“Home sweet home,” Alex says, and it smells like smoke and something rotting. The front door closes with a bang and she throws her coat on the floor, onto a pile of other coats and half-emptied shopping bags. There is a frozen pizza in one of them that appears to be fully thawed. The paper bag is dark with moisture and there’s a puddle around it.
“This way,” she says, and leads me into the living room. There is stuff piled everywhere and I can hardly see the floor. The room is hot and the air feels damp, like someone has been taking a shower for months.
“This must be Cassie,” says a raspy voice coming from the couch. I did not notice the woman lying there with hair and clothes as black as the leather. Her lips are red with lipstick and her eyes are painted dark and something about her reminds me of a cat. A thin, lanky, sleepy cat.
“Aren’t you supposed to be at work, Lenora?” says Alex.
“I’m home sick,” says the woman, faking a cough and laughing a deep laugh. She is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.
“Yeah, right,” Alex says to the woman. “Let’s go downstairs,” she says to me. I nod and follow even though I want to keep listening to this cat-woman purring in her low voice.
“Cassie,” the woman says, and I turn around. She sits up and pats the space next to her on the couch. “Come talk to me for a minute.”
I look at Alex and her face is angry, but I go and sit by the woman anyway. The couch is warm where her legs were and I sink into it. Something smells familiar.
“My daughter tells me you’re smart,” the woman says, looking into my eyes so hard I have to look away. I cannot believe this is Alex’s mother. I cannot believe this is anyone’s mother.
“Kind of,” I say. “Not really.”
“I thought she was going to be smart. But she turned out just like her brother.” She picks up a glass from the coffee table and swirls the ice around, just like my mom does.
“Did she tell you about her trip to the loony bin?” the woman says.
“Very funny,” says Alex, who does not look amused. She is still standing by the stairs.
“Her crazy brother took her along with him to skin some cats.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Alex says.
“You shut up, you little brat,” she says, then yawns and closes her eyes as she stretches her long body, arching her back and lengthening her neck like she wants to be scratched. “I’m telling a story,” she says, and takes a sip of her drink. She lights a cigarette with her eyes closed and I sink deeper into the couch.
“We took them both to get fixed,” she continues, opening her eyes halfway, her fuzzy glance settling somewhere in the direction of Alex. “What’d they call your brother?”
“I don’t know, Lenora. What’d they call him?”
“A sociopath. Doesn’t that have a nice ring to it?” She takes a drag from her cigarette and leaves a perfect red halo around the filter. “And this one”—she motions to Alex, blowing smoke in her direction—“they said it was too early to tell.”
The room is silent and Alex is smiling and wide-eyed like she’s crazy. I don’t want to believe the story, but I do. Lenora is staring at me like she can see right through me, like she knows everything about me, and I want to disappear.
She laughs a raspy laugh. “I bet your family’s nice and normal, huh, pretty girl?”
“I don’t know.”
She leans back on the couch and ashes her cigarette on the floor.
“Parents still married.”
“Yes.”
She takes another drag and blows it out slowly. I look at Alex leaning against the banister, trying to tell her with my eyes that I want to go, but she doesn’t look at me. She keeps staring at her mother, like I’m not even there.
“How nice,” Lenora says, and then turns so she is facing me. Her leg touches mine and I feel lightning surge through me, something warm inside, outside, spreading, everywhere. She looks into my eyes and I feel my face turn hot and everything solid inside me turn to thick liquid.
“I should have had a girl like you,” she says. She raises her hand and slides her palm down my cheek. I close my eyes and feel the warmth expanding. “Sensitive.”
“Let’s go,” says Alex, almost shouting, and I open my eyes. She is not smiling. She is walking over. She is behind me, tugging on my shoulder. “Let’s go.”
I get up. I follow her to the stairs. My feet move my body, but part of me is still on the couch, still warm and melting. I look back and Lenora’s lying down with her eyes closed, the cigarette dangling from her red lips, like I was never even there. The air is hazy with smoke and dust and setting sun through dirty windows, and I have a sudden urge to curl up beside her, to press against her, to absorb her. I want to wear her black clothes and lipstick. I want to scare girls like me.
But I let Alex pull me downstairs to the cold, unfinished basement. The walls are concrete and lined with piles of boxes, rusted bikes, and other broken things. Alex opens a door to a small, carpeted room with a stained mattress on the floor and graffiti the color of blood on the wall. “This was my brother’s room,” she says, matter-of-factly. She points to a broken light fixture on the ceiling. “And that’s where—drumroll, please—my dad hung himself.”
