Like Mandarin (21 page)

I kept my eyes on Mandarin as I took my first sip of beer. I’d imagined a taste like root beer, but what filled my mouth was soapy and thick, with a bland and vaguely bitter flavor. I choked down a second swallow, because Mandarin was watching me and drinking more quickly. I didn’t want her to think I couldn’t keep up, so I took another swallow, then another.

Mandarin seemed to speed up even more.

I forced myself to relax my throat, swallowing hugely, my eyes locked on Mandarin’s, hers locked on mine.

“Whoa …” One of the guys beside us elbowed his friend. “Check out these bitches. They’re suckin’ down that beer like they ache for it. I’ll bet they’re wishin’ it was—”

Mandarin flung her cup at him. It clunked against his chest, flowers of beer darkening his shirt.

“Hey, man,” he shouted. “What the hell!”

“I’m not a man, dickface,” Mandarin said, “and I’m not a bitch, either.”

The guy held up his hands and backed off.

“There’s nothing to see!” another guy called to the gathering crowd. I recognized him—Joshua Mickelson, the crooked-nosed lifeguard who’d approached me in the cafeteria line with Tyler Worley. “What an asshole,” he said to us.

“Thanks,” Mandarin said unsmilingly.

Joshua edged closer to her. “Great party, huh? So when did you get here?”

I swallowed the last of my beer, feeling even more out of place. I was obviously not meant to be part of their conversation.

“Hey, Grace!”

I almost jumped. I needed to get used to hearing my name in improbable settings.

On the other side of the bonfires, Davey Miller waved enthusiastically. He looked as out of place as I probably did, in his tapered black jeans and oversized white sneakers. After a nod from Mandarin, I wound through the crowd in his direction, feeling unreasonably relieved.

“Davey! What’s up? What are you doing here?”

He wore a T-shirt featuring a David Bowie album cover. Probably not the best choice for this crowd. But it was far better than his usual shirts, which featured bad paintings of Indian maidens playing pan flutes, or wolves howling before the aurora borealis.

“I came with my next-door neighbor,” he replied. “You know Ricky. As soon as we got here, though, he ran off with some girl. He told our moms we were going to a movie.… I should have known I was just a decoy. Guess you came with Mandarin?”

“Of course,” I said smugly. I hoped I’d never grow used to it, being Mandarin Ramey’s friend. “So where’d you get that shirt?”

He looked sheepish. “It was Ricky’s idea. I guess I was trying to fit in or something. Dumb, huh? As if it were that easy.”

“Oh, I know! That’s why I’m glad Mandarin and I are different from everyone else.”

“Different? How so?”

I squinted at him. “Well, I mean,
obviously
. We’re not like them. Just look at us.”

“I guess,” Davey said, but he still appeared unconvinced.

I was about to ask him what his deal was. But suddenly, there was a hot mouth at my ear, speaking so low that I felt rather than heard the words.

“Need a refill?”

I cupped a hand over my ear involuntarily and turned to face Tyler Worley.

He had floppy brown hair and an unshaved jaw and stood at least eight inches taller than me. I had never been close to so much male at once. I breathed deep, bonfire smoke heating me from the inside out. Davey was forgotten as Tyler took my hand.

At the keg, he filled my cup like an expert. “Did you see that? A perfect pour. Not any head at all.”

I had no idea what he meant, and didn’t want to ask. “Um, beautiful.”

“That’s why they call me Pourmaster. Naw, but seriously, I’d make a great bartender, don’t you think?”

“If that’s what you want to be,” I said, thinking of Solomon Ramey.

“Why not? It’s, like, the perfect job. I could sleep during the daytime. At night I’d get to serve myself for free, plus any sexy ladies that come wandering in.” He winked and knocked me with his hip. I brought one hand to my face, trying to cover my flushed cheeks. I’d never thought flirting would be so … 
embarrassing
.

“Well, I won’t be twenty-one for ages.”

