4

“IT’S YOUR BLOOD.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Your blood rushes back to your extremities once you’re in a warmer environment.”

“Where’s it been? What’s it rushing back from?”

“From protecting your vital organs. Once you’re safe, back under shelter, so to speak, your blood redistributes and causes that painful tingling.”

“Cool.”

Marcia was editing her valedictory speech and talking to him at the same time. First drafts, second drafts, index cards, pencils, pens, and highlighters were strewn across the desk—Sara’s desk actually, but at this point it belonged to Marcia. Marcia and Sara more or less lived at each other’s houses. They had been holing up in Sara’s room together every day after school for years, with Andrew frequently dropping by to join them or smoke pot or watch TV. It was Friday night, one week from graduation, and Marcia had yet to complete her speech.

“Why were you wandering around in the middle of the night, anyway?” Marcia asked.

“I’m a vampire, baby,” he said. She snorted in response.

“Someone come hang out with me. I’m bored!” Sara shouted from the bathroom, where she had just showered and was shaving her legs. Andrew and Marcia rolled their eyes at each other before Andrew got up and walked down the hallway. He knocked on the half-open bathroom door.

“You decent?” he asked.

“Oh, please,” Sara said. He walked inside.

Sara was messy with a razor. Her right leg was propped on top of the bathroom sink and covered with uneven globs of strawberry-scented shaving cream. She shaved her legs carelessly and fast. If her shapely limbs suffered only one or two nicks, she considered herself lucky.

“Careful,” he said. He closed the toilet seat and sat down.

“Got something for you,” she said, gesturing toward a magazine that lay on the counter. Andrew picked it up and flipped through it. It was a porn magazine and looked to be about twenty years old.

“Chicks were hairy back then,” he said.

“Still are,” Sara said. “The fucking upkeep is brutal.”

“Where did you get this thing?” Andrew asked.

“Attic. It was in a box labeled DIRK’S STUFF.” Sara ran the razor under the water and readjusted the towel that was wrapped around her chest. Sara had never met Dirk, her father, so in a way it made sense that she didn’t get upset when the subject was brought up.

“I wouldn’t think your mom was the type to keep an old boyfriend’s back issues of Barely Legal,” Andrew said.

“You never really know your parents.”

“Or anyone else.”

“So true,” she said. With a washcloth she wiped down one leg and proceeded on to the next. The shaving cream made a horrid squishy sound as Sara sprayed it on her legs. She frowned, shook the can vigorously, and sprayed again. Andrew grimaced. He sometimes resented how casual Sara could be in front of him. We may be friends, he thought, but I’m still a dude.

“This is kind of grossing me out,” Andrew said.

“That’s why I brought the magazine for you,” she said.

“Give me a break,” he said.

Sara laughed. He watched as she ran the blade up her leg. The white of her thighs flashed beneath her towel. She followed his gaze.

“What’s up?” she said softly.

He thought of Laura. “Nothing.” He looked at the floor when he spoke, then looked back up at her and smiled. She nodded.

“So, UVM?” she said. Both he and Sara had been accepted to the University of Vermont. Marcia would be attending Stanford and was already enrolled in the premed program.

“Yeah, yeah,” he said. With a sigh, he folded up the magazine and slapped it against his knee.

“At least we’ll be close,” she said. “After my trip,” she added. Sara had vague plans to take a year off before college and bum around abroad on a Europass.

“I know. I just—”

“Didn’t want to be so close to home,” she said, finishing his thought.

“I could join Brian in Georgia. You know, be a superfan, go to all his games,” Andrew said with a forced laugh. Sara reached down and pushed back the flop of bangs that fell over his eyes.

“You need a haircut,” she said. She tucked the hair behind his ear and turned back to the sink.

“I’ll be in the living room.” He stood up.

“Alone in the living room with a dirty magazine?” she said with an impish grin that Andrew knew drove other boys mad. Him, too, a little bit.

“Don’t worry. I’m leaving the porn here. It’s not my thing anyway,” he said. Andrew thought about Brian’s collection of porn under the floorboards of his old bedroom, which Andrew occasionally pilfered. But he wasn’t lying to Sara; porn made him excited in a nauseated kind of way, and the satisfaction it provided was empty.

“Come on, hang out with me. I’m almost finished,” Sara said. She began to hurry even more. Andrew flinched, thinking about the little micro cuts she was giving herself. Sara liked constant company. She became quite petulant when left alone for too long.

“I’m going to check on Marcia.”

“Leave her alone,” Sara singsonged back to him.

“She’s going to make herself crazy,” Andrew said. He put his hand on the doorknob.

