Circle Nine (7 page)

Amanda pretends to be my friend, but I know she was sent here to ruin me. It has been days and days, so long I can’t count, but at least a month if not some other indiscernible length of time. Yesterday I thought she was beautiful, but today I think she is Medusa. Her face wrinkles and her smile-grimace is ugly. Ugliness did not exist before she arrived. I can’t help but resent her.

I am not certain Amanda is human. Some days I think she is a demon and this is a test. A test where she threatens to eat my soul and steal my love. I feel my soul deteriorating in her presence most of the time, then other times her sweet loveliness betrays me and restores my heart just enough that I can breathe, survive, and feel. And then it all happens again.

He brought me a birthday cake. Sam tells me it’s my birthday and that I am seventeen today. I don’t feel older. I don’t feel any different at all. I suspect he is lying, trying to get me out of my mood. The cake is four tiers high and layered with coconut bits and covered in tiny sparkling candles. I went to blow them out, and they wouldn’t blow out, and Amanda laughed and laughed, and I saw some of that ugliness she brought with her that never existed for me before. I didn’t make a fuss; I just stood and walked over to the old writing desk, and here I sit now, writing and sketching. My pencil sketches the same face each day. It looks like Amanda, but if Amanda were younger and softer and had more light in her eyes. My pencil has drawn this face ever since it began to visit me in my dreams at night. Sam and the girl talk and laugh behind me. I wish I had gotten some cake before I decided to be stubborn. Amanda has pushed her chair in and walks toward me. She places her hand on my shoulder.

Happy Birthday, Abby-cakes,
she whispers. My heart lifts just a little. She’s brought me a piece. I hold it on my lap, where it balances precariously against my knees. Amanda sits on the ground with her own legs bent so she can rest her arms on them and her chin on her arms. About half the cake is gone before I notice her staring at me curiously.

You really like it, don’t you?
she says wonderingly.
You’re not just pretending.

What do you mean?
I ask.
It’s delicious!

Then she leans toward me and whispers more quietly so Sam can’t hear:
Abby, it’s disgusting. It’s hard as a rock and starting to mold — a dog probably wouldn’t even eat it. Sam found it in the garbage bin behind the bakery downtown.

I am so angry that I spit out my last bite, which has indeed become hard and tasteless in my mouth. It’s as if her words changed the cake to sawdust like magic. I was never this emotional before Amanda arrived. I don’t know why she’s always trying to spoil things. Sam must see we’re not getting along, because he rushes to my side. The good thing about Amanda being here is that Sam has been more like his old self. Protective of me, caring.

What did she say to you?
he asks me, glaring at Amanda at the same time. I shake my head in response, and Amanda smiles wickedly. I refuse to play Amanda’s games, although it occurs to me briefly that if he thinks she’s being cruel, it’s maybe a way for me to get all of Sam back for myself. But I can’t look like a baby, and Amanda makes me so nervous that I’m sure if I play it wrong, I’ll color his reaction the wrong shade. He glares at Amanda again, and she just shrugs.

I can’t help but notice that her mean look is gone and there’s sadness in her eyes. She is staring at the cake as if it is something to be afraid of. I focus on her thinness, and the way her ribs protrude from her chest more prominently than her breasts. Then it occurs to me that the reason Amanda wants me to think the cake is old and moldy is probably because she
needs
to think the cake is old and moldy, so she won’t want to eat it. People like that, girls who give food so much power, need it more than the rest of us. They lust after it like some of us lust after the body. But they fear it, too, because it holds more power over them than they know how to handle. Food becomes a golden serpent instead of just nourishment.

I feel sorry for her. I know all about it because I knew someone else like that, once, someone who always had hunger in her eyes. I try to think who, but I can’t quite remember. I can’t think of anything past my headache. I think maybe I could reach it sometime, way in the back of my head, but not today. Not while it hurts like this. I look at Amanda and shudder because the eerie déjà vu of it all has crept its way under my skin. Sometimes I’m sympathetic to Amanda even though my brain cries out not to be. After all, she is taking Sam away from me. But something about her is so familiar that I have all these natural warm feelings for her. I meditate on this while my head pain slides away. I focus on what’s in front of me until the ache is gone altogether. It helps, doing that.

It’s OK,
I say quietly to her when Sam has gone, busying himself at the sink. I know why you can’t enjoy it. I savor the rest of my cake, letting my eyes slide over her sharp elbows and thin wrists one more time, then back to her face, where she is shaking her head as if to say,
You don’t know anything at all.
I stand up and walk away with my plate. This girl turns everything topsy-turvy. My stomach is sick from it.

Amanda bends over me, so close I can smell her.

I love her I hate her I want her I want to be her.

We are making dinner together.