“You think that’d stop me from serving you? Didn’t I just?”

I spotted Mandarin through the gap between the fires. Joshua stood beside her, his lips still moving, but her eyes were on me. I raised my beer in salute.

“Earth to Grace,” Tyler said. “What’re you staring at?”

I looked at him, surprised. “I didn’t think I told you my name.”

He took a swallow of beer before speaking. “We go to the same school, don’t we?”

“Oh,” I said. “Right.”

I raised my cup again, tapping it against his. This time, I didn’t mind the taste so much. A new song came on and people cheered, including Tyler.

“Hell yeah! This is a great song. Dance with me?”

Without waiting for an answer, he grabbed my hand and pulled me away from the kegs and fires, into the surging forest of silhouettes. Before I knew it, we were dancing—or, more accurately, swaying together, as the crowd made it difficult to do much more than that.

All of a sudden, Earl Barnaby staggered into us, arms flailing. I squealed, then clapped a hand to my mouth, shocked that such a sound had come from my own vocal cords.

“What the hell’s your deal?” Tyler demanded.

“It’s okay,” Earl slurred, his words thick and wet. “It’s okay, buddy. I’m all right. Look here, I got somethin’ for you an’ your girl.” He held out a thin metal flask.

Without questioning the contents, Tyler unscrewed the tiny cap and drank. “You want?” he said to me, wiping his mouth.

I stared at the flask. I’d never seen one up close. It was one of those foreign objects of adulthood, like condoms or marijuana pipes. The reflections of the dancers around us crawled on the metal surface. “It’s just that … I’ve never …”

“Just swallow fast. It’s apple juice, all right?”

Still, I hesitated. Beer was one thing. Mystery liquid from Earl Barnaby’s flask was another landscape entirely. And what was old Earl doing at a quarry party, anyway? I glanced over my shoulder, but I couldn’t find Mandarin. I was on my own.

What would Mandarin do?

Well, of course. And suddenly, I knew why she’d brought me to this party in the first place: she was testing me, yet again. I was sure of it. She was probably watching right that second, camouflaged among the drunken faces, anticipating my reaction.

I accepted the flask. It felt heavy in my hand, and the mystery liquid sloshed when I shook it. I took a deep breath, tipped my head, and poured. Forget apple juice. It was like drinking molten bonfire, the taste and the burn.

“How about we get out of here?” Tyler suggested.

Instead of answering, I took another swallow.

The clamor of the party sounded muffled and tinny, as if piped in from a distant radio. Louder were the sounds of crickets, the rush of the river, and the night wind disturbing pebbles and sending them tickling off the surface of the Tombs. Against the largest boulder, Tyler had me caged, his mouth shoved wetly into mine.

Once we had finished Earl Barnaby’s flask, Tyler had led me to his pickup truck. “My first!” he’d declared.

It struck me as hilarious that he was so certain he’d own a succession of pickups throughout the rest of his life. Classic Washokey.

A prehistoric country song wailed from the speakers as soon as he turned on the engine, which made me laugh a second time. Garth Brooks, or Willie Nelson. I never knew the difference. Actually, almost everything seemed funny: the way Tyler yawned before snaking his arm over the top of the seat. The briefness of our journey: just a minute on the highway, and we arrived at the Tombs, much closer to the quarry than I’d imagined. How comical that I’d never known.

I wasn’t laughing now.

I’d long since lost track of the minutes that had passed since Tyler had brought me to the Tombs, no more than fifteen feet from my personal Someplace Magic. It seemed like hours before he released me, wiping his brow with his wrist. I slipped beneath his arm and staggered away. The world swayed in the opposite direction. My cheeks were numb, my chin scraped raw from his stubble. I could scarcely feel my lips at all. My head felt stuffed with cotton and my mouth was sour with the acidic after-tang of Earl’s whiskey. I would have spit if I could have moved my lips.

I wanted to crawl beneath my comforter, to pull my sheet over my ear, to forget Mandarin’s test, to forget everything.

