Chapter 2 #3
I kept going east until I found the address, a large two-story house, tastefully renovated, with a lime-green door and dark windows. It was the largest one on the cul-de-sac. There was a for sale sign staked in the yard that read Foreclosure in thick red letters.
I swallowed dry.
There were just two cars parked in the driveway: the rusty pickup truck and the station wagon that had crawled past my house that morning.
Just down the street, parked flush with the curb, was the Airstream RV, one of those silver sleeper vans that looked a lot like a soup can with a sticker stripped off.
There were patterned curtains drawn over most of its porthole windows, light shining out through them.
Someone inside, maybe? Watching TV or perhaps getting ready for bed.
I edged past the vehicles, started toward the front door, and knocked once, then again more loudly when there was no answer.
A full minute later, a girl answered the door. The same one from the diner, with the eerie gray eyes, the nose ring, and the shaggy bob, dead ends brushing along a sharp-cut jaw. She wore flared pants, low slung, hipbones jutting above the waist, and a cropped leather vest for a shirt.
Behind her was a dark and empty foyer. For a house party, it was awfully quiet.
No lights or music. I wondered, at the sight of that empty house, if I was about to be murdered or sex trafficked or something equally terrible.
But even that fear wasn’t enough to deter me.
I had to see this through. I didn’t realize until that moment just how desperate and reckless my grief had made me.
I didn’t feel much of anything anymore, and so even my suspicions felt…
dampened and insignificant. Like my life was a small thing to risk if it meant that I had the chance to really feel something again. Something real and bright.
The girl took me in with a slow pass of her gaze, no warmth or recognition, as if she didn’t even remember me from the diner just hours before. “Naomi invited you?” When I didn’t immediately respond, she said, “Tall? Long hair, blue eyeshadow?”
I realized, only then, that I didn’t know any of the girls’ names. With a flush of shame warming the back of my neck, I held out the wrinkled and greasy scrap of receipt paper onto which the blond girl had written the address.
“No, not her. The girl who invited me was blond and youngish?”
The girl didn’t step out of the doorway.
Just then, one of the other girls from the diner, the one with the long sandy braids, appeared in the foyer. “Jesus Christ, Riley. Stop being such a hard-ass and let her in, will you?”
Riley frowned but moved out of the way. “Guess that’s your ticket in.”
I stepped into the foyer tentatively, feeling like an intruder to this not-party that I’d been invited to. Riley turned on her heel. She was wearing cowboy boots, and the spurs rattled as she strode into the living room and disappeared out the back door.
The other girl turned to me. She had flakes of gold leaf stuck to her cheeks. “Sorry about her. She’s…not great with being social or, like, people in general.”
“It’s okay, I get it.” An awkward silence ensued, made worse when I thrust out my hand, a motion so sudden the girl flinched a little. “I’m Roslyn.”
God. I’d become something of a hermit after Adeline’s death, but my own awkwardness still surprised me. How long had it been since I’d attempted small talk? Or even had a proper conversation with someone who wasn’t Conny or my parents or someone else who was obligated to talk to me?
The girl extended her hand to mine, and we shook, a slightly stilted introduction, but her warm smile made the gesture feel less awkward than it was. “I’m Iona. Glad you came.”
“I wasn’t sure I would.” Which was to say, I wasn’t entirely sure I was brave enough until the moment Riley answered the door.
Iona seemed to understand without my having to elaborate. She was quick, I realized, perceptive in a way that made me feel like I couldn’t hide anything from her. “You’re brave to show up anyway. Skye was starting to think you wouldn’t.”
“Skye?”
“From the diner? You know, fourteen, scrawny, blond, talkative, too nosy for her own good.” Iona meant the blond girl who’d first spoken to me. The youngest one. She’d ordered the drinks for the table and asked me if I liked to swim. “She’s fond of you.”
Iona took me by the hand again, me startling a bit at her touch but holding on anyway.
Without a word, she guided me through the empty living room, devoid of furniture, and past the equally empty kitchen to a large patio overlooking the backyard.
There was a pool there, filled with murky greenish water, and two girls in it, wearing soggy bras and underwear, three more sitting around it with their feet dangling in the dirty water.
