The Girl in the Park (3 page)

“I didn’t know you were into Seth,” I said lamely.

She grinned. “Ab-so-loot-ly.”

Really?
I thought.
Because, maybe I’m crazy, but I never heard you talk about Seth until Rima gave you the stink eye when you complimented her skirt in the cafeteria
.

“Seth’s going to Jenny’s party this weekend.” Wendy rolled over on her side. “I can tell my mom I’m with you, right?”

“Right.” I had stopped going to parties with Wendy after the thing with Daniel and the towels. But Wendy still told her mom she was with me whenever she wanted to go out.

“Maybe you could come this time,” Wendy said casually.

Immediately, I shook my head.

“It’s just a
party
,” she said, joking, but annoyed also. “It won’t kill you to go.”

It might, I thought. A lot of times, when I had to speak to someone, my heart pounded so bad I was convinced it was going to explode. And I didn’t know how to tell Wendy she was different at parties. Someone not my friend, almost like the girls who made fun of me.

She shrugged. “I mean, unless you’re going to be some kind of virgin nun your whole life …”

I stared, but Wendy’s face was blank, as if she hadn’t said the ugly thing she’d just said. I knew very well that speaking and the other thing went together. If you never talked to people, the chances of getting someone interested in you
were pretty much zilch. And it was more than that. Guys took courage. Out-thereness. Sharing your thoughts, souls, bodies. Whatever—I was too scared for all of it.

I had thought that was my secret. Now Wendy, my supposed best friend, was calling me on it.

Maybe to prove I did have the guts to speak, I snapped, “Well, better a virgin nun than the opposite.”

I don’t know who was more shocked, me or Wendy. She immediately sat up and pulled her legs up to her chin. Wrapping her arms around them, she put her head down, face turned away from me.

I felt awful. Also thrilled.
Yeah, I can be nasty too
. Because that was another secret. The hope that one day, someone would push me too hard and I’d say something so scorchingly cruel that no one would ever mess with me again.

Take it back, Rain, I thought. Unsay what you said. The whole world hurts Wendy. Yay, you; you can do it, too.

“Wen?”

She wouldn’t look at me.

“I’m sorry. I totally suck, that was … wrong.”

There was a long silence. Then, her head still turned, she mumbled, “I suck too.”

“Me, more.”

She looked up, grinning. “No way. I so outrank you in suckage.”

Laughing, I said, “Okay, you win.”

“Which means you have to come to the party,” she said triumphantly. “I will totally stick by you the whole time, I promise.”

Then she added, “Seriously, dude. Those people are harsh. I need one person there that I know is on my side.”

An island of safety.

How could I say no?

“How’s Katherine Palmer?” my mom asks. She’s going through my grandmother’s friends one by one. At each name, my grandmother just shakes her head. I sit in the middle, wishing this would end.

“Call her,” says my mom after every shake of the head. “Invite her over.”

My grandmother glares, but it doesn’t stop my mom. “You need your friends,” she insists. “They need you.”

“Things … change,” says my grandmother.

Five minutes after we arrived at the party, Wendy dumped me cold, and I was living my worst nightmare: silent and lost in a roomful of people. I smiled, nodded, pretended to be one of the group. I watched Wendy work her way over to Seth, listened as she giggled and shrieked,
Oh my God, that’s hilarious
.

I prayed for her to stop, prayed for her to come back, to be my friend again. If I was her home base, shouldn’t she be mine? Wendy had said these people were harsh, and they were. Harsh and shallow and only into themselves. And Wendy seemed to get along with them just fine.

Who are you? I wondered. And why did I ever think we were friends?

When Wendy and Seth disappeared into the bedroom, I left and wandered in the hallway of Jenny’s building. Wendy and I were supposed to go home together; I couldn’t split. But I couldn’t stay in there. Sitting on the cold, white marble steps, I decided I had been exiled to some barren Arctic wilderness. All
around me there was snow, ice, frigid winds. No sign of human life anywhere.

Then Rima Nolan ran out into the hallway.

I heard her before I saw her: the ragged crying, the sharp echo of heels on the tiled floor. I felt a flutter of heat and movement as she rushed past me and up the stairs. I don’t think she saw me at all.

