Wicked Games

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Moore. I’ve got to go. Thanks!”

Lilah hung up before Carter’s mom could probe any further.

In a daze, she stared at the pink walls of her room, at the line of intertwined roses her father had painted along the baseboards, at the white dresser and the white bedside table and the white carpeting on the floor. She studied the poster of Allison Schmitt—an action shot of Allison bobbing out of the water, with her arm stretched in front of her as she won her gold medal in London—that she hadn’t had the nerve to take down after her own dreams of Olympic competition had combusted.

Then, finally, her eyes drifted to the huge, round mirror above the antique cherrywood dressing table she’d inherited from her grandmother. Among the photos she’d taped there was one she especially cherished. CARTER + LILAH carved into that bench. “Forever,” he’d said.

But did forever really mean forever? Maybe not, after what Lilah had done last night. She couldn’t help but wonder if he’d taken the first steps toward leaving her—if he’d hooked up with some other girl after she’d left, it would explain why he hadn’t been answering his phone. The old familiar hurt tickled the edges of her heart, that dark hopelessness she sometimes felt when she was alone, the flip side of her manic behavior the night before. She felt herself moving across the room, sitting on the stool in front of the mirror. Staring at that photo like she was in a trance.

Her hand reached down and opened the bottom drawer of the dressing table. She rummaged through the old lipsticks and mascara cases there, digging around until she found what she was looking for. There it was: the tiny cartridge of razor blades she’d managed to keep hidden from her mother.

As her fingers touched them, she shuddered, horrified at herself.

“Stop it,” she told herself. “Don’t do it.”

She threw the cartridge back into the drawer and slammed it shut.

Throwing on a pair of baggy gray sweatpants and a black sports bra, she slammed out of her room and stomped down the stairs and through the bright sunlit kitchen of her house.

“Mom, I’m taking your car,” she called out.

Then, before her parents had time to surface from wherever they were and interrogate her, she grabbed the key to her mom’s Dodge Caravan off the hook by the garage door and headed to Jeff’s house in search of Carter.

9 (#ulink_90e622db-9347-5520-af9b-84bb28f29f96)

Jules took her time walking home.

She lived on the southern side of town, in a neighborhood called the Slats because all the houses there were the same gray clapboards, perched on stilts, lined up tight next to one another. It was a three-mile walk from the ritzy opulence of Jeff’s neighborhood, but today Jules didn’t mind.

She swung her sandals in her hand and brazenly trespassed through the five or six private beaches between Jeff’s house and the hotels, watching the perfect rows of red and blue umbrellas lined up above the sun-bleached chaise lounges grow incrementally closer. She waved at the strangers parked under these umbrellas—the few who were out at this early hour. She tracked the waves as they tumbled and crashed. She watched the early-morning surfers catching waves, the seagulls hopping along the shore, and a few bright-eyed families setting up their chairs on the glimmering white public beach.

She couldn’t stop grinning. The sun felt warm and alive on her skin. She was electric today, tingling all over. Her brain fizzled with a sensation of uncontrollable freedom. She knew she should feel guilty for having slept with Carter, but she just couldn’t find room for the guilt inside her.

Life, the world, it was all so beautiful. She had to keep checking herself, stopping herself from imagining a life in some hazy future where Lilah didn’t exist anymore and she and Carter were an actual couple. It felt wrong but it also felt unfathomably right.

By the time she’d made it to the Slats and cut in the three blocks from the beach, walking along the sandy side streets of her neighborhood toward the little house where she lived with her mother, she’d almost given up on trying to care about the damage she might have wrought on Carter and Lilah’s relationship. He’d seemed so miserable. She hoped that when he thought about what they’d done, he’d see her as a force for good in his life.

Her mother was already up, sitting at the table on the deck of their house. She looked free and easy as ever, her blond-streaked hair hidden under a floppy straw sun hat, her hands around a warm cup of herbal tea. Enjoying the moment. Practicing her Buddhist presentness.

