The Female of the Species (21 page)

Branley's shit is so lost it wouldn't matter if it was microchipped.

I nearly jump out of my skin when she busts out of an upstairs bedroom, the door hitting the wall so loudly it stops the party dead. She's nearly naked and fisting a wine bottle that looks to be empty, all her eye makeup now streaking down her face in a multicolored river of tears.

“Where the fuck is Jack?” she screams, and Park and I immediately shrink into each other a little bit.

Everyone is staring for different reasons. The girls because witnessing the top of the pyramid take a tumble is a spectator sport, and the guys because Branley is on a balcony and not wearing any underwear.

“Where?” she screams again, raising the wine bottle as if she's about to throw it on the head of anyone who withholds information.

“Branley, honey . . . ,” Lila says cautiously, climbing the steps toward what can only be her utter annihilation.

“Don't you
honey
me,” Branley yells, scanning the downstairs for a target. Her eyes catch mine and I will her to be drunk enough not to recognize me.

“Is Alex here?” she demands. “Did she fucking come
here
?”

My tongue feels like it's glued to the roof of my mouth, but I don't need to answer because Branley is already coming down, bare feet slipping on the last few steps. Lila catches her but she jerks her arm away, gaze still locked on mine.

“Bran, I think maybe—” Park begins.

“I'm not talking to you,” Branley interrupts. “I'm talking to Peekay.” She points at me, her finger a bare inch from my face.

It's the nails that get me. I know Branley, like it or not, and she aims for nothing less than perfection. Earlier tonight those nails were glossy, buffed, manicured, the pearlescent hue accenting the blue of her dress in tiny complementary ways that only someone who spent a few hours poring over colors would appreciate.

And now those nails are gone. Ragged. Bitten to the quick. Even the tender skin alongside the nail beds has been chewed. I don't know how long Branley has been upstairs alone, but she drained a bottle of wine and gnawed at herself before the anger drove her down here.

She tried. That's what I'm seeing in the damaged hand sticking in my face, the tracks of ruined eye makeup running down her cheeks. Branley tried to keep her abandonment to herself, tried to not make a scene, tried to retain some dignity.

And it's leaking away, right now, right in front of me. The girls are using one hand to cover sly smiles and the guys aren't even trying to hide the fact that they're taking pics of Branley in her lingerie.

“C'mon,” I say, dragging a blanket off the back of the couch and throwing it around her shoulders. A little sigh escapes her and she sort of collapses forward into me, all her energy gone now that the anger has been spent. I lead her to the bathroom and she slumps into a corner, tanned legs now riddled with goose bumps.

I wet a washcloth and start working on her face, wiping away the layers of makeup that she painstakingly applied before, all of it for Jack. I wash away the remnants of lipstick, now feathered and cracked instead of decorating his body the way she'd planned. I clean her face while she sobs, her shoulders going up and down in
a silent dance of bottomless sadness that I'm only too familiar with.

Branley's heart is broken and it's Jack Fisher who's done it to her.

I can't help but comfort her, wrapping the blanket around her tightly while she searches for words, telling me things that I'm not meant to hear. There are a couple of hesitant knocks, quiet questions whispered through the door by girls who
only want to help
, but Branley tells them all to go away. It's me she wants, me she's pouring herself into. And as Alex's friend, I'm the worst possible choice.

“Does he love her?” Branley asks, her fist tight around a tissue.

“I don't know,” I tell her, glad I can answer honestly. “If he said so, she never told me.”

“But what do you
think
?”

I wish I could say
I don't know
again, but I saw Jack's face when he spotted Alex tonight at prom, have watched him try to move through every day that they've been apart as if he wasn't being torn in two.

“Yeah, he loves her,” I say. “And I'm pretty sure she loves him.”

I thought Branley would break down again when I said it, but she just nods as if I've confirmed the inevitable and blows her nose.

“It's all I've got, you know,” she says.

“What?”

“This.” She indicates her drop-dead body with a casual wave. “I'm not smart or funny or mysterious.”

“Uh, you're hot,” I tell her. “That goes a long way.”

“Nope,” she says, shaking her head. “What have I got left? Ten years? Fifteen? How long before my tits sag and my hair goes gray and I get wrinkles? How much makeup will I have to wear to compete with the other women who are interesting so people listen to them, who got good jobs because they're smart, who got Jack because they're mysterious? How long before my husband gets bored and bangs a younger version of me because I don't have it anymore?”

Branley just asked me a long line of really depressing questions and I don't have answers for any of them. I think she's selling herself short because I've glanced at her papers when they come back and she pulls Cs. She might not be Ivy League, but she's not a dumbass, and being nice might go a long way if she, you know . . . tried practicing it a little bit more. I don't tell her these things because she's drunk as shit and barreling on and probably wouldn't remember anyway.

“This is what I am,” she says. “And I've only got so much time to use it in, so that's what I've done and it wasn't always the right thing and maybe it didn't even
make me feel good sometimes.”

