Girls on Fire(64)

“I’m not your dog.” It came out harsher than I meant it—I was the only one who flinched. I saw her see it in my face, the wish that I could take it back. Only then did she smile.

“Let’s get out of here,” she said.

I didn’t argue. How come you never get to decide anything? Nikki would have asked. But deciding was what Lacey was for.

“I don’t know where,” she said, as if I’d asked. “Anywhere. Everywhere. Like we used to.”

She rolled down the windows, turned up the volume, launched us into the night. Just like old times.


WE WENT TO THE LAKE. Not our lake, but the swampy pond on the east side covered in a layer of algae and golf balls. Lacey had always treated its water as a personal affront.

“Here,” she said, picking her way through the weeds to a rotting dock. There were no streetlights there, no moon behind the thinning summer clouds. Without the radio, there was nothing left to fill the space between us.

“You missed me,” Lacey said.

“Of course I did.”

“You’ve been counting the days until I came home, marking them on the wall in lipstick like a lovesick convict.”

“Not lipstick. Blood.”

“Naturally.”

It was a game we played, narrating the story of me better than I could do it myself.

“I know you too well to ask,” she’d said once. “It would be like asking my elbow, How do you feel?”

When something’s a part of you, she told me, you just know. But I didn’t; I had to squint through the dark, searching the shadows of her face, and ask. “Where were you?” Whatever the game, I’d lost. “Why come back?”

There was a plunking splash, then another. She’d kicked off her shoes, blue polka-dotted flip-flops we’d lifted from Woolworth’s in the spring. Bare feet settled in my lap. “Don’t you know, Dex?” It was strange to hear her say my name. “I’ll always come back.”

“But where did you go? Why?”

I stopped myself before I could say it: Why did you leave without me? Small victories.

The sound of a car streaking past, then another. That was how long it took her to answer.

“God, Dex, why do you think? The Bastard and his joke of a wife sent me away.”

This was the one possibility that hadn’t occurred to me. That she hadn’t betrayed me. That I had betrayed her all the more by not, somehow, knowing it.

“They told me they didn’t know where you went.”

“Gosh, they lied to you? Shocking.”

“Sent you away where?”

She snorted. “To the kind of place you send wayward daughters. Think of it as a Club Med. With extra Jesus.”

Not Seattle, not New York, not starring in music videos or living on the streets but this. I waited to feel something.

“You’re thinking, Oh, no, Lacey, that’s horrible! If only I had known, I would have come to rescue you.”

“Was it . . . was it bad?”

“Oh, Dex, your face.” She circled my cheeks with her finger and squeezed. “It’s adorable when you do that worried thing with your mouth.”

I’d forgotten the sound of her laugh.

“You think the Bastard has the power to make me suffer? Please. It was a shitty summer camp with brainwashed sheep. Ten minutes and I was running the place.”

“Good. I guess?”

“And you, Dex? What did you do on your summer vacation? Other than miss me desperately?”

I shrugged.

I wanted to tell her everything: the foreclosure party and its fallout, the strangeness of Nikki, the chill at home, my father and me and the space between. At least, I wanted to want to tell her.

“Normal summer,” I said. “You know.”

Lacey scooped up a clump of dirt and tossed it at the lake.

“Forget the past. Let’s talk future. You ready to hear the plan?”

“What plan?”

“You’ve gotten so slow, Dex. We’ll have to work on that. What were we doing back in June when we got so rudely interrupted? What was number one on our agenda?”

I shook my head.

“Revenge, Dex. Knock the bitch off her throne, pay her back for f*cking with us. Who do you think tipped the Bastard off to my stash? Why do you think they sent me away in the first place?”

“I don’t think Nikki did that. Would do that.”

“You’re f*cking kidding me, right? It’s exactly what she did to you. Now she pays.”

“Can we just let it go, Lacey? Start fresh. Forget the past, like you said.”

“You, queen of the grudge, want to forget the past?”

“Yeah.”

“No.”

“Yes. I do.”

“No, you don’t. Yes, I do. No you don’t yes I do no you don’t yes I do—” She stuck out her tongue. “We’re not six, we don’t need to play that game. And besides, you know I always win.”

I remembered a particularly vicious episode of late-night Twister with vodka for stakes and lubrication. The more I drank, the more I lost, the more I lost, the more I drank. I remembered Lacey shoving the drinks into my hand, cheering me on.

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” I said.