AFTER BREAKFAST, I BIKED TO BEEF'S HOUSE. His dad, Roy, answered the door.
"Well, well," he said. "Look what the dog drug in."
He thought that was funny, but then, he thought most everything he said was funny-or smart, or clever. He considered himself to be a pretty big deal, and most of Black Creek agreed. He wasn't rich like Tommy Lawson's daddy, but Roy Pierson was the wrestling coach at the high school, and he was good at it. Beef was the star of the team until he dropped out.
"Is Beef here?" I asked.
Roy stretched, his shirt hiking up to reveal his abs. His long hair was in a ponytail, and his frame was lean and mean, though on the smallish side for a man. Beef was built the same way, but Beef was a good guy, and goodness, rather than meanness, shone through him.
"You wanna see Beef, do ya?" he said, leaning against the door frame. "Whatcha wanna see that sack of shit for?"
I stood my ground.
"Aw, I'm kidding ya." He nudged my shoulder, making me rock back. "What's a fella gotta do to make you smile, dumplin'?"
"I was just wondering if Beef was here," I repeated.
Gwennie, Beef's little sister, appeared behind her daddy, peeking at me from under his propped up arm. Gwennie and I used to spend a lot of time together, and she told me things about how her daddy treated her. Nothing sick, just lots of yelling and hitting and cruel remarks. Just one more reason I didn't think Roy was "cool," like most of Beef's and Gwennie's friends did.
"Cat," Gwennie said from behind her daddy. She was surprised to see me. "What are you doing here?"
The sight of her made a pit open in my heart.
"Hey, Gwennie," I said. Her dishwater hair was shot through with blond and done up in an attempt at fancy. Half of it was falling down, framing her round face. "I like your hair. When'd you do the streaks?"
"'Bout two weeks ago. I used Sun In. You like it, for real?"
Roy grew bored and dropped his arm, making Gwennie have to duck to avoid being whacked. "I'll leave you girls to your girl talk," he said. "I've gotta see a man about a horse."
He moved past me in a way that required I step back. He sauntered to his truck, hopped in, and cranked the engine. He reversed out of the yard and onto the road, roaring away in a cloud of dust.
"He means get more beer," Gwennie said. She stepped aside. "Come on in."
I did, and it brought back memories. Same old linoleum on the floor. Same pictures hanging in the living room. The kitchen, where Gwennie led me, still smelled of bacon, even. Their kitchen always smelled like bacon.
"What's going on?" she said.
"Oh, you know," I said. "Nothing, really."
The lie felt awkward, because Gwennie and I used to be close, even though we were a grade apart and even though she was kind of not so bright. I didn't say that to be cruel. God gave everyone different gifts, that was all, and hers wasn't brain smarts. Something I learned from Gwennie was that being smart wasn't the only quality that mattered in a friend.
Anyway, we used to hang out in youth group and stuff. It was easy to make her giggle, and being around her was just… nice. She looked up to me. Then, in the summer after eighth grade, I dropped her cold, just like I dropped the rest of my friends.
"Is Beef here?" I asked.
"Nah, I don't know where he is." She opened the refrigerator and pulled out a plastic pitcher. "You thirsty? I just made some Crystal Light. Want some?"
"Um… sure," I said, taking a seat at the table.
She brought me a glass of bright yellow lemonade so fakely sweet it made my teeth hurt. She plopped down beside me, and before I even swallowed, she dove straight into talking about Patrick. She said how awful it was, just awful, and a lump rose in my throat. Unlike the Crystal Light, her reaction wasn't one bit artificial.
Most people were shocked and upset about Patrick's attack, but also excited, the way people got excited when they saw a car wreck, and the bloodier the better. But Gwennie had a big heart, same as Beef, despite being raised by her full-of-himself daddy and her hardly-ever-home mother, who was a nanny to some rich kids in Asheville.
She also had a big body. She'd grown a lot since we were thirteen. Unlike Beef, she'd always been plump, but now she had to angle her chair out from the kitchen table to make room for her thighs. Her breasts were big, too, and her upper arms puffed out of her tank top like marshmallows. I felt bad, knowing the sort of comments Roy surely made about her weight.
She was doing something about it, though. She told me so after we'd said all there was to say about Patrick. She wiped her eyes, blinked a few times, and pushed a fresh smile onto her round face.
