five, so that means by four thirty it’s time to get stoned. The charade of our relationship is keeping me safe—but it’s not something I can face sober.
I shove my desk chair up against the door (no locks allowed at the Bells) and pull the cardboard box that holds the shoes from my Holy Immersive Baptism out of the back of my cramped bedroom closet. I push aside the tissue paper to reveal my vape pen and the jar that holds my stash. Then, I plug the vaporizer into its charger.
Drugs of all kinds are strictly prohibited by the Fellowship of Christ. Christian teens are high on life! But vaping is hardly the most serious of my FOC infractions. If the church’s principles are right—which they aren’t because I can’t let myself think that way—the afterworld already holds a punishing lake of fire with my name on it. In this life, I’m getting stoned.
There’s something calming about the ritual of charging and packing the pen, knowing my own little nirvana awaits. I hover over the wooden desk that doubles as a dresser and press the weed into the chamber, not too loose, not too tight. Then I sit back on my twin bed, spread up with the same worn yellow quilt I’ve had since grade school, and wait for the pen to charge.
Paulina and I tried pot for the first time freshman year, after her cousins swept through town, gifting her three pristinely rolled joints from their plants in Washington State. Pau never really got into it, preferring the cigarettes that are surely killing her faster, so when they mail her “care packages” of vacuum-sealed baggies packed in rolls of toilet paper, she passes them on to me. She hooked me up with the bright purple vaporizer too, which my parents would never recognize as an instrument for smoking pot. But they’d definitely recognize the smell, so I’m meticulous about hanging out the window and exhaling into a towel. If my parents found out, there would be something way worse than a punishing lake of fire waiting right here on Earth. But it’s worth the risk. Getting high is like stuffing my ears full of cotton; the noise doesn’t stop, but it muffles the daily reality of existing in my own house.
I check the time on my phone. 4:40. The light on my pen blinks from red to green, and I raise the window next to my bed and draw in a deep hit. Pau’s cousins call the stuff they grow Smucker’s since the plants are in an area that used to be berry patches. They swear it has “notes” of raspberry jam, but as I draw the vapor into my lungs, all I can taste is the sweet burn of oblivion.
Before I head downstairs, I return the shoe box to its place in my closet and grab the bottle of lavender body spray from my dresser slash desk—deodorant and face lotion on one side, books and school supplies on the other. I angle a spritz onto each wrist and two into my hair. Then, a final spritz near the window just to be safe.
When I’m returning the bottle to its place, something catches my eye: On the other side of the dresser top, my small collection of novels is out of order, a blue spine next to a pink one, disrupting my neat organization by color. My parents have been snooping again. Monitoring. I resist the urge to return Gayle Forman to her rightful place and shove my hands into my cardigan pockets. Deep inside my stomach, the ball of anger glows orange.
Downstairs, Lily’s doing her reading comprehension homework on the den couch. I can hear the clatter of Mom and Dad in the kitchen, starting dinner and waiting for Carter to arrive, Faith NOW blaring. The nasal pitch of twenty-three-year-old talk radio wunderkind Billy Love Williams whirrs high and sharp like a swarm of angry bees. My throat tightens, and I half close the den door behind me.
“Hey, Lils.” I plop down next to her on the couch, bumping my hip against her hip and making her giggle. “Whatcha working on?”
“A Job for Rob.” I glance at the work sheet balanced on her lap desk. It’s full of words ending in -ob: cob, mob, sob. At the bottom of the page is a cartoon of a man holding a big barrel of corn.
“That’s corn on the cob,” Lily says, pointing to the cartoon triumphantly.
“So it is.” I give her a big kiss on the top of her head. I don’t remember having so much homework in first grade, but by midway through the year, these work sheets are already much too easy for Lily, so I guess it’s paid off. “Are we still on to read Anna, Banana together after dinner tomorrow?” Lily likes to pretend Anna’s adorable wiener dog, Banana, is ours.
“Obviously,” she says to me, her eyes big and serious.
“Carter should be here soon,” Mom calls from the kitchen, voice rising above the radio.
“Any minute,” I call back. Which means I have to finish getting ready. I push up from the couch.
Back upstairs, I slip past the open door to Lily’s room and into the bathroom. When Lily turned six this year, Mom gave up the hall storage and Dad broke down a wall to give Lily her own room, but it’s still basically a closet. She’ll move into my room the second I’m out of the house.
I stare at myself in the mirror. It’s easy to recognize the girl I see, but she’s not really me. Skinny jeans. Navy blue top that Mom picked out and a long beige cardigan. My clothes say nobody girl. Plain Jane. Basic. Inside my head, I’m wearing a fitted leather jacket over a soft gray T-shirt; a short black skirt; and tall, chunky red boots that could kick some serious ass. I close my eyes and the girl inside beats her fists against my rib cage, desperate to get out. Just a few more months, I promise her. Just until we’re safe.