She blows her nose again, and wads up the tissue. I hand her a fresh.

“I'm sorry about Adam,” she says.

I've put him so far behind me that it takes a second for me to put it together, like maybe he died in the past couple of days and no one told me and Branley is offering her condolences.

I start giggling.

“Why is that funny?” Branley asks.

I explain and she actually cracks a smile, the skin around her swollen eyes crinkling with the effort. “You know what I mean,” she says.

“Yeah, I know. Don't worry about it.”

“Seriously. I made you feel the way I do right now,” she says, tears welling again. “And I wouldn't wish it on anybody.”

I look at the water leaking from her eyes, the new flush creeping up her cheeks. “Me neither,” I say.

And I hold Branley's hand as she cries.

The world is new and I am reborn in it.

Sure, spring always feels this way. It's like we forget how to live over the winter. Our lungs do the job of pushing the stale cooped-up-in-the-house air in and out to keep us alive. We move from building to car to the next building as fast as possible, backs hunched against the wind, faces hid in hoods and hats, eyes on the ground as we go. Joy leaks out of your body in the winter and whatever isn't sheltered is frozen solid.

But it's more than the thaw that's in my system and I'm not very good at hiding it. Even Park has told me to get that fucking grin off my face more than once. I'm stupid in love, and broadcasting it onto everything I see. The grass is greener, the air warmer, the baseballs
a brighter shade of white.

The senior countdown is in the single digits, Alex and me neck-and-neck for the valedictorian spot and loving every second of goading each other. I try to delay her in the halls with a long kiss, telling her that she doesn't need to study, and she responds by biting my lip just enough to let me know it won't be that easy.

“Get a room,” Park yells as he passes, arm slung around Peekay's neck.

I throw a pen at him but he snatches it out of midair and I spot Branley ducking into a classroom down the hall, the bright sheen of her hair unmistakable. I can't deny there's a stab in my gut when I see her, a trailing wound left behind that smacks of guilt. I ignore it, focusing instead on Alex's freckles, darker now that she's been coming to my baseball games.

“See you tonight?” I ask.

“Girls' night,” Alex says, shaking her head.

“You can see Peekay anytime,” I counter.

“I can see
you
anytime.”

I can't argue with that. With Alex officially accepted into Hancock and Peekay going to the Lutheran school, it'd be selfish to keep her to myself now when I'll see her as much as I want later.

“Okay,” I say. “I'll figure out something else.”

Park's been on my ass about going hunting with him
before turkey season is over, even though I know we'll probably just end up drinking in the woods. And I'm cool with that, but my phone vibrates in my pocket before the bell rings at the end of the day. It's a text from Branley, which hasn't happened in weeks. We had it out over the phone the day after prom, her hysterics rising and swelling so much I put her on speaker because I couldn't stand it right next to my ear. But I deserved it and I knew it, so I let her anger break over me in waves and never argued with anything she said.

And she said some pretty terrible things. I was just using her for sex (I could claim the same), I never cared about her at all (I almost wish that were true), I was a player and a liar and a son of a bitch. And I have been those things, all of them. So I let her say them, and hoped this was how I paid my dues.

I'm expecting more of the same now, a last volley of hate that she needs to get out of her system before we can move past it. Instead it's simple.

can we talk?

I don't know. Can we? The truth is that I want to. Branley might have fallen in love with me slowly without my knowing it, but when she fell out, it was a firestorm from hell that eradicated our friendship.

Alex is in my blood and fills my mind. I'd like to say that my whole heart is hers as well, but there's a
corner of it that belongs to Branley by right. A part filled with firecrackers and crawdads and my childhood. My thumbs move across the keypad.

what's up?

Wnt to tell u I'm stl going 2 Hancock. Nvr wuz 4 u. They've got a gd RN prgm.

They do have a good RN program, and Branley would make an excellent nurse. But I don't know how much I'm supposed to say right now.

cool

Apparently that wasn't enough, because my phone rings two seconds later. I hesitate for a moment before answering, but as usual Branley gets her way.

“Hey.”

“Hey,” she says back, her voice the version I like, pitched low and normal. It's not the Branley who wants something, high and pouty.

“It's no big deal about Hancock. I never thought you were going there just because of me anyway,” I say.

“Other people did,” she says, and I can't argue with that. I open my mouth to tell her that Alex will be at Hancock just in case she hadn't heard, but she keeps going.

“I've got some of your stuff,” she says, which isn't a huge surprise. I've dumped shit in her locker more than once, so I didn't have to walk all the way to mine before lunch. We've carpooled for years. She probably has more
of my own stuff than I do.

“Like what?”

“I don't know, all kinds of shit,” she says. “There's, like, a pile. Couple of shirts, a jump drive, some hats. Um . . . at least one pair of boxers.”

“Just the one?” I ask before I can help it, a smile twisting my lips.

