The Female of the Species (6 page)

We all walk out of the auditorium into the bright lights of the hall, blinking. It's a harsh awakening that breaks the spell the cop managed to weave, quieting constantly running mouths and forever-lit-up phones. In the anonymous dark, the air was heavy with thoughts, the blond girl sitting next to me fighting to breathe normally when a boy suggested she'd be the one raped of the five of us who were called out. Out here in the light it's harder for her to hide how badly that upset her. Her face is tight, her smile stretched too thin, and she pretends to have a wayward hair in her eye that explains the pooling tears.

The light is taking a toll on all of us, the deeply personal thoughts brought on by darkness whisked away as someone makes a joke, and then another, and soon all
anyone wants to know is what's for lunch. Not who will be a victim and who a perpetrator. A hand clamps on my arm and I jerk away immediately, down and with a twist so that they can't keep their grip.

“Whoa, hey, sorry,” a male voice says. Jack is right in front of me, and I have to focus on stringing together the right words in order to seem normal.

“Are you okay?” he asks when I don't say anything.

“You're always asking me that,” I say, and part of me wonders if that's because he instinctively knows I am definitely not.

“No, I mean . . .” He brushes his hand through his hair. “That assembly. It was pretty fucked-up. Sorry.”

I don't know if he's saying that he's sorry that he swore, or that he's sorry I had to sit through that, or if he's sorry that he scared me when he grabbed my arm. I'm cradling the wrist that he touched, holding it against my chest because where our skin met burns so badly I'm sure it's blistering, and I don't want him to see how hard my heart is beating.

“Did I hurt you?” he asks, eyes on my hands.

“No,” I say. “I'm . . .” I stop talking because I don't know what I am.

“Good, because I wouldn't do that—hurt someone, I mean.” His eyes have moved up to mine, and they're so honest I have to wonder what mine look like to him.

“You or anybody else,” he adds.

“You can't know that.” I say the first thing that comes to my mind, a reactionary cog setting another in motion. “It's impossible to know what any one of us will do in a given situation. Especially intense ones.”

His friends are gathering at the end of the hall, looking back at us. The blond girl calls his name and he waves at them to go on, drawing a pout from her as the second-period bell rings. He walks with me to class like it's a normal thing, and I let it feel that way too, for a moment.

“Alex Craft,” he says. “I think every situation with you is an intense one.”

I feel a smile on my face, muscles that haven't twisted in that manner since I talked to him last shaking with the oddity of it. An answering smile echoes on Jack's face, and I can see laugh lines forming around his lips, a life only starting but already well lived.

“Anyway,” he goes on. “I don't want you to be upset about what that cop was saying, about the person who . . . well, you know. About there being a killer out there, and that they'll do it again.”

I settle for smiling as we part instead of answering. Because the only words I have are:

The cop is right.

And it doesn't upset me at all.

“Best. Assembly. Ever,” Sara says as she gets in my passenger seat. Her basketball conditioning was canceled, so she's bumming a ride—and probably dinner—off me. “People were either going to cry or start punching each other,” she says. “Loved it.”

“I felt bad for Alex,” I say.

“What's her deal, anyway?”

“I don't know,” I tell her honestly, flipping off the car full of junior boys who are riding my ass. “I'm not sure she so much has a deal as she just minds her own business.”

“Uh, yeah, small town. No such thing,” Sara says. “Take it from the lesbian contingent of one.”

“You're not the only lesbian in town,” I tell her for the hundredth time.

“Do me a solid and let me know when you spot another one,” she says as I pull into my driveway. Sara cranes her head to look at the bell tower, as always. I'm so used to growing up next to the church I don't even see it anymore, don't think about the massive graveyard that I live next to, either. Giving people directions to my house has always been easy—drive out of town on the state route until you're in the middle of nowhere and suddenly there's a huge church. I live next to it. Easy to locate, sure. Easy to pretend not to be the preacher's kid when you use the steeple as a navigational point? Not so much.

I grab the bag of bulletins from the backseat and we go inside. Mom and Dad are sitting at the dining room table, trying to look like they haven't been waiting on me, which immediately sends out warning signals.

“What?” I ask before I even put the bulletins down.

“Sara,” Mom says, walking toward her for a hug. “Good to see you.”

Sara hugs her back but repeats my question when she steps away. “Yeah, sorry, Peekay's parents, but definitely
what
?”

My dad doesn't go in for a hug on either of us, but gives us both an awkward smile. “We heard you had an assembly today.”

