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It starts like this:
Lottie’s parents are gone. Geneva this time, she thinks, though she couldn’t be fucked to know for sure. Not like they tell her, anyway. Left a list of instructions for their housekeeper, four hundred dollars in cash in an envelope on the kitchen counter with Charlotte written across it, the letters unfolding over one another in her mother’s aggressively perfect cursive, and fucked off somewhere foreign yet again. And that wouldn’t be a problem – in fact, it would’ve been nice; times when her parents are away are far preferable to when they’re in the house – if not for the fact that Sunday, November 19th was Lottie’s birthday. Eighteenth birthday, to be exact.
It wouldn’t be the first time they’d missed her birthday, of course. Not by a long shot. The last birthday she can remember them attending was probably her tenth, the last one before she’d started talking about the things she saw out her bedroom window at night and her father’s schedule suddenly filled up with “work meetings” and “important overseas debriefs” she knew better than to believe were real.
But eighteen was a big birthday. A big year. Maybe it was stupid, foolish of her to hope, but in the week leading up to it, she began checking out her bedroom window every hour, half believing she’d see her parents’ Ford Taurus pulling into the driveway. Not that it would have brought her much comfort. Her father’s forehead lines and mother’s constantly-pinched mouth would have forced any spark of joy out of Lottie, made her hide it under her mattress along with her new favorite shirt and some kind of grunge CD she half-borrowed, half-stole from Shauna and listens to solely because she knows her parents would hate it. So, yes, their presence would have had her waking with a gasp and stripping off her blankets and clothes in the middle of the night, all in a futile attempt to feel like she could breathe again. But still, it would’ve been nice, knowing they cared. Enough to at least be there on her birthday.
But Saturday the eighteenth rolled around, and by then Lottie was sure. They weren’t coming.
That morning, she forces herself out of bed the second her eyes slide open. Moping isn’t an option for today, she’s decided. She’s almost eighteen, and that necessitates some big changes.
Their housekeeper isn’t due to come that day, so Lottie takes it upon herself to become the house’s second housekeeper. She starts with her room: strips it practically to its bones, hair ties and trinkets and old scraps of ribbon swept unceremoniously to the floor, and scrubs every inch, until she’s pretty sure the walls have never been this pristine. Then she moves to the rest of the house: dusts miles of railings, sweeps staircase after staircase, even does a quick once-over in the basement she’s sure is haunted. She thinks so only because she has a very early memory of her father running up the basement stairs and locking the door, white-faced and whispering to her mother; and nothing scares him more than phantoms he can’t see. It’s why he can’t stand to be around her. Too bad about the ghosts in the basement, though, really – it would’ve been nice to have some company, visible or not.
She’s finally done hours later, as the sun begins to tilt back over the horizon. She steps outside briefly to sweep the dead leaves off the front porch, sets out a saucer of milk for the stray cat who comes prowling sometimes – Fergie, she calls him, short for Fergal Lawler; she’s not sure why, but it fits.
She ducks back inside, shivering from the chill. When hunger gnaws at the bottom of her stomach, she makes herself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, the only real thing she trusts herself to make, and eats it with her fingers over the sink, crumbs spilling into the drain. Then she’s got just enough time to whisk upstairs and take in the sight of her newly-sparkling room before ditching her cleaning shorts for a pink top, miniskirt, and her favorite boots. She adds jewelry and a quick layer of makeup, and grabs her favorite lipstick on the way out.
Tai’s car is already at the bottom of the driveway, as she knew it would be. Lottie shivers in the chill that’s already set over the night, wraps her arms around herself, and hurries to slide into the backseat.
Van’s in the front seat, of course, and she turns to say a quick hello to Lottie upon her entrance. “Happy birthday!” they both chorus in unison, and Van presses something into her hand. It’s small and sharp-edged; she tucks it into her jacket pocket to open the next day.
“Thank you, I love you both,” she says, trying to paste a smile onto her face. She pulls the seatbelt over herself, snapping it into place as Tai pulls away from the curb.
Tai and Van talk quietly in the front seat as they drive. Night’s already fallen, and the roads are practically empty. The front window fogs over several times, and each time pulls a bigger huff from Tai. Van’s boisterous as usual, but sitting with a seat in between them is nice; it means Lottie’s free to stare out the window, take in the houses they pass. Golden windows, families eating dinner around wooden tables. Children smiling as they pass the peas.
