Chapter Twelve

When she was a child, she got anything she wanted. But when Denise took stock of it now, she realized how little she actually desired. It was almost a game—see how much she got out of her father before he finally looked up and around. But his head was always down, examining the head of his 3-wood, admiring the shine of his shoes. He had a great pair of patent leather ones he wore to the country club’s black-tie event. Her mother would have looked stunning in her pink floor-length gown if she had been anyone else’s mother. But she was five-year-old Denise’s who could sense Lucy’s fear.

Denise scratched at the acne on her chin thinking about that fear, how she had absorbed it straight through her pores. Never let them see you scared, she singsonged in her head. It was the next day when her father was on the golf course and her mother was locked in her bathroom. Denise snuck in and stole the shoes peeping from beneath her father’s side of the bed. It was the first time she stole the matches and watched something burn. 

They didn’t, not completely. They became a melted mess on the driveway that a tiny Denise doused with a wilted stream of water from the hose. A neighbor jogged by, and Denise waved, placing a determined hand on her hip as water splashed onto her saddle shoes. She half-buried the mess behind the pool shed where nobody ever went.

Never found those shoes, Denise hummed, digging a little deeper at her face. She lay on her belly on her bed, her roommate, Samantha, long gone doing whatever Samantha did. The girl was rushing as a sophomore, which Denise found embarrassing. Her last roommate, Diane, was a nerd and used too many words Denise understood but also found embarrassing. Both girls wore every inch of themselves on the outside, and it clawed at Denise’s sensibilities. It’s like neither of them had any shame.

And now Samantha—her “forever friend” as her nauseatingly peppy RA, Roberta, put it—was out with people who weren’t Denise. No sweat off my back, Denise thought, wondering how hard it would be to burn Samantha’s Nikes in a poorly ventilated room.

Denise flipped onto her back, wondering what her father was doing right at that moment. Probably romping around with his latest receptionist, whacking at grass with a long, shiny piece of metal. Her mother was probably doped out of her mind. There was something intriguing about the thought of calling her. Would she even be coherent enough to recognize the sound of her own daughter’s voice? But Denise had tried calling them the past three days to no avail. Twice Samantha watched her with her sorry green eyes, and Denise smiled and said, “Oh duhski. I forgot they’re vacationing in the Alps.” Samantha had replied with a slow nod of her head.

Maybe I should burn her loafers too.

She was so bored, Denise decided to wash her face. That’s another thing she loathed, communal bathrooms. She’d be minding her own business, removing her make-up an inch at a time to reveal her ugly, inflamed skin, when a herd of freshmen—bubbly and just smitten about who knew what—came prancing through the door. All of them always fresh-faced and cute. She loathed them because she used to be them, and now she was what happened when you ate too much ice cream in one sitting.

Her clothes were getting tighter. She thought about going shopping, but the thought of combing the racks at the mall in her dirty sweatpants was hardly appealing. She hated doing laundry, mainly because she was never taught how and had to figure out the whole mind-numbing process by stealing glances at other students who weren’t so pitiful. She felt like a stalker, sneaking furtive glances at the bottles of detergent, the loud metal machines, and the hands that folded everything into neat and organized piles.

“Stop staring,” one girl had straight out said to her. Denise rifled through her rolodex of comebacks only to realize her tongue didn’t work. 

“Uh...t-kay?” She had managed, grabbing her sack of clothes and the half empty bottle of detergent she had swiped off the counter last laundry day. She went to her dorm room and borrowed one of Samantha’s metal forks to write on the underside of her desk. “STUPID” was still carved there, but whether it referenced the girl, the situation, or herself, Denise wasn’t sure.

But it was peaceful in the bathroom. It was early Saturday morning, so everyone was either hung over or still out living their lives. Wonder what that’s like? she sang in her brain. She rubbed a white mound of Noxzema into her face, rubbing, rubbing, rubbing like it would erase everything wrong with her life.

There were a few girls she used to hang with in high school who went to school with her. She had fully intended on leading them around freshman year like usual, but they acted as if that wasn’t an option. One of them, Julia, was annoyingly pretty and became a Chi-O. Now every time Denise saw her, she pinched herself hard in a hidden place so she wouldn’t scream “I made you!” in Julia’s face. The audacity that girl had to take a leap without Denise’s consent.

And look at her now. And look at you, the voice in her head lulled. The burning need to gasp and cry came on hard, and Denise didn’t fight it. Let someone come in. Let them see what rock bottom looks like. She rinsed the white residue off her face to find that she looked the same, if not worse. Beautiful, she thought and slammed the Noxzema bottle several times on the counter.

It felt like she couldn’t breathe. It felt like drowning and knowing she was drowning, but no one was around or cared enough to help. Jamal was gay. Her best friend was gay, but she wasn’t even his best friend anymore. The love of her life was gay, and yet another girl was in a relationship with him. They even had a baby.

The crying stopped, and the laughing started. You can’t get anyone to love you, can you?

The heavy bathroom door squealed opened. Denise laughed, “No I guess, I just can’t,” to a dumbstruck Stacey.