Scars are souvenirs you never lose
The past is never far
Did you lose yourself somewhere out there
Did you get to be a star
—Goo Goo Dolls, “Name”
Hopuonk, Massachusetts, 1999
The Secret Bathroom
I went into the bathroom outside the gymnasium, which was all decorated like “An Evening in Paris,” because I knew I was going to throw up.
It was the secret bathroom, the single-stall one tucked behind the staircase, where you went if you didn’t want to be seen or heard. When I got inside, Corvis McClellan was there, smoking a cigarette.
I hated Corvis McClellan.
I mean, I was supposed to hate her. Only I was starting to miss her now that it was senior year and everyone was getting ready for graduation. She used to be one of us. Every day at recess, we played four square—Susan Blackford, Heather Flynn, Corvis, and me—but that ended in seventh grade.
Corvis gave me a pitying look.
“That homecoming crown looks stupid on you,” she said.
I gripped the side of the sink, trying not to do this in front of her. Corvis wasn’t a person I wanted to throw up in front of.
The crown was floppy and made of the same cardboard as the Burger King ones, only it was spray-painted gold and had a tiny Eiffel Tower on the side, which was pushing my ear down. She was right. I looked like a dildo.
“What are you even doing here?” I asked her.
Corvis should have been insecure, but she wasn’t. She had jaundiced-looking skin, lips that were too small, and hair that was always greasy.
My date, Brad O’Halloran, was just voted homecoming king. I let him go down on me a month before in the back of his Datsun, and a few days later, my vagina felt like it was full of fire ants.
I ran into Corvis in the waiting room of the gynecologist’s office next to the plasma donation center in the strip mall by the highway. I was sitting there with a pamphlet in my lap that said GENITAL HERPES AND YOU.
She looked up from her book and gave me a tight smile. “Nice going,” she said, and I wanted to murder her.
“Are you going to barf?” she asked me now. My crown was slipping off.
She put her hand on my back and moved it in slow circles. We hadn’t touched since seventh grade, just after she passed me the note I used to destroy her.
I could have held it down before that, but her touch made me feel green. There it was, my dinner, regurgitated in hot chunks in the sink.
When I was done, we sat on the cool tile of the floor.
“Why are you being nice to me?” I asked her, wiping sweat off my forehead with the back of my hand.
She shrugged.
“I don’t know,” she said. “You look like shit.”
The real problem with Corvis was that she knew. She knew I dated Brad because the other girls wanted him, and I wanted the other girls.
I wanted my best friend, Susan, to hug me for a really, really, really long time while I buried my face in her stomach and Melissa Etheridge played in the background. I wanted her to drive me to California, and then I wanted to die in her hair.
“Want a cigarette?” Corvis asked.
“I want . . . a scar.” A big, terrible-looking one that would make people afraid of me but not feel sorry for me.
So far, no matter what was going on in the world, no matter which unpronounceable countries were at war, Corvis had always been there, wearing her backpack covered in patches.
But not for much longer. Corvis got good grades, and even though she wasn’t pretty, she had that rare glow of a special person, or at least a person who believes she’s special.
She looked like someone who’d just set her house on fire. She looked like someone who was going to ride away on a horse and never come back.
I imagined her leaving, spending nights in a long chain of different states, in stale motel rooms where headlight beams crawled across the walls, and she would have girlfriends, and she would not be ashamed.
After she left, I would be stuck with all the assholes who loved pretending that the gymnasium really was Paris, who thought I was lucky for being pretty. Maybe I would start to believe them after a while.
I looked like a homecoming queen. Probably someday, I would be a dental hygienist.
“You’ll be okay,” she said.
I didn’t believe her.
There was such a private peace in her eyes. I couldn’t know how she got to where she was now. I could only see that she was there.
The Cliff
Taylor Garland. The other kids said it all the time, my name. I was like a brand. My mother was too—Sandra Garland, the queen of Hopuonk. She didn’t let me call her Mom, so we were on a first-name basis.
“Taylor!” someone shouted—a girl’s voice. Maybe Heather? PJ? Or one of the wannabes, like Bridget Murphy or Jessica O’Grady?
I sat in the parking lot, rubbing my temples. I didn’t want anyone to see me with Corvis in the bathroom, so I took off. The music from the dance still beat in my chest. I was pretty sure my underwear was showing.
“Taylor!” A guy this time, then more joined in. They followed me around, their collective voices like a giant mouth. Always hungry, always wanting, always asking.
Even though the dance was still supposed to be in full swing, a sudden crowd had formed around me, sweating, needy, and helpless in their sequined dresses and rented tuxes, now reeking of vodka. I tucked my dress between my legs and looked up at them.
Every small town needs a star. Our football team was total crap, and nobody outside of New England cared about lacrosse or girls’ field hockey. So I was the star, just like Sandra had been.
In Hopuonk, Massachusetts, the star is the queen. I used to think queens were rulers, but now I see that they are figureheads.
“Are you okay?” Brad asked, reaching for my shoulder. He stood tall and clean-looking, his biceps visible through his tux, his hair combed like a Ken doll’s. I dodged his hand.
“Are you drunk enough?” asked Heather, captain of the cheerleading squad and expert at backflips and punch fronts, pulling a flask out of her clutch. She leaned against someone’s rusty car, her red sequined dress cut so low that it came dangerously close to showing her nipples.
“Are you going to Scottie’s after-party?” asked PJ Greenberg. She was our school’s drama star, and she followed me around constantly. Even though she was talented, drama wasn’t exactly considered cool. Pink lipstick was smeared on her teeth.