September Girls Read online

  “Like what?” I asked, more drunkenly than I would have preferred. “Like what should I tell you?”

  DeeDee looked over at me with an exasperated smile. “I don’t know,” she said. “God, you’re hopeless. Tell me anything. Take a shot and then you have to tell me one thing about yourself, without thinking. Something secret.”

  She passed me the flask and I swigged. For the first time, I didn’t flinch at the burn of the undiluted liquor.

  “Um,” I said, seizing the first thing that came to me in my wobbly state. “When I was little, I went through this phase where I peed in the sink all the time. You know, like instead of the toilet. Afterward I would always feel super-guilty about it—I thought there was something really wrong and maybe perverted about me. But then it turns out that it’s a thing that basically all guys do when they’re little. My friend Sebastian still does it when he goes to parties, because why not? It’s like, primal, one of those things left over from when we were monkeys that evolution forgot to get rid of. Also pinky toes and male nipples.”

  “Of course. I love how when boys have a completely unacceptable habit like peeing in the sink, science actually goes to all the trouble to come up with a justification for it.”

  “Well it’s true,” I said. “It’s a biological imperative.” Although then it occurred to me that I didn’t even know if it was true at all; Sebastian was the one who had told me about the whole Darwinist theory behind pissing in sinks, and he wasn’t the most trustworthy person.

  DeeDee grimaced. “God. Last summer I was stuck cleaning houses. Houses with little boys were always the worst of all—you know, even if you rinse it down, piss eventually starts to leave a smell that’s impossible to get out. I’m lucky I got the job at the Fisherman’s Net this year. Waitressing sucks too but at least I’m not dealing with body fluids very often.”

  “Do you ever get sick of it?” I asked.

  “Of what?”

  “Of you know, cleaning houses and waiting tables and stuff? Of working all the time I mean.”

  “Of course we get sick of it. Wouldn’t you?”

  I was embarrassed that I’d asked. I hadn’t meant it as an insult. Her life was so different from mine; I should have thought of that. But I realized I hardly knew anything about her—I didn’t know where she had come from or why she was even working in the first place. I didn’t know what had brought her here or where she was going. “Sorry,” I said. “Obviously. But, like, what are you going to do next?”

  “Right this minute? I’m going to drink some more whiskey.” She reached for it and took a sip, then tossed it back to me, and I drank too. I could taste the mild flavor of her saliva on the spout.

  “I meant with life,” I said. “After you’re done waiting tables. Like are you going to go to college or whatever.”

  “I try not to think too far ahead. I’d like to see France someday. But that’s just a fantasy.”

  “So the accent’s not French?”

  “Russian,” she said, a beat too quickly. It didn’t sound Russian to me, but I guess Russia’s a big place. It stands to reason that not everyone from there would talk like a James Bond villain.

  “What’s it like? Russia I mean.”

  Her face turned vague. “Oh, I don’t know. It’s been a while. Where are you from anyway?”

  “The suburbs,” I said. “Basically the least interesting place on earth. I mean, I was from there. I’m not sure if we’re ever going back or what. My dad quit his job and everything. So maybe I’m not from anywhere anymore.”

  She was looking at me quizzically. “Never mind,” I said. “It’s your turn. Tell me something about you.” I pushed the flask into her hands again.

  “I already told you I’m from Russia. What else is there to know?”

  I raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean? C’mon. I can think of so many interesting things. Don’t be stubborn.”

  “There’s nothing that interesting.”

  “I told you my darkest secret and you’re not going to tell me a thing?”

  “That’s your darkest secret?”

  “Just give me something,” I said.

  “Fine,” she finally said, and took what started as a sip, became a swig, and turned into a gulp, before eventually settling at a chug. DeeDee let the flask clatter onto the lagoon before wiping her mouth with the back of her hand and letting out a small belch. “I don’t have a mother,” she said. She pushed her hair over her shoulder. “Good enough?”

