The Princesses of Iowa Page 12

  “Screw you,” I said, but I couldn’t help thinking that she was right. Without Jake, without Lacey, who was I? Nobody. I was an empty, pathetic nobody. I was a stupid little girl who still thought kisses could make things better, when they only made them worse.

  “A lame little crown and a picture in the yearbook for losers to jack off to, and that’s seriously your greatest aspiration in life?” My sister’s voice was relentless. “The rest of us are going to get out of here and make something of ourselves, but you? Maybe you’ll be a slutty sorority girl for a few years, and then you’ll get married, spit out some kids, and spend the rest of your life trying to get back to your glory years.”

  A teardrop escaped and rolled down my face. I squeezed my eyes shut and felt another tear splash on my collarbone.

  “Oh my God, Mirror,” Jeremy said. “I love you to death, but you are being the biggest bitch in the world to your sister right now.”

  “Since when are you on her side?” she asked.

  He glanced back at me, and I shook my head mutely at him. “I’m not on anyone’s side,” he said. “Just — she’s your sister. Give her a break.”

  Miranda took her eyes off the road to look at him. For a long minute, the only sound in the car was the hum of the wheels on the road, until finally she sighed. “Whatever.”

  I lay in bed for hours, staring at the black ceiling. Car lights on the street moved shadows of trees across the walls. The night wouldn’t leave me. Nikki’s thin arms — the sad pretty guitar — Shanti at the game — orange flames circled by dark bodies — the warmth of Ethan’s sweatshirt against my bare skin — the bitter tang of alcohol — the blood thrum of my ankle — Prescott’s intent face, bent over his mixing board — the raccoon’s thump thump under my feet — cold air against my skin — Jake’s voice — his warmth and scent in the parking lot — his shoulder, pressed against Lacey’s —

  The first time he kissed me was sophomore year, the night of Prescott’s graduation party. That afternoon, we were sitting on the bleachers in the hot June sun, trying to stay awake as the idiotic valedictorian stumbled through a speech cribbed directly from Chicken Soup for the Soul, when he leaned over and whispered, “Confession.” His breath moved a strand of my humidity-curled hair and I shivered in the heat. We were surrounded by our families, Mrs. Austin’s knees pressed into the small of my back, Miranda fidgeting next to me, but somehow that made it more thrilling, that Jake had words just for me. I leaned toward him, my eyebrow lifted the tiniest bit, and he breathed, “I like you.” I turned to him, squinting and unsure, but he looked shy and pleased, and a smile bloomed across my face like a timed-release flower unfolding. All day his confession moved between us like electricity, and that night in the Lanes’ backyard, under the low bowl of the Big Dipper, he pulled me away from the bonfire and we stood in the misty trees talking about nothing, and then he laughed quietly and I asked, “What?” and he said, “I was just trying to think of an excuse to kiss you,” and I said, “You don’t need an excuse,” and he kissed me.

  And tonight? Tonight I imagined him standing under the same trees, whispering to Lacey as she let tears well up in her blue eyes. Had she let herself sink into his arms? Had he kissed her in the wispy moonlight? I squeezed my eyes shut against the thought, shoving my fists into my eye sockets until the screen behind my eyes exploded with stars, yellow and red, and I wasn’t kissing random stupid boys at parties, and Jake wasn’t kissing anyone but me.

  I finally fell into a restless sleep around dawn. My dreams were confused, dark shadows against a curtain of red. My phone rang off and on, and its ringtones wove themselves into my dreams, songs I already knew, alarms I couldn’t shut off. Sometime late in the morning, when the sun had already stretched past the end of the bed and pooled on the floor near my desk, my mother shook me awake.

  “It’s almost eleven already, sleepyhead! Rise and shine!” Her highlighted hair was pulled into a ponytail, which curled gracefully and patted her on the back.

  I rolled away from her, pulling the comforter around my shoulders and clenching it in fists near my face. “Mmarhgh.”

  “Looks like someone had a little too much fun last night! Anything I should know?” She winked, and I recalled her suggestion that Jake might propose. Last night, it had seemed like the worst possible thing that could happen. If only.

