Such a Pretty Girl Read online

  I think I’m skittish partly because she’s gone and done the unacceptable, made herself “unattractive and unappealing” just to get close enough to wreak revenge for her son’s corruption. In my family, you can rot to hell on the inside as long as you’re flawless on the outside, which is really sick, but also hard to unlearn. So while the true and desperate core of me applauds Ms. Mues’s selfless sacrifice and adopts some of her methods for my own, the shallow outside that grew up with the Shale credo still shudders at her deliberate lack of grooming, even though we’re both doing it for a good cause.

  “I have to go,” I say and stand up because I’m drowning in mixed messages and warring truths. The air in the kitchen is dead and glassy-eyed saviors stare at me from the walls.

  I should have a plan and someone to trust, but I don’t. I should have taken my vitamins, but I didn’t.

  Ms. Mues shields me just to thwart my father. She doesn’t really care for me. She’s a plotter, a planner, and what better way to avenge her son than to destroy her enemy’s daughter? To gain my trust and use me to achieve her goal, much like my father used Andy for his own perverted satisfaction.

  And how can Andy love a girl whose father wooed a lonely little boy mourning his own dead dad, then moved in to betray him?

  I want Andy to love me, but I know now that he can’t. If he weren’t paralyzed, he wouldn’t even be with me. He’s nineteen, beautiful, and legal. I’m not. He tolerates me because I am here and available, and I am something to do. I win by default; there is no one else in the race….

  We lay twined together in bed, an old Counting Crows CD playing low, the shadows broken only by a thin, gray shaft of listless, winter light slouching in through the window. Moist warmth cools on our bare chests. Andy was hard this time, a rare occurrence, and one he doesn’t like mentioned or even noticed, but I couldn’t help feeling it pushed against me through his jeans. He’s never said why we don’t go any further and I’ve never asked, content just to be with him like this and maybe knowing deep inside that some ghosts are too cruel to question. But now I’m thinking of the four years between us and it worries me. Four is my best number, but there are four years between my parents, too, and I would rather fall down dead than find out we’re anything like them.

  Twelve and sixteen is much different than fourteen and eighteen, isn’t it? Twelve and sixteen is a seventh grader and a high school junior. Fourteen and eighteen could be a freshman and a senior. That’s no big deal, it happens all the time. And besides, it’s not about numbers with us, it’s all about maturity and common interests and love…isn’t it?

  “Andy?” I whisper, tracing a pale blue vein up his arm. “If it wasn’t me, would it just be someone else?”

  “Mmm?” He stirs, tightening his embrace and gazing down at me from beneath sleepy lids. “Sorry, Mer. Did you say something?”

  I burrow my face into his shoulder, appalled at what I’ve almost done. My parents, my father, have no business in this room. “No,” I whisper, voice muffled. “I’m fine….”

  “Meredith?” Ms. Mues says, cocking her head.

  “I have to go,” I repeat, backing away from the table.

  “Go where? What’s wrong?” She plants her palms on the table and heaves up after me. “Honey, what’s the matter? Andy, Meredith says she’s leaving.”

  Andy blinks and returns to the land of the living. “Where are you going? I didn’t even give you the house keys yet.”

  “It’s okay, I’ll come back later,” I say, scrabbling behind me for the doorknob. I have to get out of here. Control has left me and if they try to help I will bite.

  “Honey, if I said something wrong—” she says, but I slip out and the door closes on her apology.

  The glaring sunlight shocks my skin.

  My head is pounding. The doubts are winning.

  Chapter Ten

  I jog to the far end of Andy’s building, press my back against the hot brick, and peer around the side like a cheesy, B-movie spy.

  I don’t feel cheesy, though. I feel like I’m running for my life.

  I cross the court and slip around the adjacent building, crunching over the baked grass and working my way to the front of the complex. I hate being out in the open, but it’s the only way to get to the main road.

  The Mobile Mechanic truck rumbles past me through the complex, on his way to tune up Ms. Mues’s Cadillac for their trip.

  The sight of it feeds my panic.

  They’ll be gone soon, so why had I run from Andy?