"Guess what?" she said. "I've gone on a new diet, and it's awesome. I think it's really going to work. It's actually more of a lifestyle approach. Can you tell?"
Fondness made my lips curve up. A "lifestyle approach." She must have read the phrase in one of those magazine articles saying only eat grapefruit or only eat steak or don't eat anything at all, just drink diet lemonade all day long.
"Um, yeah," I said. "You look pretty, especially your hair."
"You look pretty," she said wistfully. "Gosh, I wish I had your figure. And eyes. And pretty much every single thing about you." She giggled. "Wanna trade?"
"Ha-ha," I said, pretending she was teasing. "How does the new diet work?"
She told me about it, enthusiasm animating her features. She was a pretty girl underneath her extra pounds.
"…which means that in three months I'll have dropped two full sizes," she marveled. "Can you imagine? And then, once I've gone down another couple of sizes, well…"
Instead of finishing her sentence, she blushed. A heavy duty, this-is-serious blush.
"Omigosh," I said, catching on. I shoved her shoulder. "Gwennie, you man-eater. Are you seeing someone?"
"No," she said giddily. She tried to stop smiling, but couldn't.
"Who is it? You know you have to tell me."
She shook her head.
"Gwennie."
She shook her head more, still beaming.
"Gwenn-ie," I sang.
"Hush," she said. "And don't you say a word. Promise?"
I lifted my eyebrows and didn't, just for the pleasure of teasing her.
"I'm serious, Cat," she said. "You can't tell a soul, especially with him laid up in the hospital and everyone and their mama already gabbing about him. Okay?"
My eyebrows came back down as I tried to put together the meaning of what she'd said.
She realized her goof a moment too late. "Never mind," she said quickly. "I didn't just say that. Nobody's gabbing about no one."
I half-smiled, because it was so Gwennie to think she could rewind the tape and erase her part of the conversation. Then the humor of the situation dribbled away. Gwennie had a crush on Patrick? How could Gwennie have a crush on Patrick?
He was crushworthy for sure, with his green eyes and light brown hair. He was the sweetest boy in all of Black Creek, and probably all of North Carolina. But he wasn't just laid up in the hospital. He was gay.
I didn't know what to say. Patrick and Gwennie would never be a couple. But what would be gained by telling her that?
When she was younger, maybe six, she and Beef came over for dinner along with their daddy. Afterward, we kids went outside while Aunt Tildy did the dishes and Roy and my daddy had a drink. Beef showed off his new .22 to Christian, and Gwennie and I chased after the tree frogs that come out at dusk. She caught one, and she was so happy she squealed. Then it peed on her, and she dropped it. When she lunged for it, she stepped right on it. Squish.
"Come on, Gwennie," Beef pleaded when she wouldn't stop crying and wouldn't stop crying. He threw an anxious glance at our house. If Roy heard Gwennie fussing, Beef would be blamed for not taking care of his sister, and later he'd get a beating.
Gwennie bawled. She scooped up the dead frog and tried to poke it back into shape, until Beef, losing his patience, slapped it out of her hands.
"You killed it, so quit. You can't bring it back to life."
I remembered how Christian came over and put his arm around her. He was in the fourth grade and knew stuff. He had yet to lose the title of best big brother in the world.
"It's in heaven now," he told Gwennie. "If you stop crying, I'll bury it, and then I'll catch a new one for you."
Gwennie went from wailing to sniffling, from sniffling to a few last gulping swallows.
Later, when we gathered on the front porch for dessert, I peeked at Gwennie to see how she was doing. Well, she was gobbling down her slice of Aunt Tildy's homemade pound cake without a care in the world. Not only that, but she was sitting on the floor in front of my daddy, leaning against his legs. Her own daddy was one chair away, but she'd taken mine.
"That's some cake, huh?" my daddy said, watching her eat. "We need to get you to the state fair this summer. Sign you up for the pie-eating contest-what do you think of that?"
He said it nice. She giggled.
"Aw, she knows how to pack in the food, all right," Roy said. "Shoulda named her Patty. Fatty Patty."
"She knows good eating, that's all," my daddy said. He rumpled her hair. "Ain't that right, Miss Gwennie?"
It should have been my hair he was playing with, not hers.
I used my pious voice to say, "Well, I'm just glad you're feeling better, Gwennie."
"Huh?" she said.
"About that frog you killed. That poor itty-bitty frog."
Christian kicked me.
