The Spring Girls Page 7

He was still sitting there, but the book was back in his hands, and he had stopped playing music.

  “What have you been working on lately, Jo?” Beth asked, to change the subject from matrimony and riches.

  A lot of things, I wanted to say. I was only a few paragraphs short of finishing my longest piece, an essay on female sex trafficking in Cambodia. I’d spent more time on this piece than anything I had written before. I knew that Mr. Geckle would never allow me to publish it in the school newspaper, so I was planning on sending it to Vice myself. It was a long shot, and they would probably never even read it, let alone publish it, but sending it in was something I had to do for myself. Once I did that, I would be ready for anything. Mr. Geckle could only control my voice within the walls of White Rock High.

  “Nothing special,” I started, even though I was lying through my teeth. It was special; it was the most special thing I had ever written. I felt it deep in the whites of my bones.

  “I read your paper about sex slavery. The one on your laptop,” Amy began. I whirled around and grabbed her arm. The soda can dropped onto the floor, and fizzy orange liquid sprayed onto the tile.

  “You what?” I shouted at her. She pulled back from me, but I held her arm.

  “It was open on your laptop!” she yelled in her defense.

  “I don’t care!” I let go of her when I felt Beth’s eyes burning on me.

  It wasn’t that I didn’t want anyone to read it; I was mad because I thought my laptop was the one place where I had privacy from my three sisters, and Amy had just ripped that away from me.

  Meredith came barreling into the kitchen and I stepped back, away from the orange puddle on the floor.

  “What the hell is going on in here?” Meredith stepped around the mess and let out a deep breath before anyone answered her.

  “Nothing, Meredith. Everything is fine,” Beth said, and grabbed a towel hanging on the oven door. She laid it down, and both Amy and I stopped glaring at each other as Beth cleaned up our mess.

  “Who was fighting? I heard yelling.” Meredith’s voice was steady, and she wasn’t in the mood for our games.

  “No one.” Beth bent down. “We were just messing around. Don’t worry, we’re cooking and getting everything ready for tonight. I’m almost finished with my cheese ball.”

  Meredith looked at the four of us and shook her head. I figured that she didn’t believe Beth but didn’t feel like fighting on New Year’s Eve. Meredith had a glass of clear liquid in her hand, and I thought she should have another. She had never before looked as tense and tired as she did lately.

  She told us to be careful and not make any more messes and left us in the kitchen.

  I gave Amy a look and turned back to the window. Laurie was gone.

  I went to my room and closed the door and wrote to forget how mad I was at my sister.

  7

  meg

  My makeup was done and I had just finished blow-drying my hair. While I was waiting for Jo to get out of the shower and curl my hair, I picked up the book she had slid under my pillow on Christmas. Honestly, I hadn’t opened it since then, but I had a few minutes, so I lifted the black cover and turned to a random page. It began:

  my favorite thing about you is your smell

  I read the words in silent awe, and then read them again, and Shia’s hands, dirt under his fingernails, came to my mind. He was always dirty, always planting something or helping some old woman or other move her furniture around or some such. He always smelled like the earth, like a garden.

  I couldn’t believe he was back—and worse, I couldn’t believe that I was thinking about him right now. John would be home in a week to see me. I should be thinking about John’s clean, strong hands, and the way he always smelled like fresh cologne and laundry detergent.

  He wouldn’t dare to wear ratty T-shirts or dirty sneakers the way Shia did.

  “Jo!” I yelled.

  It was eight thirty, and everyone was going to start arriving at our house around ten. By “everyone,” I mean a few of the neighbors and their kids. I didn’t invite any of my “friends,” since half of them weren’t talking to me over a rumor that wasn’t even true. That’s what happens when you’re labeled the school “slut” in a small Army town. It follows you past graduation. I didn’t mind so much and still don’t, really. If they were truly my friends, they would know that I wouldn’t do what they are accusing me of doing. The same thing happened to me at Fort Hood, and it was so much worse; the rumor mill here seemed like child’s play.

