“Arrgh, Captain, look what we found,” Leo was supposed to say, though he always mumbled it, and then I would burst out with, “She was fixing to board the ship!”
* * *
—
At the end of the final show, while the Darling children were singing in their nursery, Jesse and Leo tried to light themselves on fire. From the back corner of the cooking classroom I watched. Wedged together, they fiddled with a stove until blue flames shot up. Grinning madly, Grogan brought the sleeve of his Lost Boys costume close. Its fringe began to smoke, and slowly the room filled with a flat chemical stink.
All of us, pirates and Lost Boys and Indians, were penned in, ready for our curtain call. This was always the moment it seemed we might collectively go insane: the hours of waiting, the adrenaline of performing, the drama of who had missed their cues and smudged their makeup, ramped up all night, and would Joe get kicked out? Where was the cast party? What should we do with all this crazy energy, us sixth, seventh, eighth graders? Hyped up on hormones, teasing and pushing and whispering, we had so much electricity in our bodies that the parent volunteers could only stand by the entrance with their arms crossed and try to make sure we didn’t set anything on fire, though they were obviously failing even at that.
It was up to Lacie, deftly maneuvering between the two boys, to twist her wrist and vanquish the flames. With an imperious nod she dismissed Grogan. He shook his head, balled his fists, and, with a twist of his mouth, drifted off to harass Tinker Bell.
From my post by the window I watched. The day before, I had explained to Lacie how Leo’s thigh always lingered against mine during the fight scene, how I thought he was just a little too eager to give me a back rub. “I think he might like me,” I had confided, raising my eyebrows. “Do you like him?” she had asked immediately, and though that was the obvious response, I was still somehow unprepared. “A little,” I finally answered, and she nodded and agreed to investigate. Together we had worked out the exact wording, which struck us as precise, almost legalistic: “Leo,” she would say. “Do you like Rose? Like, like her like her?”
Now Lacie leaned close. Seeing them together, I went cold. Lacie’s lips brushed his ear. His eyes widened. She pulled back, and he shook his head. No.
* * *
—
A week after the play ended, I came swinging into the locker room after gym and heard from behind a wall of lockers a flutter of girl giggles, and then: She was fixing to board the ship! The voice exaggerated, humiliating in its theatrical growl. A round of glassy, high laughter. I stood in the shock of it, pressed against the hand-dryers, realizing I had become a joke, that there was something faintly ridiculous about me. I was aghast. But not, somehow, surprised. It was all there in how I said that stupid line: my dorkiness, my puppy-dog desire to please, the way I was simultaneously tainted by sex and helplessly a child. How could Leo love me? How could I ever have imagined he might? These girls despised me. They smelled what was eager on me. They scorned it.
These were the kinds of memories I wrote down. Wrote down, and embellished, trying to decipher their significance. Trying, also, to write from Lacie’s point of view, though it wasn’t easy. To enter her mind I had to go into a kind of trance, as if listening for a quiet song playing far away. I’d hear a lilt, and rush to write it down; sometimes the caught detail would lead to others, and I’d find myself scribbling a page or two, riffing about coming home every day to a depressed, withdrawn mother and an absent father; or having a gawky best friend lost in love; or discovering a strange power over boys but not knowing what to make of it.
I could never plan or force these scribblings; they just fell over me. I had the sneaking suspicion they were very good, maybe some of the finest writing I had done; on the best days, the book opened up. But work was slow and inconstant.
One day, pretending to myself that I was curious about Joy Williams, that I wanted to read the collection Lacie had carted off to bed last night, I found myself rifling through Lacie’s underwear drawer again.
This had been happening to me more. Having broken the seal on her bedroom, I kept going back. I liked looking at her things. I liked touching them. They helped me feel her. They helped me get her on the page. In those minutes in her room I somehow felt closer to her than all the nights we spent talking.
Now I fished out the red Victoria’s Secret push-up and pulled at the tag. We wore the same size. It was nice to see it declared there in a plain gray font.
Careful not to think too much about it, I pulled off my flannel top. Unhooked my Macy’s bra, and then threaded my arms through her straps, latched and straightened. Looked in the mirror.
The contraption pushed and hoisted, creating from my bony rib cage a valley of flesh. Was this what men liked? I touched the cups, twisting my body like an odalisque. It was all so cheesy. But maybe—I reached into the closet, back to where Lacie kept the peach dress, and slipped it on. Studied myself. Yes. In her bra, with—I scanned her dresser, snagged a tube of color, put her lipstick on my lips—I looked even more like her. I felt even more like her. Shifting my weight, cocking my head, raising first one shoulder and then the other, I tried to imagine how it would feel to wear these clothes in public, to snag second glances wherever I went.
Behind me in the mirror I could see her bed, all crumpled sheets and creased paperbacks, capped pens and shrugged-off sweaters and socks. The pillow crumpled up against the wall.
In a flounce I threw myself down. Inhaling deeply through my nose, I took in the sour smell of her sleep, the tang of sweat and something deeper, almost vaginal. On the pillow was a single dark hair. Beside it, a notebook. Opened.
I started flipping pages. I knew it was bad. As a writer I particularly knew it was bad. But I couldn’t help myself. The book was already opened.
This was what I found:
A recipe for za’atar
A note to pick up cheesecloth
The phone number of someone named Sandy
A note detailing the dimensions of something called the EZ-5460
The date and time of the next JFREJ meeting
A diagram for what looked like a chrysalis
A second diagram of the chrysalis, this one more detailed, crosshatched, with precise measurements (6'73/4", 4'3") in faint indigo handwriting
A sketch of a woman asleep on a couch. The woman was me.
For a long time I stared. My mouth was a slack hole, unrecognizable. But it was definitely me: she had even filled in the blond hair with a colored pencil. At the bottom, there was the date (9/13) and time (10:37 P.M.).
I remembered that night. She had stayed up late working on her loom, and I, lulled by the rhythmic clacking, had let my book slip from my hands and a deep sleep suck me down. As I had been sinking, some bright thread of conscious thought flashed: this is real friendship. To fall asleep in the same room, to let my guard down so completely. I was home. I slept.