Lessons From A Dead Girl Part 3

"Hey! What are you doing?"

"Looking," she says, all serious. She pushes her way farther into the back of the closet. Sure enough, behind a small pile of shoes he never wears, Leah hits the jackpot. A cardboard wine box, ripped on one side, is hidden behind a white plastic bag that has summer clothes written on it in Magic Marker.

Leah pulls open the flaps and snickers.

"I told you," she said, holding up a Playboy magazine. There's a blond woman with huge b.r.e.a.s.t.s and a toothy smile on the cover. "My mom says all men keep their Playboys in the closet. So predictable." She says the last bit in her know-it-all voice. I still can't believe it, but there it is. In her hands.

Leah shoves the magazine under her shirt. "Come on!" She pushes past me and makes her way back up to my bedroom.

I stay behind and push the plastic bag back against the cardboard box deep in the closet. The closet smells like my father, only it's a stale him, mixed with must and old wool. I quickly step back out into the room.

It feels different in here - the sweet blue flowers on the wallpaper, the silver frame with my parents' wedding picture, Christi's and my tiny plaster handprints hanging from pink ribbons - it all feels fake. I shut my father's closet door. How could something so nasty exist in this room?

"E-laine!" Leah calls in a singsong voice from upstairs.

It's wrong. I know it. But I go to her anyway. She's lying on her stomach on my bed. She looks up and smiles when she sees me, then pats the s.p.a.ce beside her.

I join her. She has the magazine opened to a picture of a woman with red hair sitting in a chair with her legs spread open. She's smiling.

Leah turns the pages while we both stare, speechless. My body tingles all over. I feel the same fear and excitement I felt in the doll closet. I hate it. But I keep looking.

Suddenly we hear the back door open downstairs and my mother's footsteps wandering through the house.

"Girls?" she calls out.

"Hide it!" I whisper loudly.

Leah laughs. "You should see your face," she says.

"Leah, please," I plead. "Put it under the mattress."

She stands up with the magazine in her hands.

"What's wrong, Laine? Afraid your mother will catch us?"

"Yes!"

Leah rolls her eyes. "It's only a stupid magazine. What's the big deal?"

"Girls?" my mother calls from downstairs. "Are you ready for some lunch?" I hear her feet starting up the stairs. I know at that moment something awful is going to happen.

"Hide it. Please," I whisper.

Leah dances around the bedroom, swirling the magazine above her head. The blond woman on the cover smiles at me, her large white b.r.e.a.s.t.s laughing.

I lunge for the magazine, pull it out of Leah's hands, and manage to shove it under the mattress right as my mother reaches the top of the stairs.

Leah seems surprised, but only for a second. She giggles.

"What are you girls doing?" my mother asks from the doorway.

"Nothing," I say.

"Well, not nothing, Laine," Leah says.

G.o.d, I want to kill her. My heart beats so hard and fast it hurts. Sweat p.r.i.c.kles out all over my body, hot and cold at the same time.

"We were playing, right, Lainey?" Leah giggles again and sits on the bed.

"What are you up to?" my mother asks suspiciously.

"Nothing," I say again. But she's already caught on.

"Why is the dust ruffle on your bed tucked into the mattress?"

I look. The edge of the magazine is sticking slightly out from under the mattress. I'd shoved it under so quickly, I pushed the dust ruffle in, too.

"What is that?"

"Nothing," I answer quickly.

Leah giggles again.

My mother pulls the magazine out from under the mattress and looks at the cover. Her mouth drops open. She rolls the magazine to hide the cover. Leah keeps giggling. But she sounds nervous now.

"Where did you get this?"

I don't answer. Leah can't stop making those awful giggle sounds.

"Where?!"

Leah laughs out loud. I glare at her. "Shut up!" I scream.

My mother grabs my arm so hard, her fingers dig into my muscle.

I pull away and run out of the room, down the stairs, and outside. Out to the pathway in the woods that leads to the big rock Leah and I used to hang out on when we first became friends. We pretended it was an island and we were stranded on it and had to come up with ways we could survive.

I climb the rock and sit on top of it, hugging my knees to my chest. Through the woods and my tears, I see our white farmhouse. It looks quiet, but I know it isn't. I watch, waiting for some sign of my mother. Or Leah.

I've never felt this ugly or embarra.s.sed - this dirty - in my life. I hate the way I feel. I hate it. I'm a pervert. Why else would my body feel that way when I looked at those pictures?

I will never be able to face my mother again.

After a while, I hear leaves crunching in the distance. It's Leah. She climbs the rock and sits next to me.

I move a little bit away. "What do you want?" I say without looking at her.

"She found the rest," Leah says. She doesn't tell me she's the one who told my mother where to look, but I'm sure she did. She doesn't say she's sorry.

Leah and I sit on the rock and watch the house in silence. Waiting.

Soon the back door opens, and my mother marches to the outdoor grill pit with the cardboard box in her arms. She throws it in the pit and runs back into the house. A few minutes later, she returns with a bottle of something in her hand. It must be lighter fluid. She squirts liquid all over the box, then lights the match. The whole thing goes up in flames.

I watch my mother through the smoke. She steps back and turns away from the heavy grayness, walks back to the house, and disappears inside.

The smell of the burnt magazines reaches our rock.

"Men," Leah says, shaking her head and wrinkling her nose at the smell.

