The Unraveling of Mercy Louis (22 page)

Next to Tiffany stand Chole Gomez and Corinne Wolcott, Chole lip-synching animatedly to the song, her short dark ponytail whipping back and forth in time to the music. Looking around, Illa notices that people wear slightly different faces from those they put on for school, their expressions excitable, alert. She wonders if they've heard the news about the sweatshirt, and if that's to blame for the frisson of tension in the air. Or maybe all high school parties feel this way, thrilling but limned with danger.

The drill team girls, Abby Williams, Marilee Warren, and Mackenzie Wolcott, Corinne's twin sister, sit in a corner surveying the partygoers. They are like specters against the dark brick of the wall. Marilee's bare, lotioned shoulders look wet in the low light, a silver cross winking between her collarbones, a thick chestnut braid coiled over her shoulder. Instinctively, Illa raises her camera and, after checking that the flash is off, snaps a few quick photos,
click click click
. The act makes her feel powerful, as if these girls are performing for her, dancing, singing, flirting, and drinking in service to her art.

She decides to be the unofficial party photographer; she will find small moments of beauty and capture them. She's so tired of ugliness. Even her face, which she has grown so sick of looking at over the last few months, is fresher tonight. She rubs her lips together, enjoying the sticky feeling of the lipstick. With a long draw, she finishes her beer, places the empty atop the Tetris-like sculpture of cans someone has started. She wants to find Mercy; in the ballroom's dim light, her exquisiteness would be just muted enough to be believable. As Illa turns to make a pass around the room, she collides with Lennox, sending beer down his shirt. “Sorry!” she says. “Sorry about that.”

“Happy to see you, too,” he says with a laugh. Travis Salter passes them, and the two boys do the dude nod. “Leaving already?” Lennox asks her.

“Nah,” she says. “I'm just going to check out what's happening around the room.” She raises her camera as if in explanation. “This is wild. Fashion photogs pay good money to build sets this weird.”

“Here,” he says, reaching into the pocket of his cargo pants and pulling out a slim silver flask. “Mezcal for courage.” She takes the flask from him and tips it back; the tequila burns down her throat, leaving a smoky aftertaste of forest fire. As she hands back the flask, she notices he's studying her face. “You look different,” he says.

She puts a hand to her cheek, then quickly removes it. “Thanks?” she says uncertainly.

“I mean you look nice. Pretty.”

She hopes the plum lipstick hasn't been discontinued, because now she wants to buy a dozen tubes of it. “Okay,” she says before chiding herself for her stupid response. Now he probably thinks she's full of herself.

“You hear about the sweatshirt?” he asks.

“Yeah.”

“Shit's about to get real. If anyone wasn't blaming y'all before, they are now.”

Y'all.
Sometimes she forgets she's one of them, a teenage girl. She hasn't even kissed a boy, how can she possibly be implicated?

“Can I ask you a favor?” he says.

“Sure, yeah.”

“Check in on me every once in a while, okay? Annie's pretty wasted, and when she gets like this, she leaves no survivors. I mean, even though we're broken up and all . . .” He looks around to make sure no one's listening. “She's like catnip or something.”

Illa's heart flip-flops. They broke up! “I don't know if I'm the one you want to call for backup. When you're dealing with Capone, you need the FBI, not the municipal police.”

He chuckles. “Still, you got my back?”

“Always,” she says.

She turns away from him to follow the celestial blur of candles lining the wall. Did Lennox break up with Annie, or was it the other way around? The answer matters, somehow.
Click click,
she takes a knee to get a good shot of one of the illumined saints. She wanders for a while, nodding hello to people who pass her in the darkness. She avoids the corners, where intertwined couples throw up monstrous eight-legged shadows. Soon she finds herself back out in the hallway, the dance beats absorbed by dozens of yards of damp carpet, the runway of candlelight gone. The doors are all closed except for the one on the end, cracked just enough for a wedge of light to emerge onto the carpet. As she approaches, she hears voices speaking in urgent cadences. Curious, she pushes the door open slightly and peeks in.

