People will never understand my friendship with Neela. Since the day we met among the metal chairs, she’s slipped from her school at last bell and hurried across town to mine. Every day she’ll be standing outside. Every day her head will be thrown back, like she’s walked off the scornful cover of a teen magazine. You can see on kids’ faces how much it bothers them. Why would a beautiful girl like that be linking arms with . . . ?
Neela gazes down at anyone who asks, as though she’s standing on the highest of mountains. I’ve never said how we met, but they know it must be something that drags her down to my level. (Both their moms are in jail, one of the kids in World English suggested. Be serious, someone else said, kicking at the metal desk leg.) It was during trig when I cleared my throat and announced Neela and I were taking Dad’s old car on an excellent spring-break adventure. Nobody said anything. But you could feel the news sliding down their throats, a spoonful of cold, greasy medicine.
“It was Neela’s idea,” I said into the air, while we waited for the bell.
None of them answered. They didn’t acknowledge my friendship with Neela. And yet there she was, day after day, her beauty its own justification.
Mom didn’t care about the trip—so long as I was out of the house all week. For years now, Mom’s been in a fury at how Dad never takes me on his weekends. Last year, she had the locks changed on a Friday when I was at school. I knocked, and knocked harder, and knocked and kicked and scratched and shouted, my mouth pressed to the door, until she finally came. She stood on the other side, telling me in a fake-patient voice that she would see me on Sunday at four, when I got back from your dad’s.
Mom knew all about Neela. But at school, they didn’t. All they got was her name, Neela Mannangi, and whatever they could grasp with their own bare eyes. The rest was exotic shit they invented: Is she a genie you rubbed out of a bottle? Is she your slave?
The first spring-break morning, I drove over to her building. I sat there in the 5:00 a.m. chill, rubbing my goose-pimpled arms and sorting our mix tapes. When she finally slipped out the front door and into my car, we blew out of town without a backward glance. We followed our route through the giant USA map: down, down, down to our state park just before dusk. (Neela had found it with a literal dart. There was still a small, braille-like hole in our map.)
But the fee was more than we’d thought. I smiled at the brown-suited man who sat in the entrance kiosk, bored, hand stretched out for our money. My smile throbbed with embarrassment, and he pulled back his hand. “If you’re not coming, then get out of line and let the other people through.”
Neela wasn’t ashamed. Before we drove away, she grabbed a park map and studied it, looking for weak spots, a way we could sneak in. “You sure?” I asked. Neela pointed to a spot, and it was easy to step over a broken part in the fence. I followed her footsteps to our campsite.
I had my pack, plus frying pan, bread, cheese, and some charcoal briquettes to build a fire. After dinner, we put up my dad’s old pup tent, which was stupidly frustrating, because Dad never showed me how to do anything. But Neela was calm. I took a deep breath, squeezed my hands, and blinked away my stupid tears. “Good night,” Neela said, when we were finally inside, finally wrapped in fresh-smelling blankets I’d stolen from Mom’s. Neela belly-wriggled over and pressed her lips to my cheek. I closed my eyes and held on to the impossibly soft, impossibly retreating happiness.
Next morning, we woke up early. We ate handfuls from a box of cereal I’d swiped from Mom’s. “Clever you,” Neela said, as she picked out a slightly damp marshmallow and set it on the tip of her tongue. “Not really,” I said, cringing. Neela laughed and set out a tableau of washed-out marshmallow characters.
Neither of us had remembered a swimsuit, which we realized as we stood in front of the lake. “Shit!” I said, glancing at her. We still picked our way down to the water’s edge, barefoot across the stones, where Neela stripped down to her panties. She took off her shirt and shrugged off her dark bra.
“Any beach in Europe,” Neela said, eyebrows arched, “this would not be remarkable.”
I closed my mouth and smiled.
If I had Neela’s body, okay, I might walk down the streets of New York City naked. But I was gross and lumpy and me. Slowly, I pulled off my awkward tie-dyed shirt and crouched beside her on the not-quite beach. I stared at the empty lake.
