Good Girls (2 page)

“Aunt Sally,” he said, all respectful and proper, the way Caribou always told the ridiculous ones they had to be. “We're hungry. And tired.”

Again, she sighed, feeling Caribou's fingers crawling up under her skirt, reattaching her stocking. Lingering, not lingering? He liked her to wonder. She liked him to wonder if she did.

“So you're speaking for all of them, child?” she purred, and whatever Caribou's hands were or weren't doing under her skirt, they stopped. He looked up from under his elegant, artfully gelled swoosh of blond hair, like a baby anticipating a story.

Well, Aunt Sally couldn't resist that. Never could. She smiled—thought she smiled—at the wasp-goatee man, and patted Caribou on the top of the head, let her fingers spread along his scalp, through all that beautiful, beautiful blond.

“It has been awhile,” she said.

“Yes,” said Wasp-goatee, all mesmerized. “We were all saying so.”

“And the nights do get long.”

“So long.” The moron's voice, his whole body, quivered.

“And you think it's time for a Party?”

Under her skirt, Caribou's hands tightened on her thighs. Then they started sliding up. He couldn't help it, poor boy. He was so utterly hers, always had been. He gazed up at her from way down deep in his hypnotized deer-eyes. “Yes,” he said. “Aunt Sally, let's. It has been so long.”

“It has,” she said, and closed her legs. She shoved Caribou back, hard, on his haunches, and grabbed the gaze of the goateed one, held it until he started to sway. “A Party. We'll need some guests.”

“Guests. Yes,” said the goateed one.

Once more, Aunt Sally thought of Mother. She wondered if she could get word to her, somehow. Invite her to a celebration, in honor of her return home. Preferably without her Whistling fool, though she could bring him, too, if she had to. Either way, maybe Mother would come. Maybe she would stay this time.

Aunt Sally smiled. Thought she smiled. “Good. Well, then. In that case.” She stretched out her own beautiful long-fingered hands, nodded at Wasp-goatee. “Come here, son. Tell Aunt Sally what you've dreamed.”

 

2

“Rebecca, come
on,
” Jack said, leaping free of his spinning chair in mid-spin to alight in front of her. He spread his arms, grinned, and the suction-cup dart sticking out of his forehead waggled like an antenna. “Do the thing.”

Beside Rebecca in the next cubicle over, Kaylene's stream of muttering intensified. “Come here, little Pookas. Come here, little Pookas, comeherecomeherecomehere…” Her fingers punched repeatedly at her keyboard, and out of the tiny computer speakers came the twinkling music and popping sounds that accompanied so many of Rebecca's nights working the Crisis Center, as Kaylene's Dig Dug inflated and exploded her enemies.

“Comeherecomeherecomehere SHIT!” Kaylene, too, leapt to her feet, joined Jack in front of Rebecca's desk. Her beautiful black hair had overrun its clip, as usual, and poured over her face and shoulders.

“Tell Rebecca to do the thing,” said Jack, grabbing Kaylene around the waist and glancing over his shoulder. “Marlene, put the book down, get over here.”

“Rebecca, do the thing,” Kaylene said. “MarlenePooka, don't make me come over there.”

In the far corner of the room, where she always set up so she could study but never stayed, Marlene sighed. She stood, straightened her glasses, put a hand through her red-orange, leaves-in-autumn hair. Not for the first time, Rebecca felt a flicker of jealousy about Marlene: too much work ethic
and
hair color for any one person. Especially a person who could barely be bothered to comb all that hair, let alone care about it, and who also knew when it was time to put the
Advanced Calculus and Cryptography
textbook down and come help her closest friends bug her other closest friend.

Then, as always, Rebecca's jealousy melted away as Marlene took up her position, linked arms with Jack, and grinned down at Rebecca, still seated at her desk with the Campus Lifeline Crisis Center manual she knew by heart tucked right where it belonged against the special blue Campus Lifeline phone, complete with idiotic life-preserver logo. Rebecca watched them beam down at her. Jack and the 'Lenes.

For an awful, ridiculous second, she thought she was going to burst into tears. Happy tears.

“Rebeccccaaaaa,” Jack chanted, and the suction-cup dart on his forehead bobbed, whisked the tears away. “Read our minds…”

“Okay, okay, okay, stop waggling that thing at me.” Controlling her smile, Rebecca glanced across their faces. Her eyes caught Kaylene's.

“Do. Your. Thing,” Kaylene said.

