Emma Cline - The Girls

“I see you,” she called from the floor, struggling to right herself, her breath going wild. “I see you, Evie Boyd.”

JULIAN RETURNED FROM HUMBOLDT with a friend who wanted a ride to L.A. The friend’s name was Zav. It seemed vaguely Rastafarian, how he pronounced it, though Zav was fishy white with a bog of orange hair held back by a woman’s elastic. He was much older than Julian, maybe thirty-five, but dressed like an adolescent: the same too-long cargo shorts, the T-shirt worn to a pulp. He walked around Dan’s house with an appraising squint, picking up a figurine of an ox, carved from bone or ivory, then putting it down. He peered at a photo of Julian in his mother’s arms on the beach, then replaced the frame on the shelf, chuckling to himself.

“It’s cool if he stays here tonight, right?” Julian asked. As if I were the den mother.

“It’s your house.”

Zav came over to shake my hand. “Thanks,” he said, pumping away, “that’s real decent of you.”

—

Sasha and Zav seemed to know each other, and soon all three were talking about a gloomy bar near Humboldt owned by a gray-haired grower. Julian had his arm around Sasha with the adult air of a man returning from the mines. It was hard to imagine him harming a dog, or harming anyone, Sasha so obviously pleased to be near him. She’d been girlish and veiled with me all day, no hint of our conversation the night before. Zav said something that made her laugh, a pretty, subdued laugh. Half covering her mouth, like she didn’t want to expose her teeth.

I’d planned to walk to town for dinner, leave them alone, but Julian noticed me heading for the door.

“Hey, hey, hey,” he said.

They all turned to look at me.

“I’m gonna go into town for a bit,” I said.

“You should eat with us,” Julian said. Sasha nodded, scooting into his side. Giving me the sloppy half attention of someone in the orbit of her beloved.

“We got a bunch of food,” she said.

I made the usual smiling excuses, but finally I took off my jacket. Already getting used to attention.

—

They’d stopped for groceries on the way back from Humboldt: a giant frozen pizza, some discount ground beef in a Styrofoam tray.

“A feast,” Zav said. “You’ve got your protein, your calcium.” He pulled a pill bottle from his pocket. “Your vegetables.”

He started rolling a joint on the table, a process that involved multiple papers and much fussing over the construction. Zav eyed his work from a distance, then pinched a little more from the pill bottle, the room marinating in the stench of damp weed.

Julian was cooking the beef on the stove, the meat losing its sheen. He poked at the crude patties with a butter knife, prodding and sniffing. Dorm-room cookery. Sasha slid the pizza in the oven, balling up the plastic wrap. Setting out paper towels at each chair, a suburban memory of chores, of setting the table for dinner. Zav drank a beer and watched Sasha with amused contempt. He hadn’t lit the joint yet, though he twirled it in his fingers with obvious pleasure.

I listened while he and Julian talked about drugs with the intensity of professionals, exchanging stats like bond traders. Greenhouse yield vs. sun-grown. Comparing THC levels in varying strains. This was nothing like the hobby drugs of my youth, pot grown alongside tomato plants, passed around in mason jars. You could pick out seeds from a bud and plant them yourself, if you felt like it. Trade a lid for enough gas to get to the city. It was strange to hear drugs flattened to a matter of numbers, a knowable commodity instead of a mystic portal. Maybe Zav and Julian’s way was better, cutting out all the woozy idealism.

“Fuck,” Julian said. The kitchen smelled of ashes and burning starch. “Damn, damn, damn.” He opened the oven and pulled the pizza out with his bare hands, swearing as he tossed it on the counter. It was black and smoky.

“Man,” Zav said, “that was the good kind, too. Expensive.”

Sasha was frantic. Hurrying over to consult the back of the pizza box. “Preheat to four fifty,” she droned. “I did that. I don’t understand.”

“What time did you put it in?” Zav asked.

Sasha’s eyes moved to the clock.

“The clock’s frozen, idiot,” Julian said. He grabbed the box and stuffed it in the garbage. Sasha looked like she might cry. “Whatever,” he said with disgust. Picking at the burnt shell of cheese, then rubbing his fingers clean. I thought of the professor’s dog. The poor animal, limping in circles. Vascular system slushy with poison. All the other things Sasha had probably not told me.

“I can make something else,” I said. “There’s some pasta in the cabinet.”

I tried to catch Sasha’s eye. Willing some combination of warning and sympathy to pass from me to her. But Sasha was unreachable, stung by her failure. The room got quiet. Zav fussing the joint between his fingers, waiting to see what would happen.

“There’s a lot of beef, I guess,” Julian said finally, his anger slipping from sight. “No big thing.”

He rubbed Sasha’s back, roughly, I thought, though the movement seemed to comfort her, returning her to the world. When he kissed her, she closed her eyes.

—

We drank a bottle of Dan’s wine at dinner, the sediment settling in the cracks of Julian’s teeth. Beer after that. Alcohol cut the fat on our breath. I didn’t know what time it was. The windows black, the squeeze of wind through the eaves. Sasha was corralling wet pieces of the wine label into a meticulous pile. I could feel her glance at me from time to time, Julian’s hand working the back of her neck. He and Zav maintained a constant patter all through dinner, Sasha and I fading into a silence familiar from adolescence: the effort to break through Zav and Julian’s alliance wasn’t worth the return. It was simpler to watch them, to watch Sasha, who acted like just sitting there was enough.

“ ’Cause you’re a good guy,” Zav kept saying. “You’re a good guy, Julian, and that’s why I don’t make you pay up front with me. You know I have to do that with McGinley, Sam, all those retards.”

They were drunk, the three of them, and maybe I was, too, the ceiling drab with expired smoke. We’d shared a burly joint, a sexual droop descending on Zav. A pleased, overcome squint. Sasha had drawn further into herself, though she’d unzipped her sweatshirt, her chest sunless and crossed with faint blue veins. Her eye makeup was heavier than it had been: I didn’t know when she’d put more on.

I got to my feet when we finished eating. “I’ve got to do a few things,” I said.

They made halfhearted efforts to get me to stay, but I waved them off. I closed the door to the bedroom, though bits of their conversation slipped through.

“I respect you,” Julian was saying to Zav, “I always have, man, ever since Scarlet was like, You have to meet this guy.” Performing an extravagant admiration, the stoned person’s tendency toward optimistic summary.

Zav responded, resuming their practiced volley. I could hear Sasha’s silence.

—

When I passed through later, nothing had really changed. Sasha was still listening to their conversation like she’d be tested someday. Julian’s and Zav’s intoxication had passed into a strenuous state, their hairlines wet with sweat.

“Are we being too loud?” Julian asked. That weird politeness again, how easily it clicked in.

“Not at all,” I said. “Just getting some water.”

“Sit with us,” Zav said, studying me. “Talk.”

“That’s okay.”

“Come on, Evie,” Julian said. The odd intimacy of my name in his mouth surprised me.