Even though it was only Kansas, it was still kind of beautiful.
“You’re going to get bra-strap tan lines.”
I laughed as I crossed my arms over my childish bra, which had a mortifying tiny bow at the center.
“I’m serious.” Neela stretched out on the rocky ground, sighing as if she were comfortable. But she pursed her lips a little. Disappointed.
I unhooked the bra and tried to detach myself from my body, the way you do at a doctor’s, lying flat on the table. It was no big thing. We’re alone. It wasn’t even a real beach. Just a pile of rocks in Kansas. No place like home, I thought, which made me roll my eyes at myself. I turned, because Neela might find it funny. Then I wasn’t sure. I didn’t want to bring her down by talking about home.
I lay back alongside her, T-shirt and bra under my head. Now I had nothing but cut-offs, and I tried not to think about my scrawny breasts as they slipped sideways into my armpits.
I was half-asleep when Neela sat bolt upright. It took me a dreamy second to recognize the sound of the motor before I jerked up, stiffly, grabbing my T-shirt and holding it over my chest. A speedboat was headed straight toward us, and Neela sat there without covering herself, a faint smile flittering across her beautiful mouth.
A man waved, and Neela waved back, her breasts swinging. I didn’t know where to put my hands. I was mortified to be covering my breasts and even more mortified to show them. My face was painfully stiff as the boat came closer, driven by a man. I was sure I looked like an idiot yanking on my shirt and struggling inside it for a hot, long, suffocating minute. When I finally got my head through, and my vision cleared, I saw a girl about our age in the back of the boat, unsmiling.
“Hey,” the man called out from behind the wheel of his speedboat. The two of them, man and girl, bobbed about twenty feet from us. Neela stood up and called back, “Hello,” her breasts still swaying loose.
“You guys want to ride?” the tall, red-faced man called. “We’ve got a tube.” He turned around, fumbled with something, and then held up a yellow tube in both arms. The girl just sat there in the back of the boat, staring at us with her small, hard eyes.
“Sure,” Neela said.
“Okay,” the man called back, and pointed off to his right. “We dock over there. Meet us?”
Neela nodded. When his boat pulled away, I fumbled to get my bra on under my T-shirt. Neela slipped on her T-shirt and picked up her cut-offs and bra, letting them swing in her hand as we walked back to the tent. She tossed them in, then went to the parking lot in her bare feet and panties. Before we crossed the warm asphalt, she turned to look back at me. “You okay with this?” Neela paused. “We won’t go if you don’t want to.”
I wriggled my shoulders. I heard a squeaking and scraping, and for a second I wanted to put both hands over my ears.
“I’m fine.”
“It’ll be fun,” Neela said, carefully walking over the asphalt, and I followed in my bare feet. “But if you don’t like it—”
“It’s great. I love tubing. I used to go with my dad.”
We went through the parking lot to the end of the dock. The red-faced guy was in his mid-thirties, holding onto the dock with the palm of his broad hand. The girl in the back of the boat, still expressionless, was about our age. Her gray-brown eyes barely blinked. Neela got into his boat first, and I followed, suddenly remembering the one time my dad had taken me and Neela out tubing. All of us introduced ourselves: The girl was “Angie from Wichita,” but she worked here now. “Mark,” the guy introduced himself. “Angie’s boyfriend.” I looked at Neela, but she was examining the boat.
Neela volunteered to be first on the tube. Angie and I sat in chairs at the back of the speedboat while the red-faced guy Mark drove. It was too loud for talking, but I had to know. “You’re not…in school?”
Angie was staring out at Neela, who was bouncing on the tube, grinning broadly. I thought Angie hadn’t heard the question, or thought it was too stupid, and I shrank into myself. Why are you bothering her, stupid. But then Angie shook her head. She was silent for a while, and Mark turned and shouted, “Faster?” toward Neela.
