The Forgotten Hours(12)
There is a long mirror in the cosmetics section near the hairnets and eyeliner, and this girl—with a solid, propulsive body, wearing this strangely boyish outfit—is looking hard at herself. She is wearing huge, sparkling rhinestone earrings and making faces in the mirror. When she finally notices Katie, the child puts her fingers to her lips as though they already share some sort of secret. The two of them stare at each other for a while, assessing each other in that frank way children do. There is something about not saying hi that makes it seem as though they already know one another. Then the girl yanks off her earrings, clip-ons, and comes close to Katie. Instead of handing the earrings over, she forces them on her clumsily, one by one, and Katie lets her.
Snap, snap; her fingers are tiny, pudgy things.
Charlie Gregory comes back before the girls have even said one word to each other. Katie notices her mother hesitate when she sees them together, but she doesn’t realize till much later that it’s because of the grimy pants, the air of neglect. Katie is entranced: when her mother asks the child what her name is and she replies, “Lulu Henderson,” Katie thinks it sounds like a song—soft and pretty, not like Katie Gregory, with its hard angles. She asks if the girl can come play with her at the cabin, just a short ride from town. She often has to play alone or with her baby brother, who still pitches furious tantrums and tires almost instantly of her games.
They pick Lulu up the very next day, and in a way, she never really leaves Eagle Lake again.
That summer Katie treasures those earrings, wearing them over and over; she imagines being beautiful like her new friend. She keeps waiting for Lulu to ask her to give them back, but she never does. Summers come; summers go. Lulu often arrives at the lake with something special, something a little unusual. One year it’s a rock she’s painted black and covered in red hearts. Eyes big, the girls name it “the sacred stone.” Another year it’s a stack of old Cosmopolitans they pore over (the sex tips as incomprehensible as Chinese). A thick macramé bracelet Katie wears for seven months straight until it rots against her moist skin. A pair of neon-orange hand-knit fingerless gloves. But the best gift of all is that she keeps coming back, as though she just can’t get enough of Katie. As though she thinks Katie is someone special, worthy of devotion, and doesn’t realize that Katie sees it the other way around.
About a dozen cars are still in the parking lot at the lake, including the red Falcon. The night is thick like coffee. Amber swaths of light from the clubhouse windows slice into the dark. The smell of rain. Only a few days of summer left now. Tick tick tick.
Lulu is playing Ping-Pong. Katie has stumbled outside to get some fresh air—and to get away from her mother, who is at the piano banging out a rendition of “Downtown.” A few of the grown-ups are trying to sing along. Charlie is so embarrassing. Most often in the summertime, she’s holed up somewhere with a book, sometimes not saying more than a few words in a whole day. Give her a few glasses of wine, and she turns into Petula Clark.
Oh, the cool rush of air on Katie’s face! The boys are hanging out by the changing sheds, some perched on trash barrels, jumping up and down, trying to grab the branches of an overhanging tree. They are tireless, these boys, unable to stop moving, their laughter loud and possessive, as if they own the woods. Glowing cigarettes move erratically in the darkness. The air pulses with sounds—trancelike house music and shrieks from the lakeside, the high-pitched cries of grown-ups drinking and laughing.
It is hard to see much in the darkness, and it’s Jack’s voice Katie hears first; she strains to see where he is. Jack—she can’t get him out of her mind.
“Hey, where’s your friend Lulu?” Brad asks as Katie approaches the sheds. Last year, he’d barely said a word to her, but now he stares at her in a way that is both disconcerting and exhilarating. Suddenly she’s become visible to him, and she likes it. On his wrists he wears a stack of thick string bracelets, like those braided together in craft sessions at summer camp. Kendrick climbs into one of the trees and dangles from a branch while Jack watches him, hands sunk in his pockets.
“Looking for you, duh,” Katie answers. As soon as the words come out, she flushes. Stupid! It’s as though she’s trying on different jackets to see which one fits; she hasn’t found the right one yet. She feels strangely like another person whenever Jack is around.
“That girl’s turned into a total babe,” Brad says. He has the bottled-up energy of a tiger or a pit bull. When he holds out a smoldering joint in her direction, Katie only hesitates for a second. She knows he’ll tease her if she doesn’t take it. The smoke is thick and spicy in her throat, and she suppresses a sharp cough. Peppery and exotic. Smelling slightly of decay. Earlier in the summer she’d tried pot and nothing happened, but now, after just a few minutes, she feels the sudden molten sensation of floating limbs, of a drifting mind. Her thoughts like dice bumping into each other. She is untethered from her body, and her limbs no longer seem so stubborn and gawky. A liquid sense of freedom courses through her, and she hands the joint back to Brad; he inhales deeply before passing it on to Jack and unleashing an enormous cloud of smoke that wraps itself around their faces and necks and makes them all burst out laughing as though at a secret joke.
Time passes. Clouds hang low in the sky, and Katie stares at them as they tumble around sluggishly. She lets the boys’ murmurs wash over her; she isn’t interested in what they have to say anymore, and she isn’t thinking about Lulu either. It is a feeling she hasn’t had all summer, a kind of looseness in her head and her body. The idea comes to her that she can say or do anything she wants, and nobody will stop her. It’s her choice. Her life is hers to make happen—or not. Again and again the boys dive for the low branch, and some of them make it, swinging like monkeys.