Lucia, forever ago
It’s hard to figure when everything changed. Lucia spent a lot of time thinking about this.
See the thing is, they all used to be friends in pairs: Taylor and Lucia. Kelsey and Riana. Josh and Porter. But then there was Andrew, who didn’t need anyone.
Sometimes Taylor said Andrew was stupid, and although Lucia didn’t agree, Taylor was far from the only one. He fooled a lot of people with his eyes half lidded and his deepening voice, that sleepy “what?” that was always followed by a laugh. Everyone else always laughed, but Lucia, she saw him. It was an act.
The mill closed when they were all ten, still kids, riding their bikes to Tibb’s shoving their pockets full of penny candy and riding back to Taylor’s. Before Mr. Lawson left, Taylor’s house was the newest, not the biggest, but the friendliest: plush, plaid couches and lit candles, hot cookies and big, sunny windows. You could forget, for a second, you were in Mt. Oanoke in that house; it smelled like a scratch-and-sniff sticker.
Mrs. Lawson would fuss and fidget and do all the things that Lucia never knew a mother should do: cooked them dinner, poured their milk, and once even sliding a pair of flip-flops into Lucia’s backpack because she noticed her heels hanging off the backs of her old ones, her ankles dusty from the summer dirt. When Taylor found them later, digging through Lucia’s bag for a pen, all she said was fucking Jesus.
Then somehow, eighth grade happened, and that was the beginning of the end. Kelsey went from a little bit fat to curvy in the right places, earlier than everyone else, with this long wavy blond hair like in the magazines that Lucia found in Lenny’s room. Kelsey and Josh started hooking up, sneaking off alone, leaving Riana the odd girl out. Near as Lucia can tell, this was the tipping point. When Taylor finally realized Lucia wasn’t so great, after all, and Riana was there. It was only a matter of time, really.
They all joined track and that first year, in ninth, Mrs. Lawson paid for Lucia to join, too. Bought her track outfit: blue-and-white little shorts and a tank top, running pants that buttoned down the legs and a nice pair of sneakers. Then the year between ninth and tenth, Mr. Lawson lost all their money and left town and Mrs. Lawson never said another word about it. By then Taylor and Riana were already showing up late to practice, smelling like cigarettes and gum, hairspray and perfume from Riana’s mother’s bathroom.
Lucia wasn’t too upset when Mrs. Lawson didn’t sign her up again. She wasn’t a distance runner and was the slowest sprinter on the team. Coach Blue hardly looked up from her stopwatch, her mouth curled up and her eyes closed, when Lucia crossed the finish line.
She started going with Andrew and Porter, almost accidentally, while Taylor and Riana were at track. They’d invited her off the cuff—you coming?—in the hall, as Taylor and Riana ran for the locker rooms. Then every day after, Lucia wondered when it would end. She hung around too long, waiting for Andrew’s voice, you coming? Terrified for the day it wouldn’t come.
They’d end up in Andrew’s bedroom, his parents still at work, his house nothing like Taylor’s or Josh’s, in the smaller development from the eighties, but still warm with plush carpet you could curl your toes into. Andrew and Porter smoked pot, the smoke sweet and thick, listened to something old, Nirvana or Radiohead from Andrew’s iPod. Andrew always said that music from after 2000 was beat, shitty. Ate the freshly baked oatmeal raisin cookies Andrew’s mom left out for them.
Until the day Porter was sick with strep throat.
Lucia ended up in Andrew’s room, alone, and she felt the pulse of her heart in her neck, a steady thrumming over which she could hardly hear. His big hands, they seemed bigger than only a week ago, flicking through the songs, looking for the perfect one as she sat cross-legged on his beanbag chair, then stretched her legs out, too skinny in ratty jeans that she stole from the Goodwill, where she’d just started to work shifts in the back room, sorting through other people’s smelly, unwashed underwear.
She watched Andrew find something, from a band called Screaming Trees, and watched him talk about grunge and how they all missed the greatest musical decade ever, by mere years. How if he could go anywhere he’d go back to 1993 in Seattle. She watched his mouth form the words, slow and easy, and his eyes blink his lazy, measured way and felt something pull, quick and tight low in her belly. She watched him and he smiled at her as he talked, and she felt the room tilt just a little, which was a feeling she’d never had before.
Lucia felt her breath coming then quick and shallow, like she was afraid to breathe, afraid to move to break the spell.
From then on, she was just a little bit in love with Andrew Evans. In hindsight, she should have been a little less obvious about it, but the next day Porter was back, and even with him hanging around, she watched Andrew’s mouth, wondering later, at night, what it would feel like on her mouth. Her neck. Her body.
She could feel the buzz, just under her skin, when she accidentally on purpose sat next to him in the cafeteria. He waited once, by her locker, handed her a pen with a slow, sideways smile and those half-open eyes, and said, “You forgot this in my room yesterday.” Amy Pinter—the girl whose locker was next to Lucia’s—opened her eyes wide and nudged her friend, and for once, Lucia felt like she wasn’t merely tagging along.
It could have been her imagination, but she felt the buzz coming back from Andrew, too. That gaze held a little too long, the way he sometimes walked too slow into the cafeteria, like he was orchestrating their seats, and when they ended up next to each other, he’d give her a little nudge and say, “You again?” but he never did that to anyone else.
