The Girls Are All So Nice Here Read online

  “What do you do for a living?” Adrian asks. He’s playing into what she wants—an excuse to brag. I already know what Lauren does for a living because I creeped her on Facebook years ago. She’s a psychologist in Brooklyn. There’s a Dr. in front of her name. The thought of Lauren inside anybody’s head is enough to serrate my skin.

  “I’m a psychologist,” Lauren says. “I work with kids, mostly.”

  The kids makes me snap to attention. That was Flora’s dream. Lauren was always so drawn to Flora. Maybe because Flora made her feel special in a way that nobody else did.

  “That’s so cool,” Adrian says. “I love kids. I can’t wait to be a dad.” I wish he would stop talking.

  “Hopefully soon,” Lauren says pointedly. As if the problem—of course, she sees a problem—lies with me. I want to defend myself, defend us, but she doesn’t give me a chance. “I almost forgot. Guess who’s here?”

  Don’t say her name, I want to demand, but I’m not even sure which her I’m referring to. “Who?”

  “Ella. I mean, I knew she was coming, but wait till you see her. She looks incredible. And Gemma, apparently she was in an episode of Grey’s Anatomy. Isn’t that amazing?”

  I nod. “Amazing.” Lauren is pushing my buttons because she can. Because she knows Gemma graduated as a theater major, and I didn’t.

  I turn toward the lady at the folding table in front of us. “Ambrosia and Adrian Turner,” I say.

  “Ambrosia. What a lovely name. Oh, there you are. I have you in Nicolson Hall. Here’s your key cards, welcome packet, meal tickets, and an updated schedule for the weekend. Don’t forget to fill out your name tags.”

  “No, we’re not in the Nics,” I say. “We’re staying at a hotel.”

  She peers at the paper on the table, creases forming near her hairline. “Not according to what’s here, sweetie.”

  I rub my hands against my jeans. “There must be some kind of mistake.”

  The lady laughs. “With a name like yours, I doubt there are many mistakes.”

  Adrian is already reaching for the key cards. “Awesome. We can cancel the hotel, babe. You must have booked this and forgot about it.” That’s the thing about Adrian. He never considered I wasn’t telling the truth when I told him the dorms were full. Just like he doesn’t know I’m lying now.

  “I don’t—” I begin, but there’s a line building behind us and Lauren is still lingering, amused. “Fine. Let’s just go.”

  The Nics isn’t Dorm Doom. I lived there sophomore year and appreciated the inner door between me and my roommate, a redhead named Veronica who wore only rock T-shirts, Jim Morrison’s face stretched across her boobs, and called everyone “dude.” Nothing especially memorable happened to me there, but suddenly it’s all too much. I turn around, looking for an empty corner, an exit strategy, and that’s when I lock eyes with the person I really didn’t want to see.

  Flora Banning doesn’t say anything to me. Her mouth is curved upward, her face porcelain, her hair the same white blond, pushed off her forehead with a headband.

  “You haven’t changed a bit,” I murmur, but quietly enough that even Adrian can’t hear it.

  “You okay, Amb?” he says. “We should go get our stuff and get unpacked.”

  My throat is dry. It’s a staring contest between me and Flora and she won’t look away first, so finally I do.

  “I’m fine,” I manage, reaching for his hand. “Let’s get out of here.”

  When I turn around, Flora is watching us. Watching me.

  THEN

  I called Billie when Kevin went home the next day. I wanted to hear the story out loud the way it should have gone. Where I met a boy at the library and he called me beautiful. Billie would understand.

  I didn’t mention Kevin’s name or what came after Foss Hill. I didn’t mention what I found in my room, late the night before, after partying with Sully. The rustling sheets and muffled laughs, the moving lump that was Flora’s and Kevin’s interlocked bodies. I didn’t mention how I couldn’t stop picturing them, twined like a damp braid.

  “So how are you going to find him now?” Billie asked. “You met him for a reason, and you need to see him again.” Her optimism was jarring, the anti-Sully.

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “I have his email address. Or maybe I’ll run into him.”

