Work Text:
“Wrestling in Dirt Pits”
I keep praying you'll save me
All alone in this house
Fucking my guts like he hates me
Spitting his love in my mouth
I get so goddamn angry
Unlike Tammy, I can't stand my man
But my son of a preacher, sinful as ever
Lies like he does and I'm still all over him
(All over him)
-Ethel Cain
Boys are so fucking dumb.
They’re gross too, they are literally disgusting, look at them. Slobbering, sweaty, come-in-a-sock-and-don't-wash-it assholes. They’re happiest when violent, at ease being rough, and they lie constantly, it comes easy to them.
Carol Perkins wishes she didn’t like them so much.
And they like her too, in a way.
‘Can I keep these?’ She holds up Tommy’s gym socks. She can tell by the feel of them that at least one has been used to jerk off into. Tommy looks up, distracted and red faced, fresh from an argument with his Mom about how much food he needs to take for the drive.
‘Uh,’ he says, shaking his head. ‘I guess?’
‘Cool. What about this?’
‘No, I need that belt.’
‘You’re not skinny anymore.’ It’s deliberate and mean, she wants to start shit with him, she wants one last fight before he leaves, car wedged with crap for his dorm room. ‘Your jeans stay up just fine, Chubsy Malone.’
He throws her a look, mild warning. ‘Fuck off, Carol.’
She snorts and swipes a pocketknife from his backpack when he’s not looking. The one he’s used for parties, red handle, cheap and shitty but still sharp.
‘So, you gonna call me after you fuck the first college bitch you see or…?’
‘You know what Carol, I’m not in the mood.’
‘Shocker.’
‘I know you’re mad or whatever. PMT, all that shit, you get it month round, babe, but I’m not getting into a fight with you before I leave.’ He zips his case. It’s old, carpet style. Musty and ancient. It’s been more places than he’ll ever go. ‘I’m not gonna fuck anyone else. You’re my girl.’
She smiles, doesn’t mean it.
She doesn’t ever really mean anything.
Life is a shallow series of disappointments and bitter consolations and the bright, sharp distraction of spite.
The only time Carol feels good is when she’s getting fucked or when she’s crying. Peak time when it’s both.
She slaps him.
And he fucks her on the bed, right beside the suitcase. It’s predictably quick and the good feeling is non-existent, but she kisses him and tries to hold onto… something, because they’ve been together since they were thirteen and now he’s going away and Carol is staying here.
He comes inside her after a few minutes and doesn’t ask if she came, he knows she didn’t. He does kiss her though, even after.
Stays inside and kisses her, touches her hair and nuzzles her a little bit.
‘I love you,’ he says, and even though it’s not really true anymore, she likes that he lied for her, one last time.
‘I love you too.’ Carol doesn’t really know if she’s ever loved Tommy. She’s not sure what that word means, outside of family, outside of dreams.
She wipes her pussy on the family hand towels and splashes water lightly on her cheeks, doesn’t let it touch her mascara.
In the mirror, a pretty girl is slowly turning hard-faced, Mall of America, she’ll fade soon. Carol wonders what her skeleton looks like underneath. She wonders if her bones can feel that they’re wet.
She pops her gum, winks in the mirror.
Finger guns, Carol laughs.
‘Lookin’ good, winner.’
*
Last year, Tommy’s Mom took Carol to get an abortion. It was in the fall and it wasn’t the first time. Miriam Hagan has taken Carol twice before, paid for it too. Always quiet, just between them, never telling Tommy.
She didn’t hug Carol, but she held her hand afterwards, in the car on the drive back. She told her she did the right thing and Carol knows it’s true. Nobody wants or needs a baby. Miriam loves her son, but she knows him too. Wants the best for him and that’s out of Hawkins.
Away from Carol.
They both know that.
But Miriam has never been cruel to Carol or unkind. She’s the one Carol goes to, or went to, when things turned bad. Not now, not anymore because the thing between them, Tommy, is gone. He drove away playing pussy rock, promised to call.
The day after Tommy left, Miriam comes by the house. Carol has four younger siblings, the youngest is eighteen months. Carol opens the door with the baby on her hip and Miriam comes inside with a box and a bag and a lasagne.
Carol’s Dad is out working, like always.
Her own Mom died last year in the mall explosion, debris in the road caused a crash. The funeral was small and quiet and Carol hasn’t cried once. Sometimes she still thinks her Mom will come home, bring groceries and tell Carol to get some sleep.
‘I found a few of your things,’ Miriam tells Carol, looking around at the state of the place, but not commenting. The box has Carol’s shit, six years of shared life and messy sex and arguments and that time Tommy hit her and Carol smashed up his car with a baseball bat and he fucked her up against it and she got glass in her back and came so hard she cried.
Miriam had paid to replace the glass and told Tommy’s Dad it was just kids.
Carol kept that bit of bloody glass, hid it in Tommy’s room. She wanted him to find it one day and remember.
He never did.
‘You didn’t waste time, huh?’
‘Well, I’d like to do something new with the room,’ the older woman points out calmly. ‘Not like he’ll be back for a while and you know boys. I found some truly horrifying things under the bed.’ She smiles at Carol, who sways the baby a little, letting chubby fingers pull on her curls. ‘How’s your Dad?’
‘Working.’
‘That’s good. And what about you? You doing OK?’
It’s a heavy kind of question and there’s only one answer she wants. That answer will close the door between them once Carol has said goodbye. Miriam has come to mark the end of their alliance. To let Carol know she can no longer go to her when she needs things.
The lasagne smells good.
And Carol just knows that piece of glass will be in the box. Miriam patched her up after, asked how she got the bruise and Carol lied, but Miriam knew anyway.
She’ll do something nice with Tommy’s room.
Make the best of it.
What else is there?
‘I’m great,’ Carol says, bright and cold. The baby whines, bored of standing around and Miriam opens the bag.
‘I had your prom dress dry-cleaned. It’s in here.’
Carol didn’t even know where the fuck that went.
‘Thanks.’
‘No problem.’ Miriam smiles again. ‘You take care now.’
‘I will. Bye, Mom,’ Carol says, all exaggerated and obnoxious and Miriam looks away and Carol… doesn’t know why she hurts herself like this.
‘Give your Dad my best.’
Carol watches her drive away.
The baby cries and the kids break something upstairs and the lasagne sits atop a stack of bills that are way past due and Carol thinks if her Mom came back now, she’d cry her fucking heart out and scream at her for leaving and scaring her like that.
But her Mom’s in a box in the dirt.
And the baby, Cory, will never know the sound of how she laughed and what kind of ice cream she liked and what it felt like to watch Dad twirl Mom around in the kitchen and pretend to be a hungry wolf while Mom laughed and scolded him for letting the meatballs burn and Dad said, let ‘em burn, I only want kisses.
Carol sticks three forks in the cold lasagne, yells, ‘Dinner!’
*
The leaves fall and Hawkins goes all cutesy for Halloween. Carol smokes on the hood of Steve Harrington’s car and he doesn’t smoke anymore, he gave it up for those brats, but he never complains. It’s a chilly morning and he has work soon. Carol has work too, down at the laundromat.
‘You heard from him?’ he asks her after a while.
Carol tosses the cigarette, exhales the last of it.
‘Nah, you?’
‘No.’
‘He was cut up about Billy,’ she says, staring at the other cars going by, places to be, people to see. It’s a Saturday. They used to be fun. Carol squints at nothing. ‘He had such a crush.’
Steve looks over, wrinkles his nose. ‘Tommy?’
‘On Billy. He was wild for him,’ she says, extra casual because she likes to shock people and Steve is easy to shock these days, he’s gone so pure.
‘Bullshit.’
She smirks at him, shucks her arms up into the sleeves of her too-small jacket, but it’s gorgeous and she can’t let it go. ‘Oh come on, man. Like you didn’t know about the major crush he had on you.’
‘Tommy’s straight.’
Carol spits, can’t shed the ash taste without it and she doesn’t have to be pretty girl with Steve, they already fucked once years ago and it wasn’t anything special.
‘Yeah, I got news for you, Harrington. I’m onto all you straight boys and the shit you pull.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘That I see you and Munson. That I saw Tommy go down on Billy while Billy called him a girl's name. That I used to hear Tommy say your fucking name while he came into a tube sock.’ The one she kept. ‘I see everything in this shithole and you boys are fucking disgusting and you’re all obsessed with each other.’
Steve looks at her for a long time. ‘Are you OK?’
‘Why? You want to fuck in your car, turn the music up real loud?’
‘Carol,’ he persists firmly. ‘Are you OK?’
She sighs, watches the steam of her insides furl into nothing, nothing, nothing.
‘Peachy keen, pretty boy.’ She sniffs and smiles mean. ‘See you around.’
*
She’s not OK.
She doesn’t know what that means.
What the fuck is it, to be OK? All she can think of is when she was a kid. A child. When someone broke a glass and told her to stay back. Now she’s the one who cleans it up and tells her siblings to stay back, except she yells it, snaps.
The baby cries all the time and Carol has to work and they only let her bring Cory sometimes. The others are all in school. Her sister Lorrie is fifteen. She used to help out here and there, but Lorrie has tons of friends now, she’s out all the time. Carol barely saw her the whole summer.
Kevin is twelve and Mandy is eleven.
Cory was a sweet little surprise.
Carol is nineteen.
Her Dad works constantly, he’s line manager of the packing factory. Carol hardly ever sees him.
Her birthday comes and goes. Kevin makes her a card and Lorrie says Happy Birthday in passing, asks if she can borrow her lipstick. Mandy is feeding Cory, sings the stupid song.
Dad forgot.
Carol asks for an advance at work, gets refused.
Her hands stink of cheap detergent and it ruins her hair, all the steam. Makes her skin rough.
The only thing keeping her going is this pussy bitch boy, Jason Carver. It’s a long story, but Carol sort of saved his life during this show down with Eddie Munson.
Jason’s the kind of boy Carol thinks of as wet.
Sappy, sweet, definitely gay down the road, she’s extremely jaded, but she knows the type.
And his honour fight or whatever with Munson over the cheerleader Sissy Chrissy Cunningham was about to go sharply south because Munson is a goofball, but he’s generally not one to fuck with and Carol knows he brings a knife to school.
So, she punched Munson in the face, sprained her wrist and yelled at him that Jason wasn’t worth life in prison, you fuck-twat and Steve came out of nowhere, all angry and worried and it was all just revoltingly emotional and the cheerleader was crying, so Carol rolled her eyes and booked it.
Jason followed her out of school and she thought he was maybe gonna murder her or something, but pale faced, he just said, I owe you, and she doesn’t know another boy on the planet who would thank her for fighting his battles for him, but Jason did.
So, he babysits sometimes.
They’re not friends, she doesn’t have any friends.
But if she asks, he will come by, drop his plans and sit with the kids for the night. Usually, when she gets back, the place is a little tidier and cleaner too. Once or twice, he made dinner. It was pretty decent.
He is pretty decent, she thinks.
And he’s never hit on her.
Which is both excellent and deeply insulting.
This town’s full of queers.
The phone’s been cut off for ages now, so she sends Mandy to go knock for Jason, ask him if he can babysit tonight.
‘Hey, can I get five bucks?’ Lorrie asks, casual and entitled, the brat.
Carol does a double take. ‘That’s my shirt.’
‘It doesn’t fit you anymore.’
‘Get it off, Lorrie or I’ll smack you.’
‘You’re so nasty. Can I get the five bucks or not?’
‘You can go get a job,’ Carol snaps, not in the mood.
‘You get to go out!’
‘I work!’
‘I’m fifteen!’
‘Go sling papers or get a rich boyfriend, then!’
‘I just wanna go get milkshakes with my friends, I’m not asking for the world!’
‘I literally don’t have fifty cents goin’ spare, kiddo, but keep on dreaming.’
‘God, you’re such a bitch!’
Lorrie slams her bedroom door hard.
Cory cries and Kevin quietly offers to see if he can find change under the sofa, but Carol clears her throat and tries to smile for him. He’s a sweet kid. ‘Nah, she’s gotta learn,’ Carol tells him. ‘She had money three days ago for new school shit. Hey, what about you? You doin’ OK?’
He’s the kind of kid who doesn’t ask when he needs things, the far end of the spectrum from Lorrie.
‘I’m all good.’
Carol hugs him, ruffles his hair. ‘You need anything, ask me. Need bein’ the keyword,’ she adds with a chuckle, trying to lighten the tension, gets in through the cracks like syrup.
‘Don’t worry about me,’ he says and Carol thinks she’ll check his sneakers later, make sure the rubber sole is still good. ‘Is Jason watching us tonight?’
‘Yeah, that cool?’
Kevin nods and shrugs. ‘He’s nice, but Dad’ll go crazy if he finds him here again.’
Their Dad hates having a boy babysit, thinks it’s not right. Last time, he chased Jason out and threatened to beat his ass.
‘I’ll be back before him, don’t worry. And anyway, Jason might have plans.’
If Jason had plans, he cancelled them.
Shows up at four with pizza and soda and an honest to god Monopoly box. Kevin, Mandy and Cory are thrilled to see him. Lorrie has already snuck out. Carol doesn’t have the energy to do anything about it, only wants to sneak out herself.
‘I appreciate it,’ she tells Jason, actually means it. He smiles at her. Pretty thing, weirdly attractive and yet completely unattractive to her, probably because he’s so nice. ‘And I’ll be back by ten.’
‘No problem,’ he says earnestly, taking Cory from her arms. ‘You want a slice before you go?’
‘Nah, I’m good. You guys have fun!’
*
“Age of Delilah”
There comes a day you sneak out
But you don't go home
Where you're out past the streetlights
Running down the road and
Your daddy won't know it hurts to grow up
When your knees are still cut
But for us, life's never been without blood
-Ethel Cain
She’s got nowhere to go.
But nowhere is better than home.
She walks to the quarry, hands in her pockets, precious few smokes left and the lighter she stole from Tommy.
Carol watches the sun set, tosses stones into the water, thinks macabre shit and lets her body get real cold.
At least it’s quiet.
She likes that.
Can hear herself think.
But it gets boring after a while, most things do.
So, she walks back.
Kicks grass and thinks about, like, what would happen if she hiked one town over, stood on the side of the road and let cars pull up. She doesn’t know how it works, but she thinks maybe she wouldn’t mind it. She’s good at going numb and the money might be cool, but then she might also get murdered, so, like, not ideal.
It all just seems so fucking out of reach.
Grey and low volume.
Christ, she misses Tommy, the fucker.
She should go there, show up at his dorm and catch him in bed with some bitch, cause a scene, smack his face, spit in hers, get thrown out, tease him into fucking her just one more time so he never gets the taste of her out of his mouth, so no matter who he ends up with, he’ll always dread Carol Perkins showing up, because she’s the bad habit he had to leave behind, could not kick.
She’s smiling to herself, spine cold.
But she misses him, so it ruins the fantasy.
*
She heads into town, sees a few people she knows. She definitely sees Lorrie in the new ice cream place, but has the good grace to wait until later to kick her ass. Ultimately, Carol knows she’s jealous. Would give anything to not be the big sister. To be a middle brat, worried about being cool, just wanting five bucks.
She used to steal from Tommy a fair bit.
Can’t do that anymore.
Not like he didn’t deserve it, she felt zero guilt in pocketing a twenty here and there after he came inside her no doubt thinking about Steve Harrington or whatever new pretty boy was on his mind enough for him to keep his eyes closed the whole time, lips between his teeth.
Even before, when things were OK and she was younger, she’d do that. Sometimes he would get mad, call her out on it and start a fight and that’s what she loved.
She loved fighting with him.
Rough sex and anger, it was like being seen.
Movie theatre is the place to be, apparently. Carol stands across the road, watches as Harrington, Munson, Wheeler, Byers and some other chick are arguing with the ticket boy.
‘It’s couples!’ the kid behind the glass reiterates. ‘The deal is only for couples.
Carol snorts, watches the very loose attempt at standard coupling that has been made. Steve standing with Nancy, even though she’s screwing the moody one, Byers, who’s the technical odd one out because Munson is lurking with the girl Carol can’t make out. They’re all so gay, it’s ridiculous.
The girl finally looks out from behind Munson, cheerful grin on her face and whatever she says has Munson trying to tickle her in revenge and Carol both wants to throw up and also have a friend like that, wants it so bad it’s a throb in her bones.
Giggle chick looks around, looks over the road.
Carol freezes.
‘Shit.’
*
‘The deal is this. Free entry for couples, a free small popcorn, plus fifty percent off all other snacks.’
‘That’s a ridiculous deal, how are they ever gonna make money?’
‘They just opened, so they’re trying to establish themselves,’ the taller girl explains, still tugging Carol across the road. Steve is instantly wary of Carol. Munson openly grins, asks Carol if she’s here to land him another shiner and he is so fuckin uncool it almost goes all the way back around, but not quite. Nancy gives Carol a hard look, Little Miss Priss holds grudges, apparently. Byers just seems indifferent, peering inside.
‘We’re gonna miss the start.’
Munson elbows him. ‘Your date is here, Jon.’
Carol displays the full extent of her disgust, looks at Steve, the only one she’ll take seriously (and even then). ‘Twenty bucks.’
‘That negates the discount entirely!’ Nancy argues.
‘I already said I’d pay,’ he points out.
‘It’s the principal of the thing,’ Munson insists.
Steve rolls his eyes, hands the money over.
Carol takes it and beams, goes all pretty girl and wraps herself around Byers with sugar sweet obnoxious effort.
‘We are so in love,’ she declares to the ticket kid, who looks like he couldn’t care less.
Inside, it smells of buttery sugar and vanilla corn.
‘You losers are so fucking cheap,’ she comments, already wondering if Kevin and Mandy want leftover popcorn for breakfast. Kids eat a lot of weird shit. ‘I want salted.’
The faux grouping has ended, and she can see it so fucking clearly, how it really is. Nancy Wheeler with the outsider Jonathan Byers. Steve “Who, Me?” Harrington with Mr Brings A Knife To School But Also Ran DnD Eddie Munson.
The odd one out is actually the lanky weirdo who gets Carol’s popcorn and hands it to her.
‘Who are you?’ Carol asks, nose wrinkle in place to mask genuine curiosity.
‘Robin Buckley,’ she answers, stealing some off the top. ‘Thanks for helping out.’
Carol shrugs. ‘What movie are you guys seeing?’
‘Alien,’ Munson tells her. ‘But they’re showing Ferris in the other theatre if it’s too scary for you.’
Carol throws popcorn in his hair. ‘Go suck a dick, I love all that horror shit. Who’s getting soda?’
She’s gate crashing.
They don’t actually want her there.
That makes it way more fun.
*
It is of zero surprise that halfway through the movie, damned fucking good movie too, Steve and Eddie slip out. Nancy and Jonathan are holding hands and that seems super enough for them, but Carol grins, mouth full of milk duds as she openly watches Munson drag Steve away into the shadows.
Carol laughs to herself, looks back at the movie.
People getting laid just makes her all warm inside.
Robin Buckley nudges her. ‘Are you OK?’
Carol thinks she probably looks vaguely psychotic. There’s a horrific alien on the screen, blood everywhere, guts and agony and bodily invasion, but it all just makes her feel weirdly safe and she’s chowing down and beaming.
‘Yeah, what about you, kitten?’
Robin half frowns, half squints. ‘Kitten?’
‘You enjoying the movie?’
‘It’s kinda scary.’
‘Nah, it’s awesome,’ Carol tells her, whispering loudly. ‘You don’t like horror?’
Robin swallows, shrugs. ‘Not so much anymore.’
Carol looks at her longer than she should.
Robin is freckly and unfashionable, she’s got scruffy hair and this weird inner confidence, but she is someone who is openly unsure of themselves too.
Well-adjusted.
She’s kinda fascinating.
And Carol, she’s getting this vibe from her too.
This very specific vibe.
Carol lights a cigarette, grins with it between her lips when Robin coughs pointedly, waves the smoke away.
‘Sorry. You don’t smoke?’
‘It’s gross.’
‘Boys are gross. This shit tastes gorgeous.’ Carol exhales to demonstrate. There’s barely anyone in the place, no wonder the ticket kid was throwing deals. ‘Here, have a dud.’
‘Is that like a jibe?’
‘Dunno, did it feel like it?’
‘You’re kinda mean.’
‘Nah, I’m an angel.’
Robin rolls her eyes but she smiles a little too.