Aunt Tildy said, "What's that?"
"Nothing," Christian said.
But Gwennie, she drew her eyebrows together and said, "What frog?" and I have forever after been amazed at how Gwennie erased that dead frog right out of her mind.
Except, did she really? Maybe she was just very, very good at burying things that were ugly. Not that I'd know a thing about that lifestyle approach.
I downed the last of my fluorescent yellow lemonade and studied my once-upon-a-time-friend, who was lonely and fat and had a crush on a boy impossibly out of reach. And yet, he'd defended her at the Come 'n' Go, when those college boys called her a fag hag.
"Why are you looking at me like that?" she said.
I didn't know I was. I cleared my expression and moved my hand to hers. It was as if I was watching a movie, only I was the one on the screen. I wondered how long it had been since she'd been touched, not counting being smacked around by her daddy.
"Being backhanded, that's the worst," she once told me. She confided in me a lot back when we were kids. I suspected she'd confide in me again, if she had anything to confide.
"You have pretty hands," I said. She did, too. Pale and soft and pretty, nothing bad about them at all. "I wish I had pretty hands."
"You do," she said. "You need a manicure, is all. You want me to give you one right now? Hold on."
She got to her feet, left the kitchen, and returned with a plastic purse filled with polishes and lotions and those thingies you put between your toes to keep them separated.
"Give me your hand," she commanded.
I gave her my hand. She got to work, and it was just one girl painting another girl's nails. Except it was more than that, too.
I told her about running into Tommy at church. I mentioned how he was out with Patrick on the night Patrick got beat up, along with Beef and my brother and some others. I asked if she knew that already, and she said yeah. I asked how late they stayed out. She said she didn't know about the others, but that Beef stayed out real late.
"Like, when did he get in?" I said. It felt nice, the way she was rubbing circles into my skin. The lotion smelled like coconut.
"Dunno. I was asleep. But Beef's always out late."
"I wish he hadn't dropped out of school," I said.
"You and me both," Gwennie said.
Beef didn't like school, but he studied enough to get by. He was this close to a high school diploma, with a wrestling scholarship to Appalachian State waiting in the wings, when he blew out his knee in a meet and threw it all away.
"I just wish… gosh, so many things," Gwennie said. "I wish he hadn't dropped out school. I wish his knee didn't get hurt. I wish he'd let me go out with him and the others last week."
The misery in her eyes told me what she was thinking. Like me, she wondered if she could have stopped the bad stuff from happening if she'd been there.
"But Beef wouldn't let me," Gwennie said. "He never lets me hang out with him and his friends anymore."
"Christian doesn't like me hanging around, either," I offered.
"But you like being alone. I don't."
I opened my mouth, then shut it, unsure where the truth lay. I didn't like being alone. Being alone was slightly better than having to deal with people, that's all. Or so I'd convinced myself.
"Beef hates it here," Gwennie said. "Hates everything. He used to be fun, but now he's like…" She lifted her shoulders. "He's not the same as he used to be."
Gwennie stopped rubbing my hand, though she didn't let it go. "Patrick tried to help him. Tried to remind him of the bright side of things, you know?"
"That's Patrick," I agreed.
Her features softened, and I realized she had it bad for Patrick. She pined for him-an old-fashioned word, but the right one. It was as if the ache of it pulled her away from me, leaving her… where?
Some place as dreamy and flimsy as a cloud.
"He's such a good person," she said earnestly. "He was always here at the house, talking to Beef and trying to get him out of his depression. But sometimes? When Beef wasn't here? Patrick would stay anyway, and me and him would just talk and talk."
Talk and talk. I knew about that, although surely it was different when it had been me and Patrick.
"About what?" I said.
"Any old thing. Life. Beef. Me and my new diet." She squeezed my hand. "Oh, Cat. We had ourselves such a time when it was just the two of us. And he felt the same way."
I got a twisty feeling, thinking she was being awfully braggy about it. Too braggy. I thought of my daddy patting her when she sat at his feet, and the way she looked at me as he did.
She looked at me the same way now, tilting her head and watching me from under her eyelashes. A hank of hair from the messy side of her updo draped the curve of her cheek and kept going, coiling down over her neck like a rope.
"He knows me better than anyone in the world, just the same as I know him," she stated. Her tone was a private, moist thing. "It's true, Cat. We're soul mates."
