23 PUDDLE-EYED VULGARITY
23
P UDDLE -E YED V ULGARITY
Amrita bought me a lily our freshman year. It was the kind of present that made me feel incapable—I’d never been able to keep a plant alive on my own. That lily was the first. Fear bolstered me—the dread that its death would let Amrita down. She loved its white flowers and fat stamens and the way each bloom unfurled like a cupped hand. Loved how it would droop to tell us it was thirsty, as if saddened by my neglect. All that love made me love it too. We kept it just out of direct sunlight, and I watered it every Thursday.
It was New Year’s Eve. I hadn’t spoken to Finch in days, and Caroline had been silent in our group chat. Saz texted constantly, each message growing more excited about her flight back to Indiana in a few days. Poltergeist was on in the living room, and snow fell with wicked strength.
In the kitchen, the lily’s leaves were black around the edges. The flowers hung and sulked, despite the still-damp soil from the last time I’d given them a drink. Pollen dusted the countertop as Amrita bent close and examined. I hovered at the foot of the stairs and scratched absently at my tattoo.
“We’ve kept her alive for three years,” Amrita murmured, lifting one crispy leaf. It crumbled under her touch. “I don’t understand what went wrong.”
Everything I touched seemed to rot these days—my paintings, my body, Finch. The ruins of the lily gathered on the countertop like piles of razed ash. Amrita swiped the mess into her palms and emptied it into the sink. Instinct told me to blame the shadow trailing me. But I turned and found the stairs empty, only my body left to darken the doorway.
“You alright?” Amrita asked when she finally looked up at me. “Finch said you were sick the other day on the way to the airport. Why didn’t you tell me?”
I kept my arms crossed over my chest and avoided the question. I contemplated a million different responses— Why can’t you let it go? Why didn’t you know without me having to say it? How can I ever be expected to say it? —and settled on a shy question of my own: “You talked to Finch?”
Amrita pulled out a chair at the table. She hesitated before sitting and said, “Want a cup of tea?”
I nodded and took the seat across from hers. She prepped two mugs with tea bags hooked over the handles. We still had a few hours before Finch was supposed to come over to watch the ball drop, and my mouth watered at the idea of caffeine. All that sleeplessness was catching up with me. I had a permanent headache and a lack of drive for anything other than sitting with them on the couch. Energy wouldn’t have mattered regardless—if there was a party on campus, we hadn’t been invited, and Rotham wasn’t known for hosting any events for the New Year. It would just be the four of us and a quiet night inside.
Amrita slid my mug over. She’d made it just how I liked it—honey and lemon. I thanked her and said, “Did she tell you the rest?”
Amrita grimaced. “Yes, Finch told me what you saw in the field.”
“It’s not mine.”
“I know that. It’s not mine either.”
“Okay.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Just okay?”
I cupped my hands around the mug. “It’s not yours, it’s not mine, it’s definitely not Finch’s. Saz and Caroline have been gone since Christmas, though we don’t know how long it’s been up. Someone else on campus could have made it. They all know about the Boar King.”
Amrita shook her head. “It’s too specific.” By “too specific,” I knew what she meant. There was too much intention behind it, in the organs hanging from its stomach and the purposeful propping up of the Boar King’s tusked hood. “Only we would know to make it like that.”
“We shouldn’t have made it in the first place,” I said.
“We didn’t know it would be like this. It was supposed to be fun.” Amrita held her scarred palm in the other hand and traced a finger over the faint line down the center. “I think you’re making yourself sick over this whole thing. It’s not real, Jo. You know that.”
But even she sounded unsure. “Yeah,” I said, mostly to wipe that regretful look off her face. I squeezed my left hand into a fist and felt my own wound strain at the edges. “What about Solo? Do you feel ready?”
“I don’t want to think about Solo right now,” she said. “Can’t we talk about something else? Something exciting to take with us into the new year, like a resolution or goal?”
I took a long drink and felt citrus and sweetness coat my tongue. Finally, I cleared my throat and said, “I don’t have any goals. I just missed you. I’m glad you’re home.”
Her smile crinkled the corners of her eyes. “Missed you too. My mom asked about you.”
“Oh yeah? What’d she say?”
“She wanted to know when you’re coming to see her again. Said she’d get the baklava you loved from that bakery in town.”