*
Carol pats Jason’s shoulder, thanks him. Debates offering sex just one more time because she really is grateful, but she thinks he’d say no and that would sting. Weird how straight boys can let a guy suck them off and close their eyes, but apparently very very gay guys can’t do the same.
Maybe there are no straight boys.
At least not in Hawkins.
The place is neat, the baby’s asleep.
The kids are in bed.
‘You’re the best,’ she tells him instead of offering head. ‘I owe you one, for real.’
He just smiles and tells her there are a few slices left over in the box.
She eats one before she goes to bed.
Checks on the kids.
Lorrie is back in her room, at least.
Kevin’s sneakers have holes in them and Mandy’s backpack strap is on its last thread.
She’ll figure it out tomorrow.
Carol goes to bed, lies under the covers and slips her hand between her thighs, thinking of Robin Buckley.
Her mouth, her skin, her hair.
The little noises she might make if Carol pinned her, got right in between her legs and ground down, rubbed up against where she’d be wet and throbbing.
Thinks she’d taste like ice cream.
Carol comes thinking about tonguing her clit and Robin’s hands in her hair and it’s a real good one, the kind where she can keep going, milk the aftershocks for more, more, more until her back is arched and her eyes roll all the way back and no boy on the planet could ever make her come like this.
Probably says something about her.
*
Her Dad finds the popcorn, goes ballistic.
He slaps her face and Carol wishes it mattered more, she barely felt it.
She shops lean and smart.
Stretches Steve Harrington’s twenty as far as it’ll go and gets cheap cough maker smokes for herself, the kind Munson no doubt goes for.
After her shift in the laundromat, she goes to school to walk the kids home. She doesn’t need to and Lorrie absolutely won’t allow it, but Mandy and Kevin are happy to see her, greeting Cory in Mandy’s old stroller.
‘Good day, you little fuckers?’ she asks affectionately, producing lolly pops for them both, the rainbow swirly kind that rot teeth and make memories.
They’re on the way back when she catches sight of Robin Buckley, who is all alone, this chick even walks funny.
She’s just… there’s something about her.
Confident but chaotic.
Carol likes it.
Wants to say hi, but she can’t, not with the kids.
‘C’mon, let’s get home.’
‘Hey, that girl is calling you,’ Mandy points out after a block. Carol looks back, mild dread curling within.
Robin jogs to catch up.
Big, happy smile, she’s such a dork.
‘Hey, I was yelling.’
‘Sorry, didn’t hear you,’ Carol lies. ‘These are my brothers and sister. Cory, Kevin and Mandy.’
Robin falls into step with Carol. ‘Hey,’ she greets the kids, bending to observe a well-bundled Cory, who’s asleep in the cocoon of the very old stroller. ‘He’s so cute.’
‘What the hell are you wearing?’
‘Overalls rule,’ Robin declares easily. ‘We can’t all look like superstars.’
Carol preens, even though it’s a lie. ‘Why, thank you, Miss Buckley.’
‘Hey, we’re headed to the burger place tonight if you wanna come?’
Carol already knows she can’t afford it, doesn’t even have to think about it. She went to Goodwill on the way from work to school, has some very decent sneakers for Kevin under the stroller and a backpack for Mandy, plus some sorely needed baby clothes and a proper coat for Lorrie because winters in this town are no joke.
‘You buyin’, Buckley?’
‘Sure, I mean, you paid last night, right?’
*
‘Is she your friend?’ Mandy asks, stirring the noodles.
‘Uh,’ Carol says, mostly distracted with the chicken. ‘Kinda? I don’t know. She’s OK.’
‘She’s in band,’ Kevin tells her, grating cheese in a bowl for Cory, who really likes cheese. ‘She’s always nice to me.’
Carol looks at him, genuinely falters for a moment.
It’s not usual for her, and it’s not safe for her to actually like someone. Harrington she likes in a weird sickly way, but she knows he doesn’t like her, so it levels out. Tommy she hated, sort of loved him too, no like.
To like Robin Buckley would be dangerous.
She puts it out of her mind.
All bullshit anyway.
‘Watch it, baby, you’ll burn your hand,’ she tells Mandy, takes over stirring when the water bubbles too high. Carol looks around. ‘Dad?’
He comes out, pulling on his jacket. It’s his day off and she gets it, she really does, but like, come on.
‘You’re going out?’ she asks, can’t hide her irritation.
‘Meeting the boys for drinks,’ he says, won’t look at her. The way he’s dressed, no he’s not. Carol knows he’s still seeing that other bitch. She doesn’t understand how he can bear to. What do they talk about? Does he do the wolf voice for this new slut? Does he call her his New Jersey Princess and tease whenever she’s especially trashy on purpose? Do they fuck with a condom because he doesn’t want any more kids?
She fucking hopes so.
Carol says nothing, knows he’ll just throw last night in her face if she does. The kids watch him leave, quiet and sad.
‘Hey,’ Carol says when he’s gone. ‘What do you wanna watch tonight? You can have a friend come over if you like.’
‘Aren’t you going out?’ Kevin asks.
She was.
She had plans with Robin Buckley.
Was about to send Mandy to knock for Jason.
But she saw their faces when Dad left.
‘Nah, I wanna hang with you guys,’ she says, all bright and warm. ‘And hey, we can rent something scary if you like, for Halloween!’
Kevin laughs. ‘It’s not Halloween yet.’
‘Hey, whole fucking month is Halloween far as I’m concerned.’
*
They don’t invite friends round.
She tries not to feel too guilty.
The other kids all live in bigger houses, have nicer shit.
Kevin loves his sneakers, he wears them till he falls asleep on the sofa and Mandy already packed her backpack for school on Monday. Lorrie came down for dinner, picked at it, didn’t talk to Carol.
She’s still mad about the five bucks.
Cory goes down solidly now, thank god. Carol just wants to forget all about the nights when he wouldn’t stop screaming, desperate for a Mom who wasn’t coming back.
The house is quiet and borderline tidy.
Carol is drinking wine downstairs, watching TV. It’s utter shit, the wine and the TV is… god fucking knows what kinda game show this is, but the kids are safe and the house is quiet and for once she feels almost like things are OK.
Then, from the front door, there comes a quiet knock.
‘Motherfucker,’ she complains, hauling herself up and over to the door. If he’s that drunk that he can’t even get in the house, Carol’s gonna rob him.
She yanks the door open, lips parted to hiss insults, but it’s not her Dad.
‘Jesus, you look mad,’ Robin says, taking a well-advised step back. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—’
‘What are you doing here?’ Carol demands, instantly guarded. Their house is small and she’s wearing shitty sweatpants with an oil stain that never came out and her hair’s a bird's nest of scruff and she’s got no makeup on.
‘I—I just wanted to check you were OK.’
‘Why?’
‘You didn’t show.’
‘Yeah, so?’ Carol crosses her arms. ‘Not like any of you fuckers actually want me there.’
She’s had too much wine. Wine is never good with people around. That’s vodka, she’s good on vodka, but who the fuck can afford that?
‘Hey, I really just wanted to make sure you were—’
Carol scoffs, steps further out. ‘Miss Goody Two Shoes, are you? Checking in, you gonna come by and bring a pie too?’
Robin doesn’t back up. ‘You didn’t show.’
‘I had better shit to do than hang around with a bunch of queers,’ she flings coldly, holding Robin’s gaze.
Leave, leave, leave.
Take your stupid freckles and your dork-ass smile and your light and go the fuck away.
Robin looks past Carol, who battles the urge to start a full on fight. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have just showed up. I really was worried.’
‘Now you know better.’
Robin shrugs, little half smile buried beneath something very calm. Late night seems to transform all her chaos. ‘I doubt it, but I’ll see you around.’
Carol watches her walk back to the road, where the Beemer is parked up, engine running. Typical. She watches Robin get in the front, can just about make out Steve’s how did it go face and Robin shrugs, makes a no it's all good face, they’re so fucking friendly Carol wants to get a rock and break his stupid windows.
There’s this moment where Steve looks up, catches her eye and it holds before Carol waves, drops her trademark bitch smile and gives him the finger.
Back inside the house, it’s quiet and clean.
The kids are all safe, asleep.
Carol wants to scream.
She wants to leave.
Go out, go find a random man and let him fuck her. She wants to start a fight. Go to the quarry and pretend she’d be brave enough to jump.
Carol wishes she was a firework.
Go up, up, up and let everyone see how beautiful she could be before she explodes and everyone forgets.
Instead, she sits back down, finishes the bottle of wine, and pretends not to think about the bathroom cabinet.
*
It started when she was fourteen.
She’d been with Tommy for a year by this point, going steady, it was a big deal. They were one of the first proper couples in their class and Tommy was so cool back then.
He chose her.
Came up to her in front of her group at the time, back when she had a group, like Lorrie does now, and asked her out, bare-faced and brave and Carol thought it was the coolest fucking thing she’d ever seen.
She’d shrugged, tossed her hair and said, ‘Maybe,’ popping her gum.
He just smiled, tongued the corner of his mouth.
Pursued her for weeks after.
Dogged flirting, all sly and teasing but not shy, never shy. Carol was in love with him before they ever made out.
First kiss at thirteen, she was his ride or die.
But at fourteen, things were bad at home. Things were bad everywhere except when she was with Tommy.
And on nights she couldn’t see him, she’d go to the bathroom cabinet, get the little re-fill of razor blades and bring blood out to play, like a friend.
She was stupid the first few times, did it where anyone could see, inside of her arm and Tommy went mad when he saw it, he was so angry at whoever did it and it made her heart beat like crazy until she told him she did it.
Anger became disgust.
Confusion, the almost of bad things, like more distance.
She laughed, told him he was so gullible and lied about how she was hacking away at the thorn patch down the bottom of the yard.
He never quite believed it, but he never asked.
And she only ever did it on the inside of her thighs after that.
Carol can’t pinpoint where the switch happened.
Where, instead of doing it because she didn’t get to see him, she started doing it because she was seeing him. Addictions are coping mechanisms, someone told her that once and she knows it’s true. Behind every single one, there is will and desire to protect from something.
In bed now, she thinks about the cabinet.
The only reason she doesn’t, is the kids.
But she lets herself fantasise about cutting her arm, and Robin Buckley seeing it.
*
“Age of Delilah”
Getting life's cold goodbye wave from
The dark of the driveway
Crying, I'm no good at goodbyes
So I leave it to the lights
Can you just tell me which way I'm driving
Interstate or the highway, I'm going I’m ready
-Ethel Cain
Jason offers her the car to use sometimes.
He used to have this real big SUV, massive thing, cooler than the Beemer, but he traded it in a while ago for something smaller, still nice, though.
‘Yeah, you can borrow it whenever,’ he affirms easily, holding Cory, who likes Jason, always grabs his hair, a sure sign of friendship. ‘I don’t really go anywhere.’
A splinter of something worryingly warm wedges itself into her ice cold spine. ‘What, like, you don’t have a million friends?’
Jason swallows subtly and shakes his head. ‘Uh, no. Not anymore.’
‘How come?’
‘Just… stuff, I guess.’
‘You want me to kick someone’s ass?’
Jason laughs softly, bouncing Cory, who giggles and kicks his chubby legs. He’s walking now, just started, but he still loves being carried, babbling words and making loud, happy noises.
‘Nah, I don’t care. It’s better this way.’
Carol watches him. ‘Is it Munson? ‘Cause I’ll sock him again, I don’t fucking care.’
God, please. She’s itching for a fight.
Jason shakes his head. ‘No. It’s fine, honestly. I get to hang with you guys, don’t I?’ he says, looking at Mandy, Kevin and even Lorrie, a rare appearance in the kitchen as she scopes for potential snacks and will no doubt be disappointed.
Kevin smiles. ‘Can we watch a movie?’
‘Hey, school night,’ Carol reminds him, but there’s no heat in it. Jason winks at Kevin and Carol really does want to find out what happened, because if it was Munson, she’s happy to throw down, knife or no knife. ‘OK, well, I’ll be back before ten, no sweat. Thanks again.’
‘Sure, go have fun.’
Carol hesitates for a moment before she kisses his cheek, very brisk, follows it up with a shoulder whack before she heads out and doesn’t look back.
‘Be good, brats!’
*
She’s on a mission now.
Moping time at the quarry be damned.
Carol is an excellent walker, if nothing else. Heels, boots, platforms, doesn’t matter. She’s got this good balance, strong legs and good lungs despite the cheap smokes.
She walks to the trailer park, it’s not far.
And she’d been here before with Tommy, getting weed whenever the regular guy got busted, knows where this fucker lives.
She knocks real loud, got an excellent wad of gum in, which is pretty much go time for fucking up someone’s night.
He opens the door, Eddie Munson stood there all shirtless and sweaty, hair in a mop top and he—
‘Oh my god, were you having sex?’
He’s breathless, lips red, and yeah, no denying the smell. Carol knows wet sex real well.
He looks pissed. ‘Can I help you?’
From somewhere inside, she hears Steve say, ‘I can’t believe you answered the door.’
Carol pops a bubble, looks smug. ‘Wwwwow.’
‘Fuck off, Perkins,’ Eddie warns.
She snorts and barges inside. ‘Jesus, I thought I lived in a shithole.’
‘Hey, get your skanky ass out!’
She sniffs, sizes him up. ‘Leave Jason Carver alone.’
He visibly reels. ‘Say again?’
‘You want me to repeat myself, it comes with a smack, trailer trash. I know you heard me.’
Steve appears in what she supposes is the living room, zipping up his jeans, similarly sexed up. ‘Carol, what the fuck—?’
‘You go near him again, and I’ll knock you head off your moody boy shoulders. And whatever shit you’re spreading about him, causing him problems, you’re gonna stop doing that too,’ she says to Eddie, hoping against hope he loses his temper, lashes out. He’s not stable like Steve, not well-adjusted like Robin. It’s always a possibility. ‘Just because you chose to be a loser living on the outside, doesn’t mean you gotta inflict it on him!’
‘Carol,’ Steve says seriously. ‘We haven’t done anything to Jason.’
‘Was I talking to you, pretty boy? I’m talking to your lover, and I’ll fuck him up unless this shit stops, you got me?’
‘Hey, he started it!’ Eddie tells her. ‘He was demanding shit that I don’t sell. I told him to get lost and when he refused, the whole thing went fucking sideways.’
Carol stares at him, hard and searching.
‘I don’t believe you.’
Eddie shakes his head. ‘Fuck me, princess Perkins, when’d you go to bat for the other side? Didn’t realise you were protecting the upper class.’
‘Hey, he’s all right,’ she warns and it’s the most serious she ever sounds about anything. ‘And whatever this shit was, it’s in the past. Let it go and leave him alone.’
‘We haven’t seen him,’ Steve says. ‘No one has.’
Eddie tongues his teeth, looks her over. ‘Are you fucking him?’
‘Eddie,’ Steve reproaches, but Carol openly leers. She just knows she could get this fucker into a fight, knows it’d be vicious and good, if only Steve wasn’t there. Munson’s like her, a little. Rough insides and sharp outsides, but good people like Harrington tend to dull their cut.
‘Why, trailer trash? You been thinking about other people fucking? Don’t blame you, ‘s hard to come when you got a vanilla baby on top’a ya.’
‘That’s enough,’ Steve tells her, now stood between them both. ‘Carol, you should go.’
Eddie grins. Carol wants to knee him where it’d matter. ‘You got over Hagan real fast, huh? Just another Tiger jacket to you, I guess. One’s as good as the other.’
‘Say that again, fuck-face.’
‘Hey! Not cool,’ Steve tells Eddie, physically pushing him back. ‘Carol, c’mon. Outside with me.’
He sort of drags her out and when they’re on the grass and the sky is dark overhead, she finally wrenches herself out of the fight clutch her body was in.
Sour taste in her mouth, she’s full of adrenaline she can’t use now.
‘What is your fucking deal, Carol?’
‘Ah, the fuck do you care, huh?’ she demands, nasty smile in place, tears in her eyes, she wants to rip them out. ‘You got your new friends, your boyfriend, your perfect life, all your money, you got everything so why would you care?’
Steve stares at her for a moment, before he shakes his head. The moon’s bright above them. ‘I don't.’
*
She wakes up in a cell.
The Chief, Hopper, gives her a rundown of the night before, but she can’t hear any of it over the volume of her hangover and far worse, the gut sick dread of what the fuck would have happened when her Dad got home and found Jason there.
‘…be doing stuff like this,’ the older man tells her tiredly. ‘You’re not in High School anymore.’
Carol’s good jacket is ruined, it’s covered in mud and fuck knows what else. Her knuckles are sore and red. She knows she had sex, can sort of remember the guy, how boring it was. She can feel the tear tracks, knows she cried at some point. Tastes bile, definitely threw up.
‘Uh huh.’
‘Who can I call to come get you?’
‘Just let me go.’
‘I’d much rather you had someone collect you.’
Carol wipes her eyes, expression dead. ‘I don’t know anyone’s numbers.’
Hopper calls Steve fucking Harrington.
*
‘Why the fuck did you bring her?’ Carol demands, bending to speak through the rolled down window. Robin scoffs, exaggerated and goofy.
‘She was with me already, and hello to you too, Carol, you’re welcome,’ Steve snaps, looks unhappy.
But Hopper is lurking in the background and so Carol has to suck it up and get in the back, giving the Chief a deeply facetious smile and a wave until he’s out of sight and then she flips her hand around. Middle finger to no one, she sure showed him.
‘What the hell happened?’ Steve asks.
Carol stares out the window. ‘Your Mom fucked your Dad and it all went downhill from there.’
‘Hey, you’re hurt,’ Robin points out and when Carol looks, Robin is half turned in her seat in the front. ‘Your leg?’
Carol glances down, sees a nasty cut that’s already clotted, probably leaves and mud. ‘I’m a tapestry,’ she tells Robin. ‘In progress. Are you taking me home?’
‘Uh,’ Steve says slowly, tone hesitant. ‘Do you want me to?’
‘Why are you talking like that?’
‘Your Dad is kinda on the war path,’ Robin explains, wincing. ‘Jason came to Steve’s place looking for you.’
‘Fuck,’ she utters, feels winded. ‘Was he OK?’
Steve takes a left. ‘Not hurt.’
‘Yeah, just get me home.’
‘You sure?’
‘What, like you’re gonna move me in to your mansion, Harrington? Yes, home. Nowhere else to be.’
Outside the house, it’s deceptively quiet.
Her Dad’s car isn’t there.
Carol bites her lip, weighing shit.
Robin nudges Steve, who sighs. ‘I’m sorry for what I said last night.’
‘Go fuck yourself,’ she mutters, barely paying attention. If her Dad’s home, she’s gonna get smacked. Carol doesn’t care about that, but she doesn’t want the kids to see it. That matters. ‘Is he in or what?’
Steve gets out the car, opens her door. ‘I’ll come inside with you.’
Carol snorts, revolted. ‘Fuck off, no you won’t.’
‘I remember how nice your Dad could be,’ Steve says, glancing toward the door. Robin comes along too and Carol just wants the kids to be OK, doesn’t care about these spoiled fuckers.
‘Whatever.’
House is quiet, but she hears the TV right away. Carol goes for the noise, Steve staying ahead of her like he’s the caped crusader. In the den, the kids are there all huddled on one sofa. Lorrie has Cory in her arms, he’s asleep, but the other three are all awake. Kevin’s eyes are red and he lets out a huge, trembling sigh when he sees her.
‘What the fuck?’ Lorrie snaps under her breath, eyeing Carol, who kneels down in front of them all, touching each of them carefully.
‘Are you OK? Mandy, you’re all right?’
‘Where were you?’
‘I’m sorry,’ Carol says, rocks in her throat. ‘I’m really sorry, where is he?’
‘Where were you!?’ Lorrie hisses and Carol takes Cory from her arms, puts him against her chest, head on her shoulder. He’s so little, sleeping soundly. ‘God, just look at you. Dad was so right!’
‘Hey,’ Steve warns. ‘There was trouble last night, it was my fault. Your sister helped us out, that’s why she couldn’t come home.’
Lorrie sneers. ‘What trouble?’
‘Someone tried to attack me,’ Robin lies, fairly well actually. ‘It got nasty. Carol kicked ass.’
‘Hey, what happened with Jason?’ Carol asks Kevin.
‘Dad came home, you weren’t back and he went crazy, screaming at Jason. He threw stuff at him, chased him off.’
Carol rubs Cory’s back. ‘Where is he now? Dad?’
Lorrie gets up, staring daggers. ‘He left, because of you!’
‘What?’
‘He said he needed some time,’ Mandy explains quietly.
Carol blinks. ‘Did he leave money?’