  I paused and cocked my head and started to say a bunch of different things but couldn’t decide on which. “Where’d she go?” I finally asked.

  “Long story,” she said.

  “They always are. I don’t have a mother either. Well, maybe I do. But not really. It’s no big deal.”

  “It actually is a big deal,” DeeDee said. “To me at least. Anyway. I don’t like to talk about the past—I mean, my past. Other people’s are fine. What happened to yours?”

  “You know how it goes these days,” I said. “It all started with Facebook.”

  “I’ve heard of Facebook,” DeeDee said. “But I’ve never used it.”

  “Really?” I said. “You’re serious?”

  “Totally serious. We don’t have good internet here. You have to go to an internet café and even then it’s super-slow. It’s not really worth it.”

  I had noticed the internet problem myself. I hadn’t checked my email since we’d left. The thing is that I didn’t even miss it.

  “Well that’s something interesting,” I said. “You’re not missing much though; I’m not sure how my mom got so obsessed with it anyway. It’s pretty dumb. For a while she was just happy making all these embarrassing comments on my wall—that was bad enough, but it didn’t last. Then she starts playing these games where you have to make a farm and collect chicken eggs and that type of thing, and she’s, like, totally into it. She’s down there in the basement on the computer all day and then she comes up for dinner and all she wants to talk about is her farm, which made no sense, but it was sort of a relief because it meant she finally was leaving my wall alone. But even with that it was only a matter of time. Soon she started making all these friends, and that’s when things actually got bad.”

  “Wait, she had a farm? Where was the farm?”

  “Just ignore that part. The point is, all the sudden she’s sending all these messages to these strangers in weird places and next thing you know she’s in the basement with a box of wine 24/7, chatting with them I guess. Or something. You know, whatever people do on Facebook. And she was different. She got all interested in this weird crap that she wouldn’t have been able to tell you the first thing about before. She’s reading all this poetry; she has a Tumblr, although I avoided looking at it. She won’t shut up about this thing called the SCUM Manifesto. . . .”

  “Society for Cutting Up Men?”

  I was surprised she’d heard of it, but I guess you learn about a lot of crazy stuff watching all that cable. “Yeah, that’s the one. Some book some lunatic lady wrote about how much she hates all dudes; it sounded psychotic.”

  “It’s actually pretty funny,” DeeDee said.

  “Wait,” I said. “You’ve read the SCUM Manifesto?”

  DeeDee looked a little nervous. “Oh,” she said. “Yeah. I guess they had it in one of the houses or whatever.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Weird.” It was no wonder people were so weird around here, with no internet and only Her Place, the Bible, and the SCUM Manifesto to read.

  “Valerie Solanas was misunderstood,” DeeDee said. “Her sense of humor was too sophisticated for most people. Although, true, she did end up shooting someone. But that’s sort of beside the point.”

  I think I sort of looked at her funny but didn’t press the issue. “Yeah, well, the point is, Mom starts getting all these crazy ideas. We barely see her anymore—she’s just on Facebook—and when we do, she’s talking about this cutting up men stuff. Then one day I’m getting
ready for school and she knocks on my door with a bag packed and she tells me she’s going to live at something called Women’s Land, where no one ever has to talk to men. And then five minutes later she’s gone. As in, completely gone.”

  “Huh,” DeeDee said. “That sucks.”

  “The craziest part is she’d deleted her Facebook profile.”

  “When did it happen?”

  “I dunno, like six months ago.”

  “Oh,” DeeDee said. “Sorry. That sucks.”

  “What about your mom?” I asked again. “Where is she? Is she dead?”

  “No. Not really. It’s hard to explain. She’s around, I guess. She’s just very distracted or something.”

  “Come on,” I said. “Tell.”