Perched on the windowsill facing each other are Mercy Louis and Travis Salter; her arms are folded protectively across her stomach, one leg dangling down the wall, the other tucked beneath her. She sniffs and then rubs under her eyes; she's crying. Travis sits cross-legged, one hand gripping the window frame for balance, his whole body leaned forward. Behind them, the canal glimmers, the wind-carved troughs in the water's surface alive with moonlight.

“But that doesn't mean we have to break up,” Travis says. “I'm so sorry for what happened, but I just want to help. I want to be here for you.”

Mercy doesn't look at him while he speaks, instead staring out the window. A white curtain billows over their heads like the sail of a ship. Up that high, they appear suspended in air.

“I'm beyond help,” Mercy says, pulling back from him.

“But we love each other. Whatever we did, we did out of love. If you'll just let me help . . .”

“You don't understand,” she says. “You're the
problem,
not the solution.”

Quietly, Illa steps back from the door. As she hovers in the darkness, Travis says something else, but she can't make it out. Pressing her back against the wall to steady herself, she exhales. Mercy and Travis, dating. Or at least they
had
been up until a minute ago. Feeling bad for eavesdropping, she starts to retrace her steps down the hallway when she notices someone coming toward her. She doesn't see who it is until it's too late to duck and cover: Annie Putnam, beer in hand, standing so close that Illa can smell her yeasty breath, poorly masked by the peppermint gum she smacks loudly.

“Who's that?” Annie says, slurring slightly, wrinkling her nose in a squint.

“Illa.”

“Oh,” she says, sounding disappointed. “I'm looking for Mercy. She abandoned me, and I
need
her. I told her to come right back and not leave me
alone
. You seen her?”

“Yeah,” Illa says, relieved that she knows the answer to Annie's question. “She's in the room at the end of the hall.”

“Of course you know where she is, you little stalker.” Annie sways forward slightly. “What the hell is she doing all the way down there”—beer sloshes from the can onto the carpet—“when she
knows
I need her close. It's a
party.
It's like my
Kryptonite.
There are boys
everywhere.
” With each word, she grows more emphatic.

“I'm sorry,” Illa ventures nervously, hoping it's what Annie wants to hear. But Annie pushes past, tottering into the blackness on her towering heels. Too late, Illa remembers Lennox's warning:
When she gets like this, she leaves no survivors.
A feeling of dread settles in Illa's stomach.
Come back,
Illa wants to say to Annie, who lingers in the open doorway before exclaiming loudly, “What the fuck? Mercy, what the
fuck
is this?”

The washing-machine rumble of voices too low to make out.

“
Mercy,
” Annie whines. “Your
boyfriend
, for God's sake?”

More garbled voices, then the sound of shushing.

“Don't
shush
me!” Annie shouts. “Please don't treat me like an idiot. How long has this been going on, anyway?”

A pause before an inaudible answer.

“Oh my God, you've been keeping this a secret from me for months? How can I be your best friend if you don't tell me
anything
? At the ball, we agreed to be closer than
ever
!”

What have I done?
Illa wonders. It unnerves her to hear Annie Putnam so vulnerable, almost unhinged.

“You're all I have, Mers,” Annie continues. “You're all I
have
. I
need
you, like,
right now.
”

And then finally, Annie's crying, a muffled decrescendo overlapping with Mercy's maternal shushing. Illa darts back toward the ballroom. Dizzy from the alcohol and the scene she's just witnessed, she catches the doorframe to steady herself. A few girls are dancing to “Gangsta's Paradise”; guys are clustered around the boom box, riffling through the pile of CDs. Just then Abby Williams shoves by, clutching a giant Market Basket soda cup rattling with ice. She's wearing the black sheet from the window like a cape, and it fans out behind her as she beelines to Marilee, who is dancing next to Wyatt Bell, arms overhead, face tipped upward, hips grinding. In the dim light, Illa can just make out Abby's silhouette as she upends her Coke on Marilee's head. Marilee squeals and shrinks down, her soggy braid whipping back and forth as she shakes the liquid off.