‘No.’
‘Fucker,’ she says, headed for the kitchen. ‘Kev, go see if he left his wallet, anything.’
Kevin heads upstairs, but she already knows he wouldn’t have left anything useful.
‘He took a case,’ Lorrie tells her, mouth in a thin line. It’s almost easy to forget she’s fifteen sometimes. ‘Took his car, said he’d call in a few weeks.’
‘Weeks?’
‘You caused it, he left because of you!’
‘When did he leave?’
‘This morning.’
‘Wait, he left?’ Steve asks, looking between the siblings.
‘This is nothing to do with you,’ Carol tells him flatly. ‘And you don’t care anyway, so fuck off.’
‘I didn’t mean it, Carol.’
‘Where would he have gone?’ Robin asks, and Carol wants to fling more bile and vitriol her way too, finds she’s running low, though.
‘With her, his girlfriend. He thinks we don’t know.’
‘Know what?’
‘The woman he was seeing before Mom died,’ Mandy explains tiredly and she is too young for this shit. ‘He’s still with her.’
‘That’s where he went.’
‘She local?’
‘No, out of town.’
‘You know her name?’
‘Only first name.’ Carol looks around. It’s still pretty tidy, how Jason left it, except for the smashed glass bowl by the back door, cheap Halloween candy everywhere all mixed up with broken glass.
Carol will clean it up.
‘Hey, you can go,’ she says seriously to Robin, fuck him. ‘Thanks for your help, but you can go now.’
‘How about we take the kids for ice cream?’ Robin offers, looking at Steve. ‘You were meeting your other brood there anyway.’
Steve opens his mouth, then closes it quickly. ‘Sure, of course.’
Kevin comes down, shakes his head.
Carol drags up a smile for him and Mandy and Lorrie.
‘You guys do me a huge favour and go rinse Harrington here completely dry, please. Take him for all he’s got, yeah? Ice cream for all.’
‘What about Cory?’
‘I’ve got him,’ Carol says, winking at Kevin. ‘Gonna clean up and sort this all out.’
‘Like you sorted shit last night?’ Lorrie demands, arms crossed, it’s uncanny.
‘I’m sorry about last night,’ Carol says, means it, wishes she knew how to get level with Lorrie, beyond winning the fucking lottery. ‘It’s gonna be OK.’
‘We can take Cory,’ Mandy offers, clearly mediating. ‘We’ll take the stroller, it’ll be nice.’
‘You sure?’
‘Yeah, course.’
Carol carefully hands him over, her heart all tangled up in thorns and nettles and other shit that cuts and stings.
‘I’ll stay and help,’ Robin says, when the kids are suited and booted, out the door with Harrington, who does at least seem very at ease with kids. Kevin is putting the carrier in the backseat, showing Steve how to do it and Robin said…
‘Wait, what?’ Carol shakes herself, wasn’t listening. ‘No, no.’
‘Yes, yes,’ Robin insists lightly. ‘Trust me, I’m actually so good at cleaning up carnage, you got no clue.’
Steve leaves, seems to know Robin is staying.
The house is quiet, empty.
Robin opens the back door, starts sweeping up the glass and Carol goes to the phone, opens the little leather booklet of family numbers. There aren’t many.
She calls Mean Gramma first, gets it out of the way. This is Dad's Mom and she’s a miserable old bitch who thinks her precious son shouldn’t have married Carol’s beautiful, trashy Momma.
‘Cunt,’ Carol declares neat and clipped, hangs up and ends the disastrous conversation in which Mean Gramma informs her in no uncertain terms that even if her son had called, she wouldn’t tell Carol.
Robin chokes on a laugh from the other room. ‘Oh my god, I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone actually use that word before.’
‘Shame, it’s the best one.’
She calls a couple more, but they either don’t answer or know jack shit. Carol just has this real nasty feeling he’s not coming back.
She calls where he works.
‘Yeah, he quit this morning,’ the voice says down the phone and Carol goes cold inside, goes full on numb.
Robin has cleaned up all the glass when Carol comes out, walking on legs she can’t feel.
‘Hey, any—oh shit, what happened?’
‘He uh, he quit his job,’ Carol tells her, nodding. ‘Yeah, so. I don’t think he’s coming back.’
Robin stares. ‘Fuck. Do you have any other family who could help out?’
‘No. Well, discounting Mean Gramma, of course.’
‘Shit.’
Carol looks around at the kitchen, the house.
She misses Tommy, or just the space he filled maybe. His presence, his existence as her boyfriend. She misses having someone in her fucking corner by default.
She wants to cry, scream, cut herself to ribbons.
Instead, she forces a smile. ‘Worse shit happens at sea, right? We were basically living without him anyway. We’ll be fine.’
She heads upstairs, needs… something.
Shower, bathroom cabinet, razors.
Robin follows. ‘Carol.’
‘You should go.’
‘I don’t wanna go.’
‘Yeah, give it time.’
But Robin pursues, follows her into Carol’s bedroom, so fucking rude. There’s a pile of laundry on the bed, Carol starts folding it, decides that this is what needs her attention. Laundry, then the house, then get a really well paid job from somewhere, somehow and just… raise the kids, on her own.
No problem.
Carol will be mid-thirties by the time Cory’s an adult.
No problem.
‘Hey, you should sit down.’
‘Me? Nah, I’m good. You can go now.’
‘I don’t want to.’
‘I don’t want you here. I got shit to do. Just go.’
‘You shouldn’t be alone.’
‘Well, I am,’ she says in a dead voice, the voice of the dead girl Tommy left behind to perish and wither when he took away the last of the light. Carol has Miriam Hagan’s oven dish downstairs and she is never, ever giving it back. ‘I am alone, and I got shit to do, so fuck off.’
Robin starts pairing socks, folding jeans and Carol snaps, shoves her away, drops the clothes.
‘You deaf? I don’t want you here, you fucking busybody, you got nowhere else to be? Think I don’t know you’re lollygagging and like… fucking enjoying yourself? Carol Perkins’ life, the Broadway shitshow! I don’t want you here, you fucking bitch!’
Robin tries to hug her.
Carol fights it, she can be vicious and mean, she knows how to hurt, but she does not utilise that. Instead of slapping and scratching and pulling hair, she pushes.
‘It’s OK,’ Robin tells her, sounds like she believes it too, isn’t that fucking hilarious. ‘It’s gonna be OK, I promise.’
‘Get the fuck off, you piece of shit! I fucking hate you and I hate him and I hate Tommy and my Mom and my fucking Dad and they’re all gone anyway, so good fucking riddance, huh? Get OFF!’
She shoves hard and Robin stumbles, but doesn’t fall.
Carol’s leg is bleeding again.
She’s muddy and disgusting.
She is disgusting.
‘I’m not leaving you like this,’ Robin says, shakes her head and Carol thinks no one has ever looked this immovable. Like a towering structure, nature made.
Carol wants to topple it.
She wants to strike it, vicious and senseless, just to watch it all fall down, beauty in destruction except no, it’s ugly and it’s painful and she just wants her Mom.
The only person she truly wants to come back is the only person who cannot.
Gone too far, gone somewhere else.
Gone into the ground.
Cory sometimes calls Carol Momma.
It’s beyond unfair.
It’s miles past a bad hand.
Carol wants Robin to realise her mistake.
To see Carol the way everyone else does.
To run, run, run away.
She pulls Robin down to kiss her.
*
“Age of Delilah”
20 'til midnight at gas stations
Praying to a stranger’s dogs
In the parking lot
I asked have I done enough for salvation
They said you’ll die if you
Leave it up to God
Said I’ve been drinking from this river
'til I bled it dry
But they looked me dead in my eyes and said
It doesn’t matter if the grass is
Greener on the other side
As long as it’s alive
-Ethel Cain
It’s a nasty kiss.
It’s cruel and cutting, there is no love in kissing, Carol knows and knows well. Lips and tongue, the mouth is a strange thing and Carol Perkins is always so aware of her own. The movements, the use, the noise, the consequences.
Robin flinches with surprise, and Carol takes what pleasure she can from that, likes to shock, to surprise, to leave an impression, especially if it’s bad.
Bad, bad, bad.
No one is badder, no one is worse, no one brings dread in the hearts of mothers when their son takes an interest in Carol fucking Perkins.
Carol laughs against Robin’s lips, slack with astonishment and it guts her inside, because Robin is kind and decent and she blushed when Carol called her kitten but she doesn’t belong here in this world, in this house and there is no surer way to get her gone than this.
So Carol thinks.
Robin breaks the kiss, moves away to do it and her eyes are wide, moving between Carol’s own, panting shallow and soft. Carol watches, waits, fight or fuck, no flight, she’s not a bird, has no wings, will never, ever get off the ground.
And for a moment, Robin Buckley looks like she’s about to say something in anger, like she’s actually going to tell Carol to fuck off, that’s gross, disgusting, what is wrong with her?
This flash of something warm, but it shifts.
She is so expressive and Carol can’t look away.
Hit me, hurt me, fight me, please.
The taller girl pushes a shaky breath through clenched teeth and then looks away. ‘I’m staying.’
Carol falters. ‘What?’
‘Your bullshit won’t work on me,’ Robin says, and she shutters her expression in the least cold way Carol’s ever seen, like putting glass between her and a wild animal she intends to later feed and bathe. ‘I’m staying.’
Robin folds t-shirts while Carol watches, feels oddly paralysed and after a whole minutes of agonising silence, she asks, in a child-like voice, ‘Why?’
*
The lack of an answer plagues her.
Robin does a bunch of stuff, they’re sort of body doubling the place, doing shit that needs doing but together, but in this weird awkward silence.
Occasionally, Robin will ask something banal and necessary like, where do you keep the batteries? And Carol will sneer at her but answer.
The way Robin didn't answer.
It’s pity, or it’s sympathy or empathy.
Decency and common goodness.
The things Carol dreads.
But she can’t let go of this strange, niggling thought that, like, maybe that’s not the only reason she stays.
The place is clean and they make an admittedly basic dinner together for the kids and Robin sets out five plates, like Carol’s gonna eat and when Carol tells her not to bother, she says, ‘There’s enough for you too, Carol,’ in the most annoying fucking way ever and Carol’s still night before filthy, still cut in places from fights she doesn’t remember and sticky from a fuck too dull to recall.
‘I’m gonna shower,’ she says, thinks she nailed that bored tone, like all this is meaningless. ‘Thanks for your help.’
‘I’ll be here when you come down.’
‘Fucking bitch,’ Carol seethes under the spray, tries not to notice that her Dad took his own all in one shit. She wishes she could cry. She wishes she could feel it.
All she feels is this need for… something.
Bathroom cabinet.
Hand between her legs.
Cheap wine.
The quarry.
It all pales to how bad she wants a fight.
Wants to track her Dad down, pummel until she lets the bone beneath breathe for once, skeletons must be so tired of being underwater all the time.
When she does touch between her legs, she finds her pussy slick with that inner wet spilling out and she knows intimately the feel of her own stuff as opposed to a man's leftovers. Theirs is squeaky slippery, her own is like silk.
She got so fucking wet from a kiss.
In the end, she settles for slapping her face a few times, hard and vicious, makes her ears ring.
In the mirror, she looks like shit.
No makeup, hair all wet and flat.
Her eyes are dull, her face unremarkable.
No shine to her like Nancy Wheeler.
No chaos, no magic like Robin.
Carol thinks she should have been born a boy, then she could just be queer like everyone else in this fucked up shithole. Then she could be violent and stupid and she could leave like all men do, leave the mess behind and have no fucker question it.
Instead, she’s just a girl.
And he took the fucking razor blades too.
*
Robin’s still there when Harrington brings the kids back. They have absolutely cleaned him out, which makes Carol very happy. Lorrie has what looks like a new purse and Cory’s wearing a new hat which is adorable and the kids have colouring books with pencils.
Carol takes the baby and kisses his face, finds warm comfort in the littlest of them all. ‘Hi, baby,’ she whispers and he babbles his idioglossia. ‘Everyone have a good time?’
‘Steve’s cool,’ Lorrie throws at Carol.
Kevin and Mandy talk about the older brats Carol knows Steve is all tangled up with, they sound nice, if deeply weird in that very specific Harrington way.
Robin and Steve talk quietly by the door while Carol sets them up for dinner, playing with Cory and pretending she can’t hear her own name pass back and forth between them.
‘Lorrie, get your ass down here for dinner!’
‘Coming, god! Can I go out after?’
Carol opens her mouth to say no, absolutely not you spoilt brat, but she looks at her little sister, remembers when she was as small as Cory, way back when Loretta Perkins’ favourite person in the world was her big sister Carol.
‘Back before nine, please,’ Carol says, emulates Jason a little, the way he’s always real calm.
Lorrie blinks, surprised. Carol has no doubt she wrangled five bucks out of Steve and rightly so.
‘Yeah, I will be.’
Carol sets the kids up at dinner, Cory still in the high chair, he’s getting too big for it, but it’ll last another month.
Carol goes to them both.
‘Thanks for today,’ she tells them, as brisk as possible, smile firmly in place. ‘We’re having dinner now, so.’
‘Cool, sure,’ Steve says, glaring at Robin and then looking at Carol. ‘I really am sorry about what I said.’
She smiles with her mouth closed. ‘I don’t care. Have a great night fucking your boyfriend in a trailer.’
Steve gives the, I told you so, look to his best friend and heads out to his car, Lorrie calling out, ‘Bye, Steve!’
Robin lingers.
Carol fronts. ‘What, you got nowhere else to go?’
She doesn’t rise to it. Instead, Robin gets that faintly all-knowing look about her, borderline smug if she wasn’t so fucking good. ‘I’ll see you around, Carol.’
*
Carol picks up a second job, she works nights over at a bar on the outside of town. It’s not a nice bar. She can’t bring Cory, wouldn’t bring any of the kids even if she could.
Lorrie agrees to help out with Cory at night and getting up with the kids some mornings, and in return, Carol cuts her some slack, slips her a buck or two when she can.
She’s working pretty much non-stop.
It’s fucking awful.
And without their Dad’s money coming in, the world has sharply narrowed to dollar bills and cents.
Carol has this box.
All the shit she’s ever stolen from boys, mostly Tommy. Some of it’s worthless, some of it might bring in a few bucks if hocked, most of it’s just junk.
But she keeps the little pieces, she steals them and hoards them, worthless treasures because they took from her and it felt good to take something back.
She puts Tommy’s penknife in the bathroom cabinet.
Just in case.
It’s been three weeks.
They’re not gonna make ends meet come the end of the month, she’s been over and over things, obsessing over numbers and bills and it makes her sick when she sees shit like taxes.
The day they pillage the basement, she opens all the windows in the house, plays music real loud on the boom box and gets all the kids to help her in the search for anything of worth.
There’s a lot of shit down there.
And some of it, golf clubs for example, might bring in a few bucks, but mostly, it just feels good to do something. Carol laughs with Lorrie about shit like boys and she talks to Kevin about Thundercats and she promises Mandy she’s gonna have a killer birthday party next week (somehow) and Cory sits in his playpen, happy amid the cheerful chaos.
They’re halfway through when Jason comes down.
‘Jase!’ Kevin yells, running to him for a hug.
Carol drags her arm over her mouth. She’s seen Jason before now a bunch of times, he still helps out and she apologised a lot for what happened.
He’s just as nice.
‘Hey, buddy,’ he greets, looking around. ‘We havin’ a clear out?’
‘Yeah, you see anything you like, I’ll give you a good price,’ Carol tells him, kissing his cheek as she sometimes does and he kisses hers back. It’s a weird little thing they never talk about, but it makes her warm inside, like the feeling of falling asleep in the back of the car on the way home from the beach, that feeling. ‘How’s it goin’?’
‘Pretty good,’ he tells her, starts helping without invitation. ‘What are you guys up to tonight?’
He’s asking if she needs him to watch the kids, but the truth is, she’s so fucking tired, just the thought of walking anywhere, even on her night off, is ridiculous.
‘We’re in tonight,’ she tells him. ‘You wanna hang?’
She rarely asks, because in all honesty the thought of losing Jason at this point would truly push her over the edge and Carol knows that people who are around her too much inevitably leave and don’t come back.
Look at Robin.
Carol’s barely seen her in passing the last few weeks and not spoken to her, not had any visits.
Not like she’s surprised, because she fucked that up completely on purpose, but the small part of her that pushes people away just to see if they care enough to come back… that part is always quietly heartbroken.
‘Is that cool?’ he asks, hefting a large basket of bagged up baby clothes away from the wall. Lorrie yelps when a big old spider skitters indignantly away and Kevin catches it with both hands, takes it outside to free it.
Jason’s blue eyes are wide and earnest.
‘I mean, sure,’ Carol tells him. ‘But you probably got better shit to do, right?’
He smile-laughs, shakes his head. ‘I really don’t. You want help taking this stuff to Goodwill?’
‘Nah, I’m selling what I can, tossing what I can’t.’
‘OK, well, lot of this could help someone else,’ he points out gently and she rolls her eyes, grins.
‘God, fine, Mr Innate Goodness, we’ll drop it off. You think I could, like, rent this room out?’
‘For what?’
‘Lodgers, I don’t know.’
‘Uh, maybe? I’m not an expert on that stuff.’
‘I don’t want some stranger living here,’ Lorrie says immediately. ‘Unless it’s Steve. Steve can stay.’
Carol rolls her eyes, bites back the bitter vitriol she wants to spew about Lorrie’s new crush.
‘Hey, there’s a box of um, photos here,’ he tells her, handing it over. They’re in there haphazard and loose, something her Mom probably told herself she’d get around to, but never did. Carol nods, can’t look at any of them.
‘Thanks, they can go in the corner.’
‘Can I take a few?’ Kevin asks, follows the box to its new home.
‘Course, sweetie,’ she says briskly, keeping her mind on the task of sifting through their trash for cash. ‘Whatever you like.’
They eat lunch together, Carol makes sandwiches.
‘You seein’ anyone?’ she asks him. It’s November now. Halloween came and went, the kids are making their candy last. Lorrie had her first kiss, she told Carol about it in a very guarded way and Carol listened, didn’t judge, just smiled the way Mom did for her, when she came running home to tell her all about Tommy Hagan.
‘Nope,’ he says and the way he pops the P, he doesn’t wanna talk about it, so she drops it.
‘Yeah, me neither.’
‘You’re not… still with Tommy?’
Carol snorts. ‘He’s already forgotten my name. It’s whatever, you know.’ She looks at him. She wonders, sometimes, in a very safe, abstract way, if she’d gotten with him instead, would he have come with her to get the abortions? No, she thinks he’s the kind to make atrocious decisions out of love. Carol wonders if she would have corrupted him. She wonders where it comes from.
The kids are playing out on the front lawn, overgrown and weedy, they’re playing tag with Cory, who squeals happily and chases them on chubby legs.
Jason looks at the door, half open.
He’s pale.
‘I need to tell you something, Carol.’
She pauses, caught in the mild panic of wanting to react the right way. She’s not the best person to come out to, but she’s gonna do her best, will act casual, like it doesn’t even matter or no, maybe that’s dismissive.
Shit.
‘Sure,’ she says, and waits.
But he just keeps on staring at the door.
And the words never come.
In the end, he just smiles like it’s that or crying. Carol thinks it must be hard for boys, only seems fair, they get it easy in so many other ways, but still.
‘You’re all right,’ she tells him and means it.
Hopes that’s enough, but knows deep down it’s not.
He shakes his head and eats the sandwich. It’s not very good, but he eats it anyway. When he looks up at her, his eyes are wet. ‘Wanna get pizza for the kids tonight? My treat.’
*
A lot of things are his treat.
Carol’s pride about shit for herself is a constant source of interference, fucking up opportunity after opportunity for things she actually needs, but when it comes to the kids, she doesn’t give a fuck. She’ll let anyone spoil them.
It’s mid-November when she sees Robin again, properly.
Carol is walking home from the bar, it’s around two thirty and she’s freezing cold, still stuck wearing the jacket she can’t let go of, even though it shrunk even more when she was forced to wash it.
It’s pitch black save for the spaced out lights, but she knows her way and when a car comes rolling along from behind, she doesn’t turn.
It drives on for a bit then slows, stops and reverses.
‘The fuck,’ she utters, instantly preparing to use the kitchen knife she carries in Mandy’s old backpack, one strap is fine for Carol.
She’s got fingers around the handle when she sees whose car it is and lets out a shuddery breath full of misplaced anger and barely hidden relief.
Robin rolls down the window.