She feels a pang in her chest and forces herself to swallow it down. Focus.
The party they’re headed to is Jackie’s, both in location and in origin. It’s somewhat, but not entirely, a birthday party for Lottie, by which she means that their friends and anyone else who might’ve heard will be wandering up to her at various points throughout the night, wishing her happy birthday in slurred tones and voices reeking of too much vodka. Jackie had wanted to make it official, get a cake and sing Lottie happy birthday at midnight, but Lottie had forbidden her from celebrating or from saying anything about it, mind too full of the previous year. They’d gathered around a bonfire, in Lottie’s backyard this time, and sang happy birthday to her, and she didn’t doubt they meant it, but as she looked around at the crowded yard, she realized she didn’t even know the names of half the people there. Another empty birthday wish, yet another empty birthday.
She sincerely hopes Jackie will stick to her promise. The no cake part, she thinks she won’t have to worry about; but she’s trying to earn her new captain stripes, so Lottie’s guessing – with a heavy amount of dread – that nothing can prevent Jackie from telling everyone at the party it’s her birthday. Laura Lee might’ve been able to – but Laura Lee can’t attend that night; she’s out of town on a church retreat.
Yet another reason she’s not looking forward to this party. Cold weather, random strangers pretending they know her, an absence in the shape of her best friend. And sure, she’s got other friends, but they’ll be more occupied with each other. It’s always Tai-and-Van and Jackie-and-Shauna and Melissa-and-Gen and Mari-and-Akilah, and normally it’s fine because it’s Lottie-and-Laura-Lee too, but not tonight. Tonight, she knows, no matter who she might talk to or dance with or befriend while waiting to use the bathroom, she’ll end up on her own again as the clock strikes twelve, just like always. Some bullshit Cinderella story this is.
“Lot,” Van says suddenly, and Lottie jerks back into the conversation with the distinct impression that they’ve said her name multiple times and she failed to realize.
She shakes off the thoughts. “Sorry, what?”
Tai points ahead, shifts the car into park. “We’re here.”
It starts like this: sixty-some teenagers wildly, happily drunk. Jackie spinning around and around on the dance floor entirely alone, smile so wide and dopey it’s clear she hasn’t had a coherent thought in hours. Shauna’s eyes so droopy she resembles that beagle down the street that’s always barking high-pitched at passersby. Akilah whispering to a blade of grass in her palm. Tai and Van pulling apart, then coming back together, bodies like sticky bubblegum, too far gone to care that their limbs dangle off one another in front of everyone. Sixteen varsity baseball players surrounding some poor sacrifice in the middle of the circle, chanting at him to drink and drink and keep drinking, don’t pussy out now. One girl laying on her back on the wilted grass, another group playing some drinking game that involves waterfalling from each other’s cups.
In short, everyone is fucking plastered, according to Lottie’s quick but accurate assessment.
Jackie’s parties always kind of get like that. Though so do hers, to be fair, so she can’t really talk. Last time she spent two hours scrubbing some basketball player’s vodka-reeking puke off her parents’ fucking billiard table, never mind that she’d roped off the entire basement in paralyzing fear of such an incident. Thank God they were gone too often to notice the slight stain left over.
Well. Nothing to do but join ‘em, right?
She’s been nursing a beer in one hand, some kind of God-awful watered-down piss Jeff and his buddies probably brought, but she stands up from the porch steps, sweeping her skirt into place, and makes her way over to the drinks table, narrowly dodging a wasted Melissa chasing an even more wasted Gen through the crowd. The table is swarmed, of course, people knocking back their shots and clamoring over each other to make the best concoction. She does her best to fly under the radar, grabbing the cleanest-looking Solo cup from the stack and filling it up with something she’s sure smells like rubbing alcohol and tastes even worse, topping it off with a swig of orange juice from the nearest container just for balance. Then she retreats back to the new home she’s found on the fourth step of Jackie’s back porch.
