Girls in Trouble: A Novel Read online

  “What did he say?” she asked. “He didn’t want to talk to me?” And Danny just stood up, shaking his arms as if he were dislodging all that rage. “Danny, talk to me,” she said. “I know you’re mad.” And then he looked at her, blinking, as if he were deciding something, and then he moved to her and kissed her. “Who cares what he thinks?” Danny said. “Who the goddamn fuck cares about any of them but us?”

  “Well, my parents will be crazy about you,” Sara said impulsively.

  “You want me to meet your folks?” He looked at her, surprised, and then she felt surprised, too, because she knew what such a meeting might cost her.

  “Of course I do,” she insisted, hoping he’d forget. But when she saw him the next day, he instantly asked her, “When can I meet your folks? When’s the day?”

  She felt a skip of panic and tried to compose herself, breathing in deep. How bad could it be? Sara thought. Maybe she was underestimating her parents. Maybe they’d be glad she had someone loving her, glad she had wanted to introduce them.

  “How about Friday?” Danny asked. Sara tried to think. Friday, Abby was cheeriest because her workweek was over. Jack was home early. She told herself that you couldn’t pretend you knew how things would turn out, because really, hadn’t Danny surprised her? Couldn’t her parents surprise her, too? When they saw how happy he made her, maybe they wouldn’t harp about who his parents were or ask how her studies were suffering, maybe they wouldn’t insist she was too young to date. “Friday,” she told him, and he grinned and grabbed her for a kiss.

  All week she worried. Should she prepare her parents? Should she warn Danny how they might really react? When Abby was forming patties for burgers, Sara cleared her throat. “Mom—” she started and then Abby turned, expectant, and the words dried up in Sara’s mouth. “Can I help?” Sara blurted and Abby handed her a greasy pattie of beef.

  Danny had dressed specially for the occasion, in his good jeans, a checked shirt he had ironed by smoothing it on the couch overnight. His hair was raked into furrows and slicked back so it didn’t look so long. “I’m a little nervous,” he admitted. “I need something to hang on to,” and he had slung one arm about her shoulders. “They’ll love you,” she said, but she averted her gaze. He didn’t know she hadn’t told them about him, that he was coming, and she felt sick with her own lie. A white lie, she reminded herself. The kind you told to protect someone you loved.

  Her parents were sitting on the front porch, and they stood when they saw him, confused. Sara gripped Danny’s hand. “This is Danny Slade,” she said, then she took a long breath. “My boyfriend.”

  “Your what?” Sara felt Jack staring.

  “Well,” said Abby, pleasantly, and Sara saw her mother’s eyes dart to the pack of cigarettes poking out of Danny’s pocket.

  “Oh, they’re menthol, is that okay?” Danny said, whipping out the pack, offering them with a flourish. “Please. Take as many as you like.” He flushed, embarrassed.

  “We don’t smoke,” Jack said.

  “Oh. Like Sara,” Danny said, lighting a cigarette and taking a slow drag. He tapped ashes onto the grass. “Well, good for you,” he said. “That’s very smart.”

  “Are you in Sara’s classes?” Abby said and Danny glanced at the ground.

  “Wish I were,” he said. Sara gave his hand a squeeze. He straightened and gave them friendly, hopeful looks. “I’m studying small engines,” he said.

  Abby’s face hardened. There was an awkward silence. Danny’s gaze flickered and lowered. Then he drew himself up. “Well, I’d better be going. It was nice to meet you,” Danny said. And then he turned to Sara and looped one arm about her waist and tugged her to him. He kissed her full and gently on the mouth, and then let her go, so that she stumbled, off balance.

  She heard about it as soon as he was out of sight.

  “What’s the matter with you, bringing a boy here? You’re too young,” Jack said.

  “I knew you’d say that,” Sara said. “I’m not too young.”

  “Why’d he leave so fast?” Abby said. “What’s he got to hide?”

  “He was hurt. Anybody could see you made up your minds not to like him as soon as you saw him. You didn’t even invite him in.”

  “Was that a way to dress to make a good impression on us?” Abby asked. “Did you see those boots?” she said to Jack. “It looked like he had spurs on them. Did you see how tight his pants were? And what was he doing kissing you like that in front of us?”