‘Hey, are you OK?’
‘Hello yourself, kitten,’ Carol says, swinging the backpack on her shoulder more securely. ‘You lookin’ for a date?’
‘Why are you walking so late?’
‘I’m coming from work,’ Carol spits. ‘You ever heard of it? Not all of us get cushy little play time, day time jobs.’
‘Get in,’ Steve says and oh, his attitude, no fucking way that’s gonna fly.
Carol snorts. ‘Go fuck yourself, pretty boy,’ she tosses over her shoulder, walking away.
The car crawls along beside her.
‘I haven’t seen you around,’ Robin says and Carol wants to find a really big rock, crush it against the bodywork of this rich boy car, really scratch the paint and dent the metal before she smashes the glass.
‘Funny, I saw you around,’ Carol says, staring ahead.
She hopes they drive away and she gets murdered.
They’d feel like shit all their lives.
‘How come you didn’t say hi?’
‘I had shit going on. Not like you don’t know where I live, is it?’
‘We’ve had stuff going on too,’ Steve points out sternly and yeah, he’s getting bricked later, it’s insured, he’ll get over it. ‘C’mon, Carol, get in the car.’
She ignores them, walks on.
She’s a good walker.
Still thinks about it, even more so now.
Just one town over, nobody would know her.
‘I’m sorry,’ Robin says, and gets out of the car. ‘Carol, I’m sorry I didn’t come by. I wanted to, but I just… shit’s been real bad the last few weeks.’
‘That where y’all vanished to?’ she asks, still won’t look. ‘During the black outs and shit?’
‘Yeah, kinda. Please get in, I wanna talk to you.’
It’s warm in the car, Carol can tell.
She’d rather freeze to death.
‘Go away, Robin,’ she says, walks on.
Robin falls back, talking to Steve.
They’re arguing, but it gets farther away.
Good, she thinks, ruthless and mean.
And when the car drives past, she’s actually a little surprised, but not that much.
What does surprise her is Robin running to catch up.
‘Hey, what the fuck?’
‘You look freezing, want my jacket?’
‘What the fuck, Robin?!’
‘C’mon, take my—’
‘What are you doing? Huh?’
‘You’re too little to be out here alone!’ Robin says loudly, removing her jacket and oh, Carol’s gonna smack her.
‘Did you just call me little?’
Robin dumps her jacket around Carol’s shoulders and for all of a second, it’s warm and comforting before she shrugs it off, shoves Robin hard.
‘Fuck off!’
‘No, I don’t think I will,’ Robin argues. ‘I’ve been caught up in a lot of really horrible shit the last few weeks, but that’s over now and I missed you and you’re freezing and you’re, like, tiny, so come on.’
Carol slaps her.
The crack of it echoes around this woodland wasteland like a gunshot, trees and echoes and space making the sound much worse than the blow itself.
Robin goes quiet, touches her cheek.
Carol is so mad she can taste it.
‘Fuck,’ Robin utters, those eyes catching the light from the nearest yellow beacon and in half-shadow, she is a strange thing, Robin Buckley.
Carol waits, wants the fight.
She always does.
Robin moves forward so suddenly that Carol’s heart jams up into her throat, defences coming into play but it’s not a fight Robin brings.
Hard and desperate, Robin kisses Carol and holds her face with one hand, the other slipping into her hair.
Carol’s entire mind goes blank.
Because Robin is warm and the world is ice fucking cold and she was alone out here and now not and Robin isn’t kissing her like she’s sorry, it’s not gentle, it’s not sweet.
It’s hungry.
And Carol is too, she is fucking starved.
She kisses back, she shows off, makes it good and slutty, moans all high the way boys like and Robin gasps into her mouth, holding her face.
‘You’re trouble,’ she tells Carol, like it’s praise.
Carol leers, licks over her mouth, triumphant. ‘You must like the taste.’
They kiss again, wild and messy and Robin is surprisingly dominant and it’s making Carol go fucking crazy, she wants all kinds of nasty, gross shit with this girl, she wants to make a mess so bad that the sky will turn away, the stars will hide and the moon will call the clouds because Carol is gonna fucking ruin her.
They stumble back, through nettles and overgrowth until Carol’s back hits a fucking tree and the only light comes from behind Robin, the road nearby.
As soon as there’s a way to push, Carol uses it, lifts her leg and her skirt rides high, gets that leg around Robin’s waist, rolling her hips, only there isn’t anything there so obvious to rub up against and that’s almost funny until Robin dips to suck on Carol’s neck, right beneath her ear and Carol lets out a real undignified sound, low and guttural and honest and Robin groans, says, ‘Love that noise.’
‘You wanna fuck me?’
‘I… I just want you.’
Carol has never done this with a girl.
Never even kissed another girl, that time in the bedroom was her first time, but she knows what she herself likes, she knows how to make herself feel good.
‘Want me to…’ She catches her breath. ‘Go down on you?’
Robin’s face creases and she kisses her again, like she’s trying to shut her up. Carol kisses back, but she’s impatient too, wants the sex, however it happens, wants something, fucking anything.
Hand between Robin’s legs is enough to make the taller girl step back, shaking her head. ‘Stop, stop, stop.’
‘What? Why?’
‘I—I never did this before.’
Carol could scoff, she could crack wise.
‘Me neither,’ she says instead.
Robin stares at her, backlit by the streetlamp, she’s a scruffy angel with a stale yellow halo.
‘I don’t know where the fuck you came from.’
Carol says, ‘I’ve been here the whole time, you just never saw me.’
Behind him.
‘I…’
Don't, don’t, don’t.
‘I’ll make you feel good,’ Carol offers, voice softened. ‘I promise. Please?’
‘Carol, you don’t get it.’
‘How hard can it be? I do it to myself all the time.’
Robin groans, hand over face. ‘No, no. Not that. I. I like you. I think about you a lot. Too much, probably.’
‘What?’ Carol is sort of disgusted on Robin’s behalf. ‘You like me?’
‘Yeah, I really do.’
‘Why?’
Maybe Robin won’t answer again.
Like she didn’t last time.
But here, in the woods on the edge of the road, she takes a deep breath and says, ‘You’re mean and you’re beautiful and you didn’t give a fuck that we asked you to lie for free entry. You treat Steve like shit and you love those kids and you punched Eddie without even thinking about it. I love Steve and Eddie, don’t get me wrong, but I’ve never… I’ve never known anyone like you. I like you. I don’t just wanna… have sex.’
‘Fuck, you mean?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Say it then.’
‘I don’t just wanna fuck you, Carol.’
‘You’re so weird.’
‘I know.’
‘So, like, what? You wanna date me?’
It’s dry with disbelief and she is so fucking wet she can feel it, heart pounding, ankles stinging from the nettles.
‘I guess, yeah. I wanna hang out, see you, get to know you.’
‘That’s disgusting.’
I'm disgusting.
‘Yeah, laugh it up, I guess,’ Robin mutters, looking down.
‘No, I’m. I just mean all that dating shit.’ Carol steps closer. ‘You don’t need to. I’ll fuck you, I don’t mind.’
Robin looks up again, seems almost mad, but not at Carol. ‘I don’t just want to fuck you, though. So I do mind. That day in your bedroom, that was my first kiss.’
‘With a girl.’
‘No, ever.’
Carol’s lips part. ‘What?’
‘Yeah. And I know you were trying to get a rise out of me, to make me leave, so it didn’t mean anything to you, but that was… you’re always gonna be the first person who kissed me. And now the second. And if we do this here and now, you’ll be my first everything, and I don’t mind that it doesn’t mean much to you, but it does to me. I care about you.’
‘You don’t even know me.’
‘I know you steal and I know you’re tough and I know you kinda wanted to fight me back there. I want to know you, Carol. I want to.’
‘Why?’
‘I’m selfish, I guess. I want more than just this.’
‘You won’t like me when you know me.’
‘Says you.’
‘Says everyone.’
Robin shrugs. ‘I’m not everyone.’
*
They walk home together.
It’s quiet and awkward.
Carol can still taste her.
At the house, Robin says goodnight and kisses her cheek and asks if she can come by tomorrow and Carol is still confused, still sort of dazed, so she says, whatever.
Carol doesn’t sleep, she can’t.
Her heart is doing weird shit.
But she does go upstairs, sit on the bath and use Tommy’s shitty penknife for the first time.
*
‘Hey, are you OK?’ Jason asks as soon as he sees her.
‘Uh, yeah. Yeah, I’m good,’ she answers distractedly. ‘All good, you?’
‘Yeah, not so bad.’
Now that he’s not in school anymore, he comes pretty much every day. Carol worries about how much she’s starting to rely on him.
Today is the first time he brings money.
And the way he delivers it, it’s smart.
She admires him for it.
‘Hey, so, I’m here all the time now,’ he says, putting the neat little stack of twenties on the countertop. ‘Using your heat and lights, drinking all your water.’ He grins. ‘I wanna chip in, please.’
Carol stares at the money, wants to cry.
She wants to put Tommy’s penknife in her chest.
Wants to go drink milkshakes with Robin Buckley and never, ever let Jason Carver leave because he does homework with Kevin and he did Mandy’s home ec project with her.
She swallows to breathe, drags up a real shaky smile. ‘That’s nice of you.’
He nods, glad. ‘Good. I’ll bring it every Monday.’
Carol hugs him when he starts to walk away.
‘Thank you,’ she whispers, eyes closed so it’s not really real, only it is. He turns and hugs her back. ‘Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome.’
*
Robin shows up at four.
Jason’s making dinner with the kids, all three plus Cory on his hip and Carol was about to go get a few rentals for tonight when she knocks.
‘Hi,’ Robin says, stood there wearing just the most ridiculous overalls atop a very orange sweater. She glances behind Carol, scouting.
‘Hi,’ Carol returns, frowning.
‘Can I come in?’
‘I guess.’
‘Smells good,’ Robin says, glancing around, following the trail. ‘Oh, hi, Jason.’
He looks at her, then Carol, then back again.
‘Hey.’
‘No starting shit,’ Carol warns, but Robin just smiles.
Robin says, ‘Nah, we’re cool.’ He nods, goes back to stirring the sauce, Cory in one arm. ‘I didn’t know you guys were friends.’
‘So what’s up, Buckley?’ Carol asks, a little hint of force to it. ‘You just swinging by?’
Robin spots Kevin, gives a friendly wave. ‘Hey, little dude! How’s the drumming coming along?’
He smiles back, genuine yet hesitant, reading Carol’s mood first. ‘Uh, good, thanks.’
‘Remember what I said, if you need the keys to practise, ask the janitor, he’s got a soft spot for band kids.’
‘I will, thanks.’
‘Hello? Why are you here?’
‘Wanted to see you, check in.’
‘Check in?’
Robin seems to be ignoring the majority of Carol’s hostility. ‘Are you free tonight?’
‘Free for what?’
‘To go out.’
‘Where?’
‘To, like, see a movie?’
Carol considers. ‘Is it still free for fake couples?’
‘No, but I stole ten bucks from Steve.’
It’s funny that that's what sells it.
*
‘I’ll probably be back before Lorrie’s even in bed.’
‘No problem.’
‘And, like, it’s the movies, so y’know. Pretty dull.’
‘It sounds fun and she’s nice.’
Carol is applying lipstick.
It’s worn right down to the rim, she has to press it completely vertical, but it’s the best shade of pink and the store she shoplifted it from has a security guard now, so she’s not risking it.
Jason’s sitting on her bed.
The kids are eating downstairs, Cory in the highchair, mashing peas into his face and making a damned fine mess.
‘So, like…’
He trails off, Carol looks at him in the mirror. It’s old and needs a clean. ‘So, like, what?’
‘I dunno.’
‘You got a problem?’
She really doesn’t think he does.
Not for that reason, at least.
Jason looks up, expression gone soft. ‘No, of course not.’
‘Well, good,’ she says, finishing off. ‘She’s just bored anyway. Munson and Harrington are probably on a marathon right now. Can’t blame her for wanting a break.’
*
Carol takes Jason’s car, which is extremely cool. She can drive, she just doesn’t have her licence, something she sort of neglects to tell Robin.
‘Are we really goin’ to the movies?’ Carol asks, pops her gum and drives with confidence. It’s almost six.
‘Do you wanna go to the movies?’
‘Shit, no,’ Carol says, grins wide and makes a left with one hand on the wheel, does it like boys do, she’s always thought that was kinda sexy. ‘Not unless it’s another gruesome bloodfest, but I kinda don’t think that’s your jam, is it?’
Robin looks out the window, road ahead getting dark, trees all around blocking out the sunset. ‘Yeah, not so much.’
‘Then let’s go do somethin’ fun.’
*
It’s cheap beer, but Carol likes the taste and there’s no one at the quarry because it’s fucking cold when the sun goes down, so it’s quiet, but it’s fucking gorgeous too.
The day’s melting into night, rivers of dying gold bleeding into the cool, calm lilac, the milky encroach of darkness, like if it happens in stages, no one’ll be scared.
Leaving in increments, the death you see coming.
They sit on the hood of the car and Carol’s freezing, but she likes it. It’s good, it’s good not to be alone.
‘So, are you gay?’
Robin chuckles, watching the sky. ‘What gave it away?’
‘I mean are you gay or do you like both?’
‘Gay, I think.’
‘That’s cool.’ Carol sniffs, ignores the urge to smoke. ‘Boys are gross.’
‘They are,’ Robin agrees and the tail end of her exhale is a warm, misty sigh that Carol watches die in the air before them. ‘But we love ‘em anyway.’
‘Speak for yourself.’
Robin looks at her. ‘What’s up with you and Jason?’
‘He’s my friend.’
‘Since when?’
‘Since the day I punched Munson.’
‘You don’t think that’s kinda weird?’
‘I don’t care about what’s weird.’
‘Did you ever?’
‘I pretended to.’ She can just see the stars coming through. When the sun’s gone, their delicate light can be seen. ‘I like weird, though. Makes me feel safe.’
‘How come?’
‘Just does.’ Carol looks at her. They are looking at each other, breathing and sharing space. 'You like weird?’
Robin considers her answer. ‘Sometimes.’
‘You're weird, you know that?’
‘I’ve seen weirder, trust me.’
Carol looks away.
Back at the stars.
‘I was fifteen, the first time,’ she tells Robin, feels around in her pockets for cigarettes, sits up to light one when she finds it. ‘With Tommy, y’know. It was up here in his Dad’s car. He got his ass beat for taking it, but he was so determined and I thought it was so cool that he stole the car, brought me up here.’ The smoke feels good, warm and soothing.
‘What was it like?’
‘Sex?’
‘Yeah.’
Carol shrugs, lies back. She offers the cigarette to Robin, but it’s only to be polite and maybe show off a little. Robin shakes her head. ‘Sex is… I don’t know. It’s fun and intense and kinda fucking great, but it doesn’t feel good a lot of the time.’
‘How is it great, then?’
‘Great’s a funny word. Means a lotta shit. Like, sometimes he just goes in wrong and then you’re stuck the whole time just hoping it’s quick because y’know, ow.’
‘Jesus,’ Robin mutters. ‘Was it always just Tommy?’
Carol grins when she looks at her, exhales artfully. ‘No, of course not.’
‘Why?’
‘We’d break up a lot. He’d break up with me on a Friday, fuck some bitch and then be at mine Saturday afternoon, makin’ up. I never minded.’
‘Did he know, about you?’
Carol watches the stars. She wonders if she stares long enough, she’d see one die. What would it look like? ‘He knew.’
‘We don’t have to talk about this.’
‘You wanted to know me, right?’
‘Yeah, I do.’
‘Well, this is me, Ro-Bee.’
Robin takes the cigarette from her fingers, just holds it, looks at it. Smoke curls and the end burns down low, and they’re cheap, but sometimes the cheap shit goes down best.
‘Stuff you did doesn’t make you who you are.’
Carol watches her, kinda stares.
She’s captivating, strange and sweet and solid. Full of chaos and mystery and all of it somehow comforting.
‘No? You sure you’re not just bein’ nice?’
Robin tosses the cigarette, it hisses when it lands somewhere wet. ‘I’m not being nice,’ she says and then she leans over, kisses Carol.
She’s on top this time and Carol’s lying on metal and glass. It’s a good kiss and there’s something about this fucking weirdo that just has Carol’s heart pounding like an idiot.
Carol wraps arms around her neck, pulls her more on top, wants to feel her, wants too much far too fast and she thinks Jason’s windscreen won’t take it, but it’s hard to care when Robin’s fingers slide up into her hair and lightly tangle, tongue licking over Carol’s own for the first time.
‘Fuck,’ Robin whispers and it’s so intimate, yet so basic.
‘In the car,’ Carol says, clinging hard, kissing wherever she can reach. ‘Backseat, c’mon.’
They’re fogging the windows, but it’s warm in here and the backseat is spacious and it’s got decent leather and Carol won’t stop kissing her even for a second.
She’s so fucking wet, just throbbing.
‘Wanna make you feel good,’ she mutters into Robin’s mouth. ‘You gonna let me this time?’
‘Don’t need to.’
Carol makes a sound of displeasure, breaks the kiss.
‘Don’t do that.’
‘Do what?’
Carol manoeuvres Robin fully into the seat, straddles her and strokes her hair back. ‘Don’t be the nice guy, I don’t want that.’
Robin’s eyes move between her own, reading. The car light inside is pale yellow, and the engine’s running, heaters on. ‘What do you want?’
Carol’s cold fingers trail over Robin’s collarbone as she touches their lips, eliciting sensation but not starting a new kiss. ‘I want to make you come and I want you to enjoy it and let loose, OK? I don’t need all this nice guy on prom night shit, you get me? I don’t want that, for real.’
‘All right.’
Carol kisses her, just once.
‘I know you’re not gonna hurt me,’ she lies.
‘Never.’
‘Good, because I wanna play.’
‘Oh my god.’
‘Yeah, that’s it, lemme make you feel so good,’ she whispers, dragging teeth over the exposed column of flesh Robin offers when she leans back, neck warm and soft, no stubble, that’s nice. ‘Wanna ruin you.’
‘Jesus, fuck.’
Carol opens up the buttons of her shirt, trails kisses low the way boys tend to do before they lose interest, but her interest is keyed in, it’s total. She sucks little love bites, shallow ones, wherever she likes and Robin is panting softly, hands on Carol’s waist as the older girl exposes her bra.
It’s the very ugly gym bra kind, used to be white, but is now determinedly grey. Carol looks up at Robin, checks in. ‘You OK?’
Robin nods.
‘Put your hands in my hair.’
‘Tell me if it hurts?’
‘I will,’ Carol says instead of, I want it to hurt.
She pulls the bra down, much easier than fumbling behind her back, even though she could snap it in an instant. Robin’s nipples are dark pink, dusky rose and they’re bigger than Carol’s. Her skin prickles, anticipation or exposure, either way it’s beautiful.
Carol’s fingertips play with the nipple of the right as her mouth descends slowly towards the other, tongue out to lick first. Robin flinches, whole body kinda thing but she makes a pretty low noise too and Carol looks up as she does it again, gets a thrill of something warm in her middle as their eyes lock and she takes the nipple into her mouth.
She makes a seal, plays with the flesh, tongue and teeth, all light but not hesitant. Robin whines, hands in Carol’s hair.
‘Push me down, I like that,’ she says in a rush of words when she pulls off briefly. Robin nods and this time, when Carol sucks on her nipples, Robin kinda pushes her down on it. Carol moans, sucks harder, mouth wide.
‘Ah, fuck, Carol.’
Carol is straddling Robin’s thigh and her skirt rides high, panties catching on the rough denim and it feels way too good, feels so good she kinda wants to start rubbing herself that way, back and forth, sucking on Robin’s tits like this, fuck.
She doesn’t.
She switches sides instead, spreads the pleasure like it’s paint, makes a picture, makes a mess.
Her free hand trails down, pushes carefully beneath the waistband, over the soft natural swell of the lower belly and she goes slow on purpose, lots of time for Robin to say stop, no, anything, but Robin’s fingers are tight in her hair, still pushing down.
It’s intoxicating.
Her middle two fingers brush over the hair first, softer than a boys and yet thicker too, Carol smiles, goes lower.
Robin’s hips buck and she groans and Carol’s middle finger touches her clit, and oh, it’s big, swollen.
‘Fuck,’ she whispers against the wet, hot nipple, pulling off. ‘You’re so fucking sexy.’
She presses against what she found, watching Robin’s every reaction. Makes little circles, side to side and Robin is so fucking responsive, it’s unreal.
