The Princesses of Iowa (14 page)

“They’re together?” I asked, a little too loudly.

“She looked really upset earlier. Something about her dad, I think.” She put the plastic cup to her lips and then pulled it away again, waving to someone down near the fire. “Hey, Jordyn! I like your hair!”

A shadow waved back. “Hi, Nikki! I love your dress!”

“Thank you!” she yelled, and then turned to me. “Yay! Isn’t this the best night ever?”

“Nikki, is she with Jake?”

“Oh my gosh, I forgot! She saw you. Don’t tell her I told you, okay? But she saw you, and she’s mad!”

“What? She saw me when?”

“Tonight! She looked like she was going to cry,” Nikki said, suddenly on the verge of tears herself. “That is so sad. Isn’t that so sad? I think it’s really sad.”

“When did she see me, Nikki?”

Nikki focused suddenly. “She saw you talking to Shanti! At the game! That was so not cool, Paige!”

“What? Why not?”

She threw her arm in the air, sending a shower of red liquid down her dress. “Hey, Geneva! I love those shoes!”

“Thanks, Nikki!”

I snapped my fingers in Nikki’s face. “What’s wrong with talking to Shanti?”

“You know! Because she’s . . .” She looked away.

She’s what? Not from here? Not white? Not one of us? I waited, almost hoping to hear Nikki say something completely awful, just to give me an excuse to fight. It wasn’t Nikki’s fault, but suddenly I resented her stupid passivity, her endless peacemaking, her tiresome drunkenness. Wasn’t her drinking what got us into this mess in the first place?

Nikki jumped. “Oh my God, where is Lacey? I have to take her this drink! This is her drink! I don’t want her to hate me! I have to find her!” Her voice pitched up another few steps. “I hope she’s not mad! Or sad!” She nodded in agreement with herself. “I don’t want Lacey to be mad OR sad. I want her to be glad.”

“Mmm.” I should have wanted her to be glad, too. A year ago, I would have. But at the moment, I just wanted to catch her kissing my boyfriend so I could know what was going on once and for all, and then rip her hair out. Even if she was sad.

“Paige, you have to help me. Lacey’s going to be so mad if she doesn’t get her drink. I want her to be glad. Please!” She reached out and nudged one of the cups against my bare arm. “Please.”

Was it evil to want to mutilate your best friend if she was already a cripple? And why was Nikki falling all over herself to get Lacey a drink? She should be getting me a drink. I was the real victim here.

“You’re drunk.” I put my drink down. “What happened to DIEDD, Nikki? Isn’t it kind of hypocritical for a drunk to lecture the whole student body about drinking and driving?”

Nikki stepped back, looking stung. “I’m not driving tonight.”

“So you can get as trashed as you want, as long as you don’t get behind the wheel?”

She shook her head. “I have to go find Lacey.”

I suddenly regretted lashing out at her. It wasn’t her fault; Lacey was the one I wanted to punch. “Nik, wait —”

“I have to go.”

“Wait, Nikki, I’m sorry —”

She swept past me, catching me in the solar plexus with her elbow. “Ow, shit!” My right ankle twisted awkwardly and I fell sideways, down over the artificial stone wall into the grass below. I landed with a brutal thump, my ankle turning again beneath my weight. “OW! Dammit! Nikki!”

Nikki turned on a wobbly heel. “Paige, oh no! Oh my God!” She looked down at me over the edge of the terrace, her hair lit from behind and her face masked in shadow. “Are you okay?”

“No!”

“Oh my God, Paige! I am so sorry! Are you mad? Don’t be mad!” She teetered drunkenly over me. “Hang on. . . .”

I had a vision of her losing her balance and falling down to join me. “Be careful!” I didn’t even try to hide the annoyance in my voice. This always happened. I always ended up babysitting a drunken Nikki, and I was tired of it. The meanest and most secret part of me was almost happy to be justified in my annoyance, like Nikki’s pushing me off the patio somehow made up for my being a bitch to her, and now she owed me.

“Okay, sorry!” She took a step back from the edge of the terrace. “Are you mad at me?”

