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Sandra “Sandy” Emilia Laurent has these big doe eyes that she doesn’t even have to outline with mascara or eyeshadow to make them pop. Her natural hair is a light blond that sits around her in a halo, even when it’s not styled.
She has the sharp sense of fashion you can’t fake, from years of reading fashion magazines in her closet when her mama and daddy would go at it in the next room over. She could drown out the sound of breaking glass as long as the patterns were bright enough.
She doesn’t need bleach or makeup to mold her each morning, she’s beautiful, No doubt about it.
The kind of beauty that even Soc girls have to admit. She can blend in with any group of girls because not a single one of them would dare say a bad word against her if it meant angering whatever God had sculpted her.
She was wanted, and it was wonderful. Even with her boyish, flat figure.
Still, that doesn’t mean she would ever dream of getting a man like Sodapop Curtis.
With his brown eyes and model looks. There’s no other way to explain it, Soda is a star.
Sandy is, too.
No one was quite shocked when they started dating. Sylvia had curled her lip a little, said she was a sap for dating a Curtis boy. They’d always been raised to feel things, which Sandy is almost certain Sylvia had never learned how to do.
But Sylvia had also clapped her on the back and slipped a condom into the front pocket of her book bag.
Sandy’s life is as close to perfect as it can get on the east side of Tulsa.
Even though she lives in a trailer with water and electricity that’s shut off half the time, she’s got a mother and father and a boyfriend and friends she could entrust her life to.
But the thing about Sandy is she’s always wanted more.
She’s wanted a mother and father who could stop fighting long enough to remember the bills on the table. Who could see through the glazed over, drunken look in their eyes to see her report card.
She’s wanted a boyfriend who won’t entertain the endless flirting of the girls where he works.
She’s wanted the whole world and more but she’s always been smart enough to never act on it.
There have been a few times, though…
Sandy exists somewhere outside of herself, sometimes. Not often, but when it happens, it almost knocks the breath out of her when she comes back into her mind.
She never remembers quite what had just happened, but not in the alcohol-induced way she knows Evie sometimes slips out of her body.
She’ll dream the night of and remember everything.
The first time it happens, she’s only seven years old. She’s floating somewhere outside her body when she opens up the cabinets she can reach in the kitchen, grabbing the bottles she’d gotten intimately familiar with over the years, popping the top off and washing alcohol down the drain.
One after another, until there was nothing left.
She’d snuck back to her room and fallen asleep that night with a smile on her face.
The next day, it became real clear what happens when she breaks the rules and steps out of line.
That had been the screaming match of a lifetime.
Neither of her parents had even remembered that they had a daughter, let alone implicated her in any of it.
But that day, she’d seen her father hit her mother for the first time of many.
And that’s when she learned. She can’t be anything other than perfect.
There was one more time Sandy still can’t fully remember, when she’d done something bad. She’d stolen or fought or drank or something, but she hadn’t even dreamed of it.
It was just a block of her memory gone, and all of a sudden a whole set of friends shunned her.
Not that she cared too much about them, they were the most uptight Socs in the school.
Every one of them thought they were the alpha bitch, and not a single one of them was even close.
She wishes someone would tell her. She tries to bring it up to Evie, who had been there, one day.
All she gets is a pat on the shoulder and a patronizing smirk.
Tonight is the first time she feels it creeping up on her. The Blackout.
She hasn’t drank. She’s just been out with her friends.
She wishes more than anything that she could down shot after shot, drowning in the stuff until she can’t talk right or walk straight or thing.
But every time she tries, she chickens out.
She isn’t her mother and she doesn’t want to be.
But, the Lord knows she needs it. Recently it feels like Soda has been slipping. Away from her.
She knows there’s never been such a thing as a good man. Or at least not in this world, where status is determined by class or beauty.
If you had both, great. If you had one, you better fight tooth and nail to keep it. If you had none, there was no answer for you.
Soda has his looks, and he treats them like Sylvia treats her ability to fight or Evie treats her makeup skills.
You gotta flaunt, or you’ll lose it.
Sandy knows she’s beautiful with her babydoll features and big blue eyes, shining blond hair making the look complete.
She knows she’s a pretty girl and she knows Soda loves her.
He assures her of that every time he can. But that doesn’t stop him flirting with the girls at the DX, even when she’s perched on the counter, right next to him.
She escapes by the partying, where the music is loud enough to ring inside her head, leaving no room for thoughts to slip past.
She sits down at her vanity and applies the softest pink lipstick she owns, carefully putting on some brown eyeshadow and mascara. Smearing her face with creams she couldn’t afford if not for her quick fingers and finally tying her hair back with an excessive amount of bobby pins.
She’s ready.
Even before her friends pull up in Maya’s fancy convertible car, with music too loud and the shrieks of happiness she can hear through the thin walls of the trailer.
She leaves, easily slipping through the hall, where her parents are watching TV, their backs turned.
The second she’s in the car, on Carolyn’s lap because there aren’t enough seat in the car, she lets herself breathe. She sings along and lets herself feel everything so deeply there isn’t time to rationalize.
It takes less than ten minutes to get to the party. That’s where they separate.
It’s a house party, with so many kids that it’s definitely against whatever codes the fire marshal has. Bodies pressed up against each other, dancing to music that would get the cops called if they were ok the west side.
There’s a makeshift bar in the kitchen, but Sandy doesn’t even go near it. She can’t handle that temptation.
She blends in with the crowd of dances as easily as she blends in with Soc girls or middle class girls or gossipers or quiet kids.
Because she’s just like every one of them.
At this party to get her mind off her troubles. No one knows what her troubles are, if they’re worse or better than their own.
But they’re there.
