Page 7 of The Initial Insult

“Awww . . .” Brynn’s face falls. I can’t imagine her disappointment at not being able to show her taco outfit to the whole town.

“We’ve still got the party,” I remind her. “And now we’ve got it sooner.”

I cut off Anho as she goes on about a possible mandatory curfew if the outbreak worsens, but Brynn leaves her phone on long enough for us to hear her cough, a wet throaty sound that definitely brought something up with it.

“Ew,” Brynn says, upper lip raised in distaste. She’s holding her phone farther away from herself now, like she’s afraid she can catch something through the speaker.

But I’m still stuck on the last thing Anho had mentioned—the possibility of a curfew. Cops in Amontillado tend to leave us alone. They know we’re drinking, but they don’t make a big deal out of it as long as we stay in the same place long enough to sober up. If the town council institutes a curfew, though, turning a blind eye won’t be something we can count on anymore.

A blind eye. I shudder, thinking of Tress’s grandpa and his dead white eye.

“Gross,” I say, without thinking.

“Yeah,” Brynn agrees, still holding her phone at arm’s length. “I think Anho choked up a lung.”

But I’m not thinking about Anho, or Brynn, or even Tress’s grandpa anymore. I’m thinking about me and what I need in order to feel good. Other people around me, their noise filling up my headspace. Eyes on me, letting me know I’m worth looking at. A drink in my hand and a pill in my fist, making everything fade out, edges fuzzy, nothing sharp anywhere. Not my memories. Not my conscience.

Everything needs to be soft and dull, the world a pillow for me to fall into.

And in order for it to happen, I need to make a phone call.

It used to be we would text, when we were younger. Lots of emojis. Hearts and smiley faces. Poop, of course. She still giggled back then, I remember the sound. Now her voice has a permanent hard edge on it, like the one time she cornered me at school after I texted at three in the morning, telling me calls only.

“Texts are evidence,” she said. “And I don’t trust you to be smart enough to send ones that aren’t incriminating. Phone calls can’t prove shit. We could be talking about anything.”

She gave me a once-over then, eyes sweeping the latest outfit that had come in the mail. There’s only one good place to shop around here, and if you go there you’re guaranteed to end up wearing the same thing as three other girls. So Mom got me a Stitch Fix account a couple of years ago. The third time I asked her to do the checkout process for me she just saved her credit card info on the site and told me to be responsible.

I’m not. I just buy everything. Sometimes I don’t even open the boxes. Mom has never said anything. We don’t check credit card statements anymore.

That day in the hall Tress was wearing a shirt of mine that I’d taken to Goodwill, something I’d never even worn. I could see the two little holes at the neckline where she’d torn the tags out, and it closed my throat a little. If we were still friends, I would’ve just given her that shirt, maybe loaned it to her after she went through my overflowing closet. She wouldn’t have found it picking through outdated shit at Goodwill, a folded twenty in her back pocket, one that probably came from me filling my need.

I glance at Brynn, but she’s adjusting her lettuce in the mirror. I quietly pull open my desk drawer, lift my birth control pills to grab a few twenties off the stack of bills underneath. I’ve got a couple hundred just sitting there. Mom always hands me some cash as I’m going out the door, if I need money for pizza or gas, or if I’m going out with Hugh. Especially if I’m going out with Hugh. The Browards don’t have land with a gas pocket on it.

Sometimes Mom hands me money as I’m leaving, and then Dad stops me in the garage and hands me more. I don’t tell either of them about the other, which is how I’ve got a nice stash sitting here, waiting for me to pass it on to someone else.

Someone who will use my money to buy my clothes at the poor store, not knowing. She’d be pissed, I think as I slide the cash into my bra, since sexy clowns don’t get pockets.

She’d be so pissed.

Calls only, she’d said that day in the hall. We could be talking about anything. Except Tress Montor and I don’t talk about just anything. Only illegal stuff. In short, transactional sentences. But it’s something, I guess. Something I found to keep her from floating away from me entirely. Something that makes the world a soft place for me and keeps cash flowing into hers.

I can’t give Tress anything. She won’t accept my clothes, my texts, or my friendship. But I can give her money, folded into a tight square, our skin barely touching as we hand off. The one time I slipped an extra bill in my payment I found it the next morning under my windshield wiper. I know she didn’t drive over, because that truck of Cecil’s doesn’t have a muffler and the whole neighborhood would’ve called the cops on her in the middle of the night for breaking the noise ordinance. She probably walked down out of the hills in the black of night to return twenty dollars, rejecting my charity and keeping her conscience clean.

Twenty bucks for a clean conscience. Sounds nice.

I’ve handed a lot more than that to Tress over the past couple of years. It doesn’t help. But I keep trying. I slip past Brynn into my bathroom, my sexy clown reflection staring me down as I dial. She picks up, blunt and monosyllabic.

“Yeah?”

“You coming to the Allan house?” I ask, realizing my mistake when there’s no immediate response. A friend would ask her that, someone who was going to meet up with her at the party. I’m not a friend; I’m a customer.

“I need a couple forties,” I say quickly. “Maybe some weed?”

Tress’s weed is shit, but I’ll pass it off to Hugh.

There’s a rustling on the other end, like Tress is checking her supply. Then a short answer, quick and concise. “’Kay.”

“See you there,” I say.