September Girls (31 page)

Although the beach wasn’t crowded, there were more people than I’d expected, more than there usually were after dark. Teenagers were milling around here and there, and although no one seemed to be actually talking it all felt sort of convivial, like we were at a party where everyone had known each other so long that they didn’t feel the need to speak to each other. There was a certain air of celebratory finality in the air—that Roman candle mix of sadness and oh-fuck-it-let’s-get-drunk. I figured it was other people’s last night here too.

Even without talking there were noises everywhere. Up and down the beach I could hear the hissing crackle of beer cans popping and the crunching of lighters as a couple of girls in hoodies flicked pointlessly, sprawled together on an overturned lifeguard chair. By the dunes, a group of guys were setting off sputtering, barely-there firecrackers so lame that their laughter was louder than the pop of the rockets, and elsewhere a clumsy Bob Marley on an acoustic guitar wandered listlessly into the night. And at the edge of the surf, a couple was making out with such enthusiasm that I thought I could hear their slurping over the rumble of the waves. I had to say good-bye.

I wasn’t surprised anymore at how easy it was to stumble upon her; by then I had learned how this place worked. If you wanted to be found, you would be found. And then there she was, just sitting ten feet behind the tide, her knees folded to her chest, her arms wrapped around her shins, and her hair flapping in the breeze, which was everywhere now. I sat down next to her.

“Hey,” I said. She looked over at me and I almost doubted it was her; she looked so different. Her hair was darker, her jaw was broader, her eyes deeper set and now tilted downward in a new slant. Even though it was hard to tell in the moonlight, I could see that they were darker too, had lost their unearthly glow as well as most of the eyeliner. She looked smaller and more human. But it was DeeDee. She was transforming, just a girl now. I decided that I would choose to remember her just like this.

“Hey,” she said.

I had sort of expected something more from her after what had happened a week ago. But “hey” was okay too.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“Oh, nothing,” she said.

“We’re leaving tomorrow,” I said.

“I know.”

“I knew you would. You’ve always been a know-it-all. I guess you haven’t lost your connection to the cosmic font of all useless knowledge.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t know most of the important stuff. There must be two different fonts, one for the stuff that actually makes a difference and one for stupid things like weather patterns and time zones and names of actresses on soap operas. Do I have any clue about the meaning of life or how to get a stain out? Of course not.”

“It always goes like that.”

“Still. It’s not nothing. When you go on
Millionaire
, be sure to make me your phone-a-friend.”

“You’d have to give me your number first. Is that show even still on?”

“It comes on really late at night,” she said.

We didn’t have a lot of time. With no time for small talk it was typically annoying that it was all we could manage. I wanted something more now.

“DeeDee,” I said.

“Yeah?” she said. “Let me have it.”

“I’m leaving tomorrow. I’m probably not going to see you again.”

“I know,” she said. “I’m going to miss you.”

“So let’s not waste our time talking about stupid-ass shit.”

“Okay,” she said. “I always thought he was overrated anyway. That Meredith person’s just as good.”

“Look, I love you, okay?” I said. There, I’d said it. I hadn’t realized I was going to say it until it came out of my mouth. “I just want you to know that. It’s just, like, important to me to say.”

DeeDee didn’t react. She looked at her hands.

“I know you do,” she said. “Thank you.”

“I just thought—,” I said, but DeeDee wasn’t finished.

“But, listen, do you really? I mean, I know you do in a way. But in another way you don’t. I mean, you can’t, really. You don’t know the first thing about me.”

I felt a catch in my throat. “How can you say that? DeeDee, look at me. I love you so much. How can I not? I know you so well. How can you think that?”

“Because I don’t know the first thing about myself,” she said. “I’m not sure if it’s because I’m different now or because I didn’t really know before or what. But I woke up this morning and saw myself in the mirror and—well, you know. It was like I needed to learn a new word for
mirror.
I had to look it up in the dictionary to make sure it wasn’t the same as
window
or
balustrade.
It was so weird. Who am I? I mean, really?”

