carefully everywhere descending (9 page)

We're shuffled back from the congested aisle and stand in an awkward huddle. Serhan has also appeared at some point, along with another girl. The music overhead dims and a voice asks Aaron/Erin back to pharmacy.

“We'd better get going,” says the girl after a time. “It's no fun anymore. Of course Chad would ruin everything.”

“Have a good time,” I say, moving my basket in front of me for something to do. They wave and traipse out, the girls holding up their skirts like princesses. Scarlett's the last to leave.

“I hope your brother feels better,” she says and then steps out to join her friends.

 

 

T
HE
WALK
home does wonders for steadying my nerves. My mom texts halfway through the trip to ask if I had any problems getting stuff. With an ironic snort, I reply that I picked up everything she had requested. She thanks me and tells me it's busy at the hospital, “a lot of drunk, hurt prom and college kids,” and they'll be a while. Dad's going to go finish the remaining time in his work shift, and she'll text me or Jimmy once they're done to retrieve her and Sam from the hospital.

As I'm nearly to my house, I see the place at the end has its lights on again. After a second, I distinguish the outline of a man at the front window, staring out, not moving. I can't make his expression so far away and backlit, but it gives me the creeps.

I hurry inside, irked at the world for being such a disturbing place, and take a lot of comfort in locking the door. I put away the supplies and then stand for a moment, not sure what to do with myself. I retrieve my schoolbag and sit on the couch, turning to the news again. It plays low and unobtrusive in the background, and I lie with my Spanish book propped on my stomach. A gentle rain starts, pattering lightly against the windows and roof. The combination of it all makes me doze.

I'm awakened by a pounding at the door.

Disoriented, I bolt upright, my heart thudding before I fully identify what woke me. The person hammers at the door again, and I grasp my book in both hands as protection as I creep toward the front window.

I look outside but can't get an angle to see who is at the door. As I pull back, I spot a silver Audi parked in the driveway through the dark and the rain.

With a great exhale, I throw open the door.

“You scared me half to death!” I tell Scarlett. “Get in, you're getting soaked.”

She steps inside, carefully staying to the old, dirty rug that never gets cleaned beyond a superficial swipe of the vacuum. She isn't that damp; there are dark spots speckling her dress, dark patches on the sheer fabric on her shoulders, and her hair is gleaming in places, but that's it. Her hair got the worst of it, falling out of its fancy updo in soaked bits. She seems slightly unsteady on her feet.

“Are you okay? Did something happen?” I ask. “Let me get you a towel.”

I go to the kitchen and fetch a hand towel from the drawer. I turn around and jump to see that she's followed me and is standing close behind. I hand her the towel, which has a reindeer print.

“Here, for your hair.”

She takes it, looks at it studiously, and then starts drying her hair with light pats.

“I took off my shoes,” she announces, pausing to point at her feet. I look down and see that, indeed, she is only in her bare feet.

“Thank you,” I say. “Are you okay, Scarlett? Why are you here? Where is Carolina?”

“She asked to go home,” she says, dropping her arms, the saturated towel dangling limply. The reindeer look a little drowned. “She thought she started coming down with something after we saw you at the store. She's kind of a hypochondriac.”

“I'm sorry,” I say, not sure how this connects with her ending up on my doorstep.

“No, I'm sorry,” she says, dropping heavily into a wooden chair by our pockmarked table. “For earlier… with Chad. I knew he was a bit of a prick, but I didn't think he'd grab you like that.”

“It wasn't your fault,” I reply, pulling up a chair to sit across from her. Our knees are nearly touching. She carefully sets the towel on the table, pulls a pin from her hair, and scratches her scalp. She pulls off the light wrap she had draped over her shoulders and tosses it carelessly behind her over the top of her chair. So now she's disheveled and sitting barefoot in my house. I try to swallow, but my mouth and throat have trouble functioning.

