Heath moved to the mirror over the dresser, stroked the two days’ growth of beard. It gave him a rugged look. Wild and untamed. Normally I would go to him and pull him close, rubbing my skin against his, but my body wouldn’t move. I touched the tender spot on the back of my head and pressed it gently. Pain radiated over my head, but it helped me focus on where I was. The fiend behind the flames caught my eye, and this time, I glowered back at it.
After Heath left for his final session, I changed into workout clothes, grabbed a bottle of water from the lunch tray, and headed outside. I needed to fill my lungs with sharp, cold air. Shock my fuzzy brain into clarity. A hike up the mountain would be the perfect thing. Maybe I’d run into Glenys again. Maybe I’d just go ahead and finish my story, tell her the things I couldn’t bring myself to tell Heath, and I would finally feel my soul loosen just the slightest bit.
On the way up, memories filtered back to me. Of Mount Olive Christian Academy, where they sent us ranch girls and the boys from Maranatha Ranch, near Warner Robins. The school sounded fancy, but it was really just an old remodeled roller-skating rink off an industrial highway, with a couple of rickety trailers out back that served as extra classrooms.
Every morning, after we said the regular pledge of allegiance, they had us say a different one, to the Christian flag, but I could never quite remember the whole thing, so I just moved my lips without making a sound. At lunchtime a ladies’ Bible study from Hollyhock Community Church brought us a meal—peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches, Fritos, and Capri Suns.
At the end of my first week at Mount Olive, when the old, hand-me-down school bus dropped us off at the top of the long drive, we all walked back to the brown brick house together. In our room, I dumped my backpack in the corner and then went to pee. From inside the bathroom, I could hear Omega and the other girls trooping down the hall. Their laughter rose up like a thundercloud and shook the thin walls.
Sitting on the toilet, a thrill shot through me. I wanted to live inside their funhouse laughter. It was so big and warm and enveloping, so full of hidden knowledge and inside jokes and stories I imagined were just too crazy to be believed. But I would get to hear the stories soon in the clubhouse. I would revel in the cushiony womb of their laughter. As I walked down the hall, Chantal called to me from our bedroom.
“Do you want to play Skip-Bo?”
She was lying on her back on her bed, her feet tapping out some mysterious choreography on the bottom of my bunk. I didn’t want to play cards. I didn’t want to be anywhere near her.
“You don’t know how to play?”
“I didn’t say that. I just can’t right now. I’m busy.”
She sat up, crossed her legs under her. “How are you busy, Pizza Face?”
That was one of her names for me, after last night. She’d lain on her bunk at night after lights out, kicking my mattress, chanting in a singsong voice: Pizza Face, Hairy Legs, Squinty McGee, Egg Salad. I let her talk. I made up my mind, sometime during the endless, droning naming ceremony, that I was going to have to do something about her.
“Where are you going?” Chantal demanded again.
“Out,” I said and waited. She hadn’t spewed all her venom, and I knew if I let her finish, she’d feel like she won. And maybe she wouldn’t follow me.
“You’re a pile of egg salad. Rotten egg salad and a fat fuck.”
I was careful to keep my face expressionless, but it warmed nonetheless. My arms and legs were thicker than hers, rounded and soft, and I had a belly that jiggled when I ran. I also had cheeks that made me look like a baby. I guessed that made me fat. The egg-salad thing made no sense. I had never considered myself anything but ordinary looking. Plain round face, plain blue eyes, and plain blonde hair. At least, nobody else had ever called me names.
She lay back down on the bed, jammed her feet against the mattress above her. She kicked once, twice, three times—so hard that the mattress popped up and tumbled off the frame. It slid to the floor, and she grinned over at me.
A white-hot needle of fury pierced my heart, and I could feel tears threatening to rise up. I ran out of the room before Chantal could see them. By the time I was at the edge of the backyard and heading across the gravel road, though, she reappeared. I ignored her as she trotted beside me, all the way through the fallow vegetable garden, past the pavilion, down to the lake, then along the shore and into the woods.
Her long frizzed green hair gently flopped behind her as she jogged, and her breathing had a whine to it, like an old dog. I tried to ignore her, and thought about running faster, but I didn’t want it to turn into a race. If anything was likely to turn Chantal into a rage monster, it was competition.
“You can’t go to the clubhouse when the Super Tramps are there,” she said as we began to navigate the brushy woods.
I didn’t answer, just kept picking my way over fallen logs and thornbushes.
“They won’t let you in. You have to be in the club, and you can’t be until you pass the test.”
I glanced at her. She jutted her chin, and her eyes glittered dangerously.
“Why do you take two vitamins?” I said.
For once, she looked taken aback. “Because none of your business.”
“Do you have a disease?”
“No.”
“Is it contagious?”
“No.” She was getting agitated. I had done that, and it felt good. I wanted more.
“So why do you take them?”
“I just need extra vitamins, that’s all. When I lived with my mom, she starved me for a week, once, and I got malnutrition. So Mrs. Bobbie gives me an extra vitamin. One you have to get from the pharmacist.”
“Okay, fine. I was just asking.”
She was quiet the rest of the way, and when we got to the clubhouse, the little hut was empty. I thought Chantal might barge in anyway, but she hung back, quiet all of a sudden. Her eyes had gone wide, her bottom lip caught in her teeth. I knocked on the door, but no one answered. She gave it one more shot.
“They aren’t going to let you in.”
And then they were upon us, a whirlwind of laughter and acrid smoke and sweet perfume and Bubblicious gum, breaking through the trees. The queen and her two handmaidens. Omega saw me first, then saw Chantal, and stopped. Tré and Shellie pulled up short behind her.
Omega pointed at Chantal. “You. What did I tell you?”
“She wanted to see inside the clubhouse,” Chantal spat, but she was already edging her way around Tré and Shellie, giving them a wide berth. “She’ll tell on you. She’ll tell Mrs. Bobbie. She’s a fat fuck.”
“You’re a fat fuck,” Tré said quietly. Ominously.
Omega looked at me. “Are you going to tell Mrs. Bobbie?”
I shook my head.
“Even if we let you in but not her?” Omega said, sliding her eyes to Chantal. Her perfect lips had curved into a small smile, and I felt afraid and elated, all at once.
“She’ll tell. Fat fuck,” Chantal said, and Omega lunged at her. In a flash, Chantal sprang to life and took off running, up the hill, weaving around the thin saplings, slipping on the rotted leaves.
Shellie giggled. “Oh my God. Look at that little jackrabbit go.”
They all started laughing then, and for a moment, I felt just the tiniest bit sorry for Chantal. But then they swept me into the genie’s bottle, into the warm embrace of their laughter, and they clicked on a string of rose-colored lights (battery powered, I asked) and turned on a CD player that had only one working speaker.
They showed me everything they had hidden there (two dirty books, each with a man’s oily torso on the cover; sour-cream-and-onion chips and Snickers bars from Mrs. Bobbie’s stash; and a crushed package of L&M cigarettes), and told me we had to wait there for a special surprise. Then there was a rap on the moldy, split plywood door.
The surprise turned out to be Mr. Al, although I didn’t quite understand what made his appearance so astonishing. He was basically our dad, after all. Surely, he knew about the clubhouse and had been down here. When the girls heard him at the door, they immediately leapt up and filed out. Tré, the last one in line, turned to me.
“Don’t come outside,” she said, her black eyes flashing in her white face. “I mean it.”