The Princesses of Iowa (13 page)

“Hey, babe,” he said, grabbing me around the waist. “Did you see that field goal? Wasn’t it amazing?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Amazing.” The night had gotten colder, and I wore the blanket around my shoulders like a cape.

Jake walked ahead of me, weaving through the remaining cars in the parking lot, occasionally shouting to his teammates. “Dude, you going to Lacey’s? Cool, see you there!”

Jake stopped at his father’s truck. “Where’s your car?” I asked.

“Some fuckwad dinged the bumper.” He hopped into the cab without opening the door for me. I took it as a good sign that my mother was wrong. Still, I watched him warily, analyzing his every gesture and word for any hint that he was planning to do something as monumentally stupid as propose. It seemed so completely, unimaginably bizarre — and yet, my mother did work for his mother, planning weddings together, no less. I squinted at him as he lit a cigarette and turned the key in the ignition, still talking about the game. He seemed normal enough, though, and I began to relax slightly.

Jake blew smoke out of the side of his mouth and tapped the cigarette against the window. “Where were you today? Lacey said she saw you leave.”

“Just around,” I said vaguely.

He pulled out of the student parking lot, honking at a red Blazer. “Just around? What were you doing?”

I shrugged. “Homework.”

He snorted. “It’s Friday. You have the whole weekend to worry about that stuff.”

I reached across the seat for his cigarettes. Supposedly I had quit when I was shipped off to Europe — even though everyone else there smoked, Mrs. Easton had an incredibly sensitive nose and went psycho at the merest hint of cigarette smoke — but at the moment I felt like I wanted to quit quitting. Without taking his eyes off the road, Jake offered me a light from his Zippo.
He’s a good guy,
I thought fondly. I sucked on the cigarette, comforted by the familiarity of self-destructiveness. I could totally marry him. Not now — God, not at seventeen or even eighteen. But after college, maybe. Or someday.

I cracked the window and blew a long stream of smoke into the night air. “Do you ever wonder if there’s more than this?”

“More than what?” Steering with his knee, he took my left hand in his, lightly tapping at each of my fingers in turn.

“I don’t know.” I waved my cigarette toward the fading lights of the high school behind us, the quiet dark street, the familiar glow of downtown ahead of us. “This.”

“More?” Jake asked incredulously. He dropped my hand and turned toward me. “Babe, this is
it.
Weren’t you watching the game tonight? We kicked Monty’s ass. We’re finally seniors, the whole school worships us. . . . What more do you want?”

“I don’t know,” I said, frustrated that I
didn’t
know — not well enough to put it into words, anyway. “Never mind. Forget it.”

“You and Lacey have been working toward this for years. The vote’s next week.”

“I know.”

“Well? What’s the matter?”

For a second I thought I could tell him everything, could confess my fears about us, about him and Lacey, and about me and Lacey. I could let him comfort me, let him tell me it was all in my head. Nothing had changed between us, between any of us. Everything was fine. I could let him convince me.

But I knew I couldn’t say everything, couldn’t say any of it without sounding like a pathetic, needy girlfriend. Besides,
Princesses don’t whine.

“I don’t know,” I repeated. “It’s nothing. Really.”

Jake flicked his cigarette out the window and looked at me, and for a brief second I wondered if he saw it all, if I didn’t even have to say the words. “You know what you need?” he asked, reaching his hand across the seat again and patting mine. “You need a drink.”

He was right, I thought, staring out the truck window at the buttermilk moon as Jake sped through the countryside toward Lacey’s house. I had everything: the adoration of the school and town, a good chance at princess-hood, a great-looking boyfriend . . . It was everything we’d planned for in junior high, everything exactly as we’d dreamed. Well, except for the accident. But even that was behind us now, except for Lacey’s limp, and Nikki’s skeletal arms. Other than that, everything was good. Perfect. What more did I want, really?