She goes lower, finds it hot and slick, she parts the lips and rubs over the hole, feeling it flutter and clench and god, it feels both obscene and fucking beautiful.
‘You all wet for me?’
Robin makes a pained noise, exquisite agony all over her gorgeous face. ‘Want you so bad.’
‘Yeah? What do you want?’ she asks, circling, rubbing, playing. ‘Want me to make you come?’
‘Want you to come too.’
‘God, you’re so sweet,’ she praises, but it’s got this underline of something dirty too. ‘You can touch me if you want.’
Robin moves faster than Carol expected, surprisingly eager. She pulls Carol more firmly onto her lap, kisses her neck, works to free her from the flimsy top and looks up to check in first. Carol’s hand is still between Robin’s legs, playing with her wet pussy when she nods, watches Robin pull her tits from the bra and she goes right for the nipples, gets her mouth on one and oh, fuck yeah, that’s good.
She’s always had such sensitive nipples.
Carol lets her head fall back, can’t help but rub herself on Robin’s thigh now, slutty and indulgent and genuinely so fucking turned on it leaves her dizzy.
‘Fucking god,’ she grunts, not faking any of it, doesn’t need to play it up, make all the good porn girl noises she learnt from watching those videos with Tommy.
Robin’s teeth graze her nipple and Carol makes this sound, all low and needy and Robin crushes their lips together, thumb rubbing back and forth over the wet nipple and Carol wants so bad to push her fingers into the wet heat she’s playing with, but that’s like Robin’s fucking virginity and she can’t shake the thought she wants that to happen on a bed, so she focuses on her clit instead.
It’s bigger than hers and fucking god all the noises Robin’s making now while Carol fucks herself on Robin’s thigh and Robin rolls her hips to fuck Carol’s hand, pure filth.
‘That’s it, fuck yourself on me,’ Robin says, all low and husky and Carol’s eyes cross for a moment, sucker-punch of pleasure that she wasn’t expecting.
‘Say more shit like that,’ she mutters, kissing and rubbing her pussy through her panties on denim. Robin’s got one hand in her hair, the other lets go of her nipple to grab her hips, pushing her back and forth even more.
‘Want you to come all over me,’ Robin grits out, body shuddering when Carol presses harder, moves her fingers side to side even faster, the way she knows feels good. ‘So fucking pretty, aren’t you?’
Carol moans, sucks on her tongue, fucks herself and starts panting, gasping, it feels way too good.
‘Slap my tits,’ she chokes out, so close. ‘Please, wannit.’
Robin swears, but she does it.
Slaps the left, kinda awkward angle, comes at it from the top but the little burst of silk-wrapped pain is what shoves Carol right over the edge. She grinds her pussy hard, moans like a whore and her back arches, orgasm crushing through her like it’s remaking her, shaping her into something new, serpentine and sinuous, she’s coming so fucking hard.
She never stops what she’s doing to Robin, though, keeps going until Robin starts making uh uhh ahh noises, louder and louder and Carol kisses her, drinks them down, greedy, pulling out all the stops, wrist aching.
Robin half screams into her mouth and there’s a burst of wet against Carol’s hand, warm and unexpected and fucking god, Carol is losing her mind.
Their movements slow, Carol kisses her harder. She kisses Robin deep and slow and real fucking greedy.
Her body is shaking.
And Robin is stroking her hair, not pulling it.
‘Carol,’ she whispers into the kiss, warm wet lips.
‘Yeah?’
‘I’m sorry that I… y’know.’
Carol draws off.
Frowns and then smiles.
‘Why you sorry for that?’
Robin’s blushing intensely, shaken and pleasure wrecked, but clearly still worried. ‘I—I don’t know if it’s normal, or…’
Carol pulls her hand out, it’s all shiny.
She licks it, grins and sucks on her own fingers before she kisses Robin again, the sex smell is intoxicatingly good. Sweet and body beautiful, not like harsh sweat or nasty come.
‘You’re fucking gorgeous,’ Robin groans into Carol’s mouth and wraps her up in warm arms, kisses her for a long time.
And then Carol whisper-asks if she’s up for more.
*
Carol cleans the back seats real thoroughly and lets it air out before she gives Jason the keys the next day.
He comes by when the kids are at school, he’ll drive her to work as he often does. Jason sees the hickey on her neck before he can even ask, and he grins wide.
‘Oh, it was a good night, huh?’
Carol throws a fork at him, which he deftly catches, still has those good reflexes from basketball, she guesses.
‘Get lost,’ she says with absolutely no heat whatsoever, smiling right back. ‘We had fun.’
‘That’s awesome,’ he says, sounds like he means it too. ‘You seeing her again?’
‘I dunno, maybe. You cool to drive me to work?’
*
He hangs out there too, for a bit.
Helps with folding, which is great, because it’s time consuming. Cory is asleep in his stroller by the dryers, he likes the noise and it’s warm there.
Carol tells him about last night.
Well, just vaguely.
He seems genuinely happy for her.
Not jealous, not judgey,
It feels nice.
That night, Carol makes dinner for the kids.
Eats with them, for once.
She’s got this weird, light feeling inside.
It’s giving her all this energy.
The next few days, all she can think about is Robin.
Robin, Robin, Robin.
With Jason’s extra money, Carol managed to pay the phone bill, get it working.
So now Robin Buckley has her number.
And one night, when Carol’s drying plates, she calls.
Kevin gives Carol the phone, and she balances it between ear and shoulder, grinning wide.
They talk a little.
Pretending they haven’t seen each other in weeks, when it’s only been days. Carol laughs, teases, kinda flirts.
Robin flirts back.
‘So, when can I see you next?’
‘Well,’ Carol sighs, finally taking hold of the phone once her hands are dry. ‘I dunno, you’re probably gonna have to come ask my Dad’s permission first.’
‘Jason Carver, you mean?’
‘Shut up. I’m free tomorrow night.’
‘Pick you up at seven?’
*
‘Why the fuck are they here?’
‘Hello to you too, Carol.’
‘What’s up, princess?’
‘Steve’s driving us,’ Robin explains brightly. ‘Eddie tagged along.
She’s in the backseat, waiting. Munson’s in the front and Steve is driving his own car.
Carol rolls her eyes, gets in.
And just to be a little extra, she kisses Robin right away.
Is surprised when Robin kisses her back.
‘Wow,’ she hears Munson say and Carol grins, all smug before she breaks the kiss and sneers at him.
‘Eyes front, loser. You made your choices.’
‘Uh, so,’ Robin says, holding Carol’s hand which is fucking adorable. ‘My Mom and Dad are away.’
Munson’s snickering under his breath.
Carol doesn’t care, she’s got all this shiny air in her lungs, like helium. ‘They are, huh?’
‘Yeah, so did you wanna hang out, maybe get pizza?’
Steve and Eddie are listening hard, Carol can tell.
But she only sees Robin, only feels the girl before her.
She’s pretty and she’s hot and she’s so very fucking weird and Carol wants her on a bed so bad she can taste it.
‘Pizza sounds great, Ro-bee. I love pizza.’
*
Robin’s fingers are long.
They’re inside her.
Moving in and out, Carol showed her how she likes it, moved her wrist to fuck herself for a few beats before Robin got it, and Carol is in her lap, stripped off almost completely bare, still got the skirt around her waist, just covering the outside of her thighs.
Robin’s shirt is open, no bra.
Panties on.
Carol’s kneeling up and the noises of Robin finger fucking her are obscene because it’s so quiet in this house. Clean, well-looked after, empty, smells like fresh cotton and pine. Her bed is soft, it’s nice.
The bedroom is warm and the walls are dorky.
Robin threw her plushies on the floor before she pulled Carol down onto the covers.
‘That's it,’ Carol moans, tits bouncing a little as she fucks herself on those fingers, clever and patient and learning, Robin rubs her insides and thumbs her clit just a bit. ‘Oh god, yeah, gonna make me come?’
There is something hungry in Robin’s eyes, in the look of her, way she kisses, noises she makes.
‘Yeah, you gonna come for me?’
‘Call me a slut.’
Robin gasps, swallows it. ‘My slut, my fucking good girl, aren’t you?’
Oh god.
Carol’s jaw drops, body spasming, nervous system spiralling hard and she’s coming, coming, coming, wracked with shivery shocks, moaning and grinding herself down on those fingers and Robin gets her by the hair, kisses her deep and kinda dark.
‘Fuck, fuck, fuck.’
‘You’re so beautiful,’ Robin breathes into her mouth, delicate throat noises shape the bones of the praise. ‘You’re gorgeous.’
Carol basks in the afterglow, all wet and wild.
‘Wanna taste you,’ she tells Robin, kissing her sloppy. ‘Can I?’
‘Oh god,’ Robin moans. ‘I—yes, please.’
Carol shuffles back, wants to whine when Robin’s fingers pull out, but she almost wants this more.
Pulls the hem of the panties down, checking in that it’s OK, watching Robin for any signs of hesitation, Carol likes to think she’d know them if she saw them.
Robin’s cheeks are flush, eyes glassy, lips red.
Carol pulls them down, down, down.
It’s a fucking gorgeous pussy, god.
Lush curls, legs pressed together, almost shy.
Carol grins, tosses the panties aside.
They were soaked.
She kisses Robin’s knees, pries them very gently apart. ‘Gonna let me in?’
Robin nods, breathing fast.
Her thighs are trembling when Carol opens her up like a book, wants to crack the spine. Her pussy lips open up too, and it’s so… so fucking pretty.
Wet and slick and pink.
Carol lowers herself onto her belly, bends her knees back so her feet don’t hang off the end of the bed.
‘Oh my god, oh my god,’ Robin utters from above and Carol just strokes the inside of her thighs, kisses the wet mess before her.
The taste…
‘Fuck,’ she grits out, wants more.
Carol drags her tongue from the bottom to the top, gets all that slick cream in her mouth, swallows it, loves it.
Fingers parting the lips, rubbing the head of Robin’s clit, intentionally light and teasing but Robin is so responsive.
Carol licks up and down, uses her tongue like her fingers, laps over where she wants to fuck into.
‘Hands in my hair,’ she says, licks her lips and then goes right back. Robin is making all the slutty low noises, they’re so guttural and sexy, and when she gets one hand in Carol’s hair, she does that thing like last time, with her nipples.
She starts pushing, back and forth, makes a rhythm.
Carol grins, wants that, loves it.
She sucks on Robin’s clit like she’s getting milkshake up a straw, tongues the tip.
‘Ah, ah my god, Carol, baby, fuck!’
Robin pulls on her hair and it takes about ten seconds of that for her to orgasm. No squirt this time, but Carol loves it anyway, wants her face crushed here, wants Robin to fucking sit on her face.
Carol can’t stop kissing and licking and playing and Robin has to pull her off, yanks her up to kiss and then rolls on top.
Carol makes a low, slutty sound of deep approval. ‘Fuck me,’ she begs, legs open, skirt still on.
Robin kisses her, seems to like the taste of herself.
‘Wanna… can I do the same?’
‘Fuck me,’ Carol says instead, because no, she’s not seeing the scars. ‘Want your fingers.’
‘Wanna lick your pussy,’ Robin mutters, kissing deep, touching her all over. ‘Want you to show me how.’
Carol huffs, mildly annoyed.
Robin seems to sense it.
‘Sorry, sorry. What’s wrong?’
‘No, it-it’s fine.’
‘No, something’s up. Are you OK? We can stop, let’s stop. Take a break. We’ve got all night.’
Carol drinks soda from the can, doesn’t look at Robin until she feels ready. ‘There’s scars on my thighs,’ she says bluntly, expression shuttered. ‘A lot. It’s not pretty.’
Robin is kissing her cheeks, playing with her hair. ‘You don’t want me to see them?’
‘It’s not—I don’t care, just. They’re gross. No one would wanna see them.’
‘Can I feel them?’
Carol frowns, but nods. ‘If you want?’
Robin’s hand is warm, soothing.
She rubs all the skin inside her thighs, nothing hesitant, though the touch lingers when she gets to the newest one, the highest ridge.
‘You’re beautiful,’ she tells Carol, who swallows the word, lets it cut her up inside. ‘I wanna taste you, want you to show me how you like it.’ She touches the zipper of Carol’s skirt. ‘Can I?’
Carol nods.
Robin inclines her head. ‘Say yes for me.’
‘Yes, you can.’
‘Good girl.’
Carol’s lips part and she has to bite back the little gasp.
Two words that can unravel her.
Robin pulls the skirt off, slips her open shirt off too. They’re naked now, completely bare. Carol hasn’t been bare during sex for years. Robin kisses all the way down her body, settles Carol back in the pillows.
‘Like you there, like a princess,’ Robin whispers warmly into the skin of her belly. ‘Wanna make you feel so good.’
Carol watches her, fascinated, riveted.
Robin opens her legs slowly.
The lamps are low, but they’re on.
She sees the scars.
Carol watches the tiny frown form, waits for disgust.
It never comes.
Robin kisses them instead.
One by one.
Carol closes her eyes, arm slung over them.
They’re wet, she can’t show it.
‘Beautiful girl,’ Robin whispers over and over before those forgiving lips brush her pussy, light and delicate, it’s somehow sexier than doing it hard. ‘My beautiful little slut.’
Carol makes a gut-punched whine, arches her back.
‘Hands above your head,’ Robin instructs and oh my fucking god, Carol is losing her mind, but she does it. ‘That’s a good girl.’
‘Ngh, fuck.’
Robin’s tongue drags like a feather.
Carol shudders, moans for more.
Then the other girl flattens her tongue and licks up, slow, slow, slow, makes her weak, makes her want things that aren’t the way she does things. She’s Carol Perkins, pushy slut.
‘That’s my good girl,’ Robin says, fucking hypnotic tone. ‘Want you to relax, want you to let me make you come.’
She licks over Carol’s clit just once, then touches it, clearly seeing it, fascinated.
‘So little,’ she observes and Carol smile-laughs, still can’t look.
‘Yours is just big.’
Robin laughs too, kisses it, then sucks.
Carol is so close.
‘Please.’
‘My princess wants to come?’
‘Please, make me come.’
‘Like this?’
Carol swallows, throat dry. ‘Anything.’
‘No, tell me how you want it.’
‘I—’ God, she can’t say that, can she? ‘I want…’
‘It’s OK, I want to know, want to do whatever you want, please?’
Carol takes a shaky breath, staring at the darkness behind her eyes.
‘Slap my pussy.’
She hears Robin gasp. ‘Fuck. Really?’
‘Yeah, please.’
‘OK, um. Fuck, fuck, you’re so sexy. Shit.’ Robin sits up, pulls Carol down a bit, opens her legs wide. ‘Will you look at me?’
Carol does it.
Feels like this girl is in her fucking blood, running through her heart, through her veins.
‘Do it,’ she begs.
‘Say please,’ Robin whispers, eyes bright.
Carol licks her lips. ‘Please. Slap my pussy, please.’
Robin’s hand swings back just a little, slaps lightly.
Carol moans, needs more. ‘Harder.’
‘Like this?’
‘Yeah, but harder. Smack it, I want it.’
Robin smacks right between her legs.
It stings, and the smack reverberates everywhere, bleeds salt with the sweet, makes Carol feel like she’s seeing in colour for the first fucking time.
‘Again, please. Ahh, fuck!’
‘You like that?’
‘I love it, please, please, want more. Uhhh, yeah! Slap my pussy, make it hurt, wanna come like a slut for you.’
Robin bends to kiss her, slaps again and this time, she rubs her whole hand all over Carol’s pussy. It’s messy and inelegant and it’s so boyish that it takes Carol’s breath away and then those clever fingers slip inside her hole for a few seconds, pumping and rubbing, thumb pressing down on her clit, side to side.
‘Yeah, like that, like that, fuck!’
‘Say you want it.’
‘I want it.’
Smack.
‘Good girl, you’re such a good girl.’
Carol’s this close to sobbing and Robin is kissing her, playing with her pussy and then she ducks to take a nipple into her mouth, sucking hard as she finger fucks her, spreading wet over the sting from the smack and she whispers into Carol’s mouth, ‘Come for me, babygirl,’ and Carol is outside her fucking body when she orgasms.
*
‘You’re weird,’ Carol tells her in the bath.
They’re in there together.
Water’s hot and bubbly and the radio is playing on the windowsill and Carol is in Robin’s arms, between her legs, back to Robin’s chest and it’s all just so fucking unreal she doesn’t know what to do, except enjoy it.
Which is, she thinks, kinda the point.
‘I am?’
Robin kisses her wet hair, her neck.
She’s making swirls on Carol’s abdomen.
‘Very.’
‘Well, I think you’re gorgeous.’
Carol rolls her eyes, but smiles.
‘Duh.’
Robin kisses her shoulder. ‘Can I ask about the scars?’
‘Why?’
‘Because I want to know.’
‘If I tell you, will you tell me what happened the last few weeks? During the blackout?’
‘Yes.’
It’s a long few moments before Carol says, ‘I cut myself sometimes. I’ve always done it, or no. Not always. Just since I was younger.’
‘Does it hurt?’
‘It doesn’t really hurt anymore, it’s not for that. It just feels… like the thing to do, when I’m all over the place. Like.’ Carol closes her eyes, trusts in the arms around her. It’s a hard thing to do. ‘I get this buzzing inside me, like a plague, like flies, and I gotta get it out. So I… let it out. And my ears ring and my heart goes calm and I wanna throw up, but it’s not so bad. And I like that it hurts after, because it’s like a warning. And when I tell myself I’m not gonna do it again, I really believe it and it makes me feel good. Like there was a last time, only there never is.’ She sighs, turns towards Robin. Is met with kisses and nuzzles. ‘S fucked up, huh?’
‘I’m sorry,’ Robin says, kissing her skin.
‘It’s all right. My Dad took all his fucking razor blades with him when he fucked off, so I haven’t had much… it hasn’t happened much since then.’
Robin reaches down between her legs, feels the scars and says nothing, she’s just… stroking them.
Carol gets this lump in her throat, real thick.
‘What about you, then? What was happening with the blackout?’
Robin sighs, hugs her closer.
‘Monsters are real.’
*
They’re dating.
Except they never actually go on dates.
It’s always sex.
But never just sex.
It’s sex and then, like, pizza and some dumb movie. Or sex and then going for a drive, taking turns with the music. Or sometimes, they’ll go get milkshakes and then fuck in the bathroom.
So like, OK, kinda they go on dates.
Just that to Carol, dating makes her think of Nancy Wheeler and her cardigans and those books she clutched to her chest and the cutesy way she smiled at Steve when all Carol could think about was how loud would she squeal if Carol grew a dick and fucked her.
Robin is nothing like Nancy.
She’s not like anyone.
She is uniquely Robin.
Ro-Bee.
Carol calls her that all the time.
Robin endures it, rolls her eyes and touches Carol in some meaningful way and then later, when she’s fucking Carol with her fingers, she’ll whisper, say my name, and Carol will say Robin, Robin, Robin until her throat is raw and then Robin will pull her on top, get her pussy on her mouth and make Carol ride her until she’s sobbing.
Then they’ll cuddle and kiss and Carol will tell her wicked stories about gross boys and the things she knows about them.
‘To keep you gay,’ she insists primly while Robin cackles, tears in her eyes.
To keep you, she means.
And the other shit is happening slowly.
Shit like how sometimes, before sex, Robin will bring Carol along to have fries and burgers with Steve and Eddie, Nancy and Jonathan. Carol is relentlessly rude to them all, especially Munson, but after a month of this, she thinks he’s the one she sort of likes the most.
He’s gritty and lewd and he is obsessively in love with Steve and she knows he still carries knives, doesn’t blame him in this town, especially after what Robin told her.
The monsters.
She and him have a uniquely vicious way of speaking to one another. Cunt and bitch and fuck-face and dick-hole.
Sometimes, Steve will hug Carol goodbye, never hello.
Nancy remains little miss priss, but she’s not so bad.
Jonathan is pretty decent, he speaks to Carol like he doesn’t know her, and she likes that.
Robin holds Carol’s hand.
She wraps herself around her from behind in the queue to get ice cream.
Carol is glad that Munson carries knives, because Robin doesn’t seem to get that shit like this isn’t acceptable in the real world. That there are pricks out there who, like Carol in her younger years, are vicious towards people who are different.
But Robin just seems too happy to care.
She kisses Carol and calls her hers.
My little brat, aren't you? she’d said one day during sex and Carol just lost it, went wild and it stuck, real hard.
Robin buys her little gifts.
They’re worthless, cheap and pretty.
A pencil topper.
