however accidentally, thereby enters into a contract with the wearer. Sometimes at parties a boy will lean over to kiss a girl and with his free hand he will scrabble at her wrist to try to break the Coca-Cola seal. Most often the girl will feel him trying to snap the bracelet and she will pretend to struggle, knowing what the breaking of the seal will mean: she will feign resistance and twist her wrist away from him to make the bracelet snap the sooner. Once it has snapped they know that they must go through with it to the very end.
It is a shameful thing to break your own bracelet. The girls snicker at the prospect, and alienate anyone clumsy enough to catch the side of the thin plastic band on a doorframe or on the buckle of her backpack so it snaps.
One of the girls says, “They found a Fuck-me bracelet in Mr. Saladin’s tutorial room. Under the piano. It was broken.”
This isn’t true.
Monday
“Thanks all for coming in, people,” says the counselor above the scraping and shuffling, raising his palms like he is a politician or a priest. “I’d really like to build on some of the issues that we raised in our last session. I thought that today we could talk about taking control.”
Julia is sitting at the back, low down in her chair, with her arms folded and her ankles crossed and her hair falling across her face. She watches as the other girls trip in from the cold, linking arms with their favorite friends so they advance across the room in a rectangular squadron of favorites. They negotiate seating with whispers and nudges and a desperate narrow-eyed panic, always fearful of one day occupying the terrible seats on the periphery which force you to lean across and be forever asking “What? What’s so funny? What did she say?”
Julia watches them slot into place around the current locus of popularity and wit with a feeling of contempt and mild jealousy. Most of the girls are seventh formers, contemporaries of the violated girl and infected only by vague proximity. The rest are the music students, more critically infected and so personally summoned by a solemn pink slip photocopied over and over and signed by the counselor in a delicate whispery hand.
The door opens and Julia sees to her surprise the sister of the violated girl holding her pink summons gingerly in her fist and checking the brass numeral on the plate above the doorknob. Isolde is only in fifth form, too young for jazz band and orchestra and senior jazz ensemble, and as she enters the room she nods at a few of the girls who must be her sister’s friends. The counselor smiles approvingly as she enters, showing them all that he is terribly proud of her, in the way that one might be terribly proud of a mascot or a flag.
Watching Isolde tuck her hair behind one ear and cast around sourly for a seat, Julia feels a flicker of interest in this girl, now thrust forever into her sister’s arched and panting shadow, and wonders what she’s thinking.
As Isolde sits down, the girl sitting behind her leans forward and gives her shoulders a squeeze, slipping her thumbs into the hollows of Isolde’s collarbones and whispering, You okay? in a hot pitying whisper. Isolde squirms away from the girl’s hands, nodding, and says something in reply that Julia can’t quite hear. The girl shakes her head, gives Isolde a pat and retreats with a motherly sigh. She turns immediately to pluck at the sleeve of the girl on her left, who is already leaning in to listen.
Julia watches the breathy whispers gather and spread up and down the row behind Isolde, and studies the hard impassive look on Isolde’s face.
“Would you jump off a bridge just because your friends were jumping off bridges?” the counselor is saying. It’s his favorite question and he asks it routinely, his voice ringing and triumphant as if he has just performed a marvelous checkmate.
Julia watches Isolde shift slightly in her chair. She is staring at the counselor dully, frowning but not
It is a shameful thing to break your own bracelet. The girls snicker at the prospect, and alienate anyone clumsy enough to catch the side of the thin plastic band on a doorframe or on the buckle of her backpack so it snaps.
One of the girls says, “They found a Fuck-me bracelet in Mr. Saladin’s tutorial room. Under the piano. It was broken.”
This isn’t true.
Monday
“Thanks all for coming in, people,” says the counselor above the scraping and shuffling, raising his palms like he is a politician or a priest. “I’d really like to build on some of the issues that we raised in our last session. I thought that today we could talk about taking control.”
Julia is sitting at the back, low down in her chair, with her arms folded and her ankles crossed and her hair falling across her face. She watches as the other girls trip in from the cold, linking arms with their favorite friends so they advance across the room in a rectangular squadron of favorites. They negotiate seating with whispers and nudges and a desperate narrow-eyed panic, always fearful of one day occupying the terrible seats on the periphery which force you to lean across and be forever asking “What? What’s so funny? What did she say?”
Julia watches them slot into place around the current locus of popularity and wit with a feeling of contempt and mild jealousy. Most of the girls are seventh formers, contemporaries of the violated girl and infected only by vague proximity. The rest are the music students, more critically infected and so personally summoned by a solemn pink slip photocopied over and over and signed by the counselor in a delicate whispery hand.
The door opens and Julia sees to her surprise the sister of the violated girl holding her pink summons gingerly in her fist and checking the brass numeral on the plate above the doorknob. Isolde is only in fifth form, too young for jazz band and orchestra and senior jazz ensemble, and as she enters the room she nods at a few of the girls who must be her sister’s friends. The counselor smiles approvingly as she enters, showing them all that he is terribly proud of her, in the way that one might be terribly proud of a mascot or a flag.
Watching Isolde tuck her hair behind one ear and cast around sourly for a seat, Julia feels a flicker of interest in this girl, now thrust forever into her sister’s arched and panting shadow, and wonders what she’s thinking.
As Isolde sits down, the girl sitting behind her leans forward and gives her shoulders a squeeze, slipping her thumbs into the hollows of Isolde’s collarbones and whispering, You okay? in a hot pitying whisper. Isolde squirms away from the girl’s hands, nodding, and says something in reply that Julia can’t quite hear. The girl shakes her head, gives Isolde a pat and retreats with a motherly sigh. She turns immediately to pluck at the sleeve of the girl on her left, who is already leaning in to listen.
Julia watches the breathy whispers gather and spread up and down the row behind Isolde, and studies the hard impassive look on Isolde’s face.
“Would you jump off a bridge just because your friends were jumping off bridges?” the counselor is saying. It’s his favorite question and he asks it routinely, his voice ringing and triumphant as if he has just performed a marvelous checkmate.
Julia watches Isolde shift slightly in her chair. She is staring at the counselor dully, frowning but not
Similar Books
