Anna North - The Life and Death of Sophie Stark

We couldn’t shoot at games anymore, and we couldn’t shoot at Daniel’s house, but we could shoot at the outdoor courts on the edge of campus where Daniel usually showed up early in the morning to practice on his own. And we could shoot at the bars that the team liked to hit on weeknights, Jacky’s and Bar 9 and the Sports Page. Daniel always ignored us, and his girlfriend stared at Sophie like she wanted to skin her, but other people came up to ask questions and try to get on camera. Everything I’d hoped for at the end of high school was coming together. I felt famous and important; I felt like Sophie’s ambassador.

I was in my dorm room, not out filming, when Daniel’s girlfriend came to see me. CeCe was tiny and honey-blond, and everybody said she was the hottest girl in school, but to me her face looked prematurely old, like she was a mom with a lot of worries already. I offered her a seat and a Coke — I was learning to be polite and generous in my fame — but she said no to both. My roommate was out; I sat in my desk chair, and CeCe leaned against the desk. She looked down at me like she was kind of annoyed that circumstances had forced us to interact.

“You need to keep your sister away from my boyfriend,” she said.

“Why don’t you talk to her?” I asked.

“I did,” said CeCe. “She doesn’t listen. She just looks at me like she’s retarded or something.”

“Sophie’s not retarded,” I said.

Actually, Sophie had been IQ-tested in fourth grade, because she couldn’t or wouldn’t answer questions in class. She’d done so badly that she was briefly placed in special ed and put back in the mainstream class only after the first math test, on which she’d not only scored perfectly but also drawn a series of geometric diagrams she wasn’t supposed to learn about for another four years. Later, when I asked her about the IQ test, she said, “They tell you stories that don’t make sense and ask you questions where the answer could be anything. It scared me. I just decided not to say anything.”

“Whatever she is,” CeCe said, “she doesn’t have the right to keep following us around like this.”

“Daniel hasn’t said anything,” I said.

I actually had no idea how Daniel felt about the movie. For all I knew, he liked being the center of attention — I’d like it, I thought, if my sister decided to make a movie about me.

“Of course he wouldn’t,” she said. “He’d never admit how much it bothers them.”

She was digging her fingernails into the flesh of her arms. It looked like she did it a lot; the skin there was covered with little scabs. I wasn’t sure why she was so upset. I didn’t know why Daniel’s friends were mad either, now that I thought about it. I didn’t really care. Sophie and I didn’t need to suck up to people. The life I’d dreamed about for us was starting, I could feel it.

“Look,” I told CeCe, “you’re not his mom. If he has a problem with it, he can talk to Sophie. You don’t have to do it for him.”

She leaned closer to me. She smelled like vanilla perfume and something I couldn’t place, something metallic.

“You don’t get it,” she said. “Everyone just wants to take and take and take from Daniel. They see how great he is, and they just want to take advantage.”

“And you’re so different?” I asked. “You’re not enjoying being with the most popular guy in school, having everyone jealous of you?”

I thought she’d yell, but instead she got really quiet.

“You think I don’t know what goes on?” she asked. “I know he fucks other girls. I know that when I go home to see my brothers and sisters, he’s got freshman chicks with big tits coming in and out of his room all weekend. And I put up with all that because I know he needs me to. He needs me to support him and let him be who he is and not try to control him, so that’s what I do. Who else would be there for him every day like that, unconditionally, no matter how much he hurts them?”

I felt like I got her then. I’d gone to school with girls like her, girls with big families who had to take care of other people all the time and who got hard from it instead of soft. I remembered when Todd Hayward had sex with Ashley Lindstrom’s little sister and then broke up with her the next day — Ashley caught Todd by the lockers and left bloody scratch marks all down his face and arms, like some kind of tiger. I could see that hardness in CeCe. She’d gotten out of her hometown and come to college and found somebody to take care of who actually made her important, and she wasn’t going to let that go.

“He’s lucky to have you,” I said. “But maybe this time you need to step back, let him handle his shit himself.”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, fuck you,” she said. “Don’t fucking condescend to me.”

She picked up her purse. “I’m going to tell your sister I tried to talk to you but you didn’t listen.”

“Tell her when?” I asked, but she turned and walked out the door.

. . .

WHAT CECE SAID stuck with me, and I meant to tell Sophie about it, but the next time I saw her, she just wanted to make plans. There was a party at an off-campus house over by the cemetery, the last big party before Thanksgiving, and she thought if we could get some footage of Daniel there, the movie might be finished. I thought maybe I’d see Andrea there, and I was excited for her to see me again in my capacity as co-director. I told myself CeCe was just a jealous girlfriend; I told my sister nothing.

The house was tall and dark and falling apart. It was nice out, one of those warm fall nights that makes you sad because it might be the last one, and guys in suspenders were out on the front porch barbecuing corn.

“Watch out for the loose board,” one of them said as I tripped on it and fell into the kitchen.

Inside, people were floating in thick smoke like ghosts. I saw a pretty girl with hair down to her ass stirring wine on the stove. I saw a wedding cake with a fist-size hole punched in it. I saw a tray of brownies labeled “nuts” and a tray of brownies labeled “party.” I saw a bowl of water full of rose petals and a guy dip a cup in it and drink. I saw three girls wearing see-through white dresses like nuns from a cool religion. I saw their six nipples and I got embarrassed and turned away.

Sophie was already shooting. People were getting used to her — one guy waved at the camera, and another lifted his beer bottle like a toast, but mostly they just ignored us. I didn’t see anyone I knew. I was jealous of Sophie — she always had the camera to put between herself and other people, but I had to talk right to them out of my own stupid face. I found a punch bowl full of something and ladled it into a plastic cup. It tasted sweet and a little bit poisonous, and I drank it very fast.

I didn’t have all that much experience with alcohol. My only source of booze in high school had been the liquor cabinet at my friend Tyler’s house, but we were always scared to take too much in case his dad found out — Tyler had to go to the hospital sometimes for shadowy reasons, and once when we broke his bike doing gravel races, his dad yelled so hard he cried — so I’d never really been drunk before, but now I could feel whatever was in the punch slamming into my brain. My muscles relaxed. I felt like I was part of the party, like I belonged to it. I started to recognize people. A guy in my English class who had always seemed too cool for everything waved at me, and then I was standing with his friends and actually talking and laughing, although I couldn’t really hear anything they said. I could still see Sophie with the camera, but we were drifting farther apart, and then I couldn’t see her anymore, and I didn’t worry about it.