Authors: Alyssa B. Sheinmel
Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Health & Daily Living, #Diseases; Illnesses & Injuries, #Girls & Women, #Social Issues, #Depression & Mental Illness
Sethie knows these things should be private, but she wants to tell. She wants to tell Janey about sex with Shaw. It’s like the skinny jeans that, having seen on her body, she suddenly found herself wanting. Wanting to show off something she worked hard to get, something she thinks too much about, something she wanted so badly: skinny legs.
t home, Sethi e closes her bedroom door, even though her mother is out. She takes off all of her clothes except her underwear and puts the jeans on. Sethie knows that dressing room mirrors sometimes lie;
maybe these won’t look the same out in the world. She’s only just gotten home; her hair is still cool from the weather outside, but she’s already thinking that she should probably return these pants. She didn’t take off her shirt in the dressing room because she didn’t want Janey to see her belly fat. But now, without a shirt on, she can see the way her belly fat bunches up around the waistline. She pulls out her desk chair and plants it in front of the full-length mirror on the back of her door. The fat is much worse when she sits down.
She stands again, turning her back to the mirror and twisting her neck. From behind, the jeans do look pretty good. Maybe they’re so tight that they’re holding her ass in, molding it into shape the way it should be. And she also
45 knows her ass is pretty thin this week. She knows because on Tuesday, they had an assembly at school, and when Sethie sat cross-legged on the floor in the assembly room, she could feel her bones against the hardwood.
It was an emergency assembly; the prior week’s
New York
magazine cover story was had been called “Sex and the High School Girl,” and it claimed that girls from New York City’s elite all-girls private schools were having way more sex than their parents and teachers realized. Like maybe that was the result of single- sex education, because none of the girls from the coed “elite private schools” were mentioned. Sethie thought it was odd that the article—which all the girls read; there was even a copy circulating in the senior lounge—didn’t acknowledge that that must mean that the private- school boys were having more sex, too; otherwise who were these girls all having their inordinate amounts of sex with? But the article didn’t seem to think that was the problem; or in any case, it wasn’t the story.
The article was based on interviews with girls from these “elite private schools,” but it didn’t say which schools the girls who’d been interviewed attended. Everyone knows which schools the article meant, though. There are three pretty competitive all-girls schools in the city, and of course Sethie’s school, the White School, is one of them. There’s an old joke—Sethie assumes that it’s old; everyone seems to know it, and she can’t remember when she first heard it—that the girls at one school will grow up to marry the lawyers, the girls from another will grow up to
46 become the lawyers, and the girls from the third will grow up to sleep with the lawyers. Which girls do which tends to switch based on which school the girl who’s telling the joke attends, but Sethie notices that no one ever says that theirs is the school from which the girls marry the lawyers. Anyway, Sethie thinks lawyers are out of fashion nowadays. It should be, she thinks, bankers, or maybe dotcom geniuses, or whatever they call those guys who make millions off the Internet. But no, Sethie decides, the Internet isn’t really a New York thing. Well, they should add bankers, in any case.
Sethie sat during the assembly, watching the headmistress squirm as she alluded to a “certain item” in the article. The certain item she couldn’t bring herself to describe was the story in which one of the girls interviewed told the reporter about a party where all the girls offered to give the boys blow jobs as, say, the cover charge to get in. Everyone at White knows it’s not true; everyone at all the private schools knows that never happened. It was just a story; it was just a punch line. Sethie thinks that the unnamed source probably didn’t think the reporter would even believe it; Sethie can’t imagine that anyone she knows would have believed it.
A girl in Sethie’s class claims to know the girl who told the story. Actually, she says, it was three girls, and they all go to the school around the corner, the school everyone knows isn’t quite as academically rigorous as White is. They thought it would be cool to be in a magazine, but then they lost their nerve and asked to be quoted anonymously.
47 Sethie wonders if it’s even legal to quote girls under the age of eighteen and use their names without their parents’ permission.