  That night we would have followed our tradition of celebrating at home, but Jo and I got a last-minute invite to the Kings’ house for Bell Gardiner’s engagement party, so we decided to stop by there for an hour, then make sure we were back home by eleven. I didn’t want to go, especially because I was afraid to see Shia there, but I had assumed since the party was at the Kings’ huge estate, many people would be there and lessen my chance of running into Shia.

  “Josephine!” I shouted again.

  While I waited for her, I flipped to another page in the book she’d gifted me.

  The poem there was simple, and began:

  how can our love die . . .

  Stunned, I turned a few more pages.

  he isn’t coming back . . .

  Underneath the poem was the word wilted, as if the poem was signed by Wilted. I thought of the bouquet of flowers on Mrs. King’s nightstand. The card was signed by Shia, and the red petals were wilted. I touched the corner of one and it broke off, falling onto the wooden dresser. I thought about how he left so suddenly and how much time I’d wasted wishing that he would come back.

  Trying to push those wilted flowers and his shining green eyes out of my head, I slammed the book shut and tossed it onto my bed just as Jo came strolling into our room.

  “I’m here!” she said with a smile.

  Her hands were full. In one hand she held the curling iron and her phone, and in the other she had a handful of Bugles. Her long hair was down, touching the top of her hips as she moved toward me and stood behind me at the vanity. Her face was freshly scrubbed pink, and her pale skin was glowing.

  She would never listen to me when I told her how lucky she was to have such flawless skin. Beth and I suffered from acne the most, but mine had cleared up since I started working at Sephora, where I got to try all the new skin-care products from the best, most expensive brands, for free.

  “Your makeup looks so good,” Jo said.

  She plugged in the curling iron, and I parted my hair, clipping up the top of it so she could curl the bottom.

  I stared into the mirror and smiled at my sister. We had been getting closer lately, and I was starting to see a change in her. She was no longer my little Josephine who ran away from home when Old Mr. Laurence trapped a raccoon in a cage and wouldn’t let it go. She was growing up so fast, and that meant I was, too. I was ready to be older; I hated being on the cusp of being a woman, because I felt like one but wasn’t treated like one.

  “Big curls, please.”

  Jo nodded and went to work.

  “Do you think Amy will be able to stay up tonight?” I asked as she curled a chunk of my hair. The strands were hot when she let them out of the barrel and they fell onto my shoulder.

  Just as she started to answer, Amy bounced into our bedroom.

  “Jo. Meg. Whatever you do, you have to tell me how the party is.”

  “We will. Are you trying to stay up? Or will you be asleep when we get back?” I asked as Jo wrapped another piece of my hair around the metal barrel.

  Amy shook her head and moved around us. She grabbed a tube of lipstick from my vanity and leaned down into the mirror as her small fingers pulled the top off, revealing a deep purple shade.

  “I’ll be up.” Amy’s fingers turned the tube around and around as if she was trying to figure out how to use it. “You guys will have all the fun. Did you hear that Bell Gardiner is engaged! I can’t wait to see her ring! Ugh, you’re going to
have way more fun than me.” Amy sighed heavily and licked her lips before she smeared the stick across her lips. When she was done, she pulled back and looked at herself in the mirror.

  “It’s going to be a blast. And of course we know, Amy. We were invited.” Jo rolled her eyes.

  Amy pouted. “Stop rubbing it in.”

  I didn’t particularly care about Bell Gardiner’s engagement, or her at all. She was one year older than me and had supposedly been going to move to Florida for college, but she only made it as far as the French Quarter. Rumor had it that she worked at a bar downtown, right in the center of the Quarter, somewhere between Bourbon and Royal. Of course she was a bartender, like my aunt Hannah.

  “How big do you think her ring is?” Amy asked, her little sock-covered feet moving around my small bedroom.

  Jo and I made eye contact in the mirror.

  “Who is she even engaged to?” Jo asked.