She giggles. “I washed everything.”

“Thank God,” I shoot back, and we're both laughing.

“Anyway . . . I wanted to get it all back to you,” Branley says. “Can you meet me out at the church in about half an hour?”

“I'll swing by and pick it up.”

“That's not a good idea,” she says. “I . . . I said some pretty not-nice things about you to Mom and Dad. They're not very happy with you right now.”

I sigh. Branley's mom and dad have been my second parents my whole life. Having them
not very happy
with me makes me feel like shit.

“Give it time,” she says. “It'll blow over.”

“Yeah, I'll meet you in thirty,” I say.

“Cool.”

She's about to hang up when I stop her. “Hey, Bran?”

“Yeah?”

“We good?”

“Oh yeah,” she says, and I can hear the smile. “You and me, we're going to be all right.”

A girls' night with Alex is never normal, mostly because she's one girl who hates to be indoors.

Even in the dead of winter, she'd drag me into the backyard and start a fire in the pit, our fronts too hot and our backs too cold as we passed a bottle back and forth. More than once she took me out to the state park, indifferent to my complaining as I trudged behind her on trails so steep wildlife were the only ones using them. But a girls' night with Alex always brought peace with it too, and that's something I've been looking for lately.

All anybody wants to talk about right now is endings. School is almost
out
.
Last
day of senior year. A phase of our lives is almost
over
. An era is drawing to a
close
. I'm really sick of well-meaning advice from people who like
to remind me that they were teens
not that long ago
.

Everybody else sees a finish line ahead and I'm stuck on beginnings. My heart tells me that I like Park a little more than we agreed upon when we started seeing each other, and as I glance at Alex as she drives I feel an even deeper sting.

It's hard to believe we've been friends for only a year. This girl knows everything about me, has seen me at my best and worst. We're at the point in our friendship where we can be quiet together and it's not awkward, but we can also both sing in the car very loudly and not be embarrassed because we both sound like shit.

It's like that. And I'm suddenly very aware that it's as temporary as Park and me. She's headed halfway across the state to Hancock, and I'm going halfway the other direction to the Lutheran school. Sure, we can text and email, make promises to
try to get togethe
r soon or when we're home on break. Then when we do go out it'll just be an update, like a folded letter in a Christmas card—
this is what I did since I talked to you last time; now you know.
Then we'll do it again the year after that, each meeting a bullet-point conversation to keep each other informed, but never intimate.

I'm afraid of that happening with all my friends, but Alex the most. She's the one most likely to call bullshit on even perfunctory get-togethers, unhappy with the
charade of being friends when we aren't actually anymore. I want to find a way to say these things, and have been plowing through a couple of beers to make the whole thing less awkward while she drives out to a beaver dam she wants to show me (yes, really). She's got her eyes on the road, humming something that I'm pretty sure she's making up as she goes, when I blurt out what's on my mind.

“I wish I had you longer,” I say, then blush up to my ears. “Wait—that sounded weird. What I mean is . . . never mind. Screw it.”

Alex's eyebrows go together and she brakes, pulling off the road into the shade of a little turnaround in the woods. “I get it,” she says.

My head is humming a little so I just nod, too aware that I don't have a way with words like she does.

“Claire, listen to me,” Alex says, using the tone that makes dogs sit even when she didn't give the command. So I listen.

“I didn't have anything for a long time,” she says. “All I knew was my house and school. There was a path in between the two I never left, like a sleepwalker. You woke me up, Claire. Pushed me off it and made me see other paths, other people. Do you realize I wouldn't even be going to college if it wasn't for you?”

“Really?” I ask, voice small as I pick at a hangnail.

“Yes,” Alex says. “After graduation I wouldn't have even had that path anymore. No school. Just home.”

“That's no good.” I shudder, thinking of Alex stuck at home with her mom, two shadows passing each other without speaking until they both forget how.

“Definitely not,” she says, putting the car back in gear and us on the road again. “So don't think that college changes—”

In the cup holder, her phone goes off as a text message comes in.

“Want me to get it?” I ask.

“Sure.”

“What the fuck? It's from Branley.”

Alex shrugs. “What's it say?”

“Just that she wants to talk to you and can you meet her at the church in half an hour.”

Alex doesn't say anything, but takes a left at the next crossroads, which makes my head sing with alarm bells on top of the beer buzz.

“We're not seriously going?”

“Why not?”

“Uh, because she's like your archenemy or something.”

“She's not.”

“Alex, seriously—”

“Branley's not a bad person. If she wants to talk to
me so she can get some closure, I'm not going to deny her that.”

I'm about to say that closure is overrated, but she's already switched back to the conversation before we were interrupted by Branley's text.

“College won't change anything between us, Claire,” she says. “The kind of friendship we have doesn't just stop.”

I don't want to argue about going to see Branley, so I crack another beer as we head toward the church, the shadows of the woods around us lengthening in the dying light.