“I’m telling you: don’t bother her,” Sara said. She examined a trickle of blood as it slid down her shin.

“You need a Band-Aid?”

“Nah,” she said.

From the bedroom they heard Marcia curse in German, a habit from her childhood abroad.

“Uh-oh, she’s speaking in tongues. Maybe you should go check on her.” She stood up straight, and her brow wrinkled with concern.

Andrew walked out the door, careful to close it behind him. He felt a sudden chill out in the hallway. It had been stuffy in the bathroom, but also warm and cozy, with the steam of the shower and his pretty, half-naked friend perched like a bird of paradise on the sink. A bleeding bird of paradise.

Sometimes he thought Sara was challenging him to get an erection when she pranced and chatted, half naked, in front of him. Would she do anything about it? Did he want that? Of course he wanted it—sort of. Sara could sometimes be a little too flirty. Or confusingly flirty.

He walked down the hallway and opened the bedroom door a crack. Marcia still sat at the desk with her back to him. She was scribbling and muttering at the same time. Andrew crept up close to her, peered over her shoulder, and read what she had written.

When my father was killed

After my father died

My father was a surgeon, and I’ve always felt a strong desire to follow in his footsteps. My best friends, Andrew and Sara, as well as Ms. Devaux, have been so supportive. . . .

“Andrew!” Marcia stood up and spun around to face him.

“It’s good!” he said. He laughed and tried to get at the speech.

“You were reading it?” Marcia shouted, and stamped her feet like a child. In response, Andrew grabbed Marcia around the waist and slung her over his shoulder. With his free hand he took the papers on the desk and tossed them up in the air. For a moment the papers and index cards rained around them like white flakes in a snow globe. He spun her amidst the paper storm while she alternately shouted in rage and laughed hysterically, pounding her fists on his back.

“You . . . are going . . . to help . . . me,” she said between gasps, “put . . . all . . . my shit . . . back . . . together.” Her voice trailed off in a half sob. Andrew stopped spinning her and loosened his grip. She slid from his shoulder.

“Sorry,” he said. He breathed hard, unsure what had come over him.

Together they gathered up her speech. Sara swept into the room. She looked strangely magnificent, Andrew thought, with her gleaming legs and her hair wrapped up in a pink towel like a turban on her head.

“Are you two fighting again?” Sara asked.

Andrew flopped onto the bed. The ceiling was painted dark green, like the walls, and gave the room the feel of a mossy cave. He’d spent half his adolescence in this room, sometimes a little buzzed, staring at the walls and wondering what inspired Sara and her mother to paint them such an unusual color.

“When’s the movie start?” he asked.

Marcia reached for the newspaper and began searching for the movie section. Sara unwrapped the towel turban and shook her head. Andrew watched her. Sara was pretty, no doubt about it, and her curly blonde hair was especially beautiful: exuberant, sexy, unrestrained—always on the verge of falling apart or coming undone. He started to reconsider his actions, or rather non-actions, in the bathroom a few moments earlier. She caught him looking at her and gave him a slight smile. He smiled back, then shifted his gaze toward Marcia, whose brows were furrowed in concentration.

“How’s the speech?” Sara asked. She slipped behind her closet door to change. Marcia tossed the newspaper at Andrew. It fluttered through the air and landed, disassembled, at his feet.

“I can’t find it,” Marcia said to Andrew. She turned toward the closet, adding, “And it’s terrible. Terrible. The speech is crap. I don’t want to do this.”

“We’re proud of you. You’re doing this!” Sara shouted from the closet. She emerged in a tight blue dress. “And you’re not letting that douche-bag Jason take your place,” she said with her hands on her hips.

“Who cares? What’s the point? I don’t give a shit about anyone from school except you two. Everyone else can kiss my ass,” Marcia said. Marcia wasn’t exactly disliked by her classmates, but people thought she was nerdy, weird, and way too into school. But they were wrong about her, thought Andrew. It wasn’t school that she was into; it was knowledge. Marcia actually cared about things like Spanish poetry and physics and the Crimean War. A guy like Jason just pretended to.

“It’s not about that. It’s about celebrating how hard you’ve worked and how brilliant you are.” As she spoke, Sara walked toward Marcia and put her arms around her shoulders. She shook her lightly and said, “Marcia, don’t be ashamed or embarrassed.” Sara was a close talker, and her face was inches from Marcia’s. Marcia laughed nervously and stepped back.

“I’m not embarrassed. It’s just stupid,” Marcia said.

“Bullshit,” Sara said, raising her eyebrows.