I adjust my glasses across the bridge of my nose, then smear some Bed Head on my fingers and run them through my hair. The dark brown strands stick out in all directions in a rocker girl, messy-on-purpose way that makes me feel alive.
A minute later, Carter pulls up front and my heart sinks deep into my stomach. I can’t see the car from up here, but I can hear the crunch of tires against the gravel drive and the smooth whoosh of the car door closing.
When he knocks, I let my parents get the door. Dad’s a teacher, so he’s always home early, but Mom traded shifts at the grocery store today just to be here for these ten minutes. I can hear their three voices turn to laughter almost immediately, but I don’t rush downstairs. Carter’s good with my parents. He always makes the right jokes, puts them at ease. And most importantly, he’s a Christian. Entering into a relationship with a nonbeliever is a practice expressly prohibited by the gospel according to everyone from Deuteronomy to Nehemiah to the Corinthians. In Richard and Julia Bell’s perfect world, Carter would be FOC, but my parents will take a good Presbyterian boy as long as he lives a godly life. Since he knows it’s important to me, he always turns it up for my parents.
“Rosalie? Carter’s here!” Mom’s voice floats up the short set of stairs to my room.
“Be right down!” I rinse off my hands, then grab my bag from my bed. I’m still rubbing my palms against my jeans when I arrive at the bottom of the stairs. Mom glares disapprovingly. When she looks at Carter Shaw, she sees a lucrative church endowment and her daughter’s salvation, all rolled into one. Eyes fixed on the wet streaks on my jeans, she says, “There are two perfectly clean hand towels in the bathroom.”
“I know,” I mumble. “Sorry.”
I glance around our living room, seeing it through Carter’s eyes as I can’t stop myself from doing every time he’s here. Mom keeps our house meticulously clean; there’s not a speck of dust or cobweb to be found. But no amount of vacuuming or dusting can disguise the worn beige carpet in need of replacing. The secondhand furniture. The thrifted art on the walls. It’s not that I’m embarrassed by it; our house is what it is, and I actually like our thrift-store decor. I picked some of it out myself. But Carter notices. Even though he’s far too polite to say it, I know he’s making mental comparisons to his family’s estate.
Dad doesn’t seem to notice my discomfort. He’s all smiles and deep chuckles this evening; Carter always puts him in a good mood. “What’s tonight’s plan?” His tone is amiable enough, but the truth is he’d never let me out of the house without knowing my whereabouts, even with a good Christian boy he trusts.
“Dinner in the city,” Carter replies. “If that’s okay, sir?”
My parents smile and nod, entirely charmed. “Of course,” Mom says. Her voice is filled with hope.
The guilt draws back its lips, baring razor-sharp teeth. I take a deep breath and let everything smooth out around the edges, leaning into my buzz. With each stray thought about the precarious web I’ve spun, another thread snaps. Too much thinking, and it’ll all rip apart.
I smile at Carter and walk over to him, sliding my hand into his. “Ready to hit the road?” I ask. The skin on my palm itches.
“Absolutely.” He beams down at me, then turns to my parents. “Bye Mr. Bell, Mrs. Bell.” He steadfastly refuses their offer to “call us Richard and Julia,” and my parents find his insistence on formality endearing.
“Back by nine thirty,” Mom says as I dart into the mudroom for my coat. “On the dot.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Carter replies, and we head out the door. Carter is always angling for a weekend date, when my curfew gets extended by an hour, but it’s never been too hard to push back. He may want to take me out on a Friday or Saturday, but really, he can’t. His weekends belong to Amanda.
We slide into the front seat of Carter’s much-too-fancy-for-Culver-Ridge car, and he backs out of the drive, gravel pinging the tires. He fiddles with the stereo controls on the dash until the newest album by a pop-punk band we saw together blares out of the speakers. I try to relax and start bouncing along to the music, willing it to boost my mood.
“Where are we going?” I shout.
He turns the music down a little. “I could definitely go for some salt and grease tonight. Want to hit the ‘O’?”
“Sure, I’ve never been.”
Carter reaches over and squeezes my hand, a big grin bringing out a dimple on each cheek. “You’re going to love it, Rosalie. Zero ambiance, but the cheese fries are out of this world.”
I nod. “Let’s do it.”
The first couple times we went out, Carter made a big production of explaining that he wanted to expand his horizons, explore new things, see the world outside Logansville. But deception was clearly not his strong suit; beneath those dimples and bright blue eyes, he was hiding something.
