September Girls (11 page)

Kristle tilted her head one way, then another, considering it. “Yeah,” she said. “Sure. Fine. I mean, it’s not like she listens to me ever. But fine, who cares? If that’s really what you want. But did you ever think maybe it’s not me you need to worry about trusting?”

Then Jeff appeared with his backpack, ready to go. “Hey,” he said with a cocky wink, “you hitting on my girlfriend, bro? Uncool.”

“I’m nobody’s girlfriend,” Kristle said. She was smiling and Jeff just laughed in his usual dopey, good-natured way, but I could tell he was bothered.

At first I was pleased to have them out of my way for the night, but after I’d been sitting alone in the living room for an hour—watching TV and picking sand from the crevices of the couch, getting slowly drunk by myself—I started to get bored. I decided to go for a walk on the beach. I took the flashlight with me and headed to the ocean, still just in my bathing suit.

When I got to the shore, the moon was behind a cloud. I didn’t remember that it had rained during the day, but the sand was damp. I sat down anyway.

I thought of my father with his metal detector and the fact that we were seeing him less and less lately. I thought of myself, and how untethered I felt, like I could float away at any moment. I thought of the boy outside the 7-Eleven, wandering off into the dunes, his shoes still lying in the parking lot.

I thought of the girl we’d seen on the first night here, and I cast my flashlight out to the ocean, wondering if I’d see another one heading for land. But I didn’t see anything. Instead I heard a voice behind me: “Hey you.” That slow and twisting accent again, but this time with a different, still familiar timbre.

I turned. It was DeeDee, standing in the sand with her shoulder cocked awkwardly, her hair wild and blue. I should have been surprised to see her but for some reason I wasn’t; I wondered if I had been expecting her this whole time. Maybe Kristle had told her to come find me after all. I sort of doubted it though.

“Can I sit down?” she asked. “I just got off work. Sucky day.”

“Yeah,” I said. It was so dark that she probably couldn’t see me smiling, but I was in fact smiling. She had found me. “I had a sucky day too. Or at least just weird.” I had already forgotten about Kristle’s warning not to trust her.

“Weird is good. Weird is at least interesting. You wouldn’t believe how boring it gets here,” she said. “We watch a lot of TV.” She plopped down next to me in the sand with a sigh.

“Yeah, I’ve noticed. Kristle’s really into those shows about the housewives.”

“Who isn’t?” DeeDee said. “Being a housewife seems like it could be a lot of fun, right? Anything’s better than waiting tables—except maybe being a maid. Either way, housewives don’t have to do any of that. I mean, they’re free. Who could be freer?” She took off her cheap Chinese slippers and shook them out into the sand before placing them in her lap.

“You should get more comfortable shoes,” I said, not bothering to comment on the relative freeness of housewives or the pure shit my mother had spouted about something called “the feminine mystique” in the weeks leading up to her escape.

“I’ve tried,” she said. “It doesn’t help. These are actually the best. I have problems with my feet. We all do.”

“If you were housewives you could just sit around all day with your feet in footbaths full of Epsom salts,” I said, half sarcastically. I only knew about the existence of Epsom salts at all because they were something my mom had been really into. I didn’t really understand what they were.

“Exactly,” DeeDee said. “We talk about that all the time.”

We sat there in silence at the very edge of the surf, the cold water creeping up on our ankles every few seconds and then receding. I’d already discovered that when DeeDee started talking she could talk forever, but I was surprised to discover that she was pretty good at being quiet, too.

I was playing a game with myself where I tried to time my breath to the in-and-out of the water, but the truth is that I’m terrible at holding my breath.

“Can you explain Kristle to me?” I asked.

“What about her?” DeeDee asked.

“She confuses me,” I said. “For one thing, is she your sister or not? Do you guys hate each other or are you friends?”

DeeDee didn’t reply, and I looked over at her curiously. I could see vague reflections of waves rolling in her eyes. Her expression was blank and very far away. She appeared mesmerized. I wondered if I should kiss her again; I felt slightly guilty that she had been the one to kiss me at Ursula’s. But it seemed wrong to kiss someone who may have forgotten I was even there.

