The Guest

by Emma Cline

The envy acted like adrenaline in Alex’s body, a swift and enlivening rush to the head. It was better, sometimes, to never know certain things existed.

The girl smiled reflexively; girls were so polite, so ready to make others comfortable.

Alex was a sort of inert piece of social furniture—only her presence was required, the general size and shape of a young woman.

She’d met people like Jack before, children of the rich or famous, their personalities distorted by a false reality. No one ever responded to them honestly, no one ever gave them meaningful social feedback, so they’d never cultivated a proper self.

was used to this, the politeness of pretending that things that were happening were not, in fact, happening.

Logistics were already crowding in, making her tired—this is what people like Simon got to avoid, the constant churn of anxieties somehow both punishingly urgent and punishingly boring.

That’s what they all wanted, wasn’t it? To see, in the face of another, pure acceptance. Simple, really, but still rare enough that people didn’t get it from their families, didn’t get it from their partners, had to seek it out from someone like Alex.

The power she felt was almost distressing, an awareness of each tick of Jack’s insecurities, his needs.

He assumed her attention when he spoke. He had his insecurities, his anxieties, but underlying it all was the certainty that the world would be generous in its orientation toward him.

You could get off on it, she saw—the moment when she knew Jack did not want her to do this, and the fact, contained in the same moment, that she would do it anyway.

Could he sense that she had pulled away? Did that make her feel powerful, clocking how agitated she could make him, how closely he was tracking her attention?