“Fuck, don’t remind me, now I need it.”
Amrita’s voice was gentle when she said, “That’s your goal, then. Make it through the rest of this year and eat baklava with me.”
I couldn’t fight my own smile. It was such a simple dream, so nearly attainable that it almost broke my heart.
“You didn’t drink your tea,” I said finally, touching my fingertip to Amrita’s cold mug. She looked at it and shrugged.
“Didn’t want it,” she answered. “I just wanted another reason to sit here with you.”
The front door banged open and brought the wind with it. We both jumped at the sound and sight of a figure stumbling inside. Caroline unwound a scarf from her face. There was a suitcase in her hands, and her nose was red from the cold.
“Caroline!” Amrita called, grinning. “You’re early!”
We went to her. It felt like a mirror of that first day on campus, pre-ritual and pre-Survey and pre-hysteria. She was just as bright as that day, elegant and imposing in an expensive winter coat and leather boots. But her eyes were such a dark and wild blue that when she hugged me close to her shoulder, I thought they might be black. I wondered if she was on something. If she was suffering the same creeping deterioration that I was. If we all were, and we just couldn’t talk about it.
I once thought we could talk about anything. But the idea of any of them knowing what went on in my head was an impossibility. I was too afraid to be the only one. There was such a real, looming chance that they might come to believe there was something wrong with me.
I helped Caroline out of her coat, and Amrita got the kettle going again. Caroline kicked her shoes off by the door and called into the kitchen, asking Amrita if she had anything stronger than tea, if we planned on getting sloshed, if she was going to have to be the only one ringing in the New Year with any enthusiasm. Her presence sparked a new energy in the two of us. I accepted a shot from Amrita, who was a little giddy already with Caroline draped over her shoulders and laughing. Whiskey burned me all the way down to the bone. Antiseptic. Alive. Reinvigorated.
“I want to be drunk enough that you can’t light a match next to me,” Caroline said, immediately topping off our glasses with a second shot and clinking hers with mine. Amrita laughed into her glass. They drank again. I hesitated, stomach still tossing from the first drink—but when Caroline’s black pupils fixed on me again, I knocked the shot back and grimaced.
This could be our way of coming together and banishing the near occult, Moody’s ever-present gaze, Solo’s eventual promise. We could get drunk and forget about it.
Caroline left her things by the door as we settled into the living room, freshly tipsy, everything warmer now. The movie was still playing but muted, its sound replaced by music on a speaker and the rising timbre of Caroline’s voice.
She moved erratically, spoke with her hands. “I had to get out of there, my parents wanted me to stay until next Friday. I told them I’d rather bash my head in with their antiques than be in that house for one more day.”
“Jesus,” Amrita said, but she was laughing a little.
“Anyway, I wanted to tell all of you before you heard it from someone else,” Caroline added casually, “but my parents donated a few hundred thousand dollars to Rotham this Christmas. They expect it to guarantee the Solo spot for me. I told them that wasn’t how it works, but I can’t stop them from wasting their money. So it’s done.”
We blinked back in stunned silence. Caroline swirled her drink in her hands. There was something deathly serious about the firm line of her shoulders and the half smile playing at the corners of her mouth.
“A few?” I asked. “How many is a few?”
“Five hundred thousand,” she answered.
“Five hundred thousand dollars?” Amrita repeated.
“Caroline,” I started. “That’s—that’s nearly double your entire Rotham tuition.”
Caroline shrugged. “I wanted to tell you before Finch got here. You know how she’ll be about it.”
“She’s going to know eventually,” I said. “Like you said, people are going to talk. That stuff is public record, and Cameron already has it out for you. It looks like a bribe.”
“Well,” Caroline said brightly, teeth bared in a grin, “who says the spot is actually mine? All Moody talks about lately is how the work is shitty, how the work to come will still be shitty, how I need to apply myself if I hope to earn the spot. The only thing that might make me capable of a great body of thesis work would be if I sacrificed Finch next.”
Amrita’s throat bobbed with her swallow. “Caroline, fuck. Don’t say that.”
“I’m obviously kidding!”
But Caroline’s voice was strained, her eyes still too dark, something piercing and endless about them beneath her fair lashes. There was a knock on the door, and then Finch emerged from the storm with an arm bent over her face, blocking out the worst of the wind.
