Reputations

I could tell you all about the boys. Adam Davidson practices modern dance routines in ladies’ leggings when visiting his father on the weekends. Mark McCready lets out a catlike yelp when you pinch the skin above his left hip. Ari Feldman hides that he has a Catholic mother, and Mike Harvey pretends to spend his summers pastry-making in Europe when, really, he’s grandpa-sitting in Milwaukee. Giancarlo Russo is a biter, and Will Ryan is a crier, and Marc with a “C” Sandusky likes it on his Bengals towel beneath his old swing set when his parents are home but never looking.

I could tell you all about the boys and you would nod and say, Of course! but not too loudly. You don’t want anyone knowing that you bummed a cigarette from me behind the strip mall on JFK and stayed for another, then bought me a new pack because I don’t get an allowance and nothing’s cheap, and then had one more for the hell of it. All the girls call me one thing, and all the boys call me something else, and though these aren’t words you’d like written on your wall, Facebook or bathroom or metaphorical or whatever, it’s given me a sort of shield, a cellophane suit stitched together with screenshots of DMs saying I am this thing, this one thing, and only this thing, and you’ll believe me because if you don’t, I’ll do to you what I did that day to Riley Klein.

Everyone in this town thinks they know about that night. Even Mark McCready stopped me at the vending machines today. Mark McCready won’t tell anyone—he has his baseball career to think about. How would this be different if I had a sports career everyone cared about? I could chop my hair and scrub my face, wrap my body in my dad’s turtlenecks, sit at home with a tower of French novels, and still, I would wear everyone’s words like a name tag.

I could tell you about the ceiling, sprinkled with those glow-in-the-dark stars middle-class children covet. But these plastic stars had lost their glow, encased in chunky layers of eggshell-white spackle. I tried to pick out the constellations. Not Orion’s Belt, that would be too easy. The Little Dipper, too cliché. It was a faraway constellation that wasn’t put there by a little kid with a library card. I could tell you I asked Riley Klein but he didn’t know, having moved into this room just two years before, the spackle already there. I could tell you that I asked him again and he said, Okay, maybe I do know. He stuck them there the night his mom didn’t sleep with his dad, and his dad didn’t sleep in the house, and he needed to go and this was the farthest away he could get without a license. He covered them up himself when his mom threw the wine—red, of course, pinot, merlot, furlough? whatever—against the wall. I could tell you that he cried, real ugly tears the size of gumballs, but I won’t tell you that because I care about Riley Klein even though they say I hate him I hate him I hate him. He ruined me, they tell me. He did.

Riley Klein, I know he’s the kind who’s easy to like. He parades through the halls with his navy blue JanSport and a homecoming queen slung over his shoulders. He’s a student that teachers want in their classrooms even if he can’t tell you who killed Hamlet or who wrote the Marshall Plan or how much Jefferson purchased Louisiana for. Riley Klein may not even know the capital of Louisiana. He would declare New Orleans with such misplaced confidence that teachers would cheer, Good answer, Riley. Riley Klein, the straight-A, straight-teeth, straight-everything Riley Klein was always right—until the day the officers came and the teachers stopped pretending Baton Rouge wasn’t the capital of Louisiana.

I could tell you I hid inside the locker-room bathroom that day for three periods before Ms. Makos found me. She let me stay there without a word. I painted my toe nails the Capri Sea Blue I lifted from the lost and found. Ms. Makos was the one who first saw the purple splotches on my hips and thighs. She didn’t say anything then, either, only watched as Riley Klein snaked his arm around my shoulders during volleyball practice. The other girls talked and texted because that’s the type of guy Riley Klein is, and the type of girl I am. But Ms. Makos never trusted Riley Klein. She graduated twenty-five years ago and she still doesn’t trust boys like Riley Klein.