And she gets pulled into the fray, dancing with the smell of alcohol punctuating the air like a blade.
She lets herself black out, floating for what feels like a few seconds but must be a couple hours because a boy comes up to her.
Not one she’d ever seen before.
He has dark brown hair and kind blue eyes. He’s well built and has no problem holding her by the hips and dancing with her.
She should turn away.
She needs to turn away. Soda doesn’t deserve it.
But instead, she lets him whisper in her ear and dance with her.
Sylvia had always tried to explain why she cheats on Dallas. ‘It’s the only way to keep a man, Sandy girl. To make ‘em so jealous they’ll lose their head tryin’ ta get you back.’
That’s when the haze gets really bad.
And she can’t feel or see anything and none of this is gonna stick by tomorrow morning.
But she can smell and she can hear.
The sudden change from the alcohol-thick blanket of air that covers the party to the cool air outside.
She feels the car she doesn’t remember getting in move, pulling away from the curb.
She feels herself applying lipstick, and though she can’t quite see it through the sheer curtain of bad decisions that’s been thrown over her vision, she knows it’s her signature pink.
His hands are on her and he’s kissing her and she’s kissing back.
There’s no other sounds except for them and Sandy is starting to think.
Until there’s a new sound to fill the void.
A bed, creaking with every movement, harsh or not. His lips on her skin and hers right back on him.
She feels him and she can’t muster up any energy to focus on a single thing besides that.
She gets lost in him before she even knows his name.
And she has no problem pushing the guilt down.
When she wakes up the next morning, she can’t remember anything. Predictably.
But she can see him, next to her under a single gray sheet. Her pink lips pressed onto just about every part of his body and she covers her mouth.
She doesn’t have anything but the sheet to cover herself with and it feels dirty, when she gathers her clothes and puts them on. She sneaks through the house, hazy light shining in through each window.
She finds his phone and easily dials Evie’s number, which she’s had ever since the first double date they went on with Soda and Steve.
She doesn’t exactly like Sandy, finds her while angelic babydoll shtick creepy.
But she’s also the only girl that won’t go blabbing about this to just anyone.
She walks down to the curb once she gets that frantic reassurance that Evie is on her way.
Lord, please don’t let Sodapop find out about this.
If Sandy had any cigs on her, she would smoke.
So instead, she uncaps her tube of lipstick and applies it, over and over until Evie finally rolls up next to her.
“Get in, Sandy girl.”
Sandy’s hands are shaking so hard she can barely grasp the door handle. “Evie.”
“What the hell happened?”
She would sound mad to anyone else, but Sandy knows she’s just concerned.
“I cheated on Sodapop. God, I cheated on Soda.”
It sounds strangely like repentance, as the blood drains from Evie’s face.
“Shit.”
Shit, indeed.
It’s been five weeks since Sandy last got her period.
Less than five hours since the thought of pregnancy crossed her mind.
Now, she’s locked in the bathroom, chain smoking to try and get her mind off it.
She can’t be pregnant. She cannot be pregnant.
Lord, she promises to go to church every Sunday if only it means she isn’t pregnant.
It’s the first of many desperate, muttered prayers. Because Sandy can’t be pregnant.
Because if she is, there’s no way in hell it’s Soda’s baby.
They’d never even fucked.
She lets out another desperate, smoke-filled and shaky exhale before getting up.
Her hand rests on the doorknob for a couple seconds too long before she swings it open.
Her mom is sitting in the living room.
“Mama.” Sandy says, to get her attention. She just gets a grunt in response.
She takes in a deep, shaky breath.
“I think I’m pregnant.”
Her mom clicks off the TV, turning to look at Sandy with eyes blown wide.
“You damn well better hope not! If you are, you’re going down to live with your gammy and grandpa. I ain’t raising another little brat, no ma’am.”
Sandy’s eyes get real wide. “No, mama. Please.”
The woman looks at Sandy with a type of coldness that’s never been there before. Detached coolness maybe, drunken euphoria, definitely.
But cool hatred? Never.
“What the hell have you just done, girlie? If you don’t get your period by next week, it’s over.”
Sandy feels tears well up in her eyes as her mother steps past her, not even daring to push past, giving her a wide berth.
She clasps her hands together and drops to the floor in a desperate plea.
Don’t let me be pregnant. Don’t let me be pregnant. Don’t let me be pregnant.
Sandy is pregnant.
Or at least, in the eyes of everyone that matters.
Her parents, herself, and her grandparents.
She never actually gets tested.
She cries like crazy when she packs a bag to bring with her to Florida, and almost holds it together when she tells Soda.
She can see his heart break. But she pretends it doesn’t tear her up inside and makes her way back to the car, leaving everything that matters to her in this town in the rear view mirror.
Her mom drives her straight to the airport. They had enough money for a single one-way ticket to Liberty County, Florida.
Before she gets on the plane, she goes to the bathroom and reapplies her lipstick, wiping away those tear tracks and redoing the mascara she always wears.
It feels almost like a sentence, walking out of that bathroom and onto the runway to the plane.
Soda sends her a letter a week after she lands and settles in her grandparents house.
She returns it unopened because the sight of his messy, uneven handwriting that he’d once used to draw “Sodapop+Sandy” on every surface he could would kill her inside.
Especially if it was a declaration of love. A card filled with I miss you’s and I still love you’s is the last thing she needs right now.
So, she doesn’t let herself read it.
Three weeks after she lands in Florida, her period comes.
It’s not a miscarriage or some weird pregnancy thing.
It’s just her regular old period.
Late as hell, but normal as ever.
Her heart drops to her feet and she spends the afternoon crying in the bathroom.
It was all for nothing.