  She dodged the question. “I want to show you something.” And before I could say anything back, the flask was in her bra again and she was dangling from the mermaid statue’s fins and clambering down the lagoon into an inch-high moat. “Come on,” she said. I jumped down and followed her across the golf course to the large pirate ship that faced out over the bypass. It was held aloft over the third hole by two fake rocks, creating both the vision of a spooky shipwreck and the more practical effect of a little tunnel for mini-golfers to putt through.

  “Can I have your flashlight?” DeeDee asked.

  I tossed it to her and she caught it, flicked it on, walked into the tunnel, and shone the light toward the underside of the ship. “Here,” she said after a second, and reached up, unlatching something. A trapdoor swung down.

  “Help me in,” she said. She was a little shaky and so was I, but I managed to hoist her through the hatch, into the belly of the pirate ship. I had some trouble making it myself—upper body strength is not something I’ve been blessed with an excess of—but DeeDee grabbed me under my armpits when I was halfway in and pulled me the rest of the way.

  It smelled like mildew. I sat up and crawled farther in, feeling my way and stumbling a little over some unidentified detritus. Behind me, I could hear DeeDee pulling the door closed.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, and when I opened them again, DeeDee was reclining against the curvy wall of the ship’s interior. She’d tossed the flashlight to the floor, and the light was bouncing through the place in unexpected patterns, creating odd shadows. She was smiling, glowing warm and yellow, and I crawled over to where she sat, collapsing next to her. The ship was spinning a little—even though it was fake, I felt seasick.

  “Look,” she said. She picked up the flashlight and began flashing it around so I could really see the place, which was small and narrow—not much bigger than a very large bathroom—and stuffed with junk.

  It was everywhere. It was actually hard to tell what all the stuff was since it was scattered and piled in jumbled heaps, like that show Hoarders, but I could pick out clothes and comic books and crappy paperbacks and all kinds of stupid trinkets like votive candles and flatware and Fiestaware dishes. And looking closer under the traveling beam of the flashlight: crappy jewelry and high-heeled shoes and plastic action figures, their poor arms and legs twisted in uncomfortable directions. Propped against the wall at the opposite end was a large mirror with a crack straight down the middle.

  “Look at this stuff,” DeeDee said. “Isn’t it neat?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Neat. Is all this yours?”

  “Nah. I wish. It’s Nalgene’s. It’s her secret hideout. Like her lair or whatever. She works here, you know—at Hole-N-Fun, taking the money and handing out scorecards and clubs and stuff. Anyway, she hides in here sometimes. She doesn’t know I know about it, but I saw her climb up in here one day as the place was closing, so I waited for her to leave and then checked it out for myself. Sometimes I use it too. Like I’ll come in here just to hang out or to take a nap or whatever. Nalgene would murder me but I don’t actually care. It’s nice to have a place to be alone. It’s important. Next summer I’m hoping she’ll work somewhere else, and I’ll get to take over here and this’ll be mine.”

  “Where’d she get all of it?”

  “Well,” she said. “She has, um, this problem. There’s always been something a little wrong with Nalgene; Kristle says it’s low self-esteem, but why would her self-esteem be any different from the rest of ours when we’re all basically the same? Taffany thinks she’s just a little stupid, but I don’t know about that either. Whatever it is, she has, like, a shoplifting thing. You have to watch out; she’s always trying to pick something up. She doesn’t mean anything by it—it’s just what she does. She could be digging around in your pocket for a quarter or a piece of gum at the same time she’s hugging you. So I guess this is all stuff she stole. Or, you know, found. Or both. I don’t actually know where any of it comes from, but it’s got to come from somewhere, right? All I can say is that I guarantee she didn’t pay for any of it.”

  “But what’s the point?” I asked.

  DeeDee looked at me blankly. “What do you mean, the point?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Why bother having all this junk if you’re just going to hide it away and never use it? It looks like she’s never touched any of it.”

  “The point is just to have it,” DeeDee said. “To own something.”

  “Oh,” I said, still not really getting it.

  “It makes a lot of sense to me,” DeeDee said. “When you’re all the same, all you have is what you own. And we don’t own a lot.”