“Marcia’s right,” Andrew said, throwing the paper aside. “Fuck ’em. And the movie starts in twenty minutes, so let’s get going.”

“What are we seeing again?” Sara asked with dread in her voice.

“Un Chien Andalou,” Marcia and Andrew said together.

Sara threw her head back and sighed.

“It’s a revival. Remastered and everything,” Marcia said, her eyes pleading. Driving to the little art house cinema just outside of town and watching old movies had been part of Marcia’s Let’s watch real films! initiative. It drove Sara nuts.

“I hate those depressing old European films. Why can’t we just get some pot and pizza and rent an action flick?” Sara said.

“I’m game for that,” Andrew said.

“Again?” Marcia said, and she looked to Andrew for support.

Andrew stood up. “Un Chien Andalou is short, Sara. Besides, maybe you’ll pick up some French.”

“I’m not even sure that I’ll be in France.”

“You’re going to backpack around Europe and not go to France?” Marcia asked.

Andrew snorted, and both girls looked at him. Sara’s year-after-high-school backpacking plans grated on him for reasons he was unable to define. It just all seemed so stereotypical. “Marcia’s right. Go to France, see the Louvre, stay in hostels, write in a journal, get a tan, and contract herpes,” he said.

“Jealous?” Sara shot back.

“Please stop arguing,” Marcia said.

“And for your information,” Sara continued, “I always use condoms. Not that either of you would know anything about that.”

He scowled and crossed his arms over his chest, wounded at this reminder of his virginity.

Marcia cleared her throat and said, “Actually, condoms don’t really protect against herpes, because herpes—”

“Oh, shut up, Marcia!” Sara and Andrew shouted together.

Lately they’d been bickering. It didn’t help that Marcia had become infatuated with yet another medical book, this one about infectious diseases, and could not seem to stop herself from announcing these transmissible illness tidbits at the most awkward moments. Sprinkles of anxiety to flavor your day, Andrew called them.

“Well, if we’re not going to the real movie theater,” Sara said as she went behind her closet again, “I’m going to slip into something more comfortable.”

“Whose car are we taking?” Andrew asked.

“Can we take both? That way you can give Marcia a ride home, and I can pick up my mom when her shift is done,” Sara said.

“Or drive off alone with that sleazy projectionist,” Marcia muttered.

“What was that?” Sara shouted from the closet.

“I thought Janet wasn’t working nights,” Andrew said, less out of curiosity and more to prevent a spat from developing between the two girls. Andrew was more or less indifferent to Sara’s occasional promiscuity with older guys, but he knew it annoyed Marcia.

“Not regularly, but she took a night shift for a friend. They’re the worst. She can’t get the smell of rancid milk out of her hair for days.”

Sara’s mother, Janet, worked at a cheese factory, and the stories she told of the place were enough to turn Marcia’s vegetarianism into tentative stabs at veganism.

“You want to hang out after the movie? What time do you have to pick your mom up?” Andrew said.

“It’s just easier with two cars,” Sara said. Andrew and Marcia exchanged looks. She had not quite answered the question.

“I’ll leave now and get tickets,” he said.

“There’s some cash on my dresser,” Sara said.

Marcia dug around her pockets and produced a pile of lint. She looked up at Andrew, embarrassed.

“Pay me back later,” he said, waving away her explanation. “You coming with me or you want to ride with Sara?”

“I think I’ll go with Sara,” she said.

Andrew stepped outside. It was six o’clock. The sun was just settling back into the green mountains and leaving a soft pink blush in the sky. He thought of Laura, of the color of her skin, how it was like the light of the setting sun reflected in the sky and bouncing off the clouds of a perfect spring day. Pale yet golden, cool yet warm. He sighed. Sometimes, often in fact, he wished he could stop thinking about her. He felt cursed with obsession. He considered confessing his crush to Marcia and Sara; perhaps this would ease the sting and make him feel less like an actor in his own life, pretending everything was cool when really he was half out of his mind.

He was about to drive away when Marcia came running down the steps. He smiled as she hopped into his car and buckled up.

“Sara’s still messing with her clothes,” she said.

Andrew shifted gears and pulled out of the driveway. He wondered if, on the way to the movies, he could get a glimpse of Laura. She would be heading to some sort of church event, even on a Friday night. Andrew thought it must be miserable to be at church all the time, but Laura and her friends always seemed happy.

The movie theater wasn’t in the direction of the church, but he could take Maple Lane to Autumn Road, then loop around Hunger Street . . . yes, that would work. The circuitous route would eventually bring them to the theater. He turned the car sharply.

