Hyacinth Girls (11 page)

“Is this a joke?” Cerise Doblak said, after I'd read her the note over the phone that night. “That doesn't sound like Robyn at all.”

“It was written in
red ink
,” I said. “Choppy writing on a pink-lined paper.”

“So?”

“It's not the first note she's left for Callie.”

Then I had to tell her about the threat we'd found over the weekend.

“Oh, give me a break. You're accusing her of threatening
Callie
now?”

“Who else would still be blaming her for the red paint in class?”

“And how would Robyn even get there? How'd she find the cemetery that you guys go to?”

“Maybe someone told her,” I said. “But the point is she needs help. I wouldn't have called you unless I was worried. I know we're not friends, but I'm sincerely concerned.”

“Sure, like you cared so much before. When I called
you
up about what Callie had done, you
really
seemed to care.”

“If it was me, I'd want someone to tell me if Callie was in Robyn's situation. I'd be grateful to have a chance to get her some help.”

“Yeah, I'm really grateful,” Cerise sniped. “Very grateful. Thanks so much!”

“Not everyone gets a warning,” I said. “Not everyone finds out in time—and if Robyn's depressed, this could be a cry for help.”

“There's no way Robyn would leave a cry for help with you.”

After we hung up, I wondered if she was right. Maybe Robyn wasn't suicidal. Maybe Cerise knew her daughter so well that she was right to blow off my warning. But it seemed negligent and hardheaded for her to ignore even a sliver of possibility. If she was wrong, God forbid, imagine how she'd feel.

“Rebecca!” Callie said. “Where'd you go?”

She hadn't knocked, and she stood in the doorway of my room, her hair dripping shower water onto her shoulders. She looked at the plastic bag in my hand. The pink lines and red ink were visible. I slipped it behind my back, but she'd already seen.

“Did she come back?”

“Has Robyn been in touch with you?”

“No—is that?” She took a step forward, but I wasn't going to let her read it.

“The good news is she hasn't threatened you,” I said, opening a drawer and shutting the note away. “Robyn's just depressed. That's all she wrote about.”

“Depressed? Like how?” Callie gaped at me, curious.

“I don't know if she really means it. She might just want attention. But either way, I let her mom know.”

Callie's eyes lit on mine. “What did her mom say?”

“I think she was confused. Hopefully she'll talk to Robyn tonight.”

Callie squeezed the water out of her hair and watched it trickling down her arm. “What if she can't be helped?”

“I think—” I paused. “I think everyone can be helped.”

“Maybe her life's hopeless and she knows it can't be good.”

I wondered if Callie was thinking of her father. We'd never fully explained his death to her. All the counselors advised us to say that Curtis had been “sad.” It wasn't a lie, exactly, it just omitted nearly everything. And in retrospect is seemed a little reckless, telling
that
to a child. Like being sad was actually dangerous, a precursor to death.

“Lots of people
feel
hopeless, but none of them are truly hopeless,” I told her. “And when people give you a warning it's because they want help.”

“Maybe she'll drown herself.”

I looked at her, standing there in her shortie pajamas. Her knees were bare. Her mouth was flat. “Why would you say that?”

“Like Autumn.” Callie looked at me and I was sorry I'd told her. She was getting sucked into tragedies that had nothing to do with her. She hardly knew Robyn, and neither of us knew Autumn, but both girls' stories had a powerful pull. I sat Callie down on my bed and told her that life was never as bad as people imagined. But when someone was depressed things seemed worse than they were. “It's like wearing goggles that made everything look crappy,” I said, and then Callie told me about a movie where the bad guy was depressed. It didn't occur to me until later that she'd changed her opinion on Autumn. She'd stopped wondering if she was murdered, and now accepted that it was suicide.

Some said that Autumn Sanger killed herself after breaking up with her boyfriend. Others whispered she'd had an abortion and did it out of guilt. As for me, I sometimes wondered whether she'd been playing at sorrow like we had, acting out the dramatic scenes that had popped into her head.

