Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls(35)

I am a new person after our school’s holiday break. I don’t care about any kids in my grade; I continue ignoring Clarissa; I start lining my lips with dark lip pencils to make them look bigger. Harley and Nelle have decided to adopt me—File the paperwork, it’s official—and they pick me up from school at three thirty on the days I show.

Harley is sixteen now, older than me and Nelle, and she drives like a maniac. She weaves around other cars on I-95, plays chicken in the wrong lanes, uses turbo. She’s been driving crazy since years before she got a license, Nelle tells me, but none of this matters to us. The way we see it, Harley is beautiful, and she can legally drive, and that’s the end of it.

From my school, we go straight to Harley’s house. Her mother usually stays at her boyfriend’s apartment, but sometimes she’s passed out on the couch with a half-drunk glass and a bottle of nasal spray. Her father lives somewhere out west. Harley’s room feels so grown-up with navy-blue walls, clicking beaded streamers at her doorway, an open shower in the middle of her room, a mattress on the floor. My room at home is still pink with porcelain dolls and twinkle lights lining the perimeter, but I don’t tell them this.

Tonight, we’re going to a bonfire party off Dixie Highway called The Circus. Public school kids. Bass music. Nelle stands at the bathroom mirror smudging on charcoal eyeliner, a cigarette bit between her teeth. In my memories of Nelle, there’s never a moment that she is not smoking. Fuck, it’s making me water! she says, fanning the smoke from her eyes.

You ever smoke before, Chinky? Harley asks me. The two of us are sitting on the love seat in her room. Why you always staring at her?

I haven’t.

Ugh, you are such a Martian.

I’ll try, I say. I mean, I love the way they smell.

It’s nice out—let’s go outside.

The three of us sit on the wood planks of Harley’s deck, palm trees whistling. A streetlight glows close and our eyes are gold with it.

We like cloves, says Nelle. Bali Hai’s. They taste like doped-out candy.

Harley puts one between my lips. Suck, she says, lighting it.

I hold the thick flavor in my mouth. I switch between trying to breathe through my mouth and my nose. I don’t know how to inhale, but it’s true, I do taste the bright sugar. Nelle and Harley exhale the smoke from their nostrils in teapot streams.

Let it out of your nose, that’s how you know you’re doing it right.

I listen to the paper crackle between my teeth. The sound is amplified in my head, and I pretend that each crackle is a strand of my brain dying out.

Do you have parents? I ask Nelle. I mean, how do you come here every night?

My mom’s always up my ass, she says, but Harley’s mom covers for me on the phone. Says we’re watching movies or doing math problems or something. My sister’s in college.

And your parents let you—

Her dad’s dead, says Harley, if that’s what you’re trying to ask.

Nelle doesn’t look at either one of us when Harley says this. She takes a longer drag, snap-cracks her knuckles against her knees.

Well, I’ve always wanted a sister, I say. So that’s cool.

And what about you, shoe princess? Nelle says. Don’t you spend a lot of money on prep to be skipping every day?

My dad moved to New York last year, I say. For the business. And my mom doesn’t give a shit about school.

Isn’t your whole family in prison or something? Chillin’ with Martha Stewart?

Harley jabs Nelle with an elbow—Rude.

What! Nelle says. I mean, it’s on the frickin’ news.

It’s cool, I say. The prison thing.

What’d they do again?

Different stuff. Mostly money.

Do you miss them?

Nah.

Well, we’re your sisters now, says Harley. Nelle nods. Like blood.

At the bonfire, the three of us sip Coronas and sway our hips to Biggie Smalls—bitches I like ’em brainless, guns I like ’em stainless—thumping out of a boom box. We’re in the middle of a parking lot behind a block of abandoned warehouses near a great stretch of trees, and the fire is piled high with tires and cardboard boxes fluttering inside a metal trash can. Groups of older kids laugh around the orange sparks, sucking on cigarettes, kissing. A senior from Nelle’s public school walks over to us and wraps his arms around her waist. Hey, Pimpstress, you smoking tonight?

His name’s Monty, Harley whispers to me. He’s in love with Nelle and he’s always got green.

Monty plucks a cigarette out from behind his ear. It looks like it’s been wrapped with a brown paper bag.

That a joint? I ask. I don’t recognize this. The only joints I have ever seen are my mother’s, and those are always wrapped white.

A blunt, says Monty. He chuckles at me. Where’d you find this girl?

She’s our prep school tropical princess, says Harley. Ain’t she cute?

Monty lights the blunt and takes it in, passing it over to Nelle, who passes it over to Harley.

I’m assuming you’re a weed virgin, too? she asks.

I nod.

Open your mouth, she says. Harley sucks the blunt until the burning worm almost reaches her nails. Before I know what’s happening, she presses her mouth to mine, exhaling the smoke down my throat. I hold her by the back of her head—I hold her right there—I don’t want our faces to part.