The Bitch Posse (4 page)

After class, he ducked out, but she said, “Wait, wait,” and the “wait” turned into a kiss, one that, in its lips and tongues and passions, reminded Amy of another gorgeous kiss, so long ago. The kiss turned frantic, and wordlessly they snuck to Harlan Hatcher Library for a tangle of giggles that turned into naughtiness in the deserted third-floor stacks. He leaned her against the wall, driving into her, kissing her neck. God, she’d no idea poetry could be so seductive. The best most exciting alive awake sex she’s ever had, surrounded by books, words, thoughts, and ideas folded up into themselves, undiscovered. As he cried out and she shivered into his arms and blinked him into focus, the first words he said to her were “I love you.”

She drowns herself in that memory for a while, letting the moments wash over her, anything to blur away the present, where Scotty’s never home when he says he’ll be, where all there is to do late at night is go online and drop a couple hundred on the latest Internet sale at J. Jill or Williams-Sonoma or the Gap or wherever, where she’s alone in this cold house in this cold place, with memories that will never go away no matter how much money she spends.

She runs her nails across the perfect countertop.

Of course, she wasn’t stupid enough to think sex would turn into love. When it happens this way most often the guy is a bastard; but odd, she and Scotty broke her own rule, in love already must’ve been for a long time before the Neruda book. They stayed up night after night at his apartment talking, conversations turning into sex that was
a poem itself, spinning tantalizing and seductive; Scotty always took his time with her. For the rest of the term they walked around holding hands, and by the end of summer she was wearing an engagement ring and her fairy tale had begun.

After their wedding came the move to the Upper Peninsula, where Sarah and Ken Dionne welcomed her with open arms and a
So glad you’re in the Soo, we promise not to call you a troll, eh?
Her in-laws, the parents she never had, initiated her into all the charming ways of the UP. Soon she too craved the strange meat and rutabaga pasties (which Amy quickly learned to call “pass-ties” instead of “pace-ties”) and believed the best thing that could happen to “Yooperland” would be if the Mackinac Bridge blew up. She too called the Michiganders from “below the Bridge” the “trolls”; she too screamed her heart out at the 1-500 snowmobile race. She even catches herself ending sentences with “eh?” once in a while. The Soo’s not like the Midwest that she hates, it’s more akin to Canada. Better yet, the UP should become its own country, secede from Michigan.

Deer hunting is the one Yooper tradition she still can’t stomach, for obvious reasons.

Reasons she won’t let herself think about.

Reasons she can never explain to Scotty.

She blurs that thought away with the struggle to have a baby, the Pergonal injections and the second move and the wonderful day she heard she was pregnant.

That was a long time ago, those beautiful moments that threw warm earth on the boxed-up secrets of her past. But the past isn’t gone at all. Yesterday, in one of the cartons she’d never unpacked from their move to the bigger house, she found it.

She felt the black cover, smelled the leather, ran her fingers along the crisp, unopened pages. The Bitch Goddess Notebook. Amy guessed she’d had it when it had all come down, when the Bitch Posse had been pulled apart, the girls separated, forever as it turned out.

There’s nothing else she has of those days, not her blue-beaded necklace, not her bloodstained glass jar, which she’d smashed soon after—well, never mind. As for the notebook, she didn’t look at it yesterday, didn’t dare. Why open the pages and send the past flying into the perfect present? Why let the voices and ghosts join her in her happiness? Instead she stashed it high on the kitchen cabinets, out of sight.

But something about Scotty being late tonight forces an ancient, visceral, female anger through her, one she hasn’t felt for a long, long time. She pulls the notebook down from its place above the cupboard where she keeps spices and flour.

Biting her lip, she opens it.

Bitch Goddess Notebook Entity #1
Holland, Illinois
December 31, 1987
Ha ha ha New Year’s Eve with the Bitch Posse!!!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMY!!! You are the Über-Bitch-Goddess! We are girls wrapped up in women, women bursting out of girls, eggs that came before chickens, bitches now and forever. We do what we want and God help anyone in our way. Fuck teachers, fuck the system, fuck everyone! We will make it till June and graduate, then goodbye Holland, for-fucking-ever. We don’t even have to write this Credo because it’s all in our heads. The Bitch Posse girls. Cherry Winters, Rennie Taylor, Amy Linnet.

