The Perfect Triangle, Part 2

Instant Love
by Jami Attenberg

(Page 2 of 2)

Take her, said Shelly's dad. It's my turn for some fun. Shelly's dad throws acid parties now. She sometimes visits him on the weekends and smokes pot with his girlfriend who is only ten years older than her and used to live in Korea and knows how to swear in ten different languages. He's acting like it's the sixties again, that's what Shelly says when she comes back after a visit. He's trying to turn back the hands of time. El tiempo.

They are taking turns, this family, with being fucked up. That's what Holly thinks.

Shelly's been back in town for a year, and everyone knows exactly who she is; no one has forgotten a thing. People don't forget things like kidnap and rape and molestation and violation and major jail time in a town so small no one can breathe. No one will touch Shelly. No one wants to go near her, except for the other burnout girls. They recognize her as the kind of girl who has a particular understanding of extreme sorrows inflicted by a different kind of fate than applied to the rest of the world.

It's funny, though, because Holly can see how easily Shelly could be something else besides a burnout girl. All the rest of them have a raw look, narrow and paranoid in the eyes, and they're too skinny (except for the one who is too fat), and have bad skin and wear too much makeup that they've probably shoplifted. Whenever Holly walks by them when they are smoking in the school parking lot, they are always laughing dark, bitter laughs, raw and scratchy and pained. They sound as if they've stayed up late the night before, when she was in bed by eleven, just as her mother asked her to be.

But with Shelly, Holly sees puffy soft cheeks, and pink sad lips, and otherworldly gray eyes that are always drifting off toward the sky, toward somewhere else besides the fluorescent peak of the pharmacy. Shelly is soft feathered hair, a real natural blond, dirty blond maybe, but blond nonetheless, and perfect pink-and-purple eyelids, and tight black jeans and a form-fitting black button-down flannel shirt that just hits the waist, and high-heeled black boots with a strap and silver buckle around each ankle. Shelly is quiet until you get to know her, and then she has something to say. Shelly has a secret, that's what Holly thinks. When you look at her, you know she has a little secret just bursting to get out of her.

In other words, she's a real knockout.

Holly sits on the toilet seat while Shelly finishes her eyes, and stares at the reflection of the bathroom in the mirror. There are so many signs in this bathroom, reminders of how to be a normal person when you're away from home: Wash your hands. Don't flush sanitary napkins. Please put the seat down when you're done--yes, that means you, Alan, Greg, Schneider, and Mario. ("Please" is underlined, and someone has drawn a star next to it.) There is also a framed print of a sketch of a rose over the toilet. A bottle of air-freshener spray rests on the toilet tank. Lilies of the Valley. What valley?

Shelly tells her to look up, and doses her lashes with mascara. Then she asks if she's in love with Christian.

So are you totally in love with him, Holly?

Christian? Christian who doesn't like to read anything but NME? Christian who has things like "Buy Jelly" written on his hand?

Holly laughs as if to say, As if, and Shelly looks at her all soft and puffy and sad, like, How can you not be in love? Don't you know how lucky you are? And a little bit of: Then why have I spent the last hour doing your makeup if you're not even in love?

So Holly says, No? Maybe?

Finally she lands on: Well, it's only been five weeks. Which should have been her answer in the first place.

Shelly tells her to stop squirming or you'll fuck it all up. While she leans over she sticks the round edge of her tongue out between her lips and holds it there. Some of the pink eye shadow drifts down from Holly's lid and her applicator onto Holly's chest.

Sit still, she says. Do you want to look hot or not?

Holly hates makeup on principle. Makeup is what other girls wear, girls who need to wear it in order to get attention, or to make themselves feel better, or to feel like they fit in with everyone else. These are girls who cannot carry their weight in the world otherwise. But I am an exceptional person, this is what Holly tells herself in between beating herself up for being such a snobby smart-girl bitch. (She cannot help it if she is the smartest girl, possibly the smartest person, in her AP biology class, and maybe even AP chemistry, too.) She has other things to worry about besides makeup.

Her mother doesn't wear makeup. When Holly asked her once to show her how to put some on, she said, "Really?" and Holly knew her mother thought that that was the dumbest thing she had ever heard. Like, why would you want to? Like, what is wrong with you?

And the truth is, Holly looks better without it. Makeup makes her look darker and older, like she has something to cover up when in reality she has fine, rosy skin, bright eyes with dark lashes, and plump red lips. She is bursting with youth. She doesn't realize it now, but she will in ten years when she looks back at her high-school graduation pictures. She is a ripe plum waiting to be plucked.

But if she's going to have a friend who is a burnout girl, and she's going to date a guy with no future who sometimes wears eyeliner on their dates, if she's going to lead this secret, opposite-world life, she might as well try wearing a little makeup.

Every time she goes out with Christian, she lets him do something new to her body. She is conducting an experiment. She is her own science project. Mix a hand with the space between the thighs, it feels this way. Apply a tongue to a nipple, it feels that way. Oxygen and water and heat equal steam.

This seems to be the main purpose of their dates, this getting to the half-naked-on-the-black-leather-couch-in-his-father's-basement part of it. The couch impresses her. It has a few cigarette burns on it, but otherwise it's luxurious. All the furniture in Holly's house is wicker or velour or some sort of flower-patterned fabric. The couch totally works on her. All she wants to do is lie on that couch and make out with Christian.

They both have become better kissers in the last five weeks, although he still likes to do this tongue-swordplay action that shethinks requires too much effort for the end result. When she kisses his neck instead, he says: Are you trying to seduce me?

Which is preposterous. She has no idea what she is doing. But she says yes.

And then he says: Are you turned on?

Copyright © 2006 by Jami Attenberg. Excerpted by permission of Shaye Areheart Books, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

About the Author

Jami Attenberg's work has appeared in Salon, Nylon, Print, Pindeldyboz, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Time Out New York. She lives in Brooklyn, New York. Visit her at jamiattenberg.com.