Like Mandarin by Kirsten Hubbard Page A

ones, lying all over the ground. And then, in the bedroom, know what they found? My mom, dead on the ground, with duct tape wrapped around her mouth like ninety times. She’d suffocated herself.”
    Suddenly, I found it hard to breathe. I wondered if Mandarin had been home when it happened. If she’d seen the body. “I—I’m so sorry.”
    Mandarin shrugged. “I’m over it.”
    I nodded. “Well, we don’t have much time,” I said. “Maybe we could come up with a list of community service ideas, and then we could—”
    “Aw, screw community service.”
    I shielded my chest with my textbook as Mandarin rolled off the bed, stomped across the room, and kicked the wall. So that’s where the scuff marks came from .
    “But I thought you wanted—” I began.
    “School is horseshit.”
    I mouthed the words I’d seen on the door of the bathroom stall as Mandarin flounced over to her stereo and jammed it on to Prince’s “Little Red Corvette.” It was kind of embarrassing, like a movie sound track that didn’t fit.
    “I love this song,” Mandarin said, pacing around the room. “Do you? Probably not. Everyone around here likes that hokey country shit. Anyway, I know what I said. And I meant it at the time. I always got good intentions. I just hate it, all of it. I’m not stupid, even though people think I am. It’s just—there’s got to be a better way, y’know?”
    I tucked my feet under the bed so they wouldn’t get trampled, trying to make myself as small as possible. “A better way to do what?”
    “To get out.”
    “Out of where?”
    “Of where?” Mandarin laughed contemptuously. “Of Washokey! Of this little cow-shit town in the middle of nowhere. There’s nothing here! We’re hundreds, thousands of miles away from anything worthwhile. The whole town’s falling apart, the people are rotting, but for some fucking reason it’s like nobody ever leaves!”
    She stopped pacing.
    “It’s suffocating . And it ain’t just suffocating me, but everybody.”
    I thought of her mom and the duct tape.
    “Everybody’s dying a little more every second,” she said. “Like frogs stuck in a septic tank. But not a single person in this shit town gets it. Nobody gets it .”
    To my astonishment, she dropped to her knees. Right in front of me, on the hideous old-man carpet. She grabbed my hands. I willed them not to shake.
    “Except maybe you, Gracey.”
    Why do I get it?
    “Did you know I read your essay?”
    I swallowed hard. “You did ?”
    “They had ’em all hanging on the bulletin board outside Beck’s office. I had a couple chances to flip through yours while I waited. I read it and I was like, finally , here’s somebody who understands!”
    I had trouble meeting her eyes. Because how could my essay have meant something to her when I’d written it for them —all the people she hated?
    “It was just for the contest.… I don’t even remember what I wrote, exactly.”
    “You’re not like the rest of them. All everybody does here is bitch and moan about how they want to move to the big city, how there’s never nothing to do here—but they don’t mean it. Not truly. Otherwise, they’d try . But you …”
    She squeezed my hands.
    “You’ve got your shit together. You know how easy it is to get stuck in this place, and unlike the rest of them, you’re actually trying to get unstuck. You see, Gracey? We’re two of a kind. That’s why I wanted you to come over. We’ll die here if we don’t get out.”
    She was so close to me I could see my reflection in her pupils.
    “You’ve still got lots to learn. But we’re two of a kind. I can feel it.”
    Two of a kind.
    What if she’s right? implored the hopeful girl inside me, pounding on the bars of my rib cage. You have it in you . What if I really could be like Mandarin?
    “M-maybe I should go.”
    “Go? Why?”
    Because I’m not you , I wanted to say. You’re wrong, and the girl inside me is wrong. I’m nothing like you at all