Sometimes they’d end up at the mill, in the parking lot, chucking stones at the glass, hollering at the loudest breaks, a forty of Colt 45 in a paper bag clutched in Andrew’s fist, the girls passing around Mad Dog 20/20, their lips pink and wide like watermelon. They all dared each other to go in alone, and it was on one of those Saturday nights when the air seemed to zing, when their laughter seemed to bounce around them, when even Taylor was being overly nice.
“Here, you need this.” She smiled sweetly, slicking glittery lip gloss across Lucia’s mouth, and Lucia felt the pull of anticipation, something sweet and swirling in her center, down her legs and into her toes.
Lucia stood up. “I’ll do it, I’ll go in.” She was feeling bold and, newly, like one of them. Andrew’s flirting had elevated her: she was no longer Taylor’s weird sidekick but a girl in her own right. She walked in through the ajar steel door, the smell of dust and rotting paper stinging her nostrils. Her head pounded, her hands shaky as she pressed them against her belly, pushing the air out of her lungs. She stood in the first room, the biggest room, with the stainless steel pulper and held her breath. Waiting.
It was that kind of magical night, when she knew how things would unfold, where everything seemed inevitable. He came up behind her, like she knew he would. His hand on her back didn’t startle her, and she felt the smile on her face before she turned around and he was there, taller than she thought he’d be, but so close. He smelled like Abercrombie cologne and fabric softener and something lemony and soft.
“What are you doing?” It was a stupid question, but the only one she could think to ask, and she breathed it right into his face, laughing.
“I’m saving you. Didn’t you scream? I heard you scream.” He leaned closer to her, his lips so close to hers, his head dipped. “I came in to save you.”
And that’s all he said before he kissed her, his hands then around her waist, down her back, her first real kiss, and it was slow, measured, like Andrew himself, his hands finding their way under her filmy top, inching up to her bra, and she let him. He cupped her, unhooking her bra strap and then easing her back against the cinder-block wall.
She let him do anything he wanted, drunk on his Andrew-ness, the newness of belonging. She was still there, in their first kiss, when she started thinking of their couplehood—like Kelsey and Josh—sneaking away from the group, away from Taylor. She would have something, someone, that Taylor wouldn’t.
The idea both excited and terrified her.
When Porter started hollering and making noise outside, they broke apart, Andrew laughed a little, and said, “We should go.” He walked out ahead of her and Lucia waited for him to take her hand, but he never did.
What she didn’t know then, but she knew now, was that sometimes beginnings and endings feel the same.
• • •
On Monday, when Taylor and Riana scampered off to track, she waited in the lobby until long after the final bell. Long after all the other students had cleared out, the buses left, the parking lot had emptied, until she finally started the three-mile walk home. Summer was looming, next year they’d be sophomores, starting to think about college and leaving Mt. Oanoke. Not Lucia, though. She’d be working at the Goodwill until she was old and gray.
She pictured Andrew and Porter, stoned and sleepy in his bedroom without her. Would they talk about her?
She felt the fury rise in her chest, a metallic bitter taste on her tongue. She’d only wait once, she hoped he knew that. One time, one chance. Jimmy taught her that. Fool me twice, shame on me.
She can’t deny that she looked, though, for those two bobbing heads in front of her, one abnormally tall, one short, dark, and blond, thin and round. She saw nothing.
Her toe kicked it before she saw it, its black wings shining in the sunlight. She bent down and knew it was dead, its eyes frozen open, but unscathed, like it had simply dropped out of the sky. They all came to her that way, perfect, unharmed, but utterly still, like the breath had simply left their little lungs and never come back.
She picked it up, the blackbird. It was still soft, like it had died only seconds ago; the feathers were smooth in her palm, and she ran her finger under its silken wing.
In the distance, she saw Andrew’s house, out of her way in the cul-de-sac at the end of the street and began to walk. She tucked the bird in the crook of her arm, like a doll, or a real baby.
She heard the music from his room, heard his laughter. Imagined she could smell the smoke. She could taste that cool pop of raisin and the warm sweet oatmeal on her tongue.
She laid the bird down on the welcome mat (the one that said Wipe Your Paws) and wondered if they’d think the cat brought it in, but then decided she didn’t care. She nudged it with her toe, almost changed her mind, but didn’t.
She ran all the way home.
• • •
“What’d you do?” Taylor hissed, dragging Lucia into the bathroom the next day.
“What?” Lucia shook her head, her ears buzzing.
“I know it was you. You have the bird thing. What the fuck, Lulu.” Taylor pinched her arm, twisting the skin.
“It wasn’t me. They have a cat. It was probably the cat.” The skin on Lucia’s arm started to welt where Taylor’s fingers were.
“You can be such a freak sometimes. Why? Was it because he made out with you at the mill?”
Lucia blinked hard. She hadn’t told Taylor. Then, reflexively, “No.”
“He makes out with everyone. Did he do that thing with his hand?” She motioned down toward her pelvis and fluttered her eyes. She flipped her hair and looked in the mirror, her reflection watching Lucia, her eyes narrowed. She inspected her face, pulled at her nose, mumbled about her pores. “You’re lucky, you know.”
Lucia’s stomach felt hard and heavy, like she’d swallowed a rock.
“You’re so moony over him. We all see it. But you didn’t really think, did you?” She turned then, her eyes wide, her mouth open in a little O.
Lucia shook her head again, her mouth dry, a film of hot tears she’d never shed against her eyelids. The warning bell clanged. Taylor turned to leave, leaned in close, her hair soft against Lucia’s face, her fingertips against Lucia’s arm cool and light.
“I’ll drop you so fast, Lucia Hamm. I will. This is high school now.” She said it like a warning.
And that’s when everything changed.