Little Fires Everywhere (18 page)

This philosophy had carried her through life and, she had always felt, had served her quite well. Of course she'd had to give up a few things here and there. But she had a beautiful house, a steady job, a loving husband, a brood of healthy and happy children; surely that was worth the trade. Rules existed for a reason: if you followed them, you would succeed; if you didn't, you might burn the world to the ground.

And yet here was Mia, causing poor Linda such trauma, as if she hadn't been through enough, as if Mia were any kind of example of how to
mother. Dragging her fatherless child from place to place, scraping by on menial jobs, justifying it by insisting to herself—by insisting to everyone—she was making
Art
. Probing other people's business with her grimy hands. Stirring up trouble. Heedlessly throwing sparks. Mrs. Richardson seethed, and deep inside her, the hot speck of fury that had been carefully banked within her burst into flame. Mia did whatever she wanted, Mrs. Richardson thought, and what would result? Heartbreak for her oldest friend. Chaos for everyone.
You can't just do what you want,
she thought. Why should Mia get to, when no one else did?

It was only this loyalty to the McCulloughs, she would tell herself, the desire to see justice for her oldest friend, that led her to step over the line at last: as soon as she could get away, she would take a trip to Pennsylvania and visit Mia's parents. She would find out, once and for all, who this woman was.

T
hose days, it seemed to Pearl that everything was saturated with sex; everywhere it oozed out, like dirty honey. Even the news was full of it. On
The Today Show,
a host discussed the rumors about the president and a stained blue dress; even more salacious stories circulated about a cigar and where it might have been placed. Schools across the country dispatched social workers to “help young people cope with what they're hearing,” but in the hallways of Shaker Heights High School, the mood was hilarity rather than trauma.
What's the difference between Bill Clinton and a screwdriver? A screwdriver turns in screws, and . . .
She wondered, sometimes, if the whole country had fallen into a Jerry Springer episode.
What do you get when you cross Ted Kaczynski with Monica Lewinsky? A dynamite blowjob!

Between math and biology and English, people traded jokes as gleefully as children with baseball cards, and every day the jokes became more explicit.
Did you hear about the Oval Office Cigars? They're ribbed and lubricated.
Or:
Monica, whispering to her dry cleaner: Can you get this stain out for me? Dry cleaner: Come again? Monica: No, it's mustard.
Pearl blushed, but pretended she'd heard it before. Everyone seemed so blasé about saying words she'd never even dared to whisper. Everyone, it
seemed, was fluent in innuendo. It confirmed what she'd always thought: everyone knew more about sex than it appeared, everyone except her.

It was in this mood that Pearl, in mid-February, found herself walking to the Richardson house alone. Izzy would be at Mia's, poring over a contact sheet, trimming prints, absorbing Mia's attention, making space for Pearl to be elsewhere. Moody had failed a pop quiz on
Jane Eyre
and had stayed after to retake it. Mr. and Mrs. Richardson were at work. And Lexie, of course, was otherwise occupied. When Pearl had passed her at her locker, Lexie had said, “See you later, Brian and I are—hanging out,” and in Pearl's mind all the nebulous things that were swirling in the air rushed in to fill that pause. She was still thinking about it when she got to the Richardsons' and found only Trip at home, stretched out across the couch in the sunroom, long and lean, math book spread on the cushion beside him. He had kicked off his tennis shoes but still had on his white tube socks, and she found this oddly endearing.

A month ago, Pearl would have backed out quickly and left him alone, but any other girl, she was sure, would have told Trip to move over, plopped down on the couch beside him. So she stayed, teetering on the edge of a decision. They were alone in the house: anything could happen, she realized, and the thought was intoxicating. “Hey,” she said. Trip looked up and grinned.

“Hey, nerd,” he said. “C'mere, help a guy out.” He sat up and moved over to make room and nudged his notebook toward her. Pearl took it and examined the problem, keenly aware that their knees were touching.

“Okay, this is easy,” she said. “So to find
x
—” She bent over the notebook, correcting his work, and Trip watched her. She had always struck him as a mousy little thing, cute even, but not a girl he'd thought much about, beyond the baseline of teenage hormones that made anything female worth looking at. But today there was something different about
Pearl, something about the way she held herself. Her eyes were quick and bright—had they always been that way? She flicked a lock of hair out of her face and he wondered what it might feel like to touch it, gently, as you might stroke a bird. With three quick strokes she sketched the problem on the page—across, down, and then a sinuous line that made him think suddenly of lips and hips and other curves.