Go over to the fridge,
I say,
and grab me a salmon fillet.
She’s too close. I don’t understand my complicated feelings toward her. Amanda reminds me of someone good and something bad. She makes me nostalgic for someone I can’t remember. It’s a feeling of happy pain. Sometimes I crave it, and sometimes it makes me glad I’ve forgotten.

Fridge!
She howls with laughter.
Salmon! You’re too funny, Abby.
She ruffles my hair condescendingly and prances away as I glower. She’s always teasing me, mocking me slightly, not enough to be malicious but just enough to sound imperious. I see Sam shoot her a warning look — he knows how she bothers me. I don’t like feeling like the outsider. But I lighten up as Amanda forgets the food, instead grabbing my arms and whirling me around the room with her as she sings. Amanda has the most beautiful voice; it fills the room, and it’s enough for me to understand what Sam sees in her.

Later, we are getting ready for bed when she gives me a funny card she made. It’s in the shape of a pig, folded like origami, and it has a poem inside along with a thin, woven bracelet.

A friendship bracelet,
she says, smiling.
Let me tie it on you. You ever been to California, Abby?
she asks absently as she’s tying.
It’s beautiful there, and always warm. That’s where I’m gonna go someday, when I save up the cash. California. It’s paradise on earth.

She seems almost like she’s talking to herself, but I nod anyway, letting myself wallow in her attention. She frowns over the bracelet; it’s far too big for my wrist, and she doesn’t want to cut it, so we drape it around my ankle instead. I step back and hold my foot out to admire the purple and orange and gold threads against my skin. Amanda is wonderful. Her beauty fills my heart.

But she isn’t always like this. Sometimes she screams and flies into rages, throwing things at Sam. She never throws things at me, but she is not above giving me cold stares and ignoring me when I speak to her. Other times, she cries all night.

Sam doesn’t see her as troubled, only moody and passionate.

It’s what I love most about her,
he tells me often.
It’s why I brought her home in the first place. She’s color to your gray.

I think it’s a cruel thing to say, but when I sulk, he says he doesn’t mean it that way, only that he thinks we’re both perfect and beautiful, and when I ask him if he thinks she is more beautiful, he only says that I shouldn’t worry because Amanda’s like a sister to him, since they have a lot in common. Then why do they go out together late at night, when they suppose I am asleep? Why has Amanda started taking Sam to Sid’s, instead of me? He never elaborates what exactly it is that ties them together that leaves me out. He must know, though, what it does to me, his leaving me for her.

The room is black magic around us. I feel his fingers prod my back gently, and when I turn, his neck is ready and welcome. I have craved this for weeks as if it could heal my soul of the horrible jealousy that nests inside me. I burrow into him. All of Sam’s angles fit into my curves; we are clay figures bent and posturing. I purr as he rubs his body on mine. Then we’re grabbing at each other all over and frantic as if we want to use our inadequate hands to touch whole bodies, every part at once. I grab a handful of his back. His skin is smooth and soft in my fingers. His flat, hard stomach muscles strain against my curvier ones. I try to push my body through his skin to meet his insides. I want to live inside of his skin, wrap him around me like a blanket.

We hunt and grab and hold and dig. I feel his tongue on my collarbone, my shoulder, then my breasts, my stomach, moving lower still. We are needy, desperate. Our sweat mixes, our shallow breathing combines. I rise toward him, keeping rhythm, pressing my hips into his. And when we are closer than ever before, as close as I think we can be and still be alive and separate, I look up into his eyes.

His eyes are filled with something that isn’t me. He stares past me. I don’t know where he is. When I see his face, I am stricken. It breaks our body magic. He notices and looks down.

What’s wrong?

You aren’t looking at me. You’re looking at someone else.

No, baby. There’s no one else.

He comes back down from over me and holds me, but it is too late. The magic is gone. He says all the right things in my ear, but I don’t believe any of them. Lies, all lies. I don’t believe a word he says, but I play a wicked game with myself anyway and pretend to trust him. Sometimes I wish I had someone here to tell me what to do. Someone other than Sam or Amanda, I mean.

He is sad.

I don’t want us to be separated.

Never, we will never be separated,
I reassure him, even though I don’t know anything for sure. I curl into myself. If we move an inch, everything that has happened just now will disappear. We are hanging on to each other by a slim, weak tendril, not the spiderweb kind that can hold anything but the spun-glass kind that snaps. Sammy calls this love, but it’s uglier than that.

My eyes dart around for Sam. She’s holding the picture close to my face, so close it fills my field of vision. I can’t do this today. I can’t handle her alone. I feel so anxious.

He’s not here,
she says.
He’s gone again. How does that feel, Abby?

I blink back tears. He left me here with her. Is that what she is to me? A babysitter, so he can get me off his hands?

Focus!
She shouts it at me violently. Her eyes are wild, and her hair is a tangled mess, black and furious. She looks paler and sicker than before, and bruises race up her arms. Yet she is still a vision of beauty. Next to her, I am ordinary. It is no wonder he rarely wants me.