The Virgin Suicides

by Jeffrey Eugenides

Chase Buell led the way, and as we descended, holding on to one another’s belt loops, we traveled back to the day a year earlier when we had descended those same steps to attend the only party the Lisbon girls were ever allowed to throw. By the time we reached bottom, we felt we’d literally traveled back in time. For despite the inch of floodwater covering the floor, the room was just as we had left it: Cecilia’s party had never been cleaned up. The paper tablecloth, spotted with mice droppings, still covered the card table. A brownish scum of punch lay caked in the cut-glass bowl, sprinkled with flies. The sherbet had melted long ago, but a ladle still protruded from the gummy silt, and cups, gray with dust and cobwebs, remained neatly stacked in front. A profusion of withered balloons hung from the ceiling on thin ribbons. The domino game still called for a three or a seven. We didn’t know where the girls had gone. Ripples spread across the water’s surface as though something had just swum by or dived down. The gurgling drain sucked intermittently. The water lapped the walls, reflecting our pink faces, and the red and blue streamers overhead. The room’s changes—water bugs adhering to walls, one bobbing dead mouse—only heightened what hadn’t changed. If we half closed our eyes and held our noses, we could trick ourselves into thinking the party was still going on.