But then Tyler reeled me in again. This time, his rough palm crept under the hem of my dress, sliding up my thigh.

“Tyler …,” I protested from the corner of my mouth.

“Shhh,” he said.

I pulled back an inch.
“Tyler …”

“Shhh … Just relax. It’s all right.”

If I can just get through this
, I told myself,
I’ll be all right
. I thought of the Virgin Mary rock, somewhere in the jumble of boulders above me. I tried to picture her face, but I couldn’t. My memory was blurry, as if someone had smudged the ancient paint.

“It’s getting late. Let’s go back, all right?” I begged.

“Come on, girl. You wanna be like your friend Mandarin, don’t you?”

He was right. But I wrenched away anyway, stumbling the last few feet to the edge of the river.

Escape! Dive in and swim for the other shore!

Instead, I knelt on the bank, my shoulders tensing in expectation of Tyler’s hands. When they didn’t come, I pushed back my sweaty bangs, feeling the base of my palm smear Mandarin’s eyeliner. I wanted to throw up, but the sick taste in my mouth didn’t seem to be connected to the commotion in my stomach.

I stared in the water, hoping for a reflection.

I saw nothing. But I knew exactly what I looked like: a little girl playing dress-up. Like I’d never outgrown my pageant days, after all.

Tyler’s arms curved around my middle and pulled me upright. I tried to pry them off. “I need to find Mandarin!” I meant to sound forceful, but my voice cracked.

“Calm down. We’ll go find her, all right? In just a minute.” He yanked me closer and pressed his body against mine, bunching my dress around my hips. I dropped my arms to cover my underwear, but he caught them and didn’t let go.

Grab, kiss, pull away. An endless cycle. I’d never even kissed a boy before—and now this? This wasn’t romance. This wasn’t what it was supposed to be like.

And yet Mandarin did this and more, all the time, over and over again. While already I felt like I’d been there forever, numb-faced and slobbered on, in the dark places of the Tombs.

Maybe this was my purgatory.

“No!” I shouted. I wedged my arm between our chests and pushed Tyler as hard as I could. He slammed into the ground. I hesitated, amazed by my own strength. That gave him time to jump up again, like someone had jabbed a rewind button.

“You little bitch,” he snarled, lunging for me.

I hit the ground without any awareness of my fall. My vision shifted, then righted again. I tried to scream, but Tyler cut it short by collapsing on top of me. Now I was choking on sobs, and his hands were everywhere. Beyond him, the stunted trees seemed to shudder and twist.

Then I heard a crack somewhere just outside my closed eyes. Tyler rolled off me, cursing furiously.

I peeled my eyes open.

Mandarin was crouched on a ledge above us, her face contorted with rage, one arm slung back to hurl another rock. When it slammed into Tyler’s shoulder, I scrambled away on my hands and knees. From the edge of the river, I watched dazedly as Mandarin savaged him with stones, slamming them into his neck, his back, his forehead. She had great aim. I shouldn’t have been surprised. Tyler tried to shield his face, but I saw blood leaking between his fingers.

“For fuck’s sake, knock it off, you crazy bitch!”

“Then get the fuck out of here, you creep!” she screamed. “You fucking maniac. You know how old she is? Barely fourteen years old. You’re fucking sick!”

Fourteen?

Tyler took advantage of the pause in her attack to hop to his feet. “You’re insane! What the hell’s wrong with you? Why’d you tell me to bring her out here in the first place?”

Why’d you tell me …

It took a moment for me to understand. I looked up at Mandarin still crouched on the ledge. Her eyes caught mine, then darted away. Just like mine had earlier, in the parking lot of the Benton High auditorium, when she’d feigned leaving town for real and
I’d
been found out.

“Just … get the hell out of here,” she ordered Tyler, the fury draining from her voice. “Or I’ll tell everyone at school you’re a fucking rapist.”