Jake took the turns tightly, his father’s giant extended-cab truck whipping around each curve. The last fireflies of the year slowly blinked in the grasses along the side of the road, fading in and out like fairy lights. I felt surprisingly safe, cradled in the shelter of the passenger seat between Jake’s warmth and the darkness outside. I allowed my hand to move across the front seat, to rest on his leg, hoping my touch could say all the things I felt in that moment.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Sure, babe,” he said, easing the truck around the last, sharpest turn before Lacey’s house.

“You don’t . . .” I started. “You never . . . had any feelings . . . for Lacey?”

“What? When? What do you mean?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Just — before you and I started dating, like freshman year, you guys used to hang out a lot . . .”

“Where is this coming from?” he asked.

Two eyes appeared up ahead on the side of the road, flashing like tiny yield signs.

“Nowhere,” I said quickly. I watched as the raccoon waddled out from the long prairie grasses. “Just, you know . . . you and Lacey seem so close these days. . . .”

Jake suddenly swerved toward the raccoon, and there was a thud as the tiny body bounced against the undercarriage of the truck. “Suicidal little fuck,” Jake muttered. I screamed, grabbing at the door handle.
Bloodred moon, wheel wrenched, shattered glass.
The truck slowed slightly, and something rolled from under the seat and hit me on the ankle. Hard.

“Jesus! I can’t believe you did that!” I pressed my hand against my chest, trying to suppress the suddenly surfacing ghosts of last spring.

“I know,” Jake said. “I hope I didn’t fuck up the alignment.”

“What? Who are you?”
Screams echo in the car as it swerves sickeningly across the country road . . .
“You could have killed us! Remember last spring? Shit, Jake!”

He slowed slightly as we neared the spot where Lacey’s driveway met the road. “Last spring?” he asked.

Was he serious? “Are you drunk?” I reached down and grabbed at the thing that had hit me. It was a can of spray paint, red. What the hell? I threw it behind the seat, seeing those animal eyes flash before me.
Everything out of control, the car flipping over an embankment and falling an eternity through space to the riverbed below
. . . I couldn’t catch my breath.

Suddenly, Shanti’s words from earlier echoed through my head:
You stood guard over it until the end of recess.
Jesus. The poor little thing. “I can’t believe you did that,” I said again.

The Lanes’ driveway was long, winding at least a quarter mile through the dark woods up to their faux-country mansion. At the top of the driveway, Jake pulled into a shadowy spot in the trees, gently setting the parking brake before turning to me. “Shh, Paige,” he whispered. “It’s okay.” As if he could hear it still pounding, he brought his hand slowly to my heart, holding it there for a moment as I closed my eyes, beginning to relax. His other hand cradled my cheek before falling to trace my collarbone to my shoulder. Leaning in, he brushed his lips across the hollow just behind my ear, and I shivered. He pissed me off sometimes, but he always apologized. Generally, the apologies were worth the fight. I waited for his reassurance.

“Go easier on your friends,” he whispered.

I drew back from him. “What?”

He took my hands in his own, pulling them together like I was praying. “They miss you, Paige. They’re worried about you. They need you.”

“Um, okay . . .” In almost a year and a half of going out, Jake had never given me advice about my friends unasked. In fact, even when I did ask him for advice, he usually just shook his head and shrugged. Where was my apology? The
I’m sorry I killed an innocent little raccoon back there and sorry I scared you and sorry I reminded you of the accident last spring that got you banished all summer and, while I’m at it, sorry about your ankle.

He smiled at me. “You ready?” Without waiting for a response, he pulled away from me and opened the door, stepping out into the cool darkness.

The customary campfire was burning down the hill where the lawn met the forest. Inside the house, the party was going strong, and people kept arriving. It was the usual mix of high school and college people, our friends from school and Lacey’s brother’s friends back for the weekend from college in Cedar Falls and Iowa City. The second we walked into the darkened living room, a pack of Jake’s friends swarmed us, and a moment later he squeezed my hand and plunged into the crowd.