“Do you get it?” Pearl was saying, and Trip found, to his amazement, that he did.

“Hey,” he said. “You're pretty good at this.”

“I'm good at lots of things,” she said, and then he kissed her.

It was Trip who tipped her backward onto the couch, knocking his book to the floor, who put his hands on, then under, her shirt. But it was Pearl who, some time later, wriggled out from beneath him, took him by the hand, and led him to his room.

In Trip's half-made bed, in Trip's room with yesterday's shirt on the floor, with the lights off and the shade half closed, striping both their bodies with sunlight, she let instinct take over. It was as if, for the first time in her life, her thoughts had turned off and her body was moving on its own. Trip was the hesitant one, fumbling over the clasp of her bra, though surely he'd unhooked many before. She interpreted this—rightly—as a sign that he was nervous, that this moment meant something to him, and found it sweet.

“Tell me when to stop,” he said, and she said, “Don't.”

The moment, when it came, was a flash of pain, the sudden physicality of both their bodies, of his weight on her, of her knees levered against his hips. It was quick. The pleasure—this time, at least—for her came afterward, when he gave a huge shudder and collapsed against her, his face pressed against her neck. Clinging to her, as if driven by an intense, unshakable need. It thrilled her, the thought of what they'd just done, the
effect she could have on him. She kissed him on the side of his ear, and without opening his eyes he gave her a sleepy smile, and she wondered briefly what it might be like to fall asleep beside him, to wake up next to him every morning.

“Wake up,” she said. “Someone will be home soon.”

They put on their clothes quickly, in silence, and only then did Pearl began to feel embarrassed. Would her mother know? she wondered. Would she look different somehow? Would everyone see her and read it in her face, what she'd done? Trip tossed her her T-shirt and she tugged it over her head, suddenly shy at the thought of his eyes on her body. “I better go,” she said.

“Wait,” Trip said, and gently untangled her hair from her collar. “That's better.” They grinned at each other shyly, then both looked away. “See you tomorrow,” he said, and Pearl nodded and slipped out the door.

That evening, Pearl watched her mother with a wary eye. She had checked her reflection in the bathroom mirror again and again and was fairly sure there was nothing different about her to the naked eye. Whatever had changed in her—and she felt both exactly the same and completely different—was on the inside. Still, every time Mia looked at her, she tensed. As soon as dinner was over, she retreated to her bedroom, claiming she had a lot of homework, to mull over what had happened. Were she and Trip dating now? she wondered. Had he used her? Or—and this was the perplexing thought—had she used him? She wondered if, when she saw him next, she would still be as drawn to him as before. If, when he saw her, he would pretend nothing had happened—or worse, laugh in her face. She tried to replay every moment of that afternoon: every movement of their hands, every word they'd said and breath they'd taken. Should
she talk to him, or avoid him until he sought her out? These questions spun through her head all night, and in the morning, when Moody arrived to walk to school, she did not look him in the eye.

All day long, Pearl did her best impression of normal. She kept her head bent over her notes; she did not raise her hand. As each class drew to an end, she braced herself in case she ran into Trip in the hall, rehearsed what she'd say. She never did, and each time she made it to her next class without seeing him, she breathed a sigh of relief. Beside her, Moody noticed only that she was quiet and wondered if something was upsetting her. Around her, the buzz of high school life continued unchanged, and after school she went home, saying she didn't feel well. Whatever happened the next time she saw Trip, she didn't want it to be in front of Lexie and Moody. Mia noticed her quietness, too, wondered if she was coming down with something, and sent her to bed early, but Pearl lay awake until late, and in the morning, when she went to wash her face, she saw dark circles under her eyes and was sure Trip would never look at her again.

But at the end of the day, Trip appeared at her locker. “What're you up to,” he asked, almost shyly, and she flushed and knew exactly what he was asking
.

“Just hanging out,” she said. “With Moody.” She toyed with the dial of her combination lock, twisting it this way and that, and decided to be bold again. “Unless you've got a better idea?”

Trip traced his fingers along the blue painted edge of the locker door. “Is your mom home?”