“Fine. Stop thinking about her,” said Rebecca. “She's safe now. Mrs. Groch's looking after her. And she's got you, now. She'll figure it out.”

“
Fuck
you, Rebecca,” Kaylene said, and burst out laughing. “How do you
do
that? I haven't said one word about the Shelter tonight. I don't think I've said a word about it this whole week. I don't remember saying one thing to you about—”

“She's a witch,” Marlene said, through her perpetually exhausted Marlene-smile. “Do me.”

It took Rebecca a second, only because she wanted to check herself, make sure. Then she shrugged, nudged a strand of her own mousy brown bangs out of her eyes. “Too easy.”

“Oh my God, you bitch, you've got Twinkies,” Kaylene said, broke free of Jack's arm, and dove for Marlene's backpack. Marlene started to whirl, give chase, but there was no point. Kaylene was already elbows deep in Marlene's backpack, shoveling aside organic chem textbooks, notebooks, calculator, tissues, until she came up with the crumpled pack in her fist. Strawberry flavor, tonight.

“Really?” Kaylene said, straightening. “You weren't going to share these?”

“Actually, I wasn't even going to open them, I don't think. They just … called to me out the PopShop window.”

“Well, now they're calling me.” Kaylene tore open the package and offered Marlene a piece of her own late-night snack. Marlene's perpetual and permanent late-night snack. The secret, she claimed, of all-night cramming.

“My turn,” said Jack, putting his hands behind his back, standing at a sort of parade rest in his baggy shorts and blue bowling-team button-up shirt, with the dart sticking straight out from his head.

“You look like a unicorn,” she said, and Jack's green eyes blinked, then flashed in his cookie-dough face.
That
was what he actually looked like, Rebecca thought. Not a unicorn, but a cookie. Purple-frosted, with spearmint leaves for eyes.

Over his shoulder, through the floor-to-ceiling windows, she could see the black gum trees melting into their moonshadows along Campus Walk. The light from this room was practically the only light in the quad, which didn't seem particularly strange at 1 a.m. in East Dunham, New Hampshire, in early August, with the great majority of UNH-D students still elsewhere for another few weeks. And yet, tonight, the dark looked deeper out there, for some reason.

Because I am so aware of this island in it,
Rebecca thought, and felt herself fighting back tears again, grateful tears.
Because I am so happy I washed up here.
She glanced into the corner, saw Marlene's hair spilling into Kaylene's, red into black, as they elbowed each other and fought over strawberry Twinkie crumbs. Then they were up, laughing, Kaylene making biting-mouth motions over her fingers like a Ms. Pac-Man, burbling like a Dig Dug.

“Well?” Jack said. “Come on. What am I thinking?”

Focusing on the dart in Jack's forehead chased the tears, instantly. But as soon as Rebecca lowered her gaze to his eyes, she blushed, without knowing why. Without wanting to think why.

“Come on,” said Jack.

Quietly? Nervously? Was that a little croak?

“Rebecca. What am I thinking?”

On the desk behind her, Rebecca's computer pinged. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Joel's name pop up in its seemingly personalized, permanent chat window. Poor Joel.

“You guys go on,” she murmured, not quite meeting Jack's eyes again. “Go play.”

“That isn't quite what I was—”

“You weren't thinking Human Curling? Tell me you weren't thinking Human Curling.”

“Human Curling!” Kaylene whooped, dragging Marlene back between cubicles toward Jack.

“I can't,” said Marlene. “You guys, it's two weeks until school.” But she was only protesting out of habit, Rebecca thought. Duty. She was hardly even trying, tonight.

“Kaylene, let go.”

But now Jack had Marlene's other arm. And there they stood in front of her. Her Crisis Center shift mates. Her every-single-day cafeteria meal buddies.

Her friends.

“Someone's got to man the phones,” Rebecca said, ignoring the pings behind her as Joel tapped out his lonely messages from the kitchen worktable at Halfmoon House. He'd be sitting in no light, at this hour, Rebecca knew from long experience, from so much shared insomnia at that table in that house at these hours, the only sound the wind whipping leaves down the cracks in the gutters, owls in those trees, loons on the lake. Poor Joel.

But why would he be poor? Why did she always feel bad for him? Certainly,
he
never seemed to.

“Rebecca,” said Jack. “This is your Captains speaking.”

“Jack and the 'Lenes,” said Kaylene.

Even Marlene joined in, smiled tiredly. “Jack and the 'Lenes. Come on, Bec.”

“Not tonight,” said Rebecca, and wondered if she sounded as happy as she felt.