They waved at each other as Jules made her way up the creaky wooden stairs, and Jules felt lucky again that her mother was more a friend than a parent, the kind of person who let her come and go as she wanted.

Flopping into the chair across from her, Jules closed her eyes and drank in more of the sun. The female singer-songwriter music her mother liked so much lilted softly through the open window from the kitchen. The Shawn Colvin Pandora channel, Jules suspected.

“Good night?” her mother asked.

“The best.”

Her mother scooped some organic strawberries into a bowl and slathered Greek yogurt on top of them.

“Here,” she said. “Breakfast. Tell me all about it.”

She could honestly say that her mom was her best friend. Her dad had died six years ago of a heart attack, when she was eleven, and since then it had been just the two of them. They talked about everything. Her mom never judged. And through her, Jules had learned that the world had a way of working things out as long as you didn’t try too hard to war against it.

Jules picked at the fruit in front of her. “Well, there’s this boy,” she said.

A wisp of a smile floated across her mother’s face. “Of course there is.”

Jules laughed. She’d had this very same conversation with her mother many times before, but from the other side, listening to her describe her excitement about this or that new guy in her life.

“But he’s one of the good ones. He’s funny. And kind of goofy-cute. But there’s, like, a seriousness to him. I’ve told you about him before, actually.”

“Oh?” The hint of a smile, just a ripple across her lips that was so hard for Jules to read, emerged on her mom’s face.

“You remember way back in sophomore year … that party I went to on the beach?”

“Weren’t you already hanging around with Todd by then? It seems like there was always some party or another on the beach.”

Jules couldn’t help making a sour face at the memory of all that wasted time with Todd and his surfing buddies. “No, before that. With Lauren? It was like a bonfire with a bunch of upperclassmen. Remember? I came home just totally upset? I had to beg you not to report it to the school?”

She was talking about the time she and her friend Lauren had gone to a beach bonfire and been harassed by a bunch of guys who thought it was funny to paw at them and pull at the drawstrings of their bikinis. They’d actually managed to get Lauren’s top separated from her body. And then they wouldn’t give it back. It was all a game to them. Keep-away.

Her mom’s gaze narrowed as she remembered being told about this. It was like she was looking through Jules into some place deep inside her that she didn’t know how to protect. “This guy was involved with that?”

“No—no, that’s not what I mean. Seth Kruger was the guy who stole Lauren’s bikini top. Carter was the one I told you about, who raced down from out of nowhere shouting, ‘What the fuck, assholes,’ and dive-bombed Seth to get Lauren’s top back.”

“Thank God,” her mom said, relieved.

“And last night, we just talked and talked. It was all so effortless. He was so sweet. And …” Jules drifted off into memories of the touch of his lips on hers. She’d thought about what it would be like to kiss him for years and the reality was so much better than she’d imagined.

Her mom reached across the table and patted her tanned hand with her own. “You really like this guy, then,” she said.

Jules looked down at her yogurt, suddenly embarrassed; then she glanced back up at her mother and crinkled her eyes. “Yes,” she said, blushing.

“I sense a but coming,” her mom said.

“He’s got a girlfriend. And …”

As Jules outlined the parameters of the situation—glossing over the details of what exactly she and Carter had done, but not hiding them, not lying about them—her mother listened carefully, looked her in the eyes, took in not just her words but her vibrations as well, all the subtle physical clues that communicated more than her words ever could. She didn’t push Jules or try to steer the conversation. She just listened and watched until Jules was done.

“Is that a bad thing?” asked Jules.

“No,” her mom said. “Not bad.” She put her hands to her lips like she was praying, and thought for a moment. “First, you should know—’cause you’re going to be worried about it later—you’re not responsible for the things he does. If he chose to fool around with you last night, something must be very wrong between him and his girlfriend. It’s not your fault.”

She reached across the table and covered Jules’s hand with her own.

“Did you hear me?” she said. “It’s not your fault. You don’t have to own problems he’s created for himself. Okay?”

Jules nodded.