The crying continued, growing faint as she climbed. I glanced down the hall, thinking Rima’s friends would follow. But no one came.

Not right
, I found myself thinking.
Come on, people, girl’s in pain. You can’t just leave her
.

But they could, it seemed.

The silence and emptiness of the hallway began to frighten me. Gazing up the stairs, I listened for Rima. Heard nothing.

Raising my voice slightly, I said, “Um, are you all right?”

No answer. I noticed that the hallway windows were open. This was a twelve-story building. We were on the ninth floor; the street lay far below us. And Rima was headed up. Last year at a party, Nellie Callender got massively drunk and tried to jump out a window.

Standing, I called up the stairs, “Hey!” Cringing as it echoed through the stairwell.

All I got back was silence.

Nervous, I climbed to the next floor. Then the next, until I heard the crying again, that ugly whining noise of real pain. I reached the top floor to find Rima wiping her nose with her sleeve. Bone thin with straight dark hair and enormous gray eyes, Rima was something out of Brontë, which I’d always frantically envied.

I kept my distance. Rima had never been mean to me, but I’d stayed out of her way, so she’d never had the chance. Now I was breaking the Thou Shalt Not Speak rule. And I was Wendy’s friend. She would have every right to blast me.

Then Rima whispered, “They’re laughing.”

“What?” I came closer.

“Laughing.” Her voice was stronger now. “Everyone. They’re hanging out by the bedroom door, listening. They think it’s hysterical.”

I felt sick. Rima, I realized, had always thought those kids were nice because they were nice to her. Now she was seeing how ugly some of them could be. Welcome to the other side, I thought.

“I think … I think they’re pretty drunk,” I said softly, not sure if I meant her friends or Seth and Wendy.

“No excuse,” she choked out.

“Nope,” I agreed.

Rima looked up, as if she suddenly realized who she was talking to. I stepped back. “I’m probably the last person you want to talk to, I’m sorry. I’ll go get …” I gestured downstairs, even as I wondered who I was going to get.

“No,” said Rima more calmly. “It’s cool. Hey, you came up here.”

You
. When Rima said that without contempt, the red burning hurt I’d felt, oh, it seemed like forever, cooled. In an instant, I wasn’t the freak girl who talked funny or Wendy’s coverfriend. I was just a person helping someone out.

Glancing toward the window, I said, “I have this very melodramatic mind. I was worried you were going to jump.”

She grinned. “I’m scared of heights.”

“Oh.” And for no real reason, I laughed.

Rima laughed too. Then she stopped. “This kind of feels like falling,” she said quietly. “All these people … you think they care about you. They’ll be there for you. And then they …”

I thought of Wendy, how she promised she’d be with me at the party. “Then they let you fall.”

“Yeah.” But she laughed again.

“At least,” I said, “after you fall, you land on solid ground. You know where you stand.”

She smiled. “And what if you’re smashed into a million pieces?”

“Yeah, that could be a problem.”

She sat. After a moment, I sat too. The two of us on one little ledge of white marble step. She talked about Seth, about her friends. Her parents, what they expected of her. How she was just a little sick and tired of the whole thing.

I listened. And it seemed to help both of us.

The conversation about friends seems to tire my grandmother out. She grows quiet. Her gaze drifts back to the garden. I give my mom a look, and she nods. Standing, she says, “I so want to stay, but we have to go.”

Gwen brings my grandmother to the door. As we walk down the long hallway, I check to make sure Grandma hasn’t actually fallen asleep. But no, her eyes are open, focused on the long stretch of hallway that leads to the door.

As we put on our coats, Grandma hands me an envelope. Taking it, I can feel photographs inside. She says, “M-m-y m-o … ther. And sis …”

She struggles and I say, “Your sister?”

She nods. Recently, she’s started doing this, giving me family photos. Images of people I don’t know but I’m connected to in some strange way. I’m not sure why she doesn’t give them to my mom, but my mom says, “Just take them. It gives her pleasure.”

Then my grandmother says suddenly, “-endy!”

My mom and I look at each other. “Who, Grandma?” I ask.

Her mouth works. “W-endy …”

“… Wendy.”

We say it at the same time. My grandmother nods. “Wha happen … Wendy?”