Sara and I both make half-vomit noises. “Was there
some kind of parental alert call system that kicked in?” I ask.

“Do I need to go?” Sara asks.

“No, it's probably best if you hear this too,” my dad says as he ushers us into the living room, my mom following with glasses full of iced tea that have been poured for a while now because they're sweating like crazy. Mom and Dad sit on the couch, Sara and I take the love seat, and we all look at each other.

“So what did you think about the assembly?” Mom finally asks.

“Uh . . .” I share a glance with Sara, who makes her eyes really big and takes a huge sip of iced tea. Lots of help there. “It was kind of scary, you know.”

Dad surprises me by saying, “Good.”

He goes on: “Sorry, honey. The truth is often alarming. I've been fielding phone calls all day from parents, and I've been telling them the same thing. I understand you were one of the girls the officer pointed to when he mentioned rape statistics?”

“Yeah,” I say, the one word catching in my suddenly dry throat. “Me and Sara both. Were people pissed off about that?”

“Some,” Dad says. “Apparently Branley Jacobs's mom called the school and gave the principal an earful over it.”

“I think Branley was kind of upset,” Sara says. “Somebody made a joke and . . .” She stirs her tea. “I don't know if she was crying or anything like that, but she sure wasn't laughing.”

“How did you feel about it, honey?” Mom asks me.

“I don't know,” I tell her. “I wasn't, like, pissed off or anything, but it was weird. I mean, we hear numbers like that shit—oops, sorry. We hear statistics like that all the time, but when he actually pointed at five of us . . .”

“It made it real,” my dad says, nodding.

“Yeah, like, really real.”

“That's what your father said to the parents who have been calling,” Mom says. “If we have to hit you over the head with a sledgehammer to make you be careful, then I'll be the first one in line at the hardware store.”

“I don't want you to walk around scared,” Dad says, eyes sliding over to Sara. “Either of you. But things aren't good around here. There's never been a lot of money in this county, but times are tighter than ever and poverty breeds desperation. People look for escape in different ways: through drugs, through alcohol, and through sex.”

My hands leave my glass to cover my face.

“I'm sorry, honey, but it's true,” Dad says.

“You were doing great until you said
sex
,” I tell him, my words muffled by my fingers. “Now I can't look at you.”

“For the record, me neither” comes Sara's similarly muted voice beside me.

“We'll keep talking, but you don't have to look at us, okay?” Dad says.

I nod, and I feel Sara doing the same thing beside me.

“I don't know how much you know,” Dad says, giving me a little pause where I can feel free to volunteer all my sins if I feel so inclined.

I don't.

“There's been an influx of heroin in the county.”

“Bad heroin,” Mom clarifies, and I know Sara is trying just as hard as I am not to laugh at the idea that apparently she classifies some heroin as
good
.

“A handful of people overdosed last week,” Dad goes on. “It's out there, along with meth—which in some ways is even more dangerous, because people are trying to make it themselves.”

“Cook it,” Mom corrects, and I have to wonder if they went to some kind of seminar or something where buzzwords were printed on PowerPoint slides in italics.

“We're not stupid; we know you drink,” Mom says, and I am so damn grateful my head is already down. “We know what it's like growing up here, honey; we did it too. But neither one of us was ever the preacher's kid.”

“And I know that's not easy for you,” Dad adds. “I want you to have a normal high school experience without that defining you. But you're also my daughter, and
I'm just a dad who wants his girl to be safe.”

“I am safe, Dad,” I say, and part of me wants to keep my face covered and part of me wants him to know that I didn't start crying until this moment, and embarrassment has shit to do with it.

“Sara.” Dad clears his throat. “This applies to you too. Just because you're not interested in boys doesn't mean they're not interested in you.”

“Oh, sweet baby Jesus,” Sara says into her hands.

“Girls,” Dad says. “If either one of you is ever in a situation you're not entirely comfortable with—call me. I don't care what time it is. I don't care who is there or what is going on. You call me and I will come get you.”

I'm totally crying now, and I don't even care. I look up at my dad and he's crying too; my mom's got her hand on his knee like she's the only thing keeping him attached to the world.

“Baby girl,” Dad says. “There's nothing you can ever do that will make you unwelcome in my house.”

I nod, a few tears falling into my lap when I do. Sara's still got her face covered. Mom takes my glass to refill it and Dad goes to get some tissues. Sara looks over at me and wipes her eyes.

“You've got the best parents in the fucking world,” she says.

