The Blessed (8 page)

Catherine smiled back sheepishly.

“Why’d you break up?”

“The usual. Backstabbing bandmates. Domineering boyfriends. Out-of-control egos. So I split,” CeCe said almost wistfully. “Mostly I just didn’t think they were into the music as much as me. And here I am.”

“I guess it’s really hard to know what you want at such a young age,” Catherine said sympathetically. “Or ever, for that matter.”

“Really? I knew what I wanted to do at five years old,” CeCe shot back harshly, never one to coddle wafflers. “If it’s in you, it finds you. Or you find it. If it doesn’t . . . ”

Catherine was stung. CeCe’s diatribe felt a little too personal. More like an attack. But it was inspiring also, Catherine thought, in its own way. CeCe bought the rock-and-roll myth. Catherine could see that. A true believer. She was born to do what she was doing. She just knew it. And no one could convince her otherwise. Despite the self-assuredness in what CeCe said, however, the look of hurt in her expression also spoke volumes.

“Your parents don’t seem to like those kids hanging around. The window shades are always pulled down and they never speak to any of them.”

“No surprise there,” Cecilia said uncomfortably. “They don’t speak to me, either.”

“Oh,” Catherine said, sensing she might have hit a nerve. “Don’t they approve of what you’re doing?”

“Approve?” CeCe said, her voice rising and nose crinkling up like she’d just smelled raw sewage. The word almost gave her the chills. Whatever the opposite of approval was,
that’s how her parents felt about her choices and how little support they gave her. They had provided a nice house, nice clothes, nice things. Everything but what she craved. It’s why she ran away. She’d stopped seeking their approval the minute she got off the bus at the Port Authority. The fact that Catherine even used the word told Cecilia everything she needed to know about the girl. She still measured herself by her parents’ standard. Naïve. Dependent. Still had their voice in her head. That could be a dangerous thing in this town. Pleasers were eaten alive and spit out like rat guts on the C line.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to pry,” Catherine said.

“It’s cool. It was a lifetime ago, y’know. I’m over it. I get all the approval I need from this,” CeCe said, nodding at her guitar case.

Catherine could see that CeCe had exhausted whatever patience and politeness she’d mustered and was pretty much done with the memory lane chitchat.

“So, any advice?”

Cecilia paused, weighing her words.

“Go home, Catherine,” Cecilia advised with a tight smile as she pulled a pint bottle of vodka from her coat pocket and raised it in a faux toast. “Just go home.”

3
Agnes felt like a car alarm going off after midnight as she walked down the hallowed corridors of Immaculate Heart Academy, the bandages wrapping her wrists her siren. The burden was almost too much to bear, even more than the seeping wounds that threatened to stain her history book through her dark blue school uniform sweater.

Being back in school was humiliating, but it was still far preferable to her than being at home. Nevertheless, the cuts she was expecting from classmates were certain to be deeper and more painful than any she’d inflicted on herself.

“Accessorizing?” came the sly whisper from a two-dimensional blonde traipsing down the hallway, swirling her finger in a circle and eyeing Agnes’s wrists. The more they commented, the more she hiked up her sleeves, defiantly offering herself up to their ridicule.

“Love your stitch bracelet.”

She was pelted. With words.

“Sadster.”

“Next time, try harder.”

She took it. Each tongue-lashing. Closing her eyes briefly after each one, recovering, and then walking forward.

“Choose life!” another mocked, holding her comparative lit book up like a fevered preacher bangs his Bible.

“Classholes,” Agnes mumbled under her breath. She kept walking, keeping her focus forward. Taking everything that they threw at her with strength and dignity. There was a certain pride in being willing to die for something or someone, she told herself. It made the berating a little more bearable, anyway.

Her friend Hazel came up beside her. “Guys—can’t live with ’em and can’t die for ’em.”

“Not now, Hazel.” Agnes smiled. “I’ll talk to you later.”

“Let’s hope so!” Hazel said, then burst out laughing at her own joke.

Agnes continued down the hall; she watched everyone watching her. No one approached her. She felt betrayed.

It was hard for her to fault any of them though. Not that she was particularly forgiving, because she wasn’t. It’s just that these weren’t exactly enemies. Not friends either really, but more than acquaintances. People she hung out with after school or at parties or did group profile pictures with, tongues wagging outward suggestively, giving some unseen someone the finger. Poring over horoscope books
and studying numerology, as it pertained to certain guys and whether they were liked by them or not. They were part of her crowd and she was part of theirs, whatever that meant. Fun but numb inside, all of them. She wouldn’t have expected much sympathy from them even if they knew how to express it. She knew what they were like and what she could be like, from time to time. It just sucked when the tables turned. Bad.

The bell rang announcing the next class. She was saved, she thought, feeling more as if she were in a boxing ring and not a high school hallway. She didn’t expect much quarter and didn’t get any. Protect yourself at all times, as they say. She’d been beaten down but threw her guard up as she saw him coming around the corner. She turned back around and hoped the adrenaline pump inside her was good for a second whirl.

“I can hear you rolling your eyes,” she said, feeling Sayer come up behind her.

“Hey,” he said, trying to act concerned.

“Been crying?” she mocked, noticing his red eyes and knowing full well he was stoned.

“How are you?” Sayer asked.

“More to the point, how are you?” Agnes responded.

