Chapter 27 Then
Then
Claire
It alarms me, how easily Natalie lets insult or injury roll off her.
At home, with Mom, the knives might come out, but outside the house, it’s like she’s disarmed.
I get that it’s her defense mechanism, balling up like an armadillo and letting her passivity be her armor.
Truth be told, I’m jealous of this ability to not let barbed words find their hooks in her skin.
Despite how hard she works to make people at school like her, how elegantly she weaponizes that Like, I know she doesn’t care in the way most people do.
She doesn’t get any warm fuzzies from people thinking or saying nice things about her.
But she knows that being held in people’s good opinion can get her things, and that… that she wants. Needs, maybe.
My popularity is more personal to me. Perhaps that’s why I’ve never been able to bite my tongue the way she can; any kind of slight feels like being told that I’m not important.
I have to remind the person that I matter, even if I do it with a smile.
Perhaps my easy step to anger is simply my own defense mechanism, resisting the urge to become the pliant rag doll our mother became.
That Natalie’s becoming. I’m never going to be anyone’s punching bag.
Natalie’s right about how useful it is having people think well of you, though.
Becky didn’t even think to accuse me of being behind the switching of her tan a couple of days ago.
Even though it’s my sister she’s being a total cunt to.
The thought of her stormy, charred orange face when she marched into school still makes me smile. She deserved worse than that.
At school, it’s hard dealing with slights, but it’s always worse watching it happen to my sister.
Maybe because I know she’ll never do anything about it, and I know some people see her as an easy target.
Our mom is poor, our dad is dead, and we’re among only a handful of Black kids in school.
Then, to top it all off, Natty just swallows any insults.
And so, to balance the scales, I’ve developed a fondness for hatching little revenges.
Feels like the acts should have a chic French name: petites vengeances.
Still, once you get a taste for something like that, for making people get what they deserve, it’s difficult to ever stop.
It’s with all this in mind that I sneak out and rush over to Marc’s party when I receive Emily’s call about my sister.
Sober Natty is vulnerable enough, but I don’t like the thought of her drunk in a den of vultures.
And when I arrive, finding her curled around a toilet bowl like a cat, I know I made the right choice.
Fortunately, this isn’t the only bathroom in Marc’s house, but people are still drunk enough and desperate enough for use of it that a lot of people are banging on the door, pissed.
There’s sick down Nat’s prom dress, which is soaked through and smells of chlorine.
Her skin is cold, and I worry she’s going to make herself even sicker than she already is.
I’m not someone who feels fear often, but I do feel afraid for my sister; she doesn’t seem to know how to look out for herself.
“Come on, Natty. We’ve got to move.”
She’s unresponsive.
“I’ve been trying for ages,” Emily says, hands flapping. “I just don’t know what to do. You’ve got this, though, yeah?” She’s already getting up to leave.
A bolt of irritation runs through me. “Hold on a minute—you’re probably the reason she’s so wasted in the first place. Can you at least go get three of the least creepy and least weedy boys here to give me a hand? Heavy on the ‘least creepy’ part.”
“I did not force your sister to down half a bottle of tequila,” she slurs. “But sure—I’ll be right back.”
A few minutes later, three boys are releasing my sister’s limbs on top of Marc’s bed. It takes me more time and effort than seems reasonable, but I eventually manage to strip Natalie down and dress her in a dry T-shirt and joggers found in a wardrobe.
Duty done, I decide to go find my sister’s boyfriend and give him an earful for not looking after her properly.
There were rumors of him being out on the rooftop, attempting to make a heroic dive into the pool, but I’ve just been in his room, overlooking the square patch of roof closest to the pool, and there’s been no sign of him.
Emily finds me before I can find him, shoving a shot glass in my hand and yanking on my arm to come dance.
I can’t stand how desperate she seems for me to like her, but look, I’m not a bloody saint; I’m a teenage girl at a house party with a cool older crowd and no parents.
I want to have fun. I also know the brownie points this is going to score me with the other kids in my year.
So of course, I take the shot, and then a Smirnoff Ice.
I don’t go crazy—I’ve no intention of getting as wasted as my sister—but I enjoy myself, flirting with whoever seems open to it and dancing with whoever has rhythm (not a huge number of people in that crowd).