  I shrugged my shoulders and closed my eyes. Who knew? Not me, nor did I care. I felt bad for the poor man who asked her to marry him. I could have made up excuse after excuse on why I didn’t like her, but the main reason was Shia. They had dated briefly during the end of my junior year, their senior, and those two weeks felt like the longest of my life.

  “Who knows. Probably some soldier,” Jo said, looking at Amy through the mirror.

  Amy’s eyes lit up. “Can you imagine? Everyone is lucky but me.” She sighed.

  “Lucky? To be engaged at twenty?” I responded to Amy.

  Even though I had a catty response, I had grown up wishing I would find the love of my life at a young age and have the security of being someone’s wife. I knew I was jealous of Bell Gardiner, and though I would never say it to my sisters, I was secretly hoping John would propose to me when he came home for leave the following week.

  Beth’s voice came from over by the door, where she was leaning against its frame. “I’m glad I don’t have to go and be with all those frightening people and try to think of things to say.”

  She hated to be around crowds. I felt a slight guilt when I got the Facebook invite for only Jo and me, but Beth would much rather be home with Meredith and Amy than at a crowded party with me and Jo.

  I gave Beth a sympathetic smile and looked back at Jo.

  “Is that what you’re wearing tonight?” I asked her.

  She nodded and looked down at her all-black outfit. Black jeans, black shirt. A thin line of pale skin showed just above her hip. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen Jo in a dress. Probably that one Easter where Meredith made all of us wear matching dresses and carry matching baskets to get family pictures done. Gah, they were horrendous. They were probably on some BuzzFeed list of corniest family photos.

  “What’s that smell?” Amy asked, and sniffed the air. It smelled like burnt . . .

  “Oh my God, Jo!” I yanked my head away from her, and a chunk of my hair was smoking, still on the barrel of the iron.

  Amy screamed louder than I did, and Jo dropped the hot curling iron onto the floor.

  “Get it off the floor!” Beth yelled. “It’s going to burn the carpet!”

  I stared at my hair and ran my fingers over the hole in it.

  Jo began, “I’m sorry! I—”

  “I can’t go anywhere like this!” My eyes welled up with tears, and as much as I didn’t want to yell at Jo, I was always going to be that girl who cared about what her hair looked like.

  “I ruin everything,” Jo mumbled, barely loud enough for anyone to hear her.

  Her words made such a sad sound that I wanted to comfort her. But I just kept staring at the chunk of my hair she’d burned off and I didn’t know what to say.

  Amy clucked around me and pulled the bow from her white hair. “Here, put this on, you’ll barely notice.”

  I took the bow from her hands and put it in my hair. I never wore bows, I was too old for them, but there was something edgy, a little baby-doll-like, about the way the black bow wrapped through the front of my hair.

  I looked at myself in the mirror and straightened my back. I couldn’t let my burnt hair ruin my night. I still looked sexy. I liked the contrast between my dark makeup and my girlish bow.

  “You’re so pretty, Meg. I hope I’m as pretty as you when I get older,” Amy said.

  That made me smile. Leave it to little Amy to give me the extra confidence boost I needed. Bell Gardiner would look flawless. I knew she would. She always did, and her fiancé was probably some rich Southern gentleman, and she was going to spend her party showing off some beautiful diamond, and I was going to spend the party sulking and reminding myself that I had someone, too.

  John would be home soon.

  John would be home soon.

  “John will be home soon,” Jo said, stealing the words from inside my head.

  I smiled at her effort and pushed my feet into my heels.

  8

  The driveway to the Kings’ house was packed with black cars and people in their New Year’s best. My feet were already killing me, and every time I looked down at Jo’s sneaker-covered feet, I wished I didn’t care so much about what people thought of my appearance. If I was like Jo, I would have worn flats and jeans. We passed an SUV and I looked at myself, using the window as a mirror. My sparkly dress was tight and my hair was already falling out of its curls.

  I looked at myself again, trying to be more like Jo. I looked hot, I knew that I did; I just had to remind myself a few more times.

  “God, it’s so crowded,” Jo said, waiting for me to catch up to her.