In my mind, Autumn's death would be forever linked to Lara. To a
kind of nostalgic yearning I felt when I saw her with my cousin. I was a yearner, I wanted to go back, to excavate our old friendship. But Lara was resolute; she wouldn't trust me again. She'd become distant and clipped as if I were the dreariest kind of stranger. And when I tried to apologize she stared right through me. I was a rat, a flea. Something she didn't have time for. Yet it seemed impossible to me that our connection could have vaporized, leaving no visible mark on our bodies, no trace of feelings once shared.

“You've still got me,” Joyce said. “Why do you care about Lara?”

Joyce had remained my best friend and my biggest influence. More than my mother, or my aunt, or even my cousin. The best way I can explain it is to describe a game we used to play as children. Aged twelve, we sat face-to-face, moving in tandem, anticipating each other's next move. When Joyce pushed her hair back with her left hand, I did the same with my right, her own mirror image. Together we scrunched our eyebrows, stuck out our tongues, wiggled our fingers, and pressed the soles of our feet together until we could sense the tiniest twitch coming, the moment before it happened, like we were each other's truer selves. Even in high school we changed in sync, becoming less silly and impulsive. We turned practical-minded together, studying for the SATs. We planned out careers, wrote college essays, applied to the same universities. Me following her and her following me. Occasionally, when I watched Joyce wrapping her arms around some boy's waist, or leaning her chin against his shoulder, there was a moment when I felt a little lost. Then she would catch my eye and raise one eyebrow, like this was just another game we were both playing, and I'd loosen up and turn to the boy I was with. I might touch his arm for a moment, or laugh a little at whatever he was saying, feeling safe that I was keeping up with her. Joyce wouldn't leave me behind.

By the time I left for college, Curtis was engaged to Lara, and when I
came home after my freshman year, their wedding was only six months away. I believed my hyacinth-girl days were long past, all those childish heroics, but then I started picturing scenarios where Lara and I would reunite. She would lose her engagement ring and I would find it. She'd break down on the highway and I'd give her a ride. Or I'd be held up at gunpoint and Lara would call the police, standing by the door as they came rushing in. Afterward our eyes would meet, victim and savior, everything forgiven, our connection sparking back to life.

It was nothing so sensational in the end. I had gone to their apartment to visit Curtis. My cousin was still in the dark uniform that made him look like a cop: black acrylic pants, serious-looking belt, short-sleeved shirt with a badge sewn over the pocket. He'd been a courthouse security guard for three years since graduating high school, and he was telling me a story about a man who'd tried to bring a weapon into court. “It was a custody case,” he said. “And this big dude sets off the detector coming in. He was old—probably thirties—going a little bald on top.” Curtis smiled, swiping his hand over his own undiminished hair. “So I'm standing there, about to ask if he's got anything in his pockets, when he reaches his hand in like this.” Curtis mimed a quick little grab into his pocket. “And pulls out—I shit you not—a five-inch metal shank.”

“He's holding it out like he's thinking what to do next—like maybe it would be a good idea to stick it right in my chest—and I'm all FUCK, because my boy Andre's in the bathroom, it's just me, got one hand on my baton, ready to go whoosh BAM, smack it right out of his hand, but at the same time I'm acting all laid-back, like I don't even realize something's wrong, and I go, ‘Sir, would you please put your weapon in the tray?' ”

Lara had come in as he told this story. She was drinking a glass of iced tea.

“And this dude,” Curtis continued, “he drops it right away. He just drops the thing in the rubber tray, like it's a set of frickin' keys or something.”
Curtis shook his head. “It's a custody case and you're gonna bring a shank to court? What you gonna do, stab
me
to get your kids back?”

“He didn't get custody, right?” I asked breathlessly, and Curtis reassured me he hadn't.

Maybe I'd struck just the right note. Of concern and sincerity. Or enough time had passed that old wounds had started to heal. Lara asked if I wanted an iced tea. And then she gave me a coaster. A week later, unprompted, she started telling me about their wedding. I peppered her with questions, tentative and excited, and she told me about the Christmas theme and the white fur stole she'd wear around her shoulders.

“You're as giddy as a schoolgirl,” Joyce said when I told her. “I don't know what you're hoping for.”

