Little Mermaid Ch. 03

After the ice cream, his roaring little car brought them to the most magical place she'd ever been to, looking out over the sparkling lake of lights that was their hometown, under a big silver moon and a roof of naked branches. Of course, it was just Necking Hill, where every boy took every girl, probably since the town's foundation. But she'd never thought anyone would ever take her there, had she? She knew the place in plain daylight, the mess of discarded cans and crisps packages; used condoms too. But right now, it was breathtaking, as in taking her breath away and making her heart race. It was too chilly for the car's roof to be open, but it wasn't the cold that made her shiver, it was the expectation, or rather: the utter uncertainty of what to expect.

"Are you cold?" he asked, grabbing a plaid from the back of the car. She said no but let him wrap her in the rather dusty blanket, a bit musty too. She looked up at him, not able to discern much of his face in the dark. Then his mouth was on hers. She let herself be smothered by the moist softness of his lips and tongue. They got more familiar with each kiss. His lips seemed to become a physical part of her. His hand slid inside the blanket, touching two buckles of her tight bustier until it found the opening of her blouse. Rough fingertips fondled her tender skin, and she wriggled away from them, letting go of his lips.

"I," she said, swallowing while trying to focus her eyes, "Let's not do baseball." He studied her face, at once frowning and widening his eyes. Then he laughed, the way you do when you don't understand and yet are tickled by the sheer absurdity of a situation.

"Baseball?" he said. Feeling awkward, she rose from the blanket. Putting her arms around his neck, she pulled him down and pressed her lips on his. Being close felt easier than seeing his face. When you kiss, she learned, there are no mocking glances, no weird questions, and, most of all, no overwhelming feelings of embarrassment. She could kiss all night, if it kept her safe from that. And he didn't seem to mind. His hands started roaming again, one on her thigh now. She stiffened and groaned; he chuckled; the hand disappeared.

"No baseball," he mumbled before they kissed again.

***

When he drove her home, she was weightless; the very flesh on her bones felt as if spun from a fluffy kind of sugar. Her head seemed to be filled with a lighter-than-air gas; it tried to lift her off the car seat and make her fly into the star-strewn night. She'd read about this. She'd seen it in chick flicks, the ones with dizzy high school girls, looking up at jocks, their wide-open eyes shining moistly behind fluttering lashes. She should have been groaning with embarrassment at that, like she used to. But she didn't, did she? Not at that; not at anything. All she felt was his presence, his warmth and his scent, and the tingling of her lips, both upper and nether lips. It all added up to a huge ball of sweet, glowing nothingness.

After coming home, she ignored her mother, who waited in the half-darkness of the kitchen. She bounded up the stairs and fell on her bed, her heart racing. Then she wrestled out of her clothes and took a shower. A long one.

***

Next day was a Saturday; it didn't start until noon for Ariel. She'd lain awake for hours that night, unable to lose the arousal that made her body glow. The shower hadn't helped much, nor had her busy fingers. They kept sending streams of little climaxes from her clawing toes to the tingling skin of her skull, but they never seemed to satisfy her. It must have been four in the morning when sheer exhaustion finally claimed her. Now she lay staring at the ceiling, wondering. Would he have fucked her if she'd let him? He'd tried, hadn't he, fondling her chest, touching her thighs? They'd joked about baseball, but he would have done it, all bases. She was sure of that. So, why hadn't she let him? She should have felt relieved, honored even, shouldn't she? A boy would have finally fucked her, a very popular one to boot. It would have meant tits didn't matter; she wouldn't be ugly anymore, would she? 'Boys will fuck anything with a hole in it.' Would Tim Bradlee? Maybe, but she hadn't let him, had she? She still was what everybody chuckled about: a virgin. Sighing, she rose, preparing herself mentally for the avalanche of questions her mother would ask, as her phone rang. The screen said 'Tim Bradlee'; seeing the name sent a flash of heat up her chest.

"Hello?" she said, her voice thick from sleep and lack of use.

"Good morning," he answered. She hated the response of her body to the sound of his voice.

"Morning," she mumbled.

"Did you sleep well?" he asked.

"No," she answered, correcting herself at once: "No problem. Slept like a rose."

"I didn't," he said. "Kept thinking of you, us." Damn, why did she have to lie? He was honest, at least, she thought. Or was he? "I have to see you," he went on. "What about now?"

"Can't," she said, feeling a jolt of excitement. "Have to study, remember? Don't you? Never knew you were Einstein." He chuckled.

"What about later?"

"See you Monday," she said -- after a pause filled with entirely different possible answers. She forced her thumb to disconnect. What was this? Ugly duckling playing hard to get?

