The Stone Girl (2 page)

33

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ethi e does not throw up again for more than a month. This is what she does do: she begins spending her afternoons at either Shaw’s house or at Janey’s house. Janey’s parents are never home so they no longer have

to go to Sethie’s vacant apartment to smoke pot. Sethie does her homework alongside Janey or Shaw; Shaw helps her with calculus, and she helps Janey with her SAT words. Sethie takes the SATs a second time, even though everyone, even teachers and her mother, told her that she didn’t have to since she’d done so well the first time she took them. (In fact, her score drops by ten points.) Even though it’s to early to send most of them, she finishes her college applications, to ten schools, only half of which, if she is really honest with herself, she has any interest in attending. Every morning, the scale she keeps under her bed reports that she has stayed within two pounds of 111—sometimes higher, often lower—and she has been able to double-check her weight almost daily because there is an electronic scale

34 in Janey’s parents’ bathroom more advanced that her computer. Sethie creates a new plan: one meal every day (usually dinner), with small snacks of pretzels, low- fat chocolatechip granola bars, Crispix cereal, or apples with Monterey jack cheese permitted throughout the day but only if she gets really hungry.

She has sex with Shaw on at least four occasions each week, and each of these occasions usually includes having sex more than once. Sethie wonders how many calories all this sex burns. She goes to the gynecologist for the first time, and goes on the pill, which means that she and Shaw can stop using condoms. They were each other’s first time, so it’s safe. Going on the pill makes her boobs swell slightly, but so far she hasn’t gained any other weight from it. And Sethie tries cocaine for the first time, one night when she and Janey and Shaw are at Janey’s apartment, getting ready to go to a party at some club where someone knows the bouncer so that they won’t get carded. She is frightened to try, at first, since she is prone to nosebleeds, and disgusted by the fact that they are all using the same twenty-dollar bill, which they’d chosen after some debate: using a fifty or higher was an eighties cliché, using a ten or lower was lame.

She is, actually, very disappointed with the cocaine. She doesn’t feel anything. Janey and Shaw seem to like it, so she pretends to feel it too. Mostly it just makes her mouth numb, and she remembers having read somewhere that dentists used to use it on patients. Her favorite part comes after they’d snorted all they could: Shaw licks his first finger and presses it on the mirror to pick up any remains, then

35 rubs his thumb inside Sethie’s mouth, along her gums, and kisses her afterward, right in front of Janey.

“Feels different,” he says, kissing her harder.

Now, Sethie is at Saks with Janey, because they’ve both agreed they need cooler-looking winter clothes so that they can make it through the cold weather without looking like a couple of puffballs.

“Our bodies are too good to hide under bulky sweaters and down coats,” Janey announces as they enter the store, and Sethie is proud to have been thus sized up by Janey. Janey is skinny, and her skin is taut, so she must be a good judge of bodies.

“The key,” Janey explains as they step off the elevator onto the fifth floor, “is tightness. We need tight jeans and tight sweaters. That way we can keep warm and look good.”

“Tightness,” Sethie says. The word even feels tight in her mouth, like a bra strap digging into her shoulder, elastic waistbands that leave a line on her belly, unfairly making it look like there’s fat where it’s really just skin pressed down too much. Tightness has never been a good thing as far as Sethie’s concerned: she thinks of her school uniform, of a fat day when jeans don’t fit, even though the scale says the same thing it said the day before. But Janey’s tightness is altogether different, and this new kind of tightness is exciting.

“They used to say tight,” Janey says, “for drunk. I think.

Like Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald got tight.” “Really?”
“I think so. I think that’s how they meant it.” Janey

36 shrugs. “Anyway, I like it. We should bring it back. Or invent it, if I got it wrong to begin with.”

Sethie wants to be more like Janey, more like a girl who is not scared to admit she may have just invented or misunderstood an expression she heard once or twice before. Janey is very brave.