  Because I hadn’t expected him to break down so quickly.

  Wrong.

  I hadn’t expected him to break down at all.

  But then again, I hadn’t expected him to leave me and trot off to Iowa, either.

  I’ve missed seeing a lot. I will have to look closer.

  I skirt a pile of mummified dog crap and keep on going. Sweat beetles down my temples to my neck and disappears into my tank top.

  I’ve been wrong too many times over the past twenty-four hours and it rattles me. My biggest mistake is in believing there are limits to how bad it can get.

  I clench the sheet tight under my chin but it’s no use.

  “Come on, Chirp,” my father murmurs, tugging it free and guiding my hand down under the covers. “It’s all right.”

  Shaking, I stop and light a cigarette. Inhale. The smoke burns my throat.

  If the victim soul in Iowa cures Andy’s paralysis, he’ll be able to walk again.

  I come home from school to find a raggedy bouquet of daisies on my front porch and wheelchair tracks shortcutting across my lawn. Look over to see Andy smiling from behind his sliding glass door….

  Stand upright. Hold me. Screw me.

  It’s midnight and still snowing. Andy and I have been sitting in the dark in front of his sliding glass door for hours, whispering, laughing, holding hands, and watching the magical flakes swirl and dance in the streetlight’s glow….

  I walk faster. My mind is reeling.

  If you don’t count incest, I’m still a virgin.

  I don’t know if Andy’s a virgin. I don’t know what he did in the time span between my father and his crippling accident. He doesn’t seem like a virgin, though. He knows too much about how and what to touch to be a beginner.

  “What are you doing?” I say hoarsely as he trails a finger from the beauty mark on my rib cage to the one on my hip, leaving a path of goose bumps in his wake.

  “Connecting the dots,” he murmurs with a wicked look. “Uh-oh, you made me lose my place. Now I have to start all over again….”

  I’ve never seen him with his pants off.

  My father has. My father’s seen both of us.

  And it’s wrong, wrong and unfair that he could have done what he did and be allowed back for more. Wrong that no one will stop him.

  I will stop him.

  I rage past the front of my father’s building, bare feet pounding the pavement, fists ready, daring him to see me, to order me to stop right there!, but his blinds are closed and I pass unchallenged.

  I don’t feel panicky or disloyal anymore. I am David facing Goliath, eager to rework my strategy, fling my killing stone and annihilate the bully.

  I scale the hill to the main road and head for my grandmother’s.

  Chapter Eleven

  My grandmother, Leah Louisa Delklap, lives at the east end of Estertown. The houses are stately, graced with gently rolling lawns and ancient maples. In comparison, our pricey condo complex with its manmade retention pond and weeping cherry saplings is a raw upstart, a blotchy birthmark on the town’s otherwise smooth complexion.

  It takes me forever to arrive because I follow all the neighborhood back roads. I skirt groups of gossiping adults who fall silent as I pass and I avoid their kids who aren’t silent at all, and who do their best to remind me of who I am. They would be happy to know that they’ve always made it impossible to forget.

  I see my mother’s BMW cruising Main Stre
et a few times. I fully intend to meet up with her, but not until my grandmother is there to referee.

  Hunger makes my head spin. My overalls are sagging from sweat and the legs drag under my bruised heels. I smell ripe and used and this cracks me up, because I am. Insanely, I wish my father were here now to see and smell me and be revolted by my sloppy self.

  My mother’s car is parked in my grandmother’s driveway.

  I flick my hair loose and the curtain closes around me. Open my grandmother’s front door and step into the cool foyer. “I’m here,” I call, bumping the door shut behind me and ambling toward the kitchen, where an indignant “It’s about time!” echoes and chairs are pushed from the table.

  My grandmother reaches me first. She’s wearing crisp, white capris, a sporty Ralph Lauren polo, and sensible sandals. Her short hair is neat and threaded with gray, her gold hoop earrings small and tasteful. Her face is composed but her cheeks are pink and a battle light burns in her eyes.

  “Are you all right, Meredith?” she asks, smoothing my sweaty hair from my face with a broad hand so she can get a good look at me.

