‘I’m Johnny,’ she starts, ‘and I’m a widdle baby who’s so sad because—’
‘Connie!’ Johnny interrupts, putting his arm around her and tugging her away. ‘Cut it out!’
Connie protests as Johnny walks her off into the darkness, and I spy her stumble a few times before he helps her stand back up.
‘Jesus,’ says Ray, ‘what the hell was that about?’
‘Who knows,’ says Sunny, and we catch eyes. With Connie and Johnny, anything is possible. The one thing that’s certain is that the two of them will always look out for each other with ferocious loyalty. After all, they don’t have much of anyone else to look after them. Their mom drinks too much and their dad is sort of rough with them, and that’s on a decent day. No wonder Connie ran away.
After Johnny and Connie leave, things grow quiet for a moment, but the party atmosphere picks up again before long, and I realize I have to go to the bathroom. I think about asking Sunny or Juanita to go with me, but suddenly I feel like being alone. Maybe the excitement from earlier in the night is starting to wear off. Or maybe I’m just tired of worrying about saying or doing the wrong thing in front of everyone. I don’t tell anyone I’m leaving, and nobody seems to notice.
As my shoes crunch over the gravel and my crowd’s voices fall farther into the distance, something unusual happens. The hair on my arms stands up totally straight, and I shiver just a little bit. It’s enough that I pause in my steps for the smallest moment. Then a single sentence marches through my mind, demanding attention.
Turn around and go home, Evie.
I frown and keep walking, brushing it aside. I know my mother would call it woman’s intuition. The same woman’s intuition that told her when I was three years old that my father wasn’t coming back from the corner store. The same intuition that told her that her manager at the diner where she used to wait tables was still married even when he swore up and down that he was as single as they come.
‘Every woman has a little warning system in place,’ she’s said to me. ‘And you have to pay attention to it.’
I love my mother, but I think that’s ridiculous. And anyway, if woman’s intuition was real, wouldn’t she have gotten some warning not to marry my no-account father in the first place? And if a woman’s intuition was worth anything, wouldn’t being a girl be just a little bit easier instead of harder, like Connie always says it is?
So I just keep walking, wondering why I can’t manage to shake off whatever it is that’s making me feel so out of sorts.
The Washrooms at Winkler’s are in a cinder-block building way at the back of the property line. Far away from everything else, it sits against a sorry-looking chain-link fence that serves as a not-so-secret entrance for teenagers who don’t want to pay to get in. Painted a drab gray color and framed by a ring of overgrown weeds, it greets you with a nasty smell several feet before you actually arrive at the twin doors that read GUYS and DOLLS. I approach, wrinkling up my nose, and push the DOLLS door open. Two girls who are a little younger than me are washing their hands. Flannel skirts, matching cardigans. Bright eyes and clean fingernails. They remind me of the girls I used to hang out with, back before I started running with Juanita and the others. Back before I realized what life could be like when you make friends with girls like Connie Treadway. When these girls spot me, one of them gasps a little bit, and the two of them hurry on out of there.
After they leave, I mutter, ‘I don’t bite, you know.’ Less so to the girls than to my reflection in the smudged mirror. It wouldn’t bother Connie to run off girls like that, but for some reason it doesn’t make me feel too hot.
Maybe it’s those girls who make me feel prickly. Or maybe Ray’s joking around earlier has gotten to me. Maybe it’s the realization that a boy like Johnny Treadway will probably never look twice at a girl like me. Whatever the reason, I’m glad the bathroom is empty, and I linger alone, taking a few extra minutes to read the graffiti. Lipstick hearts with initials smeared inside them next to corny doodles and pencil scratchings that say stuff like Principal Hawkins can get bent. I wash my hands and straighten myself up in the mirror, and when I push open the door to head outside, the first thing I spot is a boy in khakis and a madras shirt. A River Oaks boy. He’s leering and cocksure, standing there against the back fence with a wolfish grin that slices across his all-American face.
A wave of nausea instantly takes hold. My mind skates over my mother’s warning, but it’s too late for that now. This boy’s face promises me nothing good. I know this with certainty, somehow. But I also know with just as much certainty that I don’t have an easy way out. In the middle of my panic, I seize on where I’ve seen this face before. Just an hour or so earlier, when the girls and I walked past him and his crowd. He’s the one who called Connie a bitch.
‘Hey,’ says All-American. I realize he’s got a beer bottle in one hand, and he takes a long pull before throwing it casually against the chain-link fence, where it explodes with a smash. ‘I recognize you. You told me and my friends to drop dead twice.’ Then, with fury laced through it, he spits out, ‘Trash.’
‘What do you want?’ I manage. I start to move past him and he lurches in front of me, blocking my way.
‘I never said anything to you,’ I say, hoping I sound tough and bored. ‘You’re thinking about someone else.’ Even though I don’t tell him her name, there’s a wince of remorse when I mention Connie, but I’m desperate. She and I don’t look anything alike. He must be so drunk.
‘You don’t know what I’m thinking,’ he says. His cheeks are ruddy and mottled, his blond buzz cut so sharp I could nick myself on it. ‘You probably don’t want to know.’ He barks out a sick laugh.
Oh God.
My stomach careens and my heart is hammering so hard it hurts. My eyes shoot beyond this boy who won’t let me pass, and I spy the concession stand and the field of cars and the giant, luminescent screen where some dumb blond actress is dancing around in a yellow polka-dot bikini. I can hear the occasional laugh and shout. I could count headlights. It’s all just a few hundred yards away, but it’s like I’m viewing it through a film or a fog.
He laughs again, a soft, low laugh. He’s pleased with himself.
What do mean, drunk boys like this want? I know. All girls do. Somewhere along the way, the answer to that question seeps into us until we can’t remember a time when we didn’t know it.
My stomach twists again. My body goes numb.
‘Someone’s gonna come by any minute,’ I manage, swallowing hard, setting my mouth into a thin line, ‘so you might as well let me go.’
‘Well, maybe …’ he drawls, relishing the words, ‘maybe I only need a minute.’
It all happens so fast. He’s behind me, his hands on me, one tight around my torso, the other – calloused and rough – pressed hard against my mouth to muffle any attempt at a scream. I’m being dragged now to the edge of the drive-in’s property, well behind the washroom building, to a cluster of overgrown bushes and trees. I can hear my feet kicking up gravel, so I know my body is trying to fight back even as my mind is frozen. I turn my head frantically as much as I can manage, catching a glimpse of the other side of the chain-link fence, where warehouses and a bottling factory sit, big metal husks of buildings that are empty and quiet under the light of the moon.