On the night we met last August, I was playing wing woman for Elissa at a club in downtown Logansville. Sneaking out that night had meant risking my parents’ wrath, but Elissa had just broken up with her boyfriend and needed me, so I’d slipped out through the mudroom after my parents went to bed. It was 21 plus, but Elissa got us in because she knew the sound tech. Inside, we spotted a group of high school guys at a table behind a velvet rope. Elissa said she recognized one of them from a youth leadership conference, Ben Gallup or Gallagher, so we went over.
The guys must have paid their way in. They had bottle service, and two gin and gingers later, Ben’s friend Carter was telling me how beautiful I was, how unique, how bad he wanted to take me out. He was handsome if you’re into that preppie, blond heartthrob thing—or guys in general—but when he asked for my number, I said no.
Later, when we were waiting for the bus back to Culver Ridge, Elissa asked me did I know who I’d turned down back there. I’d shrugged and said some rich kid from Logansville, I guessed. I’m not out to Elissa. I’m not out to anyone except Pau.
“That’s Carter Shaw,” she’d said. “As in Shaw Realty? His parents own like half of West Virginia.”
I looked him up on my phone at four in the morning when I was home, under the covers, my parents none the wiser. Facebook didn’t tell me much, his profile was set to private, but Google did. The first hit was a photo-rich feature from the previous December’s Logansville Gazette, touting his parents’ real estate agency as the model West Virginia family business. The article included profiles on his dad, founder and CEO; his mom, the CFO; and Carter, who was clearly being groomed to take over one day. It listed his many accolades: Logansville South lacrosse team captain, homecoming court three years running, leadership roles on a long list of school clubs and organizations. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have given him any more of my time, but summer before senior year had been pretty low, my parents’ suspicions simmering and popping, threatening to boil over. I spent my days slinking around the house, fear buzzing beneath my skin.
So when Carter tracked me down via Ben, via Elissa, I’d said yes to a date. And when he’d made a big deal about avoiding Logansville, I’d called him out on it.
Carter had blushed deep red and sputtered something about being on a break with his long-time girlfriend, Amanda.
Girlfriend. We were in the middle of date number two. I’d almost called it off right then.
“You’re really on a break?” I’d pressed.
“We’ve been together a long time. We have a kind of arrangement.” He said it was fine, really, but hanging out in Logansville would be kind of like rubbing it in her face.
I’d let his words settle. My parents had been positively glowing since the day I’d introduced them to Carter—they had to vet anyone I was hanging out with, of course, male or female. I’d printed out the article from the Logansville Gazette at school, had brought it home to show them. The paper hadn’t mentioned a girlfriend.
I’d wanted to believe him, didn’t ask any more questions. But eventually my conscience got the better of me, and I looked Amanda up online. She had a lot of photos set to public, the albums absolutely bursting with pictures of Carter. Recent pictures. Pictures I pretended I hadn’t seen.
Sometimes, we drive out to a diner in Wheeling or this movie theater that’s kind of in the middle of nowhere, but most of the time we drive the half hour into Pittsburgh where there’s plenty to do and three hundred thousand people to lose ourselves in. It’s amazing how fast cows and cars propped up on cinder blocks turn into bridges and office buildings, a bright glimpse into my future.
As we drive on Forbes Avenue past Primanti’s, another Pittsburgh culinary institution, and the building that looks like it used to be a small castle that now houses a noodle shop and T-Mobile store, my skin starts to tingle. Atwood Street, Oakland Avenue, South Bouquet. We’re almost here—at the “O,” but more importantly, at the University of Pittsburgh, its campus right in the center of the city. Paulina and I will both be freshmen there next year, assuming we get in. Which we will.
Carter finds a spot down the block from the restaurant, and we get out of the car. In front of us, a group of students cross above Forbes in the enclosed pedestrian walkway that connects one side of campus to the other. Next year, that will be Pau and me. I’m so wrapped up in my fantasy that I don’t notice Carter next to me on the sidewalk. He fake-tackles me from behind, picking me up and spinning me around and around. “I love the ’Burgh!” he shouts. “And I love being here with you!”
I yelp, caught off-guard. A chill races down my spine, and this time, I can’t stop the memory from coming. It’s sophomore year, Halloween, and I’m in downtown Logansville with Donovan Miller at a theater showing Donnie Darko after school. My hands are folded in my lap, my eyes trained on the screen. He leans across the armrest and presses his lips into my long, limp hair. “I love being here with you, Rosalie,” he whispers.
My stomach curdles, rejecting the sugary combination of Dr. Pepper and Swedish Fish sloshing around inside. I mash my fist into my mouth and struggle to keep it down. I want to like him the way I like Paulina. I want those feelings that Brother Masters calls “a homo-SEX-ual sickness” or sometimes just “the sickness” to go away. I want, so badly, to be normal.