  “I’m hungry.” I let her look, mostly because there’s no way to stop her.

  “Where the hell have you been and what the hell did you think you were doing?” my mother yells. “Do you know how long your father’s been out looking for you in this heat? I swear, I don’t know what possesses you sometimes!”

  “Yes you do,” I say flatly.

  She snakes a rigid arm around my grandmother and jabs her finger at my nose. “Don’t start. I’m warning you.”

  “Really, Sharon, can’t you see you’re only making matters worse?” my grandmother says, shifting and forcing my mother to abandon her accusing stance. “Why don’t you go pour the iced tea while Meredith showers?”

  “Why bother?” my mother says. “She’ll only run away again.”

  “No I won’t,” I say. “There’s no reason to, here.”

  “I left you alone for ten minutes—”

  “You weren’t supposed to leave me alone at all! There’s a reason for that, remember? How long did you really think it would take him to start again?”

  My mother goes white. Her mouth opens but no words come out.

  “Meredith.” My grandmother grips my shoulders. “Are you saying he…?”

  I’m tempted to take the convenient shortcut, but DNA tests and rape kits will brand me a liar and then when I really do need help, no one will believe me. “No,” I say and grant my mother breath. “But he could have.”

  “You just won’t let it go, will you?” my mother snaps and rubs her temple.

  “This isn’t getting us anywhere.” My grandmother steers me toward the stairs. “Meredith, go take a shower. Hand out your clothes and I’ll wash them. My robe is hanging on the back of the door. Sharon, go into the kitchen and start lunch.” She’s using her official mayor’s voice now and it’s easy to see why even after my father’s scandal, she wasn’t asked to resign from office.

  “I’m not hungry,” my mother says as I head upstairs. “I have to find Charles and tell him Meredith’s turned up. The poor man must be on the verge of an apoplexy by now.”

  “Only if he thinks I’m down at the police station reporting him for not registering as a sex offender yet,” I toss back without pausing.

  “He hasn’t registered yet?” my grandmother says grimly.

  “He has a couple of days from the time he was released,” my mother says. “We’d planned to go down as a family after breakfast, but then Meredith had to pull this stupid stunt—”

  “Oh, there’s a wholesome outing,” I say. “Let’s all skip down to the cop shop to register my daddy as a pervert. What fun.”

  “That’s enough,” my grandmother says, but it sounds like she agrees with me. “And Charles will survive another twenty minutes without you, Sharon. He can go register alone. Or if you must go with him, call and leave a message telling him to wait another half hour because before you leave, we three are going to sit down and find a workable solution to this problem.”

  I cross the upper landing and head for the bathroom.

  “Now,” my grandmother says, “does Meredith still like tuna salad?”

  “No,” I shout, because my mother doesn’t know what I like anymore. “I don’t eat things that bleed. Just cheese with lettuce or tomato with mayo. No dead fish or animals, please.”

  “You see what I have to put up with?” my mother says.

  I open my mouth to answer, then think better of it as it will only irk Leah Louisa and I need her on my side.

  “She’s a teenager,” my grandmother says and her voice grows stronger as she mounts the stairs. “Let’s focus on the bigger issues, shall we?”

  I close the bathroom door and strip down, careful to stow my cigarettes, lighter, and knife in the pocket of my grandmother’s robe before I hand my soiled stuff through the cracked door.

  “What about your underwear?” she asks, accepting the grubby wad.

  “Well, I left in kind of a hurry, Gran,” I say, catching sight of myself in the full-length mirror. I’m nasty. Messy. I look like I’m wearing dirt-gray Peds and with a little more knotting and studied neglect I will have perfect Rasta hair.

  “All right,” she says, sighing. “Come down when you’re finished.”

  My feet ache and there’s a purple knot above my eyebrow where I whacked my head climbing out the window. It’s tender and I don’t press on it again.

  The shower is heaven, though, with forty-four perfectly square tiles and four thick guest towels. The blue in the bathroom is pure and pristine, and reminds me of the serene eyes and painted robes of the oak Madonna icon next to Andy’s bed.

  A victim soul is a pious individual chosen to absorb the suffering of others.

