Final Girls(33)

It’s not a question.

It’s a dare.

All of a sudden, I feel like we’re replaying yesterday afternoon. Back in the kitchen, Sam watching, me inexplicably wanting to impress her.

“Sure,” I say.

I take another Xanax, followed by more grape soda. Instead of chewing hers, Sam gestures for the soda bottle. She takes two hearty swallows, finishing up with a quick belch.

“You’re right. That does make it go down easier.” Again, she holds out her hand. “Third time’s the charm.”

This time, we take the pills simultaneously, passing the soda quickly between us. All that Xanax has left a bitter spot on my tongue, which is made even more obvious by the sticky fuzz of grape soda spreading over my teeth. I laugh at the ridiculousness of the situation. We’re just two massacre survivors downing Xanax. Lisa would not have approved.

“Are we cool?” Sam says.

Soft morning light slants from the kitchen window onto her face. Although she’s made sure to put on makeup, the sunlight exposes tiny webs of wrinkles starting to form around her eyes and the corners of her mouth. They draw my gaze the same way I’m drawn to a van Gogh, always looking for the glimpses of canvas hidden between the dollops of paint. That’s the real Sam I’m looking for. The woman behind the tough-girl mask.

The glimpse I get now is darkly alluring. I see someone who’s still trying to comprehend what’s become of her life. I see someone who’s lonely and sad and uncertain about everything.

I see myself, and the recognition makes my body hum with relief that there’s someone out there just like me.

“Yes,” I say. “We’re cool.”

The Xanax kicks in fifteen minutes later while I’m in the shower. My body softens in increments, feeling like the shower’s steam is seeping into my pores, swirling inside of me, filling me up. I get dressed as if on a cloud—floating and lightweight, drifting down the hall where Sam waits by the door, also floating, her eyes smiling.

“Let’s go.” Her voice is muffled, soft. A long-distance call.

“Where?” I ask, sounding like someone else. Someone happier and carefree. Someone who’s never heard the name Pine Cottage.

“Let’s go,” Sam says again.

So I go, grabbing my purse before following her into the hallway, the elevator, the lobby, the street, where sunlight shimmers down on us, golden and warm and radiant. Sam is radiant, too, with sun-orange highlights in her hair and face glowing pink. I try to pause at each door we pass, checking my reflection in the glass to see if I’m radiant, too, but Sam pulls me away, into a cab that I never noticed her hail.

We float on. Into the steaming thickness of the city, then into Central Park, where a fall breeze trickles in through the cab window, cracked an inch or two. I close my eyes, feeling the air’s caress until the cab stops and Sam is tugging at me again, me barely feeling it.

“We’re here,” she says.

Here is Fifth Avenue. Here is the concrete fortress of Saks. Here is us floating across the sidewalk, through the doors, into the gleaming pattern of perfume counters, passing scents so strong I can almost see them stretching in hues of pink and lavender.

I trail Sam through the rainbowed air and up an escalator. Or maybe we’re not going up at all. Maybe it’s just me. Floating into the women’s department, where another rainbow appears, made real in rows of cotton, silk and satin.

Other women mill about. Bored salesgirls and haughty matrons and listless teenagers who should be in school but instead are here, sighing into their cell phones. None of them are radiant. They give us judging looks, if they bother to look at us at all.

Jealousy.

They know we’re special.

“Hi,” I say to one of them, giggling.

“Love that skirt,” Sam says to another.

She leads me to a rack of blouses. White ones spattered with blooms of color. Grabbing one off the rack, she holds it up and says, “What do you think?”

“That would look amazing on you,” I say.

“Really?”

“Yes, you have to try it on.”

Sam grabs two blouses, holding them tightly together. “Give me your purse,” she says.

My purse. I forgot I had brought it with me. Then a line of clarity cuts through the haze, its appearance so sudden that I grow dizzy.

“You’re not going to steal it,” I say.

Sam’s expression is blank. The golden glow on her skin fades to gray. “It’s not stealing if you’ve earned it. And after what we went through, babe, I’d say we earned this big time. Purse, please.”

With arms so numb I can barely feel them, I pass it to Sam. She tucks it under her arm and disappears into a dressing room.

While she’s gone, something catches my eye. A glint of gold luring me across the sales floor. It’s a small display of accessories—thin belts and chunky bracelets and loops of beaded necklaces. But what holds my attention is a pair of earrings. The two dangling ovals remind me of twin mirrors, drawing the light until they glow.

Radiant.

Like me.

Like Sam.

I finger one of them, the light glinting. My reflection leaps off its surface, face oblong and pale.

“You want them, don’t you?”

It’s Sam, suddenly behind me, whispering in my ear.