Time passes oddly: in tiny increments, then all at once. Sometimes Lottie’s alone, watching from her vantage point. Sometimes, all of a sudden, she’s not. Mari comes over, scream-sings happy birthday far too raucously, and insists on giving Lottie eighteen kisses on her forehead until she’s sure her skin must be stained pink. Misty tries to play Light as a Feather, but she’s by herself, so when it comes to lifting all lanky five-foot-ten of Lottie she’s woefully underprepared. Jackie sits down beside her, shoes tied messily enough Lottie can tell her mother hasn’t been home in a while, and tells her something incoherent about Jeff and his banana pancakes; then Lottie blinks and she’s vanished.
Lottie can tell she’s drunk a little while later, when she starts being able to feel the air on her skin. Normally it’s not there, not noticeable, but now she can feel it – like little fairy kisses. She smiles, lifts an arm wonderingly. The muted light from Jackie’s porch silhouettes itself behind her skin until her arm looks like a tree branch. She wiggles her fingers: twigs. Her skirt: bark on the legs of the tree she’s become. She sighs happily, plants her feet against the bottom step, and does her best to phase into the wood entirely.
She’s not so drunk, though, that the ticking clock in the back of her mind silences itself. So when she checks her watch, squints and sways into the light for long enough that she’s pretty convinced she’s reading it right, she’s not surprised when it’s three minutes to midnight.
She stands again, far more unsteadily this time, and trips down the steps. The red Solo cup is long emptied, but she crushes it in one hand, clinging to the banister with the other. When the steps end, though, so too does the banister, and she gasps, feeling robbed.
She makes her way through the crowd well enough. People touch her, their limbs brushing her everywhere she moves, but she’s too drunk for it to bother her. If anything, it’s kind of nice, a reminder that she’s not entirely alone.
At one minute to midnight she plunks down on one of the benches in Jackie’s front yard. This side of the house is mostly empty, everyone having rushed to the back maybe fifteen minutes prior to watch Jeff try to stuff Randy in an empty beer keg – suffice it to say, this endeavor ended with Randy’s nose bleeding all over the wood and Jackie forcing Jeff to take a time-out against the fence, where he sat and pouted like a kicked puppy until she let him return. This left her primarily alone, though, only one other figure on the front porch steps and two under the willow tree, the glowing spark of their cigarette an orangey-warm comfort in the chilly night. She sits down, tucks a leg under herself, and begins to count.
Forty-five seconds. A third person joins the first two, their voices humming like bees. Like yellowjackets. She cracks a smile at her own thought. The smell of cigarettes dances under her nose, raw and dingy and alive.
Thirty. The rest of the street is empty and quiet. Lottie has only a half-second to wonder if Jackie’s neighbors mind the ruckus they’re surely causing before she remembers. Jackie’s not all alone on the street, but she might as well be; one set of neighbors are nearly always gone, not unlike Lottie’s own parents, and her house is set so far back from the street that it would take something akin to an asteroid falling from the sky for the others to take notice.
Fifteen. The bench is smooth, sanded down, probably. Done by Jackie’s father, maybe. Lottie sighs, hands falling into her lap. How nice it must be to have a father who would do things with you.
Ten, nine, eight. Lottie feels the usual apprehension creep into her throat, heart beating in time to the ticks of her watch.
Seven, six. She wiggles, sits up as straight as she can manage given the vodka’s in her brain now and wow, she really has had a lot to drink, hasn’t she? Not enough to dull the ache, though. Not enough to dim the harsh white light of her thoughts, rabbiting around her skull like ping-pong balls. God. Eighteen, really?
Five. Four. Three. She tenses, and then –
Smash. Something – or, rather, someone – collides with her on the bench. The impact is so sharp and unexpected, she nearly slides off the other end. The red Solo cup falls abandoned by her feet, and she drags herself back across the wood, too dazed to say anything but “Shit. What?”
The person looks up, then, allowing light to slide across their previously-shadowed face. The porch light catches their teeth in a wide smile, almost predatory in their enthusiasm, bleach-blond hair gleaming almost white, and then Nat Scatorccio grins up at her, shoving a horribly messy cupcake in Lottie’s face. “Happy birthday, Lot.”
So, yeah. It starts like this.
