Lena wasn’t a nice girl, but she was nice to me. I won’t make excuses for her; I won’t sugarcoat the facts. She was a troublemaker, a perpetual pain in the ass who seemed to get off on making other people uncomfortable, watching them squirm. Why else would a fifteen-year-old wear a push-up bra to school, twirling her French braid around a bitten-down fingernail as she chewed on the side of her pillowy lip? She was a woman in a girl’s body, or a girl in a woman’s body; both seemed to make sense. Simultaneously too old and too young—a figure and mind beyond her years. But there were parts of her, somewhere, hidden beneath the depths of her slathered-on makeup and the cloud of cigarette smoke that seemed to envelope her each day after the ring of the high school bell that reminded you that she was just a girl. Just a lost, lonely girl.
Of course, I didn’t see that side of her when I was twelve. She always seemed like an adult to me, despite the fact that she was the same age as my brother. Cooper never seemed like an adult with his burping and his Game Boy and his stash of dirty magazines he kept hidden under the loose floorboard beneath his bed. I’ll never forget the day I found those, snooping through his room in search of a stash of cash. I had wanted to buy myself an eye shadow pallet, a nice pale pink I had seen Lena wear. My mother refused to buy me makeup before high school, but I had wanted it. I wanted it badly enough to steal for it. So I crept into Cooper’s room, lifted up that creaky plank, and was slapped in the face with a pair of cartoon tits that sent me reeling back so fast I whacked the back of my head on his box spring. Then I immediately told my dad.
The Crawfish Festival had been in early May that year, the prologue of summer. It was hot, but not too hot. Hot by the majority of the United States’ fragile standards, but not Louisiana hot. That wouldn’t come until August, when the damp breath of the bogs wafted through the city streets each morning like a rain cloud searching for drought.
Also in August, three of the six girls would be gone.
I joke about Breaux Bridge—the Crawfish Capital of the World—but the Crawfish Festival really is something to brag about. My last festival had been in 1999, but it had also been my favorite. I remember wandering by myself through the fairgrounds, the sounds and smells of Louisiana permeating my skin. Swamp pop leaking from the speakers on the main stage, the scent of crawfish being prepared in every possible way: fried, boiled, bisque, boudin. I had drifted over to the crawfish race, my head snapping to the right when I noticed Cooper’s moppy brown hair peeking out from inside a crowd of other kids leaning against my father’s car. He always seemed to be surrounded by people back then—we were opposites in that way. They swarmed to him, trailing him around like a cloud of gnats on a muggy day. He never seemed to mind, though. Eventually, they just became a part of him: the crowd. Occasionally he would swat at them, annoyed. And they would obey, scatter. Find somebody else to stick to. But they never left for long; they always found their way back.
My brother seemed to sense me looking, because before long, I saw his eyes peek above the heads of the others, zeroing in on mine. I waved, smiled meekly. I didn’t mind being alone—really, I didn’t—but I hated the way it made others see me. Cooper, especially. I watched him push his way through his friends, dismissing some scrawny kid with a wrist-flick when he tried to follow. Then he made his way over to me and slung his arm around my shoulder.
“Bet you a bag of popcorn on number seven?”
I smiled, grateful for the company—and for the way he never acknowledged that I spent the majority of my life alone.
“Deal.”
I looked over at the race, about to begin. I remember the commissioner’s scream—Ils sont partis!—the cheering crowds, those little red mudbugs clicking their way across the target spray-painted on a ten-foot wooden board. Within seconds, I had lost and Cooper had won, so we made our way to the concession stand so he could collect his bounty.
Standing in line, I had never been happier. Those early days of summer brought so much promise, it was like the red carpet of freedom was being rolled out beneath my feet, stretching so far into the distance it felt like it couldn’t possibly end. Cooper grabbed the bag of popcorn and pushed a kernel into his mouth, sucking off the salt, as I handed over the cash. Then we turned around, and Lena was there.
“Hey, Coop.” She smiled at him before fixing her gaze on me. She was holding a bottle of Sprite, twisting the cap on and off between her fingers. “Hey, Chloe.”
“Hey, Lena.”
My brother was a popular kid, a jock, wrestling for Breaux Bridge High School. People knew his name and it always confused me, watching him make friends as naturally as I kept to myself. He didn’t discriminate when it came to company—he’d hang out with his wrestling buddies one day, make small talk with some stoners the next. Mostly, his attention just seemed to make you feel important, like you were somehow worthy of something valuable and rare.
Lena was popular, too, but for the wrong reasons.
“Y’all want a sip?”
I eyed her carefully, her flat stomach sticking out from beneath a skintight henley that looked two sizes too small, pushing her cleavage up through the buttons. I caught a glint of something sparkly on her stomach—a belly-button ring—and I immediately snapped my head back up, trying not to stare. She smiled at me, lifting the bottle to her lips. I watched a bead of liquid dribble down her chin before she wiped it with her middle finger.
“Do you like it?” She pulled her shirt up, rolled the diamond between her fingers. There was a charm dangling beneath it, some kind of bug.
“It’s a firefly,” she said, reading my mind. “They’re my favorite. It glows in the dark.”
She cupped her hands around her stomach and motioned for me to peek through; I did, my forehead pressed against the edges of her hands. Inside, the bug had turned a bright, neon green.
“I like to catch them,” she said, looking down at her stomach. “Put them in a jar.”
“I do, too,” I said, still peeking through the hole in her hands. It reminded me of the fireflies that emerged in our trees at night, the way I would run through the darkness, swatting at them like I was swimming through stars.
“And then I take them out and squish them between my fingers. Did you know you can write your name on the sidewalk with their glow?”
I winced; I couldn’t imagine squishing a bug with my bare hands, listening to it pop. But that did seem kind of cool, getting to rub its liquid between my fingers, watching it radiate up close.
“Somebody’s staring,” she said, dropping her hands. I snapped my head up and looked in the direction of her gaze, directly at my father. He was across the crowd, staring at us. Staring at Lena, with her shirt pulled up to her bra. She smiled at him, waved with her free hand. He ducked his head down and kept walking.
“So,” she said, pushing the Sprite bottle in Cooper’s direction and wiggling it in the air. “Do you want a sip?”
He glanced over to where my dad once stood, finding a gap instead of his watchful eye, then back at the bottle, snatching it from her hand and taking a fast swig.
“I’ll take some,” I said, grabbing it from him. “I’m so thirsty.”
“No, Chloe—”