Sethie sat on the floor of the assembly room, even though the seniors are allowed to sit in the chairs in the back that are otherwise reserved for faculty use only. The headmistress talked about the dangers of speaking to reporters, the importance of preserving White’s 100-year-old reputation. When she asked if anyone had any questions, Sethie was tempted to ask why the headmistress (who apparently believed the story) was more concerned with the girls speaking to reporters than she was with girls giving blow jobs to get into a party. Sethie leaned against the wall near the door. Cross-legged, she could feel three sets of bones in this position: the bones beneath her ass, her ankles, and her shoulder blades. Sethie imagines that being really fat must be like having a constant cushion; there must be no hard surfaces, Sethie thinks, for the obese.
Now, Sethie stares at her butt in the mirror, at the stitching over the pockets in the denim. These pants remind her of how she used to dress, years ago, when she was thirteen and fourteen and her mother still helped her pick out her clothes, just like she had when she was a little girl, even though her body had defiantly stopped being a little girl’s. Sethie’s breasts came late, but now they are here to stay; no matter how much weight she loses, she always needs to wear a bra. Her mother came into dressing rooms
48 with her then; now, if they do shop together, Sethie never lets her in. Rebecca told her how clothes should fit, and Rebecca—skinny, small Rebecca—said that clothes should be tight, so her daughter wore them tight. Now, Sethie can hardly believe she walked around like that. She remembers her short shorts and the way men began to stare at her. She liked it at first; it made her feel pretty. It even made her feel stylish, as though her clothes were what they noticed, not her body underneath them. And it made her feel grown-up, old enough for adult men to notice.
Once, in ninth grade, she was meeting someone at the Met, and she got there early. She was wearing an army green short skirt and a white tank top. An outfit her mother loved so much that they both tried it on in the dressing room, and Rebecca had insisted that they share it, since they could only afford to buy one set. Sethie was already two inches taller than her mother, so the skirt wasn’t nearly as short on Rebecca, something Rebecca didn’t seem to notice; or if she did, she didn’t think it was a problem.
Sethie sat on the steps of the Met and waited for her classmate. It was the end of the school year, and their ancient-history professor had assigned them all a trip to the Greek wing of the Met as their final project. They each had to pick an artifact to write about, and their teacher had insisted they go to the museum in pairs. She said it was for safety.
49 not to notice; she pretended to be oblivious. She played with her hair and chewed on her pen, pretending to make notes in her notebook. When she looked up, she saw that the man hadn’t moved at all; he was staring right at her, smiling. Sethie hadn’t intended to make eye contact, but she had. She was surprised when he didn’t look away; most men looked away once they saw that she could tell they were watching her. They usually seemed ashamed, or embarrassed. But this man went right on staring.
Sethie stood up. She stuffed her notebook into her backpack (she still used a backpack then), and walked to the other side of the steps. The steps are enormous, she remembers thinking, surely he won’t be so shameless as to follow me to the other side. She thought he would lose sight of her among all the other people milling around and sitting on the steps. But he rode his bicycle from one side of the steps to the other, keeping his eyes on her, on her bare arms and bare legs, on the tiny stripe of stomach that peeked out from under her tank top when she moved.
When she got home that night, she took off the skirt and the tank top and told Rebecca she could keep them. They don’t really fit me, Sethie explained. I’m bigger than you, Sethie said, we can’t really share clothes anymore. Rebecca had shrugged. Sethie thinks she was probably pretty happy to have the outfit to herself.
Sethie puts on a shirt. With a loose shirt on, she can barely see the roll of fat at the top of her new jeans, and the bottom half really does look good; Janey was right. Sethie decides she will keep the pants; she will wear them tonight
50 at least, even if she hides them in the back of her closet after that, even if they will become her “skinny jeans,” the jeans she tries on only in her room to gauge whether she is having a fat week or a thin week. But she will wear then tonight; Janey would be disappointed if she didn’t.
aney has i nvited everyone to meet at her apartment before heading up to Columbia. First, Shaw picks Sethie up. He’s wearing jeans with a Polo T-shirt, which he has tucked in, and a belt that looks strange to Sethie,
though she’s not sure exactly what’s wrong with it. Sethie would never say it out loud, but she knows that Shaw does not dress well. He buys the right clothes, but he wears them all wrong. That shirt should not be tucked in. He should not be wearing white socks with those sneakers. And something about the belt needs fixing.