***

Monday came with a sparkling sun and raging nerves, only partly caused by the impending tests. Tim had called her Saturday evening, Sunday morning and afternoon too. He'd conjured up very transparent excuses for them to meet, like a proposal to study together. Between his calls, her mother's curiosity and her own flaring excitement, she'd tried to concentrate on her studies.

Driving to school in her little Japanese car, she felt calmer. Everything was out of her hands, wasn't it? The rows of tables would be there in the huge gym hall, white virgin test forms on top of them. Thank God there wasn't time enough for Von and Barb to get nosey or, rather, sarcastic -- about her date. And Tim? Well, he would be there, wouldn't he? She knew very well that he'd been the one she looked for, the moment she got out of her car. Walking to the front entrance in her short faux-leather skirt and shining blouse under the studded black jacket she'd bought this very Saturday afternoon her eyes roamed the clusters of nervously chatting students. She didn't see him in the hallways, and not at one of the many tables in the gym. When the doors closed, she saw that one table remained empty.

"Didn't you hear?" a voice whispered from her left. She turned and saw it was Liz. "He was in an accident, last night," the girl went on. "A car accident." A giant rock plunged into her stomach.

"But..." was all she could say. Accident?

"Silence, please!" a male voice insisted. Ariel rose, making her chair screech.

"But..." she repeated, looking left and right.

"Too late now, Miss Moore," the voice said. "Tests have started. Please sit down." It was the principal, a short, scrawny man, adding inches to his modest stature by standing on his toes. Ariel sat down again, seeing nothing, hearing nothing. Her head was in turmoil, producing images of blooded flesh and twisted steel. The little red car, Tim Bradlee... yesterday-night? She'd waited all yesterday-night, trying not to fall asleep, but he hadn't called. He would have if he weren't... if he... wouldn't he? She turned to Liz.

"Liz?" she hissed. The girl looked up from her work, frowning, shaking her head 'no'. "Is he alive?" Ariel's hissing voice resounded in the quiet hall.

"Miss Moore, one last warning!" Liz' head moved up and down before she returned to the test. Ariel rose again. She grabbed her bag and walked to the exit, her heels echoing loudly on the concrete floor. A man sitting next to the exit tried to intercept her, but she ducked and opened the door, walking out. The moment she reached the hall, her body started shaking. She went on until she was outside. The town only had one big hospital and a few clinics. She got into her car and drove to St. Anne's, a few blocks away.

"Tim Bradlee," she said to the receptionist, a black, middle-aged woman in a white outfit. "He was in an accident last night. Is he here? Can I see him?" The woman looked over the rim of her glasses, taking in the girl in front of her.

"And who are you?" she asked. Who was she, Ariel wondered. A simple question, but was it?

"I'm, ehm," she started. "I'm his... girlfriend." She almost tasted the question mark.

"Tim... Bradlee... Bradlee," the woman said, inspecting a list. "No visitors; only family once a day."

"But I must see him," Ariel urged. "See how he is. How is he?" The woman sat up straight, taking off the glasses. Her eyes looked the girl over once again: the spiked hair, the dark eyes in the white face, the outfit, the panic.

"Only close family," she repeated, turning back to her papers. Ariel didn't know how to go on, but she didn't leave.

"How is he?" she finally repeated, almost whispering. "Is it bad?" She felt tears burning; soon they'd fall.

"Can't tell," the receptionist said, without looking up.

"But you must," Ariel insisted. "You must let me see him, because... because I love him." Standing here, looking like she did, using words like that... it was all getting too much. Tears ran down her face, plowing dark traces through the white powder. The woman looked up and then down on the list again.

"Doesn't say 'loved ones,'" she said. Then she smiled. "Must be an omission. Room C21, girl, second floor."

The halls and the hallways, the stairs and the corridors resounded with the machine gun-like impact of her heels, until she stood in front of a door next to the number she'd been given, her breath racing, her blood pounding. The room was white and silent, but for a string of quiet, repetitious beeps. There was a bed, Tim was in it, looking awful, his pale face bandaged, tubes running from his arms and mouth.

"He'll be all right," a voice said. It belonged to Allison McKeefe, who rose from a chair behind the bed, her arm in a sling, her face marked with scratches and bruises. "You're Ariel, aren't you?" she asked. "Ariel Moore?" Ariel's eyes rested on the blonde's chest, big round globes pressing against her sweater, only partly covered by the sling. Then her gaze wandered up to the bruised but smiling face, and from there to the ghostly face in the bed. 'No visitors, only close family,' the receptionist had said. Another omission, no doubt. She turned on her heels and fled the room.

