Susie Yang - White ivy

She did have one thing. One more precious thing.

SHE COULD FEEL the pull of it: destruction. A delightful feeling, like the anticipation before eating a large, delicious meal. She’d thought her crush on Gideon was an absolute secret, but Tom had known. Tom said she followed Gideon around. Did she? Did everyone at Grove see her as the Gideon follower? And Gideon said he felt sorry for her… had he only invited her to his party out of pity?… pity, which was a thousand times worse than hate.

Ivy leaned back against the wall. Her head ached from where the orange had hit her. She could hear the angry cawing of Meifeng and Nan in the living room, still fighting over her as if she were a precious carcass only one of them got to eat, a cacophony that would never end, this soundtrack to her life. Then it went quiet. Ivy’s mind, too, went quiet. The pain of her injustices evaporated in the stimulating rush of a reckless plan. The world wasn’t fair. Punishments rained from nowhere, sins were rewarded. Timing was everything.

She went to the closet and dug out an old baseball cap, tugging it low on her forehead to hide the bruise. Then she went outside to the living room. Nan was scrubbing the burnt parts of the stove. Meifeng was sitting in her chair, knitting a sweater. The air was so dank you could open your mouth and taste its poisonous residue. Ivy asked if she could go to the library.

“Come back before dinner,” said Meifeng, her eyes darting toward Nan, waiting to be contradicted. But Nan didn’t even look up.

Ivy tied her shoelaces. Still nothing. The silent treatment, then. A new low. Outside, she turned right and headed toward the building at the edge of Fox Hill. The Romans’ unit was situated on the ground floor with windows just slightly above eye level. The shutters were closed. She squeezed through the clearing between two bushes and rapped on a dusty pane. No one stirred. She rapped harder. The shutters rose. Roux had apparently been sleeping. He was wearing only his plaid boxers, an imprint of a pillow on one cheek. He pushed up the window and asked in an irritated tone what she wanted.

Ivy studied him with detached curiosity. The deep slashes beneath the seafoam eyes, the dimple, so rarely spotted. He felt her watching him. A flicker of surprise, followed by a twitch along the jaw. A flicker, a twitch. That was all it took for him to grasp the hinted-at intentions of a girl’s blazing face.

He stepped aside. “You gonna come in or what?”

SHE HOISTED HERSELF through the dusty windowsill. There was nowhere to sit in the room. All the surfaces were piled either with paper or drawings and pencils. She pushed aside the crumpled gray-colored sheet and sank into the mattress’s creaky depths. It smelled earthy and lush, like a jungle, or unwashed hair.

“Is your mom home?” she asked.

“She has an overnight shift.” That same ironic smirk. “Why?”

Ivy shrugged. Nan’s voice echoed in her mind: There are only two types of people who stay out all night: burglars and bad women. She felt the briefest flash of pity for Roux, followed quickly by disgust. Hurriedly, she tried to focus on his nice parts: his eyes, the smooth skin of his hands.

“I got into a fight with my mom,” she said. “They found out about the party and towed me away in front of all my…” She could not bear to say friends. “Anyway, everyone hates me.”

“Your mom does not hate you.”

“Not her. The others. The people at the party. They were saying things—they… I…”

Roux got up from the chair and sat down next to her. She felt his hand, tenuous, on her back. “Jesus. Sorry. Who cares what they say anyway? Rich pricks are the nastiest pricks.”

Ivy turned and pressed her face somewhere between his shoulder and chest. She hadn’t cried in front of her classmates when they were whispering about her family, and she hadn’t cried when her parents dragged her from Gideon’s house, but it was a relief to cry now in front of Roux, the only person she could go to at a time like this. This thought made her cry harder.

Roux handed her a tissue. She pulled back to wipe her face and blow her nose. His arm was still around her shoulders. She looked up through the haze of wet lashes. The pale blue flecks among the gray of Roux’s eyes looked like the scales of a fish. She leaned in abruptly.

“Ow.”

“Sorry.” She removed her hat. He was the one to lean in this time. Their lips missed. Roux was absolutely still. Embarrassment? Aversion? She almost retreated, unsure. But a moment later, he was guiding her face with one hand until their lips met in earnest. The intimacy was excruciating: the sucking and smacking, the heavy breathing, the tiny beads of sweat clinging to the hairs on Roux’s upper lip. His eyes, like hers, were wide open. She was surprised by the look of utter tenderness in them. They broke apart for air.

“You’re beautiful,” said Roux.

That word cut Ivy’s heart into pieces in a way she had never known.

“Again,” she said.

Roux tilted her chin up… again… again… again… Each kiss and caress filled the bucket inside her with little scoops of courage. When the bucket was full, Ivy reached down, hand steady, and loosened the drawstring of her terry-cloth shorts.

THERE WERE FEW things Ivy could imagine more lowly, more sordid (her least favorite adjective) than losing your virginity to spite your mother. But then to guard the knowledge afterward from this mother, from everyone, as if guarding your life—what had been the point then? She couldn’t explain it herself. It was a private war.

She disliked that it had been Roux, she would have preferred Gideon obviously, but even a stranger would have been a better choice: clean, no awkwardness, a onetime mistake you could erase. But in the end, it didn’t matter. All she remembered from the event itself was the intense pressure, as if someone were trying to plug up a hole in her she hadn’t known existed, and the feeling of sweaty skin on skin, a sharp whip of pain. The health teacher said that in such moments there might be blood, but she hadn’t bled. Even this proof of innocence had been denied her.

Afterward, Roux asked if she’d done this before.

“Yes,” she lied.

“With who?”

“Someone from school.” Before he could press her, she said, “What about you?”

“You’re the proud owner of my V-card.”

“Liar.”

“Seriously.” He pulled out a pack of Camel Blues from his desk drawer and lit up beside the window.

“Can I have one?” she asked.

He handed her the pack without speaking. She pulled out a cigarette, lit it, and held it between her index and middle finger as she’d seen her father do. She inhaled. Almost immediately she was seized with vertigo and had to lean back on Roux’s crumpled gray pillows as the room spun and spun…

“What happened to your head, anyway?” Roux asked. “It’s turning a nasty puke color.”

“I walked into a pole.”

Their eyes met. His gaze was full of knowing. She hated him in that moment. He looked away. “You hungry? There are Hot Pockets in the fridge. I have vodka, too. I’ll mix it with some Tropicana. You’ll like it.”

That’s when Ivy heard it—the unmistakable sound of ownership.

Why was it that in Gideon’s voice, it had such an admirable, dignified quality, but in Roux’s, it sounded dirty, like something unearned? But this wasn’t fair because if anything, it was the opposite: Gideon had been born rich and cared for, he’d done nothing to earn his big house, his private education, his ten years of speech therapy; whereas Roux had a whore for a mother and a father in Romania who may or may not be dead or in jail, and a part-time job at Kmart. Gideon had done nothing to earn her love. Roux had given her forty dollars. That was how much her virginity had been worth. Forty dollars.