They Wish They Were Us(31)
Robert steps forward and hands Bryce an unmarked clear bottle. The little Miller takes a swig and coughs. He doesn’t do as well as Shaila did but he passes it down the line until they’re all nearly in fits.
“I remember my first beer,” Robert shouts, his body lurching forward toward the freshmen. Sierra flinches.
The wind picks up and I shiver. Finally Jared looks over at me and his shoulders relax. Relief fills his face. But my excitement disappears when he brings the bottle to his mouth. It’s already too familiar, seeing him like this. It feels wrong, torturous. I fight the urge to knock the jug from his hand and instead suck in my cheeks, turning my mouth into a fish face, just like we used to do when we were kids. His lips curl into a smile and he takes a sip from the bottle.
* * *
—
Shaila Arnold was one of those people who went by both her first and last name. Shaila Arnold. There were no other Shailas at Gold Coast. I don’t even think there were any Arnolds. But nevertheless, when she was alive, that’s what everyone called her. Mr. Beaumont, when he said her name in roll call. Big Keith during cast announcements. Only those close to her called her Shay, and only sometimes, when the moment was right. People who didn’t know her, but speak of her now, often smush her name together like it’s all one word. Shailarnold. That’s how Sierra McKinley says it tonight during the first senior-freshman girl sleepover at Nikki’s house a week after intro night. We did the same thing when I was a freshman. Back then it was a size-up-the-competition thing disguised as a get-to-know-you thing. A pre-pops slumber party to gain our trust before they broke us. This year will be different, I say over and over again to myself. This year will be different. It has to be.
“Shailarnold was your best friend, right?” Sierra asks while we sit at Nikki’s kitchen island. Her legs are bare, save for a tiny pair of flannel shorts with lace detailing around the edges. Her oversize tee makes them nearly invisible when she stands.
“Yep,” I say, trying not to show my disgust at hearing her name come from Sierra’s mouth.
“I knew her, you know.” Sierra brings her knees up to her chest and her eyes flit around Nikki’s great room. From our perches on the bar stools, we can see everyone. “Westhampton Beach Club,” she continues. “She and Kara Sullivan were my swim counselors.”
Shaila and Kara had spent so many summers there, sailing and perfecting their backstrokes. It was where Shaila got her period for the first time in the summer between sixth and seventh grades. She described it in obsessive detail in one of her longest letters to me.
It’s BROWN some days, she wrote. It’s so disgusting and I feel like a monster. I can’t even talk to Kara about this. CAN YOU GET YOURS TOO, SO WE CAN BE IN IT TOGETHER?!?!?! PLEASE. I’M BEGGING YOU.
Her wish was my command. The day after I opened her letter, I pulled down my cotton shorts to find a pool of thick, dark goo matting my underwear. It had seeped all the way through my shorts and I cried in the stall, thinking about how I had been walking around science camp with blood stains on my butt, in front of boys, while extracting samples from the pond, standing in the dining hall. I stayed there until my own counselor came over with a maxi pad as big as a diaper.
When I told Shaila, she was thrilled.
I’m going to buy us bright red headbands to wear on the first day of school so everyone knows we are WOMEN, she wrote in her next letter.
And she did. I wore mine begrudgingly, annoyed that I was forced to display my deep, dark secret like a badge of honor when really it seemed like a curse. Graham, who was still just a middle school asshole who hadn’t murdered anyone yet, lost his shit when he saw us in the library. He pointed at our matching hair and laughed. “What are you? Blood sisters? Gross!” he called. “Don’t get your bloody shit all over me!”
Shaila just laughed at him, waving at him like he didn’t even matter. “Sorry, Graham. Guess you can’t handle a real woman. Sucks to suck.” Graham shuffled off, mumbling something under his breath. I wore that stupid headband with pride after that day. Any shame I had felt about my entry into adulthood disappeared, too.
They both seemed to have forgotten the whole incident by the time we entered high school, but for the rest of that year, Shaila was the fairy godmother of periods. She invested in dozens of red velvet headbands and whenever a classmate made the transition, she gifted them one. She even gave them to the quiet girls, the ones who got their PE credits fulfilled in badminton, and the horse girls who sat together in the library during lunch, playing with those creepy figurines. Shaila made it cool to go through that rite of passage. But she didn’t realize what it would do to the girls who weren’t there yet. Neither did I until I found Nikki crying in the locker room in the middle of eighth grade, devastated that everyone had a red headband but her. It took her until ninth grade to earn one.
All of that feels so far away now in Nikki’s kitchen with a whole new set of girls to watch over. The responsibility feels like too much to bear. I look at Sierra and bite my tongue, forcing myself not to ask if she had already gotten her period, if she needed her own red headband. But it’s hard to picture. She’s small like a child, her skin taut against her bones.
I’m desperate to find a way out of the conversation. Nikki and Marla are spinning and dancing in front of the TV, leading a few desperate freshmen in some butchered Beyoncé choreography. Their giggles make me recoil.