  “No,” I said flatly. “Nothing happened.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Nothing at all?” I didn’t say anything. “Well, Stella needs me to pinch-hit for the caterers. Miranda and I are going over to stuff mushroom cups. Want to come?”

  “No.” I burrowed farther into my blankets. “I’m sick,” I said. “I have a migraine.”

  The determined cheerfulness wavered. “Oh. You do? Oh.”

  I lay still, breathing into the pillow.

  “You want some of my migraine medicine? Some coffee? Caffeine helps to constrict the blood vessels.”

  My voice was muffled. “I just need to sleep.”

  Downstairs, the house phone rang, echoing through the open rooms. My mother yelled for Miranda to answer it. Her voice drilled into my skull, and I groaned. “Sorry, honey,” she said. “I’ll leave my migraine medicine out on the counter just in case. And I’ll fill up the coffeemaker, so all you have to do is turn it on if you want coffee, okay? Dad’s on campus all day, so if you need anything, just call me and I’ll see if I can sneak away. Okay?”

  The sound of stomping in the hallway announced my sister. “Phone, Paige. It’s some chick.”

  “Paige can’t come to the phone; she’s sick.” There was silence, and I imagined my sister staring blankly at my mother, either missing or ignoring the implicit instructions. My mother sighed loudly. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Miranda. Hello? This is Mrs. Sheridan! No dear, I’m afraid Paige is ill and can’t come to the phone. Mmhmm, I’ll tell her. Of course. Okay, you too. Okay. Buh-bye.” There was a click as she set the phone down on my desk. “Sun Dee? Is that the little Kim girl? She wanted me to tell you that she and Ellen are working on their English homework today and you’re invited to join them if you feel better.”

  “Great,” I mumbled.

  She leaned over me, smoothing my hair with gentle fingers. “Okay honey, we have to get going. Make sure to call me if you need anything, okay? Get some beauty rest; your skin looks a little gray.” I stayed perfectly still, and after a moment I heard her walk away from the bed. “Come on, Miranda, those mushroom cups aren’t going to stuff themselves!”

  My sister didn’t follow. Instead, she walked over to my bed and picked my phone up off the bedside table. “You have like a hundred new voicemails.”

  “Give me that.” I swung my arm at her.

  “Texts too. Do you want me to read them to you?”

  “No! God, Miranda!”

  “It’s Mirror,” she said. The phone vibrated in her hand, and she tossed it onto the bed.

  “You can leave now.”

  “Rawr. Calm down, princess.” She picked up a stuffed dog from the floor and sat down on the edge of the mattress. “Hi, Mister Dog.”

  I sat up slightly. “It’s Zeke. Remember, Zeke and Zia?” Miranda had a matching dog, somewhere, that was lighter in color, a tawny sand to Zeke’s dark cinnamon. When we were little, we used to make houses for them out of the couch cushions in the living room.

  She nodded. “Oh yeah.” Next to me, the phone buzzed again. “Aren’t you going to answer that?” I shook my head, my eyes on Zeke. The phone buzzed again. Miranda reached over and picked it up. “It’s Jake.”

  I grabbed the dog from her. “I don’t care.”

  “I don’t care either.” She threw the phone back onto the bed. Our mother’s voice floated up from downstairs, calling her name. “God,” Miranda said. The phone stopped vibrating and we were quiet.

  “So . . .” she said.

  “Miranda! Let’s go!”

  “You’d better go,” I said. “She’s going to come up in a minute and start ye
lling.”

  “Whatever.” She looked thoughtful, and then grinned. “Anyway, she likes to nag me. It makes her feel useful.”

  “I guess.”

  “Miranda!”

  “In a minute!” my sister screeched, making me wince.

  She rolled her eyes. “Look, I’m sorry about last night. About, uh, being such a bitch to you, when you had a bad night.”

  I hugged Zeke to my chest. “Did Jeremy tell you to say that?”

  “Why, because I can’t be nice on my own?”

  Yes, I thought.

  She picked at a thread on my comforter, and sighed. “Okay, fine! He did, but I would have said it anyway. I felt bad. Obviously you were having a bad night, and . . . whatever. I’m just sorry, okay?”

  I let go of something inside me, a breath I didn’t know I was holding. “Yeah, okay. Thanks, Miranda.”

  “It’s Mirror.”

