Places No One Knows (21 page)

By Saturday, my arches are still breathtakingly painful. I've applied ice, heat, Tiger Balm. Gentle stretches, lots of rest. Doctor's orders. I've done everything I was supposed to, and nothing's changed. I have officially managed to damage myself in a way that is completely beyond my capacity to ignore.

When I get dressed for the dance, I do it like an acrobat, trying to stand without putting weight on my feet. The theory is notionally sound, but I'm defeated by the physics.

I apply my eyeliner the way Autumn showed me, a heavy black swoop that flares at the outside corners. The way it transforms my face reminds me of the day we browsed the drugstore together, how contrived that seems now. There is no conceivable way that Autumn has ever needed someone else to explain a neutral palette to her.

Her fashion expertise is nothing short of stellar. The dress she picked for me is darkly perfect, and my new haircut is the best thing that's ever happened—a style that looks good no matter whether it's wet, dirty, slept on, hanging in my face, or slicked back like a '50s greaser.

CJ picks me up at eight, with Hunter and Maribeth already in the backseat. The boys both tilt their heads in approval as I climb into the car, but Maribeth unbuckles and leans over the center console to stare at me. Her horror is deep, total, and apparently genuine.

“Oh, Waverly, you
cut
it! I thought you were growing it out.”

I look at her, trying to see myself the way she must, these little twin dolls trapped in the center of her pupils. “Why would you think that?”

But I know. As far as she's concerned, we settled this weeks ago, the day she casually expressed her hatred of short hair on girls. She's had the final word, and that word was supposed to be law, and now here I am, running around messing up her neat little world.

My feet feel like something sharp and possibly scalding is stuck into the very center of my soles. I lean my head back and fight the impulse to slip off my stupid shiny heels. The whole way to the restaurant, I do calf stretches, pressing my toes against the vinyl floor mat and staring out at the street.

“I just can't believe you did that,” Maribeth says. “What were you even thinking?”

And I don't say anything, because anything I say will be vicious.

I've slept six hours in two days, so when CJ guides me through the double doors and into the dance, at first I'm not even sure if what I'm seeing is real.

The gym is a festival of green. It looks like a chemical explosion, complete with colored streamers dripping from the rafters. We are stuck in the heart of a toxic tinsel disaster.

The rest of the dance planners are already here, clustered around the best table—at the edge of the dance floor, but not too close to the speakers. We weave our way over to them, Maribeth fluttering like a tropical bird, eager to flock decorously with Kendry and Palmer in their assorted jewel tones and their cattleya orchids and shiny barrettes.

Beside them, Autumn's outfit is almost too ludicrous to pull off.

Except, she's doing it.

She is
haute couture
and Hollywood Heroes and epic punk rock. She's come as Alex DeLarge from
A Clockwork Orange,
and also the most brutal Tinker Bell the world has ever seen, tricked out like some kind of psychopathic ballerina.

The material of her dress is nothing fancy—just plain white cotton—but the cut is shocking and whimsical, with a short, stiff skirt and brass zippers everywhere. The straps are styled like straps, but they're also suspenders. She's got the black bowler hat, the single false eyelash, and all of it's contrived, but none of it's wrong.

She is a fashion god.

“Oh, my brothers,” I whisper, sliding into the empty seat beside her. There's almost always an empty spot beside her. This whole time, I've assumed it's because no one wants to get too close, like her lack of polish is somehow contagious. Now, though, I think maybe I was wrong all along, and really she's just been saving it for me. “Autumn, you look amazing.”

She smiles and drops me a huge false-eyelashed wink. “They wouldn't let me bring in my swagger stick. They said it was a weapon.”

From across the table, Hunter examines her with casual lewdness, openly appreciating her legs, the way her ultra-violent neckline accentuates her breasts.

Autumn is the new Maribeth. And not in that noncommittal way that black is sometimes the new black. This is confrontational. It's daring—the social equivalent of Plaid Is the New Black. Fuchsia Is the New Black. Outrageous, sure, but what are you going to do? Everybody who's anybody is jumping on the plaid bandwagon.