  When I looked up, Flora was standing in our doorway with two mugs. Actual mugs, not just the paper cups she usually brought back from the cafeteria to mix her vegan hot chocolate in. A white marshmallow peak jutted out from one like a little Mount Everest.

  I didn’t know how much she had heard. But she kept smiling—she was always smiling—and when I put my phone down she sat on my bed and handed me the mug with the marshmallow.

  “What’s this?” I said.

  “Hot chocolate. I thought we could have matching mugs. Mine says Best, yours says Friend. Although if you want Best, you can have it instead. I just gave you Friend because it’s the one with the marshmallow. I can’t eat those because of the gelatin.”

  “That’s really nice,” I said. We weren’t even that close. We talked about our sisters, she talked about her boyfriend, she asked me about Matt and I lied. We ate together sometimes and slept five feet away from each other and she painted my nails and braided my hair. But we didn’t have what I had with Sully. The headiness, the excitement. The mug wasn’t a gift. It was a way for Flora to keep me in her thrall, check college best friend off the list she had created in her busy head. I wondered, Why me?, whether it was sheer proximity or something else.

  “Were you out late? I didn’t hear you come in.” Her flush was candy pink.

  “I tried to be quiet.” I took a sip that burned my mouth, wondering how she would react if I told her to stop keeping tabs on my nights out. “I didn’t want to wake you.” I watched her face for a sign of embarrassment—that I’d heard her and Kevin having sex.

  “I miss him already.” She leaned back on my pillow, her bun squished against the wall. “But I’m so relieved that he came. It’s hard being away from each other, as much as I believe we’ll make it through. Sometimes I worry about what he’s doing without me.”

  “That’s normal,” I said. Maybe Flora’s nice was a homing device, pressing into Kevin’s conscience when she sensed him sniffing around. I watched my giant marshmallow bob in my hot chocolate and fought the sudden urge to drown it.

  “I don’t know. I can be paranoid.” She took a sip from her mug. “But it was definitely like absence makes the heart grow fonder, you know?”

  I nodded, but I didn’t know. Nobody had ever grown fonder of me after being away. I had gotten dumped by my ninth-grade boyfriend, Wesley, when I went away to a summer performing arts camp in Newark. Wesley had kissed me fiercely and told me he would miss me like crazy, but when I got back and skipped the Kunkel Park After Dark movie night to surprise him at his house, he stared blankly from the safety of his foyer and said he thought we’d decided to just be friends.

  “He’s coming back for Halloween,” she said. “I want to do a couple’s costume. Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler.”

  I stored that fact away. I would get the chance to see him again.

  “That’s fun,” I said. “I forgot about Halloween.”

  “It’s my favorite,” Flora said, sliding her feet into her slippers. “I love dressing up and being somebody besides myself.”

  It was that statement that sharpened my mood, made my back bristle like an animal’s. Flora had everything, including the audacity to want to be someone else.

  “Maybe you and Sloane can take us to a Halloween party,” she said. “I want Kevin to get to know my friends. And you’re my girl, you know?”

  The hot chocolate was too sweet, and I wasn’t Flora’s girl. It was too much responsibility. I didn’t need a friend like Flora, whom I would always feel slightly inferior beside, who would impose a standard I would forever fall short of meeting.

  “Yeah,” I said weakly. �
��I know.”

  * * *

  I had no plans to actually email Kevin. It was satisfying, somehow, my private knowledge that he wasn’t the saint Flora made him out to be. If he were, he wouldn’t have given me his email address. He would have acknowledged to Flora that we had met. More likely, we never would have met at all, and he certainly wouldn’t have spent time with me on Foss Hill, time that was becoming wispier in my memory with each passing hour.

  As my slice of reality with Kevin faded, Flora’s day with him was dissected in detail, over and over. “Oh, I forgot to tell you what Kevin said,” she exclaimed in MoCon. She didn’t even wait for me to ask before launching into a parade of plushy facts. “He said he keeps my picture on his nightstand so I’m the last thing he sees before he goes to sleep.”