I look at her in disbelief. “Are you serious?”
“Yeah. Pretty cool, huh?”
No, I am thinking. That is the least cool thing I have ever heard.
“When?” I ask because I don’t know what else to say.
“I don’t know,” she says, kicking a broken skateboard. “A couple years ago.”
“That’s when your brother left?”
“Yeah. He just left him up there and packed up his shit and was gone. The funniest part is he left a note right next to the suicide note. It said, ‘Dad’s hanging in the basement. I’m leaving. Bye.’ What a weirdo.”
“What’d the note say?”
“I just told you.”
“No, the suicide note.”
“Oh, that. I don’t know. I never read it.”
Alex keeps kicking the skateboard and I want to grab her and make her stop. I want to grab the skateboard and hit her with it. But she would probably just laugh. Even if her jaw were broken and she was covered in blood, she’d just smile at me with her big crazy eyes and make me feel like there is nothing I can do to hurt her.
“Did you really do that with the cats?” I finally say.
“What do you think?” she says, smiling.
If I say no, she’ll laugh at me. If I say yes, she’ll do something worse. So instead I say, “Let’s get ready to go,” and she smiles like she knows exactly what I was thinking.
The bathroom smells like mildew and old piss and there are strands of green hair stuck everywhere. A box of tampons is spilled on the floor and the towels look like they haven’t been washed in months. I am tracing the outline of my lips with bloodred pencil and I can see Alex behind me in the reflection. She is sitting on the toilet, peeing, and her thighs are covered with bruises.
“To what?” she says, wiping herself.
“To your legs?”
She laughs at me like I’m a stupid child. “Wes just likes it rough.”
“Likes what rough?”
“Sex, stupid,” she says. “But you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you? Not Cassie, the sweet little virgin.”
I don’t say anything. I turn around and start curling my eyelashes.
“How much money did you steal?” she says as she gets up and flushes the toilet. She grabs a pair of fishnets that were hanging on the doorknob.
“Huh?” I say.
“For Portland, dummy. So we can move to Portland.”
“Oh,” I say. “I didn’t think you were serious about that.”
“Of course I’m fucking serious,” she says, her voice hard. She’s looking at me like she wants to kill me. “Are you serious? Or are you a fucking chicken?”
“I’m serious,” I say.
“Because I can find someone else to come with me.”
“No,” I say. “I’m serious.”
“Then start getting some money. And have a bag packed so you’re ready whenever it’s time.”
“I’ll figure that out,” she says. She sprays some hair spray and it makes my eyes burn.
“We’re ready,” she says, and it’s time to go.
Lenora is passed out when we leave, so Alex steals a pack of her cigarettes and a bottle of vodka, just puts them in her backpack like it’s no big deal, like she’s not even afraid of getting caught. We walk to the lake and it’s freezing. I drink fast so I’ll get warm, so I don’t have to think about that house and the things that happened in it, so I won’t be scared of where we’re going.
“My half sister’s moving in next week,” Alex says, her voice torn by the shot she just drank.
“How old is she?”
“Eighth grade.”
“Is she cool?”
“She’s all right.”
“Why’s she moving here?”
“Her dad’s fucking her,” she says, and the vodka gets stuck in my throat, gagging me, pulling everything inside me out.
“We have the same mom,” she says. “But Sarah’s dad was some guy my mom had an affair with so my dad made my mom get rid of her.”
“Oh,” I manage, trying not to throw up, trying to make sense of what Alex just said.
“Now the stupid social workers say she has to come live with us even though we don’t want her.”
“Oh,” I say again because I can’t think of anything else. I’m not anywhere near drunk, but my stomach feels like it’s full of poison, like there’s a fist inside moving it around. I am doing everything I can to keep from puking. I am clenching my teeth, my fists. I am walking fast. I am thinking of summer and beaches and sun on my face.
We crest the hill and see Lake Washington, dark and choppy, Seattle sparkling behind it. We get closer and can see the shadowed group of boys, none of whom I recognize.
“Who are those guys?” I ask.
“High schoolers.”
I want to turn around. The vodka’s not working. I drink more and it’s still not working.
“Where’s Ethan?” I ask.
“Right there.” Alex points and he is lit by moonlight, standing on top of a bench in his baggy pants and giant sweatshirt, balancing on it like a tightrope. We get closer and I can hear the other boys cheering him on. I feel something in my stomach that is not nausea, a pleasant, heavy numbness. The fear is not gone, but it is somehow softer.