It's dark when I get home, even though the sun is still up.

Our windows stay closed, our curtains drawn. It's easier for Mom to ignore the outside world this way: out of sight, out of mind, the only thing perpetually in her line of vision a bottle of scotch. I put myself in her way accidentally, our paths crossing in the kitchen as I get a glass of water. She looks up at the clock, confused.

“You're home?”

“School lets out at three, Mom.”

Her eyes thin out as she squints at the clock, the shakily applied eyeliner she puts on only for herself crimping together as she does.

“It's three-thirty,” I supply.

“Oh.” She busies herself for a few minutes, trying to make it seem like she came into the kitchen for something other than to refill her glass. I wait her out patiently, sipping my water and crunching ice between my teeth.

“How was school?”

I imagine this question is asked all over the world, every day, receiving everything from flippant answers to in-depth reckonings. But it's hardly ever asked here, in this house. The last time I answered this question I was wearing a Hello Kitty book bag and the heels of my shoes lit up when I walked.

I pulverize some ice with my molars while I think. I could tell her, I suppose. Let her know that Anna was on the minds of everyone today. Something that rightfully belongs to only us resurrected once again as a cautionary fairy tale, a warning to all the Little Red Riding Hoods that there are wolves in the forest.

I could tell her, but I don't. Because I know why the curtains are drawn and the windows are shut. Nothing is ours; nothing is sacred. The one thing we shared was pulled into pieces, memorialized and mythologized so that everyone could participate in it. When she was missing, Anna's picture was tacked in so many places around town it's what I see when I think of her, not her actual face. I see that picture next to a lost cat poster
and a lawn-mowing service advertisement.

I learned later they did find that cat.

“School was fine,” I say, and dump the rest of my water in the sink.

We're cleaning cat ears.

Rhonda doesn't require us to come in on Sundays, but somebody has to feed the animals. Yesterday Alex and I helped five cats and two dogs find homes, one of them being the newly spayed dump, who was pretty cute once she got cleaned up. We agreed we probably could have placed a couple more cats if their ears were nice and pink inside like in the wet-food commercials. We told Rhonda to take a much-deserved break today and we'd come in, feed everybody, and make our cats a little more like the ones you see on TV.

So I skipped church to clean cat ears. Normally that wouldn't fly, but since we had a half-mortifying, half-heartwarming family moment Friday, Dad was okay with it.

It's kind of a gross job. A lot of these guys come in here with ear mites. They get this nasty black buildup that has its own special smell if it's been sitting in their ear canals a while. It doesn't matter how much I wash my hands; I can still smell it hours later, like an onion.

And cats don't exactly love having their ears cleaned, so it takes two people. Alex has this weird hypnotic effect on them. I wrap them up in towels, bundled tight like cat burritos in my arms, and then Alex talks to them, low and soft. I don't know if she relaxes them or if it's more like utter defeat because they know they've come up against an unstoppable force with a Q-tip, but they go limp after a few minutes. When she's done, she'll nod at me and I let them go. They stalk off with their ears down and their tails in the air, trying to regain whatever dignity we took from them.

It's a close work environment. Alex leans over the cats while I've got them tucked under my arm like a football. She smells like cold air and the late-evening showers that are two degrees away from being snow.

“What are you wearing?” I ask.

She grunts something that might be a question, her usual word choice lost in concentration as she digs into a tom's ear.

“Perfume? Body spray? You smell good,” I clarify as her confusion deepens.

“I suppose it could be my shampoo,” she says as she squirts medicine into the tom's ear, massaging it down into the canal. Inexplicably, he purrs.

“It was raining earlier, and I jogged here. Wet hair smells,” she adds, as if this statement is nothing odd. “He's done.”

I unwrap the tom and he jumps down, leaving us empty-handed and looking at each other. “What do you mean you jogged here? It was almost snowing this morning.”

“My car is in the ditch,” she says, like it's been casually misplaced.

“Are you okay? Did you get hurt?”

“It was last weekend. I'm fine.”

“Okay . . .” I look at her for a second, unsure how much I get to pry now that we've shared lunch meat through a fence. I don't ask why she didn't get her mom to bring her, because I consider other people's parents an out-of-bounds topic. I've been picked on enough about mine.

“Do you want a ride home or something?” I ask slowly, not sure if I'm even supposed to offer. If Alex says no, then it's a very clear statement: she'd rather run home in cold weather than have our friendship move any further.

