Lessons from a Dead Girl(11)

I smell the smoke again and hope she’s right. I want to ask her if she felt the way I did when she looked at the pictures, but I don’t dare. I couldn’t bear to be the only one.

We stay there for a long time, not saying anything. Just watching the smoke rise into the sky and disappear.

My mom never says a word to me about the magazines. But a few weeks later, my parents have a bunch of friends over for dinner. They’re all sitting at the long harvest table my parents use in the dining room. Leah’s spending the night, and we’re spying on them from the top of the stairs. It’s late, and dinner has been over for a while. They’re drinking and laughing and sharing old stories about all the so-called crazy things they did when they were younger.

When he was fifteen, Mr. Murphy stole his dad’s truck and took it to the drive-in and got caught making out with his girlfriend. Mrs. Carey almost got kicked out of college for smoking pot in her dorm room. “I only hope my own kids don’t put me through what I put my parents through.” She laughs.

“Amen to that,” my dad says.

Then my mother, who rarely speaks at these gatherings, suddenly pipes up. I can tell she’s been drinking because her voice is louder than usual and a little slurred.

“Lainey and Leah certainly got started recently,” she says.

Leah grabs my arm, and we exchange surprised looks. We lean closer to the top stair so we can hear better.

“Did I tell you what I caught them with?”

“Uh-oh,” says Mr. Murphy. “They didn’t get into your Scotch, did they, Stan?”

My dad chuckles nervously. “Honey, I don’t think Laine would be thrilled to have you tell this story.”

“Or out him,” Leah whispers. I put my finger to my lips to shut her up.

“Oh, she doesn’t care,” my mom says, like it’s no big deal.

I wish I could dash down the stairs and scream at my mom to shut up before it’s too late. But I want to stay invisible, too. I don’t want to exist.

“Lainey and Leah found Stan’s Playboys and had one up in Lainey’s room,” my mom says, as if she’s telling one of a hundred innocent family stories. “I couldn’t believe it! I guess they’re at that curious stage.” She laughs. Everyone laughs.

My cheeks burn. Leah shakes her head.

“Poor girls,” my mom continues. “I guess I overreacted a little.”

“A little?” my dad says. “She burned all my magazines!”

They laugh again.

“My boys got into mine last year,” Mr. Sloane says.

“Ha!” Leah whispers in my ear. “Those Sloanes are cute. Now we’ve got the goods on them.”

“Yeah, but it’s normal for boys to look at that stuff,” I whisper back.

“It’s normal for girls, too. God, Laine.” She inches closer to the top of the stairs to hear more.

“Kids are curious,” says Mrs. Carey. “When our Sarah is older, I’m going to buy her The Joy of Sex and tell her everything she wants to know.”

“Well, after what Laine and Leah saw, I’m going to have to ask them,” my mother jokes. “I didn’t even know Stan had those magazines,” she whines.

I am never speaking to her again, I vow. I slide back into the hallway and tiptoe to my room. Leah follows and shuts the door behind her.

I sit on the bed and squeeze my pillow.

“You know why she told, don’t you?” Leah asks, sitting next to me.

I shake my head.

“She wants them to tell her it’s OK. That we’re normal. And I bet she wants to get back at your dad, too.”

I throw myself backward on the bed and hide my face in my pillow. “I bet they all think we’re perverted,” I say into my pillowcase.

“Oh, Laine,” Leah says, as if she’s my big sister. “Lighten up. You’re reading way too much into this. Here’s the deal: your mom only told so she could get back at your dad and maybe because she was a little worried about us. But now her friends are all going to convince her we’re just ‘curious,’ so she’ll feel better.”

I roll over to face Leah. She has the strangest way of knowing things — hidden things — about people. Most of the time it scares me, because it’s usually me she’s seeing through.

“That’s all we are, right?” I ask. “Curious?”

“Of course,” she says. She grabs my old Curious George from the bookcase and sits him on her lap like a baby. “Everyone does it. My mom even showed me and Brooke my dad’s stash. She told us any time we were curious, we could look. How else are you going to learn? They don’t teach it at school. They don’t teach us anything we really need to know. They don’t teach us crap.”

“But did they — you know — make you feel funny?”

She gives me a strange look, and I immediately wish I’d kept quiet. I just let her in on a secret I don’t understand and that I’m afraid of. I wait for her to decide what she’s going to do with it.

But in the end she simply shrugs. “That’s normal, too, Lainey. Don’t worry about it.”


She tosses George on the bed as she gets up and walks over to my mirror. “I keep telling you, Lainey. You need to lighten up. You take everything way too seriously. All the wrong things, anyway.”