As the party quietens down, I start to catch snippets of the hushed conversations and throwaway comments traded in clusters.
By the time the last of the party guests are heading to bed or hopping in taxis, I’ve realized that Marc and Natalie are no longer together, that there has been some kind of scene with Becky.
There’s still no sign of Marc, but I think of my sister lying sprawled out on his bed and I realize it was a mistake to leave her there.
From the sound of it, it’s the last place she’ll want to be.
Moving quickly, I make my way back up to Marc’s room. When I get there, the door seems jammed, but with a firm shove, it comes tumbling open. A chair topples over, clearly propped against the handle mere moments ago. Marc is in the bed, hunched over Natalie, his mouth on hers. She isn’t moving.
“What are you doing?” My blood is suddenly cold in my veins, feet planted on the floor.
He throws a hooded look my way, clearly also drunk. As he turns to face me properly, I notice his hand sliding out from Nat’s trousers. I’m glad, at the very least, that they’re still on. But that doesn’t stop the bile from rising in my throat.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I ask again.
Still not moving, Natalie gives out a low groan. Marc swings his legs out from under the duvet and gets out of the bed. He’s naked.
“Claire!” It’s a slack-jawed greeting and a reminder that I’m not supposed to be where I am. He ambles over to me, arm outstretched. “Come on, you gotta go.”
He’s strong, but he’s drunk and unprepared for my righteous anger. “I’m not fucking leaving you alone with her. She’s passed out. What the hell are you doing?” I smack his arm off my shoulder.
“C’mon, you’ve got to get out,” he says. “She doesn’t want you here.”
“Nat?” I run to her side of the bed and shake her. More gentle groans, but nothing coherent.
Suddenly there’s a hand on my arm. I stagger back with the force behind it.
“You gotta go,” he says.
“If you make me leave, I will scream up and down this house about what you were trying to do to her.”
He glowers at me, storms over to the door, and slams it shut. “And what was that?”
“Christ, you could at least put on some clothes.”
He still looks sullen as he staggers over to the bed, unsteady on his feet. Once he’s unceremoniously plonked himself down on the edge, he starts scooping up discarded clothes and putting them back onto his body. “You’re a real pain in the ass, you know that?”
Natty stirs again, this time forming a semi-coherent sentence. It’s slurred, each word bleeding into the next, but the question is clear: What’s going on?
“Is there anywhere we can talk?” I ask him. I don’t want her to overhear. Whatever he was doing was bad enough; she doesn’t have to hear about it in this state.
“Could you not just fuck off ?”
His growl is dark, menacing. But unfortunately for him, my amygdala only knows “fight,” not “flight” or “fright.” It’s a seed of savagery I wish my father hadn’t sown in me. A seed I’ve watered to grow over my fear. And so I find myself marching up to Marc and flicking him in the ear. Hard.
“Ow! What the—”
“Cut the attitude. Two minutes, and then I’ll leave you alone,” I say.
A glowering Marc indicates that I should follow him, ambling over to a large window.
I don’t love heights, don’t love the prospect of being out there alone with him, something menacing in the glazed-over look in his eyes—the eyes of a spoiled teenage boy with no one currently at the helm. A boy like that is capable of anything.
He prizes the window open and steps out into the warm air. It takes more effort to climb through with my short legs, but I make it out after him, pushing the window almost closed so that the sound won’t travel to Natalie.
“So, Marc, what the fuck?” I say. “I mean, I saw where your hand was. And you were naked.”
He looks at me with those dead eyes of his. They’ve always been so cold, devoid of something. I’m never sure if Natalie likes him because of or in spite of this. But in any case, something in his energy has shifted. He isn’t pretending to be pally anymore.
“Look, your sister’s a little fucking slut. I wasn’t doing anything she didn’t want.”
My temperature starts to rise again. “How could she want anything if she’s out cold?”
“She’s always desperate for it. I can smell it on her.”
“Care?”
Natty. She’s swaying unsteadily behind me, bare feet on the roof tiles.
“Natty, go to bed.”
“Yeah, babe, go to bed. I’ll be there in a sec.”