  “You don’t seem the same to me,” I said. “You and Kristle are nothing alike.”

  “Don’t be so sure,” DeeDee said darkly.

  “Wait. You still haven’t told me anything about you. I told you I peed in the sink and I told you all about my dumb mom. And you told me about Nalgene. But I still barely know anything about you.”

  “Maybe there’s nothing to know,” DeeDee said. “Have you considered that?”

  “No,” I said. “I reject that premise.”

  “Fine,” DeeDee said. “Well maybe I need you to tell me, then.”

  “Tell you what?”

  “Something about myself. Anything. Just something.”

  “You’re funny,” I said. “But you seem sort of angry about something too.”

  “Funny,” she said. “That’s how I would describe you.”

  And then she tossed the flashlight aside and I was kissing her. I don’t know, I mean, we were kissing. I’m pretty sure that I was the one who made the first move this time but I could be wrong. Even if I had been, it wasn’t something I did intentionally. It was just like we were sitting there looking at each other, and then we were kissing each other and it was a pretty equal thing.

  It was different from when Kristle had kissed me. (Had that really even happened?) It was different from when I had kissed Sasha at that Halloween party too. Most of all, it was different from the silly, off-the-cuff kiss after karaoke, which I was pretty sure was really meant for James Taylor. Kissing DeeDee in the hold of the fake fiberglass ship, surrounded by all of Nalgene’s crazy plunder, I felt like I was on an expedition to the edge of the world. I felt life unfurling itself in lazy and salty spirals in the water below my feet, revealing itself as something I would never have guessed.

  It was perfect.

  And then DeeDee’s hand was on my boner, and I felt my spine straighten, my shoulders tense, my tongue stiffen in her mouth. I don’t know why I was so taken aback; I know that as a seventeen-year-old boy, a girl’s hand on my boner is supposed to be one thing that I cannot resist. And yes, it felt good. But my heart was pounding and, okay, I was afraid. So fucking kill me; I pushed her hand away.

  “What?” she whispered, biting my ear.

  “I don’t know,” I whispered back. “Not yet.” Jesus Christ. What was wrong with me?

  “Okay,” she said, but then her hand was creeping up the front of my shirt.

  “Can we just wait?”

  “Okay,” she said. “Okay. I’m tired anyway. Let’s just sleep.” She gave me a warm peck on the cheek and let me go, c
urling herself into a ball in the bow. I moved behind her and wrapped my arms around her chest and she murmured something happy sounding, and the summery, saltwatery smell of her skin enveloped me as we drifted off together, forward, into whatever unknown ocean.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  .....................................................................

  OCEAN

  We don’t know how to swim.

  We don’t really even understand swimming. We see the Others in the water, flailing around, jumping and diving and flopping backward into waves, and we are confused. They call it swimming, but it doesn’t look like swimming to us. Maybe we’re mistranslating.

  We have learned to use our bodies. We have learned to walk without wincing, to stand upright and put one foot in front of the other, to stumble from one place to the next. We have learned to do the other things required of us in this place, too.

  But we have forgotten as much as we have learned.

  We have forgotten the ocean: what it looks like from below the surface, the mysteries it holds.

  We have forgotten how to navigate by the stars.

  We have forgotten how to survive on salt. (Though we continue to enjoy salty food.)

  We have forgotten almost everything.

  The feeling remains, though. That is what we remember: The weightlessness in our toes and the velocity in our fingertips. The way the water once carried us, and how our destination always ended up lying somewhere halfway between our own desires and the intention of the ocean.

  We remember waves and currents.

  And we remember the knowing. The knowing that as deep as you travel, there is always a deeper wreck to be discovered.

  The knowing of our own names.

  The ocean frightens us now. We are frightened by how much we miss it. We are frightened as much by what we remember as by what we don’t. We are frightened by the way it sings to us, calling us back to depths we know we can no longer survive.