“It’s miserable out there. Sorry I’m late.”
It felt like forever since we’d fought in Grainer. Since then, her studio had been empty, our shifts at the library canceled for the holidays, her window in Tuck House glowing without fail. On my walks to Grainer, I had stopped outside of it and contemplated doing something foolish, like tossing a stone at the glass until she emerged on the fire escape. I was such a coward. I wanted her like nothing else.
She was beautiful even now, with her hair dampened and skin chapped by the snow. The Manor’s light illuminated her in shades of orange. The smile on her face was hesitant—her eyes bounced from Amrita to me, where that smile faltered a little, sheepish and private. Then she landed on Caroline, and the smile dropped away completely. “You’re back,” she said. It was a statement intended for exclamation that came out hollow.
“Come have a drink, Finch,” Caroline said.
Finch hesitated and then shed her jacket, snaring it on a hook by the door before she claimed the spot beside me on the couch as if it were no problem. Maybe it wasn’t for her. But I could feel every inch that we didn’t touch, that fine line between us, the heat of Finch’s hip so close to pressing against mine. My body recalled hers even when I wished it wouldn’t.
Caroline sprawled on the floor and scrolled through her playlist, queuing songs that would only become more chaotic with her increasing drunkenness. Amrita started listing off requests as Finch’s phone buzzed in her pocket. She touched it through the fabric but didn’t check the notification.
“You’ve been working in your room,” I said quietly, just for her.
She shifted uneasily. “Grainer is cold as fuck. I don’t know how you bear it.”
It was such a cop-out. I scoffed a little, tipsy enough to let how I really felt spill through the cracks. I could feel her looking at me but refused to turn my head. I didn’t look up until she stood and beckoned for me to follow. “Come on, help me fix a drink.”
“It takes two of you to make a drink?” Caroline drawled. It was a challenge. Her eyes flitted suspiciously between the two of us.
“Yeah, if you want a good one,” I called over my shoulder, and followed Finch into the kitchen. She peered into the fridge and shook an old bottle of seltzer. I watched her unscrew the cap and taste it, grimacing.
“Flat,” she declared. She grabbed a beer instead and closed the fridge, slid her phone out of her pocket to check it. I hefted myself up on the kitchen counter beside the dying lily as she set her phone down beside me and uncapped the bottle with the opener hooked to her keys. The music in the other room kicked off even louder now—Caroline’s preferred brand of electronic clashing.
“We should talk about it,” I whispered beneath the rumble of sound.
Finch looked at me. Really looked at me. Her eyes had a sad weight, that newborn-calf kind of gaze that made me soft for her every time. The Manor’s warmth sapped the dampness from her hair, and now the strands around her forehead sweetly curled.
She cleared her throat and said, “You’ll have to remind me what ‘it’ is referring to. If it’s that gruesome display in the cornfield, I don’t want to hear it.”
I shook my head hard. “No, I—I mean us.”
Some of the fight left her shoulders, replaced by a different directness. She set the beer down beside the sink and caged me with her hands on either side of my thighs, gripping the edge of the countertop. My pulse kicked. I was so aware of the two of them down the hall, their laughter carrying, the music loud enough to vibrate the room, skin humming with her nearness.
“Go ahead and talk,” she murmured, looking at my mouth when I wet my lips with my tongue. Everything felt like a risk. Her T-shirt was loose around her shoulders. I reached up, hands trembling, and rested my fingers along the frayed neckline. Those two shots had sparked something in me. I needed her closer. I’d do anything to make it happen.
But my awful mouth went ahead and said, “Do you regret it?”
She shook her head and swallowed. “’Course not.”
Her arms caged me. I dragged my thumb across her collarbone and tried to keep my voice from shaking. “Really?”
“Yeah,” she breathed. There was a twinge of disbelief in her voice, thinly veiled frustration. “I want it to happen again.”
Heat everywhere, in my head and my mouth, in the space between us. One of her hands slid up and brushed against my knee, just the barest flicker of touch. “Me too,” I whispered when I finally realized she was waiting for me.
Finch smiled. She leaned closer and stopped a breath away. I could smell traces of her beer and the citrusy stain of linseed oil where she’d touched her T-shirt. Down the hall Caroline said something low and indistinct, and Amrita erupted into laughter.