A sewing kit.
A lollipop Carol won’t ever open because the wrapper is clear and crisp and it’s tied with a ribbon.
Robin knows Carol steals things too.
She’ll make it funny, she’ll say, ‘Gee, I wonder where my other sock went, huh? Who did that? Who took it?’ and then she’ll kiss Carol and call her magpie and Carol will deny it hotly, accuse her of slander and they’ll fuck fast and rough and it’ll slip into a game where they make believe all sorts of weird things.
Carol wants to show Robin her box of treasure.
She wants… she wants a lot of things.
But it worries her, too.
She knows she’s falling in love.
And it’s worse than with Tommy, because in every possible way, Robin is different. Where Tommy was indifferent to so many elements of who Carol is, Robin is interested. Where Tommy was casual, laid back and absent, Robin is caring, considerate and present. She shows up to make dinner, she gets along with Jason, she brings games for the kids and sometimes, she sleeps in Carol’s bed with Cory in between them, her hand on his chest, head on Carol’s pillow.
Carol knows it’s happening.
Her life, for the first time in years, feels good.
She’s happy to wake.
She is hopeful.
Able to quit the awful job working nights thanks to Jason’s weekly contributions.
And sometimes, Steve will swing by for the kids. He’ll wink at Carol and take them out, straight swap for Robin, who brings Carol her favourite gum and a cheap bottle of wine and kisses her until they forget both.
In bed, they are a mess of sweat-slippery skin and wet kisses and love slick and Robin knows how Carol likes it better than Carol now, she’s so fucking good at this, at sex and Carol, more and more feels herself becoming this bratty pillow princess as Robin increasingly wants to take control and Carol increasingly wants to give it.
Robin will tie her hands to the headboard.
She checks in often, but god, she’s so fucking good at it that Carol doesn’t know why she bothers.
‘My girl can take more, yeah?’ she whispers into Carol’s mouth, three fingers inside her, fucking slow and good while Carol whimpers and bites her lip. ‘Want me to stretch you out and fill you up?’
Carol mewls, fucking herself on Robin’s fingers like a whore, desperate for that burn. ‘Yeah, want more, please, give it to me, I can take it.’
‘Good girl, so good for me,’ Robin praises, low and rough as she pushes four fingers into Carol, twists her wrist, curls the fingers as she pulls out, making friction, making pretty lights shine behind Carol’s eyes. ‘Look at you, so needy, huh?’
‘Want more,’ Carol babbles, genuinely mindless at this point and Robin will only ever give her more if she’s sucking on her clit, determined to dull any possible ache with pleasure, so when Robin goes down, mouth making all kinds of agonising delights, Carol starts moaning louder and louder as Robin pulls out four and carefully pushes in five, until her whole hand pops in and now Carol is screaming, begging, pleading, fucking herself like a slut and begging for bad things, wants to get fucked like a bad, bad girl and Robin gives them all to her.
‘Fucking take it, that’s my girl, my perfect little whore, you need it so bad, don’t you? Take my whole fist in your pretty pussy, yeah, harder? You want it harder? Course you do, you wanna feel me so deep it’ll bruise your insides, yeah, fuck, fuck!’
She makes Carol squirt whenever they do that.
They learn to lay down towels.
And after…
Oh, after…
Robin holds Carol, kisses her, whispers things.
Dangerous things.
Things like…
‘You're my girl, my perfect girl, so beautiful, so sexy, so smart, can’t get enough of you, want you all the time, want you always, wanna keep you, so lovely and funny and good, aren’t you? So good, my little magpie, taking all the things you think I won't miss, but the only thing I miss is you when I have to go, and I wish I didn't, but I’ll always come back.’
Carol has fallen for her.
Hard.
Irreversible.
She’s ruined.
And everything is beautiful.
The kids are flourishing.
They’re even managing to save up a little.
It’s coming on Christmas when it all goes to hell.
*
“The Beach”
Let me off, let me in
Let others battle
We don't need to battle
And we're both shouting
When will we meet eye to eye
We clink the glass
But we look at the floor
Are we still friends
If all I feel is afraid?
You're not a bitch
But just a bit when you're bored
-Wolf Alice
Tommy comes back for the holidays.
Carol hears about it before she sees him.
Lorrie tells her.
And Carol just nods to herself, exudes nothing. She drops the kids off at school, heads to work. Jason meets her for lunch.
‘You heard about Tommy?’ he asks, oddly pale.
She frowns at him, steals a chip from his packet. ‘Yeah, so? He came home for Christmas, big deal. Far as I’m concerned, the fucker’s dead.’
‘You’re not gonna see him, then?’
‘No, why would I? He didn’t call, didn’t write.’
It still hurts.
In the way that the loss of something no longer needed hurts because it was there for a long time, part of the furniture and she didn’t get to choose whether or not to keep it.
The way she sometimes misses her baby teeth.
The hair her Mom cut before she could decide.
The virginity she gave away for nothing.
All the treasure trash in her shoebox will never fill the void left behind of things taken from her.
‘Besides,’ she says, snorting. ‘He probably bought some new bitch home to show off to Mommy and Daddy. Hey, how come you’re not eating?’ Carol lifts his face by the chin, searching. ‘Is he giving you shit? Did he cause all that, before?’
He shakes his head, tries to smile.
But she sees the way he swallows, got nothing in his throat except the swell of feelings.
Carol keeps it to herself, for now.
It’s three days before Christmas when she sees him.
*
‘Carol.’
He’s on the doorstep.
He’s on her fucking doorstep.
Carol blinks, wrinkles her nose.
The kids are out with Steve and the gang.
Carol was about to get changed and walk over to the free for the night Buckley residence.
But now Tommy fucking Hagan is on her doorstep.
He’s bulked up, changed his hair, grown it out. He looks, she thinks meanly, kinda like he wants to be Eddie Munson. Some things never change.
But then, he’s never been on her doorstep like this.
‘What do you want?’
She stays away, doesn’t wanna get near him. All their history is a contagion, heavy and airborne and dangerous.
‘I wanted to see you,’ he says, cautiously hopeful, but careful too. ‘Haven’t uh. Y’know. College has been crazy. I missed you.’
Carol narrows her eyes at him.
‘What do you want, Tommy?’
‘To see you.’
Inside the house, he lurks.
She goes right ahead doing what she needs to, showers before she changes.
He follows her, cautious and careful.
‘All right, what the fuck do you want, for real?’ she asks him, no makeup, hair wet, ugly old towel. ‘Because I got things to do.’
He makes a little face. ‘Like Robin Buckley?’
Carol smiles, cold and cruel. ‘Aww, you wanna watch, little boy? Too bad.’
‘You just… got with a fucking girl?’
‘Yeah, you know,’ she sighs, brushing her hair. ‘No man could ever fill the void you left, so I had to turn gay.’
‘Carol, I missed you.’
‘Fuck off, Tommy. I don’t want you here.’
‘I kinda thought… you’d come see me.’
She turns to look at him.
Really looks.
He is not the boy who asked her out.
Brave and sly and alight with endless possibilities of who he might become, who she might become with him.
‘Yeah? Well I kinda thought I’d never see you again.’
‘I really did miss you. College isn’t… it’s not what I thought it’d be.’
She changes in front of him, doesn’t care.
But she feels eyes on the scars.
‘Like, what? You actually had to work?’
‘Yeah, that and it turns out everyone else’s schools were actually half decent, unlike Hawkin’s High. I don’t know if I’ll go back after Christmas.’
‘And what?’ she asks, pulling her clasped bra on like a sweater. ‘You thought you’d come pick up where you left off?’
‘C’mon,’ he says softly. ‘You know I love you.’
‘I don’t love you,’ she tells him. ‘And you don’t love me, Tommy.’
‘I think about you all the time.’
‘Well, go find someone else to think about, OK? Because I don’t want you.’
‘’Cause you’re shacked up with that freak?’
‘I want you to leave.’
‘I know she doesn’t fuck you like I do.’
Carol shakes her head, bitter smile on a one out of ten. ‘What, like, six pumps and a, did you come, baby? No, she doesn't fuck me like you did. She actually makes me feel good.’
‘I made you feel good.’
‘Get out.’
‘I know I made you feel good that day with the car.’
‘When you fucking hit me?’
‘You liked it.’
She lets silence form, needs it.
Needs the whole world quiet before she says what she needs to say next.
‘If you came here to rape me, just get on with it.’
His jaw drops.
Eyes wide.
‘What?’
‘You heard me, Tommy. I see you workin’ yourself up, getting all mad, trying to justify whatever you’re telling yourself this is. Like you’re the only one who knows me, who knows what I need. I am telling you very fucking clearly,’ she says, pulling on her jeans. ‘That if you touch me, kiss me, try to fuck me, anything, it’ll be rape. I don’t want you. So if that’s why you’re here, get on with it. Only watch yourself, because you know I took your knife when you left, and I know where you’d try and fuck me and maybe… just maybe I put that knife there, easy reach.’ She drops her gaze, expression glacial. ‘I think it’d be easier to cut your dick off while it was hard, wouldn’t it?’
‘The fuck is wrong with you?’
‘I got a man in my house when I wanna be alone! That’s what’s fucking wrong! Get out! You hear me? I don’t want you and I got nothing for you!
Scruffy t-shirt on, she pushes past him, heads downstairs. He follows her, fast.
She almost falls, she’s running down the fucking stairs, feels like she did when she was a kid, getting water at night, demons chasing her back up.
‘Carol, wait!’
‘Get out of my fucking house, Tommy!’
‘I just wanna—’
She whirls around and slaps him.
All she can think is, he's gonna kill me, he’s gonna kill me now, and she knows she’s not strong enough to fight him off, but she’ll scratch him up so bad that everyone will know, at least.
The back door opens and Jason comes inside.
Carol lets out a breath so heavy it hurts and runs to him, barely resists the urge to fling herself into his arms.
‘Hey, are you OK?’ he asks, feeling her over for injuries, instantly alert. ‘Carol, what’s—?’
‘The fuck are you here for?’
Tommy’s voice is so cold, Carol can’t stand it.
Jason is warm and solid and the kids love him and Carol… Carol loves him too, has for a while. He’s her best friend, he’s like her brother.
‘Leave, Tommy!’ she yells.
‘You heard her,’ Jason says to Tommy, who does the opposite, moves closer.
‘Did you tell her, is that why you’re here?’ he snarls and Carol looks between them, sees how pale Jason is. ‘God, you’re such a pussy, huh? Ran crying right to her, I bet.’
Jason says, ‘Stop,’ but Tommy doesn’t know what that word means.
‘And… what? Now you’re shacked up with her too, are you?’ He looks at Carol, lip curled with disgust. ‘Even I thought more of you than that,’ he spits. ‘Fucking the guy who killed your Mom.’
And the bottom drops out of the world.
*
‘What did you say?’
‘Tommy, don’t!’
Tommy looks between them both eyes narrow, a hint of something like regret visible there before anger burns it away. ‘You didn’t know?’ he says to Carol, who turns her attention to Jason, needs him to deny it.
He is just pale and quiet and his eyes are wet.
She remembers thinking that, months ago.
‘Jase,’ she whispers, can’t feel her body.
He blinks tears down his face, wipes his nose on his hand and croaks, ‘I’m so sorry.’
Carol takes a sharp, painful breath.
Needs to go.
Needs to get away.
Get out.
Run.
Run, run, run, right to the quarry.
This time, she’ll do it.
‘No.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ he cries softly, the weakness of true heartbreak. ‘I was… I was driving. It was my fault.’
‘No.’
‘It was an accident, I didn’t see her, but it was… it was my fault. I hit her car, it rolled over.’
Carol turns away, hand over her mouth.
Tommy says, ‘He wasn’t drunk. We were just—’
‘We?’ she gasps, expression shuttered. ‘You were with him?’
‘We were headed to a party. The mall caught fire, we could see it. We were driving there,’ Jason explains, still crying. ‘I was looking at the fire, I didn’t see the other car.’
‘No, no, they said it was debris.’
Jason makes a sound, this thing of despair.
‘My Dad covered it up.’
Carol shakes her head.
‘I can't,’ she whispers to no one, everyone, the world. ‘I…’ Carol looks at Tommy. ‘You knew? You were there?’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘You let me think it was an accident.’
‘It was,’ Tommy says, glancing at Jason. ‘Whatever else, he was always a careful driver. The fucking mall was on fire, we were just—’
She slaps him again, hard and vicious.
He closes his eyes, keeps them that way, jaw clenched.
‘You’re a plague in my life. Don’t ever come near me again,’ she tells him. Then she looks at Jason, can scarcely draw breath. ‘You too.’
‘Carol, I’m sorry, I wanted to tell you, I kept—I kept trying, but it wouldn’t come out.’
Hands in her hair, she looks around. ‘That’s why you’ve done all this. Being so-so nice, so kind! Giving me money, watching the kids when you killed their mother! You took my Mom away!’
‘I’m so sorry, I wish it was me every day, every day I wake up and I think about it, and I wish I was dead!’
‘You fucking should be!’ she screams, but it’s all undercut by the fact that she’s crying too, can’t stop it. ‘You should have killed yourself!’
‘I was trying! I was—I was trying to get the stuff from Munson, I wanted to make sure and I was trying to get heroin from him and he wouldn’t give it to me and then you…’ Jason closes his eyes, chest heaving. ‘You punched him and you told him I wasn’t worth killing and I just… I couldn’t leave after that. I wanted to help you. To make it better, even just a little but I know I never could, because I… I fucked up and that took your Mom away. I ruined your whole life.’
Carol tries to get by, but he stops her.
‘Please, just… just hit me or something, get that knife in the cabinet and—’
‘You’re not worth it,’ she declares, voice trembling, she is shaking apart and this time, she won’t be able to build herself back up. ‘You were here out of pity.’
‘No,’ he says, breathless and snotty and red eyes, heartbreak is always ugly. ‘No, I love the kids, I love—’
The door opens.
Kevin comes running inside, he’s always first in, most eager to see Carol and tell her about the day he had, to make it bright for her, so she doesn’t have to worry about him.
He freezes when he sees the scene.
The others come in too, Steve carrying Cory.
He goes rigid when he sees Tommy.
‘What’s happening?’ he asks seriously. ‘Carol, you OK?’
She’s not OK.
Robin goes right to Carol. ‘What’s going on?’
Carol wipes her eyes, tries to get it together.
‘They’re leaving,’ she croaks. ‘Both of them.’
Tommy looks like he’s about to open his mouth and protest when Steve calmly hands Cory to Robin and grabs him by the collar, hauls him out.
‘—the fuck off me, she’s my girlfriend!’
‘Not anymore, loser,’ Steve growls, slams the door in his face when he’s on the other side of it.
Jason has his back turned to everyone, to the kids.
‘What’s wrong?’ Mandy asks, looks like she’s about to cry too. Carol can’t bear to tell her. She just can't.
They love Jason.
She let them love Jason.
She let him in and didn’t ask why, she never pushed and she should have pushed because men don’t stay and if they do, there’s a reason, a trick, a lie.
‘Jason’s gotta go, honey,’ she says, voice wrecked.
He turns around, visibly trying to get a grip of himself, but he can’t. Carol was right the first time, he’s wet to his core, weak and weepy. ‘Yeah, I’m sorry, I’ve uh. I gotta go.’
‘Are you fighting? Please don’t fight,’ Kevin pleads, looking between them.
‘No, no it’s not Carol’s fault, it’s mine. I messed up. I’m.’ Jason swallows, chokes a little on what won't go down his throat and shakes his head. ‘I’m so, so sorry.’
Carol stares at the floor.
Cory is pulling her hair, wants cuddles.
‘Momma,’ he says, impatiently happy.
Carol kisses his cheek.
‘Just leave.’
*
She can’t tell the kids.
But she has to tell them something.
So she lies.
She’s good at that.
Makes up it’s something to do with Tommy and him leaving and treating her like shit, which isn’t that much of a stretch, but she can also kinda tell none of the kids really buys it.
She’ll have to tell them at some point.
But not today.
Carol just wants this day to end.
Steve and Robin stick around to help out, she can’t shake them and then, to her subdued horror, fucking Munson and Chrissy Cunningham show up. Like it’s a natural disaster and everyone needs to pitch in.
Eddie Munson, at least, pulls zero punches, he crunches those eggshells, and that’s comforting in a way Carol doesn’t want to analyse.
‘He never tried to tell you?’ he asks her, while they’re both smoking outside. Steve is in there with the kids, Robin and Chrissy making dinner.
Carol exhales and eyes him levelly. ‘Did you know?’
‘No,’ he says and she believes him. ‘I would have told you.’
‘Fair enough. And yeah, I think he tried to tell me a couple’a times, but no dice.’
‘Steve says you were good friends with him.’
Carol stares at the yard, the mess that needs attention, the overgrowth she ignores. ‘He felt guilty, that was all.’
‘Still sucks,’ he says, stretching until his bones pop, boys are gross. ‘Makes sense why he wanted H so bad, I guess.’
‘Yeah.’
‘You gonna go round there later, flatten him?’
Carol looks at him sidelong, gets a good stream in her lungs, feels so good in the most subtle of ways. ‘Why, you offering to back me up?’
Eddie shrugs. ‘If you need.’
Robin comes outside, tells them dinner is ready.
*
She doesn’t go there, she can’t.
Carol would never admit it, but it hurts too much.
She loved him.
And it was pity from his end.
The next day, his absence is painful, it’s glaring and the kids all blame her, even Kevin, though he’s too nice to say anything to her face.
Annoyingly, Steve and Friends have taken it upon themselves to fill the gap. Carol allows it for the kids’ sake, but she is now far too aware of generosity as it bleeds from pity.
Charity.
But it’s almost Christmas.
And she wants the kids to have a good one.
Tommy comes to the laundromat.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says.
She’s folding clothes, takes longer now.
‘Yeah.’
‘Carol, I really am. I missed you and I was… I guess I was jealous. When I came back and heard all this stuff about you, I was jealous.’
‘You thought I should be… what? Just sat around waiting for you, Tommy?’ He looks down and she has her answer. Carol laughs, bitter and soft. ‘Yeah, I guess so.’
‘I never told you about the thing with your Mom and I should have, but I didn’t wanna hurt you.’
‘Bullshit, you didn’t wanna jeopardise your ride.’
‘I… there’s a morality clause in the scholarship. I couldn't threaten it.’
When she finally looks at him, it turns her stomach.
Fucking loser.
‘If I met you now and you asked me out,’ she says, slow and clear. ‘I’d laugh in your fucking face.’
His jaw works, brows lifting. ‘But if you met me in a bar and I bought you one, you’d let me fuck you round back.’
‘Not twice.’
‘I am sorry.’
‘Must be a new feeling for you.’
‘Oh come on, Carol. I put up with a lot of your shit too.’
‘My shit?’
‘Like you stealing all the time, starting arguments over nothing! You’re just as fucked up as I am, if not worse.’
‘Then why are you here?’
‘I… I missed you. There was no one there like you and I…’ He sighs, hand through his hair. ‘I was thinking maybe you could come back with—’
‘Are you gay?’
His eyes widen immediately. ‘What?’
‘Are you gay, Tommy? Or, like, bisexual?’
‘Why are you asking me that?’
‘Do you want me to reel off the shit that I saw and heard or will you actually do me the decency of answering me honestly?’
He glares. ‘I’m not gay.’
Carol rolls her eyes. ‘Uh huh.’
‘I… all boys do stuff.’
‘Oh my god, be more pathetic.’
‘You’re one to talk, Carol!’
‘I don’t fucking care, that’s the difference! I’m not lying to anybody!’
‘You lie all the time!’
‘Not about this.’
‘So you’re gay then?’
‘I wish.’
An old lady comes inside, carrying a bag. She deposits it, while Tommy and Carol glower in silence.
When she’s gone, Tommy shakes his head.
‘I want you to come with me.’
‘You can’t stand me.’
‘I love you.’
‘No you don’t. You don’t love me and I don’t love you and it’s not a waste, us being together back then for as long as we were. You don’t need to make something of it. I don’t love you and I’m not leaving the kids.’
‘And Robin Buckley.’
‘Fuck you, Tommy. If you’d have been watching, you wouldn’t have given a shit. You just don’t like that you’re left out.’
‘You’re my girlfriend.’
Carol throws a basket at him, the clothes spilling, folding ruined. ‘Get the fuck out of my life! Go run to your Momma and tell her that mean Carol broke your heart or whatever the fuck. Go back to college and suck it up and use what brains you got left so you don’t ever have to come back here! I don’t love you, and I really don't wanna hate you, so do us both a favour, go find some guy, admit who you are and leave me the fuck alone. I’m not your girl.’