Amy traces her finger across the giant heart she drew fifteen years ago, skates over the pictures she sketched of the girls. Cherry, her red hair in a fuck-me bob. Just looking at her forces guilt and pain and love and heartbreak down Amy’s throat. And Rennie, dyed black hair buzz-cut all over except for a crown of bangs and a few stray locks,
here and there. Amy’s own eyes are wide open, revealing mysteries, wispy blond hair curving in tendrils around her face. Somehow, Amy looks the saddest of all. But pictures don’t tell the future. Or do they?

She closes the notebook on the past and draws her fingers across the slick granite countertop of the present, then rests them on her swollen belly again. It feels fuller somehow. The pizza she ate after watching the boats was too spicy, or she ate too fast. That’s what happens when you eat alone, you eat too fast.

Where the hell is Scotty?

You should be happy, Amy.
Tears prick her eyes.
You have everything that everyone your age wants.
The voice in her head doesn’t comfort her, though. It sounds accusing, and her stomachache is getting worse.

She pours herself a glass of milk and sits at the counter, staring at the cake, the white icing cresting in little snow peaks over the center, thirty-five candles crammed into the pendulum. This afternoon she thought it’d be cute to make Scotty’s cake in the shape of a clock. Then she’d have him unwrap the watch. It feels stupid now, a lame joke. As she gulps down the milk, each swallow makes her thirstier until she reaches the bottom. Droplets cling to her upper lip, a cold film over her warm skin, and she wipes them away, presses her chin in her hands, and stares at the cake, eye level, so closely she can see cracks in the icing, valleys and canyons in the mountainous snow country, places for climbers and skiers to fall into, to be buried by an avalanche. If she was there, she’d ski across that ridge—no,
that
one—([a-z]+) . . .

Pain shoots though her belly, stabbing, knives everywhere, and suddenly she’s sitting in something wet and . . . Did she spill the milk? She glances down. Blood blooms through her skirt, blood’s dripping over the edge of the stool, blood all over the place. Fear rips through her.
There’s something wrong with the baby, oh, God, there’s something wrong with the baby. . . .

“Scotty!” She claws through the air, clutches at the phone. But a second name, stronger, firmer than Scotty’s, pounds through her head.
([a-z]+) . . .
Even as blood trickles down her leg, puddles across the white-tiled floor, and her abdomen cramps so much she doubles over in pain, she feels this all makes sense to her, that it’s what she’s anticipated all along.

That nothing good should happen to her.

She presses in the phone number of the auto dealer in Hancock, even though Scotty’s surely on the roads by now.

That she should pay.

“
Scotty!
”

March 1988
Holland High School

So here I am onstage, practicing my solo with Mr. Schafer, and it’s just as fantastically heart-pounding as I knew it’d be. After this I’m meeting the Bitch Posse, and I’m going to stay out late enough so Dad and Kelly and their precious little baby will be asleep when I get home. I don’t know how Kelly wormed her way into Dad’s life so soon after Mom took off, but the word “slut” comes to mind. Now Kelly sets my curfew, criticizes my clothes, nags me about homework. (Not that she has to do that last one; I’m a study bug, it’s a disease of some kind.) Yup, after two years with Dad, Kelly’s decided she’s now my mom. Um, I have a mom.

I try to see the good stuff about it. Mallory’s a cutie, and having a baby around means Dad’s decided I can fend for myself. Really the best part of Dad and Kelly’s relationship is that Dad no longer thinks I’m his closest friend in the world. After Mom took off, things began
to feel a little . . . weird. A little too close for comfort, that’s all, his arm flung next to my breasts as we’re watching TV—oh, not on them or anything, just too close. Now that Kelly’s around there are no more too-long good-night hugs, and funny, he never walks in on me when I’m taking a shower anymore. Not that he ever tried anything, I don’t think he would, after all he’s my dad! But now he has someone else to snuggle up to, and that is the only, only thing I will ever thank Kelly for. Not out loud, of course.