Sethie is wearing her new jeans with a black tank top layered under a cardigan and scarf, black boots with high heels. She’s wearing makeup, which she doesn’t wear often: brown eyeliner and mascara, blush and lip gloss. She doesn’t think she’s ever looked so good for Shaw, and she’s proud when she opens the door. Sethie is excited for the party; excited to be Shaw’s girl, looking good, at a party.
52 Excited to get a sneak peek at Columbia; Sethie wants to go there too. Excited because she always has fun when she’s with Janey.
Shaw kisses her hello. “Your lips are sticky,” he says, and rubs his own lips, to wipe away any trace of gloss from having kissed her. He hasn’t had a chance to take in the whole outfit yet, Sethie thinks. He’ll see that her lips need to be sticky when he sees how good the gloss looks.
Sethie turns her back to him, steps into the apartment so he can see her. She picks up her purse from the dining room table, turns around to face him, her arm leaning on the back of a chair, her hip cocked. She is posing.
Sethie smiles. “Thanks.” She grabs her coat from the back of the chair she’d been leaning on. “You too,” she adds, even though she knows she’s lying. Shaw’s handsome, but he doesn’t look particularly great now, in his clothes that aren’t right at all.
It’s okay, Sethie thinks. She looks right enough for the both of them. Shaw says they should walk to Janey’s building. It’s only ten blocks. Sethie is freezing, but she agrees. She didn’t think they’d be outside much tonight; Janey said they’d take a cab up to Columbia. So Sethie had decided to wear a light coat; her warmer one isn’t nearly stylish enough.
“Why aren’t you wearing gloves?” Shaw asks after a few blocks of walking side by side.
“You’re not.”
53 “But the cold doesn’t bother me like you.”
Like it bothers you, Sethie thinks, correcting his grammar in her head.
“Come here,” he says, putting his arm around her. “You can put your hands in my pocket.”
Now Sethie is very happy they have decided to walk to Janey’s instead of taking a cab. Walking, Shaw is holding her close. She could never tell him that he doesn’t actually keep her warm, that it would be easier, and warmer, to keep her hands in her own pockets, and really it would help more if he would just carry her purse for her. She would never say that; she would prefer to be cold because his arms feel so good around her. He wants to make her warm, and that makes Sethie happy.
After walking in the cold, the heat in Janey’s apartment hurts. Sethie’s fingers feel like they’re burning, and she goes straight to the bathroom and runs water over them, starting with cold water and warming it up slowly, until her hands feel normal again. Shaw joins the group in the living room: Janey, and two other guys who must have known Jeff Cooper too.
In the bathroom, Sethie looks at her face in the mirror above the sink. The wind wore off her lip gloss, but her cheeks are pink and glowing. Her eyes are red, but they look very bright and shiny. Sethie reapplies her lip gloss and wipes her nose. She opens and closes her hands a few times. She wonders how late they will be out tonight. She’s told her mother she’ll be staying at Janey’s.
Shaw’s shirt.
“A shirt like this should not be tucked in, buddy,” she
says. Her blond hair is pulled into a tight ponytail. Sethie
thinks Janey’s cheekbones look expensive. Cheekbones
like Janey’s are exactly the kind a plastic surgeon would
give you.
“All right, all right, thanks, Janey,” Shaw says. Shaw
doesn’t blush, and he doesn’t seem embarrassed or even
bothered that Janey is fixing him and touching him. Sethie
always waits for Shaw to touch her first. It’s only polite, she
thinks, since she knows she always wants him touching her,
but can’t be sure when he wants her touching him. “Wait, something else,” Janey says, reaching for Shaw as
he is about to step away, maybe toward Sethie.