I turn and watch her look at the scene she's created. Her eyes are slightly squinted so she has tiny wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. It's like looking at an adult almost, the way those wrinkles map out across her temples.

She catches me watching her, but she doesn't say anything. She just keeps shaking her head and looking at the burning magazines. I swear she's trying not to smile. But then she says without looking at me, "I didn't think that would happen, you know."

I'm not sure what part she means - finding the magazines, getting caught, telling my mother where they were, or the way they made me feel.

"You shouldn't have done it," I say.

"I know. I'm sorry." She shifts a little next to me. "Your mom shouldn't make you feel bad about looking. There's nothing wrong with it. Besides, I'm sure it's not you she's really upset with. It's your dad."

I smell the smoke again and hope she's right. I want to ask her if she felt the way I did when she looked at the pictures, but I don't dare. I couldn't bear to be the only one.

We stay there for a long time, not saying anything. Just watching the smoke rise into the sky and disappear.

My mom never says a word to me about the magazines. But a few weeks later, my parents have a bunch of friends over for dinner. They're all sitting at the long harvest table my parents use in the dining room. Leah's spending the night, and we're spying on them from the top of the stairs. It's late, and dinner has been over for a while. They're drinking and laughing and sharing old stories about all the so-called crazy things they did when they were younger.

When he was fifteen, Mr. Murphy stole his dad's truck and took it to the drive-in and got caught making out with his girlfriend. Mrs. Carey almost got kicked out of college for smoking pot in her dorm room. "I only hope my own kids don't put me through what I put my parents through." She laughs.

"Amen to that," my dad says.

Then my mother, who rarely speaks at these gatherings, suddenly pipes up. I can tell she's been drinking because her voice is louder than usual and a little slurred.

"Lainey and Leah certainly got started recently," she says.

Leah grabs my arm, and we exchange surprised looks. We lean closer to the top stair so we can hear better.

"Did I tell you what I caught them with?"

"Uh-oh," says Mr. Murphy. "They didn't get into your Scotch, did they, Stan?"

My dad chuckles nervously. "Honey, I don't think Laine would be thrilled to have you tell this story."

"Or out him," Leah whispers. I put my finger to my lips to shut her up.

"Oh, she doesn't care," my mom says, like it's no big deal.

I wish I could dash down the stairs and scream at my mom to shut up before it's too late. But I want to stay invisible, too. I don't want to exist.

"Lainey and Leah found Stan's Playboys and had one up in Lainey's room," my mom says, as if she's telling one of a hundred innocent family stories. "I couldn't believe it! I guess they're at that curious stage." She laughs. Everyone laughs.

My cheeks burn. Leah shakes her head.

"Poor girls," my mom continues. "I guess I overreacted a little."

"A little?" my dad says. "She burned all my magazines!"

They laugh again.

"My boys got into mine last year," Mr. Sloane says.

"Ha!" Leah whispers in my ear. "Those Sloanes are cute. Now we've got the goods on them."

"Yeah, but it's normal for boys to look at that stuff," I whisper back.

"It's normal for girls, too. G.o.d, Laine." She inches closer to the top of the stairs to hear more.

"Kids are curious," says Mrs. Carey. "When our Sarah is older, I'm going to buy her The Joy of s.e.x and tell her everything she wants to know."

"Well, after what Laine and Leah saw, I'm going to have to ask them," my mother jokes. "I didn't even know Stan had those magazines," she whines.

I am never speaking to her again, I vow. I slide back into the hallway and tiptoe to my room. Leah follows and shuts the door behind her.

I sit on the bed and squeeze my pillow.

"You know why she told, don't you?" Leah asks, sitting next to me.

I shake my head.

"She wants them to tell her it's OK. That we're normal. And I bet she wants to get back at your dad, too."

I throw myself backward on the bed and hide my face in my pillow. "I bet they all think we're perverted," I say into my pillowcase.

"Oh, Laine," Leah says, as if she's my big sister. "Lighten up. You're reading way too much into this. Here's the deal: your mom only told so she could get back at your dad and maybe because she was a little worried about us. But now her friends are all going to convince her we're just 'curious,' so she'll feel better."

I roll over to face Leah. She has the strangest way of knowing things - hidden things - about people. Most of the time it scares me, because it's usually me she's seeing through.

"That's all we are, right?" I ask. "Curious?"

"Of course," she says. She grabs my old Curious George from the bookcase and sits him on her lap like a baby. "Everyone does it. My mom even showed me and Brooke my dad's stash. She told us any time we were curious, we could look. How else are you going to learn? They don't teach it at school. They don't teach us anything we really need to know. They don't teach us c.r.a.p."

"But did they - you know - make you feel funny?"

She gives me a strange look, and I immediately wish I'd kept quiet. I just let her in on a secret I don't understand and that I'm afraid of. I wait for her to decide what she's going to do with it.

But in the end she simply shrugs. "That's normal, too, Lainey. Don't worry about it."

She tosses George on the bed as she gets up and walks over to my mirror. "I keep telling you, Lainey. You need to lighten up. You take everything way too seriously. All the wrong things, anyway."

She pulls her hair back with her hands, piling it on top of her head, then looks at herself from side to side to study her profile. "There's a lot more serious stuff to worry about," she says, still looking at herself. "Trust me."