At our new home in Culver Ridge, my parents are celebrating or praying, probably both. The FOC counselor in our old town told them our sessions together had worked. He called me a “success story” with a kind of pride that made my insides heave because I knew it was a lie. I’d just gotten really good at pretending, anything to make the sessions stop. They believed it because they wanted to believe it, but they haven’t loosened up. They’re afraid I’ll slip back into sin, that the cure won’t stick. If they knew what Paulina and I do sometimes—kiss and trade secrets in the clearing behind the school, bodies pressed against each other, then snapped back like rubber bands, breath hot and sweet in the air between us—they’d put me back in FOC counseling faster than anything. And I’d never see Pau again.
We are friends who sometimes kiss, have not yet found a language to describe what we are to each other. Or I haven’t. Paulina wants to be my girlfriend, but putting a name to what we are, what I am, means admitting something I’m not ready to admit.
I stare straight ahead, but I’m not really seeing the movie. My stomach churns and churns. I’ve been back in regular school since we moved here, but I’m still under glorified house arrest. Having a boyfriend could change all that. I picture my parents relaxing just a bit. I picture myself at the library, working part-time. I picture myself in the fall play. I picture myself never seeing another FOC counselor, ever again.
I picture myself with Paulina, when my parents think I’m out with Donovan.
“Me too,” I whisper back.
Carter puts me down, then spins me around to face him. “I just can’t get enough of you, Rosalie Bell.” He places his hands on either side of my face and tilts it up. “You are so freaking special.”
I plaster on a smile. My stomach churns, Dr. Pepper and Swedish Fish all over again. I squeeze my eyes shut until it passes. When I open them, Carter’s standing in front of me, all dimples and white teeth. “Come on.” I shove aside the voice that says no matter what I do, I can’t win this. “Cheese fries await.”
Inside, we place our order at the counter and slide into a booth in the back. The Original Hot Dog Shop is a Pitt favorite, and even though it’s January, it’s packed with students. They bring us our fries and chicken strips and Carter completely lights up as we scarf them down. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that he doesn’t eat too many cheese fries with Amanda. Or that meals with his family are more likely to be chef-designed than deep-fried. I’m the girl who will order chicken strips and a Coke and call it dinner. The girl who doesn’t care about labels or the future. I’m the girl he can be real with. Even if I’m not real with him, not even a little bit.
“There’s supposed to be this amazing fry shop out by WVU,” Carter says when we’ve cleared our plates. “They deep fry candy bars, marshmallows, you name it.”
I frown and change the subject to live music. There’s a band playing at Milk & Honey in a little bit, and when it comes to Carter, I only want to think about the present.
After the “O,” we climb back into his car. I key in the address for Milk & Honey and pull my vape pen out of my bag while Carter drives. He seems to think my penchant for dry herb makes me edgy, along with my haircut and big, boxy glasses. In Carter’s world, I’m some kind of religious rebel, a thought that would almost be funny if it wasn’t so freaking sad.
We park a few blocks down from the coffee shop, and I pass Carter my pen. He draws in a deep lungful of vapor and closes his eyes. His head falls back against the headrest.
“This is the most fun I’ve had all week,” he says, his eyes still shut.
If I’m really being honest, I’m having fun too. I wish I hated Carter, that he wasn’t so nice. If I loathed every minute with him, this would almost be easier. I look out the window when I respond. “Me too.”
“Seriously, I mean it.” His eyes are open now, and he’s looking right at me. “I know this seems like no big deal to you, but I can’t be like this at home.” He draws in another deep hit.
It strikes me then that Carter and I might have more in common than I’ve been admitting.
“Like what?” I ask, genuinely curious.
“Just . . . relaxed. When I’m with you, it’s like, no one’s watching me. Is that a weird thing to say?”
“Totally weird,” I reply. His face falls until I laugh, and he gets that I’m joking. He passes the pen back and I take another hit, but it’s basically kicked. “Let’s go in.”
As it turns out, the band is pretty terrible, but it’s still early, so we stay at the coffee shop for the full set. I let Carter hold my hand. With my eyes closed, I can almost pretend he’s Pau.
At the end of our second or third date, Carter suggested we drive up to Culver Ridge’s eponymous bluffs. The ridge is the local make-out spot, and I shut that down hard and fast. I think he finds it a little confusing—how I’m obviously not as devout as my parents, but when it comes to sex, I’m basically the Virgin Mary. I told him I’m religious, take it or leave it. FOC kids save themselves for marriage. He’s never suggested the ridge again.
After the set ends, we get back in Carter’s car. When we’re parked in my driveway, and I know my parents are peeking through the living room window, I let him kiss me good night.