Emma Cline - The Girls

“What are you gonna give me for them?” Henry said. “Nothing’s free in this world, Connie.”

She shrugged, then lunged for the beers. Henry pressed the solid mass of his body against her, grinning as she struggled. Peter rolled his eyes. He didn’t like this kind of thing either, the bleating vaudeville. He had older friends who’d disappeared in sluggish jungles, rivers thick with sediment. Who’d returned home babbling and addicted to tiny black cigarettes, their hometown girlfriends cowering behind them like nervous little shadows. I tried to sit up straighter, to compose my face with adult boredom. Willing Peter to look over. I wanted the parts of him I was sure Pamela couldn’t see, the pricks of sorrow I sometimes caught in his gaze or the secret kindness he showed to Connie, taking us to Arrowhead Lake the year their mother had forgotten Connie’s birthday entirely. Pamela didn’t know those things, and I held on to that certainty, whatever leverage might belong to me alone.

Henry pinched the soft skin above the waist of Connie’s shorts. “Hungry lately, huh?”

“Don’t touch me, perv,” she said, hitting his hand away. She giggled a little. “Fuck you.”

“Fine,” he said, grabbing Connie’s hands by the wrist. “Fuck me.” She tried halfheartedly to pull away, whining until Henry finally let her go. She rubbed her wrists.

“Asshole,” she muttered, but she wasn’t really mad. That was part of being a girl — you were resigned to whatever feedback you’d get. If you got mad, you were crazy, and if you didn’t react, you were a bitch. The only thing you could do was smile from the corner they’d backed you into. Implicate yourself in the joke even if the joke was always on you.

I didn’t like the taste of beer, the granular bitterness nothing like the pleasing hygienic chill of my father’s martinis, but I drank one and then another. The boys fed the slot machine from a shopping bag full of nickels until they were almost out of coins.

“We need the machine keys,” Peter said, lighting a thin joint he pulled from his pocket. “So we can open it up.”

“I’ll get them,” Connie said. “Don’t miss me too much,” she crooned to Henry, fluttering a little wave before she left. To me, she just raised her eyebrows. I understood this was part of some plan she had hatched to get Henry’s attention. To leave, then return. She had probably read about it in a magazine.

That was our mistake, I think. One of many mistakes. To believe that boys were acting with a logic that we could someday understand. To believe that their actions had any meaning beyond thoughtless impulse. We were like conspiracy theorists, seeing portent and intention in every detail, wishing desperately that we mattered enough to be the object of planning and speculation. But they were just boys. Silly and young and straightforward; they weren’t hiding anything.

Peter let the lever ratchet to a starting position and stepped back to give Henry a turn, the two of them passing the joint back and forth. They both wore white T-shirts that were thin from washings. Peter smiled at the carnival racket when the slot machine clattered out a pile of coins, but he seemed distracted, finishing another beer, smoking the joint until it was crushed and oily. They were speaking low. I heard bits and pieces.

They were talking about Willie Poteracke: we all knew him, the first boy in Petaluma to enlist. His father had driven him to register. I’d seen him later at the Hamburger Hamlet with a petite brunette whose nostrils streamed snot. She called him stubbornly by his full name, Will- iam, like the extra syllable was the secret password that would transform him into a grown, responsible man. She clung to him like a burr.

“He’s always out in the driveway,” Peter said. “Washing his car like nothing’s different. He can’t even drive anymore, I don’t think.”

This was news from the other world. I felt ashamed, seeing Peter’s face, for how I only playacted at real feelings, reaching for the world through songs. Peter could actually be sent away, he could actually die. He didn’t have to force himself to feel that way, the emotional exercises Connie and I occupied ourselves with: What would you do if your father died? What would you do if you got pregnant? What would you do if a teacher wanted to fuck you, like Mr. Garrison and Patricia Bell?

“It was all puckered, his stump,” Peter said. “Pink.”

“Disgusting,” Henry said from the machine. He didn’t turn away from the looping images of cherries that scrolled in front of him. “You wanna kill people, you better be okay with those people blowing your legs off.”

“He’s proud of it, too,” Peter said, his voice rising as he flicked the end of the joint onto the garage floor. He watched it snuff out. “Wanting people to see it. That’s what’s crazy.”

The dramatics of their conversation made me feel dramatic, too. I was stirred by the alcohol, the burn in my chest I exaggerated until I became moved by an authority not my own. I stood up. The boys didn’t notice. They were talking about a movie they had seen in San Francisco. I recognized the title — they hadn’t shown it in town because it was supposed to be perverted, though I couldn’t remember why.

When I finally watched the movie, as an adult, the palpable innocence of the sex scenes surprised me. The humble pudge of fat above the actress’s pubic hair. How she laughed when she pulled the yacht captain’s face to her saggy, lovely breasts. There was a good-natured quality to the raunch, like fun was still an erotic idea. Unlike the movies that came later, girls wincing while their legs dangled like a dead thing’s.

Henry was fluttering his eyelids, tongue in an obscene rictus. Aping some scene from the movie.

Peter laughed. “Sick.”

They wondered aloud whether the actress had actually been getting fucked. They didn’t seem to care that I was standing right there.

“You can tell she liked it,” Henry said. “Ooh,” he crowed in a high feminine voice. “Ooh, yeah, mmm.” He banged the slot machine with his hips.

“I saw it, too.” I spoke before thinking. I wanted an entry point in the conversation, even if it was a lie. They both looked at me.

“Well,” Henry said, “the ghost finally speaks.”

I flushed.

“You saw it?” Peter seemed doubtful. I told myself he was being protective.

“Yeah,” I said. “Pretty wild.”

They exchanged a glance. Did I really think they’d believe I had somehow gotten a ride to the city? That I’d gone to see what was, essentially, a porno?

“So.” Henry’s eyes glinted. “What was your favorite part?”

“That part you were talking about,” I said. “With the girl.”

“But what part of that did you like best?” Henry said.

“Leave her alone,” Peter said mildly. Already bored.

“Did you like the Christmas scene?” Henry continued. His smile lulled me into thinking we were having a real conversation, that I was making progress. “The big tree? All the snow?”

I nodded. Almost believing my own lie.

Henry laughed. “The movie was in Fiji. The whole thing’s on an island.” Henry was snorting, helpless with laughter, and cut a look at Peter, who seemed embarrassed for me, like you would be embarrassed for a stranger who tripped on the street, like nothing had ever happened between us at all.

I pushed Henry’s motorcycle. I hadn’t expected it to tip over, not really: maybe just wobble, just enough to interrupt Henry so he’d be scared for a second, so he’d make some jokey exclamations of dismay and forget my lie. But I had pushed with real force. The motorcycle fell over and crunched hard on the cement floor.

Henry stared at me. “You little bitch.” He hurried to the downed motorcycle like it was a shot pet. Practically cradling it in his arms.