***

Ariel didn't return to school. She didn't go home either; she drove, just keeping her heeled foot down -- chasing an ever-yielding horizon. Until she finally woke from the speeding haze, not knowing where she was. She parked the car on the road's shoulder, looking around at gray woods and hills and skies and fences.

Breaking down crying, she hated herself for it, but the tears were long overdue. They felt like a flood, flushing her body clean; or was it her mind? She didn't care; she was alone in a glass bubble of utter loneliness. And then she stopped crying, feeling empty, and it felt good.

Of course, she felt good; how else should she feel, being back to where she belonged, where she'd always been: her soothing, unloved ugliness? She'd been right all the time, hadn't she? People had toyed with her, having their cruel fun. The woman with the pictures and her schmaltzy stories, her pathetic mother; and most of all this cheating, askew-smiling Prince Charming...

She fought down a fresh bout of balled-up tears. No more crying. Things were as they were supposed to be. Ariel cleaned her face with spit and a crumpled tissue. Then she made a U-turn, supposing it would be best to trace her tracks and find a sign that pointed out home.

Home. There might be a hundred signs saying so, but she knew home was gone. Had it ever existed? Even if so, what was the point? She didn't need it anymore, and she wouldn't miss it. What was there anyway? Nothing to want or love, or even need, surely. Just pain and humiliation.

As Ariel drove back, a future shaped itself in her mind. It was a future built with blocks of unfeeling concrete and ice, cold and rational, but very real. She would finish the exams and graduate; and then she'd leave for a school as far away as possible, California, maybe, or Oregon, yes, Oregon. Over there, she'd be as ugly and lonely as here, but people would at least be honest about it. There would be no faces and eyes from the past, no treacherous charades of love. No boys, no Tim.

***

Coming home, Ariel ignored her mother. She went up to her room, took a shower and lost herself in textbooks after clearing her table of the little forest of pots and brushes and pencils. She also took away the mirror. She'd dressed herself in sweats and a robe, her feet wearing the threadbare, pink bunny-slippers she'd had since her thirteenth birthday. Wondering what to wear to the tests tomorrow, she shrugged and returned to the books when her phone rang, showing Tim's name and his face with the crooked smile, his messy hair blown by the wind. She cleared the little screen.

***

Getting out of her car, Ariel walked up to the entrance of the school. Her head was filled with the numbers and the lines and the info she had been cramming into her brain all night, eager to replace the hurt and the dizzying memories of the day before. She walked looking down, concentrating on her old running shoes as they slid over stone and grass and concrete. As long as she shut the world out, she thought, there would be no mocking eyes, no grinning mouths, no hurting whispers. Because everyone would know for sure. Everyone.

"Ariel? Hey, you Ariel?"

The blond hair was in a thick braid, the sling was still there; so were the tits. What did she want? Ariel tried to ignore her, but the girl blocked her way.

"I have no idea why," Allison McKeefe said, her face close, her voice sarcastic. "But Tim wants to see you. I messaged you for him, but you blocked us. Then he kept nagging me to see you and tell you. You must go see him." Ariel kept her eyes averted, raising her hands to clear her way. She smelled the girl's perfume, sweet, of course, and way too much.

"Get out of my way," she said. "I have tests to do."

The eyes were overly made up, blue shadow, fat mascara. Pancake and powder to camouflage the scratches and bruises, no doubt. Immaculate eyebrows. Why did she notice that? Fuck off, bitch, let me pass.

Ariel didn't say that, she said nothing. There was nothing left to say, was there? A cloud of heat descended on her, making it impossible to hear or say anything anyway. She rowed with her hands, moving the girl aside, at last getting past her.

"Well," she heard behind her, "I did my duty telling you, didn't I? Have it your way, crazy bitch."

Inside the building Ariel took minutes to silence her heart and prepare for the tests. She found her seat in the rows and rows, ignoring the others.

***

The tests were easy. Ariel guessed she ended somewhere at the top of her class, although she never looked. To her mother's huge disappointment, she didn't attend graduation, leaving for Portland only days after receiving her diploma in the mail. They'd been lonely weeks, mostly spent in her room, mostly in bed. And most of all ignoring the incessant phone-calls of Tim fucking Bradlee. Or the nosy inquiries of Von and Barb and fucking Liz.

Sitting in her cramped seat on the plane, she stared down at the green countryside rolling below her, peeking through woolly clouds. Why didn't the pain numb with the growing distance? Numb. "Numb."

She must have said it out loud, startling the chunky woman next to her. She tried a smile.

"Never mind," she said.