Robin Wasserman - Girls on Fire

“Not possible.”

“Try me.”

Then her hand was on my thigh, and she was crawling up me like I was a tree, Nikki Drummond, drunk and hungry, straddling me, grinding me, tonguing my lips and tugging at my hair, saying something about how she hated it so short, then cutting off the thought by taking my fingers in her mouth and sucking, hard. Her breasts felt bigger than I remembered them, looser somehow, and there was a trickle of drool at her mouth.

“Get the fuck off.” I pushed her hard enough to hurt and hoped that it did.

“Come on, you know you want to.”

You know how they say desperation isn’t sexy? Bullshit. An ugly drunk without a shirt, wheezing rum and aiming herself at me like a torpedo of need? Pushing her away felt like kicking a puppy, and I got off on that, too.

“Maybe I’m fucking in love with you,” she said, doing that half-laugh, half-cry thing that middle-aged women do in bad movies. “Did you think of that?”

“Frankly? No.”

She sat back. “Why the fuck did you even show up, then?”

“I want to know what you want.”

“Was I not clear?”

“What you want to stay away from her.” I would have given it to her, Dex. Anything.

“You’re fucking kidding me. You want me to believe you came here to talk about Hannah ?”

“Her name is Dex.”

“Uh-huh. Keep telling yourself that.” She laughed again. She’d amped up her acting skills since the last time we talked. She was nearly approximating human. “I get it, what you were doing. But we don’t need her anymore.”

“Since when is there a fucking we , Nikki?”

“You’re not serious.” She was touching me again, sweaty hands on hands. “What do you think your precious Dex would say if she actually knew you, Lacey? Is that what you really want, someone who can’t see you? Someone who thinks all your bullshit is for real?”

“Stop talking.”

“It’s almost a year,” she said.

“We don’t talk about that.”

“You don’t think about him? You don’t think about me?”

For a second, she almost had me. The stink of desperation, the sheen of moisture in her eyes, the pressure of her hands: She was so good at playing her part that, even knowing everything I knew, I almost bought it, that she missed me, that all this time she’d been secretly in love or lust, that she’d clawed her way into your life for the same reason I’d hung onto your father, that she didn’t hate me anymore for what we knew about each other, that the things we’d done in the woods had meant something, hadn’t been a hateful joke. Maybe I did buy it, just long enough to tell her the truth, and tell it almost gently. “Not anymore.”

She let go.

“You came here for her,” she said, and there, in the flat affect, the vacuum of her expression, was the real Nikki. “To tell me to stay away from her .”

I nodded.

“But why would I stay away from my good friend Hannah?” She was slurring; it was hard to tell how much was rum and how much was effect. “I’m protecting her. Saving her from the big bad wolf.” She smeared a hand across her nose and wiped the snot on her jeans. “Like I should have saved Craig. I’m good now. I do good works. Like Jesus.”

“I need to know what you’re going to do, Nikki. Are you going to tell her?”

Laughing again, she wouldn’t stop laughing. “Tell who? Tell what?” Then she clapped her hands together. “Oh, I get it! All this crap about staying away from Hannah — that’s not about her, that’s about you .”

“No.”

“You’re not afraid of what I’ll do to her. You’re afraid of what I’ll tell her.”

“They’re the same thing.”

“No, Lacey. One is about her. One is about you. Normal people know the difference.”

“Don’t hurt her just to fuck with me.”

“Let’s be clear. I don’t care about fucking with you any more than I care about fucking you.”

“Then why are we here?”

She left without an answer. We both knew the answer.

I made it worse. I tried to warn you, and you didn’t listen, and that part’s your fault, but the rest of it, that’s on me. What she did next. What that made you do. It was all my fault and not my fault at all, same as everything else.

WHEN I WAS ELEVEN, I threw out my retainer with my lunch. Didn’t even notice until it was time to slip it back in my mouth and go to class, and that’s when I freaked the fuck out — because I could see it, wrapped in a napkin on the corner of my tray so it wouldn’t get gummy with French bread pizza. Sliding into the garbage on top of Terrence Clay’s leftover spaghetti and the tuna fish salad that Lindsay North, getting the same head start on anorexia she’d gotten on boobs, had tossed out uneaten. You want to know what my life was like before you? It was like, given a choice between going home without the retainer and taking a swim in a Dumpster, I didn’t even have to think. The janitor gave me a boost, and then watched me pick through the banana peels and clumps of spaghetti — I’ve blocked that part out, for the sake of my sanity. What I remember is that I found my retainer. I took it to the bathroom, ran it under some hot water, and — I try not to think about this, because it makes me feel like I’ve got bugs laying eggs inside my skin— I put it back in my mouth .

“Careless,” the janitor said after he pulled me out, after I’d finally stopped crying. “Means that much to you, why’d you throw it out in the first place?”

You tell me, Dex. Why would a person do that?

You came for me, like nothing had happened, like we were still Lacey and Dex, you and me forever. I felt more like a witch than usual, because I’d commanded it, you need me , and there you were. Needing me. You pretended it was a gift, like you were giving for once instead of taking, but you needed me to tell you what to do next.

You told me what my mother said when you went looking for me at the house: Lacey doesn’t live here anymore. But you didn’t say how she said it, regretful or worried or relieved. Lacey doesn’t live here anymore. Turns out that, even in Battle Creek, some secrets keep — especially when they’re about something people would rather not know.

You took her suggestion and came for me in the Giant parking lot, and when you found me, you didn’t look at me like I was some charity case, and you didn’t ask me stupid questions, you just said, Lacey, I have a surprise for you, something you’re going to like.

Lacey, trust me.

What would you have done if you’d known the truth, Dex? That when you tapped on my window, you were — for the first time in months — not even a speck on my mind. It was Halloween, and that night, of all nights, I was thinking about Craig, and about Nikki. I was thinking kind thoughts about Nikki and how I’d held her while she cried. I wondered if she felt it, on this night, dressed up somewhere in some stupid slutty kitten costume, laughing and drinking and finding someone else to make hurt as much as she did. If she’d been the one to tap at my window that night, I would have let her in, and I would have taken her into my arms and sung her to sleep. I would have given her what I owed her, because I couldn’t give her what I’d taken, and maybe she would have done the same for me.

It wasn’t her. It was you.

Your face, a ghost materializing on the other side of the glass, that hopeful smile, same as the first time I ever talked to you, like maybe, if you pressed your hand to the window, I would meet it with mine.

You had a surprise for me, you said. That night, of all nights, a surprise in the woods.