I struggled to my feet, clutching the rocky wall for ballast. “Goddamn it, Nikki. . . .” My ankle wobbled fiercely, threatening to give way again. Hesitantly, I leaned a fraction of my weight onto my right foot and was promptly rewarded with flames of pain shooting up through my calf. “Shit!” I swore, grabbing again at the wall. “Can you help me?” I asked grouchily.

No answer. “Nikki?” I managed to stand up and caught a glimpse of Nikki’s back before she disappeared around the corner with a tall guy. “God
damn
it, Nikki!”

The party was quieter by the time I managed to hobble my way up the steep slope of Lacey’s yard and back into the house. Most people seemed to have reached the contemplative plateau between dancing drunkenness and unconsciousness. They gathered in groups of four and five on couches and chairs, talking quietly. One of Prescott’s friends had taken over the music and was spinning a slow, pretty song that made me think of twinkling stars in a wide-open sky. I paused in the doorway, leaning against the jamb to take the weight off my throbbing ankle. I just wanted to find Jake and leave.

“Don’t you love the Cure?” An unfamiliar guy with long, well-kept dreadlocks appeared in the doorway next to me.

“No,” I said, with as much disdain as possible. Where was Jake?

“They’re like, so magical.” He closed his eyes, an expression of peace on his tan face. “Listen to that guitar.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “Listen, have you seen —?”

“Shhhh,” he said. “You have to listen.” He took my hand. “Close your eyes.”

To my surprise, I did. “Breathe,” he said, and I did, deeply. A galaxy of unfamiliar constellations appeared in my dark vision. The muscles in my shoulders relaxed, and my body grew heavier, slumping against the polished wood.

When the song ended a moment later, the guy gave my hand a warm squeeze. “Take care of yourself.” By the time I opened my eyes, he was gone.

Lacey’s room was upstairs, the final door in an endless hallway of guest rooms, closets, and bathrooms. She kept a myriad of bandages, knee braces, and athletic tape in the top drawer of her dresser. Or at least she did, before. Captain of the dance team, Lacey had been no stranger to injury, even before the accident. If I could just wrap my ankle, I’d be able to put weight on it. The fewer people who saw me limping the better; I didn’t want anyone to think I was trying to steal Lacey’s cripple angle.

The light was low under Lacey’s door, and I could hear murmured voices. My heart pulled against its moorings, beating frantically.
Idiot.
I was an idiot. I’d spent the entire night looking for them all over the house and they were in her bedroom the whole time.

I reached for the doorknob. Inside, the murmurs turned to laughter. I considered just turning around and leaving. I wanted to know the truth, to put a stop to all of the suspicion and sadness that were wearing me so thin, but the thought of actually catching them in the act made me dizzy.

I squeezed my eyes shut against the promise of future pain, from the memory that, once captured, wouldn’t fade.

Deep breath.
I turned the knob and pushed the door open.

A figure on the bed sat up. “Paige?”

“Nikki?”

She leaned against Lacey’s pillows in her bra and panties, her shoes and dress in a pile on the floor. She giggled, brushing her long hair off her face. The guy next to her trailed his hand up her arm, watching me lazily. He looked like a lion who’d just been fed. “Don’t tell Lacey, okay?” Nikki asked.

It was last spring all over again: clothes on the floor, older dude in the bed, Nikki half undressed and mostly drunk. Déjà vu. I almost expected Lacey to barge in and drag Nikki out to the car, screaming at me about kissing her brother.

“Okay, Paige? Don’t tell.”

I backed out of the room. “I didn’t see anything.” Before I could pull the door shut, the lion rolled over and reclaimed his kill.

Gross. Gross. I hobbled back down the hallway, cringing with every step. I tried to shake the sight out of my head, her skinny, vulnerable arms, his thick fingers.

And then I found Jake and Lacey. Or they found me.

They were walking up the stairs together, laughing, their shoulders touching with every step. Jake looked kind, protective. Lacey looked drunk.

“Oh!” she said, seeing me. “Paige!”

They were leaning on each other. They were laughing. They were fully clothed, but somehow they seemed far more intimate than half-naked Nikki and the faceless dude had. That just seemed like sex. This seemed like something deeper. Like — I didn’t want to form the word, not even in my own head.

My breath came in little bursts. I felt so stupid, so naive. Faced with the truth at last, I realized I’d never really believed that they could do this to me, had never actually thought that Jake was cheating on me with her. With my evil, evil crippled bitch of a best friend.

