Селеста Инг - Little Fires Everywhere

“You’re wrong about him,” she said at last.

“It’s fine,” Moody said. “I guess if you don’t mind being the latest of his conquests. I just thought you had more respect for yourself than that.” If he looked up, he knew, he would see the pain in Pearl’s eyes, so he kept his eyes pointedly on the guitar in his lap. “I thought you were smarter than the sluts who usually agree to do it with him.” He thumbed one of the strings, nudged the tuning peg a little higher. “But I guess not.”

“At least there’s someone who wants me. At least I’m not going to spend high school as a frustrated virgin.” Pearl fought the urge to cross the room and yank the guitar from Moody’s hands and smash it against the desk. “And for your information, I’m not a conquest. You know what? I was the one who started it with him.”

Moody had never seen Pearl angry before, and to his embarrassment his first reaction was to burst into tears. He didn’t know what exactly he wanted to say— I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it— only the ever-deepening regret at how things were turning out between them, the desperate and impossible desire to go back to the way things had been. Instead he bit the inside of his cheek to keep from crying, until the sharp, salty taste of blood spread over his tongue.

“Whatever,” he said at last. “Just—do me a favor and let’s not talk about it. Okay?”

As it turned out, this meant they stopped talking at all. The following morning, they walked separately to school for the first time, took seats on the opposite sides of the classroom in first period and every period after that.

More than anything, Moody told himself, he was disappointed in Pearl. That after all, she’d been shallow enough to pick Trip, of all people. He hadn’t expected her to choose him —of course not; he, Moody, was not the kind of guy girls had crushes on. But Trip—that was unforgivable. He felt as if he’d dived into a deep, clear lake and discovered it was a shallow, knee-deep pond. What did you do? Well, you stood up. You rinsed your mud-caked knees and pulled your feet out of the muck. And you were more cautious after that. You knew, from then on, that the world was a smaller place than you’d expected.

In the middle of algebra, when Pearl was in the bathroom and no one else was looking, he opened her bookbag and pulled out the little black Moleskine notebook he had given her all those months ago. As he’d suspected, the spine hadn’t even been cracked. That evening, in the privacy of his room, he tore the pages out in handfuls, crushing them into wads and tossing them into the garbage can. When the can was heaped with crumpled paper, he dropped the leather cover—empty now, limp, like the husk stripped from an ear of corn—on top and kicked the can under his desk. She never even noticed that it was missing, and somehow this hurt him most of all.

Lexie, meanwhile, was having romantic troubles of her own. Since coming home from the clinic, she’d been understandably skittish about sleeping with Brian again, and the strain was starting to show. She’d said nothing to him about the abortion, and it sat between them like a scrim, blurring everything. Brian’s patience was increasingly wearing thin.

“What’s with you,” he grumbled one afternoon, when he’d leaned over to kiss Lexie and she had, once again, turned her face to offer her cheek instead. “You PMS-ing again?”

Lexie flushed. “You guys. You think everything’s about hormones. Hormones and periods. If men ever got periods, believe me, you’d all be in a ball on the ground from cramps.”

“Look, if you’re pissed at me, just tell me what it is you think I’ve done. I’m not a damn mind reader, Lex. I’m not going to apologize at random.”

“Who says I wanted an apology?” Lexie looked down at her hands, as if she might find a note scribbled on her palms, like a cheat sheet to guide her through. “Who says I’m even pissed at you?”

“If you’re not pissed, why are you acting like this?”

“I just want some space, that’s all. You don’t have to be pawing me all the time.”

“Space.” Brian slammed his hands against the steering wheel. “For the past month I’ve given you nothing but space. You haven’t even kissed me in like a week. How much more space do you need?”

“Maybe all of it.” The words fell out of Lexie’s mouth like stones. “I’m going off to Yale and you’re heading to Princeton—maybe it’s better this way.”

Stunned silence filled the car as Lexie and Brian both picked over what she’d said.

“That’s what you want?” Brian said at last. “Okay. We’re done, then.” He clicked the unlock button on the car door. “See you around.”

Lexie slung her bookbag over her shoulder and stepped out of the car. They had been parked on a quiet side street, a spot they’d used often when they wanted time alone. He wouldn’t just drive off, she thought to herself. This can’t really be how it ends. But as soon as she slammed the door shut, Brian started the car with a growl and drove away. He didn’t look back, though Lexie thought she saw his eyes flick to the rearview mirror, just once, before he turned the corner.

Without thinking where she was going, she began to walk: down the sidewalk and around the corner and out to the main road, paths she’d driven often but seldom walked before. She and Brian had been friends since the eighth grade, had been dating for almost two years. She thought of everything they’d done together—screaming from way up in the bleachers at Indians games, watching from the middle school parking lot on the Fourth of July as the city shot fireworks high into the night sky. Homecoming, Brian slipping a rose corsage onto her wrist, an Italian dinner at Giovanni’s neither of them knew how to pronounce, dancing in the gym to the Fugees until they were both beaded with sweat, then pressed in his arms during “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing,” so close that their sweat mingled. Now all that was gone. She walked and walked, following the curve of the road, stopping now and then only to let cars pass by, and then she found her feet had taken her somewhere she hadn’t expected, but that felt like the only place in the world she wanted to be: not home, but the duplex on Winslow. Through the upstairs windows she could see Mia hard at work on something, and Lexie knew that Mia would know just the right thing to say, would give her the space to think this through, to process what had just happened, what would happen next, why she’d just left what she’d thought was a perfect boyfriend, a perfect relationship, how it had all suddenly fallen apart.

When Lexie climbed the stairs and opened the door into the kitchen, Izzy was there, too, sitting at the table beside Mia, folding scraps of paper into cranes. Handfuls of them in all sizes lay on the table already, scattered across it like confetti. She shot Lexie a hostile look, but before she could open her mouth, Mia cut her off.

“Lexie. I’m glad you came.”

She pulled out a chair and Lexie settled into it, her face so still that even Izzy could tell something was wrong. Lexie looked almost as if she were going to be physically ill. She had never seen her sister like this before.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Fine,” Lexie said through dry lips. “I’m fine.”

“You’re fine,” Mia said, squeezing Lexie’s shoulder. “You’re going to be fine.” She pulled an extra mug from the cupboard and put the kettle on.

Without meeting Izzy’s eyes, Lexie said, “Before you ask, Brian and I broke up.”

“I’m sorry,” Izzy said, and found that she really meant it. Brian had always been nice to her, letting her tag along for milkshakes once or twice at Yours Truly when he and Lexie had first started dating and she’d still been in middle school; giving her a ride home now and then when he’d passed her walking. She glanced at Lexie, then at Mia. “Do you—want me to leave?”