Famous in a Small Town(52)

It was Flora:

Wanna sleep over tonight?

I didn’t answer. Instead, I tapped open the window for WHERE WILL YOU SPEND ETERNITY. Paused, and then removed myself from the group.

When evening came, I told my parents I was going to Flora’s.

I quietly got my bike out of the garage, wheeled it across the grass, crossed around back, and cut through the yard that backed up onto ours.

Then I pedaled away.





forty


People were meeting up at Jasmine Mead’s tonight. I knew Dash had to work, so Brit wouldn’t have a ride if we didn’t go together. Flora probably wouldn’t go if Brit didn’t, and Terrance wouldn’t if Flora didn’t, and who knew what August thought of anything.

So I went, because I wanted to be with people who weren’t my friends.

Not that they weren’t my friends—they were. The seniors on the drum line, the girls from the color guard who I sat with in world lit last semester. It just wasn’t the same kind of thing, and maybe that was good. Maybe that was less complicated. We could just have fun.

And I did have fun.

I ended up in the living room, dancing with Tegan Wendall and some other girls. I drank, and drank some more—level-three Brit drunkenness maybe, except this wasn’t Brit drunkenness at all, this was Sophie drunkenness, which was its own relatively uncharted thing. I didn’t know the levels of it.

I didn’t know which level was stumbling into the bathroom, looking for my phone to call someone, and realizing I didn’t have my phone at all. Not caring.

I didn’t know which level was throwing my arms around Tegan Wendall’s neck because she was so pretty, really, she genuinely was. Her body was insane, it was absolutely unreasonable, and yet she had this big goofy smile that squished her cheeks up, crinkling her eyes so that they looked almost closed. She could take pictures with a serious expression and look perpetually glamorous if she wanted to, but she always did that big-toothed grin.

Tegan and I danced, and the beat of the song was loud and pounding and it all became a swirl in my mind—community colleges, state schools, private universities, and I saw a mullet today!!!! and I talked to mom about the visit and Miss you lots. And I spotted Troy Fowler across the room, laughing unpleasantly just like he had that night in the kitchen with August, the scene of the beer can demonstration, and suddenly all I could think of was the slap of his hands coming together in fourth grade, of the sheets held up around the terrible car crash he saw, so people couldn’t see the dead bodies when they pulled them out.

Was dead bodies redundant? When do people ever refer to it as a body unless it’s a dead one? Pop songs, maybe? Get your body on the dance floor—that’s what I was doing now, but it had to be qualified, the body had to belong to someone. No one sang about “the body”—just “your body” or “my body” and if you were addressing someone about their body or yours, you were both alive, right? Get the body on the dance floor was way more sinister. The implied emptiness. The body was vacant. No one was home.

Everything was tilting a little.

And loud, too loud, and Tegan was looking at me with concern in her eyes, very far from the squishy-cheeked grin. I wondered how much of the bodies discourse I had said out loud.

“Are you okay, Sophie?”

“I’m excellent,” I said, but she didn’t look like she believed me.

She disappeared after that, and I was sad, because I would have rather she smiled than disappear, but then she returned at some point, parting through the crowd with August behind her.

He looked tired—hair tousled, dark smudges under his eyes—but still undeniably, annoyingly attractive.

He leaned into me, and for a second I thought he was going to kiss me, but instead he put his mouth by my ear, talking over the pound of the music.

“Let’s go home, okay?”





forty-one


August led me out, one of my arms around his neck, one of his around my waist. It was the same way we had taken Brit out to the car, what felt like ages ago at that party at Tegan’s.

“You have good shoulders,” I told him. For some reason, it seemed pressing for him to know. “You should get a tattoo across your shoulders,” I continued. “And then I can lick it off.”

A choked laugh escaped him abruptly.

“Jesus.” He tightened his grip on me. “Jesus, you’re drunk.”

“I am. I think I’m very drunk. Maybe that’s good. Maybe I’ll forget everything. I think it would be awkward next time I see you if I remember that bit about licking your tattoo off.”

He didn’t speak, just marched us forward.

“You have to forget it too, though,” I said as we reached the front door. “You have to promise.”

He just looked at me for a moment.

“You have to,” I insisted.

“I promise,” he replied, eyes strangely solemn. Then he opened the door and led me out to the front, looking up and down the street and then taking out his phone.

“Can’t call Dash, he’s working,” I said. “Can’t call Flora, Flora can’t drive. Terrance can, but Dash won’t let him drive the Cutlass ’cause he backed their mom’s car into the mailbox last year.” My voice stuck. “Can’t call Brit. She hates me. Can’t call Ciara.” I shook my head. “She didn’t want to come back for the summer.” Suddenly tears sprang into my eyes, hot and stinging. “We fought, you know. She tried … She wanted to …”