She waits until he’s gone before she goes to the bathroom, locks the door and gets the pen knife out of her purse.
*
Carol dreams of her Mom.
She dreams of her coming back on Christmas day.
Sacks of presents in both arms, she sets them down, hugs the kids, takes Cory from Carol and kisses her cheek, tells her to go have fun with Robin and she takes over the house, the cooking, the cleaning.
She fixes everything.
She picks up the glass.
She comes home.
Carol wakes on Christmas day already crying.
But she makes the day as lovely as she can for the kids.
It’s just them in the morning, the presents, the paper.
Her best effort, but it’s subdued for everyone except Cory, who loves the paper best of all.
Robin, Steve and Eddie turn up with food, more presents and a fuck off sized chocolate cake that Eddie insists he made when actually, Carol thinks it was the cheerleader, way too pretty and neat and delicious to be anything that fucker created.
They play games and eat food and Lorrie’s crush on Steve is more obvious than ever and Carol doesn’t get how she doesn’t see that Eddie and Steve are so clearly a thing, but then she thinks she herself ignored a lot of shit like that at Lorrie’s age, so.
It’s around six that night and they’re playing Battleship when she hears a noise at the back door, slips away to go check.
There’s a sack of gifts on the step.
And she can hear whoever it is (she knows who) moving away. She follows, cuts around and meets him in the street where his car is parked.
‘The fuck do you think you’re doing>?’
He stops, doesn’t look at her.
‘I already got them for the kids.’
‘How dare you come here?’
He turns slowly. ‘Carol.’
‘What? Huh? What do you want from me?’
‘Please, just tell me what I can do.’
From inside, she hears the kids yelling happily. Jason would be with them, if Tommy hadn’t told her.
‘Do for what?’
‘To make it right.’
It’s freezing and she doesn’t have on a jacket. Her good one is long since ruined, but she still wears it.
Carol looks at him for a moment.
Then she says, ‘You can tell the truth. You can go to the cops and tell them the truth.’
He pales, breath curling into the cold night.
‘I… I can't.’
‘Then you can’t make it right.’
‘That won’t do anything to help you and the kids.’
‘You don’t get to decide that! If you wanna make this right, you go tell the fucking cops what you did! But you won’t, because you’re a coward, just like all of ‘em. Coward. You run away, you leave, you lie. You’re no different.’
‘My Dad paid everyone off, he—’
‘Oh, poor little rich boy, huh? Fuck you! Fuck you, Jason! I won’t let you use us so you can sleep at night. If it was an accident, then go to the cops. Otherwise, I don’t wanna see you anymore.’
She walks away, eyes wet.
Pathetic, disgusting, useless, unwanted.
Ugly, alone, forgotten.
Inside, the kids are standing around the bag.
Kevin is holding a remote controlled car, clutching it to his chest. He won’t look at her. ‘Why did you have to make him leave? Don’t we get to have anybody?’
Lorrie looks at him sharply. ‘Hey.’
But Kevin just shakes his head. ‘Just because you want to be alone doesn’t mean we have to be alone too! Jason was nice and he cared about us and he didn’t mind spending time with us! Why’d you have to send him away?’
‘Kev, that’s not what—’ Robin says, but he shoves past her, runs upstairs.
Mandy sighs, won’t look at Carol.
Only Lorrie meets her gaze, something hard there.
Reminds Carol of their Mom.
‘Fuck Jason,’ Lorrie says. ‘We don’t need anybody, just us, right?’
Carol wipes her eyes, can’t speak for the lump in her throat, rocks and regrets and the misshapen monster of wasted love.
All she can do is nod.
*
Her Dad comes back two days after.
He comes in with his bags and Carol is making coffee, Cory playing on the floor. The kids aren’t up yet, it’s early.
He just… walks in.
Looks at Carol.
Hesitant, apologetic maybe.
New haircut, different clothes.
‘Hi.’
She stares at him.
‘The fuck are you doing here?’
He sets his bags down. ‘This is my house, Carol.’
‘You left. I had to pay the mortgage. I had to pay everything. I—’
‘And I’m back,’ he cuts across her, forceful but civil. ‘So. Thanks for stepping up, but I’m here now.’
Carol glances behind him.
‘Where is she? Left you in the dirt? That why you’re back, because she realised what a waste of skin you are?’
‘Actually,’ he says slowly. ‘She wants to meet the kids.’
*
Robin’s Mom answers the door.
Figures.
Carol is drunk, which… isn’t great.
She clears her throat, sways and smiles.
‘Hel-lo,’ she says, in a dead on impersonation of a Not Drunk Person. ‘Is Robin here?’
The woman gives her a look Carol knows well. ‘It’s a little late for social calls, no?’
Carol snorts, but quickly regrets it. ‘Sorry. Um. Just. Is she there? I need to see her.’
‘Mom, it’s fine,’ a soft voice comes, gently pushing her Mom aside. ‘I got it, it’s fine. I’ll be in soon.’
‘Ro-Bee,’ Carol sighs, reaches for her as soon as she’s outside, taking Carol’s hand in her own and pulling her out of sight. ‘’M sorry for just showin’ up, but I needed to see you.’
Robin gets her around the side of the house. There are plants and bushes, it’s all very neat. The house is nice too, family house, not the Harrington monstrosity, but just a good house to raise a kid in.
She’s in sleep wear, t-shirt and shorts.
Her hands are warm on Carol’s cheeks. ‘What’s wrong?’
Carol laughs, turns toward the hand, nuzzles Robin’s wrist. She likes the smell of her blood beneath the skin. She wants to see it, touch it, taste it. Get it out and compare, because Carol thinks her blood is black sometimes, black like the tar they coat the roads with in summer, that smell that does things to her senses. Good but bad and gross but beautiful, she wants to eat it.
‘Missed you.’
‘I missed you too, I’m sorry. Carol, did something happen?’
‘He came back.’
‘Your Dad?’
‘He’s…’ Carol shakes her head, holds onto the feeling of Robin, her wrist. She wants to put ink there, mark this one with her own name so that when she’s gone, when Carol is a memory Robin doesn’t look at often, she’ll still see the name there, she won’t be able to forget. ‘Doesn’t matter.’
The kiss is sloppy and desperate.
She’s not really expecting Robin to kiss her back.
But she does.
She meets her feelings, sees them, does not ignore.
‘It’s gonna be OK, baby,’ she whispers to Carol, cupping her face and stroking her hair. ‘Whatever it is, we’ll get through it.’
Carol has to stand on tiptoes to bring them level, it always gives her this little thrill, but now she can’t feel that, she can only feel the dull death in her blood, the ache of loss, the absence carved by men who take.
‘I wanna fuck you,’ she tells Robin, sucks on her bottom lip too hard, uses teeth, draws a little of the Robin Red, and her parents are inside, it’s dangerous, too risky.
‘You’re drunk.’
‘Uh huh,’ Carol utters, grins to make warmth in the grip of all this winter. ‘Makes me horny.’
Her hand dips down beneath Robin’s shorts, palm to skin, she kisses Robin hard, fingers clumsy but intent.
‘No, baby, no. You’re really drunk and we’re outside my house.’
‘So? Just blame me, say I corrupted you,’ she giggles, but Robin pulls her hand away and Carol sighs, takes injury immediately, eyes stinging. ‘God, fine. Just say you don’t want me already.’
‘Carol.’
‘What?’
‘We’re not gonna fuck when you’re drunk. If you need to make that into me rejecting you, that’s fine.’
‘I need you.’
‘And I’m here, but not for this.’
‘For what then? To be my friend? To hold my hand while my fucking Dad tells me that his new girlfriend wants to bond with Cory? That maybe they’ll be moving to New England in the summer. You gonna be my good friend throughout? I don’t need that and I don’t fucking want it! I want you,’ she says, too loud, way too loud. ‘to fuck me, Robbie. I want it.’ She presses close for a kiss. ‘C’mon, take me round back and fuck me like I need, wanna be your bad girl, want you to make me cry, make me beg.’
Whatever happens, whichever outcome will give her a taste of what she needs. If Robin agrees, she gets to not feel for a little while, she can just be with Robin, she can be a slut with her girl and then walk home wet between the legs, bones lighter, blood warmer.
Or.
Robin will refuse, she’ll be nice about it.
Carol can start a fight.
That’s really what she wants, deep down.
She wants to get hold of this lovely thing in her life and shake it hard, beat her fists against it to see if it cracks. If it can withstand, if it’s built to endure.
Nothing is.
Nothing ever has been.
Nothing lasts, everything rots, dies.
Her skeleton is wet all the fucking time.
Will they ever let it breathe, even after she’s dead?
Robin nods to herself.
‘Stay here.’
Carol blinks hard, reaches for Robin as she walks away.
‘What?’
‘Stay here, don’t fucking move, Carol.’
‘I… OK.’
*
They’re walking in the deep night and Carol’s cold, she always is, the jacket is too small for her now, she’s outgrown it a while back, but she still can’t let go, or maybe she just doesn’t have the guts to actually buy herself a new one.
Robin drapes her own jacket over her shoulders.
Carol looks down. ‘You’ll be cold.’
‘I run warm.’
They’re holding hands, so the proof of that is real. Robin is warm and kind and sweet and weird and sexy and Carol’s anger is like ice, it cannot be in the presence of this woman. It slips away, turns liquid, turns sad.
‘Were they mad?’
‘Not really.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘Where nobody is.’
The Harrington house is empty.
Robin uses a spare key under a rock, which is so dumb. It’s cold, chilly and dark.
In a guest room, the heat gathers slowly. Robin runs the shower in the en suite next door. Carol asks, ‘He won’t mind?’
‘He’s with Eddie. His parents are never here.’
Carol nods, wipes her nose on the sleeve, already ruined. ‘Are you mad?’
‘No, I’m not mad, baby,’ Robin says softly. She takes hold of Carol’s face, pushes the jacket off, tips her chin and places a single kiss to Carol’s dry lips, the cold always makes them crack. ‘I love you.’
Carol keeps the sob down, bites it back.
‘You shouldn’t.’
‘I know. But I do. I really do.’
In the shower, Robin kisses everywhere she washes. They’re bare and wet and Carol can’t stop shaking, even beneath the downpour of hot water, even when baptised in luxury soap. Floral and delicate, it leaves her skin feeling newborn and lovely.
Robin washes her hair, ducks low to kiss her whenever it’s been more than a few seconds and she whispers above the volume of the water, ‘I love you, Carol Perkins.’
And Carol, all she can do is let it happen.
Let somebody care for her.
Wash her, kiss her, make her warm, takes a while because her insides are underwater and frozen solid, but Robin is determined, she’s patient. Gravity waiting for the apple, the ground offers death, but gravity is the force, the love, the pull.
Carol cries without crying, wet tears with shower water and Robin kisses those too, she kisses them all away and when Carol wraps her arms around Robin and whispers things, Robin never pulls off.
She listens, shares it, halves it.
Under the stream, they hold each other.
The water is long lukewarm before they leave.
But Carol doesn’t mind, she’s warm inside.
*
It’s slow, aching and intentional.
It’s sex, but it’s not.
It’s like they’re trading skin, slipping in through the cracks to invade one another, to fill the spaces, to bond the way water droplets bond, all sense of self forgotten in the union of wet things.
Carol thinks that maybe this is what it feels like to make love, to actually make it, like arts and crafts, like a pasta necklace made in good faith for a grateful Momma, who treasures the failures and holds them up as triumphs.
Love with fingers, love with lips.
They are shower damp on the sheets, no clothes, no towels, just them and the knowledge of one another’s body and the presence during dark times. Robin whispers her love into Carol’s flesh, she marks it there and uses pleasure as the brand, white hot and unyielding, it’s almost a punishment to be held, to be told I love you so much while her insides tighten and her blood blooms ultraviolet and a flower blossoms inside, free to unfurl for the first time and Carol is crying and groaning and gripping and she will never let go of this one, even if she leaves, like they all do.
It feels like death, like the earth in the woods come to take her home and wrap her up and forgive all her silliness and the roots promising to whisper songs, and Carol remembers falling down as a small child, she remembers bloody knees and the vicious scrape of tree bark and the feeling of coming home to see her parents dancing in the kitchen, she didn’t want them to see her, she just wanted to see them. To watch them be happy forever, dancing and laughing and teasing and her Mom’s accent and her Dad’s silly games, easy to be a fool when around the one who held his heart.
It feels like the beach.
Like a whole, beautiful day at the beach and sand in her shoes when she gets home, memories held in happy grit
Like ice cream for free on that one really hot day.
Milkshake and two straws.
Robin Buckley’s jacket over her shoulders.
I love you, says the best person in the world.
And Carol is far from the best.
Not middle tier, not even best of the worst.
But god damn if Robin Buckley doesn’t make her feel just a little bit beautiful.
They sleep in an unused room in an unwanted house, in the quiet of careless riches, with the heat on all night, and the sheets are crisp and damp and Robin holds her close, kisses her wet hair, whispers things that Carol thinks are the reason people write songs, why there are poetry books, because once upon a time, somebody said something like this and everyone’s been chasing that feeling since then.
Carol kisses her.
Kisses the woman she loves.
But she doesn’t say it back.
She’s not that bad.
*
The new year is grey, cold, and mean.
Her Dad is back, apparently.
Had a nice little break with his bitch girlfriend, Josie.
The kids are wary of him, especially Lorrie.
Kevin is still mad at Carol about Jason, but they are apparently united in their dislike of their father’s return. The casualness of it.
They meet Josie three days into nineteen eighty seven.
She’s beautiful.
Long brown hair, it’s wavy and it gleams.
She dresses like a French heiress who went hiking and just really caught the vibe and she is, to Carol’s utmost revulsion, extremely nice.
She doesn’t ask to hold Cory, who still reaches for Carol most of all and when Dad offers the toddler, Josie smiles, glances at Carol and says to let him come to her.
Carol wants to hate her, has already set it in motion.
Pretty little bitch could cure cancer, she’s a cunt as far as Carol’s concerned.
She’s got money too, Carol can just tell.
The bills get paid.
Dad gets a different job, something better.
He tries to tell Carol about it and she walks out, hate in her heart well stoked.
But he is back.
The neighbours scorn him, they whisper things.
Carol still has Tommy’s penknife.
She has Robin Buckley, who loves her.
She has her job, she has the kids.
She misses Jason.
It hurts to have another person who took up a little space inside when given, to live there in the dark, ripe space where love might grow, and then to go, to be torn out, revealed false.
She drinks most nights.
Thinks about ways to destroy things with Robin.
She doesn’t want to, but she imagines it.
The way she imagines bad things happening to the kids sometimes, can’t stop it, is set upon by worst case scenarios that take hold of her heart and won’t leave until Carol has exhausted all possibilities of how she would save them. If they were in the sea, and a shark came, who would she save? How could she grab them all? She only has two arms, and water slows progress.
Awful, ugly shit like that.
Only now it’s Robin.
She imagines fucking other people.
A random man.
Robin finding out.
Carol wishes she was like Robin, who is probably out there thinking happy things, hanging with Steve, Eddie, maybe even Nancy and Jonathan. Milkshakes and fries, good cars, friendships and laughter.
A cut on her thigh gets hot, red and itchy.
She goes to buy salve, but it’s shockingly expensive and Carol won’t be paid for a week, so she steals it.
Gets caught, followed out of the store.
They make a huge fuss.
Miserable fuckers got nothing else going on.
They call the house.
And it’s Josie who comes.
‘Why are you holding her?’ she demands, hair tied back, supposedly messy, but it’s like a glamour shoot, the bitch.
They explain she was shoplifting and Josie scoffs. ‘Here, take it,’ she says, holding out the dollar bills.
‘It’s not that simple.’
‘Are you charging her?’
‘No, but—’
‘Then let go right now, unless you want me to call my Father and disturb him from advising the President to tell him about you harassing a young girl who forgot to pay, meanwhile there are criminals running rampant, is that what you want?’
In the car, Carol sulks.
‘Is any of that true?’
‘Shit, no,’ Josie says, and it’s not natural to her, swearing. Carol can just tell. ‘My Dad died years ago, but they don’t need to know.’ She clears her throat. ‘It’s nobody’s business, far as I’m concerned.’
Josie doesn’t say a word about it.
So Carol tells her Dad that night.
Waits for the slap, but it never comes.
Instead, he just looks away from her.
More distance.
The way Tommy never asked why she kept her skirt on during sex. Didn’t want to know.
The cut gets worse.
She never got her salve.
But it’ll get better, she thinks.
Not like a single cut is gonna kill her.
*
All the best parts of her life are Robin.
‘Ro-Bee,’ she’ll tease, reaching across the table to draw touch down Robin’s face with her middle finger and Munson will shake his head, mutter things through a grin and Steve will roll his eyes, pretend to be a priss and Robin just kisses Carol’s wrist.
And when she says that, she means, I love you, Robin Buckley, I love you so much and I could never not love you now, because I know you and you know me and I see you and I love everything I see, my darling.
The need to fight came and went.
Robin took what was ugly and sharp and kissed it soft and sweet, made it lovely somehow.
Tommy goes back to college.
He didn’t say bye this time, either.
The kids are levelling out, she thinks.
A new normal sets in.
Lorrie staunchly hates Josie, and Carol thinks it’s for her, at least in part. Some bastardised loyalty she’s too weak to set straight, so sometimes the sisters will make fun of Josie behind her back and it feels nice to bond, even if it’s being shallow little bitches together.
Carol misses Jason still.
‘Where are my golf clubs?’ Dad asks one day when it’s just Carol and him in the house, Josie taken Cory for a walk, no stroller, they went off holding hands, wrapped up warm.
‘I sold them,’ Carol tells him, dares him to make a big deal of it, come on, just try it.
He nods, tongue in cheek. ‘I tried to send money.’
Carol wipes the plate. ‘No, you didn’t.’
‘It didn’t go through.’
‘You weren’t coming back.’
‘I was always coming back, I just. I needed a break.’ He looks around. ‘This house… she’s everywhere I look.’
‘Yeah? Must be nice, I can’t find her anywhere.’
‘Carol.’
She waits.
But she already knows better.
Is not surprised at the nothing she gets.
Steals a twenty from his wallet later, recompense.
*
She gets this fever, this bone deep sickness.
It comes out of nowhere, but she knows better than to call in sick, still goes to work, she’s saving up for the next time her Dad needs a break and it’s Kevin’s birthday coming up, she won’t let it be a flop like Mandy’s was, she’ll make it up to them both, to all of them.
But around mid-afternoon, the world is swimming.
‘You should go home,’ the old woman, Aileen, tells her. ‘You’re sick, girly.’
Carol laughs, pulls on her too small jacket and walks outside. The January air hits her like a slap to the face and she feels like she needs to vomit, but she is a pro at holding it in, so she walks a few blocks.
Can’t remember where she is.
Where she lives.
‘Mom?’ she calls out, blinking, trying to remember. Somebody walks past and she reaches out, polite as she can. ‘Do you know where my Mom is?’
They pull away, seemingly horrified and she scowls at them, wrinkles her nose. ‘Oh, fuck you then!’
The sidewalk looks like a canyon, the paving slabs are rippling and her own hands look like they’re very far away.
‘Mom,’ she calls out, patiently waiting for the voice in reply, for her Mom to call back, ‘Yeah?’ and then louder, ‘Yeah, baby?’
Calling to one another from different rooms, walls between them, but she’s there, she’s always there, her Mom and she’ll be so glad for Carol now that Tommy’s gone, she should tell her about Robin too.
‘Mom, I don’t feel good.’
What's wrong baby, you have a fever? Go on, right to bed, no sneaking out, I mean it. You're sick, girly. Go on, get. I’ll be up with soup.
‘You can’t make soup, Mom,’ Carol laughs, walks on water, walks out into the sea of tarmac.
Hey, nobody buys canned chicken and stars like your Momma.
She laughs again, waits.
Walking.
It’ll all be OK.
And then something hits her, real hard.
*
‘Carol? Carol, can you hear me?’
‘Mom?’
‘She’s coming around, yeah. Are they here yet? No, don’t touch her! Carol, sweetie, can you hear me?’
It’s not her Mom.
It’s Jason.
Carol’s in bed, just like Mom said.
Except no, she’s not.
The ground is cold and the sky is brightly dull.
There are people milling around her.
Jason is there.
‘Jase,’ she whispers, trying to reach for him, but her elbow hurts, in fact everything hurts.