  “You don’t know him.”

  “Oh, yes, I do,” Abby said. “Trust me, I know all about that type of boy and he’s not the one for you. And you should be studying, not dating.”

  “I knew you’d say that, too,” Sara said.

  “You’re much too young—” Jack repeated, but Sara was gone.

  Sara stormed upstairs to her room, slamming her door. She grabbed for her headphones and blasted her music. Her parents didn’t have a clue. Her mother thought you could go through your whole life doing nothing but studying, and her father would be happy if she was his little girl until she was eighty.

  She yanked off the headphones and flung them to the floor. She wouldn’t stop seeing Danny. Her room was closing in on her. She sat on the bed and bolted up again because the bedspread felt raw and scratchy on her bare legs. She tugged her hair into a tail and then set it free again. Nothing felt right. Nothing. At least nothing here.

  She had to see Danny. All he had to do was touch her forehead and everything inside of her relaxed. All he had to do was look at her and she felt calm. She grabbed for the phone and called Danny, but no one answered. Think, think, she told herself, and then, heart skittering, she went downstairs, grabbing up her book bag.

  Her parents were sitting in the living room, drinking coffee, and as soon as she came into the room they looked up at her. She struggled to look calm, relaxed. “Is it okay if I go study at Judy’s?” Sara said. She held up her book bag. “I have a history exam this week.”

  Abby set her teacup down and then repositioned it on the saucer.

  “You can call Judy if you don’t believe me. If you don’t trust me,” Sara said.

  Her parents exchanged glances. “Of course we trust you,” Abby said.

  Jack glanced at his watch. “You be home by ten.”

  “Ten! That’s hardly any time at all!” Sara felt panic taking root, sprouting. She bit down on her lower lip. Calm, she told herself. Calm.

  “Ten,” Jack repeated.

  * * *

  She ran to Judy’s, knocking on the door, and as soon as Judy opened it, Judy’s expression changed. “Look what the cat dragged in,” Judy said. “I haven’t been able to see you for weeks now and you just show up?”

  Sara’s head was swimming. “I need to use the phone,” she said.

  “That’s why you come to see me, to use my phone?”

  “Please, Judy,” Sara begged. “Please.”

  Judy studied her and her face softened. “You look kind of funny. Are you okay?”

  “I just need the phone,” Sara said. She didn’t care that Judy was dogging her steps, that her curiosity was like a fierce little animal, nipping at her heels.

  This time, Danny answered, and as soon as she heard his voice, she gripped the receiver even harder. “Danny—” she blurted, and Judy folded her arms, frowning. Sara cupped the receiver closer. “My parents won’t let me see you. I can’t even call you from my house. I’m at Judy’s—”

  “They can’t do that,” he said. “I won’t let them do that.”

  “They can make it really hard for us to see each other. I don’t know what to do.”

  “I do,” he said. He told her not to worry. He told her he’d see her tomorrow, first thing at school, right by the wire fence where they always met. He’d see her at lunch, and last period and after school right up until she had to go home again. He knew just what to do, and she shouldn’t worry, not for a moment. “No one can separate us,” he told her. �
�We’re the same person.” Sara’s breathing slowed. The weight about her ribs lifted. She hung up the phone and Judy made a face. “Danny Slade?” Judy said evenly and Sara nodded.

  “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” Judy asked.

  Preoccupied, Sara headed for the door. “I have to go.”

  “I’m trying to talk to you here! I’m trying to help!” Judy said, grabbing for Sara’s arm, but Sara was already out the door, out into the cool, clear night, and when she left Judy’s house that night, she left more than Judy behind. She left her old life, too.

  She learned quickly how to come up with excuses. The flush on her face was blush she was using. “Why do young girls think they need makeup?” Jack protested. She hid the new slinky dress she had bought under a baggy shirt so Abby wouldn’t ask questions, and any gift Danny bought her, she told her parents she had bought herself. She had a whole roster of excuses for stealing out of the house. Studying always worked. Sessions at the library.

