Like Mandarin (20 page)

I clambered over the tangled legs of the angry crowd, to the aisle where Mandarin waited. “Took you long enough,” she said, grabbing my hand. Together, we rushed along the dim corridor toward freedom.

“Miss Taffeta Carpenter!”

My hand slipped from Mandarin’s. I caught the door before it shut between us, and turned to look.

Taffeta stepped out of the row of little girls. Her grin seemed to catch the light and send it back at me, like sunshine zinging off a car windshield. I couldn’t tell if she was sucking in, but it didn’t matter. She was beautiful. I watched the tilt of her head as she gazed out at the audience, scanning, searching.

And suddenly, she was looking straight at me.

I doubted she could see me all the way in the back of the room, where I hunkered like a fugitive. But then her grin faltered. Her eyes widened.

My fingers slid a few inches down the door.

“Come on, Gracey! Let’s go!”

Ducking my head, I followed Mandarin into the evening outside.

“Look,” Mandarin said. “Heat lightning.”

We stood in the parking lot of Benton High, on either side of her father’s truck. Far across the badlands, the evening sky faded into a gradient of flashing light. The whole earth seemed to rumble faintly, as if something were awakening.

“What causes it, anyway?” I asked as Mandarin stuck her key into the driver’s-side door.

“Dragons,” she said.

There was a shudder of wind right as she said it. Wildwinds. Or maybe not. I pulled the cuffs of my cardigan over my hands and shivered. Mandarin reached across and unlocked my door. I hopped in and slammed the door behind me.

“So … I see your dad let you use his truck again.”

“It’s my truck now.” Mandarin patted the steering wheel.

“Really?”

“I still got to pay him back. But how’d you think we were going to leave town in the first place?”

The wind quaked against the sides of the truck, and the heat lightning seemed to crackle into the cavity of my chest. I suddenly became aware of the tiniest details: the flimsy fabric between my hands and my thighs, the expansion of my lungs, the way my dry tongue seemed to fill my whole mouth.

Is this it?

This very night? Without any warning at all. Would she? Of course she would—it was just like her. I commanded my heart:
Careful, now
.

“Leave town? You mean … Now? Like, this is it?”

Mandarin stared at me. Her face was dangerous. “What if it was?”

I tried as hard as I could to hold her stare. But fear won. I dropped my eyes. Just for a second, but it was enough.

Knowingly, Mandarin nodded.

But she didn’t look angry. Only resolute—maybe even self-satisfied. Probably because I’d proved her right. Silently, she thrust the key into the ignition. The engine vibrated but didn’t start. She tried again. Nothing.

“So where are we really going?” I asked when I found my voice.

“You’ll see.”

Mandarin twisted the key a third time, pumping the accelerator. At last the engine grunted to life. She slammed her foot down again and the truck shot onto the road.

Despite my shame, it didn’t take long for the drive to infect me. We were miles from home, halfway across the county. The radio sputtered out classic rock. Shadows the color of ripe plums pockmarked the landscape. I saw the occasional glow of far-off house lights, like solitary fireflies stuck fast in the darkness. The truck’s windows were rolled down, and the wind agitated our hair like playful fingers.

I felt ultra-conscious, hyperalert. And for the first time, I began to feel like maybe I
could
leave with Mandarin, just maybe. If this was what it entailed, I really could.

Maybe if the Scotsman truck didn’t rattle so much as Mandarin sped down the old highway. I could hardly imagine it taking us all the way to the coast.

“What a fucking gorgeous night!” I exclaimed. “On a night like this, doesn’t it feel like anything’s possible?”

“Anything,” Mandarin replied.

She watched as I pulled a cigarette from the pack on the dash. I stuck it into my mouth, then realized it wasn’t lit, and that I didn’t know how to smoke, anyway. I returned it to the pack. We crested a hill, and the wind gusted against the sides of the truck like sheets swinging from a clothesline. I caught a whiff of manure.

“Oh, gross.” Mandarin wrinkled her nose and reached for the crank handle. “Roll up your window, quick.”

I obliged, momentarily disenchanted.

The truck rumbled down the slope of the hill and into a vast, flat valley. Outside my window, the landscape grew rockier, thousands of years of geology sculpted by wildwinds and ancient seas. Because of the darkness, I didn’t recognize the terrain until I noticed a smear of light ahead.

“Wait,” I said. “That’s Washokey. Isn’t it?”

“Bingo,” Mandarin replied.

“Are we going back?” I tried to hide the disappointment in my voice. Nothing would kill my exhilaration more quickly than going home.

Mandarin checked her side mirror. “Eventually.”

“Well then, where are we going
now
?”

She didn’t answer. But then, unexpectedly, she swerved off the highway.

I held back a shriek as the truck bumped and banged for several yards before grinding to a stop. Although I hadn’t noticed them from the road, now I saw all the parked cars and pickup trucks. Beyond them, the land dropped away in some kind of canyon or gorge.

“We’re here,” Mandarin announced.

“Where’s here?”

“The quarry.”

“The quarry?” I had never been there before, though I’d heard of it. “What’s at the quarry?”