  It was a barb, hooking into me, a reminder that I had nobody. I tried to ignore it. But she went on.

  “Kevin looks at the stars at night and makes a wish for me. He said he feels connected to me that way.”

  I wanted to tell her to shut up about Kevin. I couldn’t even bring myself to look at her ever-widening smile and flushed cheeks, the picture of happiness. I had once felt that way—I remembered Billie rolling her eyes and jokingly telling me I was insufferable when Matt and I were together.

  Maybe that was why I found myself in front of my laptop three days after Kevin’s visit, his beautiful only a faint echo in my head. I would poke at the connection Flora wouldn’t shut up about until it predictably capsized. She had said something that I’d glommed on to. Sometimes I worry about what he’s doing without me. She should have been worried. It was irresponsible to trust people like Flora did.

  I used John Donne’s Wikipedia page to craft a message that would make me sound effortlessly smart yet casual. Hey, it’s Amb! Thanks again for your help with my essay—I got an A! I peppered the email with references to John Donne’s work, clever lines Kevin would appreciate. Then I hit send.

  It took him two days to reply. Two days during which I checked my email incessantly, morbidly curious to see if my laptop had anything to offer from bigmac10. After I came back from dinner at Summerfields with Sully and Gemma on Friday, it was there.

  Hey Amb, it was great meeting u. JD is my specialty. I’m sure u rocked that essay—I can tell, ur smart as hell.

  He didn’t mention Flora. I was smart as hell, but the message wasn’t flirty.

  I could have chosen not to write back. But now I was invested. I wanted to see how far he would go, how much of himself he would reveal through a computer screen.

  I emailed him back, but this time I didn’t bring up our mutual friend John Donne. I bitched about my Introduction to Playwriting class and Professor Ogden, with his beady eyes. I told him I wanted to act. I was testing him, seeing what he would give me in return. I had watched Sully interact with enough boys to learn her methods. She treated them like transactions. Give a bit—lean in, laugh at a joke, let a bra strap slip down a bare shoulder. Get a lot back. With Sully, the returns never diminished.

  He wrote back almost immediately. I pictured him hunched over his keyboard. His bed was almost too small for him, too full of boy.

  Bad teachers suck. Yours sounds like a dick. What’s it like being a theater major? Sounds pretty cool. I can see u as an actress—u have the look for it. I’m pre-law but I wish I was doing something cooler with my life. I don’t think my parents would like that very much though and they’re the ones paying for all this. lol

  I ignored the lol. I hated cell phone lingo, the absence of actual sentences, the abbreviations. Under my bed at home in Pennington, I had a box of letters my grandpa Wellington wrote to my grandma while he was in the army. Life and death, urgency, all there in his stilted handwriting. My beloved, he called her. I ignored the lol because Kevin had confided in me. I doubted Flora was an outlet. She trapped him in her giant angel wings, denying his dark parts entry.

  I got bolder. I had to really fight mine to let me come here. But I figured, I have to go after things I want. Can’t wait for them to come to me.

  It was too much, I decided right after I sent it. It was obvious I was baiting him, beckoning him toward a line he wouldn’t cross.

  But his response was fast. It was Friday night. Didn’t he have somewhere to be? I was supposed to meet Sully later—there was a concert at Eclectic. Suddenly the idea of leaving my room was exhausting. Kevin was giving me more attention than anyone at Eclectic would. It had been so long since a boy actually listened.

  Let me guess. U R a youngest child too. Youngest children are always willing to do whatever it takes (I’m no exception ;)

  He was flirting with me—I was sure of it. I whipped out one of the spiral notebooks I used to take notes during class and jotted down, in bullet points, Youngest child. Pre-law.

  My sister, Toni, is two years older than me. She got the good nose and the science brain.

  It was risky, pointing out my own shortcomings. I wanted to pull the email back from the void. I would be another girl to him, insecure and obsessed with looks. I needed to be somebody else.

  Don’t be so hard on yourself. U have a great nose. Actually, ur whole face is great

  I practically choked on the saliva building in my mouth. He was picturing me right now. Maybe his hand was detouring into his pants. I had the power.