  The Kings’ estate was a massive, two-story, square, tan house with thick white pillars on the porch extending up to the second floor. The long shutters on the bottom-floor windows were painted black, and since I had last been here a week prior, someone had strung up strands of white twinkling lights on the black fence upstairs and down the front pillars. The house was always beautiful; it had been my dream home since before I even stepped inside, but that night it seemed even more magical. Flowers were everywhere. Purple bellflowers draped over iron trellises, and blue flowers that I didn’t know the name of overflowed from hanging baskets.

  The real estate in southern Louisiana was my favorite of what I had ever seen. I loved the old, square houses with shutters and pillars, and the eeriness of it all just made it even more appealing to me.

  When we finally stepped onto the porch, my heart was beating so fast and my toes were aching in my heels. I spotted Mr. Blackly, the doorman for the estate, and he smiled, waving for me to cut the line at the door. I couldn’t believe a line had formed at the door. It didn’t surprise me too much, though, since the Kings’ home was the biggest anywhere near the post. It was a large double-gallery house. I loved that style of home, especially when the houses were in the Quarter.

  One day, I had asked Mrs. King why she didn’t move closer to the French Quarter, and she had looked at me with a smirk in her eyes and said, “Because, darling Meg, I love my diamonds.” She looked down at her wrist, and it sparkled under the lights in her bathroom. I nodded and swept blush over her dark cheeks.

  I tugged Jo by the arm of her denim jacket and we pushed through the crowd of people waiting to get inside. I didn’t recognize a single face in the sea of them.

  Mr. Blackly told me to have fun and drink some champagne for him. I was even more surprised when we got into the living room. All of the furniture was placed the same as always, but there were little tables full of appetizers, and tucked in the corner was a full bar. The man behind it was shaking a metal cup in one hand and pouring liquor into a glass with his other, and I felt like I was at a Gatsby party.

  “This is freaking insane,” Jo said into my ear.

  I agreed with her as we made our way into the parlor to look for someone I knew, anyone but Shia.

  The first person I spotted was Bell Gardiner, standing over by the piano. She was wearing a long emerald-green dress, and I couldn’t help but look down at her left hand. Her ring sparkled from t
en feet away, and I could see that the color matched her dress. It was beautiful. My petty dislike for her grew instantly. She smiled at the man in front of her, and I wondered if he was her fiancé. Since he had a fairly large bald spot on the back of his head, I hoped he was. I was petty, but at least I could admit it.

  “Has it been an hour yet?” Jo pulled her cell phone out of the back pocket of her jeans and checked the screen. “How has it only been five minutes?” she asked, and shoved the phone back into her jeans.

  Jo grabbed a little cucumber sandwich, and we continued to explore. A few minutes later, I saw Reeder and the Laurie boy standing by the bar. When I told Jo I wanted to talk to them, she shook her head and told me to go for it but she was staying put.

  I didn’t want to leave my younger sister alone in such a crowded place, but I was bored out of my damn mind.

  “Meg.” Reeder smiled when I approached him. He wrapped his arm around me and I leaned into his expansive chest. He was monstrously big.

  I had known him since I moved to Fort Cyprus. It didn’t take long for the student body to hate me and he was always so nice to me. He used to drive me to school on the mornings that he had patrol, and he was one of the only guys I had ever known that I felt safe around.

  One sloppy night my senior year when John had broken up with me, I went to a party and drank my weight in vanilla-flavored vodka. I was a stumbling mess and Reeder showed up with his friends. It was the first time I had seen him out of his uniform, and I hung all over him like a bee to pollen, and when he drove me home and walked me to my back door, I leaned up and tried to kiss him.

  I had never been turned down by a boy, or man, before that night, and I haven’t been since Reeder gently declined my advances. He said I had had too much to drink. He was right.

  “There are so many people here,” I said to the two of them. I wondered how Reeder, a military police officer, had become such fast friends with the greasy, leather jacket–wearing boy from Europe. I didn’t trust a boy with hair like that.