“Maybe we should give it a new meaning all its own,”

Sethie ventures.
“Good idea! But what will it be for?”
Sethie considers. “The perfect-fitting outfit. Like,

Janey, you look tight tonight!”
Janey laughs. “Love it,” she says, and heads for a table
covered in jeans.
“How about these jeans?” Janey holds up a pair that look
skintight even when they’re folded on a shelf.
“I can’t wear jeans like that,” Sethie says.
“You’re wrong; they’re perfect. Just you wait. With your
skinny legs, they’ll be perfect.” Janey grabs them. She
doesn’t ask Sethie’s size, and Sethie doesn’t tell her. She’s
curious to know what size Janey will select for her. “Aren’t you going to try them too?” Sethie asks. “Nah, my legs aren’t like yours.”
The way Janey says it, Sethie knows it’s a compliment.
But she also notices the way Janey says it like it doesn’t matter that her legs are different; she’s going to find some cool
clothes too, clothes that will be perfect on her own body. And she does. Actually, Sethie finds them first: slim
leather pants. She knows that they are perfect for Janey, and
when she holds them up, Janey squeals. Janey doesn’t look

37 at the price tag, but Sethie looks and sees that they are 300 dollars. She hasn’t looked yet at the price of the jeans that Janey picked out for her.

“Oh my God, Sethie, you have such great taste.” Sethie grins. “They’re your style, not mine.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to try these on too?” Sethie shakes her head. “Nope,” she says. “These are

all you.” And she means it; she knew the minute she saw these pants that they were Janey’s. But now Janey can’t find her size. A saleswoman comes over when she sees Janey frantically searching the pile.

“Can I help you?”

“I hope so,” Janey says, panting from her search. “I need these in a 26. Please say you have them in the back.”
“We just got them in, so I’m sure I have more. I’ll get you girls started in a dressing room.” She takes the clothes they’ve gathered so far and leads them across the floor. “They’re really amazing pants,” she says, “very unique.”
Walking behind her, Sethie and Janey exchange a smile. They are girls who know that something cannot be
very
unique, and the sound of the error is like nails on a chalkboard to them. And no matter how grateful they are, later, when the saleswoman finds the pants in Janey’s size, they both believe that this separates her from them: because they know something cannot be very unique, they will never be saleswomen at Saks.
They are sharing a dressing room, of course, so that they can get each other’s opinions and so that each has to show the other everything she tries on. It’s a huge room,

38 actually, with two mirrors and a bench across which they’ve slung their coats and bags. Janey has already slipped her pants off and is pulling the leather jeans on. Sethie thinks that she would have done the opposite; she would have waited, and tried on her favorite item last.

Sethie sits down on the bench.
“Where are you parents this week?” she asks. “Espan-ya,” Janey says, overemphasizing her accent.

“Barthelona, Andaluthia, Ibitha.” Janey jumps up and down to pull the leather pants on.
“I’ve never been to Europe,” Sethie says.
“Yeah, well.” Janey turns to examine her butt in the dressing room mirror. “It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”
“It’s not?”
Janey shrugs. “It’s beautiful and all. I mean, I love the things I’ve seen. But, ” Janey picks her hair up, as though that might help her better see how the pants fit. Sethie stares at Janey’s collarbone; a straight line beneath her T-shirt. “I guess I’m just more of a homebody.”
Sethie smiles. “How’d you get to be a homebody with parents who travel so much?”
“Having parents who travel so much is exactly how I became a homebody.” Janey bends down to slide her pants off. “Those are definitely going in the yes pile,” she says, tossing them on the floor and picking up the next pair. “I was eleven when my dad entered his semiretirement and they decided they were going to travel the world. I thought it was cool; they pulled me out of school to go to Monte Carlo. When everyone else went to camp, I was in the Swiss Alps.

39 But those trips weren’t for me; they were for the grown-ups. You know, in Spain, no one eats dinner before ten o’clock. Do you have any idea how hard that is for a starving, jetlagged kid who really just wants French fries and doesn’t even know how to pronounce the word
paella
?”

Sethie shakes her head. “I don’t. I’ve never been anywhere.”
The girls look at each other and laugh.
“Don’t worry, we’ll go lots of places together,” Janey says, and Sethie believes her. “Come on, I want to see those skinny jeans on you,” Janey says, grabbing at the pants Sethie is holding folded in her lap.
Suddenly, Sethie is shy. She has never been undressed in front of Janey, which surprises her, though she can’t imagine why it should. When would she ever have had a reason to undress in front of Janey before? This is the first time they’ve gone shopping together, and they’re too old to have sleepovers, too young to be roommates.
Sethie is scared of what Janey will see. She is so careful to choose clothes that will cover up her flaws: the roll of fat over her belly, the hint of cellulite under her ass on her right thigh. And yet, she has worked so hard to stay close to 111 over the past few months, and she knows it looks good on her. She wants someone—a girl—to notice. Shaw only notices that she looks good, in a very general way, in whatever way it is that makes him attracted enough to her to keep sleeping with her. Shaw wouldn’t understand that not many girls can wear skinny jeans, and he wouldn’t know how very

40 special it makes Sethie feel to think that she might be one of them.

