Lessons from a Dead Girl(8)

The following weekend, Leah comes to my house. She pulls me straight into the doll closet. She doesn’t ask or even tell me what we’re going to do. She’s rough and angry. It doesn’t feel like practice. It feels like punishment.

I hold myself as stiff as I can, my eyes squeezed shut, feeling like I deserve it.





“Sam says we could be supermodel sisters,” Leah says, sticking out her chest.

It’s the fall of eighth grade. Leah and Brooke are strutting down the catwalk that is the path between the twin beds in Christi’s room. They have light blue bath towels wrapped around their heads like turbans. They swing their hips as they walk, pretending to pose for photographers.

Christi and I watch from Christi’s bed with our mouths open.

“Sam says they make tons of money,” Leah adds.

Christi and I had watched Sam from Christi’s window when he dropped Leah and Brooke off here earlier. He kissed them both good-bye on the lips. I swear his hand brushed against Leah’s butt as she walked away from him. If it did, she didn’t seem to respond. The way she talks about him now, you’d never know he was the same guy she didn’t want to be left alone with.

“And if it doesn’t work out, we could always be strippers,” Brooke says, lifting up her shirt to just below her breasts. She and Christi are sophomores, but Brooke looks more like a college girl. Brooke is beautiful, like Leah. But that’s their only similarity. Brooke doesn’t have the same “I’m in charge” look in her eyes. She just seems to like being watched.

“How pathetic,” Christi says, nudging me with her elbow.

Brooke stands above us and sticks out her chest. She turns, a graceful little half-step, her hands on her hips. “If you’ve got it, flaunt it. That’s what my mother says.”

Christi jabs me in the ribs again, and we exchange knowing looks. Mrs. Greene is always wearing low-cut blouses that show the tops of her large breasts.

“Flaunt it? That’s so — slutty,” Christi says, wrinkling her nose.

“What’s slutty about it?” Leah asks. “Just because you show off your goods doesn’t mean you’re giving them away.” She’s gathered the waist of her T-shirt and pulled it through the neck, making a halter top out of it. She walks up to us and sticks her bare stomach close to our faces. Her eye-like belly button watches me.

“Don’t be gross,” Christi says.

But Leah keeps her stomach inches from my face.

I feel my own stomach tighten the way it does when Leah and I are in the doll closet. My cheeks go prickly hot.

“What do you think, E-laine? Am I gross?” she asks.

I don’t answer.

“Don’t call her that. You know she hates it.” Christi moves closer to me on the bed, going into protector mode.

Leah ignores her. “E-laine, you don’t think I’m gross, do you?”

“Leave her alone,” Christi says. She sounds nervous, as if she knows what Leah is getting at.

I force myself to look up into Leah’s face and plead with my eyes for her not to say anything. Leah smirks and turns around.

Later that afternoon, Christi and Brooke are outside practicing new cheers for tryouts. Leah and I are alone in my room.

“Let’s play house,” Leah says quietly. “We haven’t practiced in a while.”

“I don’t think so,” I say, remembering what it was like the last time.

She moves closer. “Please, Lainey. It will be fun,” she says softly. She looks almost sad, like I hurt her feelings by not wanting to go. She reaches for my hand and tries to pull me. Her hand feels delicate and strong at the same time.

“I don’t want to,” I say. As she laces her fingers with mine, though, I feel that strange, familiar tingling in my stomach. I shake my head, but even as I do, I’m already walking with her up the stairs.

Once we’re inside the closet, Leah shuts the door. I turn on the tiny light. Leah comes closer, raising her eyebrows.

I close my eyes and pretend I’m someone else. I pretend I’m one of the dolls, sitting in the corner, watching Leah kiss me and put her hands up my shirt and down my pants, feeling every part of me, then taking my hands and making me feel every part of her. I try not to let it feel good, but it does. It feels good and horrible at the same time. Every part of my body feels alive.

“Right here,” she says.

“Right there,” she whispers.

Her voice is deep and not like her own. It scares me. Why is it that the only times I feel really alive are when I’m terrified?

When it’s over and Leah opens the door, Christi is standing there, looking at us.

“What were you guys doing in there?” she asks. Her face is pale.

I feel like I’m going to throw up.

I pray Christi won’t look in my eyes, because if she does, I’m sure she’ll know. I hear her words from earlier. Don’t be gross.

But I know what she really meant, because it’s how I feel now. Dirty.

Leah clears her throat. “Playing house,” she says coolly. She walks past Christi as if that’s all she needs to say.

I stay put, looking at the floor. Eighth-graders don’t play house.

I wait for Christi to say so, but she just turns and leaves, careful to avoid making eye contact with me.