“My dad did this.” Angie lifted up a sleeve of her colorless T-shirt, pinching it to the shoulder. At the top of her arm were what looked like old- fashioned vaccine marks. Angie turned away from me and scrunched up the back of her T-shirt. Her back had been decorated with a wild mess of welts and furrows. I’d seen things like that, but now I was shamed and terrified and blank, a droning buzz in my ears, louder and louder until finally she lowered the T-shirt. “I left home.”
Angie didn’t say anything else for a while. We both stared at Neela, who was laughing and trying to stand up on the back of the tube. My Neela. I wanted to gather her in my arms. Mark was driving wildly now, heading straight for his own wake, turning sharply, trying to shake her off.
“Mark found me,” Angie finally said, in her emotionless voice. “We live together now.”
I glanced over at Angie, and then back at Neela, just as she lost her grip on the handles. She’d stood up, for half a second, her arms windmilling before she flew backwards and was sucked down into the water.
“She’s down,” Angie shouted at Mark, her voice flat.
Mark looked around, and then he made a wide arc, coming around to where Neela was treading water, breathless, laughing. “Oh my God, I lost, I lost my panties.”
Mark laughed, too, and his red face took on an embarrassed, predatory look. I wanted to stand between him and Neela. Angie’s expression didn’t change, though, so I relaxed a little. Mark put down a wobbly old ladder, and Neela climbed up into the boat, her bare pussy showing. Angie handed Neela a towel, indifferently, and Neela finally wrapped that towel around her waist so I could breathe.
“You want a go?” Mark was looking just past me, and I shook myself and nodded. I climbed down into the chilly spring water, wearing all my clothes. I was embarrassed to be embarrassed.
Once the boat was going, and the wind was streaming past, my body grew light and I was flying along. I put one leg in the water behind me, steering over the wake, back and forth. I laughed and waved at Neela, who waved back. I didn’t want it to end. Mark was trying to shake me off, but I was stronger than him, hanging on until suddenly the tube flipped and I was underwater, being dragged, dragged, and I had to let go.
It was only when I was underwater that I thought about lifejackets. I sucked down a lungful of water but untangled myself. I made it to the surface, choking. They came back around, and I heaved up that wobbly ladder into the boat, my body shaking, T-shirt and cutoffs sopping. I knew from Neela’s look she thought I should take them off and let them dry, but I didn’t. I sat there, blue-lipped and hunched and shivering.
We drove around in the speedboat for a while, under the cold spring sun. Mark was flushed as he talked to Neela, so I turned to Angie.
“You could make a thousand, two thousand a week easy,” Mark was shouting at Neela, and she laughed.
“So what do you do?” I asked Angie. “Your work.”
“At the club.” Angie looked past me. Her face stayed flat, not mocking or superior. Just flat. “It’s a strip club.”
“Oh.” I shivered and wanted to scratch my upper arms. I didn’t know what I thought about strip clubs. I knew what my mom would think, and my dad, but I didn’t know what I thought.
“You could be on our billboard!” Mark shouted at Neela. “Your picture!”
“You make a lot of money?” I felt dumb to ask.
“Sure.” Angie turned to look at Mark, her boyfriend. I couldn’t tell what she felt for him. It wasn’t boredom, or indifference, but I wasn’t sure what it was.
I had questions about what it was like to work at a strip club, but all of them sounded equally dumb. I heard something on the radio about it being empowering, once . . . I straightened my shoulders, and we listened to Mark ask Neela what she’d do with all the money she was going to be earning at the club. She laughed. The sound of Neela’s laugh made my hands tighten into fists.
“What you doing for dinner?” Mark asked. His voice was a little strained, as though he were holding something back, or forcing something out.
Neela looked around at me, eyebrows up. I didn’t know. She lowered her head a little, giving me her you make the decision look, but I didn’t know! Decisions made me feel lost inside myself, like it was a test and I was going to, inevitably, fail.
“I’ll probably need pants,” Neela said, and Mark and I laughed. I suddenly knew I didn’t want to go to Mark’s for dinner.
