Page 48 of The Fall of Iris Henley
ME
but i wanted to warn you. In case someone mentions it. You might have to slow-dance with a total pariah
[Pause.]
JONAH
it’s cool
ME
Really?
JONAH
Yeah really. What a shitty thing to do to you after what you’ve been through. I’m sorry it’s happening.
I close my eyes and cradle the phone to my chest.
I don’t know what will happen between Jonah and me—whether it’ll stay a light flirtation or turn into something else entirely. But he’s not scared off by what I’ve been through, what I’m still going through. It’s such an unbelievable relief I could cry.
Instead, I get up and go to the bathroom, where my bag of makeup sits open on the counter. If I’m not going to worry about Rockytruther ruining my homecoming, I’d better start worrying about what I’m going to do with my hair and how to put together my look.
Another unbidden memory surfaces, this time of last year’s dance. Lynette hadn’t been kicked off the team yet—meaning that we were still friends. She’d come over to get ready with me. And miraculously, she’d been sober that night.
I can still see her, leaning close to the mirror with her lipstick in hand. We’d both decided to go “Hollywood glam” that night: red-carpet-style dresses, sideswept waves, bold lips.
“You look amazing,” I told her.
It wasn’t entirely honest. She was pale, and the fit of her dress made clear how much weight she’d lost over the last few months. Her shoulder blades jutted out like bony wings. Her hands trembled as she painted her lips scarlet. But even still, I meant what I said, because I was so happy to have her with me, so happy to see her next to me in the mirror, that in that moment she was one of the most beautiful people in the world to me.
“Yeah, well, Rocky’s going to lose it when he sees that dress,” she said, turning to look directly at me. “That’s bombshell material.”
“Mom wanted to hem it,” I giggled. Mom had tried to get me into a minidress on the grounds that I should show off my legs as long as I could get away with it, but Lynette and I had chosen our dresses together, full-length column gowns, hers in forest green and mine in midnight blue.
“No way,” Lynette said. “No offense to Mom, but everyone sees our legs all day, every day. That’s the point of cheerleaders. But we don’t have to be what someone else wants all the time.”
She straightened her shoulders in the mirror and tossed her hair over her shoulder.
“You get to choose who you want to be every single day,” she said. “You’re allowed to change, if you want.”
That night I don’t know if I actually heard what she was trying to tell me. Now the words come back to me like a blade to my heart. Now it’s obvious that she was talking to herself as much as to me. That, one way or another, she was trying to change.
Maybe she’d been trying to get clean. If so, I wish she’d toldme. I wish she’d told me what she was going through, told me what I could do to help her. Because I was too stupid—too self-occupied, too caught up in what it’d mean formeifshehad a problem—to figure it out myself. That might have been the last time I saw her sober. By the end of that weekend she was using again. Two weeks later I sent the note to Gloria.
Now, I hold my hair up at the back of my head, play with different ways it could frame my face. Maybe I hadn’t been able to understand what Lynette was saying that night, but now it rings loud and clear in my mind.You get to choose who you want to be. You get to change.
Does that mean I’m allowed to forgive myself, Lynette? Does that mean I’m allowed to survive?
Maybe it just means I’m allowed to try.
DAY EIGHT
CHAPTER 26
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 14, 8:12PM
HENLEY HOUSE
