May 1976
They gathered outside under the tree by the side of the house. The girls brought out the blankets and pillows and placed them
in a small semicircle, with Dean in the center. Then they carried out one of the old recliners and put it in front.
“That’s the seat of honor,” Dean said. “For you.”
Sweet Jane brought out a mug of tea and presented it to Blue. It was redolent with mint and lavender and something else, something
earthy.
“What’s in it?” Blue asked.
“It’s okay,” Sweet Jane said. “I dosed it carefully. Go ahead.”
So they were going to trip. Blue had tripped before, and this was about as good a place and time to do it again. She drank
a bit more. Dean nodded, and Jane took the mug back. Blue watched it go around. Everyone had a sip. They let a little time
go by, relaxing and staring up at the sky, waiting for the spark. Acid always gave her a metallic twang in the back of her
mouth, and that wasn’t happening. It was probably mushroom tea.
“Tell us something good about yourself, Blue,” Dean finally said. “Something good.”
This became a soft chant. Something good, something good, something good. The cicadas joined in on the chorus with their chirping.
“Okay,” Blue said, starting to giggle. “I bake.”
“Something more than that,” Dean said. She could see his smile, even though it was getting dark. It was a second half-moon,
hiding down here among the trees and people. “Tell us about you. What makes you Blue?”
No one had ever asked her this before and she hadn’t really thought about it. She just was herself. What was good about her,
aside from her baking? She didn’t dislike herself. She was adequate. But she wanted to please her new friends.
“I’m loyal,” she said after a moment.
“Loyal,” Dean repeated. “That’s beautiful. We saw that in you right away.”
“We did,” Denver said.
An echo. Everyone thought she was loyal.
“Do you think you’re the most loyal person here?” Dean asked.
Did she? She didn’t know how to compare loyalty.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“So you’re not sure?”
“No,” she said.
“So you might be.”
“I don’t know,” she said again.
“Are you more loyal than Sweet Jane?”
How would she know? Then again, Sweet Jane was as gentle as the flowers and plants she grew. She was unfailingly kind. She
couldn’t be more loyal than her.
“Probably not,” she said.
“So compared to Sweet Jane, you’re disloyal?”
“I didn’t say that. . . . I just, Jane’s so . . .”
“What about Denver?” he asked.
Denver. She was Dean’s right hand. Denver would do anything for the group. Blue was sure of that.
“No,” she said. “Probably not.”
“What about Cat? Or Lacey? Or me? Are you more loyal than me?”
This was impossible. Compared to them, she was a spineless mess. They had picked her up, brought her here. They had given
her so much.
“No,” she said. “No, not more than all of you.”
“So the best thing about you is your loyalty, but you’re less loyal than all of us?”
“I guess?” she said.
“Would you turn on us? Turn us in?”
“What? No. No. Never.”
“Then how are you so much less loyal?” he asked.
Those things didn’t line up. Just because she felt they were more loyal than she was didn’t mean she was going to turn them
in for anything.
“That’s not a fair comparison,” she managed to say. Her tongue was expanding slightly. The taste of the lavender crowded her
mouth and filled her nose.
“Not fair?” Dean’s voice was even, but there was an edge to it. “I’m not fair?”
“It’s just, it’s not the same . . . I wouldn’t . . .”
“Because we would go to the mat for you. To the end. Do anything. Denver, what would you do for Blue?”
“Anything at all,” Denver said. She was a bit farther in the shadows, so her voice seemed to come from the dark itself. “Anything
she needed.”
“Would you give her your clothes? Your food?”
“In a second.”
“Blue,” he said, “would you do that for Denver?”
“Of course,” Blue said.
“Then do it. Give her your clothes.”
This wasn’t an unreasonable request. They all shared clothes here. Blue got to her feet and pulled off the T-shirt and cutoff
shorts she had on and walked them over toward Denver’s voice.
“Here you go,” she said, handing them over.
She went to go back to her spot, but Dean stopped her again.
“Just stay there. Stand there.”
She did as she was told. It was a little chilly. She had no underwear on, so she was naked in the dark, standing before the
group. Nudity wasn’t frowned upon here or any kind of a big deal, but it was usually passing by each other in the shower or
getting changed. It wasn’t a display. She pulled the dark around herself in her mind as a sheet.
“Tell us one bad thing about you,” Dean said. “Tell us the worst thing about you.”
The worst thing? Bad things came to mind more easily. She was a coward. She gave up on things, like school. She wasn’t pretty enough. She could be smarter.
“Come on,” Dean said. “Tell us.”
tell us tell us tell us
She told lies sometimes. Small ones. Sometimes big ones. Lies to her parents. Lies to people at college. Lies to the owner
of the shop about small amounts of missing food.
“I’m a liar,” she said.
“A liar,” Dean repeated. “Who have you lied to?”
“Lots of people, I guess.”
“To us?”
Had she ever lied to them? She didn’t think so. She didn’t remember doing it. Bugs were crawling on her bare skin. She slapped
at them.
“No,” she said.
“Took you a while to answer. Are you sure? We don’t lie here. We tell the truth, always. We live in the truth. No games. Only
the truth.”