“You’re DeeDee,” I said. And then she finally turned and looked at me for the first time since I’d sat down. Her cheeks were streaked with mascara. Her eyes were sharp and probing and she regarded me with a concerned squint that seemed nearly wounded. I wondered if I had said something wrong.

“No,” she said. At first she sounded sad, and then she turned angry. “Of course I’m not. DeeDee. God. That’s not even my real name.”

“Sure it is,” I said. “It’s what everyone calls you, so it’s your name.”

“That’s not my name,” she said, more firmly now. “It’s just something I called myself. Before. It doesn’t seem right anymore. And it’s
not
my name. It never was.”

“I didn’t know you felt that way,” I said.

“That’s exactly what I mean. There’s a lot of things you don’t know about me. There were a lot of things you didn’t know about me to start with, and there’s even more you don’t know about me now that I’m different. DeeDee. It was never my name. None of us remember our real names. We come here without names. We choose our own names. They’re not our names. They’re just a pose.”

“It’s still your name,” I said. “It’s still who you are. You can be whoever you want to be. You can just decide. This is America.”

She was looking at the moon now, and sort of talking to herself. “It just sounded pretty. Exotic. The night I got here, Kristle gave me a towel and some old clothes and showed me how to work the remote, and we watched TV and thought of names together. It’s strange not to have a name, so you have to come up with one quickly or you start to go a little crazy. What were the other ones we thought about? I can’t remember. Jenuvia. Carlotta. Oh—Francie. I liked that one. Have you ever been to France?”

“Yes,” I said. “We went on a field trip for French class in eighth grade. I had to room with Andrew Carlton and Ian Wang. It was completely terrible.”

“Really? I hear it’s nice. I always wanted to go. I saw this thing on the Travel Channel and it seemed great. Was the airplane at least fun?”

“Why does this matter?” I asked.

“See? You don’t know the first thing about me. Of course it matters.”

I touched her leg, and she jerked away, but only for a second before she relaxed and bowed her head to my shoulder. She put her arm around me and I could feel her breast against my side, and her breath in her chest in time with the waves.

Right before we had sex, right before we’d broken the curse, she’d asked if it really mattered why I felt the way I did. At the time I didn’t know the answer. It could have been magic, some kind of watery voodoo. Or it could have just been the way the light was hitting her eyes when I first saw her. It could have been some magical pheromone drawing me to her, something in that song, or something purely chemical. I didn’t even know her that well.

There were a million things I loved about her. But none of them were the real reason I loved her. I loved her just because I did. Because we’d had this summer together. So maybe I
was
under some kind of spell. Maybe, technically speaking, I wasn’t in love with her. There was actually no difference as far as I was concerned.

Because isn’t the whole point of loving someone—being in love with someone—that you understand her as well as you understand yourself? Isn’t loving someone almost like becoming that person, and them becoming you? I mean, isn’t that the point, at least in a way?

That’s what I had thought before, or what I had been led to believe. I didn’t know anymore.

Do you really know anyone? My father had thought he had known my mother, and he had been totally wrong. I had thought I had known her, and it was only now that I understood that I would never know her at all. Did that mean we had never loved her?

No. She was my mom. I had loved her and I still loved her and I would continue to love her even if she was a crazy person with tattoos all over her body, a person who was fundamentally, eternally unknowable. Maybe that made me love her more, even.

“I love you no matter what,” I said. “I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t.”

DeeDee squeezed me. “I know you do,” she said. “And I know you wouldn’t have.”

“I wasn’t even doing it because of the curse. I mean, I wanted to help you and everything. I’m glad I was able to. But that wasn’t why I did it.”

“I know,” she said. “Same, basically.”

And then, “Listen, Sam: You’re the best person I ever met. Even if you seem a little bitchy at first. You are so good in every way. I may not know the first thing about you, but I know that much.”

“I think you’re the only person who knows it, then,” I said.

“No,” she said. “Jeff knows it. Kristle knows it. Knew it, I mean. I keep forgetting that Kristle’s gone now. I wonder where she is. She was really nice to me. She treated me like a sister—I mean, a real sister. I’ll miss her.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“You should never be sorry for anything,” DeeDee said. “And I love you too. Of course I love you. You’ve given me all this.” She fluttered her hand in the air to indicate I don’t know what. It was a gesture that was both expansive and dismissive.
Everything, nothing, what’s the difference?
Or something like that. “I mean, this is all thanks to you.”