She puts the unused Q-tips back in the box one at a time while she deliberates. “Yes, that would be nice.”

“Cool.”

“What's your name?”

“What?”

She's said my name before. I know it. I remember because it came out funny, like she was stumbling a little with it. But Alex licks her lips as if they've gotten dry from this new experience of talking so much and repeats herself.

“What's your name?”

“Peekay.”

Alex shakes her head and sprays down the counter, sending fluff from every disgruntled cat we've worked on today flying into the air. Tiny black, gray, white, and ginger hairs settle onto the floor before she tries again.

“That's not your name. It's what people call you.”

“It's my nickname,” I say, an edge of defensiveness sneaking into my tone. “It stands for—”

“I'm aware of what it stands for. I'd like to know your name.”

Alex holds eye contact, almost always. Even when she says insignificant things like “Is it my turn to clean the toilet or yours?” it's like the fate of the world hangs in the balance. So when she's staring me down over a stainless steel table asking me what my name is, I feel a weird bump in my throat . . . like maybe it actually is important.

I clear my throat to make room for the answer. “Claire. My name is Claire.”

Her smile breaks out, ear to ear, infectious as hell. “That's a lovely name. I would go by that, if I were you.”

I drop my eyes. “People have always just called me Peekay.”

And I let them. Even though maybe in the beginning it wasn't meant to be nice. Maybe in the beginning there was a taunt underneath it, an edge born on the playground that supposedly matured into affection. But maybe it didn't. Maybe it was a constant affirmation of who I'm supposed to be, said into my face every day to remind me of my place. Maybe when I sucked Adam's dick and he said my name at the end it wasn't because he wanted
me
but because he just got a blow job from the—

“Preacher's kid,” Alex says.

“Yeah,” I say, feeling that stupid bump again. “I'm the preacher's kid.”

“I'm the girl with the dead sister.”

“I'm sorry about that,” I say quickly, and she cocks her head exactly like one of the dogs. “The first day when I called you . . .”

“Anna.” She waves it off. “It's understandable. Sometimes it's how I perceive myself, too.”

I laugh a little, and the bubble in my throat pops. “Why do you talk so funny?”

Alex doesn't hesitate. The answer is right on her lips, like she's had it prepped in anticipation.

“I read a lot. I don't have a lot of experience in conversation, so my turn of phrase is different from . . .”

“Pretty much everybody else, yeah,” I finish. “Don't you pick it up, though? Like in the hallways or whatever?”

“I try not to listen.”

I can dig that. I've overheard things I definitely wish I hadn't. I suddenly remember Branley, her shiny, waxed legs stretched out in front of her while she talked about Alex loud enough to be heard, shooting snide glances and waiting for her to take the bait. And Alex reading Dostoyevsky like it was nothing, her own world blossoming around her.

Her own world. Population: 1.

When we get in my car, I jack the heater up, the stale air blowing out of the vents and fanning Alex's hair away from her face. She gives me directions to her house and I flip off her car, resting in the ditch, when we pass it. She actually laughs at that. It's funny to hear such a natural sound when her conversation comes out so stilted. As soon as I think it, I hear my mom's Sunday school teacher voice in my head, about how a smile is the same in every language. I guess that goes for laughing with the socially awkward, too.

I sneak a glance at her when I pull into the driveway. We kept the conversation on the drive to shelter talk—who we hoped would get adopted next, and Rhonda's creative non-swearing insults (
friend-eater
is my current favorite; Alex likes
sweater-unraveler
). I put the car in park and open my center console to grab the last senior picture I have.

It's an awkward pose, the one I liked least. I'm leaning against the stone wall at the local park, my mouth stuck in a grimace that suggests I'm at the end of my shoot and patience at the same time. Mom loved this one, a traditional shot that she ordered more of than necessary, the pose I pawned off on freshmen who asked if they could have one.

“Hey, want one of my pictures?” I ask impulsively, and Alex pauses, her hand ready to unlock the passenger door. She thinks about it a second, as if accepting it might mean taking an irreversible step. And maybe for her it kind of is.

“Yes,” she says.

I take a pen off the dash—turquoise ink—and am about to scribble “Peekay” and our graduation year on the back, but I stop. Instead I twist the pen in my fingers for a second, the unfamiliarity of writing my given name making my hand awkward. It actually takes concentration for me to write it in cursive, the
handwriting shaky and childish. But Alex smiles when she accepts it and nods when I tell her I'll see her in school on Monday.

And the truth is, I'm kinda looking forward to it.