They trusted me, you see, Ms. Makos and the police chief and even my twitchy guidance counselor who switched out my university brochures with an application for the junior college. Riley Klein did something to me even if I can’t remember what he did or how he did it. Why wouldn’t he, why not, why else, it explains everything. We have a problem here, they would say, we can’t deny this charade. How could we have let this happen in our most elegant community, voted No. 17 in the nation for safety by that Very Prestigious Magazine? That’s how the statement is addressed, emailed to every news station in the county. Before long, the single-mother blogger careless with her adverbs would pick up the story and type type type in the Target Starbucks that there’s

a sickness in this Rust Belt town. They are lacrosse players on the East Coast, and water polo players on the West. Here, in the “real” America of BBQ and shoulder pads, they are football players, blue-eyed and freckled. They are raised in this sort of blinded entitlement; the boys will be boys who like that girls will be girls who the boys can take because girls will always be those girls when boys will be boys who will be boys who—

The single-mother blogger asked me to contribute anonymously. Did privacy matter in our Rust Belt town with a very public sickness? She would type type type about me, type type type from me. I would refuse to confirm anything after a while. No more JPEGs of my DMs, no screenshots of my text messages. She got a book deal, did you hear? She’s been blogging about her day trips to New York, first-class seats and Four Seasons and fruit-flavored cocktails on rooftop decks. I threw my phone into the creek behind the football field and didn’t confirm anything.

You know, I only started smoking after Madame introduced us to Godard in French Club. Bébé, you look like Anna Karina, Madame said, right down to your belle yeux. Karina is Madame’s favorite actress and now she’s mine, too. I had my mom cut my bangs straight across my forehead, real short and thick, and take me to TJ Maxx for some polka dot dresses. Adam Davidson said I looked like a vintage movie star, puffing Marlboros on the hood of his black Camaro. Adam Davidson didn’t know Karina, but he liked my bangs.

Let’s pretend we didn’t kiss in kindergarten. Let’s pretend I was Anna, a transfer student from California. Let’s pretend we didn’t meet me until last week, when I sat down across from you in the cafeteria without bothering to ask if the seat was taken. Would I look like this kind of girl to you, or would I be the kind you take to Ruby Tuesday with your mom’s credit card?

I could tell you all about my character. That I was from a bad family with no college graduates, just some cousins with some associate’s degrees and a dad with a certified foreclosure letter granted with distinction from Bank of America. He did so well, they sent him two. My mother, she does nails for Mrs. Butler, who went home and told her daughter Kimberly that I’d skipped a period, and Kimberly went to dance class and told her team I was pregnant, and her team went to school and told the cheerleading squad I went to Planned Parenthood, where I apparently stayed overnight even though I really went to the emergency room with a blown-out cyst and left with a stockpile of Oxy and Maxi Pads in my backpack. We’re the family who only goes to church on Christmas and Easter and cuts in line at Communion and leaves before the priest shuffles down the aisle. The family who dropped me off at my Confirmation ten minutes late and waited with the engine rumbling as I declared my Catholic name to the bishop: Teresa of Ávila. I still call myself that sometimes, but never in Spanish. Madame wouldn’t call me Teresa because it wasn’t French. Just Thérèse, with an H thrown in like Thérèse La Petite Fleur, Madame’s favorite saint. Thérèse, où es-tu, bébé? C’est Madame, bébé. Ici, I said (or j’ai dit, you know, in French), je suis là, Madame, dans la toilette. Madame’s favorite saint may be the French Teresa, but they sent Madame to the girls’ locker room that day because her favorite student is me, c’est moi, a straight-B student except for all A’s en Francais. Alors, Madame sat cross-legged on the tile floor, slick with chlorine and Dana Leibowitz’s tanning lotion, and we conjugated verbs, imparfait and passé composé, as the men ushered Riley Klein away et lui a demandé de cette nuit—