Mark turned the speedboat back toward the dock. When we pulled up, Mark said he wanted his towel back. Neela said she’d give it back in ten minutes. Mark said he wanted it now. I was about to punch the guy in the throat when he said he was kidding.
“Great,” Neela said, and we walked back over the asphalt, barefoot, to my dad’s old car, which was gloriously warm. We sat there a while before we went back to our tent for dry clothes. I felt much better as I put my fingers in my hair and shook it out.
Then we snuck back out through the fence, to the car, to where Mark and Angie were waiting beside his huge-wheeled truck. They were standing shoulder to shoulder, not touching. I felt afraid of them. Neela smiled.
“Dinner?” Mark asked, waving keys and nodding at the big-wheeled truck.
Neela looked at me again, and I didn’t know what to say. What did she want me to say? My throat was seized by a spreading, painful numbness. “Sure,” I finally said.
“Great.” Mark went to his truck and opened it up. Neela climbed up into the truck bed, looking at me a little funny. I climbed in after.
In Mark’s living room, a TV was already blaring. A fishing show. I hung back in the doorway, not wanting to go in after them. Neela was right behind me, and she accidentally stepped on the back of my shoe. As I stuffed my foot back in my ugly white moccasin, I felt sure we were entering a trap. If we touched the wrong thing, or maybe Mark was—
“You coming?” Mark asked. “I don’t bite. I don’t bite, do I Ange?” He made a growling, snapping face, like a cartoon dog’s.
Angie didn’t answer.
“You can’t know the things I’ve done for this girl. Kindness.”
I squeezed myself together and stepped in. The apartment smelled like old hamburgers and stale grease and marijuana smoke. Angie was scratching her back. Her T-shirt lifted up a little, and I could see marks on her belly. I tried to smile at her, to show her I wasn’t afraid.
“Sit down,” Mark said, nodding at the worn blue couch in front of the TV. I went and sat on the edge of it. Neela stood, smiling, looking around, and I wished I knew what she was thinking. I prayed a little, and I wanted to laugh at my cowardice.
I watched the fishing show while Mark and Angie disappeared into the kitchen. We could hear Mark grunting, but Neela wasn’t embarrassed. She looked around as curiously as if it was a museum. She disappeared down the hall at one point, and my stomach practically ate itself. A hundred years passed before Neela came sauntering back, smiling faintly at the pale-blue paint on the walls, at the pale-blue carpet, everything in hideous shades of dull, dull blue.
After another minute, Neela went back down the hall to the bathroom, and just that second there was a knock at the front door. My body jumped. Was someone going to answer? Or were Mark and Angie still. . . ? Should I answer? What if it was the police? Haha, police. My mom would lose her mind.
“Someone at the door?” Mark’s voice called, thickly.
I half-stood, unsure what to do. Why was Neela in the bathroom so long? Was she looking for an escape route? I tried to laugh, and Angie appeared and walked through the room, her shoulders slung low and purposeful. She grabbed the doorknob and yanked it open. She had absolutely no reaction to whoever she saw standing there, and I smelled him before I saw him.
“It’s Kevin,” Angie called out in her flat voice.
Mark appeared from the kitchen, his face hard and annoyed. He readjusted his shorts.
“I guess he heard there was food,” Mark said, loudly. I looked over at big balding Kevin, who smelled as though he’d taken a bath in ketchup.
Neela came back down the hallway.
“Whoa,” Kevin said, staring at her as though he wanted to put his pink mouth on her body. She didn’t smile at him, not even her cold, condescending smile. My stomach throbbed with fear. I had both hands on the couch, and my skin was alive with nerves.
“Is she joining up?” Kevin asked.
“There are two of them,” Mark said.
Kevin looked around, but he couldn’t see anyone. His eyes skimmed over me before they went back to grabbing and tearing at Neela. “Shit.”
“You can sit with them out here,” Mark said. “But don’t be a dick.”
Mark stared at the guy, Kevin, as if trying to communicate something with his glare. Then Mark went back to the kitchen, walking backwards, waving at Angie. I got up from the couch and inched toward the door. If they let me go look outside, get some air, then I would know if we were . . .