Lacey and Jake glanced nervously at each other, sharing an entire conversation without saying anything. Somehow that pissed me off more, the notion that they had some shared understanding binding them together. That was betrayal. Jake and I were in love. The understanding was supposed to be between
us.

Jake looked at me, and for a second I saw the boy he’d been when we first got together, sophomore year. My anchor. My love.

I couldn’t breathe.

“Where have you been all night?” Jake asked. “We’ve been looking for you.”

“Where have I been? Where have
I
been?” I gasped for air. I would not cry. Goddammit, I would not cry.

“We couldn’t find you anywhere,” Lacey said. “We looked everywhere.” She paused. “And then we found you here.” She and Nikki sounded alike when they were drunk, I thought distantly, like a goddamn Dr. Seuss book.

“Paige? Are you okay?” Jake asked gently. He sounded like himself. He sounded like my Jake.

Instinctively, I moved toward him. “I —”

“Yeah, where were you?” Lacey interrupted. “It’s like you disappeared into the darkness! And then you reappeared into the light! Right?”

“Oh, put it on me,” I said, trembling. “I’m the one who disappeared. Where the fuck were
you
all night?” I was asking Jake, but Lacey answered.

“Paige,” she said seriously, reaching out a wavering hand. “My parents . . . are splitting up.” She waited, full of self-important sadness. Her eyes blinked slowly in the dim hall light. What did she want from me, I wondered. What did she seriously expect? Did she think I’d throw my arms around her and cry? Beg her forgiveness? Give her my goddamn boyfriend as a consolation prize?

“I know.” My voice was bitter. “But look on the bright side: at least your boyfriend isn’t cheating on you with your best fucking friend.”

Jake reached for me. “Paige, we weren’t —”

Lacey looked shocked. “My parents are getting a
divorce
!”

“We were, uh, talking about our parents. And forgiveness,” Jake said.

Lacey smiled at him, nodding solemnly. “Like Jesus.”

“Like hell!” I said. “Would Jesus screw his best friend’s boyfriend?”

“Baby,” Jake said. “We would never — I would never —”

“Jesus wasn’t GAY!” Lacey exclaimed.

“Fuck you!” I pushed right through them, forcing them apart, and ran blindly down the stairs.

Anger is buoyant. It carried me down the front staircase and out into the night, masking the pain in my ankle until I was nearly to the unlit cul-de-sac. With every step I took, the woods bent and creaked, moaning in the night air. My heart pounded in my chest, pushing shards of glass through my veins, tearing at me from the inside. If I could outrun the spasms in my ankle, then I could outrun the gaping holes in my chest where he was supposed to be, where she had been since middle school. But as soon as I slowed down, it all came speeding back — ankle ache and heartache — punishing me for my flight.

The Lanes had a pair of faux-rustic wooden benches at the end of their driveway, perhaps to offset their ostentatious mansion — or perhaps to emphasize it, as if to say, “You think this house is grand? Shucks, this is only our little country cabin. You should see our real house!” Normally I didn’t even notice the benches. Lacey and I had long ago stopped objectively seeing the elements of each other’s lives. Like family, we saw each other in glances only, no longer truly looking at each other. When I thought about it, I could more easily picture Shanti Kale’s face than Lacey’s or Nikki’s.

I collapsed onto the rough-hewn logs. The woods around me were quieter now, with the faint wheeze of late cicadas and the slight rustle of leaves. There were no cars speeding down the driveway after me, no muffled rubber
thup thup
of sneakers on the pavement. I released a breath I hardly knew I’d been holding.

I dug in my purse for my cell phone. I couldn’t call my parents for a ride: my mother would demand to know why I wasn’t going to wait for Jake, and her answer to anything I told her would inevitably be advice on how to be properly wifely in order to win him back. My father would come get me if he was the one who answered the phone, except he had an early meeting at the university the next morning, and my mother would kill me for dragging him out of bed in the middle of the night. I flipped through the contacts saved in my phone. Brian, Chris, Jake, Lacey, Nikki, Prescott, Randy, Tyler. No good — they were all at the party behind me, probably all drunk. I scrolled through my list again, looking for anyone not at the party. Dentist. Doctor. Grandma. Shit.