I recognized the two in the pool from the diner. There was the oldest one, Naomi, with the sleek black hair and blue eyeshadow, sitting on a slimy stair in the shallows. And then the youngest, Skye, sprawled out on an inflatable pizza slice, staring listlessly at the stars.
The girls sitting outside the pool, on its far end, included Riley, the rude one who’d answered the door, and the redhead, who waved as we approached, making all the diamonds on her various engagement rings flicker in the porch light. Her name, I later learned, was Chloe.
Beside Riley and Chloe was the only girl who hadn’t been at the diner.
She had high-cut cheekbones, freckles scattered across her nose, a downturned mouth stuck through with the mouthpiece of a vape pen.
She tipped her head to the stars and parted her lips, loosing pale whorls of smoke that hung, wraithlike, in the cool night air.
Her hair was somewhere between dark blond and light brown, and it was sun dyed and tangled. She wore it in a low and messy bun at the nape of her neck. But when the wind blew, a few strands came loose and clung to her parted lips.
Skye called out to us, waving frantically, almost falling off the inflatable like she was trying to make sure we spotted her in a crowd.
But it was just the seven of us. No loud music, or music at all, really, except for a few faint chords streaming from a cell phone on the side of the pool, so quiet I could barely hear the song over the lapping water.
It should’ve come as a relief. I’d always preferred parties that were more…
chill, nothing too rowdy, no drinking or drugs so I didn’t have to worry about the cops getting involved.
But this was different. Subdued, yes, but somehow tense, and I was more nervous than I’d ever been at any party I’d ever attended.
Iona moved to join Naomi and Skye in the pool.
She took her dress by the hem and pulled it up over her head in one fluid motion.
Had I attempted that, my arms would’ve tangled in the sleeves.
Her underwear was mismatched, a tightly crocheted top paired with plain white briefs.
She turned back to look at me, caught me staring.
“Well? Come on, then. The night won’t wait for you. ”
It was one of those chilly summer evenings that felt like autumn; the air was a bit too cold and the water far too dirty for swimming.
It smelled sulfurous, and a scattering of leaves floated on its surface, a fleet of ships on the ocean sailing to nowhere.
But in spite of this, I never considered saying no.
The girls had a hold on me. I couldn’t admit it then, but it was nonetheless true. I wanted so badly to be like them, girls who could draw gazes and keep them. I had never been able to harness that power. But what if this was my chance to try? To pretend to be like them, if only for a little while?
“We’ve never bitten, mugged, or kidnapped anyone,” said Skye. “If that’s what you’re worried about.”
Naomi cast Skye a sharp look. “You can’t just say stuff like that—”
“What?” Skye demanded, looking a little affronted. “I was just trying to be hospitable.”
“You were trying to be hospitable by telling her we’re not going to kidnap her?” Iona demanded. “That’s the first impression you want us to make?”
“When you say it like that, it sounds bad,” said Skye. “But it wasn’t a creepy ‘we’re not going to kidnap you.’ It was meant to be like, you know, a welcoming ‘we’re not going to kidnap you.’ I just wanted to clear the air.”
Iona stared at the sky like she hoped to find help up there. She muttered something, a silent prayer, maybe, if the small gold cross on her choker was any indication at all.
Naomi issued a low warning. “Skye.”
“I was just trying to be nice,” said Skye, her voice high-pitched and wheedling. “It’s her first time, and she’s obviously scared.”
“I’m not, actually,” I said, a blatant lie.
But to back it up, I kicked off my sneakers and started to undress.
I was aware of all the eyes on me as I stepped out of my jeans, fumbling and hopping on one foot when my toes snared in the gaping rip at the knee.
I managed to pull them off and kicked them away from me.
I left my T-shirt on and slipped into the pool.
The water was so cold my stomach suctioned into a tight knot behind my ribs.
It was almost unendurable, but I pushed through, trying to keep my teeth from chattering.
As I waded out of the shallows and toward the deep end, the water grew even colder.
I dipped beneath the surface and swam a bit, diving low to the bottom of the pool.
When I surfaced again, through the distortion of my wet eyelashes, I saw my sister, Adeline.
She was sitting at the far end of the pool beside Chloe. I froze there, in the middle of the pool, but when I wiped my eyes on my wrist, I saw that it wasn’t Adeline at all. It was the same quiet girl with the vape, watching me from across the dark and shimmering water.