The Blue Girl (10 page)

G
REG IS THE ONE WHO GETS US TO GO. HE
'
S BEEN
saying it every day since school started, how he's going to go out there in the woods and find her and how he's going to get a look at her for himself. It's November now, the leaves are changing, and I'm tired. I just keep quiet and look at my hands when he talks and talks and talks. I wonder if Greg will talk so much when he's older, or if something happens to guys along the way that stops them from talking. Then they try to act like they're not there at all, like my dad, or they seem to go backwards, like Audrey's dad. I don't know much about Greg's dad, but he never says much to me either, and Greg does enough talking for both of them. There's nothing anybody can do about it.

Then there are boys like my brother who hardly talk at all.

Even Greg. Greg with the way he comes up behind me outside on the steps and swirls his tongue in my ear,
soft and hot. It's not that I haven't liked it. It's not that I haven't let him do it, his tongue moving around and around, his hands up my sweater and all around. I sweat thinking about it. I've even let him move his hand inside me out in the backyard along the trees. But he's still a boy. I look at him and think:
A boy. A boy is what you are, and you don't even know it
.

We're out behind the annex at school when he really gets on about the blue girl and finding her. All of us going out to the woods. At first it's just him talking, talking, and talking the way he does. It's me and Caroline and Audrey and Greg, just the way it's always been since we were little, only Ethan used to be with us then, too, before they put him on the bus for the special kids, the little one that drives them all out of town. We'd all go out to the lake, all of us kids with our mothers, and run around with the kids who came only in summer. In pictures we look like any other little kids with tans. But then Ethan started talking in that voice of his and throwing blocks at school and biting the other kids. I saw the blue mark of a bruise on a teacher's arm once, and my mom wore long sleeves to hide hers. He's never bitten me, not then, not now. Once he bit my mom, a long time ago, and when she yelled for me to get him to stop, I held his head with the side of one hand and rubbed his jaw with the other to get him to release.
Like a dog, really, is how it was. There's no way to describe it, that feeling that your brother is like a dog, but that's what it felt like. Like he was a biting, foaming dog. Now he just bangs against his door at night, trying over and over to get out.

But Greg. Greg was different. Ethan never bit Greg, either. And Greg always talked to Ethan, even though Ethan never answered. I used to like Greg so much for that, like Ethan must have seen something kind in Greg. Even now, Greg will go on talking to Ethan, and Ethan just says things in that voice of his like he hasn't heard a word Greg has said. The rest of them are all the same, these boys I used to think I knew, all of them looking at me like I don't know what they want. When Greg does it, I close my eyes and think about the day the blue girl was drowning, the day Audrey saved her. I see her in my mind, dead on the beach, and then walking away, alive. I go to see her in my mind all the time, at night when Mom gets into her car and drives away, at night when I watch Ethan sleep in his white room. I go to the blue girl because I think maybe she can make it all stop.

And that, I guess, is why I've agreed to try to find her.

That fucking blue girl
is what Greg calls her.

We just sit here. We look up at the trees and think about the girl. Lots of people don't believe she's real. I know they don't. Caroline and Audrey and I sit on the stone steps
outside the annex, all of us just sitting around. Sometimes I think that all we ever do is sit and sit and wait and wait. Wait for the next laugh, the next day. Me, I wait for the next time we take our clothes off out in the woods in a sleeping bag, and I make him wait, or on Greg's porch where I let him move against me on the wicker couch. On the couch I make him keep on his underwear, and I make him wait. I know he's not going to keep waiting for too much longer, and even as we make out, I think about when I'll finally give in and let him have what he wants. But for right now, I make him wait.

I sit here listening to Greg going on and on about
fucking this
and
fucking that
, and I just sit here. I look out at the field and think about Ethan. Ethan never has to wait. Ethan never waits because nothing ever happens for Ethan. He doesn't do anything, and nothing ever changes. He'll just talk in his voices and watch
TV
and sleep in his white room forever until he dies. I get a feeling like ice poured into my stomach when I think about Ethan dying, which makes me think about the blue girl again as I'm watching Caroline bite her nails and Audrey look like she can't hold her head up, so I'm the one who finally says it.

O.K
., I say.
Let's go
.

And then before I think about what I'm really saying, I tell Audrey we'll meet at her house and take her father's car, because her father's crazy and won't know, and it's too
cold now to walk. Greg will drive, and we'll get into the car, all of us, and we'll go out to the lake and find her. I don't say it, but part of me thinks,
And then Greg will shut up about her once and for all
.

Because, really, I want to go, but more than that, I want Greg to stop talking about her.

Caroline says we shouldn't go, it's not right, we're going to get in a lot of trouble, which is what Caroline always says, and Greg says,
You and your fucking grades and your fucking tests
, and Caroline says,
At least I'm not failing fucking biology
. Caroline almost never curses, so we all laugh, even Audrey, whose mouth opens in a half-laugh, half-yawn. It makes me think of Ethan's mouth, how wide it is, how I can never make him close it all the way, how I wish he could be quiet, that he could just be. Greg looks over at me so quick I almost miss it. I can tell he's thinking about Ethan, too. Or at least I think he is. He has a certain look people seem to get when they think about Ethan. I know I shouldn't, but I get that look too, and I feel guilty about it. Maybe that's what makes me let Greg do whatever he wants.

I take out my mirror and put the lipstick on real slow, a big, deep circle. Greg is watching my mouth. It makes me want to laugh, the way he watches. I laugh a little too and get lipstick on my teeth and then wipe it away by curling my tongue. I laugh some more.

