The Princesses of Iowa (33 page)

The car stops. Headlights in the rain. Footsteps crunch on gravel.

“Paige? Paige Sheridan?”

He’s coming, oh my God he’s coming down the hill, don’t find me don’t find me don’t find me.

But he did find me and his hands were softer and his voice was softer. “Paige? Oh my God, Paige, what happened?” And it wasn’t the police at all; it was Ethan. He helped me up the hill and put me in his car and I was shivering, so he wrapped me in his coat and I tried to make a joke but it didn’t work, my words were wrong, and he tucked a blanket around my legs. “Do you need to go to the hospital? Oh my God, Paige.” He pushed the hair out of my face — it was wet and heavy but his hands were light. “You’re bleeding! What happened? Should I take you to the emergency room?”

“No!” What would my parents say, what would everyone say, I’m a princess, I can’t go to the hospital. I was drunk, it was an accident. It’s a bad dream, it’s a memory, it’s not happening, it’s a dream. It was an accident. Another accident. When will you learn? What would my parents say? They’d never forgive me. They’d send me away again, forever. “No,” I said again. “Please, just take me home.”

He clicked my door closed so quietly and went around to the driver’s side door, slid into the car slowly, like he was worried that I’d be afraid but I wasn’t afraid. Not of him. “Are you sure?” he asked softly.

I nodded, tucked in his coat. It smelled good, warm and safe, and I saw the stars through the window as the rain stopped.

“How can you drive?” I asked, turning to look at him.

He frowned, confused.

I pulled the blanket tighter around me. “You’re a freshman.”

“God,” he said, and I was struck by how pretty his voice was, how much like warm syrup. “I’m a senior. You know that, Paige.”

I spent some time with that, thinking about it and maybe dozing off a little, and then waking up with an answer, because I know that already and he can’t know I’m drunk I’m not drunk. “Right.” I nodded wisely, my eyelids heavy and my aching muscles finally beginning to unwind a little bit.

After a long silence, he spoke hesitantly. “Paige,” he said, “may I ask — what happened —”

“No,” I said softly.

“Okay,” he said. “That’s okay.”

He drove and I drifted in and out of sleep. “Keep talking,” I murmured. His voice was an anchor, keeping me safe in the warm car, keeping me out of the rain.

The drive seemed to last forever. “. . . went to Perkins with Shanti . . .” I heard him say, and I thought about how nice it would be to snuggle up against Jake, to lean myself into the warmth of his chest and arms.

“. . . dropped her off . . . and thought I saw you running . . .”

Stars through the window, the window cold and the moon. My dad told me about stars. The Seven Sisters, also known as the Pleiades, are a sign of autumn. We saw them from the boat in Minnesota. Some Native American cultures used them as an eye test; if you could see the two stars in the double-star system, you had good vision.

“. . . eyes were playing tricks on me, but then I saw . . .”

Uncle Roger is from Wisconsin, and he told me that Cassiopeia is a giant
W
for Wisconsin. The ancient Greeks said it was a queen who was tied to a chair, doomed to spend half the year dangling helplessly upside down as punishment. What was she punished for? I couldn’t remember.

I don’t know when we stopped driving. I vaguely remember telling him about the side door that opened almost directly into the back stairs. I struggled to stay awake.

An arm around my waist walked me up to my room, and he turned his back as I stepped out of my ruined dress. It was torn and stained, muddy and wet.

I climbed into boxers and a tank top. “Don’t leave,” I whispered, tugging on his sleeve.

He glanced up at the clock on my bedside table. “It’s two in the morning.”

I held on to his sleeve and forced my eyes to stay open. “Please. Stay.”

He stayed.

He sat on the edge of my bed, holding my hand and telling me stories as I slept and woke and slept again. At one point I woke up and his voice had stopped. He was stretched out on the very edge of my bed, as far from me as possible. He looked precarious, like he might just roll off at any second. I pulled his arm toward me, tucked myself under it, and slept.