“I didn't even really want to go with them all,” she says. “Carolina and Serhan, sure, and Irina's fine, but she's friends with Gabby, and with Gabby comes Chad…. And it just wasn't fun, you know? Everything was built-up, and everyone started putting so much pressure on everything to be the best night of our lives…. They got a dumb band too,” she says suddenly. “Either get a great band, or get a DJ, you know?”

“Sure,” I say.

“And everything was just loud and crowded, and people were pushing each other, and all I kept thinking was, ‘I wonder what Audrey is doing right now?'”

I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. Especially considering I wasn't doing anything particularly interesting.

“It was unexpected, seeing you in the store,” she continues. “I keep thinking I see you places, and I then finally do, and I'm with Chad and Carolina…. I don't even see you in school that much anymore. It's like I miss you, but we never really hung out. Why's that?”

She slurs the last couple of sentences.

“Scarlett,” I say gently. “Are you drunk?”

“Noooo,” she says, shaking her head. “I promised my parents. All I've had is punch.”

I lean forward and sniff a little. It smells sweet, and a little like the stringent way my dad or mom sometimes smells after a beer or harder drink.

“I think that punch may have been spiked, Scarlett,” I say, still soft. It feels like a separate world in the kitchen, like this. The sound of the rain seems to draw a curtain around us.

Her head drops forward. “Oh, man. That's what Jacob meant when he said it would be better than I expected. That's why my head feels like this. I'm so stupid.”

“No, you aren't.” I'm surprised by the anger I feel at her statement. She slumps to the side and rests her forehead against the table.

“I am, I'm not smart like you. I always knew it. My older brother too, he's so smart. He skipped grades and got into Princeton. My parents know I'm stupid too.”

“Scarlett,” I say.

“I hate bringing home my grades to them,” she continues, still slurred. “I always have. When I got summer school, they weren't that angry. It was worse, disappointed. No.” Her brow furrows. “Resigned. Like they never expected better.”

“I'm sorry,” I say again, around a lump in my throat. I only have a second to wonder if, feeling as I do toward her right now, at this moment, I would have said yes when she asked me to help her cheat. She snaps upright before I get too deep into that thought, startling me into reaching out to brace her shoulders and keep her from toppling over.

“No!” she says earnestly. “You were right. It's like, you're always right. I didn't want to do the work. I was afraid of it, scared I couldn't figure it out, so I decided not to bother trying. I just wanted the easy way out. Summer school sucked, but at least I'm not behind as I would be if I didn't take it and learn the… the
stuff
.”

Her ability to articulate wavers, and she flaps a hand around to encompass everything meant by “stuff.”

I realize how close I am to her, my hands still folded over the dips of her shoulders between the sockets and her neck. I can feel the strength and
realness
of her muscles and bones under my fingers, especially as they bunch when she reaches up one hand to scrub over her eyes. Our arms drop at the same time, and I move back. My heart is racing.

“Let me drive you home,” I say. “I can't believe you drove here without getting into an accident.”

“I didn't know I was drunk,” she protests.

“Yes, well, that explanation wouldn't have held up with a cop. Or a ditch,” I say. I'm suddenly terrified for her. I want to touch her again. “You're lucky, Scarlett, this could have been very, very bad.”

She looks at me with that same look she gave me before, during our first session together. I can't put my finger on it. It's almost like affection, but with something more.

“You get these furrows when you're very serious, right here,” she says, reaching out. She gently smooths a finger over my forehead, between my eyebrows. She lightly traces a line, the pad of her finger soft against my skin.

I don't move. I barely breathe.

Scarlett leans forward, smile gone and face serious. The hand against my face moves so the palm is pressed against my cheek and her fingers slip into my hair.

Before she can move closer, before she can… I pull back.

“Scarlett,” I say, my voice shaking. “What are you doing? What about Carolina?”

Scarlett blinks rapidly but doesn't look away from me.

“She's not you,” she says. Unlike me, her voice is firm.

I'm overwhelmed by her, by her nearness, by the weight of everything she carries with her: a girlfriend who still believes in her and the potential of a kiss. I stand up and turn away, tears in my eyes for no reason I can explain. I'm trying to get them under control when the side door behind Scarlett and to my right opens and Jimmy enters.