“Your belt,” she says, grabbing for it, shifting it to the
side like it should be. Easily identifying what had been
wrong with it. Sethie inhales; her throat is tight, her skin
itches. Janey’s fingers fold over Shaw’s waistband carelessly,
without any sense of the intimacy of it. Sethie isn’t sure
whether she’s jealous that Janey is touching Shaw’s waist,
or that Janey was able to identify what was wrong and fix it
so easily.
“There,” Janey says, satisfied, mussing up Shaw’s hair
as though for good measure. Then she turns to Sethie.
“Honestly, how can you let him out of the house like this?”
A question that Sethie understands is Janey’s way of giving
Shaw back to her, having taken him for just a second. And a
gesture for which Sethie is grateful, since it makes clear to
55 everyone that Shaw belongs to her. That even though Janey fixed him, really she was just doing it on Sethie’s behalf.
Janey walks over to Sethie now. Sethie wonders if she’s about to be fixed, too.
“You look fantastic,” Janey announces. Sethie blushes. “Those jeans are perfect,” she says, and Sethie is grateful for this. Warm now, she’s become very aware of the denim on her legs— literally touching her legs. She’s used to feeling some air between her body and the cloth of her clothes, every touch of that air confirmation that she is thin. These jeans definitely don’t allow for air. Janey says clothes should be tight, not loose. Maybe she thinks that Sethie used to be heavier, and that’s why all her clothes are too big. She might not know that Sethie buys them that way because she likes the way loose clothes feel. And certainly, Janey doesn’t know how it feels when you do gain weight, when your clothes become the other kind of tight, too tight, grabbing onto your fat like grubby, angry hands. Sethie needs to buy her clothes loose because she needs the insurance for when she does gain weight, as she is always frightened she will.
Everyone is drinking Janey’s parents’ booze. Topshelf, Sethie thinks, though she’s not entirely sure what it means. They’re all buzzed by the time they leave the apartment. The cabdriver groans when he sees that there are five of them; four is the limit, he insists.
“We’ll give you a big tip,” Janey promises, and the cabdriver waves them into the backseat.
Sethie sits on Shaw’s lap. Janey sits in front with the driver. No one ever wants to get stuck sitting up front with
56 the driver, and Sethie is disappointed none of the boys volunteered in Janey’s place. They all piled in. Even Shaw didn’t wait for Sethie to go in first. Sethie wonders if boys raised in other places—places where there isn’t such an emphasis on rushing, where you don’t have to scramble for a seat or be left standing, gripping a pole on the subway— have better manners, or if chivalry really is dead, everywhere. But then, she thinks, sitting up front with the cab driver would be a very New York–specific kind of chivalry.
Shaw’s hands rest on her waist; he slips two fingers under her waistband. Shaw’s fingers are so cold that Sethie inhales sharply, but then she is grateful for the reflex, because now she’s sucking in her belly.
The frat house isn’t like the houses in movies. It’s a tall, skinny town house just like the ones on side streets on the Upper East Side— not as nice as the ones closer to Fifth, but no more run-down or beat-up than some of the ones farther east, near Second Avenue. The boys go in first, and Janey and Sethie hold hands and follow. Janey’s fingertips poke through her gloves.
“Cut the tips off,” she explains when she sees Sethie looking. “That way I can smoke without taking them off.”
“Very cool,” Sethie says, and Janey grins.
It’s stuffy inside the house; almost immediately Sethie is aware of sweat forming on her upper lip. There’s no place to put their coats; it looks like everyone else lives so close by that they didn’t bother wearing coats for the walk over. Sethie unwinds her scarf, unbuttons her jacket, but she can’t imagine just leaving them somewhere here. The
57 floors feel sticky; the sofas look grimy. Maybe she can just keep it on. Maybe they won’t be here that long, or maybe she’ll get used to the heat. She can fit her clutch into one of the pockets. She notices that none of the girls here are carrying purses.
