“I thought I’d take you to the Chateau,” he said, without facing me. I’d never been to the Chateau before. We rode in silence, which I chose to think was romantic. We passed railroad tracks, turning into a subdivision that seemingly didn’t end. He was silent and brooding, but I knew we’d talk eventually. He’d reward me for my own quiet and let me in. I couldn’t wait for him to tell me I was easy to talk to. For him to tell me things his girlfriend wouldn’t understand.
We drove into a cul-de-sac where no porch lights were left on as a courtesy. I discovered what few sophomores were privy to. That the Chateau all the seniors talked about at school, the spot for all the wildest parties, was nothing more than a half-built model home in a nothing-neighborhood in a zombie part of town.
The door was ajar, with a hole where a doorknob would be. Holland walked in first, without holding the door for me, and I felt foolish for my crushing disappointment. The floors were littered with beer cans and broken glass, and it smelled powerfully of pee. There was a filthy mattress on the floor and a few plastic chairs around it, a jet-black streak of char coloring the far wall. A gold glimmer caught my eye, and I realized it was a condom wrapper. In fact, there were multiple bits of foil confettied all around the mattress.
I’d thought it would be a mansion, but who knew where I’d heard that. I’d stupidly wondered if there was a pool, whether we’d dip our toes and laugh, but there wasn’t even electricity in the sad, abandoned house. The glass had been busted out of the window frames. There were no appliances in the kitchen, a toilet had been dragged into what would have been a dining room.
I could feel my fingernails digging into my palms like teeth as revulsion rolled thickly through my body.
We drank Fireball, which left our mouths spicy and warm. Still without talking, he kissed me, pushing up against me on the splintery wall of that dank shell of a house. His hooded eyes were open but unseeing, and I left my body there, preferring to witness this as a bystander. I knew this was going to have to be a secret—at least for a while—but I was confident that everyone would recognize the change in me. They’d see it in my movements. That this intense, pulsing charge of rage at my mother could be alchemized into power. He was a good kisser. Slow and deliberate, melting into my edges, which were already fuzzy from the cinnamon liquor. For that moment, I didn’t mind that we stood in a squatter’s den. That there was so much broken glass on the floor. We were both floating.
I led him back to his truck by his hand. It was surprisingly warm and soft. He had a rough, woven blanket in the bed. All I could think while his hands groped my breasts was that I hoped he wouldn’t go for my pants. I’d heard that you could contract tetanus in your cervix if you got fingered by a guy with dirty fingernails. I tried to check his nails, but it was dark, and when he switched from sucking on my neck to kissing my mouth again, I moaned in that way that every girl knows how even if they don’t want to.
It was surreal when he took my hand and guided it to his fly. I was shocked by how suddenly I was touching Holland Hint’s penis. And by how hot his penis felt. It was not unlike petting an unseeing animal wholly separate from him. Like caressing the spine of a small hairless cat. When the spurt of feverish ooze landed on my hand, it glistened as it cooled. I couldn’t tell if I was sick from giddiness or loathing. I knew that this part I wouldn’t tell anybody about. I checked my own nails. They were clean.
I also saw that my ring was missing.
“My ring.” I sat up, heart hammering. It was everything she’d left me, and I’d lost it down some stoner’s pants.
“What’s that?”
“My ring,” I heard myself say, hysteria edging. “We have to find it.” Holland, who was prone to doziness in the sober light of day, was practically comatose. He didn’t stir. Didn’t help me look for it. Didn’t jump up and down to see if it fell out of his pants. Didn’t so much as pull his phone out to help me search his car filled with garbage.
The next morning, he passed right by me as if nothing had happened. And still, two weeks later, I’d silently lost my virginity in that room. I’d watched my own condom wrapper falling to the floor. I was grateful that we’d done it standing up. Even if it hurt. Even as he crashed into me at angles that felt brutal and wrong. I was careful not to touch anything. A week after that Holland Hint never spoke to me again.
It’s how I learned that nothing ever met expectations.
Every time I saw him kissing his willowy, glossy girlfriend in the hallways, pulling her narrow frame toward him as he draped his arm across her shoulders, I felt a deep, digging pain through my midline.
They both had the same straw-colored hair. From the back they looked like siblings.
I thought no one knew. But a few days later, the rumors began. My friends became distant and more boys came calling.
* * *
June kills the engine.
“Every time someone hurts you, you find a way to hurt yourself ten times worse.”
It doesn’t sound untrue even if it feels wounding coming from my sister.
“Whatever, it doesn’t matter.” I hear the tears fall dully onto my lap. Onto her borrowed clothes.
She’s right, though. The completeness of Holland Hint’s disregard gave me purpose, direction. It became a brittle carapace of protection. Beneath the veneer I was the thinnest I’d ever been. I didn’t need Holland Hint. I didn’t need Mom, I didn’t even need June. By the time my older sister left for college I was ready. Mom, Holland, my friends, they all served as great practice.
“Can we go?”
She sighs. I keep staring at the white streaks of shoe polish on the van next to us. I hope someone gives them a kidney. Even if I don’t know why anyone would.
chapter 36
I sneak up to Mom’s bedroom. She and Dad are watching TV downstairs, June’s in the shower. When I was little, I’d take off all my clothes—underwear and everything—and get into Mom’s bed pretending I was her. An adult. A beautiful woman. A desirable woman.
Little kids are such creeps.
I slide the mirrored panels of her closet aside. The scent of mothballs overpowers Mom’s perfume. I breathe deep. I love the feeling of the fabric on my face. I dig in the back, beyond her everyday boring work stuff, for the white garment bag. It’s all still there. Unworn. Waiting. I unzip it, pulling the hanger through the hole in the top of the nylon bag, freeing just the blazer’s shoulders. Her suit is tiny. With the prim, shiny, outdated buttons so close together that it gives the impression of doll’s clothes. I hold my cheek against it, the crepe whorls scratchy against my skin.
I return it and search for my favorite. Mom’s hanbok. It’s still as delicate as I remember, but as I pull it closer, I see them: pinholes of light. A series of holes. A greedy moth’s meal clustered under the armscye of the jeogori. An ache branches along my chest at the stolen potential of all these beautiful clothes. Saved with such earnestness only to be ruined.
When the water stops, I return the clothes and slide the closet door back.
I’m watching June as she watches Mom watch TV. This is it. I’m on pins and needles wondering if she’ll tell them everything. The cancer, the surgery, that she won’t be able to give them grandkids.