With his arms still wrapped around his head, Tyler turned and lurched off toward his truck. He flung open the door and dived into the front seat. The tires scraped over the gravel as he backed into the road, then took off in the direction of the party.

Mandarin came over and stood a few feet from me. Her knee was freshly skinned, probably from climbing down the boulder. I stared at her knee instead of her face.

“Gracey …,” she began.

“Take me home,” I told her knee.

I sat in the passenger seat of Mandarin’s truck, leaning as far from her as possible. She was driving much more slowly than usual, but I didn’t comment. Washokey passed outside my window, the same stores, the same dreary, monotonous houses. When we passed Solomon’s, I closed my eyes.

When I opened them, I discovered that Mandarin had pulled to the side of the road. She’d left the truck running. I could tell she was waiting for me to speak.

Finally, she cleared her throat. “Gracey, he didn’t …”

“No,” I said.

“Thank God.” She sounded genuinely relieved. “Because I
told
him …”

She cleared her throat a second time. When she spoke again, her tone had changed. And she sounded—of all things—self-righteous.

“Y’know, Gracey, if you hadn’t—”

“I don’t want to hear it,” I said, interrupting her. “I heard enough. All I needed to hear was that you
planned
this, Mandarin!”

She took a cigarette from the pack on the dash. Instead of lighting it, she picked at it with her thumbnail, shaving off tobacco flakes. “I didn’t plan for it to go that far,” she said quietly.

“A real friend wouldn’t have planned anything at all.”

“I would never let anything happen to you. You know that.”

“Just a second ago, you weren’t sure if anything
had
. What were you thinking—that handing me over to some Washokey creep would make me trust you? Why couldn’t you have just explained it all to me? I didn’t need to experience it myself. You should have told me. I would have listened!”

“You wouldn’t have.”

“I would!” I kicked the dashboard, like a little kid throwing a tantrum. Mandarin’s pack of cigarettes fell to the floor.

Mandarin sighed and steered back onto the road. We drove the last few blocks to my house in silence. When she pulled into the bottom of my driveway, she turned off the engine and looked at me.

“Gracey, listen.… You’ve got to let me explain.”

I opened the passenger door and started to climb out.

“I needed you to leave with me,” she continued anyway. “I still need you. But I always felt like there was something keeping you here, some reason you couldn’t let go. And so I knew I had to show you how Washokey really is. How the people here, the guys …” With one hand, she folded the cigarette over her index finger, tearing it in half.

“I knew you needed to see for yourself.”

I shook my head. Her explanations were empty. Meaningless. Nothing but mosquito noise. Because that night, I had learned the third truth about Mandarin Ramey.

Sleeping with men she hated wasn’t ironic. It wasn’t one of her carefree fuck-yous, flipping off the people she claimed to hate. She wasn’t in control. Not her. Not really. Some deeper, damaging part of her was in charge. A part so intent on filling her empty spaces it was destroying her. And that night, it had come close to destroying me.

It was ugly and appalling. It was pathetic.

Why hadn’t I seen that before?

“Well, your plan backfired, didn’t it?” I slid all the way out and slammed the door. Then I screwed up my face and, through the open window, shouted words I thought would feel good—but in reality, they felt like knife pangs, not in her chest, but mine.

“Because you’re nothing but a goddamn selfish liar, Mandarin. And now I won’t go
anywhere
with you!”

Mandarin stared blankly back.

I didn’t shower, or wash my face, or even wipe the mud from my calves. I peed with the light off so I wouldn’t have to look in the mirror. I stuffed my dirty dress into the trash. Then I crawled into bed without pulling down the covers, curling up with my knees against my chest. I squinched my eyes shut.

But I couldn’t sleep.

I rolled out of bed, knelt beside my shoe box of rocks, and pried the lid open. I unfolded the paper bundle and dumped Mandarin’s arrowhead into my hand. Or rather, Mandarin’s
mother’s
arrowhead, regifted to me.