Emma Cline - The Girls

Afternoon shadows were starting to slant through the trees. Donna reemerged from the wooden side gate. “The back door’s open,” she said. My stomach sank — there was no way to stop whatever was about to happen. And then there was Tiki, scrambling in our direction, barking in wretched alarm. Yips shook his whole body, his skinny shoulders twitching.

“Fuck,” Suzanne muttered. Donna backed off, too.

The dog could have been enough of an excuse, I suppose, and we could’ve piled back into the car and gone back to the ranch. A part of me wanted that. But another part wanted to fulfill the sick momentum in my chest. The Dutton family seemed like perpetrators, too, just like Connie and May and my parents. All quarantined by their selfishness, their stupidity.

“Wait,” I said. “He knows me.”

I squatted, holding out my hand. Keeping my eyes on the dog. Tiki approached, sniffing my palm.

“Good Tiki,” I said, petting him, scratching under his jaw, and then the barking stopped and we went inside.

—

I couldn’t believe nothing happened. That no cop cars were whining after us. Even after shifting so easily into the Dutton domain, crossing the invisible boundaries. And why had we done that? Jarred the inviolate grid of a home for no reason? Just to prove we could? The calm mask of Suzanne’s face as she touched the Duttons’ things confused me, her odd remove, even as I fluoresced with a strange, unreadable thrill. Donna was looking over some treasure from the house, a bauble of milky ceramic. I peered closer and saw it was a little figure of a Dutch girl. How bizarre, the detritus of people’s lives removed from their context. It made even things that were precious seem like junk.

The lurch in me made me think of an afternoon when I was younger, my father and I hunched over the shoreline at Clear Lake. My father squinting in the harshness of midday, the fish white of his thighs in his swimming shorts. How he pointed out a leech in the water, quivering and tight with blood. He was pleased, poking at the leech with a stick to make it move, but I was frightened. The inky leech caused some drag on my insides that I sensed again, there, in the Dutton house, Suzanne’s eyes meeting mine across the living room.

“You like?” Suzanne said. Smiling a little. “Wild, right?”

Donna came out into the entryway. Her forearms shone with sticky juice, and she held a triangle of watermelon in her hand, the spongy pink of an organ.

“Greetings and salutations,” she said, chewing wetly. There was an almost feral percolation emanating from Donna like a bad smell, her dress whose hem was ratty from being stepped on: how out of place she looked next to the polished coffee table, the tidy curtains. Drops of watermelon juice fell on the floor.

“There’s more in the sink,” she said. “It’s real good.”

Donna picked a black seed from her mouth with a delicate little pinch, then flicked it off into the corner of the room.

—

We were there only a half hour or so, though it seemed much longer. Snapping the TV on and off. Paging through the mail on the side table. I followed Suzanne up the stairs, wondering where Teddy was now, where his parents were. Was Teddy still waiting for me to bring him his drugs? Tiki banged around in the hallway. I realized with a start that I’d known the Dutton family my whole life. Under the hanging photographs, I could make out the line of wallpaper, just starting to peel, the tiny pink flowers. The smear of fingerprints.

I would often think of the house. How innocent I told myself it was: harmless fun. I was reckless, wanting to win back Suzanne’s attention, to feel like we were arranged again against the world. We were ripping a tiny seam in the life of the Dutton family, just so they’d see themselves differently, even if for a moment. So they’d notice a slight disturbance, try to remember when they’d moved their shoes or put their clock in the drawer. That could only be good, I told myself, the forced perspective. We were doing them a favor.

—

Donna was in the parents’ bedroom, a long silk slip pulled over her dress.

“I’ll need the Rolls at seven,” she said, swishing the watery fabric, the color of champagne.

Suzanne snorted. I could see a cut-glass bottle of perfume tipped on the nightstand and the golden tubes of lipstick like shell casings in the carpet. Suzanne was already sifting through the bureau, stuffing her hand inside the flesh-tone nylons, creating obscene bulges. The brassieres were heavy and medical looking, stiff with wire. I lifted one of the lipsticks and uncapped it, smelling the talcum scent of the orangy red.

“Oh, yeah,” Donna said, seeing me. She grabbed a lipstick, too, and made a cartoonish pucker, pretending to apply it. “We should leave a little message,” she said. Looking around.

“On the walls,” Suzanne said. The idea excited her, I could tell.

I wanted to protest: leaving a mark seemed almost violent. Mrs. Dutton would have to scrub the wall clean, though it would probably always have a phantom nap, the receipt of all the scrubbing. But I stayed quiet.

“A picture?” Donna said.

“Do the heart,” Suzanne added, coming over. “I’ll do it.”

I had a startling vision of Suzanne then. The desperation that showed through, the sudden sense of a dark space yawning in her. I didn’t think of what that dark space might be capable of, only a doubling of my desire to be near it.

Suzanne took the lipstick from Donna but hadn’t yet pressed the tip to the ivory wall when we heard a noise in the driveway.

“Shit,” Suzanne said.

Donna’s eyebrows were raised in mild curiosity: What would happen next?

The front door opened. I tasted my own stale mouth, the rancid announcement of fear. Suzanne seemed scared, too, but her fear was distant and amused, like this was a game of sardines and we were just hiding until the others found us. I knew it was Mrs. Dutton when I heard high heels.

“Teddy?” she called. “You home?”

They’d parked the ranch car down the road, but still: I’m sure Mrs. Dutton took note of the unfamiliar car. Maybe she thought it was a friend of Teddy’s, some older neighborhood pal. Donna was giggling, her hand pressed over her mouth. Eyes bulged in mirth. Suzanne made an exaggerated shushing face. My pulse was loud in my ears. Tiki clattered through the rooms downstairs and I heard Mrs. Dutton cooing to him, the heaving sighs he made in response.

“Hello?” she called.

The wake of silence that followed seemed obviously uneasy. She’d come upstairs soon enough, and then what?

“Come on,” Suzanne whispered. “Let’s sneak out the back.”

Donna was laughing silently. “Shit,” she said, “shit.”

Suzanne dropped the lipstick on the bureau, but Donna kept the slip on, hitching the straps.

“You go first,” she said to Suzanne.

—

There was no way out but to pass Mrs. Dutton in the kitchen.

She was probably wondering at the pink mess of watermelon in the sink, the sticky patches on the floor. Maybe just starting to pick up the disturbance in the air, the itch of strangers in the house. A nervous hand fluttering at her throat, a sudden wish for her husband at her side.

Suzanne took off down the stairs, Donna and I hustling behind. The racket of our footsteps as we plowed past Mrs. Dutton, barreling at full speed through the kitchen. Donna and Suzanne were laughing their heads off, Mrs. Dutton shrieking in fright. Tiki came barking after us, quick and hectic, his nails skittering on the floor. Mrs. Dutton backed up, nakedly afraid.

“Hey,” she said, “stop,” but her voice wavered.

She bumped against a stool and lost her balance, sitting down hard on the tile. I looked back as we banged past — there was Mrs. Dutton splayed on the floor. Recognition tightened her face.