When I told Lily I was going to the city tonight with Tami Butler, she almost hung up on me.
This is what Tami said when she invited me: “Let’s get off this pathetic hunk of rock.”
“Is your boyfriend coming?” I said.
“Why do you keep asking about my boyfriend?”
“Why are you going?” Lily said. “You don’t even like her. Does this relationship nurture you in any way?”
Who talks like that?
She makes it sound so easy. As if it’s just a matter of liking or not liking someone. What matters is I’ve been waiting my whole life for girls like Tami Butler to acknowledge my existence. Even though I tried to convince myself I wasn’t. Even though I told myself I didn’t care. But I do care. Everyone cares. Anyone who says they don’t is a liar.
And maybe I do like Tami, just a little. Maybe I got to glimpse a part of her people don’t usually see. Maybe I want to see more of it, more of what else she’s hiding. As cruel as she is, there’s something about Tami that I admire. How does it feel to not care about being nice or liked, to be so sure of your place in the world, you feel no threat of losing it?
Lily looked at me through the screen of my phone, from the other side of the earth. She said, “You know they’re all narcissists, right? Tami, Ash. I could diagnose them right now. You’re not still hung up on him, are you?”
“No,” I lie.
“As you can probably guess, I’m not a big fan of this decision.”
I didn’t say, “But you are not here.”
I didn’t say, “What choice do I have?”
I didn’t say, “I’m bored and I’m lonely and I want to feel worth something.”
I want to feel something.
I check my phone.
I look in the mirror and I don’t know when I started looking like this. Like someone who might be friends with Tami Butler.
I check my phone again.
No one remembers nice girls.
Tami sends a prepaid car for me. I get a text that says, Your car is here. Driver’s name: Norman. Norman probably has at least two other jobs. Norman probably moved here from someplace that’s underwater now or that’s been poisoned by busted oil pipelines.
Papa says, “Be safe.”
Daddy sniffles, “Where did my little girl go?”
Gotami says, “Meow.”
No one says anything about a curfew. I have never needed one.
“Quite a place you got here,” says Norman.
Ivy Avila hasn’t texted. I’m beginning to think I dreamed our whole conversation.
Daddy talks about “the middle path.” But the middle path is boring. Buddhism is boring.
We do not take the tourist ferry. We take the private A-Corp boat. We climb the steps to the VIP lounge. The woman at the door scans Tami’s ID and adds me as her guest. She looks at me like I do not belong here, like she knows just by looking at me that my own ID only gets me access downstairs.
I have always been the middle path.
I do not say to Tami, “Why me? Why’d you pick me?”
There are so many other girls on the island, private school girls, girls home from other boarding schools, girls so much more like Tami than I will ever be. But Tami is tired of those girls.
The casual rich of the island have transformed into their cocktail dresses and diamonds, their heels and pearls. The city glimmers across the water, promising something.
We are moths rushing toward the light.
I was supposed to be Ivy’s tour guide.
“You know why she wants to hang out with you?” Lily said. “Because you’re not a threat. Because you’re not competition.”
Tami pours a flask of something into my lemonade. “You know why I like you? I think we have a lot in common. We’re special. Not like all the basic bitches on the island.”
I am the girl homeless people ask for money. I wear a giant flashing sign that announces to the world: “I will listen to you. I will not be mean. My patience is endless.” I am a magnet for people’s secrets, but I don’t have any of my own. Not yet.
Tami called me special.
Maybe tonight I will make some secrets.
The city approaches quickly.
Tami says, “All the other girls on the island are jealous. I can’t trust them. You know what I mean.”
My patience is endless.