  It was even easier in the summer, when she was taking special classes at Harvard, when she could blame the subways, the buses, for always coming home late. Maybe she couldn’t drive, but she went into the garage and dug out her old three-speed green Schwinn and rode to wherever he was. At the abandoned day camp. Behind the Thrift-T-Mart. “I’m glad you’re being smart about all this,” Abby told her one evening when Sara was doing her homework at the kitchen table, just waiting for her parents to go to sleep so she could sneak out her window and find Danny. “I’m glad you came to your senses,” Abby said, and all Sara could think was that because of Danny, her senses were all the more intense. Colors shimmered. Sound pulsed. Her heart grew in size.

  And then school started up again and they had a whole new routine. They’d see each other before classes. During lunch when she’d run outside to meet him. At odd times during the day. She was in calculus class one day, taking a pop quiz, when she sensed Danny’s presence, a charge in the air. The test was so easy she could do it in her sleep, but she couldn’t concentrate anymore. She heard Danny’s whisper, just behind her, making her turn around. Sara. Sara. I’m here, he whispered. She looked at the numbers and she smelled him—laundry soap and cigarettes, making her so dizzy she got up from her seat, as if she were sleepwalking. Drawn, she walked to the window, and there he was, like an apparition, and as soon as she saw him, she felt wings beating inside of her.

  “Miss Rothman!” the teacher said sharply, pointing to Sara’s seat. Sara turned from the teacher back to the window, and Danny was gone.

  The first time they made love she was in Danny’s room, getting ready to bolt out of there, because she had a paper due the next day that she hadn’t even started. “I’ve got to go,” she said, but she couldn’t move from his bed. He grinned at her and came so close his nose almost touched hers. His breath was warm, smoky from cigarettes. She inhaled at the place where his neck touched his shoulders. “You smell so good,” she said.

  “Stay,” he said, and slid a hand along the front of her shirt. He shut his eyes, shivering.

  “Be right back,” he said, and then he ran upstairs, and when he came back, he had a pink satin sheet in his arms and a small bottle. He unfurled the sheet, spreading it on the floor so the folds rippled with light. “Mike gave it to my mother for her birthday,” he said. He lowered her down so that when she looked up she saw a painting of a deer on the wall, another small silver cross, a Jesus looking down at her. Then he took the bottle and opened it and she smelled his scent. He daubed the tip of the bottle along her shoulder. “Now you smell like me,” he said, and when she smiled, he told her she could take the bottle home. She could always wear it. “I will,” she promised.

  He undid her blouse a button at a time, gazing at her in admiration. “I have never seen anything like you in my life.”

  He kissed her stomach, her knees, knobby as teacups, her feet, her hair. She had never had a real boyfriend before. She wasn’t quite sure what to do, where to put her hands, her legs, her mouth. “Wait,” she said. He stopped what he was doing. He looked cool, unconcerned, but even lying beside him, she could feel how his skin radiated heat. And then he kissed her neck, her face, her fingers, and then she forgot to stay his hands, to protest. Instead, she shut her eyes. She arched her back, and moved toward him. She memorized the slope of his neck, the downy hairs on his arms. “Is this all right?” he whispered, and she didn’t know what to say, she didn’t know what anything was supposed to feel like, how it was supposed to fit, or if she was any good at it, and it suddenly seemed like the most important thing in the world that she was. “Wait—” he whispered. “Are you on the pill?” When she shook her head, he reached over her to his night table and fumbled in a drawer. “Shit,” he said. “Shit, shit—” and then she pulled him back to the bed, back to her. She kissed his mouth, his neck, the slope of his shoulder, wanting to put every part of him right inside of her. “It’ll be all right,” he whispered, his voice hoarse. “It’ll be all right—” And he moved closer toward her, and all she heard was the rasp of his breathing.

  They were both slick with sweat. And when he pushed himself inside of her, she felt the strangest shock of recognition, as if this moment were something she had been trying to remember, and suddenly, here it was. And when he cried out, her eyes flew open. She watched his face, the pulse beating behind his lids, and when he slid from her, she felt a sadness so overpowering, she could have cried. Come back, she wanted to say.

