Girls on Fire(65)

“You can’t let her scare you.”

“She doesn’t scare me. She . . .” To explain Nikki would be to explain what had come before. The long days after the party. The party itself, after Lacey left me alone. She would want details. She would want to peel back the surface, because Lacey only believed in what lay beneath. “She apologized. I accepted. It’s over.”

Lacey burst into laughter. “Fuck that. She apologized? I bet she promised never to screw with you again, cross her heart and hope to die?”

“Pretty much.”

“You know who else made a lot of promises like that? Hitler.”

“Come on, Lacey. Really?”

“I’m serious, Dex. It’s historical fact, look it up. Appeasement. They were too chicken to do anything but kiss his ass. You know what happened then?”

“I’m on the edge of my seat.”

“He invaded f*cking Poland.”

“Invoking Hitler isn’t exactly the sign of a strong argument, Lacey. And I don’t think Nikki Drummond is angling for Poland.”

“You can’t negotiate with evil.”

It had been nice, that summer, not having so many enemies.

Lacey threaded her fingers through mine.

“You know why guys like to hold hands like that,” she’d told me once. “Because it’s sexual.” She drew out the word, like she always did, because she liked to watch me squirm. “Your fingers are basically having intercourse.”

“Say it, Dex,” she said now, squeezing. “You and me against the world. Everything like before.”

“Sure.”

We drove home without music. Lacey propped her bare foot on the seat and hung an arm out the window, steering with the fingertips of one hand.

“Pick you up tomorrow morning?” she said when the car stopped in front of my house. “We could drive to the ocean again, see some real water.”

“I’ve got school tomorrow.”

“Yeah, and?”

“And I can’t cut.”

“Because?”

“Because I can’t. I’ve got a math test. And this . . . other thing.”

“What other thing?”

“I’m going to the mall after school, okay?”

“Whatever, let the mother-daughter fro-yo wait a day.”

“It’s not my mother—” I was almost tempted to say the name, see what she would do. “I said I’d go with some people, and I want to, okay? So I’m going.”

There was a noise in the darkness, the sound of someone choking on her own spit. “Funny ha-ha.”

“No. Seriously.”

“Oh.”

I wanted to touch her face, then lay my fingers against her lips and feel what shape they took in surprise.

“Are you coming back to school?” I asked, opening the door.

“Nothing better to do. They gave me a week or two to catch up.” The words came slow. “Whatever. I can go to the beach myself. Maybe I’ll send you a postcard.”

“Fingers crossed.”

She pulled the car away from the curb, then stopped and stuck her head out the window. It was still strange, that pale moon of a face without its curtain of black hair. “Hey, Dex, I almost forgot—”

“Yeah?” I was prepared. She would ask me for something, something I couldn’t deliver and couldn’t refuse. Or she would find the magic words that would bind us together again, some spell to fix what was broken. I would have waited there in the dark forever, except for the part of me that wanted to run.

“Tell your dad I say hello.” Then she drove away.


THAT NIGHT, I EXPECTED TO dream of Lacey. When it didn’t happen, I woke up convinced she was gone. Run away for real this time, or banished back into my imagination, like some fairy-tale creature who, once refused, spirits herself away.

I went to school, did my homework, answered my parents politely, didn’t think about Lacey, didn’t think about Lacey, didn’t think about Lacey.

Sunday, Nikki invited me to church. I sat stiffly at her side, examining the fine grain of the pew while the minister explained about hell, counting the bulbs in the track lighting and trying to remember when it was time to stand up for Jesus. The Lord was a lot less interesting without magic mushrooms. Ladies fanning their Sunday finery, husbands jockeying for usher spots so they could sneak a smoke, ribboned and bow-tied kids who took a sickening pleasure in good behavior dodging spitballs from brats who didn’t. The minister spoke on forgiveness, opening your heart to those who had wronged you, but he didn’t say how.

There was a time, I thought, when I descended on a place like this as a god.

“There’ll be wine at lunch after,” Nikki whispered. “We can snag some if we’re careful.”

I was always careful.

Days passed without sign of Lacey, until I started to think I really had imagined her return. Then, one Monday after school, the Buick pulled into the bus lane and honked, one unrelenting blare of the horn that didn’t let up until everyone on the lot had turned to stare.

Lacey poked her head out the window. “In.”


HER ROOM WAS DIFFERENT. THE giant poster of Kurt was gone. Everything was gone.

“Spring cleaning.” She shrugged. “I’m going for the monk thing.”