Margarette (Violet) Read online

  “I just said hi, I guess,” Julie says justifying, and hangs her head a little.

  “He said hi to you?” Alice asks Julie.

  “Yes,” Julie says, also nodding her head. She must be so proud of this guy’s response. Margarette closes her eyes for a second in disbelief.

  “What about it?” Margarette asks, stepping into the conversation.

  “What about what?” Julie counters. “This doesn’t concern you.”

  Alice isn’t so brutal, but reinforces Julie’s opinion. “Uh, it’s Tommy. He’s a legend on the football team,” she says, as if discrediting Margarette for never being on cheer. In truth, none of them were at this point.

  “And?”

  “And not just anyone talks to Tommy,” Alice says. “We know him from cheering.”

  “Like I said, it doesn’t concern you. He’s out of your league,” Julie says.

  “Oh-kay,” Margarette says rolling her eyes, but doesn’t dispute out loud. She shrugs as if she doesn’t care. “Go get him, then.”

  They all go round to the front of the gas station while Margarette fumes internally. Who are these girls to think they’re better than she is? To hear that she can’t have something makes her want it that much more. Not that she cares about the guy. She has seen Tommy before, of course; he graduated only a year before. Other than his dad being rich, she doesn’t think there’s anything special about him.

  As they walk back to the pumps, Margarette sees a dark black Chevy smeared with mud and dust. So this guy has so much money, yet his car is still dirty just like every other car driven down the little town’s dirt roads. Coyote Falls is the smallest of small towns. Only the areas by the old railroads are paved properly; the rest is a patchwork of gravel and dirt.

  Staring at the dirty car, Margarette wonders why the girls are shunning her from him. Tragic, she thinks. It’s just a boy.

  Alice and Julie are slowly walking up to the pumps as if they were having trouble putting one foot in front of the other, strutting as if they were models on a runway. Margarette steps on the smoke and walks into the sunlight ahead of them with a confident girly strut. The filthy car is next to Alice’s mom’s dusty wood-paneled Dodge caravan.

  She notices the football legend guy’s car isn’t pumping gas, but is parked next to the pump. The license plate is smeared with mud and hard to see, but everyone in town knows the car has his father’s name on it. GALLAGR. Rumors were that they had enough money to make the entire Gallager name fit on the plate, but didn’t pull favors with the state just to try and fit in with normal folks. Margarette looks back at the attendant and doesn’t see anyone at the counter either.

  Alice and Julie finally catch up with her, disappointed that Tommy isn’t there anymore. They look around. Julie mumbles something that Margarette doesn’t catch.

  Alice grits her teeth. “Where—is—he.”

  “He was here,” Julie says, with a low growl.

  Margarette smirks; she can’t figure out who they’re angry with. She watches the recently retired cheerleader glide up to the guy’s Chevy and squint as she walks up closer. Alice whispers something in Julie’s ear. Julie’s eyes flash in the light as she turns towards Alice.

  “Go pay; I’ll pump,” Margarette says.

  “You pay,” Julie offers for her.

  “No, we’ll pay,” Alice says, with a meaningful glance at Julie. The debate ends with their overt look to the store, presumably thinking Tommy must be inside.

  Margarette instinctively shakes her head, then squeezes the pump a few times making a loud clicking noise, and a frustrated gasp.

  In the end, both ex-cheer enthusiasts walk towards the store laughing as if they just heard a joke. Clearly a ploy to appear more interesting to a guy they hardly know.

  Margarette stands there wondering about her choice of friends. She hears a snapping twig behind her. The infamous young man that Alice and Julie are fawning over, Tommy, steps out of a clearing of trees and walks in the direction of the pumps. Margarette looks at him. He’s muscular, with wavy blond hair and a nice haircut. She doesn’t see herself with a guy like him, but she figures she has nothing to lose by talking to him if he talks to her first. But she looks away as if she doesn’t care.