“Oh, it's tonight,” said Kaylene.

“It's tonight, it's tonight, it's tonight,” Jack chanted. “Why won't you come? Seriously. It's the middle of summer. It's the middle of the night. It's the middle of East Lake NoAssWhere, New Hampshire. No one's going to call. And if they do, they'll just get forwarded to the Hospital center. To, you know, professionals.”

“Who aren't their peers.”

“Is it a money thing? How about if tonight's on me? Rebecca, seriously, I know you don't have—”

“It's not a money thing,” she said, too fast, and half-honestly. There was always the money thing, of course. But that wasn't the reason. How could she even explain the reason?

Was there even one?

Only Joel. And the phones, which were supposed to stay manned at least another hour. And the fact that this feeling—this
accompanied
sensation—was still new in her life. And wading around too much in it—or setting out across it—felt foolhardy. Dangerous. Like testing fresh ice.

“You take Crisis Center rules pretty seriously, don't you?”

“So do you, Jack. Or you wouldn't be here.”

“The rules are not the Center.”

“
We
are the Center,” Kaylene said, and grinned at Rebecca. And …
winked
?
Gestured with her chin toward Jack, and his ridiculous dart?

Then, somehow, the 'Lenes were shutting down their desk lamps, and Marlene had packed her backpack, and they were out the door, arms around each other's shoulders, doing their leaning thing, first to one side, then the other. Their voices echoed down the empty corridor as they stomped and leaned their way down it, fluttered up staircases and sounded the silent classrooms overhead.

Jack, meanwhile, had shut down his computer, collected his supplies. But he'd dawdled, doing it, and now he paused once more in the doorway, his face half in shadow, the only remaining light coming from Rebecca's lamp. He folded his faintly pudgy arms across his pudgy chest, which made him look twelve, like someone's little brother, or else like a jester. A harlequin. And also like Jack.

“Is it me?” he said. “Is it my rad thrift-store blue bowling shirt?” He plucked at his pocket, with the name
Herman
stitched across it. “How about I man the phones, and you go Human Curling with the 'Lenes. You could use it. They're good for you.”

“They're good for everyone,” Rebecca said.

As if on cue, both 'Lenes appeared at the windows, on the path, standing together, joined at the hip. When they saw that she was looking, they did the lean. One side, the other. Kaylene beckoned, calling Rebecca out, into a world Kaylene was so obviously sure she belonged in.

And therefore, did?
Rebecca wondered.
Was that all it took?

“So it is me,” said Jack.

“It really isn't.”

Unfolding his arms, Jack waved his fingers in front of Rebecca's face as her computer pinged again. Joel, seeking contact. Jack's fingers continued to wave in her face like a mesmerist's. “
Rebeccccaaaaa
.
You are getting very hungry. And thirsty. And Curly. You want to come play Human Curling with Jack and the 'Lenes.
”

When Rebecca just sat, arms folded over the logo on her UNH-D hoodie, and smiled, he lowered his hands and stared into them, as though baffled that his spell hadn't worked.

“Maybe tomorrow,” she said.

“Tomorrow,” said Jack. “You're coming tomorrow. Plan on it. Book it in your Rebecca-Must-Plan-Everything-Years-in-Advance book.”

“I might,” she said.

“You just did.” Jack thrummed his dart, and it vibrated at her.

“Someone could really take that the wrong way,” Rebecca said.

“But not you, apparently.” Sighing, he smiled sadly—as sadly as Jack knew how, anyway—and left.

She watched the windows until he appeared. Instantly, the others adhered around him like charged particles, forming a nucleus. Kaylene glanced up once more at Rebecca, scowled, then waved. Jack waved, too, but over his head, without looking back. Then they were off, crossing from shadow to shadow down Campus Walk toward Campus Ave, where they'd skirt the forest, the edges of the little subdivisions full of tiny, mostly subdivided shingle houses, many of them empty for the summer, and make their way, at last, to Starkey's, which had to be the only non-pub within fifty miles still open at this hour. They'd eat Mrs. Starkey's awful canned-pineapple pizza, drink a pitcher of her Goose Island Night Stalkers: cranberry juice; white grape juice; seltzer; some rancid, secret spicy powder; and gin. And then, if Mrs. Starkey was feeling friendly, or else Jack waggled his magic fingers at her, she would give them the keys to the rink in the giant shed out back, and they'd grab brooms and push-paddles out of the cupboards in there and Human Curl to their hearts' content.