So she slides out of her regular, looser jeans. She wants to pull on the new pants gracefully, sexily, but of course they get stuck around her ankles; that’s how tight they are. She panics, briefly, wondering what she will do if she can’t zip them in front of Janey. Janey, who is admiring herself in the mirror, turning around to see the way her butt looks in another pair of jeans.

“Not bad,” she says, pursing her lips. “Let’s see yours.” “They might be too tight,” Sethie says. Janey picked out a size 27 for Sethie; one size larger, Sethie knows, than what Janey herself wears.

“You haven’t even pulled them up yet,” Janey points out, and it’s true. The pants are still below Sethie’s hips, because she’s too scared to pull them any higher.

“Want me to help?” Janey offers. Sethie nods.

Janey steps away from the mirror, stands behind Sethie, very close, and puts her hands on either side of her, then grips the jeans. She slides them up over Sethie’s hips, and then Sethie steps away from her to zipper and button them.

“Sethie, are you crazy? These fit you perfectly.” Sethie has never worn anything so tight.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, nut job. They’re supposed to be tight. All of your

clothes are too big.”
“They are?”
Janey shrugs. “Sometimes. You know, wearing things

41 loose makes you look fatter, not thinner,” Janey says matter- of- factly.

Sethie looks at herself in the mirror. Janey is right. Her legs look skinnier in these tight jeans than in the looser ones she’d been wearing earlier. And she deserves that, she thinks. All that work, and the only person who sees it is Shaw, when she’s naked, and that’s usually only under covers.

“You’ll wear them tonight.”
“What’s tonight?”
“Didn’t Shaw tell you?”
Sethie shakes her head. They always do something on

Saturday nights, but Sethie doesn’t usually find out what ahead of time. Shaw’s not a planner.

“There’s a party up at Columbia. Jeff Cooper—do you know him?” Sethie nods. “He graduated last year. He invited us, since Shaw wants to go to school there.”

Jeff Cooper went to their school, Shaw and Janey’s: Houseman.
“Shaw will love that,” Sethie says, feeling possessive, “That’s actually what he’s doing today, right now. Working on his Columbia application.”
Sethie has known that Shaw wants to go to Columbia forever. Certainly longer than Janey has known it. She has no idea why she feels threatened. She wishes it would go away.
“Yeah, pretty cool. Anyway, Shaw’s bringing a bunch of us. It’ll be fun. Like, a frat party, how cheesy is that?”
“Pretty cliché.”

42 “Well, no getting drunk and losing your virginity to some frat brother. That’s a little too Lifetime Television for Women.”

Janey must be joking, Sethie thinks. Janey must know that Sethie wouldn’t disappear with anyone, because she will be there with Shaw tonight. She must know that Sethie and Shaw have been sleeping together for months and months.

“That would be impossible, Janey, but I’ll be sure to keep an eye on
you.
” Sethie pretends it’s a joke, but she knows she’s only saying it to point something out.

Janey laughs.

“Well then,” she says, “I guess both of us are in the clear.”
Sethie pays with cash; her mother gave it to her before she left the house this morning, though Sethie thinks she probably assumed it wouldn’t all be spent on one pair of jeans. Rebecca has promised to get her a credit card next year, when she needs it to buy books and food at college. Janey pays with a gray American Express that Sethie knows is not really gray but platinum, and she explains that her parents have black ones. Until then, Sethie didn’t know that they came in black.
They walk back uptown. In the dressing room, Janey made it clear that she is not a virgin either. Janey may know many things, but she doesn’t know about the tuft of hair that began to grow on Shaw’s chest after his birthday this year, or the way he closed his eyes when he touched Sethie’s breasts for the first time, and certainly Janey doesn’t know

43 that his mouth is always cool, his tongue always soft but ice-cold.