  He approaches her but veers off to his car at the last minute. Margarette walks around the minivan, stepping over the gas line. She leans forward in her blue jean shorts and out of the corner of her eye she can see him staring at her legs. She flips her hair back behind her and turns to face him. He doesn’t say anything, but doesn’t look away at first, as if wanting to be caught looking; the awkwardness builds until he finally pretends to look for something in the glove box.

  She grabs the gas pump and squeezes over and over with no successful click; she turns towards the car completely frustrated. She looks up again and catches the boy looking at her again. For the first time she feels herself flush, or maybe it is the heat; but clear warmth ripples over her skin and the hairs on her arms stand up. Why does he keep looking at her? Agitated by her own body rebelling against her determination, she shoves the nozzle further into the car and squeezes the grip. This time it works.

  “Hi,” she hears a voice in front of her.

  She looks up and faces Tommy. “Hey.” It comes off with a twang. She curses herself for sounding way too country.

  “Hey… you from my school?” Tommy asks.

  “What school are you from?” Margaret counters.

  He fans out his arm and shows the initials of his school burned into his arm. Margarette isn’t impressed. It’s probably a permanent marker. And if it isn’t, it would be totally trashy.

  “That’s me too,” she says.

  “Yeah. I finished last year.” Tommy says.

  “I know,” she says, before she catches herself. Shit… revealed too much.

  Luckily he doesn’t comment on her slip-up. “You’re a senior now, right?” he asks her.

  “Yes.”

  “Eighteen?”

  “Yes.”

  “Alright….”

  “Alright what?”

  “That means you can smoke.”

  “I don’t,” she says, despite the fact that she just smoked with Alice. She sneers at him and decides to ask him some questions in rapid fire. “You in college?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I wanted to take some time off,” he says smiling. “You know, play around and shit.”

  “Do you work?”

  “For my dad.”

  “At the bank?” Shit. She didn’t mean to reveal she knows who his father is.

  Again, he doesn’t comment exactly, but seems reaffirmed as though he was prince of Coyote Falls, and knows that everyone knows him. “Yep.”

  “That sucks,” she says.

  Tommy chuckles. “I guess.”

  She can’t think of anything to ask anymore without getting too personal. Everything else she’s heard about him revolves around the princess of her school, Sharon, who started dating him when she was a freshman. There’s a drawn out pause.

  Tommy breaks the silence. “You know, you look familiar.”

  “Do I?”

  “Yeah, I think I remember you from grade school.”

  She looks away, knowing that that’s not possible. She grew up in a totally different town. A different state, even.

  But she doesn’t contradict him. “You must have a good memory,” is all she says.

  “Not really. I think….”

  “What?” she says, feeling very self-conscious.

  “Nothing… I was going to say that I like your hair like that. It’s better grown out.”

  She smiles knowing he’s never seen her any other way, but the compliment disarms her and strengthens her ego. “Thanks.”

  “Yeah….”

  The two girls appear out of nowhere.

  “Hey, Tommy,” Alice says.

  “Hey, there,” says Julie.

  They flock around his car
and his attention switches from Margarette to them. She barely gets a word in after their arrival. Julie takes advantage of her short skirt and shamelessly does what she can to get him to look at her. The short discussion ranges from one subject to another, mostly revolving around sports and those who watch them. Julie bats her eyes and twists her fingers into her skirt tips. Alice is more direct and has a flare for direct eye contact. Margarette notices Alice’s comments go to the cusp of being rude, but Tommy doesn’t take notice or is just unfazed.

  Margarette watches Tommy closely and never sees him look at her again. She assumes it’s a confirmation of social influences, not a true rejection. Nothing else is said that has any particular value until the click of the pump acknowledges that the van is full of gas. They climb in one by one and Tommy watches them all get into the car.

