Rachel Glaser - Paulina & Fran

Though she is the only bearable company in the country, I can’t help but notice that Fran’s inconsistent, adolescent wardrobe is a nostalgic circle jerk for the past. At 20 years old, she still remains challenged by simple tasks such as clear speaking.

“I got high last night and had revelations,” Fran told Paulina the next morning.

Paulina snorted. She had spent the evening wandering around the city feeling lonely and boring. She’d refused to sleep in Fran’s room or her own, and had ended up in Nils’s room, rubbing against him while he talked about his girlfriend. It distressed her that he wouldn’t sleep with her. She had missed Julian.

“Anything you do with those losers has nothing to do with me,” Paulina said. It was their last day in Norway. The Viking Ship Museum was amazing, but it was wasted on them. They were sick of museums. They spent a good half hour deciding which boat could best support their weight, and then crawled inside it to hide, nibbling a chocolate Fran had bought on the street.

“What do you think Julian is doing right now?” asked Fran.

“Filming a bug and then squashing it,” Paulina said.

“Do you love him?”

“Not really. For a while I liked having him around.” Across the room, a female museum guard approached a male museum guard. “I spent a lot of time with him last semester. Showed him the ways of a woman, wasted time philosophizing. Tried to outfit him in better clothing, but he resisted.” Paulina watched as the two guards conferred, then walked toward them.

“It’s easy to dismiss things when they aren’t nearby,” Fran said, smoothing the worn wood of the ship.

“What?” Paulina said, feigning distraction. The guards approached Paulina and Fran. The man told them sternly in Norwegian to get off the ship, and then the female guard told them the same in overenunciated English. Fran blushed wildly as she disembarked, in a way Paulina found beautiful and idiotic.

The girls meandered around the museum, avoiding their classmates. Their classmates ruined the dream. “It’s like traveling to the moon, only to see the junk you left on your bedroom floor,” Paulina whispered.

They saw Nils doing an involved sketch of a ship and felt bad for him. “Do you think he’s sexy?” Paulina asked Fran.

“He’s okay,” Fran said.

“Who do you really like?” Paulina said.

Fran wouldn’t say.

“James? Tim? Dean? Troy? Zane?”

Fran smiled. “Dean, Troy, and Zane for sure.”

“No, really though. Who do you want to sleep with? Whose little cock do you draw in the margins of your art history handouts?”

Fran hesitated. She liked keeping things to herself. She hadn’t told Paulina that she’d kissed Nils after the play they’d seen in Bergen, or gotten a matching tattoo with Milo at the amusement park — a little pink ice-cream cone behind her ear.

“Stop being so precious!” Paulina scolded. The female guard glared at them. “She’s been following us!” Paulina exclaimed.

“Marvin,” Fran said impulsively.

Paulina laughed. “Everyone likes Marvin! He doesn’t count.”

“Not the way I do,” Fran said. She’d deluded herself in believing she’d discovered him.

“He’s beyond us anyway. He’s like a gorgeous dog who paints,” Paulina said. “He’s untouchable.”

“I’m going to touch him. No one has really tried,” said Fran.

“You’re unreal. Do you know how many times I’ve tried to seduce him?”

Fran looked at her with dismay. “You can’t,” she said.

“Are you kidding? You can’t claim him. What makes your Marvin infatuation more important than mine?”

Fran’s teeth locked. Marissa approached with something unwieldy she’d bought at the gift shop, but Paulina snapped at her and she retreated.

For the rest of the day, Paulina and Fran avoided each other. Fran walked the rolling fields of Vigeland Park with Milo and James. Paulina got drunk with Nils but he refused to let her sleep in his room. “You’re a twenty-seven-year-old on a school trip!” Paulina told him. “I mostly just feel bad for you,” she muttered as he closed the door. Then she walked sadly back to her assigned room with Marissa, fumbling with her card key, loudly undressing and humming to herself. Marissa struggled to maintain her composure while also pretending to sleep.

In the morning, everyone was packing for the airport when Paulina burst into a fury. “What did you do with them?” she yelled at Marissa.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, freak! Stop screaming at me!” Marissa screamed.

Fran heard their voices from across the hall. “What is it?” she asked, walking into the room.

“She’s hidden my hair potions!” Paulina said. “How low and immature!”

Fran started searching under Paulina’s bed.

“What do they look like?” James asked, peeking in from the hallway. Angel joined him in the doorway, but neither helped to look.

“They’re these glass jars. Sort of baby-food sized,” Fran said.

Paulina had refused to tell Fran her ingredients, but the stuff worked. Paulina had put some in Fran’s hair a few nights before, and for twenty-four hours Fran was invincible to humidity and frizz. Now, however, Paulina could only hold up the empty bag where she’d kept the bottles and rub her blanket to her lips.

“Wait, is that the thing you were telling me about?” James asked Marissa.

Paulina fumed.

Marissa nodded. “Her blanket!”

“It’s a tattered rag,” James said, “I’d hardly call it a blanket!”

Paulina glared at him, her whole body tense. “Shut up, losers! Marissa, what did you do with them?”

“Why would I move your hair goop?”

“As a passive-aggressive hate crime against me,” Paulina insisted. Marissa laughed in disbelief.

“God, you’ve been such a bitch on this trip,” James said. “You barely made eye contact with anyone.”

“You deserve every bad thing that will happen to you!” Marissa yelled.

Paulina kicked over Marissa’s suitcase and emptied her toiletry bag while Marissa berated her with an incoherent emotional speech.

In a low drawer beneath the sink, Fran found the bottles and thrust them at Paulina.

“What’s that, lube?” James said, but Paulina was too busy putting the bottles in her bag to respond. She carefully put the bag in her suitcase. Her eyes glazed over as she held the blanket to her mouth.

“That girl’s got a serious oral fixation,” Angel said and James snickered.

“Joan of Arc had a blanket,” Paulina said, but Fran knew this couldn’t be true. Angel cracked up. Paulina glared at her, waiting for her to stop, but Angel laughed loudly while Paulina boiled beside her. Just when Fran thought the whole thing might subside and Angel was catching her breath and letting out little laughs of relief, Paulina leapt at Angel, and in one stunning movement, Angel grabbed Paulina’s arm and flung her to the ground.

“Oh! I hate her so much it’s murdering me,” Paulina said, throwing herself on Fran’s bed.

“Angel or Marissa?”

“I hate her hair, and her fucking day camp wardrobe. I hate when people do that — form a club of losers to torture you,” Paulina said. “Marissa,” she said. “Both,” she said. She cast her angry eyes at Fran, who sat by the hotel room window watching the doorman smoke. “What do you hate?” she asked Fran. Fran said nothing. Paulina waited impatiently, eyeing the welt on her arm in the mirror. Her hair was unruly and she liked herself less because of it. She looked like a doll whose factory-made hair was not meant to be brushed but had been brushed violently.

“I hate when people call alcohol a ‘social lubricant,’” Fran said.