They split the cupcake – vanilla, with pink frosting and rainbow sprinkles. They eat it with their fingers, straight from the ripped edges of the paper wrapping. Crumbs catch on Lottie’s thumb, icing on her middle finger. She and Nat smear the excess on each other’s hands, then lick it off, gleeful and undisturbed. Later, more sober, Lottie will ask how and when on earth Nat made the cupcake, and Nat will reveal that she iced it in the back of Jackie’s pantry, spilling crumbs between the shelves like a little mouse, but she’d made it in her trailer and carried it all three miles she had to walk to Jackie’s, which explained its slightly smushed appearance. Lottie’s not sure anything has ever tasted better than this, spun sugar and sprinkle crumbs and the lingering taste of vanilla under her tongue. Nothing has ever looked kinder than this: bleach-blond hair and long nimble fingers, leather jacket and green eyes flashing in the low light.
When they’re done, Nat asks, “Did I make it in time?”, to which Lottie checks her watch: midnight and seven minutes.
“Yeah,” she says, and looks at Nat, all teeth and tongue and sharp nose and messy hair and funny little quirk of her mouth in the corner; “you made it,” and she doesn’t ask how Nat remembered her birthday or why she baked the cupcake, too scared of speaking the moment into existence and watching it float away. If it’s a dream, at least it’s a really nice one.
Nat isn’t smoking at the moment, but Lottie can tell she has been. Drinking, too, though she probably hadn’t had that much alcohol. It’s the combination of a joint and a shot or two that bring out this side of Nat: wiggly, energetic, like a toddler or a particularly energetic pet. It’s adorable, though she’d never tell her so. Three shots with the joint, though, and Nat starts to get contemplative; four and she gets emotional. So Lottie’s guess is two: enough to dissolve her shell, break her down and pull out her innermost parts; not enough to make her hurt in the process.
When Lottie leaves the party, it’s with Nat by her side, humming and swaying as she half-skips down the street. She looks angelic under the streetlights, cigarette between her forefinger and thumb, clouds of smoke trailing as if in slow motion behind her hair and her smile. She offers Lottie a hit, and when she takes it, smoke expelling itself from her lungs along with the thoughts that had been throwing themselves against the back of her skull all night, she feels floaty. “Like a cloud,” she voices, and Nat giggles and spread-eagles her arms, spinning in circles like a slow-moving ceiling fan all the way to the bottom of the hill.
How they make it back to Lottie’s house, she has no idea; but they make it, and soon Nat’s in her kitchen, gently nudging her aside and sorting through her fridge. Fifteen minutes and three glasses of cold water later, and she’s sprawled atop her kitchen island, socked feet and all, halfway through ravenously devouring a quesadilla Nat had thrown together. She’s a surprisingly good cook; Lottie tastes several different spices, garlic powder and paprika and something else she can’t name. Nat grins up at her in the dim green light of the oven clock, a bit of tomato peeking out from where the most recent bite of her quesadilla is hidden in her cheek like a chipmunk, and Lottie thinks somewhere in the back of her mind that if she had to freeze time, this might be a good place for it to stop. Somewhere, she hopes the night will never end.
When it does, though, she’s in an old ratty tanktop and shorts, feet tucked inside her most comfortable fuzzy socks. The blanket’s warm over her bare shoulders, and Nat’s warm by her side, her breathing smooth and regular like the ticking of a well-worn clock.
It starts, and it ends, both at the same time, as Lottie rolls onto her side, reaches out blindly until she touches warmth, and pulls Nat into her arms, bleached hair tickling her skin as she tucks her cheek against Nat’s temple. “Thank you,” she whispers into the crown of Nat’s head, presses a kiss there to punctuate her words, breathes in tobacco and men’s cologne and a hint of something lighter and sweeter – strawberry, maybe. Nat doesn’t respond verbally, but she breathes in and out, air brushing Lottie’s wrist where it lies under her nose; and Lottie curls her body around this lovely girl in her bed to fit the exact shape of her, squeezing her eyes shut and thanking whatever deity might exist with everything she has inside her.
In the morning, Lottie wakes up late, sun streaming into the window she’d forgotten to close. The bed is cold beside her, an imprint on the pillow and a single strand of blond hair the only indications that someone had spent the night next to her. But when she sits up, pushes her hair away from her face and blinks her eyes open, her eyes alight on a little pink sticky note on her nightstand and she scrambles to reach it, hangover forgotten. Scribbled in a familiar scrawl reads, happy birthday, pretty girl.