Maybe I pressed my lips together. Maybe I pulled away from her, just slightly. Whatever I did, it made her features harden up like that special chocolate sauce you pour on ice cream, where it comes out of the squeeze-bottle velvety smooth and then straight away solidifies into a shell.
She released my hand. "You can't steal him away from me, neither."
"Huh?"
"He's not yours anymore, so you don't get no say over it."
"He never was mine," I said, thinking the exact opposite. He had been mine once. I cut that tie, so Gwennie was right that I had no say over him anymore. But there was no way that Gwennie, of all people, could have found the loose thread and latched it to herself.
"You don't believe me," she accused.
I didn't contradict her, and her eyes turned mean.
"You ain't better than me, Cat," she said, spitting the words. "You think you are, but you ain't."
I rubbed the headache spot on my forehead.
She saw that I was weary of her, and she jutted out her chin. "Remember when Patrick came to school wearing those pants?" she said.
Those pants. It was a low blow-and not only that, but Gwennie hadn't even been there. She'd been in middle school still, so anything she knew about those pants came to her secondhand.
"You helped him pick them out, didn't you?" she accused. "Y'all went to the Sharing House together and went shopping, just the two of you."
Her tone was poison. Was she mad we hadn't invited her? All these years later, was she jealous of the connection Patrick and I once had?
"I'd hardly call it shopping," I muttered.
"What's that?"
"Nothing." Just, you couldn't call it shopping when it was a charity warehouse where every item was free and came from some rich person's throwaway bag.
"Well, I wouldn't have let him get those faggy pants," she declared. "I wouldn't have let him, but you did. I bet you said, 'Oh, Patrick, those pants are hilarious. You have to.'"
The voice she used for me was awful: husky and flirtatious. And the word faggy? It was so wrong.
"You shouldn't say that," I said.
"Why not? It's true."
"No, I meant…" My words dribbled off. I stared at the table for a long time.
"You're right," I said. "I'm not better than you."
She launched right in. "Dang straight. If I'd been with him, I'd have helped him pick something handsome. You think your poo don't stink, Cat Robinson, but let me tell you-"
She broke off as she replayed my confession. If we were in a cartoon, a fluffy question mark would pop up over her head. She squinted at me. "I'm sorry, what?"
"You are a good person, Gwennie. Patrick, too. He's lucky to have you for a friend."
"O-oh," she stammered.
I rose from the table. "I should get going. Can I use your bathroom first?"
She nodded, a bobble-head Gwennie doll. "Yeah, sure.Anything you need." Color crept from her neck to her face, a darker red than her giddy crush-blush. "And, um, I'm sorry for being nasty."
"You weren't. It's fine."
"I'm just super stressed," she said. "The diet… and Patrick…"
"It's fine. Back in a sec, 'kay?"
In the bathroom, which needed cleaning, I peed and washed my hands. Then, leaving the water on, I crouched and opened the cabinet under the sink. I felt around until I found what I was looking for: a box of Tampax Pearl Ultras.
Gwennie got her period when she was eleven, and she made me go with her to buy supplies. If she had something private she wanted to keep safe, like a perfume sample or a pretty stone, she'd hide it among her tampons, knowing Beef and Roy would never find it.
I lifted the cardboard flap of the box. Tampons, tampons, tampons. Rows of little white soldiers. Except-there. A slim tube of paper, bound with a pink ponytail holder. Carefully, I slid off the elastic and unrolled the paper.
Good golly, I thought as I took it in. It was a collage of pictures cut from magazines, all of models so skinny they looked like skeletons. Bony rib cages. Sharp and dangerous collarbones. Thighs the size of my forearm, forearms like straws.
Worse were the personal touches Gwennie had added. She'd filled every bit of white space with words and quotes meant to motivate her, I guess.
Thinspiration! she'd printed at the top of the page. And then tips, like, Freeze your food, it makes it take longer to eat. Or, Pinch yourself every time you think about ice cream. Or, Take a picture of yourself naked and look at it every day, and don't worry if it makes you throw up. Just be sure to brush your teeth after.
At the bottom of the page, she'd written, Think thin. Think Patrick! And then, in loopy cursive, Mrs. Patrick's Wife.
Carefully, I rolled up her "Thinspiration" sheet and tucked it back among the tampons.
My heart, as I closed the cabinet and rose to my feet, was a small dead creature. If I could bury it in the woods, I would.