“Come on,” Janey says, pulling Sethie toward the stairs. The boys have walked beyond them already, into the party, and presumably closer to the booze.
“I don’t know, but we’ve got to find a decent place to put our coats, right?”
They walk up one flight, then another. The higher they get, the less grimy it looks.
“I guess the more important people live up higher,” Janey says. Sethie shrugs. On the third floor, they see a boy coming out of a room, closing the door behind him.
“Hey!” Janey says.
“Yeah?”
“That your room?”
“Yeah,” he says, raising his eyebrows.
“Is it clean?”
“What?” he says, laughing. Sethie guesses he must be at least a sophomore.
“Is your room clean?”
“Why?”
“Look, dude, it’s a yesor-no question.”
He laughs. Sethie wonders if he can tell they’re in high school, or maybe he thinks they’re cocky freshmen. She’s happy to let Janey do the talking.
58 “It’s not.”
“It’s dirty?”
“No, it’s not a yes-or-no question. It’s too strange to be
Janey opens her mouth, but nothing comes out. Sethie’s never seen her stumped for a good rejoinder, and even the boy she’s been talking to seems to know that he’s done something unusual-stumped the strange girl with the red lipstick, even though no one wears red lipstick these days.
He throws Janey a rope. “It’s clean. I’m a chemistry major.”
Janey still doesn’t say anything, so Sethie speaks. “What does being a chemistry major have to do with having a clean room?”
Janey grins like she’s proud of Sethie for asking the question. Later, she’ll tell Sethie: “I love when you’re a smart-ass.”
The boy says, “Dunno. Just seems like it does, I guess.”
“Can we use your room?” Sethie asks.
He raises his eyebrows again. “What for?”
Janey seems to come back down to earth. “Don’t be a perv. For our coats.”
“People are stacking their coats on the couch in the basement, I think.”
Janey wrinkles her nose. “Gross. We’re not leaving our coats down there. Who knows what’ll end up getting done on top of them?”
He laughs.
“Good point. Use the room.” He opens the door behind
59 him; Sethie notices then that he’d never actually taken his hand off the doorknob.
He stands against the door so they have to squeeze past him to get inside. Sethie goes first.
“What’s your name?” Janey asks when it’s her turn.
“Doug.”
“You’re supposed to ask for our names now,” Janey says, entering the room, slipping her coat off her shoulders, unwinding her scarf. When Janey’s scarf is completely unwound, she slides out of her cardigan, revealing her scoop-neck top. Sethie notices a sheen of sweat over her collarbone; it looks like Janey’s clavicle is glowing.
Sethie grabs Janey’s coat, puts it over her arm with her own.
“Where should I put these?”
“Over there.” Doug points to his desk. Sethie lays the coats over the back of his chair. He’s holding his keys. Sethie’s worried that when they want to leave, they’ll have to find Doug to let them back in here, to get their coats. Sethie is worried they won’t be able to find him, or maybe he’ll be back in here, asleep, and they’ll have to wake him for their coats. These kinds of concerns never seem to occur to anyone else.
Janey is still standing in the center of the room, waiting for Doug to ask their names. Sethie doesn’t think he’s going to.
“I’m Sethie,” she says finally. “This is Jane.”
“Nice to meet you,” Doug says.
“You too. Thanks for the room.” She looks at Janey.
60 “Want to go find the boys?” Sethie asks deliberately. She feels like they’ve been in this room, with this strange boy, for a long time. She wants him to know they didn’t come alone.
Janey shrugs. “I guess.” Sethie steps toward the door. “Wait,” Janey says. “Are you locking the door?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“Then how will we get our coats when we’re ready to leave?” Sethie almost grins because Janey’s thought of the same problem she has. But when Doug responds, she realizes that Janey wasn’t worried about the coats at all.
“Guess you’ll just have to stick with me all night, then.” He cocks his head toward the hall. “Come on.”
Both girls squeeze past Doug again and wait while he locks the door behind him. Sethie sees that Janey’s clavicles are glowing even harder now.