Mandarin flicked on the overhead light, making it hard to see out the windows. She reached across me and unlatched the glove compartment.

“What’s at the quarry?” I asked again as she pulled out a black cosmetic bag. She withdrew a compact, flipped it open, and handed it to me. I glanced at the brand name on the back of it: Femme Fatale Cosmetics, Inc. Had she taken it from my house, or bought it from Momma? I didn’t want to ask.

“Washokey’s in the quarry,” she said. “Washokey, in the flesh.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

She handed me a black eyeliner pencil, then a tube of mascara. I cradled everything in the folds of my dress.

“Don’t just stare at everything. Put it on. We’re gonna whore you out tonight.”

I paused, then laughed uncertainly. “What are we
really
doing?”

“I’m being serious. I know you’d like to meet a guy, and this is the best place I know to catch one. Besides the bar, of course.” She handed me a makeup brush.

“But …”

But what?
I knew I couldn’t protest after I’d worked so hard to be like Mandarin. I’d told myself a million times I’d follow her lead anyplace, any which way, if only she’d agree to lead me. “It’s just …,” I began again. “You know I’ve never …”

“Obviously.”

“That’s not what I meant. I’ve never even
kissed
a guy.”

“No big deal. Although …” Mandarin looked at me, her expression intense. “Do you want to practice first?”

I stared at her a little too long. Then she laughed, and I looked away.

“You’ll be fine!” she said. “Quit worrying. Just ditch that idiotic bumblebee sash.”

The story behind the Washokey quarry was another one of those local legends, like the Virgin Mary rock, documented in self-published books available at Wyoming souvenir shops.

The quarry, so the story went, had been carved sixty years earlier by a single obsessive-compulsive man with a desire to dig. What he’d expected to find wasn’t clear. Some people claimed diamonds. Others said gold, oil, or dinosaur bones. After a decade and a half of digging, the man suffered a heart attack. It took weeks for his son to find his body, still propped atop his shovel. Since he had never found whatever substance he’d sought, he was said to haunt the quarry forever after, et cetera, et cetera.

All his work had been futile, anyway. The only substance worth mining in the Washokey Badlands Basin was boring old bentonite—mineral rubbish used as a filler in candy and lipstick. Probably including Frisky Flamingo and What in Carnation.

Nature had since reclaimed the quarry. Because it collected rainwater and winter melt, it served as a sort of badlands oasis. Its edges were crowded with cottonwoods and scraggly shrubs. The center was perfect for beer bashes.

Or so I’d heard.

Music echoed off the walls as Mandarin and I descended the hand-carved steps running down the quarry’s side. Shadows cast by the twin bonfires flickered all around us. I concentrated on placing my ill-fitting high heels on rocks I hoped wouldn’t dislodge, willing myself to look at my feet instead of the people below.

Once we reached the bottom, Mandarin led me through the crowd. Everybody from school was there. Or at least, all the upperclassmen. I glimpsed a few freshmen and sophomores and was thankful Alexis & Co. seemed to be missing, though I did see Brandi Shelmerdine. I recognized Kate Cunningham, and Peter Shaw, and Joshua Mickelson, and Tag Leeland, and other juniors and seniors from homeroom.

It was so
bizarre
that parties like this existed—and had always existed. All these everyday faces congregating and having the time of their lives, without my even knowing.

There were strangers, too. “Kids from other towns,” Mandarin told me. “They come all the way from Worland and Thermopolis and Benton. Our quarry’s the best.”

I wondered if I should feel proud.

Everybody stared as Mandarin walked by. But how could they not? Her skin looked flawless in the dark, her hair impossibly black. The firelight made her hazel eyes flash. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d crouched on all fours and roared, her true primal self revealed.

Meanwhile, I clung to her finger as if it were a twig on a cliffside, the only thing anchoring me above a bottomless pit. Without the sash, my dress looked like a skanky nightgown, swishing around my bare legs. I tried to saunter, but my heels snagged on the uneven ground. Every time I blinked, Mandarin’s mascara threatened to fasten my eyes shut.

I felt like at any minute, somebody would call me out: “What is
she
doing here?”

It seemed like forever until we emerged from the far sideb of the crowd. Mandarin pulled me closer. “Want me to get you a beer?”

I’d never tasted beer before. I’d never even had the chance to. Momma didn’t keep alcohol in the house, and though I suspected that Alexis & Co. had sampled their share, they’d never invited me to partake.

“Only if you’re having one,” I said.

“Maybe just one. Remember, I’m driving. I’m a responsible drinker. But we’re here for you. Get drunk! Live it up!”

I smiled weakly.

Mandarin nudged me through the space between the two bonfires. For a second, my entire body seemed to erupt into flames. On the other side sat the kegs, so old and dented they looked like discarded oil barrels. A lengthy line of people trailed from each. I began walking toward the back of the lines, but Mandarin caught my arm.

“I need some brewskies, boys,” she announced. “Who’ll pour?”

Instantly, three eager guys each filled a red plastic cup from the three respective kegs, practically slobbering with disbelief that Mandarin Ramey had deigned to speak to them. The two guys who finished first shoved their cups toward us. The third guy glanced at his cup, then took a swallow and wandered away.