“Where you going?” Ketchup Kevin asked.
“Look around the neighborhood,” I said, because that was my story. “Get some air.”
“It’s almost dinner.”
“I’ll be just a minute.” It was the sort of thing my mom said, impatiently. I’ll be just a minute.
“Is there any music?” Neela asked, and both of us turned to her. Ketchup Kevin’s expression changed entirely, and he looked as though he were struggling to make his face seem attractive. I almost sympathized.
“Yeah, sure,” Ketchup Kevin said. “What do you like?”
Neela shrugged in her loose, charming way. “I’m open. I’d love to hear something new.”
“Okay.” Kevin muscled past me to the entertainment center. He pushed the glass door with his greasy fingers, causing a spring to release so the door swung out. While he was staring at the tapes and CDs, Neela raised her eyebrows at me.
I knew what she meant.
But there was a black hole inside me, drowning out everything with its scraping buzz. Mark was making orgasm noises in the kitchen, and Ketchup Kevin stood next to Neela, struggling to wash the rape out of his expression. I couldn’t leave her there! I shook my head at her, and Mark came out of the kitchen, hitching up his shorts with a dulled smile, telling us dinner was ready.
I slugged into the kitchen somehow. I stared at the counter and my hands moved on their own, picking up a mug with a worn image of a grinning rich man and a young blonde girl perched on his lap. “Hey!” Mark’s voice was suddenly sharp. “Don’t touch that mug.”
I held onto it for a moment, unsure how to get rid of this thing that felt glued to me, like in some horrible fairy tale. Finally, I got it down onto the kitchen counter.
“Oh, the special mug,” Ketchup Kevin said. “Yeah, don’t touch the special fucking mug. It’s his hero. Mr. Beauty Pageant.”
“Fuck you,” Mark said, his voice venomous.
Ketchup Kevin turned to us. “Mark wants to be him. Get his own brand name everywhere.”
“Is there something wrong with success?”
“Is there something wrong with success,” Ketchup Kevin mimicked, and Mark lunged toward him, his face mottled with rage and embarrassment. Angie stood back, suddenly taking on a real expression. Disgust.
Ketchup Kevin fell backwards against the table, knocking plates onto the floor, and I felt Neela’s hand on my arm. We were out the door, running down the stairs. I kept tripping in my too-big moccasins, which weren’t made for running, and I took them off and ran barefoot down the quiet road. I was crying, stupidly, stupidly, and a man’s voice shouted behind us, and Neela tightened her grip. I ran alongside her, flinging my legs, again, again.
We turned, and there was a gas station at the end of the street. We threw ourselves forward, and when we got there Neela breathed hard as she explained our case to two middle-aged women, white and affluent, but they edged away. Then a brown woman in a giant Buick, who’d just pulled up, said, “Get in, girls. Get in.” We got in the back of her big car and sat there, not looking at each other. Ketchup Kevin and Mark stopped a few feet beyond the gas station parking lot, their faces heaving with exertion and rage. But they didn’t see us. They didn’t look in the Buick.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. Neela took my sweaty, twitching hand and squeezed it between both of hers.
The woman in the Buick took us back to the parking lot. I’d never been so relieved to see my dad’s shitty old car! After a second, I froze, realizing Mark knew where we’d parked. But he wasn’t there yet. So we hurriedly tore down the tent and threw everything into the trunk except the cereal, which we kept up in front. I started the car and drove to the interstate, shaking. Neela put in a tape, and we listened to Nina Simone as we drove through the falling curtains of darkness.
We got back into town when the sun was rising, and its glare stung my eyes. I knew Mom would be furious to see me, but it would be much worse for Neela. I offered to let her stay over at my place, hidden, but she smiled and said she’d be fine. She gave me an enormous hug, and I wanted it to last for years, but she took her backpack and slipped out of the car. I cried as I drove back home. I parked a couple blocks away and snuck into the house, getting quietly in my bed, praying Mom and her boyfriend hadn’t heard me.