  “Right. Uh, thanks . . . Mirror.”

  “MIRANDA ROSE SHERIDAN!”

  She stood up, groaning. “Jesus!”

  “Those mushroom cups aren’t going to stuff themselves,” I told her.

  “Shut up,” she said, heading for the door. “I can’t believe you’re getting out of this. I hate going to the Austins’. Jake and his dad are always wrestling and calling each other fags. It’s like, if you want to wrestle, whatever, fine, but you don’t have to get all defensive about your sexuality.”

  “Mmm-hmmm.”

  She shook her head. “Migraine my ass.”

  I smiled angelically. “Have fun.”

  “MIRAN —”

  “I’M COMING!” she screamed. She paused at the door and turned back toward me. In spite of her black-and-red hair, she looked surprisingly like our mother. “Hey,” she said seriously, “if I see Jake, I’ll kick him in the nuts for you, okay?”

  After they left, I got up and wandered around the house, my ankle twinging with each step. The events of the night before sat like a crater in my thoughts, and I walked around the edge carefully, minding the boundaries without acknowledging to myself what I was avoiding. I made myself some toast with jam, brewed the pot of coffee my mother had left for me, flipped through a magazine, and thought idly about cutting my hair. I took a shower and spent a long time shaving my legs, running the razor over and over my skin until it was all perfectly smooth. I turned on the TV and tried to immerse myself in a reality show about fashion designers. I glanced through some college brochures that had come in the mail: Swarthmore, Columbia, Grinnell, Lake Forest. I wandered up to my room and spread my physics homework across my desk and stared intently at the problem set while my good foot bounced against my chair. I stared out the window. I made my bed. I didn’t check my voicemails.

  Finally, late in the afternoon, I sat down with my creative writing notebook and turned to a blank page. The pen in my hand hung over the page, bobbing up and down like a glass bird trying to drink.

  I remember . . .

  I remember the party. It’s late and the living room is lit only by the glow of white Christmas lights around the windows, not carefully stapled flush against the wooden frames, like your mother would do, but draped lazily and held up with thumbtacks and duct tape. The room is thick with cigarette smoke and muffled voices and the awareness of how late it is, the voice in your head nagging that it’s way past curfew and no matter how distracted your friend’s mom has been recently she’s definitely going to notice how late it is, but you’re so tired and even though the couch is the most hideous pattern of brown-and-orange velour, it’s comfortable, and maybe you’ll just have one more cigarette before you finally rouse yourself and go find the girls.

  And somehow your cup is empty again even though you’ve just been sipping it, seriously, because Prescott’s mixing awfully strong drinks and you really should be drinking mostly just Coke and only a little rum, just enough rum to make you forget about how annoying it is to be sitting in the smoky living room on this ugly couch so you can be the designated driver for your best friends’ booty calls. Prescott hands you another cup, plastic with a Hawkeyes logo on it, the kind that should hold a Bloody Mary with a stalk of green celery at a tailgating party, not mostly rum and some Coke, long after midnight on an ugly sagging couch in a shabby college house.

  Prescott sits down next to you and goes, “Hey,” and you’re like, “What?” “I’m glad you’re here,” he says, and you kind of laugh because you’re so tired and maybe you were glad you were here three hours ago when those cute soccer guys were checking you out, but now? Not so much. But you go, “Thanks,” and he’s like, “I’m so sick of these parties, they’re so fake,” and you’re like, “Yeah, totally,” even though this is only the second college party you’ve been to, and before everyone disappeared into their various corners and rooms it was actually pretty cool. And he says, “You’re not like them; you’re different,” and you’re flattered even though you shouldn’t be because you’ve known him forever, since you were in seventh grade and he was still a short high school sophomore who couldn’t even drive yet. “Sometimes I just want to take off, you know,” he says, “just jump on a train or something and get out of here, head out west, away from all the phony bullshit and everything,” and you light another cigarette and say, “Yeah, that would be awesome,” mostly just to make conversation, because it’s clear that Lacey and Nikki aren’t going to just show up on their own anytime soon.

