Bridget nodded. Ashlee was a quiet student, a cheerleader with a clique of friends that was neither cruel nor kind but rather just there. She was rounder than the other cheerleaders, her hair frizzy. She’d always slipped her way into the right crowd, a good student. “I know her. Nice girl, cheerleader, right?”
The waitress nodded and tore off the top sheet, ripping halfway down the page, her nameplate blinking a silvery Misty. “Tell you what, if Winters did that to my cousin, I’d castrate him.” She pushed the bill down on the Formica with a thick finger and gave them both a wide smile. “Y’all have a good day now.”
?????
Night came, hard and quick, and Bridget’s house was dark when she got home, as though the day skipped entirely over twilight and sunset and went right to midnight. She wandered to the kitchen, the pie still on her tongue, not knowing if she was hungry or thirsty, but instead made tea. Her phone trilled from the table, and when she picked it up, there was a waiting text from Tripp: Sorry again about Misty. Call me tomorrow.
She texted back: It’s okay. Not your fault. This town . . .
I know it. I live it, he replied.
Bridget thought about what Harper said, the heroin problem. Lenny, his oil-slick hair and purple bulging arms, pocked with whiteheads and scabs, the veins running lines down his cottony white skin.
She thought about Tripp, the way the hair on his calf tapered to a smooth ankle. How he smelled, clean yet boyish, a hint of saltiness, like jeans left an hour too long in the washer.
What if I wanted to try it? she texted on a whim and then instantly regretted it, biting her lower lip so hard her eyes stung.
Heroin??
She rolled her eyes. No. Dating. You said I should try it.
There was two minutes of nothing then, which seemed more telling than any response, and Bridget was typing never mind, forget I said anything when the text finally—finally—came back.
You let me know. I’m here for you. She laughed, and it seemed enormously loud in her empty kitchen.
?????
Later, in bed, she pulled the student journals out of her bag. She skipped the pink ones, the brown leather Moleskines, and went right for the black bound with the gold stitching, the outline of a raven on the front, its beak sharp and pointing to the left, the one smooth eye looking toward the horizon. She paged through it, the edges gold and gilded. How could Lucia have afforded such a thing? It was incongruous. When she fanned through the pages, they smelled musty. Old.
The entries were no less erratic than she remembered: drawings of birds, tarot cards and long rambling descriptions of self-readings, bare trees, pencil and a few charcoal sketches, no color whatsoever. Some poetry entries, some written out like love letters. Scraps of thought, raw and quick, like to a lover.
Don’t you just love Nietzsche? I feel like you mock me when I talk about this. I’ve been obsessed with Our Virtues, the idea that those who are exceptional are hated. The idea that knowledge is self-torture, a quest for knowing a form of the spiritual cruelty. I can hear you saying shut up. But it’s true. Everyone wants to pretend we’re this upper echelon, but really, we’re just part of the food chain. We’ve usurped our role but only by luck, by chance. I look at Lenny and all I see is how lucky he is, he’s so stupid, still an animal, then. I look around and all I see is animals. Stop laughing.
The thing is, you looked at me so strange the first time I said that, like you were seeing me for the first time. No one ever has. I’m not sure that anyone has ever seen me for the first time. I’ve been seen forever by everybody as the same person: The bitch, the witch, Lulu (but only from Taylor, always, always Taylor—I’m reminded of the quote about there being some madness in love, but always reason in madness, and with Taylor, I’m not sure that’s true, but we’ll get to that), the fucking idiot (by Lenny the fucking idiot, of course, who else). But with you I am just me, and everything I say or do is new or surprising and you act like no one has ever said it or done it before, which is utter bullshit, I know, but when I say that you laugh.
I try too hard to make you laugh.
?????
When we were nine, you bought me a licorice whip from the QB before it became the QB, while it was still sometimes okay that we rode our bikes there and before it smelled like piss and sex. When we were eleven, your mom gave me money for the Bronx Zoo, over fifty dollars, and I’d never seen a bill with a fifty on it, I didn’t even know they made them. But then I could go on the class trip instead of sitting in the gym with the fourth-graders. When we were fifteen, maybe sixteen, you gave me your heart—the day you danced in the fountain, remember now?— and said it was forever, but now I’m not so sure.
People change, we both said, but you, you can be cruel and you don’t even know it. You can’t see your own meanness, it’s all a justification. I’ve never known a time when you didn’t own me, when I wasn’t yours.
You’ll be gone soon, which is sad and good, but mainly only good for you. I’ll be here. I’ll always, always be here, your Lulu.
Have you ever wanted to just hurt someone? How about me, have you ever wanted to hurt me?
Bridget ran her thumb over the page, a small silver-plated plastic heart taped to the inside. She pried it off the page, the tape coming up slightly fuzzy from the paper, and could see the broken plastic on the back, like it had been attached to something: a pendant or a ring. She gently pulled the tape away: BE FRI.
She could see the other half in her mind: ST ENDS. The two pieces together making a whole heart. A cheesy, cheap novelty.
It was amazing, really. Something so plastic, so fragile could be holding it all together.
CHAPTER 30
Nate, Tuesday, May 12, 2015
When Nate was a kid, his dad, the late, great Bob Winters, was a man of few words. A mill supervisor during the day, but a baseball coach to Nate at every stage of his life, until the day he keeled over on shift while fixing a gasket on the Fourdrinier table. Bob was in maintenance, could tell you just about anything regarding water corrosion and rust, paper making and humidity. One day he just sat right down with his left hand on the still conveyor belt, his right hand clutching a wrench, and went to sleep. They said it was an aneurysm, but all Nate knew for most of his life is that the paper mill killed his father. He didn’t feel anything about it, he wasn’t angry about it, it was just plain as fact to him. Unlike Vi, who thought the “fumes did him in,” never mind how many people told her that the chemical was harmless. She knew, deep down, that the paper mill killed Bob. The thing is, though, Bob wouldn’t have said that. He wouldn’t have harbored anger about it, that is, if one can harbor anger about their own death. He would have shrugged, the way he always did about everything, and said something vague and mumbling like, the only thing you can’t outrun is your own skin. Not death or taxes or the mail. Just your skin.