‘Don’t move,’ he tells her, strokes her cheek. ‘Just keep still till the ambulance gets here. You’re really hot.’
Carol snorts. ‘Shoot your shot, tiger.’
He smiles, but it’s watery, he has always been wet, this one. Wet eyes, wet heart, a river of a man and no way to dam himself. ‘Like I stand a chance, huh?’
She coughs, wonders if she’s gonna die here.
‘I don’t want to be burned,’ she tells him. ‘Put me in the ground, please.’
‘You’re not going in the ground, Carol. Why are you so hot? Are you sick?’
‘Mom’s gonna make me soup.’
Somebody is screaming.
It’s Lorrie.
Carol knows, because that’s how she screamed the day they told her, the day Carol came home from the hospital with news.
‘Carol! Carol! Is she—why is she—CAROL!’
‘It’s OK,’ Jason is telling her. ‘She’s gonna be OK.’
People come, push them both away.
Carol is lifted.
The sirens are loud.
And she hopes Robin comes to visit her bones, sometimes.
*
“Age of Delilah”
There comes a day you find out
That you don't wanna die
They'll say it’s time you finally grew up
You've been gone for quite a while
But they'll never ask you why
They ask how it felt to suffocate myself
But not everything feels like something else
Getting life's cold goodbye wave from
The dark of the driveway
Crying, I'm no good at goodbyes
So I leave it to the lights
Can you just tell me which way I'm driving
Interstate or the highway, I'm going
I'm ready
-Ethel Cain
Robin’s hand is in her own when she wakes.
The room is sterile and ugly, too warm.
She feels sick and banged up and immediately ashamed, without knowing why.
Mouth dry, throat stuck, she tries to clear it.
‘Robbie?’
Robin looks up fast.
‘Baby,’ she utters, face creased, red grooves from the discomfort of atrocious sleeping positions, bent over Carol’s bed, cheek on rough linens. ‘Hey, are you… how are you feeling?’
Carol blinks slowly, looks around.
‘Where’s the kids?’
‘They’re all fine,’ Robin tells her, reaching up to press a button. It beeps once. ‘They’ve been coming by.’
‘Who’s—?’
‘Steve’s been bringing them, taking them out.’
Carol frowns. ‘What happened?’
‘Jason said you walked out into the road, a car clipped you, spun you around, but you didn’t get hit. It’s the uh,’ Robin swallows, cradling Carol’s hand with both of her own. ‘The sepsis that was the big thing.’
‘Sepsis?’
‘From the cut on your thigh. It was bad.’
They fall quiet for a while, until Carol whispers, ‘Sorry.’
‘Don’t be sorry. Just be here, please.’
Robin wipes her eyes, can’t look at her.
‘I didn’t mean to… nearly not be here,’ Carol says slowly. ‘I wanna be here.’
‘Then stop it,’ Robin says, closest to harsh she’s ever been. ‘I need you to stop doing this. There are too many reasons not to do that and not enough reasons to risk leaving behind the people who love you.’ She looks at Carol. She is so beautiful, so fucking gorgeous and chaotic and utterly normal and inherently weird, and she has love writ large, the clearest way Carol’s ever seen.
Anger.
Anger at the almost.
‘I didn’t mean to.’
‘Then that should scare you, babe.’
‘It does.’
‘Good.’ Robin exhales, jagged and shaky, complex little faces she can’t settle on, just looking at their hands. ‘Good, because you matter to a lot of people who need you and love you, so stop it, please. I love you and I want you to stop.’
Carol says, ‘OK.’
And it’s not that simple.
But she’s tired.
She is so fucking tired.
And her Mom is dead.
She remembers now.
She remembers thinking she wasn't.
That little piece of her, cut free from reality by fever delusion, that was innocently looking for her Mom.
It cuts her up worse than Tommy’s stolen knife ever could. Cuts deep, cuts her to the core. Childlike trust and the expectation of her Mom to take care of her when she’s sick, that part of her is small, and it guts her to have let love slip through the bars like that, seeking the light.
‘OK,’ she says again, tears warm as they roll down her cheeks, agony burning and buzzing in her throat like a beehive of complicated loss and love that has nowhere to go, except maybe one day, the earth. But not today. ‘I’ll stop.’
*
The kids visit her.
They are a whirlwind of nerves and adrenaline, Kevin saying he’ll find whoever hit her with the car and beat them up and Mandy promising that if Carol needs crutches, they’ll make them really pretty and Lorrie saying nothing, just there with Carol, holding Cory, smiling at Carol whenever the big sister looks her way, something watery in it.
She came close, Lorrie did.
Next in line, her whole life disrupted like Carol’s was.
But it didn’t happen.
It won't happen.
Her Dad comes with Josie, who brings chocolates and soup that Carol won’t touch, it’s homemade and not the canned stuff she likes.
‘They said it was a cut on your leg?’ he asks, when Robin’s taken the kids to get vending machine snacks.
‘I guess.’
‘What was it from?’
Carol looks at him.
She hasn’t seen herself in the mirror, but she knows she looks like shit. She must do. It’s oddly freeing.
‘I did it,’ she tells him plainly. ‘I cut my leg.’
He knew.
She can see it.
The lack of surprise, only mild discomfort that she won’t play along and lie.
‘Well,’ he says, nodding to himself while Josie sits, watching them both. ‘No more of that.’
Carol says nothing, just looks at him.
‘Why did you cheat on her?’ she asks after a period of quietly beeping machines and awkward silence.
He closes his eyes. ‘Carol.’
‘Didn’t you love her anymore? What did she do? She was the prettiest woman I ever saw, you were crazy about her, so why? Why did you… how could you?’
She’s expecting him to clam up, to leave.
And he proves her right.
But Josie stays.
She stays with Carol, tells her that she’ll be in for a few more days until the infection is cleared up, but not to worry about the kids.
Then she says, ‘I got you a new coat.’
Carol looks at her, pretty princess, mid-twenties.
She hates her, but it’s on a low simmer.
It’s on the way out, can’t stay hot forever, nothing can.
Entropy, that’s called.
Heat leaves.
Heat always leaves.
And it goes somewhere else.
But it won’t stay any one place forever.
Like light.
Entropy.
Josie pulls the jacket out.
It’s not the one Carol loved, they don’t sell it in this town, she got it when her Mom took her to a mall in the city years ago, but it’s kinda similar.
She can tell Josie tried to find one the same.
It is, however, Carol’s actual size.
It’ll fit.
It’ll keep her warm.
‘Thanks,’ she says curtly.
*
Jason comes by when it’s dark.
The kids are home, Dad and Josie took them.
Robin’s coming back later, she went to shower and change because it’s been two days, two fucking days she hasn’t left until now.
‘I love you and I’ll be back,’ she said to Carol, kissing her on the corner of the mouth and Carol believes her.
Jason slips into her room in the hospital, quiet, likely unnoticed.
He doesn’t sit.
Carol stares at him.
She remembers the road, he was there.
‘Hey,’ he says quietly, barely above a whisper. ‘Can I talk to you for a minute?’
Carol clenches her jaw. ‘Not like I can go anywhere.’
‘I’ll go if you say so.’
‘What do you want?’
‘I uh.’ He comes inside, but still doesn’t sit. ‘I wanted to tell you about that night, if you want to hear it.’
‘The night you killed my Mom?’
She feels young, defenceless. Like the first time she realised she had to be an adult without actually being one.
Jason nods slowly, visibly swallows.
‘Go on, then.’
‘I wasn't driving carefully,’ he tells her. ‘I was showing off, for the boys. For Tommy and the others. I was speeding and being stupid and they were cheering and when we saw the fire through the trees, I looked away, but I didn’t slow down and we hit your Mom’s car. I hit your Mom’s car and it sent it off the road, down the drop where it rolled. I got out and ran down there, and um.’ His voice shakes so bad the words clam up, like the rattle of a spinning coin before it gives in to gravity. ‘I tried to get her out, but she was really hurt and uh. She was still alive for a few seconds, though. She asked me, are you OK? And then she just…’ He stares at nothing, dull horror and a million other things in his eyes. ‘She was gone. I tried to get her out, to do CPR but the boys pulled me away and somebody knocked me out. Tommy must have told my Dad, because the next day he told me that nothing happened last night and that’s all there was to it but I… I know it did and it was my fault.’
Silence stretches, awful and aching.
‘You want a medal?’ she asks, just to break it.
Jason shakes his head. ‘I see her every night. I’ll never not see her, I think. And you look just like her.’ Then he takes a deep breath, gaze fixed down. ‘I’m gonna tell the cops. I’ll tell them it was just me. They’re out there, saw the big one, Hopper. I just wanted to tell you, Carol, how sorry I am, and how I wish there was a better word for it. Better than sorry, better than any fucking thing I could ever say to you and the kids and to Cory. I wish it was me who died and not her. I should have told you. And this won’t make it right, telling the cops, but I know it’s the right thing to do.’ He pushes away, wipes his nose. ‘That’s what I wanted to say.’
He walks out.
And Carol watches the door slow-close behind him.
This late, she can hear the voices.
Local Chief, couple of others.
Jason.
Telling the important parts of his story.
Are you OK?
That’s the last thing her Mom ever said.
Because she cared a lot.
She cared so much, even if she wasn’t the best.
Carol is moving, she’s getting her legs over the side, cannula in her hand protesting, but fuck that.
Her feet are tingly and her knees are weak and she has to pull the thing along with her, each step heavy, legs like Bambi.
The hall is bright and ugly.
Jason is walking away with Hopper.
She calls his name.
‘Jason, Jason!’
He turns around, brow creased with concern.
And her feet are cold and her leg throbs because she ignored it and her body had had enough and he came when nobody else would, he helped when there was no one and it doesn’t mean what she thought, but it doesn’t mean nothing.
‘Don’t,’ she says, walking to him, shaking her head, stubborn like a child, tears in her eyes, lodge of love in her throat, stupid and unworthy, but love all the same. He goes to her, crying. ‘Don’t, please. It’ll be OK, it doesn’t m-matter, please don’t go.’
He wraps her up in a hug and she hugs him back, feels like something she never had and yet misses every day, kisses his cheek the way they did sometimes, doesn’t want to let him go.
‘It’s OK,’ he whispers. ‘I already told him.’
‘Tell him you lied, tell him you made it up, please,’ she cries, can’t hold it back. ‘Please don’t go.’
‘I’ll be here,’ he tells her, voice cracking even though he’s trying to smile. ‘Whenever you need me. Just gonna be in one place for a while.’
He sounds terrified and he sounds true and he’s the only one who never took anything from her, except her Mom, but he didn’t mean to.
It counts for nothing, but she pretends otherwise. Make believe structures that no lightning could fell.
Love gets you stupid like that.
Hopper comes and gently pulls Jason away, tells Carol to go rest up. A nurse takes her back to bed, but Carol looks as long as she can, holds the picture of him, wiping his eyes and telling her he’ll always be there for her, always.
She keeps it.
Not stolen, given.
Carol will keep it forever.
*
Robin Buckley drives her home.
She’s borrowing Steve’s car, has her permit now. Carol is heavy with things that need attention.
She’s got a paper bag of pills, things for the pain.
And the rain sluices against the window, wipers doing what they can, but she thinks it feels like a good day anyway.
A clear day.
At home, the kids make a fuss and Robin chats guardedly with Josie and Dad is out, he’s working.
Carol goes to the bathroom.
Opens the cabinet.
The knife is there.
Red and silver.
Cheap, shitty.
He used it to open beers.
She stole it because it was his and it was sharp.
And she used it to open herself.
Carol takes hold of it, opens the blade a few times.
And then she closes it, throws it away.
Puts other things in there instead, to fill the space on a shelf where there have only ever been sharp things.
*
She hears Josie and Dad arguing that night.
It’s about her, of course.
He knows about Robin.
Somebody slipped up or maybe he saw it.
Maybe he saw the love, the way they look at each other across a room, the way they touch, the little smiles for nothing because when you share as much as they do, you start thinking the same way sometimes.
Josie is defending her.
Isn’t that funny?
Over the next few weeks, Carol gets better.
She heals up, walks without crutches, she got lucky.
Cory is babbling sentences now, he’s walking around with late blooming confidence. His hair is long and curly. Carol can’t bring herself to trim it.
Kevin’s birthday party is a bounce house in the Harrington yard with food and balloons and music and Carol doesn’t know why Steve had the pool filled in, but it’s nicer out here without it, even in the deep winter, kids all bundled up but still determined to bounce and yell and back-flip.
Everybody knows about Jason.
He’s looking at eight years.
Carol has to go testify soon.
Her Dad refused.
She is to testify to the loss left behind, the kid without a Mother, the damage done.
Robin will go with her.
Her Ro-Bee has her arms around her middle.
‘They’re having way too much fun,’ she says, smiling against Carol’s skin.
‘Gonna be hyper all day.’
‘Hope they break something expensive’ Robin whispers and Carol giggles, turns to kiss her cheek.
She can see her own breath and the jacket Josie got her will never be as lovely as the one her Mom got her, but it’s warm and it fits and her wrists aren’t exposed.
It’s loud and it’s freezing and something goes crash inside and Carol hears Steve laughing and Eddie yelling it was an accident and Lorrie asking if they’re best friends, poor kid’s in for a disappointment. Cory is holding hands with Kevin, walking around the bounce house, looking for flowers, not many to be had this time of year, but come spring, there’ll be plenty.
Mandy is talking with the quiet girl of Steve’s group, the one with the eyes, the one who speaks kinda funny.
Carol turns to Robin, never breaks the embrace.
‘I love you,’ she tells her. Plain and ordinary and all the more beautiful for how honest it is, how real in the daylight moments, outside of heart-stopping intimacy. ‘I love you so much.’
It takes a lot, to trust.
To give love and know it will be given back.
Robin smiles and kisses her.
Holds her like she’s precious.
‘I love you more, Magpie.’
‘Hey, those accusations are unfounded,’ Carol whispers, smiling against her girlfriend’s lips. ‘I am upstanding, I’ll have you know.’
‘Stole my heart, that’s what you did,’ Robin says, snickers into the kiss because it’s a rotten line but Carol eats it up, even as she sighs, rolls her eyes and calls out Munson’s name, threatens to tell him what a sap Robin is, but Robin keeps her, she traps her. ‘You’re going nowhere. All mine, mine.’
Carol rubs her cold nose against Robin’s warm one. Robin makes swirls on her lower back, fuck who sees. ‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah, ‘fraid so. Can’t let you go, could never.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I’m gone for you. I’m all yours, can’t you feel it? You’re my girl. You’re my girl.’
They’re slow dancing to some god-awful metal song and Robin’s hands are warm under Carol’s jacket and she tastes like love and a hint of what’s wild and strange.
The world has monsters in it.
And the world has monsters in it.
Carol is slowly learning what they look like.
How to fight them.
Somebody drops a glass. Munson cheers grimly, applauds and Carol sighs, breaks the kiss.
‘Stay back!’ she tells all the kids. ‘Keep away, I got it. Harrington, fetch your fancy sweepy thing!’
Robin helps, Eddie too, and Steve brings the pan.
It’s clear in no time.
And the party goes on until it snows.
*
The train journey there, they don’t hold hands because it’s still America and people are still cunts, just because you can’t tell which is which doesn’t make anyone safe.
Carol’s nervous, has a whole speech in her pocket.
She’s spoken to the kids about this a lot.
They know about Jason now.
And it’s a horrible, complicated thing but they’ve talked about it, while their Dad slowly grows distant again. Carol will be ready this time, she won’t be caught unawares.
Robin keeps her mind off it.
They talk and Carol smiles and Robin kisses her in the bathroom at the courthouse in the city and tells her, no matter what, it’ll all be OK.
And people say that, don’t they?
It’s a funny word.
Meaningless and yet heavily used.
Carol believes it when her Ro-Bee says it, though.
In the shade of kisses and company and love and passion and wild laughter that leave ribs sore and knowing every inch of the bodies they love and in talking after arguments instead of tearing it all down… she comes to know what OK means.
It means the bad things will end.
That they’re temporary.
Pain fades, scars heal.
That’s what OK is.
It’s the after part of the bad.
And from there, things can maybe start to get good.
He’s in orange and handcuffs.
She has her speech out in front of her and the podium smells of polished wood. The kids have all written things they want to say, so she reads those first. Short paragraphs about how much they miss their Mom and all the ways in which it hurts, but all three of them ended their statement with the same thing.
Forgiveness doesn’t come easy to Carol.
It’s like love.
Like giving back something she stole, she would rather throw it away than return it, because fuck the right thing.
All three kids managed it, though.
Are you OK?
Bad things are temporary.
Or they’re meant to be.
Carol wipes her eyes.
She has a whole speech of her own.
All her feelings in ink.
It felt good to write it.
It felt gutting to write it.
Like pulling a rotten tooth, the relief after was immense, and now she’s staring at the decay, the once strong exterior bone, the only ones that are outside the skin, and she just wants to throw it away.
She says, ‘My Mom is gone and she shouldn’t be. But it was an accident and I forgive you, Jason. It was an accident. It’ll be OK.’
He’s looking at her, wet eyes and red cheeks.
She nods at him manages a little smile that he can’t return, but when they tell him it’s four years and they walk him away, it’s her name he calls out.
And she looks, waits.
Carol.
‘I love you,’ he says, and smiles.
And she knows everything will be OK.
She knows it.
*
It’s been two years.
The summer is crazy, there are kids everywhere, running in and out of the house. Soda and juice and sleepovers and movies and Lorrie’s boyfriend trying real hard to make a good impression and Carol winking at Lorrie whenever she gives him shit and Kevin coming home from his performance at the new mall, band stuff, and Robin drove him, and Mandy is outside with Cory playing in the sprinklers and Cory’s hair is shorter now, but still curly and the same shade as Carol’s and Josie comes by sometimes, but their Dad has been gone for eighteen months and he only calls on birthdays, sends twenty dollars in a card.
Carol and Josie get along well enough.
And Robin Buckley lives there, in the house with Carol and the kids and their bed is big and roomy and there are pictures everywhere, and Munson’s stupid amp has been by the door for a month now, he needs to come get it, but he’s lazy and Steve lives with him in a house not too far down the road, so he’s there sometimes, hanging out with Carol, they are friends in a new way, a way that takes time to find because they were friends without ever actually being friends for a long time.
Robin’s life is intertwined with Carol’s, it’s a pretty knotted mess, like a person who wanted to learn how to knit, but gave up and just did their own thing. Their life is kisses and babe, you got cash for the ice cream van? and going to the quarry and fucking in the car and laughing afterwards and getting matching tattoos that Eddie puts in them for free, he’s not so bad, and their life is blankets in winter and lake swimming in summer, and Carol’s thighs are scarred, but they’re all old now.
The last one was the bad one.
The one that said, do you really wanna go?
And she said no, let it be the last.
It left an ugly scar.
Carol thinks that’s fair.
And Robin kisses it sometimes.
She kisses them all.
Her mouth makes magic.
The bathroom cabinet has medical supplies in it, has shaving foam for Kevin and safety razors and deodorant and cheap perfume for Lorrie and Mandy’s tampons.
The house is always full.
There’s always food.
Carol makes lasagne in Miriam Hagan’s oven dish, she never, ever gave it back, and the kids make happy mess, and Carol can feel herself slipping into her Mom’s accent and it makes her feel warm.
Cory calls her Momma sometimes when he cries, and that’s all right, he knows who their Momma is too, he points at pictures of the little time he had with her and smiles and Carol tells stories about her and she’ll be mid-thirties when he’s eighteen, but she won’t be doing any of it alone.
And on a sunny, sweltering Thursday, she drives her car out to the city.
Robin holds her hand, plays the music they love, navigating poorly, which leads to laughter and accusations and a pit stop for slutty kisses in the bathroom and very quick, not-quiet sex and then it’s back on the road, headed to the Indiana Department of Corrections.
Not for a visit, this time.
To be there, when the gates open.
To take him home.
Boys are real fucking dumb, but sometimes they’re not so bad, Carol thinks, knows, takes the one rare example and holds onto it harder than every other man who has worked to show her otherwise.
She’s wearing sunglasses and Mary Janes with a skirt and Robin is taller, always will be, but Carol feels good leaning against the car, sun on her skin, skies blue.
Their rings catch the light.
And the world is lovely today.
It is most days.
And the gates open.
And Carol smiles, takes a deep breath of the air all around her, and she sees him.
It’s a good day.
A really good day.
Carol Perkins thinks she was due.
the end
*