Rachel Glaser - Paulina & Fran

“What do you care?”

“I’m sort of friends with her,” Fran said, sweating.

“Finally, you admit it,” Gretchen said. “I saw you guys dancing at a party once and wanted to throw up.”

“What was I supposed to do? There was no one cool in Norway! I couldn’t help it. We just hit it off.”

“Hit it off? No one hits it off with her. It takes a lobotomy to be friends with her. Have you seen her friends?”

“I’m sorry,” Fran said, but she wasn’t. She felt Gretchen was the kind of girlfriend she would be offered again and again by the adult world, the real world, but Paulina was someone truly original, someone who existed only once.

“I’m over it,” Gretchen said, trying out a black ink pen on the sample paper stuck to the shelf. She wrote her name in perfect cursive. “The important thing is you’re dating Julian. It will ruin her life.” She smiled.

Even after receiving Julian’s affection, Fran remained fixated on Paulina. Paulina was like part ship captain, part call girl. Once Fran spent a whole party watching her, unable to name what was so impressive. Fran was terrified of Paulina finding out about Julian. Sometimes she would have dinner with Paulina, let Paulina walk her home, and then, when she was sure Paulina was out of sight, run to his house.

Fran lay on Julian’s chest, asking him about Paulina.

“She fancied herself a wild lover,” Julian said.

Fran giggled. “How?” she asked, stroking the coarse hairs under his arms.

“She was always thrashing about like there was a great passion within her, but somehow I doubted the passion.”

Fran wanted to ask if there was a great passion in her , but it was a damning question. First, she would create a great passion. She was almost there. In bed with Julian, all her concerns flattened into a cracker.

“I’m going to tell her,” Fran said. “You think it will go okay?”

“It could be awful, to tell you the truth. Like her in an awful mood, tromping about like a robot on the wrong setting.”

“My Norwegian princess!” Paulina exclaimed when Fran found her in the library. “Look at this hairstyle!” Paulina said, pointing excitedly to a painting in a Velázquez book. “Isn’t it amazing? I’m going to write my final on ancient hairdos.” She grinned at Fran. “These girls are like hair gods!”

“How’s it going with Tim?” Fran asked nervously.

Paulina sighed. “Honestly? It sucks.” Paulina leaned dramatically against the bookcase behind her. “Sex with Julian was a million times better.”

Fran’s throat tightened. She’d expected Paulina to tire herself out praising Tim. Fran had grown used to hearing about Tim — his hands rough from sanding, how sawdust fell off his clothes like a kind of masculine powder.

“I gave up on Tim. He was completely unavailable to me. Anyway, what’s happening with that, with Marvin?” Paulina asked.

“Nothing.”

“That boy needs to get his dick checked at Health Services. Seriously! Who could resist you? Your silhouette should replace the school logo.”

Fran opened her mouth to tell her, but Paulina was distracted, watching two girls covertly rip pages from a book. “I think Sadie and Allison have finally decided to ask for my forgiveness,” Paulina said. “They asked me to come over. I had completely forgotten we weren’t speaking.” She turned suddenly, and looked into Fran’s eyes. Fran stared back in terror. She had always been afraid of Paulina, even in Norway — afraid of her temper, her hasty dismissals, but also afraid of her affection. Once Paulina endorsed something, she raised it too high in her regard. Fran always felt exposed around her, that Paulina knew too well Fran’s desires and insecurities.

“I should really go to studio.”

Paulina made a face. “Promise me you’ll come to Sadie’s party tonight.”

Fran found it impossible to say no.

Allison saw them at Thai Dream,” Sadie told Paulina. The three girls sat on lawn chairs on Sadie’s porch. Below them, the students biked and walked to class.

“They’re definitely together,” Allison said with satisfaction.

“We thought you should know,” said Sadie, beaming.

They hadn’t apologized. Instead, when Paulina arrived, they’d hugged her stiffly, then told her of this poisonous development. Her face faltered. She forced a laugh. She pictured Fran naked and got the wind knocked out of her.

“Are you okay?” Allison asked.

“You look bad,” noted Sadie. She remembered how Paulina looked when they’d first met, before Paulina had redone herself. Paulina’s hair had been a ball of frizz. In the bathroom, she’d try to mat it down with water. She hadn’t yet learned to carry her weight with power, and danced clumsily at Artist Ball. For a few weeks, she’d tried to get people to call her Lina, but no one would.

Paulina sunk into a primal, hateful area of her consciousness.

“What is it about my porch?” said Sadie. “When I’m up here I feel like I’m deciding who will get into heaven.” They watched their classmates walk by in insignificant groups. Paulina sat frozen in her chair.

“It’s actually really perfect. They’re both corny and have no instinct for fashion,” Paulina said. A muscle twitched in her face. Nils walked by, and normally Paulina would have shouted out to him, or at least criticized him to them, but she was silent. “She’s ruined everything,” Paulina said.

“Maybe she’ll die,” Allison said lightheartedly.

“She’d haunt me. Though she’s no great mind, she’d figure out how.”

“What if you died?” Sadie asked. Paulina gave her a nasty look. “No, I mean like, then you could haunt her .”

That Fran could find happiness with Julian was excruciating to Paulina. Fran was adding on to a project Paulina had halted. Hadn’t she mined all there was? She took her blanket out from her bra.

“You still have that bit of rag?” Sadie asked, pitying her.

“It looks like Joseph Beuys’s wolf blanket,” Allison said, “but smaller.”

“This blanket was given to me by a spirit in the night,” Paulina said. A smile fleetingly premiered across her face before drooping like a dead plant. Allison rolled her eyes.

“Let’s go,” Sadie said. Already they were tired of her again.

“Fine, go. But I feel poisoned and might do something horrid we’d all regret.”

“Like what?” Allison asked. Paulina wanted more of a reaction. She sat silently, depriving them of her answer.

“Then come to the cafeteria with us,” Sadie said impatiently.

Paulina refused. “It’s always crawling with freshmen in their high school wardrobes.”

“If you want to hang out before the party, we’ll be at Eileen’s. You know the address.”

“No, I don’t. I forgot it,” Paulina said unhappily.

“You know it!” Sadie said, gathering her things. “Listen, stay here all you want, but lock up when you go.” Paulina gave them a pained look, but still they left her.

She sat on the porch for a miserable half hour, the plastic bands of the lawn chair sticking to her thighs. The dread she’d felt in little packets over the last few months now traveled to her from a greater source, in huge waves from the town’s reservoir of dread, sending dread meant for other people, a collective dread her body absorbed with no immunity. She pictured the dread like smoke or oil. Oil that turned into smoke. She felt like a ruin of a woman, like a cold, empty cave. She tried to draw up a life plan, but a mean magnet sat on her brain, preventing her from thinking forward. She was stuck in the ugly cell of the moment.