  Before I could think up a reply—the pressure was on to make it both witty and confident, self-aware but slightly self-deprecating—Flora barged in. She was on her cell phone and it was her Kevin laugh, sweet and girly.

  “So you had lunch with Adam,” she said into the phone, then looked at me with an apologetic smile. I wondered how long they had been on the phone, him carrying on conversations with both of us. She was policing who he ate with, making sure she knew where he was.

  I typed out a response that was raw and real. I couldn’t imagine Flora voicing her fears like this.

  Sometimes it’s like everyone expects me to be someone else. Nobody asks who I am. Nobody in my life ever puts in the effort like I do. Maybe it’s like that for you, too. So tell me what you really want to do with your life.

  If he wrote back while he was on the phone with Flora, it meant something. I needed this, the victory over a girl better designed than me. The longer I waited, the dumber I felt. I was constructing a fairy tale in my head, trying to build a whole palace where I didn’t even have enough to work into a straw hut.

  Then the reply came in, and it was worth the wait.

  Typical story, dad wanted Thomas and me to become lawyers like him and make a bunch of money and buy big houses and have a couple kids each. Thomas was cool with it, because he wants to be rich. I just want someone to understand me. Can u keep a secret? I’m more into writing and poetry. Sometimes I think I should be a writer, but then I talk myself out of it.

  My whole body thrummed, electrified. It was less a secret and more a gauntlet, gently lobbed to see how I would respond. I picked my words carefully.

  You should totally do it. What’s holding you back? Just start writing in your spare time. I bet you’re super talented.

  Lol. U R way too nice. The other problem is, I don’t know what to write about. My life is like this wheel and I sometimes hate it and just wanna escape it but don’t know how

  He wanted to be understood, to be seen for who he was. I started to feel like Kevin somehow saw me. And there was no greater relief than knowing I wasn’t invisible.

  I totally get it. Maybe this is weird, but I feel like we understand each other. You can talk to me any time you feel like you need an escape.

  When he didn’t reply, I chewed my fingernails off. I was savage. I gnawed until it hurt, until the spongy surface under my nails was exposed in all its raw, red glory.

  Flora’s phone call continued. I sat there in the dark, on my bed, her occasional giggle puncturing the monotony of her continuous talking. Anger was a ball in my stomach, big and hot. She thought the world owed her a Kevin, which was why she didn’t deserve him
.

  I refreshed my inbox at least ten times. When a new message finally came in, I almost dumped my laptop onto the floor in my scramble to get a firm hold on it. Kevin’s reply was the validation I needed. I was right when I met u. Your different. I think we can help each other but lets keep this between us for now ok? Other people wouldn’t get it.

  Your different. I ignored his bad grammar. He was in a rush to type his truth, and it could be forgiven. I knew exactly what he meant by the last part. He didn’t want Flora to know. I shivered. This was something solely ours.

  When I realized what time it was, I put my laptop away and waved goodbye to Flora, who was still on the phone. Then I knocked on Sully’s door. “Come in,” she yelled over her music.

  “You’re late,” she said from her stance on her bed, cross-legged in a tank top with no bra.

  “Sorry. I was just trying to get some work done first.” I closed the door behind me.

  “Whatever.” Sully eyed me critically. “What’s up with your hair, did you just get fucked?”

  I shook my head. “No. I just got too busy to straighten it.” I couldn’t tell by her expression if she was amused or disgusted.

  “You’re weird tonight,” she shouted later, when we were thumping to a rock cover, bodies crashing around us. A group of boys alternately stared and pointed, as if we were a different species. They didn’t see me, just the acreage of my sweat-slicked skin.

  “I know,” I said. “Sorry. I just have a lot on my mind.”

  “Tell me it’s not a guy,” she deadpanned, gripping my wrist. “Because they’re not worth ruining everything.”

  “No.” I wasn’t ready to mention Kevin, and besides, I was stuck on her forceful everything, an unexpected dagger of vulnerability, and with it the knowledge that I had finally secured my foothold.