  And then he’s talking about New Mexico, how dark it gets at night and all the stars and camping in the mountains under the wide desert sky, but you’re not really listening, you’re wondering about Nikki and that dude she was hanging on and hoping she’s okay because she looked kind of out of it and usually you and Lacey tag team to make sure Nikki’s okay, because she’s a little too sweet for her own good sometimes. “In New Mexico you can see what the weather’s doing fifty miles away on the Sangres,” he says. Does Lacey seem unhappy lately, you wonder. She was drinking more than usual and you had a weird feeling tonight when you were getting ready, like your friends were somehow slipping away, so you yelled, “Group hug!” and grabbed them around the necks even though Lacey was trying to straighten her hair and you almost made her drop her iron on the carpet but she didn’t, she managed to set it down, and the three of you hugged like you used to and for a minute everything was perfect, the three of you in one sculpture of twisted arms and twining hair, like in Girl Scouts when everyone would reach into the circle and grab someone else’s hand and then you’d have to figure out how to untangle yourselves as a team. But then Lacey laughed and asked if you were lezzing out on her and pulled away and Nikki gave you one last squeeze and joked about how she was usually the hugger of the group, and your arms untangled on their own like a knot that’s been cut open.

  The rum is making you sad, maybe, so you drink a little more to make the sad go away and you try not to think about how pathetic and lonely this stupid house is, this stupid party, how in a few hours it will just be empty cups and beer bottles on the floor, full ashtrays and random girls’ left-behind sweatshirts and a lingering sense of disappointment, and you drink a little more to make those thoughts go away. Prescott’s so nice to stay here with you, it would be much more depressing without him, and his eyes are pretty in the dark and it’s kind of cool whatever he’s talking about, God and the desert or whatever, and the house is lonely and pathetic and he’s nice and he’s close and then you’re kissing him. He tastes like vodka and ash and mint and teeth and his hand slides up your arm and it’s warm and it’s different from being with Jake; his lips ask questions and his fingers trace the skin down your neck and wander back up into the forest of your hair and you haven’t kissed anyone but Jake in two years and you really shouldn’t be doing this. But he’s so gentle and you’re so sleepy and it’s all brand-new, like you’re exploring room after room of an infinite mansion, each room more beautiful than the last.

  No, you can’t do this. Say it. I can’t — your voice is quiet, breath against his cheek, a
nd he goes to kiss your neck and you want to let him but you can’t. Really, I —

  And then Lacey is there with unmistakable delight in her voice as she says your names. “Paige! Prescott! I’m shocked!” And Prescott practically jumps to the other side of the couch, abandoning you to the cold center. “We weren’t —” he says. “Nothing happened. . . .”

  I put down the pen and shivered, staring at the words on the page. It was more than I wanted to remember.

  Later that afternoon, my sister appeared in my doorway. “Hey.” I hit the MUTE button on the TV remote, but she wasn’t fooled. “How’s the migraine?”

  “Fine,” I said. “How was mushroom cups?”

  “As awful as you might imagine,” she said. “But at least Jake and his dad weren’t there.”

  I grabbed my stuffed dog. “Where was Jake?”

  “I thought you didn’t care.” She waited, watching me. “Anyway,” she said, “Jeremy wanted me to ask you if you want to come with us tonight. We’re going to Iowa City for a poetry reading or something. . . . He said it’s homework for the class you guys have together?”

  “Crap.” I’d forgotten all about it. “I don’t want to impose . . .”

  My sister rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”

  “Seriously, if it’s like a date or something . . .”

  “Funny,” she said. “Anyway, we’re leaving in a half hour, so if you want to come you should probably put some clothes on and curl your nose hair or whatever.”

  I weighed my options: continue with my plans to lie around feeling sorry for myself and trying not to think about things, or get a homework assignment out of the way and maybe distract myself from my own thoughts for a while. “I’ll come.” I shut off the TV and swung myself out of bed.

  Miranda looked surprised. “Really?”

  “Sure, yeah. Just let me get dressed and, you know, curl my nose hair. I’ll be ready in twenty.”

  The bookstore was downtown, with a huge metal awning that reminded me of some of the Métro stations in Paris. Jeremy led us inside and up a flight of stairs to where a bunch of people were already sitting in rows of green plastic chairs. At the front of the room, Mr. Tremont sat behind a solid wooden table, along with a guy in hipster glasses and a girl with short dreadlocks.