Pearl nodded. “Izzy'll be over there, too.” Separately each ran through a mental list of places: none where they could be alone. After a moment, Trip said, “I might know somewhere.” He pulled his pager from his pocket and fished a quarter from his bookbag. Pagers were strictly forbidden at the high school, which meant that all the cool kids now had them.
“Meet me at the pay phone when you're done, okay?” He sprinted off, and Pearl gathered her books and shut her locker. Her heart was pounding as if she were a child playing tag—though she wasn't sure if she was being chased or doing the chasing. She cut through the Egress and toward the front of the school, where the pay phone hung outside the auditorium. Trip was just hanging up.

“Who did you call?” Pearl asked, and Trip suddenly looked abashed.

“You know Tim Michaels?” he said. “We've been on soccer together since we were ten. His parents don't get home till eight, and sometimes he brings a date down to the rec room in the basement.” He stopped, and Pearl understood.

“Or sometimes he lets you bring one?” she said.

Trip flushed and stepped closer, so she was nearly in his arms. “A long time ago,” he said. “You're the only girl I want to bring down there now.” With one finger he traced her collarbone. It was so out of character, and so earnest, that she nearly kissed him right there. At that moment, the pager in his hand buzzed. All Pearl could see was a string of numbers, but it meant something to Trip. The kids who carried pagers communicated in code, spelling out their messages with digits.
CAN I USE YOUR PLACE,
Trip had tapped into the pay phone, and Tim, changing in the locker room before basketball practice, glanced at his buzzing pager and raised an eyebrow. He hadn't noticed Trip with anyone new lately.
K WHO IS SHE,
he'd sent back, but Trip chose not to answer and dropped the pager back into his pocket.

“He says it's fine.” He tugged at one of the straps of Pearl's bookbag. “So?”

Pearl found, suddenly, that she didn't care about whatever girls had come before. “Are you driving?” she asked.

They were at the back door of Tim Michaels's house before she remembered Moody. He would be wondering where she was, why she hadn't met him at the science wing as usual so they could walk together. He would wait a while and then head home and he wouldn't find her there either. She would have to tell him something, she realized, and then Trip had retrieved the spare key from under the back doormat, Trip had opened the back door and was taking her hand, and she forgot about Moody and followed him inside.

“Are we dating?” she asked afterward, as they lay together on the couch in Tim Michaels's rec room. “Or is this just a thing?”

“What, do you want my letter jacket or something?”

Pearl laughed. “No.” Then she grew serious. “I just want to know what I'm getting into.”

Trip's eyes met hers, level and clear and deep brown. “I'm not planning on seeing anyone else. Is that what you wanted to know?”

She had never seen him so sincere. “Okay. Me either.” After a moment, she said, “Moody is going to freak out. So's Lexie. So will everyone.”

Trip considered. “Well,” he said, “we don't have to tell anyone.” He bent his head to hers so that their foreheads touched. In a few moments, Pearl knew, they would have to get up; they would have to dress and go back outside into the world where there were so many other people besides them.

“I don't mind being a secret,” she said, and kissed him.

Trip kept his word: although Tim Michaels pestered him repeatedly, he refused to divulge the name of his new mystery girl, and when his other friends asked where he was headed after school, he made excuses. Pearl,
too, told no one. What could she have said? Part of her wanted to tell Lexie, to reveal her membership in this exclusive club of the experienced, to which they both now belonged. But Lexie would demand every intimate detail, would tell Serena Wong and everyone in the school would know within a week. Izzy, of course, would be disgusted. Moody—well, there was no question of her telling Moody. For some time, Pearl had been increasingly aware that Moody's feelings toward her were different, in quality and quantity, than hers toward him. A month before, as they fought through the crowd at a movie theater—they'd gone to see
Titanic
at last, and the lobby was mobbed—he'd reached back and seized her hand so they wouldn't be separated, and though she was glad to have someone ferrying her through the mass of people, she had felt something in the way he'd clasped her hand, so firmly, so proprietarily, and she'd known. She'd let him keep her hand until they broke through to the door of the theater, and then gently disentangled it under the guise of reaching into her purse for some lip balm. During the movie—as Leonardo DiCaprio sketched Kate Winslet in the nude, as the camera zoomed in on a hand smudging a fogged car window—she felt Moody stiffen and glance over at her, and she dug her hand into the bag of popcorn, as if bored by the tragic spectacle onscreen. Afterward, when Moody suggested they stop off at Arabica for some coffee, she'd told him she had to get home. The next morning, at school, everything seemed back to normal, but she knew something had changed, and she held this knowledge inside her like a splinter, something she was careful not to touch.