  ***

  Tommy goes inside after they leave and speaks with the attendant. He asks if anyone’s seen a buck knife he dropped out by the pumps. The attendant doesn’t seem to know what that even is. Tommy turns around to walk out but just before leaving asks the attendant if there’s a key for the restroom. The attendant says no; it’s unlocked and the service guy is overdue. Tommy goes around the station and enters the men’s room. He goes in and out only stopping to wash the dirt off his hands and look at himself in the mirror to fix his hair.

  The door shuts behind him as he walks out. A few drops of water fall from the dirty sink.

  The door bursts back open and Tommy walks in. He puts a quarter into the machine and turns the knob. Out falls one purple condom. He sticks it into his pocket and then heads out to the car.

  Chapter 2. Social Butterfly

  The following Friday the three girls get ready for a party. There’s a lamp on the desk with bracelets dangling from it, and two cartons holding fingernail polish organized like a spectrum of light. Every detail in the room is a part of the mystery that is Alice; from unexplained musical instruments to a collection of tiny umbrellas found only in drinks. The bedroom is on the second floor adjacent to an elevated wooden deck. Margarette keeps stealing glances at a big oak next to the edge, imagining how good it would feel to climb it.

  Alice’s hair is up like a bell and it curves by her neck. She wears a soft white dress planted with dark flowers. Julie is pretending again to be something she’s not and wears a princess-like tiara, a golden skirt and yellow top. Watching her in the mirror Margarette realizes that Julie looks like Big Bird, and even has the beak to match. After considering how much cartilage it would take for Julie to fix her nose and extensive cost of that job, Margarette turns to look at herself in the mirror.

  She’s wearing an old pearly white dress with a faint weaving pattern. When she chose it she was afraid that Julie would compare her to a doily, but she didn’t have a lot of dresses to choose from. No—she actually does own a lot of older-style dresses, but would rather die than wear them now.

  This is the first time Margarette has ever been in Alice’s house, but she has heard about the second story deck being the locale for many stories and gatherings. Inside the house there is a distinct smell of cedar that Margarette might be allergic to, which serves as an uncomfortable reminder how little she knows of her new friends. The house has wood everything: wooden staircase, wooden blinds and wood floors, currently littered with dirty clothes that may have also been made from some wood pulp. Margarette knows that Alice’s father is a doctor, but she figures he must have been a lumberjack in a past life, or he just hates the woods.

  Alice scurries into the bathroom to finish her makeup and is jittery with excitement that she has a new perfume. The room falls silent when Julie is left alone with Margarette. They both take a breath and pause to see who’s weak enough to speak first. While holding her breath Margarette ponders about her vendetta with Julie. It’s not like Julie has ever done anything to her or vice versa. Their snide comments and evil glances were only an indication of how little they liked each other; no real quarrel had ever occurred. Alone in the room, no words are spoken—a simple look up with a faux smile is the equivalent of a long conversation between the two. Perhaps being on either side of Alice is the most ideal place for them to be.

  Finally Alice returns and after another few minutes they leave. On the way out she kicks open her brother’s door and steals his keys. The car belongs to Alice’s father so technically it is fair game, and the older brother is away anyway.

  Julie immediately goes for the front seat, and Alice drives, so Margarette ends up in the back seat. It’s cramped back there with magazines and stale dirty clothes, a fact that Margarette doesn’t believe is really fair. The two in the front rattle on about something that happened in a different class and Margarette’s already lost before they even get to the point of the story. She sniffs twice and pulls her hand back from what could be a dirty gym shirt; at that moment she would have given anything to smell the cedar again. Fortunately Julie doesn’t notice her suffering, because her smoke addiction makes her crack the window, indirectly helping Margarette. As they drive off, Margarette tucks into the seat with her head back and closes her eyes.

  Her mind wonders as they drive through the dark road filled with trees and back wood roads. They spend what feels like hours looking for a tree with balloons, but in reality only half an hour goes by; time stretches in Margarette’s mind to prolong her discomfort.