She turned and looked at me. “I love you,” she said. “But I can’t love anyone right now. Except Kristle, maybe, and she’s gone. I can’t love anyone for a while. Maybe forever. You knew that. And I’m going home. You knew that, too. You knew all of this would happen.”

She was right. I had known everything. I don’t know when I had known it, or how I had known it, but I had known it, and I hadn’t cared. Maybe I had known it the first time I saw her; who could say? It had been worth it of course.

“Yes,” I said. “I knew all of that. I love you anyway.”

“I know,” she said. “And I love you for that.”

“When do you go?” I asked. “Like, tonight? I actually thought you would have been gone already.”

“Oh,” she said. “I can go whenever I want, I guess. I can do whatever I want now. The curse is, like, totally broken. For me, I mean. I’m free. I’m my own woman.” She forced a thin smile and pulled her fingers through her hair all the way down to the ends. “It feels totally weird. I don’t know anything except this dump. Everything’s different now. What’ll become of me?”

“Yeah,” I said. I didn’t understand. “I guess. So what will you do?”

“I think I’ll stay on through the winter,” she said. “It would be strange to leave right away. And winter is nice here. It’s peaceful and the colors are totally different.”

“Then what?”

“Then I guess—I don’t know. I guess I’ll buy a car or something. And just get out of here. I’m going home.”

“A car?” Now I was really confused. “Why do you need a car? I thought you were going—you know. Back down there.”

“That’s what I thought too,” DeeDee said. “That’s what we all thought. But home isn’t where I thought it was. We got everything all wrong. That’s where we came from, yeah. It was home once, or a kind of home. I don’t know if a place like that can really be a home, actually. It’s wet and very cold and no one’s particularly friendly. One way or another, it’s not home anymore. There’s nothing down there for me, or for any of us. Not anymore.” She paused, considered something, and amended herself: “I mean any of
them.
But I can leave here now.”

“I thought—,” I started.

“I know.” DeeDee cut me off. “Me too. We were just wrong. These stories—they get passed down; they get retold. We don’t even know who started them. Our memories—their memories—they’re all fucked up anyway. Things get very confused. A legend can be wrong. Actually, I think they’re wrong more often than not. Or at least wrongish. I guess.” I was still sort of unsure what it all meant, but she seemed to be struggling with the notion herself, so I didn’t press her.

“But the legend was right, too; it was just confused,” she continued. “I can go home now; it’s just not the same home I came from. I don’t know where I’ll go. But wherever I go—that’ll be home, right? I can have whatever home I want. I can be anyone. It could be anywhere.”

“It could be somewhere in the suburbs,” I said. “Somewhere north, following I-95. Nearish to me. And you could be DeeDee.”

“It could be,” DeeDee said. “And I could be. You never know. But I wouldn’t count on it.”

“I know,” I said. “I wasn’t.”

“I just wish I knew my real name,” she said. “That seems like it would make everything easier, somehow.”

I didn’t reply. I didn’t care what she said. Her real name was DeeDee.

“You know,” she said. “We have this legend. It’s different from the other legend. It’s related, I guess, but it’s its own legend too. Maybe even older than ours, if that’s actually possible.”

“What is it?”

“It has to do with a mirror.”

I tried not to show any trace of recognition or surprise, but she was tilting her head and smirking a little bit, staring right into me. “You know,” she said. “A mermaid’s mirror. Total old-magic shit. Very powerful.”

“Oh,” I said carefully. “What does it do?”

“It’s hard to say. There are different versions of the story. And legends can be wrong. But they say that if you find it, you’ll see the person you really are, the truest version of yourself. The one that really matters.”

I decided it was better not to mention the mirror I’d given to Kristle. Why bring it up? I wasn’t sure if I believed in this kind of magic anyway. It seemed too easy. I had looked at the mirror myself, and it’s not like I’d had some huge revelation. Although maybe I just needed to listen harder.