Sayer was slightly built and long-haired; he was generally dazed and nervous-looking with a toothy perma-smile as if he were almost about to be caught doing something wrong in mid-laugh but wasn’t exactly sure what. His natural demeanor suited this situation perfectly. Her nonchalance
was totally unexpected. He thought he might get read the riot act, but Agnes seemed to be offering a peace pipe.

“I’m okay,” he answered.

“Oh, that’s a relief. I assumed you must have broken your fingers or your legs or something.”

She clung to the burning heart charm under her bandaged wrist and outlined it with her finger as she talked to him.

“Huh?”

“Yeah, otherwise, I thought for sure you’d come by for a visit or call or even just text,” Agnes went on. “Then it occurred to me it must be solar flares.”

“Solar flares?”

“You know, screwing with the Internet. I mean, it had to be something pretty drastic for you to not come see me or even ask how I was doing, right?”

“Opening up your wrists is pretty drastic, Agnes,” he half whispered, topping his insensitivity off with a nervous giggle. “It was, like, scary. I didn’t know what to do, or what to say.”

“So you did nothing,” she said. “You said nothing.”

“Not exactly nothing,” he said. “I was thinking about you the whole time.”

“So I’m supposed to be telepathic now? Thinking about me? When? Between bong hits and hos?”

For the first time, she was able to see him for the selfish, disheveled, stupefied, and unreliable stoner her mom so vehemently disapproved of. The pointlessness of the
conversation took her totally out of body and she began to beat herself up for being so stupid and impulsive, for her moments of weakness or rebellion, but if any good had come of this self-destructive episode, it was that the brain fog from this relationship had lifted. Thank God she hadn’t slept with him. At last, something she and her mother could agree on.

“Did it hurt?” he asked slowly, running his finger along his own wrist for emphasis.

“Not as much as it does now.”

“I guess I’m a pretty lame excuse for a guy.”

“Just
some
guy?” she said in a tone that parents and lawyers often use when asking a leading question. “You were supposed to be
the
guy.”

He wasn’t great at thinking on his feet, and her sarcastic inquiry was met with awkward apologies.

“I’m sorry, okay?” he whined, the most authentic emotion she could ever actually remember getting from him.

“That’s it?” she hissed. “You cheated on me!”

“I never said we were exclusive.”

“You knew how I felt about you.”

“It was just too much pressure, y’know. All the love stuff,” Sayer said. “I just wanted to have some fun.”

“Does this look like fun?” Agnes screamed loudly enough to stop the between-class traffic clogging the halls, holding her bandages up to his face.

Sayer just hung his head.

“It’s not worth it,” Agnes said, turning her back on him
and rummaging through her locker. “I guess you were just an excuse. For me.”

“Forgive me?” he asked, reaching for her shoulder, mustering up his most concerned face. “Please.”

Startled by the sympathetic gesture, she looked him over and honestly thought about it for a second. He was just doing him. He was sorry, at least as sorry as it was possible for him to be. She could see that, even in his blank expression and glassy eyes. But he had now entered “what was I thinking?” territory in her head. The worst place for any guy to be.

“My mother was right about you,” Agnes said, almost choking on her words.

“At least you finally admit it. We both know, this was never about me.”

“Don’t turn it around,” she said, tears beginning to flow more from embarrassment than hurt. “You used me. I believed you.”

“No, actually, I didn’t get the chance to
use
you, remember?”

“So maybe if I would have slept with you, you might have cared? What a joke,” she nearly growled, gripping his arm with force.

He shuffled around, pouting in place with his head down for a second like a little boy, waiting for his time-out to be over. She released his arm and pushed him away from her.

“I almost died for you,” Agnes said.

“I almost waited for you,” he said.

As if they were of equal importance.

7
Lucy was immediately ushered into the VIP area, as usual, at Sacrifice, the afterhours DUMBO club. Both bridges—the Brooklyn and the Manhattan—illuminated the dark space, creating auras around the celebrity guests and patrons. She was wearing rhinestone drop earrings with several gold spikes radiating out of the bottom of each. Her hair was freshly colored blond—sleek, straight, and shiny. She was wearing a short gray couture tunic dress with fox fur sleeves dyed royal blue. Her suede stilettos were dyed the same blue, with gold spiked heels to match the ones coming out of her earrings.

It is amazing,
she thought,
how quickly you can become accustomed to A-list treatment, whether you deserve it or not, or to ultimately losing it.
Everyone did at some point. It was like death. Always looming and eventually your fate. Even more amazing was the short ride from getting it to demanding it to needing it. It was as addictive as any drug.

As she looked around for someone she really knew well, there were few hellos. Just stares from underage insiders with fast-food opinions, Botoxed curiosity hounds, and surgically rerouted Joker faces with etched bellies, unnaturally arched brows, and swollen lips framing tight, twisted-up smiles impossible to discern from frowns. Digital attention-seekers all, with a million questions they were dying to ask, the answers to which they were dying to sell to the highest bidder. It was a cage match of ambition more intense than the climb up any corporate ladder or high school hierarchy.
A bloodsport that smelled more like expensive perfume than perspiration.

The competitiveness was palpable, viral. She recognized it in others because she was one of them, one of the afflicted. Riding any wave that would take them to the golden shore of their Fifth Avenue fantasies. It didn’t matter whether they caught a clean one in or tumbled and crashed on the sand, they were there just the same. Different day, same night. All the same.