My body gave an electric jerk. I’d heard a noise—was someone there? I stopped breathing. I held myself still in the bed. But there was no one. Just a nightmare, probably.
I looked at the time and crept out of bed. It was already afternoon and nobody was home, thank God. I took a long shower, but I kept my underwear on. Just in case. I called Neela’s, but her uncle answered so I hung up.
I put on makeup, did my hair, and dressed in my only cute outfit. I drove by Neela’s, but it’d just cause more problems if they saw me. I kept going. I drove and drove until I passed the Knights Inn motel bar. Neela and I had gone there a few times, because they didn’t card, or at least they didn’t card anyone as beautiful as Neela.
I turned and stopped in the motel parking lot. It had rained that morning, while I was asleep, and the rain brought a smell of freshness to the world, except in the parking lot where it still reeked of fry grease and industrial cleaner. Where would I sleep tonight? I could wait until Mom was in, lights out, and sneak into my room. I could drive out of town and find a wooded area—I still had Dad’s tent.
A car pulled into the spot beside me. The kids in the back opened their mouths and stared at me, as if I were some crazy zoo animal. The two adults were yanking out suitcases and arguing in low, angry voices, and the bug-eyed kids kept staring. Slowly, I got out and walked inside. I stood in a corner of the warm lobby until the family had gotten their keys. Then the woman behind the counter asked, “Can I help you?”
The way she asked, it sounded as though she was going to call the police. I shook my head and scurried into the bar.
I stood there, looking around, about to cry. I wanted to be far away, with Neela, in a different kind of universe.
People were staring at me, so I smiled and sat down at the bar. A short middle-aged man who smelled of spearmint and cigarettes asked what I was having. I didn’t know. He was older than Mark, and I was sure he had kids. I felt sick to my stomach. “A daiquiri,” I said. If they carded me, I’d just pretend I meant a non-alcoholic.
The man leaned forward, patting the bar and then rubbing it in circles, as though it were an animal. He was drunker than I’d thought. When the bartender came by, the man had to steady himself before he ordered me a daiquiri and himself a vodka. “Strawberry?” the bartender asked. The man agreed. I felt a prick of something, but I knew it wasn’t relief.
The man kept watching the bartender until the drinks came.
When the drink touched my lips, I could taste the alcohol in it.
“Good?” the man asked, and I nodded. As we drank, he told me about his mother’s illness. He was staying in this shitty motel in this shitty cold suburb because his mother refused to fucking take care of herself. She wouldn’t move into assisted living. I nodded as if I understood. When I’d finished the whole daiquiri, I was floating. The man asked if I wanted another. I shook my head, and he asked if I wanted to take a walk. I didn’t know how to say no. I slid down from the high wooden chair. I was so scared I wanted to laugh. Maybe this would be good for me. I needed to grow up. Maybe Neela would be proud.
“Shall we go to my room?” The man started walking, and he was so drunk he could barely keep his body balanced over his feet. I wanted to grow up, I did, but my legs turned and walked me away. He didn’t notice. I went out the motel’s front door, to my dad’s old car.
I knew they wouldn’t let me sleep in the motel parking lot. They would definitely call the police, who would definitely call my mom, and it would all start again. But—I felt a thrill of inspiration—they wouldn’t bother an empty car, would they?
I got one of Mom’s blankets out of the trunk. When no one was looking, I curled up on the floor of the back seat and arranged the soft blanket over me, so I was completely hidden. I wasn’t so big! After a second, I realized I’d forgotten to lock the doors. I snuck my hand up, smiling at the idea of a passerby being spooked by my ghost-arm rising up from nowhere. I wanted to laugh as I pushed each of the locks down. Then I curled up on the floor. It wasn’t comfortable, but it was safe.
I closed my eyes and prayed Neela had found a way to be safe, too.
M Lynx Qualey is an author, editor, critic, translator, and founder of the lit mag ArabLit (www.arablit.org) and the ArabLit Quarterly.