That’s right, I forgot you don’t take French. Anyway, Madame was telling me about being sixteen in Belgium and kissing boys named Manu beside the canals slicing through Bruges, when more officers came and drove me to where Riley Klein was, but not to the same room. They used a paintbrush on my face before photographing it up and down and right to left and upper right to lower left and straight on, one more time, and I felt like an artifact at the natural history museum, unearthed from the creek behind the football field, discolored and unidentifiable, needing a spot in an exhibit that was not meant for me. They numbered my purple skin like dinosaur bones, connecting the skeleton of that night. But they were short a metatarsal or two, so they sent me, the half-winged pterodactyl, to the emergency room. To the very same cubicle where my cyst swelled and swelled and I begged both Teresa and Thérèse that if I could keep my ovaries, I would be good from now on. This time, nothing burst—not exactly. They thought the missing bones were lodged in my inner lining, as dinosaur bones are quite good at concealing themselves, often for a millennium at a time. The nurses poked—like, poke poke jab jab jab poke—with miniature paintbrushes, turning my sopping insides into laundry on a clothesline, all backwards and taut until the middles sagged like a turkey’s neck. I’m not sure what kind of paintbrush scrapes instead of coats, but these paintbrushes, perhaps falsely advertised, did double duty as ice picks, finally plucking one tiny, tiny bone. They placed the specimen on a glass slide. I was still a half-winged pterodactyl with no name, only a number. 1-9-7-7-4. Nineteen seven seven four. Nineteen thousand, seven hundred and seventy-four. That’s how many half-winged pterodactyls there are.

Being exposed is a lonely existence. You know the deposition, the filings, the court room sketches. It’s all public record now. For your consideration: the half-winged pterodactyl, a one-time predator now tethered and tamed. It’s what happens when you’re pulled from the ground. They say we half-winged pterodactyls are predatory by nature. But you don’t know what Riley Klein said. I’m not the only predator in our most, most elegant community. I could tell you Riley Klein only had me over because of what the girls had called me. He believed I went to Planned Parenthood, that I wouldn’t mind going again if I needed to—he explained it to me, everything I would do for him in the worst-case scenario of his life. Riley Klein is that guy, the guy who asks many questions without ever using a question mark. And if he were to use a question mark, and I were to say no? Well, how can you do anything like that to Riley Klein? I can’t tell you what I said, not without my lawyer present. I’m not not saying I said, No, but my lawyer told me to beware double negatives.

I could tell you that we never stop collecting girls. There’s the blonde girl, put her on that shelf. The goth girl, put her over there, next to the smart girl and below the nice girl and to the left of the ditzy-but-not-dumb girl and across from the computer programmer girl who will never be the pretty girl because the pretty girl is over there, above the ordinary girl who really isn’t ordinary but she looks it, and that’s what we know her to be, so why would we think of her as the wise-ass girl when we already have one, right there—look!—wise-ass but not smart or pretty or blonde. There is only one girl for one thing, and she’ll be passed around these guys who are many different things, all the time, even when, really, some are just one thing, more so than these one-thing girls, who might be two- or three- or four-thing girls but too late, they’re marked and gone, nothing left but their smiles (the blonde, the ditzy-but-not-dumb, the pretty) or their smirks (the smart, the computer programmer, the wise-ass) or their thin-lipped sadness (the goth, the ordinary, and me). No one has ever told me to smile more, because they know they will never let me be that girl.

You want to trust me, I can tell. You’re almost begging for it, to know why Riley Klein was sent away for as long as you’ll be in college. I suppose I should feel sorry for Riley Klein. Even Madame has her doubts, and Riley Klein was barely passing French III. I saw her crossing herself during French Club this afternoon, muttering under her breath about how this whole thing has gone too far. There’s the version in the news and the version you heard and the version typed typed typed by that single-mother blogger and the version where Riley Klein’s mother was speed dating at the synagogue, sipping gin and tonics in the company of bougie bankers searching for a divorcee. His mother wouldn’t be home until after midnight, when she would saunter in with soggy bangs and runs in her stocking. He was used to this, Riley Klein, he knew what to do. He texted me, hey, what’s up, I’ve been thinking—so smooth, you know?—I’ve been thinking, yeah, he’s always thinking. And I’ve been thinking, too, thinking about which dress I should wear, the one with the white polka dots or the red polka dots, and if eyeliner was too much, or mascara too little, and if girls like Kelsey and Ava and Kaylee had stretch marks on their thighs or spray-tanned them into oblivion, if such a thing was possible, and what girls like Sophia and Taylor and Emma would think if they knew Riley Klein had invited me to his sitting-pretty colonial mansion. I can’t remember how I got there, only that I did. Really, I can’t remember most things. Only that I didn’t wear white polka dots or red polka dots, but the fake-leather dress my mom bought with her tip money. I’d wanted to save it for a night when I felt—you know, it’s such a girl thing, thinking a dress could alter the way that you feel and he feels. Thinking that if I wore the white polka dots, he would have asked me to Ruby Tuesday. The red polka dots, to the movies.