  Despite the vague directions and no address, they irrefutably arrive at the right place when they see a tree plastered with strings and several colorful latex scraps lying on the road. They slowly drift down the long gravel drive, and eventually hear distant driving bass from the party like a heartbeat in a track meet. They make it to PJ’s house, whom none of them know personally, but who’s cool enough to have an older sibling that likes his younger brother’s girlfriend’s friends. Long story short, he has a keg.

  The front of the house is black as night with silhouettes fading in and out of yellow glowing windows. As they approach the front door it flies open and a piggyback couple crashes into the yard with a few other following after. The music blares from underpowered speakers laced with laughter, and gets impossibly louder as they cross the threshold. Someone presses a red cup into their hands, and the night of drinking begins before the girls even reach the kitchen.

  Alice and Julie continue talking with each other completely ignoring Margarette as she trails behind, telling stories Margarette doesn’t know. It doesn’t take long for Margarette to fade into the scenery of warm bodies and she finishes her drink out of boredom. As she gets handed another, she catches Julie’s eyes and notices the other girl smiling—Margarette finds that odd. A few sips and it isn’t long before the music seems to slow down and her legs buckle. She looks up and the two girls are gone and she ends up confused, alone and in the living room with strangers, mostly from the public high school from the other side of town.

  She begins to realize her hypothetical friends are much like mirror copies of each other during social events and less like anyone she’s ever been friends with before. She judges them a bit harsher than she would lend judgment to herself. If the situation were reversed and it was Margarette with a close friend and Julie tagging along, she would probably exclude Julie to some extent; however, she would at least keep an eye on her. From the moment she started hanging out with Alice and Julie, she hoped that they would listen to her as some form of friend, but in public there is far too much background noise for that.

  Somehow not having someone else to complain to makes her more frantic; she scans the room looking for almost anything to catch her attention. She may be the only one that notices the lights flicker with every pulse of the bass in the music or the two overgrown football players eyefricking every drunken girl from the corner of the room. Margarette frowns thinking about the indecent thoughts clearly flooding their minds.

  She decides if there is to be no reason then she will be the unreasonable one. But she feels a strong emptiness in her chest, as if she had exhaled and had not come b
ack up for air. A new feeling creeps over her; it goes beyond the absence of her friends. The physical reaction grows and she forgets what she is thinking about. Her body slumps forward as the music lulls between songs. She shuts her eyes and the entire room falls black with only the ignorant background chat in tune with different frequencies. She briefly remembers Julie’s obtuse smile as Margarette been handed the drink, but again she forgets what she was thinking a moment after it was thought.

  The next song starts, and it is familiar to her. Margarette stands with the intro and without ever opening her eyes she begins to dance as if she were the only soul that the song was crafted for.

  A person taps someone on the shoulder; eyes meet eyes; a finger points; the simple gestures notify others in the room that hadn’t seen Margarette, and they now stand watching her with their mouths agape. The song grows in volume and tempo, and her hips rock back and forth. Her arms cradle her body; her fingers float in the air as if the tips were electric and she’s being careful not to touch her wet body.

  Even her artificial friends notice her dancing alone and smile at first, thinking she’s making a fool of herself. But then they scan everyone else in the room and notice them all watching her; even the ones that were dancing stopped and now watch Margarette. Alice takes a step, but Julie grips her by the wrist and feeds a secret into her ear that stops her from interfering.

  Margarette feels her legs bend beneath her, weak under her own weight, and too late realizes that whatever potion she drank was beyond alcohol. She folds into her own mind and continues to dance without the light creeping beyond her eyelids. The focus is slipping, but she feels herself move perfectly along with the music. Alice and Julie are no longer in the kitchen nor are they in the room. They are gone without a word of warning or polite excuse, leaving her alone. Had Margarette noticed, she would have wondered how girls could be capable of being so wicked.

  All eyes stay fixed on her as she stops dancing to the music and a soft smile comes over her face.