I look at him. He pauses for a moment to take in the scene, hand still on the doorknob.

“What did you do to her?” he demands. In a few steps he's gone from the door and is in front of Scarlett. He looms above her in her prom dress and puts his fists on either side of the chair. “Well? What did you do to her?”

“Jimmy!” I yell. “Stop! What are you doing? She didn't do anything!”

Scarlett seems to be having difficulty processing this new development. She squints unresistingly up at him. She tries to push herself up toward him to respond but has trouble getting her hands positioned on the chair's arms.

“She's drunk,” Jimmy says in disgust, moving back from Scarlett. She falls back to the chair, knocking it back on the two back legs for a perilous moment before crashing forward.

“I know!” I say. “She didn't mean to be. The punch at prom was spiked.”

Jimmy looks at Scarlett like she's an idiot. Scarlett flushes and her jaw tenses.

“But why is she here?” Jimmy asks, not looking away from Scarlett, who attempts to drape her wrap again. Her left arm keeps missing the end.

“Forget it,” Scarlett says, staggering to her feet. The wrap finally gets on. “I'm leaving.”

“Let me drive you,” I say.

“No,” says Jimmy, in a voice that says he's not going to allow for an argument. “I will. We can talk about responsibility.”

Both Scarlett and I blanch.

“Seriously, Jimmy,” I start, but Scarlett pushes past him and skirts me to get to her shoes.

“No one has to drive me,” she says, muffled as she bends over to messily work her feet into her shiny heels.

“You can't—”

“I won't,” she says, interrupting my distressed objection, twisting her head to peer up at me. She straightens and shakes her wrap so it lies smooth and neat over her. She carefully adjusts the knot in front of her chest, putting herself back together piece-by-piece. “I'll walk. It's not that far, and it's not raining that hard.”

“What about your car?” Jimmy asks.

“I'll pick it up tomorrow.” She puts a hand on the doorknob, then pauses and looks back at me. “We'll talk then.”

“What will your parents say?” I ask. How will these faceless people react to her arriving home from prom drunk and vehicle-less?

She shrugs, a look of bitter humor twisting her mouth. “They probably won't be that surprised.”

The sound of the rain intensifies as she opens our sad excuse for a door, and she leaves. Jimmy goes through the kitchen and closes the side door, which he had left open. He takes a breath to preach at me, probably.

“Don't even,” I say and go to my room.

Jimmy leaves me alone, except to announce through my door fifteen minutes after it shuts that Mom texted him, and he's going to pick her and Sam up from the hospital. I say fine and get ready for bed while the house is still empty. Then I lie in bed, listening to first the silence, and then the murmurs and movements of my family as they come home and go to their beds for the remainder of the night.

For my own part, I don't sleep much, and when I do it's disjointed and uneasy. I'm by turns relieved and dissatisfied I stopped her before she could kiss me. (I'm almost positive that's what she was going to do. Wasn't it? What else could it have been? Why would she have touched my face, and cradled it if not as a prelude to a kiss?) After all, she is still officially with Carolina until she breaks up with her, and she was intoxicated. It would have been taking advantage of both to have let it continue. But how wonderful it would have been to have been kissed by Scarlett West!

I wake after a dream-fantasy reliving the moment in the kitchen turns into a dream where I wander around the house and show it to Scarlett, trying to shove things like dirty clothes and beer bottles under the couch or into a closet before she can see them. I can't get comfortable and flop around, seeking a restful position. I try to picture what she'll say tomorrow—no, today, I realize as I pull up my phone to check the time. It's almost 3:00 a.m. I put my phone away and punch up my pillow behind my head. When will she get here? Will she have broken up with Carolina, or will she ask me to wait until she can tell her in person? And then what? I imagine her hand, warm, strong, and soft, wrapped around mine. I think through where I'd like to go for dates and this soon lulls me to sleep.