She wished she had clothes on. She wished everyone wasn’t looking at her. She had to go to the bathroom. She felt guilty and
couldn’t explain why.
“Okay,” he said. “Tell us the truth now. Who do you like best here?”
She wrapped her arms around her chest. The night sky was dividing into subtle bands of color—violets and electric blues.
Cracks of pure black penetrated this lovely display and showed the deeper, scarier reality out there.
The cold and endless one. The one where you were alone and you never heard a human voice again and you turned to stone on the inside.
“The truth,” Dean said. His voice had taken on the sonorousness of a celestial trumpet.
Which one did she like the best? The mushrooms brought a cloudy clarity as she surveyed the group. There was Cat, with her
short dark hair, always on the edge, crackling with soft paranoia. Cat barely seemed real. Sally was more corporal than Cat—her
long, dirty-blond hair swinging as she moved, and she was always moving. Sally and Blue probably had similar backgrounds—Sally
leaving Swarthmore, and Blue leaving Mount Holyoke. But she wasn’t supposed to think about that because that was before. Sally
winked out. Lacey was a strange dream. She wore so many clothes, skirts on skirts, scarves on scarves. She took speed sometimes
and would circle her eyes over and over in thick black liner until she had two holes in her face. Not Lacey. Denver? Denver
was big and solid, as tall as Dean, but bigger. She was their mountain, a mile high, and you can’t know a mountain.
But Sweet Jane . . . Jane smelled of soft herbs and sunshine. Jane understood the garden and cared about every tiny green
bean or tart little unripe strawberry. When Jane was in the kitchen with Blue, they moved around each other with ease, like
they were dancing. Jane made sure the dishes were dry and the bowls correctly stacked. She hummed along with the radio and
watched in admiration as Blue worked dough. Jane liked her. The real, deep like that you could never fake. Her soft freckled face was beaming up at Blue now and Blue knew that while they were supposed to be one seamless family with no favorites—Jane was her actual friend.
“Jane,” she said.
“Jane,” he repeated. “You like Jane.”
“I like everyone.”
“We love you,” he said.
“I love you.”
“You said like,” he replied. “Which is the truth?”
“Both,” she said.
The cicadas conferred.
“Jane,” Dean finally said. “Blue likes you best! How do you feel about that?”
“Nothing but love,” Sweet Jane said.
“For who?”
“For everyone,” she replied.
“You see, Jane gets it,” Dean said. “She didn’t even hesitate.”
But Jane hadn’t been asked these questions. What was Blue missing that Jane got at once?
“Jane,” Dean said, “give Blue a kiss.”
Blue saw the form of Sweet Jane rise from the grass and approach her, her sunny-yellow halter glowing softly. She moved at
butterfly speed, coming upon Blue, pressing her body into Blue’s, taking Blue’s head in her hands and pressing her lips to
Blue’s. She was so soft. Her lips, her breath. She smelled of sweat and soil and patchouli.
“Now correct her,” Dean said. “For her lying.”
“How?”
“However feels right,” Dean said.
Sweet Jane smacked Blue across the face. Her ear started ringing. She recoiled, then reflexively teared up from the blow. The aftershock tickled all the nerves in her face.
“How do you feel about Blue?” Dean asked.
“I love her,” Jane said.
“Is that why you corrected her?”
“Yes.”
Sweet Jane had real affection in her voice, as if the smack was another kiss, the most tender of all.
“We’ve opened the box,” Dean said. “Let’s explore. Let’s clear it out.”
And so it began. As Blue stood there in the cold, shaking, Dean went to each member of the group and asked them what the worst
thing about Blue was. Denver correctly said she was kind of a coward. Cat said Blue thought she was better than everyone else.
Lacey said she wouldn’t be very useful to the group. Sally, similarly, thought Blue might be a drag on their resources. Even
Sweet Jane had a take—she thought Blue was lazy.
Blue stood there, naked, taking it all. She didn’t want to keep her eyes open, but when she closed them, strange figures loomed
at her. All the failures in her life. There had been so many.
She began to sob.
“Why are you crying, Blue?” Dean asked, his voice soft with curiosity.
“Why did you . . . bring me . . . if I’m so bad . . . ?”
“Because,” he said simply, “we love you.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re perfect,” he said.
“But you said . . .”
“Those are your games. You’re holding on to them. You need to let them go.”
“How?”
“There’s no trick,” Dean said. “You just do. You just let it all go. With us. Like us. When you stop playing, you’re free
to be what we see. Which is you. Blue, Blue, Blue. We can see it, can’t we?”
we see it we see it we see it
“Okay,” Dean said. That seemed to be enough of a signal for the group to jump up all at once and wrap themselves around her,
a blanket of human skin, warmth. Voices telling her how much they loved her, how good she did, how amazing she was. Someone
brought her a blanket and wrapped her in it. They led her inside and put her down on a mattress, surrounding her, stroking
her hair.
Blue had never felt so much love. They were doing all of this for her. She wouldn’t let them down. And she could see it a
bit now, a crack. A glimpse of who she really was.
Later that night, when she was having sex with Dean for the first time, he said, “It starts now. Then tomorrow. Then tomorrow.
Then now. Then tomorrow.” And she understood.