“Where are you going?” Marcia asked.

“Shortcut,” Andrew said. He was glad that Sara hadn’t come with them. Unlike Marcia, Sara would have known that he wasn’t taking a shortcut and would have teased him about it. Thoughts of confession were now far away.

They drove in comfortable silence for a few minutes, the special trick of their old friendship. Despite Sara’s beauty and flirty charm, Andrew actually preferred being alone with Marcia. He often felt calm and strong when he was with her. Marcia was a small person, five feet tall and thin; she almost looked like a child. Something about Marcia’s size, her fatherlessness, and even her precocious intelligence made Andrew feel like an older brother to her. He tried to treat her like the loving and protective brother that Brian had never been to him, and her own brothers had never been to her. Other times he idly fantasized about her, or Sara for that matter, and it satisfied him more than porn.

Andrew and Marcia had become friends when they were in the sixth grade. He had seen Marcia around at school. She was new to town. She had been born in Korea but was white, a paradox that intrigued and repelled some of his classmates. “That’s just weird!” had been the common refrain.

When she was young, Marcia had had a subtle but strange global accent, having attended an English language school for the children of diplomats, politicians, and other international types. Her accent was gone, but her speech, especially at times of great emotion, was still peppered with the occasional “Bollocks!” or “Shiza!” or “When I go to University—I mean college.”

Marcia’s father had been a military doctor stationed in Korea. While volunteering at a free clinic, he was brutally murdered by an insane patient. Marcia’s family moved back to the States shortly after the tragedy.

People were kind to them but left them alone. Marcia’s brothers were older than she was and very close in age to each other, sixteen and seventeen when they moved to town. The brothers had passed imperceptibly through high school, quietly scoring the highest marks in everything and then vanishing into college. They had attended the same state university on modest academic scholarships. Neither studied medicine.

He slowed down as they drove past Laura’s church. A large placard on the lawn read ALL ANSWERS HERE! About a dozen cars were parked in the lot. He thought he saw a flicker of long amber hair out of the corner of his eye, but when he turned his head, it was gone. He silently cursed.

“Sometimes I wish I were religious,” Marcia said.

“Oh?”

“I kind of envy people who have that.”

“All the answers?” Andrew said.

Marcia laughed. “Yes, that. But also . . . peace, calm, certainty in the face of a storm.”

“But religion has caused a lot of conflict and oppression, even warfare. Maybe religion is the storm.”

“That’s true.”

“I don’t know. I’d never really thought about it,” Andrew said.

“No?”

“I mean, I figure we’re all going to die someday, and it’ll be just like before we were born.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing.”

“And while we’re here?”

“If you need God or Buddha or whatever to help you through life, that’s . . . fine, I guess.”

“As long as you’re not causing wars.”

“Yeah, exactly.”

“It sounds so simple, talking about it in your car,” Marcia said with a nervous laugh. “You know, it’s weird that they’re even here.”

“What do you mean?”

“The ‘All Answers’ church. I think they’re pretty conservative. Here, in liberal Vermont?”

“Please. That kind of stuff is all over the place. Vermont’s not special. There’s poverty and drugs and all kinds of shit. We’re just like every place else.”

“Maybe,” she said.

“Need plus fear plus ignorance equals religion.”

“That’s pretty harsh, Drew,” she said as she looked out the window.

Drew. She had invoked the childhood nickname she’d given him years ago. She rarely used it now, and when she did it usually meant, as when she swore in German, that her emotions were running high. He mentally noted all this and bit back a sarcastic retort. Besides, he wasn’t even sure he felt that way about religion; it just sounded cool. Every once in a while he was meaner than he’d intended to be, like an instinct he couldn’t control. It happened with his mom sometimes, and now it had happened with Marcia, who was probably talking about religion in the first place because of her father, the eminent surgeon who loomed large in her imagination but dim in her memory. He tried to think of something comforting to say, but Marcia was prickly about her family’s past. He glanced at the clock and pressed the gas pedal harder. The movie started in five minutes. Sara was a fast driver and would not have taken his ridiculous “shortcut.” She could be there already.

But she wasn’t. They left Sara’s ticket at the window and entered the already darkened theater. It smelled like nutritional yeast and hot oil. They sat down just as the movie began.

As the images flickered before him, Andrew realized that there was no dialogue at all. Maybe Sara had found this out and decided not to come. He leaned back. She’d probably be outside when the film ended. He put his arm around the back of Marcia’s chair and glanced at her. She looked anxious.

“You okay?” he whispered.

She nodded, not taking her eyes away from the screen. She flinched at what she saw.