  Her body felt as if he had marked her somehow. She sat up, resting on her elbows. Now even his room looked different to her. Colors were brighter, the air had a heavier feel to it. “Sara?” he said. She rolled toward him and as soon as her belly touched his again, she shivered. She would have inhaled him if she could. “You okay?” he asked. She looked up, rolling to her other side, her face away from him. There was a starry stain of blood on the pink sheet and she touched it gingerly. “Oh God! Your mother’s sheet—” she said. “She’ll kill me. She’ll kill us.”

  He leaned over to her, brushing her hair from her face, taking her hand from the sheet. He threw one end of the sheet over the stain so you couldn’t see it. “Sara?” he said, and it was as if he had a sheen about him, like a kind of suntan oil, glossy and inviting. She sat up. She smoothed the sheet, she tried to fix the pillows. Her mind raced, thinking about the paper she had to do, the way her grades were slipping, and then Danny pulled her back down beside him. “You don’t have to do anything. Just be here,” he said. “I’ll never be with anyone else but you. I’ll never want to.” She lifted up one hand and put it against Danny’s face. “Mine,” she said.

  They began spending more and more time in Danny’s room. He opened his drawer. “Look,” he said shyly, and she looked down and saw the five kinds of condoms he had bought: red and blue and ribbed, all with names so ridiculous she sputtered with laughter. Bareback Rider. Intense. Wild Thing. In the supermarket, all he had to do was trace a line down her back, and her whole body felt a flutter and she would turn and kiss him. She wouldn’t be able to stop. “Kids, get a room,” someone muttered, walking past them, and all Sara could think was, I wish we could. I wish we could get a whole country.

  He took her places she didn’t even know existed. A Japanese mall at the far end of town, a supermarket where every item was either in Japanese or translated incorrectly. Sara plucked up a sponge, delighted, because it was called Clean Life Please. She bought Danny a tea towel that said “From the Kitchen of Buxom Beauties.”

  He showed her how to tune an engine, sneaking her into the vocational school, patient when she flubbed it. “Soon as I get a car, I’ll teach you to drive,” he said. He showed her the maps he saved. California, Alaska, the paper soft because he had opened and closed them back up so many times.

  “You don’t need much money to live a good life in Alaska,” Danny said.

  “Is that where you’re going when school’s over?” Sara asked. She didn’t want to look at the maps anymore.

&nbs
p; “I’m going where you’re going,” he said and folded the maps shut.

  They talked quietly about the future, planning it out. The house they’d live in, by the water, with a backyard. His auto body shop nearby, and her psychologist office on the top floor. The dog they would have, a big rangy mutt that would sleep at the foot of their bed. “You’re the first thing I haven’t somehow fucked up in my life,” he told her. “The first thing I’ve ever gotten right.”

  That night, when she was alone in bed, she imagined Danny there beside her, and she got so restless, she bolted up from bed and went to the kitchen for ice, rolling it across her arms and legs, trying to cool some of the heat down. She came back upstairs and sat at the window, willing him to come get her. If he showed, she vowed she’d climb out her window to be with him. She swore she’d let him into her room. She reached for her phone and told herself if he didn’t answer on the first ring, she’d hang up.

  “Hello?” His voice was soft, heavy with sleep.

  “Come and get me,” she whispered.

  She felt him before she saw him. Then she heard pebbles rattling at the window. Stealthily, she opened the window and slid outside, grabbing on to the maple tree she had grown up climbing, shimmying down in her nightgown, her toes curling on the dewy grass. The neighborhood was dark. A cat yowled in the distance. And then the two of them lowered to the damp grass. Wordlessly, she slid off her nightgown, she unbuttoned his shirt and lifted up her mouth to his.

  Later, when she finally came back in, she fell into a sleep so deep she felt drugged. When Abby came in the morning to wake Sara for school, there were bits of grass on the sheet, and the hem of her nightgown was muddy, and Abby, racing to leave for work herself, didn’t notice. “There’s my beautiful daughter,” Jack said, walking past her room.

  Sara ran off for school, stopping at the patch of grass where she and Danny had been the night before. In the hazy morning light, it seemed almost magical, and she crouched, raising one hand over the grass, and she still felt its heat.