“We can’t do this here,” Finch murmured, and I nodded immediately, but neither of us moved to pull away. Her palm slid up my knee. It was like her fingers were wired to my nerves—every touch lit me up, made me fight not to tremble. She stepped between my knees and rested her forehead on my shoulder, fingertips pressing into my thigh hard enough to promise a bruise. The image was invigorating; I imagined the outline of her hand marked on me, somewhere I could fit my hand to later in bed. I leaned my cheek against the top of her head and closed my eyes. Wrapped my arms around her shoulders and breathed in.
“Sorry about this week.” Her voice was muffled against my neck. “I don’t want to fight, I’m just scared.”
She would have never said it if I could see her face. The admission tucked itself away in my throat instead where it could die unnoticed. I tightened my hold on her, as if she might float away without it.
“Forget it,” I answered. I snared my fingers in the fine hair at the nape of her neck. She sighed beneath my touch. There was so much I wanted to say. That I was sorry, too, for scaring her. That I was fucking terrified. That if she could see what I saw, she’d never want to touch me again—she’d think me ruined beyond repair.
The softest press of her lips to my throat was my unraveling. I twined my fingers deeper into her hair and held fast.
“You scare me,” she mumbled, the words dissolving into a second kiss. Then another. “Like, you really scare the shit out of me.”
I laughed a little, dragged my nails over her scalp. “Why?”
“I don’t know, you’re just—” She hesitated. “It’s like you see everything that we can’t. You’re smarter than us, and you’re talented as fuck, and you get this look in your eyes when you’re painting or when the rest of us are talking that makes me think you’re somewhere else, far away.”
Her teeth scraped across the soft skin at my shoulder. What would I say if she left a mark there? How would I explain it away? They always saw right through me. I could never get away with anything. I was barely hanging on to my concealed delusion, and clearly Finch had seen through it too.
“You make it so hard to know what to do with you,” she said. Another kiss.
Her phone buzzed beside my thigh, loud against the countertop. My eyes slit open to look. Thea’s name lit up on the screen above a message preview that read: wish u were at cameron’s tonight so we ...
I froze. Finch felt it and pulled away to give me a questioning look. Her hair was mussed, her lips red and damp, her pupils dilated with desire. She cocked her head askance. When I still didn’t speak, her eyes darted to her phone, and she slackened as she flipped it face down against the counter.
“Jo, it’s not—we’re not—you know it’s not like that, it’s—”
“Three minutes until midnight! Hurry up, you’re going to miss it!” Amrita poked her head out of the living room and peered at us from the end of the hallway. I could barely make out her face in the dim lighting, couldn’t read what we looked like to her in the staggered action of pulling apart.
“Be right there,” Finch called back. She turned to me, but I was already sliding off the countertop and away from her. The sound of my pulse in my ears was nearly loud enough to war with the music. “Jo, wait.”
I left her behind in the kitchen. Amrita was stretched across half of the sofa, Caroline perched on the floor with her head against Amrita’s legs. I hauled myself onto the empty cushion and watched the clock count down. Finch followed a second later, hovering in the doorway. I could only look at her out of the corner of my eye. I tried to focus on the back of Caroline’s head instead, her hands in her lap, picking at the raw edge of a fingernail.
“I wish Saz were here,” I said as the countdown glowed. “It’s not the same without her.”
Amrita hummed, one arm slung across my shoulders. “I wish we were there with Saz. Her dads probably took her somewhere beachy, I’m sure she’s knocking back pina coladas by now.”
“Oh, to be rich,” Finch sighed.
“It’s not all that great. Look where I ended up.” Caroline gestured loosely around the room. Finch snorted a laugh.
“We are very fun,” Amrita scoffed, “and you chose to be here, in case you forgot.”
“Ten seconds,” Finch reminded.
The numbers ticked off. I drew my knees up to my chest as if they could cage my pounding heart. Saz’s absence was palpable, but the room still felt too full, as if there were another person in the room watching us unfold. Fireworks announced another year. Past the shut windows I could hear them echo across campus, brilliant pops of sound.
Caroline seized Amrita by the jaw and kissed her directly on the mouth. Amrita sputtered and laughed into it, until Caroline turned and snatched up my hand next, pressing her lips to my knuckles and smiling viciously. I didn’t look at Finch. Lights bloomed on the TV screen, spark and spark and spark.