“What the hell?” Wyatt says. Coke drips from the sleeves of his shirt.

“Fuck you, Wyatt!” Abby shouts.

“You're such a witch,” Marilee squeaks. “That baby's probably your fault.”

Abby darts to the window, where she hops nimbly onto the ledge, the fingertips of her left hand gripping the top of the frame, her right hand clutching the sheet. She looks like a superhero about to take flight. Someone cuts the music and the partiers go quiet.

“Abby, get down from there,” Wyatt says, suddenly serious.

Illa finds Lennox standing in a corner, brow knitted in concern.

“Take it back!” Abby shrieks. “Take it back right fucking now!”

“Come on, Abby,” Wyatt says, starting toward the windowsill.

“Don't fucking touch me or I swear, I'm jumping,” Abby says over her shoulder.

Illa feels a hand warm at her waist. Lennox, watching the scene intently, has put his arm around her as if to protect her from what's happening. He pulls her closer, so that her cheek brushes his sleeve. He smells of shaving cream and dryer sheets. She pictures him doing the laundry at the apartment, separating his kid sister's and brother's whites and colors, and her chest swells.

“Abby, please,” Marilee says. “I'm sorry, I didn't mean it.”

“You don't care about me, don't even pretend like you care about me!”

“I was just—” Wyatt says.

“Just what?” Abby says. “I suppose you were going to marry us both, too? I know that's the only way you got Marilee into bed.” Marilee puts her face in her hands and starts to cry, which seems to soften Abby. “I should've known better than to trust either of you assholes.”

“Don't kill yourself!” Marilee pleads.

Abby jumps down from the ledge, pulls the sheet tight around her body. “Go to hell,” she says, trying to muster what remains of her dignity. She stalks to the doorway through a gauntlet of onlookers and disappears. Someone cranks the music. Illa is afraid to move because then Lennox would let go of her and the moment would end, so she wills herself statue-still. Instead of backing away, Lennox faces her, putting both arms around her waist and pulling her tight to him, his forearms firm at her back, guiding her in to him so that soon they are swaying like one body, the bass resonating through them, directing their hips. His hands move to her ass, and he dips his head so they're cheek to cheek and then mouth to mouth, his lips warm, his tongue probing gently, and Illa feels like the wax pooling beneath the dancing flame in the saint candles, hot to the touch, reflecting a miraculous light.

On the drive home from the party, Illa tries to resurrect the moment with Lennox, that feeling in her stomach, the mammoth hunger to be closer and take more. It was so exquisite and terrifying that the memory seems not like a shadow of the lived experience but close to the experience itself. Turning off Main onto Galvez, she has to pull the car over and close her eyes. She feels a strong sense of melancholy, because she knows that even in her jubilation, she's lost something, the chance to be seventeen and kissing a boy for the first time.

With that kiss, she feels as if she's staked a flag to claim her place in the world. But now she knows she'll have to be ready to ricochet off others—to get a Coke dumped over her head, to jump from a window; to love and fight and fail. It all seems so painful, yet she's certain there will be no prize if she makes it to the end with an unmarked heart. So she mutters one of her ersatz prayers, this time to Venus, which shines like a diamond beauty mark on the face of the sky:
This year, let me see what my heart can bear. Break it if you must.

THE DAY AFTER
the sweatshirt was discovered in the woods, the Market Basket is again a media circus, busy with talking heads from what seems like every local news station in Texas and a few from Louisiana. Illa can see their bleached teeth, smell the hair spray from a hundred yards out. A few of them try to come onto school property to talk to the students, but Veryl Johnson, the parking lot attendant, shoos them back across the street. Near the dumpster, people holding candles and poster boards scrawled with Bible verses sit vigil alongside the angry college students. They are all crisis tourists who've come not on a pilgrimage made for their own salvation, as at Lourdes or the Dead Sea, but as a kind of widdershins journey of faith to save the girls of Port Sabine.