locked her locker door. “Well, they’re not.” And then, smiling sadly, as though I was Ruth Walter rather than the girl who helped her bury her hamster, “Sorry.”
But we stayed friends through high school, Stephanie, Jaylen, and me. Even after Stephanie gave Keith Stern a blowjob, even after Jaylen started sneaking vodka into her morning coffee, even after we stopped having Friday night sleepovers and their bedrooms no longer felt as familiar to me as my own. Even after Stephanie and Jaylen got boyfriends and I began spending too much time in front of a magnified mirror, examining my skin.
What changed was what I then understood: that you could never know what people were capable of, even yourself.
_ _ _
ReeAnn asked me how lacrosse practice had been after I returned to the Hovel, and I immediately thought, she knows. The cartoon drawing from Clarence still sitting in my bag felt like an admission of guilt—though really I had nothing to be guilty of—and I excused myself upstairs to my room, where I folded the picture into a tiny square and slid it into my desk drawer.
Had I flirted with Clarence? Had I led him to believe that he had a chance with me, that I could become his girlfriend? Was that just Duggar talking, or had Clarence told his teammates his own imagined version of the afternoon in the ambulance? I replayed the scene in my mind. Had I done anything to encourage him? No, the thought was ridiculous. Clarence was a kid, the little brother I’d never had. All I’d wanted was for him to feel less alone.
I took out the drawing again and smoothed it out on my desk. He’d signed the drawing in the corner of the page with his cramped boyish scrawl. It wasn’t fear of getting into trouble I felt; I was almost sure I wasn’t in the wrong. It was fear of being judged. I’d seen the look in Duggar’s eyes when he’d sneered the word boyfriend. It was disdain, not because I had maybe flirted with a student, but because I had maybe flirted with someone who wasn’t cool.
“What’s that?”
I looked up. Chapin stood in the doorway. Her hair was braided messily down her shoulder, loose pieces framing her fox-like face, and her bitten nails were painted blood red. She nodded towards the cartoon drawing on my desk.
“Nothing.” I flipped it over, then flipped it back again. “Something one of my students gave me.”
“Fucking adorable.” She stepped into my room and took the drawing from my desk. She’d never been inside my room before; none of the girls had. I felt intensely aware of the period stain on my sheets and the stretched-out cotton underwear in my drawers, things she couldn’t even see but that I knew were there nevertheless. I was forever surprised by how comfortable the other girls were around one another. The other day, I’d walked into the living room to find Babs clipping her toenails at the coffee table while she watched the news. The Woods twins often peed with the bathroom door open and would ask you how your day was as you walked by, peering out at you from the toilet seat as casually as though they were sitting at the kitchen table. ReeAnn even once left a used sanitary pad spread open on the top of the upstairs bathroom trash barrel (I knew it couldn’t have been Chapin’s, so it must have been hers), her dried blood laid bare. I was so horrified (and so worried that Chapin might think it was mine) that I took the trash out right then, disposing of the evidence.
Maybe I’d once been this comfortable around Jaylen and Stephanie—we’d fart and burp and change our clothes in front of one another—but that had been years ago, long before I finally revealed to my mother the crusted-over mess of skin hidden beneath my newly-chopped bangs and was sent to therapy, long before I learned the consequence of relinquishing privacy.
“Who’s Clarence Howell?” Chapin asked, studying the drawing.
“A third year. He’s on the lacrosse team.” I paused, and then added, “I took him to the hospital after he broke his nose.”
“El Músculo.” She smiled and set the drawing back on my desk. “Careful, Imogene. Sounds like someone has a crush.”
She knows, I thought. “He doesn’t,” I said.
Her smile persisted, infuriating in its certainty. “Just be careful, that’s all.”
I crumbled the drawing into a ball and stuffed it deep into the trash.
_ _ _
At dinner the next night, I was distracted by the sight of Christopher Jordan and accidentally agreed to the game night ReeAnn had proposed for later on. It was a late dinner for us, nearly nine, having spent the greater part of the afternoon making lesson plans and grading papers together. We did these no-nonsense tasks together—working, grading, eating—not because we had to, but because it felt safer to stick together sometimes, us against them, apprentices against students. Even Chapin joined us for every meal without fail. We always sat at a table in the back of the dining hall, which usually afforded us privacy, but tonight Christopher Jordan the Monkey Beater and his friends had settled with their trays at the next table over—straight from sports practice, judging from the way their hair was plastered to their foreheads in wet strands. I kept my eyes on my plate, focused on cutting my meatloaf into cube-shaped bites.
“Can we play Friends Scene It?” ReeAnn asked. “My mom just sent it to me in the mail.”
Raj nodded. “I’m in.”
The Woods twins were tossing their lettuce leaves and trying to distract us from the fact that they weren’t eating. “We’re so good at that game,” said Meggy.
Maggie bobbled her too-big head on her skinny neck. “Yeah, we practically grew up watching that show.”
Babs sniffed. “My parents didn’t let me watch television.”
Chapin was busy building a tower out of her mashed potatoes and didn’t respond.
Christopher Jordan looked up as he chewed his meatloaf and caught my eye. He gave me a closed-mouth grin, his cheeks bulging, and waggled his fingers.
Chapin followed my gaze. “Is that your lover?” she hissed.
The other girls and Raj swiveled in their seats to look.
A rush of sweat flooded my armpits. “I have to go,” I decided, and I stood.
“Where are you going?” asked ReeAnn.
“I have to—”
“Call your mom again?” Babs smirked. I would never be friends with these people, I thought, not really.
“Check my mail,” I lied.
“Sure.”
“Will you be back for game night?” ReeAnn pressed.
“Yeah.” I grabbed my tray and headed towards the doors.
I knew already where I was going, had been secretly planning it all day, but I’ll never admit it.
IN HIGH SCHOOL, I DECIDED I WOULD GO TO COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, and it was not just because Jared Hoffman, my high school crush, once expressed an interest in applying. To me, it was the best school, just as 115 pounds was the ideal weight (I’d read it in a book once—the main character, a “beautiful, waif-like girl” as the narrator described her, was 115 pounds) and seventeen years old was the most popular age to lose your virginity (I’d read this on a let’s-talk-about-sex forum I’d stumbled upon online, though I wouldn’t lose my own until several years after that age). Why Columbia, I’m not sure, but I cemented its name in my mind as the best school, the perfect school.
I didn’t imagine a transformation would take place. I didn’t imagine any sort of fairy-tale reinvention or the kind of incontestable change people from high school would see in pictures on social media and talk about with wonder—“Have you seen Imogene lately? My god!” Or, at least, I never could have articulated having these desires.
But