Greg says,
This is good. I can drive the fucking car. I'll drive it right out and find her
. He scrapes his sneakers on the cement.
The fucking lake. Now we're really going to fucking go
.

The others walk away when the bell rings. I try to count up all the fucks, but I lose count.

See you tonight
, I say to Audrey, and she gives a little wave. We used to be so close, Audrey and me, passing notes to each other in class and laughing at all the same things. When we were little, we used to go to the lake with our mothers and pretend we were mermaids in the water, dragging ourselves along on our hands. Audrey never looks at me now. I talked to Greg about it, but he kept making those little sucking noises on my shoulder and said,
Audrey doesn't fucking look at anybody anymore. Audrey's a fucking freak
.

It made me a little mad when he said that, more than a little mad, and I thought about finding a way to get out there without him, out to the woods alone. Even though Mom is always driving off at night with her cakes and her friends, and even though my father hardly comes home, I am never alone. Maybe if I see the blue girl I'll be able to figure out how to really be alone.

At night, Greg comes for me and waits outside on the back lawn, out by the white fence that blocks out the trees. Everything on the lawn is framed in white. Even the flowers
Mom plants in the spring come up white. Sometimes when the sun hits, the trees look white, too. The fence keeps the trees out and Ethan in, so of course Ethan wants to run though the trees, run all the way out to the highway that leads to town. He wants to keep running until he makes it out to the lake, where he can scream and no one will hear him. I don't know if that's what Ethan really wants because there's no way to know, but this is what I think he wants, to run, to run and scream and have no one hear him. Because just like me, Ethan is never alone.

Caroline isn't with Greg when I open the sliding door and walk across the lawn. He brings his hands up to my face and kisses me with his slow tongue going around and around, and usually I kiss him back with my hands around his waist, but now I am too tired, tired of never being alone.

Where the fuck is Caroline?
I ask, because it's what Greg would say.

He moves back and shoves his hands in his pockets. He laughs.

You shouldn't talk like that
, he says,
you're too beautiful to talk like that
.

Now I'm the one who laughs.

Shut the fuck up, Greg
, I say, because I want him to know how it feels to be on the other end of all those fucks.
Where's Caroline?

I look up at my mom's window, at Ethan's window right next door, at the white moon in the sky, the white house, the white fence, all of it glowing. I pull my denim jacket around me and think,
This is the way I'll break out of all this white, by seeing the blue girl again, and up close
, but then I decide I'm not going. Not without Caroline, and definitely not without Audrey.

Greg says I should be cool, relax, that Caroline went to Audrey's, and we'll meet them there, and that he wanted some time alone with me, that he never gets any time alone with me, and he kisses me again, softer this time, until I give in to the complaining, give in to the kissing. When I'm done being kissed, I take his hand and lead him past the white gate, out to the road where we walk the white line holding hands. I look at the leaves and stuff my other hand in my pocket, and I think about how long the walk will take. Since we probably won't get to Audrey's until eight, I wonder if the blue girl will be asleep or if we'll have to wake her up, if she'll lie there waiting for me like she does when I see her in my mind, or if she'll come out to the road to find us, if she's been waiting for us all along.

By the time we get to Audrey's, my hands and face are colder than I remember them feeling in a long time. I have to make Greg stop pulling me over to the side of the road to touch me with his cold hands. I say,
Come on, already,
you're the one who keeps saying you want to fucking see her
, and he says,
You shouldn't say fuck. I told you that you're too beautiful for that
.

Taking the car is easy. Audrey comes out with the keys and hands them to Greg without looking at him.

Are you sure your dad won't notice that his car is gone?
I ask. And Audrey starts laughing hard, and says,
If only
. She points at the living room window. We can see right in. There's her father with the little ball in both hands, aiming it at the hoop. I tell Greg to open the car door because I don't want to see if he makes the shot or not.

The engine is quiet, and I tell Greg to drive slow, not to get crazy. Caroline reminds us that none of us has a license yet, that this is definitely against the law and that we could probably all get thrown out of school if we get pulled over. I don't even mind when he says,
Shut the fuck up, Caroline
.

We drive, all of us quiet, even Greg. At the spot in the woods where the road ends, Audrey says from the back seat,
Turn here
. It's the only thing anyone has said the whole way, and for a minute, while thinking about Ethan and his voices and the girl out there somewhere in the dark, I almost forget that Audrey is with us. I turn around to look at her, but Audrey doesn't look back at me. She looks really awake now, though, and she hasn't looked that way in a long, long time.

Greg turns down the road so hard the tires spin in the gravel, and I fall against the door.
Fucking road
, he says, and then squeezes my knee and mouths a
sorry
. It's so dark that even with the brights on we can't see anything, just trees and road and gravel. It's quiet in the car except for Greg muttering all of his
fucks
under his breath, and for a minute, I think I'm going to scream like Ethan. I'm just going to open my mouth as wide as it will go and scream for them to let me out when Audrey says,
Stop the car
.

Greg doesn't stop, so Audrey says it again, louder, then puts her hand on the back of his neck.

I said, stop the fucking car
, she says.

Greg stops. The car shakes when he hits the brakes hard.
Take it easy, Audrey
, Greg says, and she tells him to stop telling her what to do.

You wanted to see her, right?
she says.
Well, now you're going to
.

She opens the car door. The dome light goes on overhead. It's so dark even its faint light makes me squint. While I'm squinting, Audrey leans her head back into the car and looks right at me.

Stay here
, she says.
Stay here until I tell you to come out
.

I nod at her. This time it's my turn to squeeze Greg's knee.

And turn off the lights
, she says.