The Girls

by Emma Cline

“A fucked-up expression, but an expression,

All that time I had spent readying myself, the articles that taught me life was really just a waiting room until someone noticed

you—the boys had spent that time becoming themselves.

She searched until there was only searching left.

“I just want some space,” my mother said, “for me. This world takes it out of you, doesn’t it?”

I wasn’t pretty enough to get the grades I did, the scale not tipping heartily enough in the direction of looks or smarts.

So much of desire, at that age, was a willful act. Trying so hard to slur the rough, disappointing edges of boys into the shape of someone we could love. We spoke of our desperate need for them with rote and familiar words, like we were reading lines from a play.

I didn’t really believe that friendship could be an end in itself, not just the background fuzz to the dramatics of boys loving you or not loving you.

A space opened up between us as soon as I started to notice these things, to catalog her shortcomings the way a boy would. I regret how ungenerous I was. As if by putting distance between us, I could cure myself of the same disease.

That was part of being a girl—you were resigned to whatever feedback you’d get. If you got mad, you were crazy, and if you didn’t react, you were a bitch. The only thing you could do was smile from the corner they’d backed you into. Implicate yourself in the joke even if the joke was always on you.

That was our mistake, I think. One of many mistakes. To believe that boys were acting with a logic that we could someday understand. To believe that their actions had any meaning beyond thoughtless impulse. We were like conspiracy theorists, seeing portent and intention in every detail, wishing desperately that we mattered enough to be the object of planning and speculation. But they were just boys. Silly and young and straightforward; they weren’t hiding anything.

inanely.

stippled

I’d always hated martini glasses—the stem and the funny shape seemed embarrassing, like the adults were trying too hard to be adults.

The girl wasn’t beautiful, I realized, seeing her again. It was something else. Like pictures I had seen of the actor John Huston’s daughter. Her face could have been an error, but some other process was at work. It was better than beauty.

“People are the way they are, you know? I could tell when I saw you,” she continued. “You’re a thoughtful person. On your own trip, all caught up in your mind.”

Who told me that my birthday, on the cusp of Aquarius and Pisces, meant my two phrases were “I believe” and “I know.”

Life will come up on you so fast, and guess what, you’ll be stuck with the person you are.

I felt hatred hardening in me, and it was almost nice, how big it was, how pure and intense.

antic

Girls were good at coloring in those disappointing blank spots.

Poor girls. The world fattens them on the promise of love. How badly they need it, and how little most of them will ever get.

treacled

“They throw something away and they still want it. That’s America.”

wanted the world to reorder itself visibly around the change, like a mend marking a tear.

Her daughter, who had always been good, even if that was more disappointing than being great.

girls who believed the jewelry he wore was the pretty evidence of his untapped emotional depths.

solicitude

Men did it so easily, that immediate parceling of value. And how they seemed to want you to collude on your own judgment.

Of course—she would love Russell if he lived in a mansion in Marin, had gardenias floating in his pool, and charged rich women fifty dollars for an astrology reading. How transparent she seemed to me then, always on constant guard against anything lesser than, even as she opened the house up to anyone who smiled at her. To Frank and his shiny-buttoned shirts.

Seems like there’s a lot going on and that’s what life is. Think it only stops when you die.”

It was new to me, that you could treat someone famous like they weren’t that special, that you could see all the ways they were disappointing and regular or notice the way his kitchen smelled of trash that hadn’t been taken out.

Linda was beautiful, though I’m sure her face would’ve grown bawdy or cheap.

was shoring up the bad feelings, I suppose, like I could preempt sorrow with my bravado, with the careless way I thought about Suzanne to myself.

I hated that unwilling knowledge, how I’d started to notice each tiny shift of power and control, the feints and jabs. Why couldn’t relationships be reciprocal, both people steadily accruing interest at the same rate? I snapped the magazine shut.

it was ridiculous to see a grown man’s socked feet.

unguents

Though I should have known that when men warn you to be careful, often they are warning you of the dark movie playing across their own brains.

This older man who saw that I was alone, who felt like I owed him something, which was the worst thing a man like that could feel.

How Linda must have believed, as beautiful people do, that there was a solution, that she would be saved.

Their dramatic shows of support underpinned with jealousy—bad luck was rare enough to be glamorous.

But they would never know the parts of ourselves that we hid from them—they would never sense the lack or even know there was something more they should be looking for.

Life a continuous backing away from the edge.

Even at the end, the girls had been stronger than Russell.