What happened to Wendy? I hesitate. For some strange reason, I want to tell my grandmother,
I don’t know. I don’t know what happened to Wendy and …

I’m scared
. I don’t know why that comes into my head. Wendy’s partying in Atlantic City with Nico. She’s fine. Or she’s not with Nico and having some big nervous breakdown over how no one will ever love her. In which case, she’s fine too.

Only why didn’t she get someone to cover for her?

But my grandmother’s tired and this is not the time for me to blather on about a girl I haven’t hung out with in over a year. “I think she’s okay,” I say. “I haven’t seen a lot of her lately.”

“Hey there!”

“Hi.”

Wendy stopped, not sure if she should or not. It had been three weeks since Jenny’s party. We hadn’t spoken since then. She had called once. I had not called back.

Now I said, “Nice sweater.”

“Well, thank you.” Someone said Hey, she nodded back, then asked me, “So, like—how are you?”

“I am good.”

“Yeah, I see.” She nodded. Then: “I’m sorry I …”

I shook my head. “Nah.”

“Oh. Okay.” She smiled uncertainly. “But we should—”

I cut her off. “Definitely.”

There was a silence; then Wendy said brightly, “Saw you eating lunch with Rima the other day. Hanging with the top girls, whoa.”

She smiled, because in spite of everything, she saw how funny that was, and for a moment, I almost smiled back. But I didn’t.

Wendy sighed. “Well, bye …”

That was when I could have said, You know what, Wendy? You think you’re hurting those girls who have so much power—and you are—but the one you’re really hurting is you. And I wish you wouldn’t because I like you so much. At least I used to.

I didn’t say any of that. Instead, I thought, Why bother? She won’t listen.

So I waved.
Bye
.

In the car, my mom says, “She needs to see people.”

“Why? If she doesn’t want to?”

“It’s not healthy. You need to connect, interact, otherwise …” She turns the wheel. “By the way, when did your grandmother meet Wendy?”

“That winter,” I say. “You were in Greece? Grandma came to stay? Wendy slept over.”

My mom nods, remembering.

*   *   *

“Do you think she’ll actually do it?”

Weirdly, last night was the first time I’d spoken to Wendy in forever. Even though we went to a lot of the same parties, we went for different reasons. I was the girl who listened. I was the girl who held people’s heads when they puked. I was the girl who understood that you could love someone who treated you badly, that yes, it sucked when someone said they were skipping lunch and then you saw them eating with someone else, and that it was possible at sixteen to think you would never be happy. I never told anyone it didn’t matter or asked why they cared. In fact, I never told anyone much of anything. I just watched and listened to the crazy.

And there was a lot of it, particularly when Wendy was at the party. And that night, people were hoping for more. I’d talked to Sean Pertwee about his mom’s new boyfriend, who was only three years older than him. I’d listened to Deirdre Fish angst about her crush on her best friend, Melanie, who didn’t seem to have a clue. And I’d nodded while Wilbur Pierce said his new meds were screwing up his head in a totally unfun way.

Every single one of them asked me the same question:
Do you think Wendy’ll actually do it?

And every single time, I said, I have no idea.

“I so don’t get what guys see in her,” said Layla Maxwell.

I do
, I thought. I completely got it. Wendy would come at you with that total, out-there emotion and suddenly, you were a part of the coolest, most fun club in the universe. Wendy always seemed to know where life was, and if you were lucky, she’d grab you by the hand and take you along for the ride.

Funny, I thought. I’d forgotten that.

Around eleven, I was overdosed on people, so I ducked into the kitchen for a break. The kitchen was right by the front door; you could see people coming and going, or watch them through the window space that looked onto the living room. I was wearing what I always wore to parties: my favorite pair of jeans, tall boots, black turtleneck, and my signature army jacket with the
I LIKE IKE
button. Red hair up, two of Chinatown’s best chopsticks stuck in the bun.

I found Wendy sitting on the windowsill. She had a plastic cup in her hand, one foot up on the sill, the other dangling toward the floor. And she was alone, which was strange. Wendy was never alone if she could help it.

In some ways, Layla was right. For a girl who got a lot of guys, Wendy wasn’t that pretty. But she’d learned from all those top girls. She shopped where those girls shopped. She got her hair cut where they did. From a distance, she looked like a lot of thin, dark-haired girls in the city.