As for Mom, I’ve turned her into a distant memory, in Texas now with her new man, Devon. What kind of creep is named Devon? I get birthday cards, usually about a week late, and I haven’t visited since last summer. I’d love her if I could see her, but I can’t, so I don’t. At least that’s what I tell myself, and why am I even thinking about her when I’m alone with the sexiest man I’ve ever seen?

“One more time, Rennie, and then we’ll try the new blocking. After that we’ll call it a night.” Air. Schafer’s teeth sparkle when he smiles, really sparkle, and I watch his lips too long until he nods a couple more times and I realize I’m supposed to be singing.

I push what’s left of my hair behind my ears—my haircut’s inspired by Liz on
Degrassi,
buzzed all over, the rest choppy and chunky except for my bangs. Cherry did it over New Year’s at Amy’s eighteenth birthday party, dyed it black too. Of course, Mr. Schafer wasn’t crazy about that, but what was he going to do? I start the number again. It’s my signature song, “There Are Worse Things I Could Do.”

Play practice is always, shall we say, interesting. Especially when I’m getting a little extra help, like I am tonight. Darkness fell a long time ago, and I’ll have to drive through McDonald’s for my dinner if I’m going to meet my friends at the college when I’m supposed to. But it’s not like I was going to say no to Mr. Schafer. Oh, my God, if you could see this man. Fantastic dark curls shifting around his face, eyes you could drown in, strong jaw, blue-black razor stubble, great body, about thirty-five, maybe a little older. He looks more like the football
coach than the drama teacher. A girl would be nuts to turn down a chance to be alone with him.

Last year I was in the chorus when we did
Carousel,
but something amazing happened to my voice this year and I landed the part of Rizzo in
Grease.
I have lots of lines and songs, too many. If I’d known how much work this was going to be, I would probably have said no, because my grades are starting to slip, and Rennie Taylor’s grades don’t slip. They just don’t.

Of course, like all Broadway musicals,
Grease
has a happy ending; Rizzo’s not pregnant, and everyone’s friends again. But when she’s singing “There Are Worse Things I Could Do,” she’s pretty sure Kenickie’s knocked her up. It’s a sexy song, but it’s a sad song, too, and I’m having trouble reconciling the conflicting emotions in my voice. At least that’s what Mr. Schafer says, and why we’re pretending to work on it night after night after the rest of the cast has gone home.

We both know what’s really going on, even though neither of us has said it out loud.

“Good, Rennie. Let’s walk through your marks.” He stands behind me and rests his fingers on my forearm, his lips so close to my ear I can feel his breath tremble through my hair. “Cross to stage right . . . ” As he guides me to the mark, he slides his fingers up my arm, so my skin tingles, bristles. But he’s crossed this line before, and I don’t care. “Now stop.” I lean back into him, daring him to touch me more, just like I did last week, when I felt him pressing into my back and I was pretty sure I’d given him a hard-on. His hands lingered over my breasts, then he pulled away and ended the rehearsal soon after. But it was a good feeling, to be so giddy with power, to know I came close to making him lose control.

This time his hands move to my shoulders, and now he’s not directing me anymore. Maybe I should be scared, but I’m not. I know exactly what I’m doing, and it’s a hell of a lot of fun. I’ve left last year’s Rennie Taylor in the dust. It’s bad enough I’m barely five feet tall, but I
have such a boyish figure I could pass for twelve. And it doesn’t help that they named me after a fucking bird, a little plain brown bird. My middle name’s almost as stupid; don’t ask.

Names. I have a bunch of them. Tiny Wren Taylor, Skinny Little Bitch, Girl Genius, the Virgin Mary. No wonder everyone hated me last year; I was fucking annoying, waving my grades all over the place. I still have straight A’s, but I don’t make announcements about it anymore. And I’m done being the good girl, everyone’s baby sister, the virgin.