Page 12 of Backslide
“Good,” she says, visibly relaxing. “Then why are you still here?”
“I just stayed to help you.”
She looks me up and down with a scowl, like I am decades late. Which I guess I am. “I’m not the one who needs help.”
And, like so many years before, she turns and leaves. And I am left, confused and angry, staring helplessly at her back as she recedes.
3BOTHBACK IN THE DAY
Cara and Lydia have no plans. And Nellie is jealous. Jealous like a sixteen-year-old afraid to miss out on even theleastpromising social interaction. In truth, Nellie exists in a constant state of FOMO, though the acronym for it does not yet exist.
It’s spring in New York City. Warmer but not warm. The breeze smells fresh and damp, stirring with new beginnings. Pink magnolia and white cherry blossoms explode from fragile branches, embarrassing the surrounding dogwood trees—still naked and thorny.
Thorny like Lydia, who Nellie doesn’t even like.
Lydia is Cara’s leftover from nursery school—a kind of obligatory-family-friend-appendage who Nellie would prefer to exorcise. She doesn’t go to school with any of them and yet, somehow, she constantly pops up, her curly red hair and freckled skin accented by bright-red lipstick. And, whether it’s because she sees Nellie as a threat to her childhood friendship with Cara or just can’t suppress her snark, she throws relentless barbs.
“I’ve been looking for a sweater exactly like this!” Cara exclaims, fingering the soft sleeve of Nellie’s oversized black cashmere V-neck as they walk downtown on Broadway. They lug matching JanSport backpacks, heavy with textbooks and in various states of disrepair, cluttered with quippy pins or tagged with Sharpies.
“Yeah, it’s kinda fly,” Lydia allows. “Is it, like, vintage?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Nellie says, looking down to examine it. “It was my brother’s, actually.”
“Oh, yeah,” Lydia nods. “That makes sense. ’Cause it looks kind of old and worn out.”
Fucking Lydia. Nellie just rolls her eyes.
Nellie may act cavalier about her outfit, but there is nothing left to chance about the distressed sweater over the white V-neck Hanes T-shirt, tight black stretchy miniskirt, and requisite late nineties blue six-hole Doc Martens. She cares what she wears maybe even more than the average teen. Actually, she cares about aesthetics and design in general—all things visual. Which is why instead of having no plans like Lydia and Cara, she is headed to her weekly drawing class right now.
“Do we have to walk herallthe way?” Lydia asks Cara like Nellie isn’t standing right there. Like she can’t hear every word. “I’m tired.”
“Lydia!” Cara giggles, lagging a couple steps behind, so she can playfully place her hands on her friend’s back and push her forward. Lydia leans back into Cara’s palms until she almost trust-falls backward. They both dissolve into laughter.
Very funny. They’re going to make Nellie late.
“You guys…”
“Coming, coming!” Lydia says, rolling her eyes, like Nellie is such a buzzkill. “Let me just get a cigarette.” And, while Nellie taps her foot, impatience strumming through her, Lydia takes her sweet-asstime flipping her bag off one shoulder, unzipping a front pocket, then a side one, sliding a Newport Light 100 out, and then rummaging for a lighter.
She finally lights the thing and takes a heavy drag, her red lipstick leaving a ring around the filter like the mark of the devil.
If any of the adults walking past disapprove, they don’t show it. Pedestrians rush down the sidewalk on either side of the girls, headed toward meetings and appointments scrawled in Filofax organizers. The tech-savvy among them return pages via pay phones. People actually look where they’re going.
This pre-Y2K world is a simpler place than it will be soon.
“I can just walk myself,” Nellie blurts out finally, working to keep the irritation out of her voice. “Really. I’m a big girl. I’m all good.Bye!”
She’s not bluffing. She really wants to leave. She edges away down the street.
“No way, Nells!” Cara says. “Wewantto walk you! Otherwise, we have to go back and start our homework.”
“We don’thaveto start our homework,” Lydia quips, dragging on her cigarette and blowing an ineffectual ring—more like a blob of smoke. “We could go to the Meadow. I heard the cast ofThe Real Worldhas been chilling there. They, like, rollerblade on the bike path nearby.”
But if she thinks she can distract Cara from her schoolwork, she doesn’t know her old friend as well as she imagines. Cara is up for a party—but only after her calculus is done.
Nellie relates to this. The need for vigilance.
The threesome turns the corner onto Seventy-Fourth Street, east in the direction of Central Park on a mostly residential block, and stumbles into an optimistic stretch of sunlight. Cara tilts her head toward the sun and sighs.Heaven.