“Sorry Hollywood Heroes didn't work out,” I whisper. “It's hard to fight the inertia of poly-satin.”

“Oh, who cares?” She sounds like she actually means it. “I'm wearing what I wanted to wear, and I fully intend to have the most fun that has ever been had at one of these things. So, slightly more than one tablespoon. Anyway, change of plans. My mom has this sales conference coming up in, like, Pittsburgh or wherever. I'm totally going to have a party, and it's going to be unruly and amazing and exactly how I want it.”

When a fast song comes on, Autumn slides out of her chair and takes the floor, not sullen or slouching or anything I've come to expect from her. She moves to the music with her arms aloft, pirouetting through her own private
Swan Lake.
Her own irreverent ode to joy.

Halfway through the routine, people start to clap. She maneuvers through the crowd like a beautiful, volatile gyroscope, impossibly graceful in her steel-toed boots. I wonder if they know she's making fun of them. I wonder how long it took her to learn her extensive selection of ironic Michael Jackson moves.

She flicks off her bowler hat, letting it tumble down her arm and into her palm, smooth and practiced, no hesitation. She drops the hat onto my head and smiles, batting her false eyelash.

I laugh. The hat is heavy and warm, slipping over my forehead. I want to hug her the way she hugged me that day in the locker room, to throw away all my carefully cultivated inhibitions and just plunge headlong into the chaos of her. The sheer, unspoiled wonder.

And right about then is when I see Marshall.

He's standing just inside the double doors, under a makeshift arch of silver and green balloons. He has on slacks and a dark button-down shirt and his hair is combed in a slick, deliberate way I don't recognize. It makes him look young and sort of wet.

The sensation is like someone sucked the air out of the room, and being breathless is strangely pleasant, until I notice Heather beside him. Her dress is a lurid shade of purple and, in a bold fashion move, is also encrusted with glitter. Her hand is resting on his arm.

The track switches over to a slow song and she reaches up, slipping her arms around his neck. It hurts in a way that I didn't know things ever hurt. Deep and without logic.

CJ sees me looking off at all the swaying couples and leans to whisper in my ear. “Would you like to dance?”

I let him lead me out into the middle of the gym, under all the fluttering, tumbling confetti.

It's probably supposed to be romantic, but it looks like someone planned a birthday party for the Green Goblin. I bet Marshall's into it anyway. He's biologically designed for flowers and soft things and all that sentimental stuff, which I know is supposed to be a secret, the way it's a secret that his heart hurts, a secret that getting insensible is his version of curling up on the floor and closing his eyes. His version of running the cross-country course at Basset at three in the morning until his feet bleed.

I want to think that Heather is just another part of that, warm mouth and clutching hands and numbness. The way she wants him is just so honest.

She likes him so much it's painful and I face front, staring at CJ's tie. It's subdued. Sensible. The kind of thing parents buy when they want their sons to grow up to be accountants.

He pulls me closer. His suit coat is lumpy with buttons. We turn slowly, swaying to the music, rocking in circles as Marshall and Heather wash into sight again and again.

She's leaning against him now, her cheek on his shoulder. His hands are long-fingered, clasped gently on her back, and I hate her. Not for resting her head in the place where mine should be, or even for liking him.

I hate her for existing in all the ways I don't. For knowing instinctively how to want him here and now, in front of everyone, without caring that everyone will know her desires and her secrets. I hate the way she never worries about anyone seeing her.

CJ is looking down at me, smiling in a solid, honest way. I lean my head against his chest and close my eyes.

When the music ends, I don't know what to do with my voice or my hands. I float back to our table and sink down next to Autumn. I think I might be shaking.

Marshall and Heather are still standing under the industrial fan, surrounded by confetti. She's got his shirt untucked and is sliding her hands up the back of his undershirt, reaching for someplace impermissible.
My
exclusive province,
my
territory. When she touches him, she is running her hands over
my
skin.

