Sandra Hollis’s—Sandy’s—face remains calm and composed, like a social worker who’s been trained to stay calm and composed, no matter what’s revealed to them. It makes me wonder what would happen if I told her about Greta’s underwear. Would the expression change then?
“He said you’re super smart, and that you should definitely be an English major in college. He told me that he’s going to stay in touch with you after we leave at the end of this school year and give you a leg up at Yale in three years, if you want.”
She’s lying. Maybe not about the college admissions stuff, but certainly by omission about knowing the truth of my illness. She’s too smooth, too prepared with her words.
Abruptly, she tilts her head. “Are you okay?”
As I just stare at her, she glances over her shoulder into the apartment. “Nick? Can you come out here—”
I am so sorry, I think to myself.
“About what?” she asks.
When she poses the question, I realize I’ve spoken out loud. I also realize how high I have raised the stakes in this game I am trying to play with Greta.
“I have to go,” I say just as Nick steps into the open doorway.
He’s wearing a deep red cashmere sweater, at least I think it has to be cashmere given how fine the knit is. And he’s smiling as he drops a casual arm around his wife. She looks at him, her mouth moving as she brings him up to speed, and when she nestles her body into his, I doubt she’s even aware of how comfortable she is with him. How loose. How unwound. The way she is with her husband is honest intimacy, and I’m the only one among the three of us who suspects it’s not going to last much longer.
I look down at his jeans, and try to guess whether they’re the ones I took out of the washer, the ones that Greta’s panties were in. They seem similar. Don’t all jeans look the same, though?
“God, Sarah, I feel like I haven’t seen you in forever.” Nick smiles. “And you’ve got to come to dinner—”
“I have to go study,” I mumble.
“We’ll make a date,” he says as I trip over my feet again and take off.
I barely make it to the bathroom in time. Punching through the door, I go to the row of toilets, burst into a stall, and crash down onto my knees. I don’t even bother to put the seat up as I retch. Nothing comes out, though, so I retch again. And again—
“Are you okay?”
When I hear the voice from up above, I have a thought that God is a female and She’s checking in on me, and I promptly decide I must apologize for doubting Her existence all these years.
I lift my sweaty, flushed face out of the bowl.
Francesca is standing in the open doorway of the stall. She’s put her hair up in a scrunchie and she has her toothbrush and toothpaste in her hand—and that’s when I realize that she’s been doing successfully what I just failed to execute: You can always tell when the pretty girls purge after they eat because they have to get their long, beautiful hair out of the way. It’s the only time those locks are not down around their narrow shoulders.
“Well?” she prompts.
Even though she’s inquiring about my welfare, it’s not exactly with charity. From her superior, far more comely elevation, she’s regarding me like a stray dog in the street that she may or may not have to call animal control about. Given her pursed lips, it’s clear that she’d really rather write me off and keep going. She’s not like Greta, though. If she leaves the stray with a broken leg in the middle of the road, it will bother her later. It will not sit right.
Just like putting my essay in all those mailboxes and showing up in tennis whites ultimately affected her.
“When Greta punched you in the eye on Mountain Day,” I hear myself say, “was it because you knew what she was doing with Nick Hollis?”
The color drains out of the girl’s face, transforming her subtle makeup job into Bozo the Clown’s version of Maybelline.
“What are you talking about,” she whispers.
I don’t even try to get up off the bathroom floor. My legs won’t handle my weight for so many reasons, and besides, I’ve been beneath her and her kind since the day I drove onto campus in a ten-year-old Mercury. Going eye to eye isn’t going to change anything.
“It’s not right,” I say. “The whole thing. He’s fucking married.”
There are moments when the rigid hierarchy of teenage social status melts away, and this is one of them. The significance of what I’ve broached is so great that it sandblasts our distinctions of pretty girl and insane outcast away. We are merely human. And we are both appalled.
“How did you find out?” she says softly.
“It doesn’t matter.”
Francesca looks around the empty bathroom. I look at her. I realize that she, like Stacia, has been a blur to me, the unfocused background behind the object my camera’s lens has been so sharply focused on. Her face is not as pretty as I’ve always thought it was, her nose a little too long in her lean face, her profile therefore birdlike as her chin is no match for its projection. I’m guessing she will fix this imbalance before she goes to college, and likely, too, the size of her breasts. Her skin is perfect, however, so smooth and unblemished that it is alabaster with a blood source. And of course, courtesy of her after-dinner toilet stall habits, no one can fault her body fat percentage.
Assuming a vertical yardstick is the standard you’re applying to her figure.
“I caught them back in early September,” she says in a hushed rush, like she’s been holding on to the secret for a while. “I was in the newsletter offices alone way late.”
Copying my essay? I wonder. No, given the timing, that was closer to the fake geometry memo. But I am no longer angry about the pranks or violations of my privacy. At least, I’m not angry with her.
“His office is on the same floor as the newsroom,” she says. “It’s way down at the end of the hall. I was leaving and they walked out of his door together. His hair was a mess. So was hers. He was tucking his shirt back into his pants.” Francesca shakes her head. “Like I don’t know what they were doing in there? Come on.”
“They didn’t see you?”
“No. They were too busy flirting with each other. And then on Mountain Day, she was being way obvious. Talking to him. Touching his arm or his shoulder. When we got to the park, I told her she better chill if she didn’t want the whole school to—” There’s the bang of a door out in the hallway and her head whips around. But she doesn’t stop. She talks faster, like we might be running out of time. “I said she was making a fool out of herself and she needed to quit it. She went outer limits on me.”
“But you kept on being friends with her.”
Francesca’s eyes come back to me. “What am I supposed to do? Sit at a table alone?” She looks down quickly. “No offense.”
“None taken.”
“So how do you know?”
“I found her panties in his laundry. It’s a long story, but there’s no doubt whose jeans pocket they were in.”
Francesca’s eyes bug out. “When was this?”