I was still debating it when she snapped back. “Ugh,” she said. A cigarette had appeared between her fingers, seemingly from nowhere, and she had to fuss with her lighter before it would light. “I hate the ocean. You want to, like, go somewhere?”

“Like where?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “We could break into the mini-golf course.”

I’m generally a law-abiding person. Not out of any sense of morality, but because I’m sort of a pussy. I don’t even like skipping class; it makes my stomach hurt. But I looked over at DeeDee, who wiggled her eyebrows in a way that was at once sarcastic and entreating, in a way that made lawbreaking seem totally worth it, and I was just like, “Okay.”

She sprang up and dusted her beautiful ass off. She forged a curling and mysterious trail up the beach, cigarette burning from her fingers, and all I could do was smile and scramble behind her. It didn’t strike me then that a person can get lost even when following a path.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

.....................................................................

NINE

“SO TELL ME about you,” DeeDee was saying. “I want to know everything.”

The golf course was closed for the night—we’d crawled in through a hole in the chain-link fence—and now we were bathed in the eerie, bluish, almost underwater light of the garden lamps as we perched atop a fake lagoon overlooking the seventh hole of Cap’n Redbeard’s Hole-N-Fun. Between us, a fiberglass mermaid reclined in a way that was meant, I think, to be seductive but actually made it look like she had a problem with her spine. DeeDee had pulled a small flask of whiskey from her bra, and we were passing it back and forth.

“Like what?” I asked, more drunkenly than I would have preferred. “Like what should I tell you?”

DeeDee looked over at me with an exasperated smile. “I don’t know,” she said. “God, you’re hopeless. Tell me anything. Take a shot and then you have to tell me one thing about yourself, without thinking. Something secret.”

She passed me the flask and I swigged. For the first time, I didn’t flinch at the burn of the undiluted liquor.

“Um,” I said, seizing the first thing that came to me in my wobbly state. “When I was little, I went through this phase where I peed in the sink all the time. You know, like instead of the toilet. Afterward I would always feel super-guilty about it—I thought there was something really wrong and maybe perverted about me. But then it turns out that it’s a thing that basically all guys do when they’re little. My friend Sebastian
still
does it when he goes to parties, because why not? It’s like, primal, one of those things left over from when we were monkeys that evolution forgot to get rid of. Also pinky toes and male nipples.”

“Of course. I love how when boys have a completely unacceptable habit like peeing in the sink, science actually goes to all the trouble to come up with a justification for it.”

“Well it’s true,” I said. “It’s a biological imperative.” Although then it occurred to me that I didn’t even know if it was true at all; Sebastian was the one who had told me about the whole Darwinist theory behind pissing in sinks, and he wasn’t the most trustworthy person.

DeeDee grimaced. “God. Last summer I was stuck cleaning houses. Houses with little boys were always the worst of all—you know, even if you rinse it down, piss eventually starts to leave a smell that’s impossible to get out. I’m lucky I got the job at the Fisherman’s Net this year. Waitressing sucks too but at least I’m not dealing with body fluids very often.”

“Do you ever get sick of it?” I asked.

“Of what?”

“Of you know, cleaning houses and waiting tables and stuff? Of working all the time I mean.”

“Of course we get sick of it. Wouldn’t you?”

I was embarrassed that I’d asked. I hadn’t meant it as an insult. Her life was so different from mine; I should have thought of that. But I realized I hardly knew anything about her—I didn’t know where she had come from or why she was even working in the first place. I didn’t know what had brought her here or where she was going. “Sorry,” I said. “Obviously. But, like, what are you going to do next?”

“Right this minute? I’m going to drink some more whiskey.” She reached for it and took a sip, then tossed it back to me, and I drank too. I could taste the mild flavor of her saliva on the spout.

“I meant with life,” I said. “After you’re done waiting tables. Like are you going to go to college or whatever.”

“I try not to think too far ahead. I’d like to see France someday. But that’s just a fantasy.”

“So the accent’s not French?”

“Russian,” she said, a beat too quickly. It didn’t sound Russian to me, but I guess Russia’s a big place. It stands to reason that not everyone from there would talk like a James Bond villain.

“What’s it like? Russia I mean.”

Her face turned vague. “Oh, I don’t know. It’s been a while. Where are
you
from anyway?”