The next time I woke up I was aching all over, throbbing headache, scabbed and torn feet — but feeling oddly peaceful. I slowly opened my eyes.

“Paige?”

I was alone in my bed, no safe anchor on the edge. I blinked, and my mother’s head came into focus from the door. “It’s almost noon, sleepyhead!” she trilled. “We’re off to the club for lunch. I’d ask if you wanted to join us, but it looks like you had a little too much fun last night!”

“Mmrpf,” I said.

“I had to swing by Stella’s this morning and noticed your car in the driveway. I’m glad you didn’t drive last night, honey! Very mature!”

“Thanks,” I mumbled.

“Want us to drive it home for you? Miranda can do it.”

“I guess.”

My sister pushed past her, striding into the room. “Are you hungover?” Her voice dripped with disgust.

“So, no on lunch?”

“No.” My voice was like pebbles under a bike tire. I coughed and cleared my throat. “I have to, uh, work on the homecoming float today, anyhow.”

My sister looked down at me. “You’re repulsive.”

“Now, Miranda,” my mother said, “you know as well as I do that the homecoming parade is very important to this town. Helping with the float is a community service.”

Miranda sputtered, seeming torn between several different scathing remarks. Finally, she just huffed and stalked out of the room.

“Oh, dear,” my mother said, looking after her, “I just don’t understand what’s not to like about homecoming.”

I didn’t make it out of my bed for another hour after that. When I finally dragged myself into the shower, I found dark-blue and pale-green bruises peeking up at me from my arms and legs. Every muscle in my body hurt. I huddled under the hottest possible water, scrubbing at myself with a rough loofah as if I could slough off all my memories and start over with a new skin, a tougher skin, a smarter skin.

The day was cool, almost chilly, punctuated by an unsteady drizzle. I felt restless, and a little scared, like I didn’t want to stop moving. I still owed Mr. Tremont a story for creative writing, but I was afraid of facing the blank page. I was afraid of facing myself and my memories. I would study. I was behind where I wanted to be with my physics paper anyhow, I’d been so caught up in Mr. Tremont’s class.

I stared at my physics notes for a half hour before giving up. Nothing made sense, and the words just hurt my head. I got a glass of water and went back to bed for the rest of the day.

Late in the afternoon I woke to the ringing of my phone. It took me a moment to place the sound and then another to remember where my purse was. I rolled to the side of the bed and grabbed for the strap peeking out from under it. There was a clattering metallic noise as everything dumped out onto the floor and rolled under the bed. “Goddammit,” I muttered, patting my hand around for the flat shape of my phone. When I finally found it, I didn’t recognize the number and stared at it for a moment before answering. “Hello?”

“Paige?”

My breath caught in my throat. “Ethan?”

“Yeah. Hi.”

I felt myself smiling into the phone, and then I remembered the night before.
Shit.
“Hi.” I fell back against my pillows and closed my eyes.

“Uh . . . how are you?”

What had I told him last night? What had I said? Memories came to me in flashes: Ethan crouched next to me, backlit by headlights; the way his car smelled, like mint and warmth and spice; his reassuring weight on the edge of my bed. I thought of how I must have looked to him — pathetic and wasted — and I flushed with shame.

“I’ve been better,” I finally said, cringing.

His voice was soft. “Are you okay? Really?”

The concern in his voice made me anxious. His words came back to me:
I’ve never felt a connection like this with anyone else.
. . . And where had that gotten him? I couldn’t let him keep caring, because he’d only get hurt. I wasn’t the person he thought I was. I couldn’t be. I’d made my choice, and I chose Jake. I wasn’t a writer, I was a fucking drunk. What had Lacey called me?
A dumb slut
? I was a dumb slut, not a writer. I didn’t belong at a poetry reading or writing in a café; I belonged in the smoky basement of some party surrounded by people I hate.

“I’m fine.”

“About last night . . .”

“Thanks for bringing me home,” I said quickly. “You didn’t have to do that.”

There was a pause. “Of course I did.”

“It was very nice of you, but I could have walked. I was okay.”