I look away, even though my first impulse is to make myself watch, to stare until the ache dissolves. Master the situation, move on.

I look away because if I don't, then…nothing. The wound will scab over, scar, go numb. It will cease to exist.

And so I look away, because there's a small but ferocious part of me that doesn't want to stop caring that Heather is getting her steadily degrading DNA all over him.

I fold my hands in my lap, chin high, back straight. Autumn is lining up silver plastic clocks on the tablecloth, making a tiny timepiece army.

She scrapes the clocks into a pile, then glances at me, leaning in like she might touch my hand. “Hey, what's wrong? Are you okay?”

But Maribeth flops down across from us before I can get the words out, starry-eyed and flushed. “Oh, no, don't worry. That's just Waverly's face.” She reaches for my arm. “Here, come with me while I fix my hair.”

Her voice is bright and strained and desolate. I can't tell if it's over something real, imagined, or just the fact her whole extracurricular life has been building up to this fucking dance, and now that the moment is here, she doesn't know how to cope.

When she pulls me to my feet, I force a smile and follow her, tripping gaily along as she leads me through the crowd, holding hands like two little girls on their way into tangled thickets and dark woods. It's both gratifying and disappointing that my heartbreak face isn't much different from my everyday one. I feel utterly composed. And at the same time, like something inside me has cracked in half.

In the bathroom, Maribeth stands at the counter. “Here, can you pin this? No, not like that—just move it there and hide it under the edge.”

I adjust the curls carefully. She could get someone else to do it, of course. Any one of them would be flattered, because one of the secrets of total social domination is to make your moment of vulnerability a premium. You trade on your need for people, bestowing it like a gift.

The gesture has a broad and cynical application, announcing that I am still the favorite. Announcing to me that I should be flattered.

Once you know the secrets, though—after all, you were the one who wrote them down—the language loses its meaning. The real reason she picked me is simply that I'm careful.

When her hair is arranged to her satisfaction, she turns and brushes my cheek with her thumb, wiping away a smudge under my eye.

“Aren't you having the best time?” Her smile is syrupy, trying way too hard. “
So,
are you going to give CJ a kiss goodnight?”

She looks ferociously happy, and under that, she looks sad. I haven't seen Hunter in a while.

I want to let go of my tiny beaded bag and hug her, tell her it's okay. That even if Hunter never chooses her, despite all her demonstrations of organizational preeminence, someone will. I want to tell her about Marshall, but I don't.

This is just what it means to be friends with Maribeth. Never, at any point in my life, have I told her anything that qualified as a feeling. We are not allowed to see the dirty mechanisms of each other's inner workings.

Her world view doesn't encompass Sad-Waverly, and she'd try to fix it in the only way she knows how—by detailing all the ways I'm not built for anything so prosaic as affection.

She'd carefully explain the emotional limitations of species Camdenmar, prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that I am made of jumper wire and rare-earth metals. If I were really lucky, she'd move on to Marshall's fundamental composition next, take him apart and lay him out—drugs, report card, lack of healthy male aggression—like all the best things about him are not worth anything.

So I don't tell her, because a part of me is still strangely gratified by how it feels to ache for something instead of just waiting for it to be over so I can go home. But mostly, because I don't want anyone to see the way my mouth will tremble if I have to say his name.

Maribeth smooths her hair with a few drops of water, flicking her fingertips under the faucet. Her nails are painted a vibrant peacock green. “So,
Autumn
seems to be having a good time.”

“I think she pretty much always has a good time.”

Maribeth does this thing with her hands, like she's waving Autumn off. “She is just…too much.”

I apply another layer of lipstick and wonder how a person ever knows what is officially too much.

When we leave the bathroom, we're both more composed, slick and hard as porcelain. Maribeth takes my hand again, tugging me toward the dance floor. She's got her finger hooked in my bracelet like a towline, but as we approach the refreshment table, she stops short. We stand caught in the eddies of dry, freezing air and confetti, green foil stars landing in our hair.