A tall boy with a pierced lip turns around and looks us up and down. “What do we have here?” he says. Ethan hops off the bench and smiles and the numbness turns to melting.
“Hi,” he says to me, ignoring Alex. “I’m glad you came.”
“Yeah,” I say.
“Do you want to sit down?” He motions toward the bench covered with his dirty footprints. I sit and he sits next to me and everyone else sits and soon we are all in a circle, and Alex is passing around the bottle of vodka and it is getting emptier and emptier and I am suddenly very angry. I am furious. That is our vodka, I want to tell her. They are drinking it and it will be gone and there won’t be enough for me.
Everyone’s talking except me. I drink extra when the bottle comes around so I won’t think about the fact that I’m not talking. It does not take long for me to get drunk enough so my mind does not have to be here anymore. I am thinking of tropical islands and warm water and I feel okay even though I’m sitting here with a bunch of high schoolers and I haven’t said anything in thirty minutes. I haven’t been paying attention to what anyone’s been saying because I’ve been somewhere else, and all of a sudden everyone but me is up and Alex is screaming because the guys are carrying her over to the embankment and threatening to throw her into the lake.
“Hey,” says Ethan, and I think he’s going to save her, although I wouldn’t mind if he didn’t. And I’m surprised at this thought and I look around to make sure no one heard it, but everyone’s laughing and not at me. “It’s time to go,” he says, and he’s the boss so they let her go. She’s laughing like she was in on the joke, but I don’t think she was. Ethan gets up and I am suddenly very cold. They all grab their backpacks and skateboards and I’m relieved but feeling pathetic, and I want to crawl into a little ball and hide in a cave and never come out, not until I’m old and all of this is done with.
I am sitting on the bench, and Alex is standing by the water, and everyone else is walking away. Ethan hangs back and sits back down next to me. “It was nice seeing you tonight,” he says with his soft lips and long eyelashes, like he didn’t even notice that the only thing I said all night was “yeah.”
“You too,” I say.
“It’d be nice to hang out just you and me sometime,” he says, and the warm, spreading feeling comes back. “I’d like to get to know you better. Maybe you wouldn’t be so shy if it was just you and me.”
“Yeah,” I say, even though I doubt it. I will never be able to talk to him. But I can do things other than talk.
“I have to run,” he says. “Can I have a hug?”
“Okay,” I say, and I cannot remember the last time someone hugged me.
There are arms around me, a hard chest against mine, hands on the small of my back, breath in my ears. This is when I’m supposed to put my arms around his neck, when I’m supposed to put my face close to his. This is when I’m supposed to kiss him, when he’s touching me and his warmth is getting inside my clothes. I’m supposed to do it now or he won’t be interested later. I must kiss him because what he wants is not my voice. He doesn’t really want to talk. He doesn’t really want to get to know me better, not really know me, not get inside my head where the hidden things are. I must kiss him because what he wants is my mouth, my hands on his back, my body, close, closer. I must turn my head, feel his breath on my face, move my lips to his mouth. Open. Tongue in. Out. Close my eyes. They like it when you close your eyes.
“Damn, girl,” he says, licking his lips.
“What?” I say, smiling, my head cocked to one side. I am looking him straight in the eye. I am a different person. I am not scared. I know what he wants.
“Just damn.”
“C’mon, man,” someone yells from across the street. The others are laughing their always-laughs that never seem to be directed at anything.
“I gotta go,” he says, backing away and looking me up and down.
“See you later,” I say. I am still looking in his eyes. Brown. Shallow.
“Definitely,” he says, then, “Mmm,” and this must be what it feel like to be a piece of meat, to be wanted by someone hungry. This is all I have to do. This is easy. I am delicious.
Alex and I walk away from the lake. She has a big grin on her face but isn’t saying anything and I’m just waiting for her to tell me I fucked up somehow, that I looked like a fool in front of the high school boys. All of a sudden, she stops walking and looks at me and puts her hands on my shoulders.
“I can’t believe you did that,” she says, smiling at me like I’ve made her proud.
“What?” I say.
“Just kissed him like that.”
“Why?” I am smiling now, too. I have done something right.
“What happened to the sweet little virgin Cassie?” She is laughing.
“I don’t know.” I laugh back. I am giddy.
“She’s gone,” Alex says.
“Yeah,” I say. We are running down the street now. We are laughing so hard we’re screaming.
“The fucking bitch is gone,” Alex says.
“Bye-bye,” I say.
“Bye-bye, Cassie,” she says.
“Bye-bye.”