A FEW WEEKS LATER, there is a summit of sorts, held on a picnic bench in a small park near the junior-high school. Christian has lured Holly there with the promise of a picnic, but when she arrives he is seated only with a beer wrapped in paper, and a pack of Camel Lights, the top of the box half-cocked, one cigarette jutting out from the rest. She joins him on the bench, and they sit for a while, space between them, and quietly watch two young girls, identical sisters in matching athletic shirts and shorts, race up and down the wide expanse of grass. They are trying to best each other with a soccer ball. Their hair is long and red and unruly, held back barely with barrettes and ponytail holders. Their cheeks are flushed. There are freckles on their arms. They are wearing training bras masquerading as sports bras. They are fierce. When one finally breaks loose, the other flies gracefully after her, finally tackling her to the ground. She sits on top of her, laughing, until her sister reaches up and smacks her in the face. The sister on top grabs a fistful of the other’s hair, and it is on, they are rolling and pinching and biting and it doesn’t seem like it’s going to stop, until a woman passing through the park with a baby carriage yells at them to cut it out. They start laughing, the two of them, and roll off each other. They lie on their backs and laugh and laugh and look up at the sky, which on this day is gray and thick with chunky dark clouds.
It could rain at any minute.
“Maybe we should get out of here,” says Holly. She rolls her eyes to the sky.
Christian checks his watch. He has a watch? He looks past Holly, past the twins, who are now practicing headstands, and then, finally, he sees what he is looking for, and he smiles a drunken smile, which makes no sense to Holly because it is only two in the afternoon. She turns and sees Shelly approaching, almost running, the points of her high-heeled boots sinking into the grass.
Shelly sits on the far end of the picnic table across from Christian, and she reaches out her hand toward him, lays it flat, waiting for the moment he will reach back for hers. And then she says, “We have something to tell you,” in such a dramatic fashion it is instantly clear to Holly that all they have talked about for days and days was this moment, that they have been waiting to utter these words, to feel the simultaneous thrill and guilt race through their bodies like a shot of alcohol at the beginning of the night.
And even though Holly is not surprised, she is still hurt, and sad, because now she’s going to have to be a complete bitch to them.
HELLO, MA’AM, this is Shelly’s friend from work, Holly Stoner, and I don’t know how to tell you this, but I thought you should know, I mean I would want to know, considering what’s happened to her in the past with that man, yes, ma’am, I know it was a long time ago, I know that’s none of my business, but what’s happening now, like, I’m her friend, so I think maybe it is my business? Anyway, look, she’s dating someone, he’s older, like, not in high school anymore, over eighteen, yes, definitely, anyway, they’re doing it, ma’am. And technically, that is rape, you know? He’s raping her. I don’t think it’s right, do you?
SHELLY DOESN’T TALK to Holly anymore after her totally unforgivable act of betrayal. (That’s what it said on the note that she slipped in Holly’s locker.) Also, she wears his New Order T-shirt with the hole in the sleeve every day to work for a month. It smells like cigarettes. She leans against the lottery machine, perfectly lined eyes staring out toward the birthday-card carousel, and fingers the bottom of the shirt, the ratty cuffs of the sleeves, and the jagged cigarette-burn hole. She is dreaming of her eighteenth birthday.
Like I care, thinks Holly. She has already packed up her shirt in the closet. She likes Sonic Youth now, and the Pixies, bands that have girls who are messy and tough. She is sick of faggy boys who strum their guitars and cry and people who work beneath their potential. She is so over it. In a year she will be somewhere new, studying to be a doctor, a hero, a rock star, and they will still be there, smoking their goddamn cigarettes and eating their stupid vegetarian burritos. In a way I feel sorry for them, she thinks. In a way.
At night she scrubs her face, until her skin is raw and dry and pink, until nothing is left but Holly. She scrubs until it stings.