  That boy needs a good shrink and some physical therapy, not some corn-fed quack quoting Scriptures and waving a crucifix.

  I twist off the water and open the curtain. Grab a towel and blot my skin. Slip into the striped cotton robe, perch on the hamper, switch on the fan, and light a cigarette.

  I don’t know what to think about this.

  Is Andy really suffering in the curable sense? Because he isn’t ill, he’s paralyzed—and not from birth, either.

  He was hanging out an SUV window on the night of his high school graduation, whooping and waving his diploma, one of dozens in a wild, snaking caravan of cars on the way out to party.

  Andy’s buddy, the driver, had started drinking early. He’d gunned the engine and whipped a right onto Main Street. Cut the corner too short and bounced over the curb. Andy, hanging up to his waist out of the passenger window, had hit the steel stop sign chest-first and the impact flung him out onto the road.

  I wedge my cigarette in my mouth and squint against the acrid smoke.

  If Andy has no physical pain, then what suffering does Ms. Mues want cured?

  I think of the scars knitted across his body and the “accident-prone” label. Of the stories Ms. Mues has told me about Andy’s postmolestation childhood.

  Crashing bikes into walls. Rollerblading into traffic. Falling off the monkey bars and out of trees. Bungee jumping off the roof with a homemade tether.

  I run my cigarette butt under the faucet and hide it in the wastebasket.

  Getting high. Driving drunk. Picking fights. Unprotected sex?

  The accident, numbing half but not all of him.

  I rip a comb through my hair, yanking at knots and making my eyes tear.

  Gallons of Jim Beam. Gallons.

  Open the bathroom door and emerge in a cloud of smoky steam. It dissipates fast, no match for sunlight and air-conditioning, leaving me chilled and seeing clearly.

  Ms. Mues isn’t praying for Andy to walk again.

  She’s praying for him to want to live.

  Chapter Twelve

  I belt the wrap robe over the pocket with the cigarettes in it, but I can tell by my grandmother’s arched eyebrow that I’m
not fooling her.

  “Two tomato sandwiches with two pickles,” she says instead, setting down the plate and sinking into the chair beside me. “Eat first and then we’ll talk.”

  Four. Good. I devour the pickles first. Yum, salt.

  “Oh, come on, Mother,” my mother says. “Meredith can talk and eat at the same time.” She slumps against the countertop and folds her arms across her chest. “And it’s not like I haven’t heard all this before. So let’s just get it over with so I can take my daughter, go home to my husband, and get on with my life.”

  I wolf down the first sandwich and am into the second by the time my grandmother answers.

  “Well, I guess that’s a beginning.” Leah Louisa turns to me. “All right, Meredith, you’ve heard what your mother wants. What do you want?”

  I want my father gone but I can’t say that, so I chew slowly, buying time to readjust my goal. My original plan of making myself repulsive and driving him away isn’t working. Staying out of his orbit is going to be impossible with both him and my mother insisting on a harmonious reconciliation.

  The tomato sandwich tastes sour now. I don’t want to be run out of my own home, but I don’t want to live near my father, either. On the other hand, the only thing standing between exile and me is my father. He will never let me move away; my mother would send me here to live with Leah Louisa in a heartbeat.

  If I were to stay here, I’d be safe, but alone and monitored. Leah Louisa would never put up with my disappearing act, especially if I came in with swollen lips and bed hair, smelling of Jim Beam and Andy. Living here would mean no more purification Fridays, no Nigel and Gilly, no easy access to Andy, and no freedom.

  Freedom. Free to do what? Cower and run and hide? Free to be made small and disgusting, to listen to my father’s obscene desires, feel his gaze creeping over me, waiting for me to make that one wrong move so he can pounce…. Who is free? Not me. He’s the only one who’s free. He’s the only one doing exactly what he wants…

  Oh.

  Hope flares, hot and immediate, and I almost drop the sandwich. Of course. It’s so simple. When he reoffends, he’ll be sent back to prison. Probably for a long time, maybe even forever if his next victim is as messed up as I was and the enraged parents go straight to the police afterward….