I know I wore the white polka dots today. I guess I thought you would take me somewhere else. Giancarlo Russo still wants to bang me, you know; he’s not afraid.

Marc with a “C” Sandusky, he found me in the stairwell, the one outside the cafeteria. He was jogging down the stairs and nearly flew over my head. He noticed my polka dots, too. He said he was sorry, for what he asked of me. I told him I was sorry, too. Marc with a “C,” he knows they got his DMs. They know what he said to Riley Klein.

I could tell you like the single-mother blogger. I could tell you like the dance team and cheerleading squad. I could tell you like Madame and Ms. Makos, or I could tell you without care, like how I told Riley Klein I loved him even though I’ve never told anyone that. We sat on the opposite ends of his plaid comforter and passed around a tumbler full of scotch—your guys’ idea of a picnic, I guess. When the scotch ran out, Riley Klein asked if he could take off my dress, and I really didn’t want it to come off, imagining how upset my mom would be if she found out I discarded the fake-leather onto the floor, even if it wasn’t real at all. Riley Klein wanted to try something he saw in a video, something I’ve never done. He said he felt terrible for asking, and I know he really did—it just made him shiver with both discomfort and delight. Riley Klein can be both those things at once. Riley Klein is at least a two-thing guy. But when Riley Klein knelt on my inner thighs and swiped his palm across my cheek, snapping my numbered dinosaur bones, I had to choose if I felt discomforted or delighted. I thought for a very long time as he swiped my other cheek, then back to the first cheek, and then the other—ack-ack-ack—and it wasn’t as violent as I thought it would be. I had those eggshell-white stars for a support group, plastered in a folding-chair huddle that formed not Orion’s Belt or the Little Dipper but a constellation that wasn’t so far away, a constellation only for me, in a space he couldn’t be, so I asked the eggshell-white stars, when did you lose your glow? And they asked me, when did you lose yours? And that’s when I chose discomforted, I think, because the stars sledded away on their spackled constellation as the ceiling unhinged itself from Riley Klein’s house and there were no stars beyond it even though the sky was as black as ice on an unlit overpass. On the way home I lingered there above the highway until I was sure my teeth had fallen out and spiraled like hail, dink dink dinking the windshields. They could dink dink dink around the whole town if they wanted to. No one asks me, the half-winged pterodactyl, 1-9-7-7-4, to be the girl who needs to smile more.

Sometimes, when I perch on my parents’ roof at night, I wonder if half-winged pterodactyls are the only species without an origin. Don’t worry, I would never jump—I can’t without my wings. I just sit up there and listen to this whole town. No one can seem to come up with something that satisfies them. Not even me. I could sit up there all night, every night, listening to everybody closely. Listening to everybody love each other. The only love I knew was the God-given kind the pope preaches in his sermons. He loved everybody, that pope, every animal and every human, even those who were caught like Riley Klein and those who weren’t. I wrote the pope a letter asking him how I could possibly love every human. The Vatican sent back a blessing on Very Important Letterhead, which I read like it was my French homework. I think the pope would still love Riley Klein even if he read the news, because everybody everybody everybody loves Riley Klein. You know they still do. After all, you wouldn’t be here spitting up tobacco bits behind this strip mall on JFK, hoping, still hoping for that girl you heard about.

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Lauren Barbato's fiction and essays have appeared in The Georgia Review, The Hopkins Review, Blackbird, North American Review, Cosmopolitan, Ms. magazine, Cola Literary Review, Phoebe, and Necessary Fiction, among others. She was recently awarded the Emerging Writer Fellowship from Lighthouse Writers Workshop's Lit Fest and has previously received support from the Sewanee Writers' Conference, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, and the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley. A trained oral historian and a longtime advocate for reproductive justice, Lauren is currently completing a Ph.D. in religion and gender studies at Temple University and teaches in the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Delaware.