“The suburbs,” I said. “Basically the least interesting place on earth. I mean, I
was
from there. I’m not sure if we’re ever going back or what. My dad quit his job and everything. So maybe I’m not
from
anywhere anymore.”

She was looking at me quizzically. “Never mind,” I said. “It’s your turn. Tell me something about you.” I pushed the flask into her hands again.

“I already told you I’m from Russia. What else is there to know?”

I raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean? C’mon. I can think of so many interesting things. Don’t be stubborn.”

“There’s nothing that interesting.”

“I told you my darkest secret and you’re not going to tell me a thing?”

“That’s your darkest secret?”

“Just give me something,” I said.

“Fine,” she finally said, and took what started as a sip, became a swig, and turned into a gulp, before eventually settling at a chug. DeeDee let the flask clatter onto the lagoon before wiping her mouth with the back of her hand and letting out a small belch. “I don’t have a mother,” she said. She pushed her hair over her shoulder. “Good enough?”

I paused and cocked my head and started to say a bunch of different things but couldn’t decide on which. “Where’d she go?” I finally asked.

“Long story,” she said.

“They always are. I don’t have a mother either. Well, maybe I do. But not really. It’s no big deal.”

“It actually is a big deal,” DeeDee said. “To me at least. Anyway. I don’t like to talk about the past—I mean, my past. Other people’s are fine. What happened to yours?”

“You know how it goes these days,” I said. “It all started with Facebook.”

“I’ve heard of Facebook,” DeeDee said. “But I’ve never used it.”

“Really?” I said. “You’re serious?”

“Totally serious. We don’t have good internet here. You have to go to an internet café and even then it’s super-slow. It’s not really worth it.”

I had noticed the internet problem myself. I hadn’t checked my email since we’d left. The thing is that I didn’t even miss it.

“Well
that’s
something interesting,” I said. “You’re not missing much though; I’m not sure how my mom got so obsessed with it anyway. It’s pretty dumb. For a while she was just happy making all these embarrassing comments on my wall—that was bad enough, but it didn’t last. Then she starts playing these games where you have to make a farm and collect chicken eggs and that type of thing, and she’s, like, totally into it. She’s down there in the basement on the computer all day and then she comes up for dinner and all she wants to talk about is her farm, which made no sense, but it was sort of a relief because it meant she finally was leaving my wall alone. But even with that it was only a matter of time. Soon she started making all these
friends
, and that’s when things actually got bad.”

“Wait, she had a farm? Where was the farm?”

“Just ignore that part. The point is, all the sudden she’s sending all these messages to these strangers in weird places and next thing you know she’s in the basement with a box of wine 24/7, chatting with them I guess. Or something. You know, whatever people do on Facebook. And she was different. She got all interested in this weird crap that she wouldn’t have been able to tell you the first thing about before. She’s reading all this poetry; she has a Tumblr, although I avoided looking at it. She won’t shut up about this thing called the
SCUM Manifesto. . . .
”

“Society for Cutting Up Men?”

I was surprised she’d heard of it, but I guess you learn about a lot of crazy stuff watching all that cable. “Yeah, that’s the one. Some book some lunatic lady wrote about how much she hates all dudes; it sounded psychotic.”

“It’s actually pretty funny,” DeeDee said.

“Wait,” I said. “You’ve
read
the
SCUM Manifesto
?”

DeeDee looked a little nervous. “Oh,” she said. “Yeah. I guess they had it in one of the houses or whatever.”

“Oh,” I said. “Weird.” It was no wonder people were so weird around here, with no internet and only
Her Place,
the Bible, and the
SCUM Manifesto
to read.

“Valerie Solanas was misunderstood,” DeeDee said. “Her sense of humor was too sophisticated for most people. Although, true, she did end up shooting someone. But that’s sort of beside the point.”

I think I sort of looked at her funny but didn’t press the issue. “Yeah, well, the
point
is, Mom starts getting all these crazy ideas. We barely see her anymore—she’s just on Facebook—and when we do, she’s talking about this cutting up men stuff. Then one day I’m getting ready for school and she knocks on my door with a bag packed and she tells me she’s going to live at something called Women’s Land, where no one ever has to talk to men. And then five minutes later she’s gone. As in, completely gone.”