Prescott, Lacey’s brother, was spinning in a corner of the room, his state-of-the-art stereo system blasting at full volume. As always, he had a whole mixing board set up, with some of the speakers aimed out the open windows so that the bass line rolled out over the dark lawn, spilling beyond the boundaries of light from the house and bouncing off into the trees. He caught my eye and waved, keeping one hand clutched over his ear, as if his giant headphones might suddenly slip off and ruin the party. It was the first time I’d seen him since the night in June. I blushed and turned away, grabbing a beer from a cooler in the kitchen and heading through the wide French doors down toward the fire.

I’d left the blanket from the game in the truck, and I was already regretting it. The air was cold on my bare legs, and I walked slowly, in part because my strappy heels were hard to handle in the spongy grass. Sparks flew up into the night sky and happy, drunk voices filled the air. A few of the louder ones were chanting, encouraging Hunter Torres, a popular junior, to jump over the fire, while he drunkenly protested that the flames were too high. He was right, but I knew that it was only a matter of time before he would give in and jump anyway, likely catching himself on fire in the process. It was all so damned predictable.

I stayed in the shadows for a while, meditatively sipping my beer. The sensations of heat on my face from the fire and cold on my back danced together, and I closed my eyes for a moment, absorbed in feeling my own skin. Maybe I should find Jake and borrow his jacket. He was an expert at playing the part: the doting boyfriend, the good-times jock, the golf-loving junior lawyer. Any role a situation called for, Jake came through with panache. At least, he usually did. I heard his voice again, low and mean:
Suicidal little fuck.
I shivered.

The voices of increasingly drunk people wrapped around me like a soothing wall, a barrier between myself and the true silence of the night and the stars. My beer softened the edges of the evening, warmed me up. So Jake hit an animal in the road. It was sad, but it wasn’t
evil.

I thought too much; that was my problem. What I needed to do was relax, take a deep breath, maybe get another drink, and kick it with the people around me, people who, if not true friends, were at least a comfortable and easy group to be a part of. High school was for having fun, after all. Jake was right: What more did I want? What more did I need? I was at the top of the school, and I was in danger of ruining the best time of my life by thinking too goddamn much.

Resolutely, I turned away from the fire, heading back up to the house for another drink. Maybe I’d find Lacey and we’d gossip like old times, sit in the cushy chairs on her patio, smoking cigarettes and giggling. I’d smile at the college boys who flirted with me and laugh at their jokes, then I’d go find Jake and lean against him for a while. I’d drink and dance with my girls. And it would be enough. How could it not be enough? But first, I needed another drink.

Nikki materialized at my shoulder, clumsily carrying three large plastic cups, sloshing liquid over her hands. “Paige?” Her voice squeaked even higher than usual. “Oh, I’m spilling all over.”

I nodded, unable to pull my eyes from the flickering orange fire at the bottom of the hill.

“Paige, is that you?”

I nodded again. “Yeah.”

“Have you seen Lacey?” She wobbled on her tall heels, losing her balance and splashing on my arm. I jumped out of the way, grabbing at my dress to pull it as far from her as I could. “Damn it, I keep spilling!”

“Here,” I offered, taking one of the cups from her. I sniffed it. “What is it?”

“Um . . .” She giggled. “I don’t know. Chris made them for me, special. His special mix.”

I took a cautious sip. “It tastes like fruit punch.”

Still giggling, she thrust one of her cups out in the air before her. “Let’s toast!” She clunked her plastic against mine, sloshing “punch” over my arm. “To best friends!”

“To best friends,” I echoed quietly.

“Where’s Lacey?” Nikki asked abruptly. She looked around her, as if Lacey might just be standing a few yards away, hidden in darkness.

“I don’t know,” I said, and took another sip. “I haven’t seen her.”

“I’m supposed to take her drink to her. Hers and Jake’s, both.”