Another pause.

I pulled at a string in my quilt. “I should —”

He interrupted me. “Look, I . . . I fell asleep. . . . I didn’t mean to, but I did. When I woke up . . .” He paused. I held my breath, squeezing my eyes shut. “You had curled up beside me, tucked yourself under my arm, and I thought . . .”

I didn’t breathe. It was quiet between us, the long expectant pause of waiting to hear the thing you want the most. I swallowed heavily. “I was . . . very drunk.”

Silence.

“I have to go. I’ll see you around, okay?” Without waiting for an answer, I hung up the phone and threw it across the room.

On Monday morning I was drained like the morning after a night spent sobbing. I drove to school in a daze, not even bothering to stop and buy coffee. The air pushed against me like water, and I had a hard time hearing. I swam against the stream of people and headed to class. The week leading up to homecoming was designated “Spirit Week,” with a different stupid theme for every day. Apparently it was Pajama Day. In the hallways, girls in pigtails and slippers whispered and pointed, and Lacey limped past me with a blank stare.
You’re done,
her eyes said, but I didn’t even care.

Halfway to history, the hallway traffic stopped moving, and the normal morning chatter and gossip stopped with a gasp. “What’s going on?” asked the girl next to me.

I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

Voices spoke in a jumbled chorus. “I can’t believe it — Who did it? — It’s true, you know — It’s awful — It’s wrong — Did you hear? — Stonewall-type shit.” Curious now, I pushed through the crowd to see for myself.

Sprayed across a classroom door in angry red letters, sharp like lightning, was one word:

FAGGOT.

The crowd swirled around me, shocked and whispering, people edging themselves into the drama as if to elevate themselves by proximity. Planning to lay claim to the celebrity of first witness, most horrified, most outraged. Boys scoffed and girls gasped and in my head voices from the weekend suddenly threatened to overwhelm me.

Everything blurred at the edges, and the people grew hazy around me, until the only things that remained clear were the jagged letters across Mr. Tremont’s door.

Halfway through first period, the PA interrupted Mr. Silva’s endless drone. “Excuse the interruption, Mr. Silva,” the voice said. As always, everyone turned to look at the speaker box.

“YES?” Mr. Silva shouted. He didn’t trust technology.

“Is Paige Sheridan in class?”

Twenty heads swiveled to look at me. Lacey gave me a huge, delighted smile. “YES!” Mr. Silva shouted.

“Could you please send her down to the office?”

“NO PROBLEM,” Mr. Silva yelled, and gestured to me, then to the door. I gathered up my books and hurried through the class’s stares and whispers into the silent hallway.

In the office they were ready for me. “Go right in,” the secretary said, sounding sympathetic. I clutched my books to my chest and stepped hesitantly into Dr. Coulter’s office.

“Paige,” he said, “come right in! Have a seat!”

There were two chairs in front of the principal’s desk. Coach Ahrens was already sitting in one; I took the other. My mind was running through a thousand possible reasons I could be here. Just a homecoming thing, I told myself. Princess business. But of course I knew Coach wouldn’t be there on princess business, and my heart pounded in my throat.

“It has, uh, come to our attention,” Dr. Coulter began, “uh, events on Friday night . . .”

Oh God, the fight at the bonfire! Were they going to kick Jake off the team? “Nothing happened!”

Dr. Coulter blinked. “Well, uh, we’ve had reports of an altercation between Jacob Austin and —”

“Nothing happened,” I said again. Fighting fell under the zero-tolerance policy; if Jake got dinged on both drinking and fighting, he’d be off the team for the rest of the year. His dad would kill him. “They were just messing around. You know how boys are.”

“Uh . . . huh. Well, we have various, uh, reports about the bonfire . . .”

“Seriously, it was nothing.” I tried my best to find the innocent princess face that Lacey always used in order to get Dr. Coulter to do whatever she asked. “There was a misunderstanding but it was fine.”

The principal looked at Coach Ahrens. “Okay, so what about afterward? There was a party. Was there drinking?”