Two Truths and a Lie(6)

But she should. She would!



When Sherri was getting ready for dinner, Katie slipped into her room and watched her brushing her hair in the mirror over the dresser. The mirror was here when they got here, as was the dresser—the whole place was fully furnished. At the time Sherri had been grateful not to have to buy furniture, but now she felt there was something sad about living with other people’s castoffs.

“Can you dress up tonight, Mom? The way you used to?”

Sherri kept brushing and said, “I don’t have any of those clothes anymore.” Then, softly, an addition: “You know that.”

Katie nodded and sat on the bed, tucking her bare legs under her, accepting.

“I was pretty then, I know,” said Sherri. She pulled her hair back in a ponytail, then fastened it with an elastic. She looked in the mirror, considering. She turned toward Katie, who was looking at her severely.

“You’re still pretty,” Katie said. “You’re just much less fancy.”

“You’re not fancy,” said Sherri, smiling now, indicating Katie’s grubby shorts.

“I know,” said Katie. “But I was never fancy.”

Reasonable enough. Maybe Sherri could try a little harder. Lipstick, at least. She left the bedroom and padded into their shared bathroom, where she dug around in a drawer to see what she could find. Katie followed her and watched her the whole time: sternly, unnervingly, lovingly.





5.





Alexa


It was your typical summer high school party, except that it was out on the farthest reaches of Plum Island, which was a pain to get to. There was a fire pit on the back deck. Some kids had wandered off to the dunes to make out. Zoe Butler-Gray, valedictorian and resident of the house, was in the kitchen holding forth on Trump’s immigration policy, and nobody seemed to be listening. Zoe didn’t appear to care. She was headed for Dartmouth; she knew her real audience was waiting for her there.

Alexa, sitting on a couch in the living room, wished she could be elsewhere. How many parties had she attended over the course of her high school career, each one the same as the last and the next? Tyler handed her a plastic cup. She could tell by the shiny look in his eyes that he had been drinking a lot already, or smoking weed, or both, and she wondered how she’d get home. She wondered how he’d get home. The cops had been out in full force on the causeway this summer and Tyler couldn’t risk getting caught. She should take his keys and get them both a ride.

She took a sip of the drink. Vodka and cranberry. Tyler had been kind enough to put a slice of lime in it for her but even so she could hardly stomach it. The taste of cranberry juice reminded her of a series of urinary tract infections she’d had when she was young, nine or ten, when her mother poured her a glass every morning and wouldn’t let her leave the table until she’d finished it. It was a gesture that came from a combination of love and Internet medical knowledge, no harm intended, but still Alexa was positive cranberry juice was a drink she would never enjoy in this lifetime. She had told Tyler this more than once.

“You can’t drive,” she said combatively. “And I want to go home.”

“Let’s just crash here. Come on, babe.” Tyler snaked his arm around her waist. Alexa disliked the word “babe” almost as much as she disliked cranberry juice, and Tyler knew this too, but sometimes when he was drunk or high he forgot.

She removed his arm and sat back on the couch. “Negative on that,” she said.

“Why not?” He returned his arm to her waist, tighter this time. “We can sleep on the beach!”

Nothing sounded less comfortable to Alexa than sleeping on the beach. Her hair was very thick; she would never get the sand out. She removed Tyler’s arm again, and this time he resisted more strongly. Say what you will about the #metoo movement and all the rest of it, tell Alexa that times were changing and women could speak up, she knew it was still a very, very fine line that she was walking, that all girls were walking. The line between being attractive and being a tease. The line between needing and not needing. Between independence and desire. If she could give Morgan one piece of advice it would be, Don’t grow up.

“I don’t want to stay here, Tyler,” she said. “Just leave me alone.” Besides the fact that she would much rather sleep in her own bed, there was the not-small matter of her virginity, which for some reason, against all odds and contrary to what most people at school and probably in town and probably online thought, she had managed to hold on to for so long that now it seemed awkward and meaningful to let it go. But whatever. It was her body; these were her choices. She stood.

“I get it,” Tyler said. “Take it easy, Lex.”

“Don’t call me Lex,” she snarled, sounding like the bitch that she felt like, that she feared, sometimes, she actually was. The next thing she knew, she was steeling herself and knocking back the cocktail, cranberry juice or no cranberry juice. Forget it, she thought. Forget Tyler. Forget Zoe Butler-Gray. Forget everybody. On her way out the back door she grabbed a can of beer, a Riverwalk IPA, which had probably been brought out because Zoe Butler-Gray’s father worked for the brewery and always had stacks of it in the garage. She opened it and carried it onto the back deck.

High tide and it felt like the waves were going to come all the way up to the furniture. The moon was almost full, but not quite; it looked like somebody squished it between a thumb and a forefinger. Alexa sipped the beer. She hated IPAs—they were so heavy, they sat in her stomach like a stone. She drank it anyway. Her sips got bigger, and they turned into gulps. When she stood, she felt dizzy. Experimentally she lifted her face to the sky and turned around and around. She felt like she was one with the moon. She felt like she was spinning through the night.