She thought Lara was using me to get in better with my family. But my aunt already liked Lara more than me, so I knew that Joyce was wrong. I tried explaining why Lara's friendship meant so much to me, but then I started talking about Autumn, and my ideas got all mixed up. If Autumn hadn't killed herself, and she'd really been kidnapped, we wouldn't have acted out those scenes, and I wouldn't have hurt Lara. There would be no funeral to come home from, and Lara wouldn't see me stuttering. I wouldn't have discovered that I was cruel, and all five of us would've stayed friends. Joyce, Lara, Curtis, me, and Autumn, too, maybe.

“That's pretty far-fetched,” Joyce said.

“Don't you regret what happened?”

“The only thing I regret is that she's marrying your cousin.”

Joyce's crush on Curtis had become a joke. When we'd run into him at the seawall in July, Joyce pretended she was going to get arrested so she could visit him in court. She started calling him Officer Meathead, Officer Friendly, and Curtis laughed and narrowed his eyes like he was trying to see something almost invisible. But then he said he had to get going. Lara was waiting at home.

I thought it was still a joke. That's why I didn't believe her when she showed up at the convenience store where I was working an afternoon shift.

“Something big,” Joyce said, leaning on her elbows across the counter. “Me and Curtis.”

The coffeepot gurgled, and I could hear cars and trucks rushing by on the highway outside.

“Hooked up.”

I stared at the small brown birthmark below her eyelashes.

“No, you didn't.”

Joyce cocked an eyebrow and said she'd called him up. They'd gone for a drive in his car. Then he'd put a blanket in the backseat.

I did a little karate chop on her arm. “Bullshit.”

The bell above the door jangled, and Joyce picked up a Twinkie, moving to one side while I printed out lottery tickets for a customer. She had to be lying. It was the same as if she'd walked in and claimed she'd smoked crack and it was so amazing. The person I'd known as Joyce would not have done this thing. It had to be another joke, a test to see how I'd react.

She said they'd done it in the backseat. Twice. Lara thought he was out with friends.

“Oh, really,” I said.

“Afterwards, he took me up to the roof of the snack bar—at the beach. He pulled me up so we could see the stars.”

The pain in my legs was sudden, almost thrilling. It shot up into my thighs, a needling prickly heat, making me want to stamp my feet against the linoleum floor. Joyce dropped the Twinkie back onto the plastic rack, and I realized she'd been telling the truth. I scuffled my hot feet back and forth, and forced myself to look at her. Then I wanted to slap her.

“You're so selfish,” I said.

Joyce did a little double take, like maybe she'd just heard me wrong. She looked like a girl I'd never met before, with a very pink face. I wondered how much redder her skin would become after I'd smacked it.

“I thought you'd be happy for me.”

“It's wrong, Joyce!”

I picked up the Windex spray I'd left on the counter and began to squirt it in cool little bursts. I'd been with Lara the night before. She was showing me flower arrangements. White roses and holly berries: very wintery and elegant. I'd been dreading the moment when she stuttered, nervous about how we'd both react to it, as if the memory of my performance six years ago would come rushing back. Lara was talking about juniper boughs when she suddenly clamped her mouth shut. I recognized the signs, but I didn't hesitate or act uncomfortable. Instead I jumped in calmly to complete her thought.
It'll be so festive with all the red ribbons
. And Lara nodded like I'd just read her mind.

“What about Lara?” I hissed at Joyce. “Did you ever think about her?”

“Come on. Be serious. She's not your real friend.”

I shuddered and then started to shiver. The air-conditioning was suddenly freezing on my hot skin, and I considered sitting down behind the counter, peeling off my sneakers and boiling socks, waiting for her to leave. When I was with Lara I felt redeemed. I was flattered that she wanted to confide in me. She was so adult and yet still vulnerable, and I wished I'd explained this to Joyce. I was sure if she'd just understood, she wouldn't have done this. I started to rub the counter fiercely, ripping off paper towels. Why did she have to tell me? Why involve me? Because she knew I'd choose her over Lara—I'd have to join in her betrayal. But if Joyce and Curtis were falling in love, where would that leave me? I'd be alone, trailing behind, never able to catch up. I'd lose all three of them; they were already miles away.