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It hadn’t been my idea to go to the farm bar last week. It was Deb’s. She said we deserved it. It was one thirty in the morning and we’d been studying all night. I just didn’t feel like going, but how would it look if Bender said no? No, it’s a school night and my stomach hurts;no,I have a paper due on famous poisoners throughout history; and you know what,no,I don’t feel like it because I keep thinking about what happened to Charlotte last week at that beach party.

Even if I’d said no, no one would have believed I was serious.

I didn’t used to feel this way, but unless you’re blotto, the best part of going to the farm is being able to say,I went to the farm bar last night.People look at you differently. It’s sure not the sort of place you go on a date. It doesn’t open until 3:00, and depending on how wasted you are it takes an hour or more to get there. There’s no jukebox, no music at all, just a black-and-white TV behind the bar, and a radio set on the Weather Channel or the station that plays Bible sermons. No reason to go there except that it’s the only place open at four in the morning that serves booze. No Johnnie Walker Black or Famous Grouse, just their poor relations Jack Daniel’s and Rebel Yell.

The only bad thing was the floor. It had a rotten, sweet-sour smell like they’d never wiped up anything that spilled, just let it sink into the wood. The floor felt weirdly spongy when you walked on it. Otherwise, it was a perfect bar.

It was the middle of the goddamn night, so of course we were in our pajamas—but Deb called, nobody changes, not that anybody wanted to anyway. On the weekends we always go out in our nightgowns, into town for brunch, shopping. Our nightgowns, with the lace and the neck and wrists, were nicer than the dresses half the women in the state wore, and with pearls, we looked ready for church. My pearls were passed down from my grandmother to my mother to me. I was only supposed to wear them on special occasions, but because none of the girls at my school ever took theirs off, I didn’t either.

Even though Charlotte wasn’t feeling so social, it would have been weird for us not to invite her. We couldn’t not ask her; if she found out it would hurt her feelings. And she wouldn’t have to drive either like she usually did. Deb was going to drive. For once, Charlotte could get as hammered as she wanted—if she wanted. She could sit in the back with Butter and me. The thing is we all assumed someone else had called her. Nobody said a word when we drove past her house. It wasn’t until we were literally there that we figured it out.

Deb said it was my job to call Charlotte. One simple job, she said. Butter didn’t call because she said Charlotte had no business going out to bars. Teddy didn’t bother because even if Charlotte were awake, she wouldn’t answer the phone. Not only that a late-night phone call could set off a panic attack. Deb was driving. That left just me. They could pretend to be mad at me, but none of us wanted her to come.

A piece of string walks into a bar and asks for a beer. The bartender says, “Sorry, we don’t serve string.” So the string leaves, then comes back and again asks for a beer. The bartender says, “I told you we don’t serve string.” So the string leaves. Out in the alley the string rubs its body against the brick wall, then walks back into the bar and asks for a beer. And the bartender says, “Hey, weren’t you the string that was just in here trying to order a beer?” And the string says, “No. I’m a frayed knot.”

I couldn’t even see the farm bar until we were almost on top of it because the black cinder blocks blend into the dark and there are no windows. It’s like if you didn’t know the bar was there, you’d never see it. But if you needed it, you’d spot it low down, sort of hunkering in the weeds.

The sky was that weird grayish color that tricks you into thinking dawn is right around the corner, but it’s not. It’s the time when all the animals that hunt at night, like owls and foxes, start crawling, or flying, or whatever—creeping back to their holes. You know,Last call for field mice! You don’t have to go home, but you can’t eat ’em here!

It wasn’t a time you’d think of people being awake, and drinking, but the parking lot was jammed with rusty cars and hay wagons and tractors, pickup trucks with gun racks. I always wonder when a guy tells me I have a nice rack if that’s like a gun rack, like deadly—or a rack of antlers, like a trophy you’d hang on the wall over your fireplace. Either way it’s a compliment.

“You know this county has the highest incest rate in the entire country?” Deb said.

“Ah.” Teddy sighed, making a frame with her fingers as she squinted at the bar. “I do adore early American bomb shelter architecture, don’t you? When the big blast comes, the only survivors will be drunken farmhands and cockroaches.”

The echo of our laughter bouncing back at us, across the fields, was a little creepy, like there was another set of us out there in the dark and we were throwing our laughter back and forth. Playing catch. Which made us laugh harder, and longer.

“You go first, Bender,” Deb said, stopping right in front of the door to the bar. She rubbed my shoulders. She was practically daring me, so of course I opened it. It was heavier than you’d think. Like a test. If you can’t open the door with one hand, you aren’t man enough to get in. I’m stronger than I look.

When we walked into that bar in our gowns and matching pearls, the way those farmers turned and looked at us, we must have seemed like something out of a movie. A fantasy.

Men sat lumped shoulder to shoulder at the bar, or crowded around the tables. In their blue jeans and overalls, plaid work shirts and baseball caps, you could hardly tell the farmers apart, their faces as blank as cattle. Staring down into their beers, like the meaning of life was at the bottom. Even the ones in the safety orange caps and hunting vests only stood out because of the color.

As usual, I got elected to get the drinks. I didn’t mind. I was the best one to go anyway. I mean, Butter looked like a toy in her sailor suit jammies and Deb was a chicken, and Teddy smoked blue cigarettes, for god’s sake. Like my coach said,Bender’s not afraid to throw the trick.It was a little weird to be there and not be wasted. Up at the bar there was a bowl of hard-boiled eggs. I wondered what my grandfather and dad would say if they saw me now, out here rubbing shoulders with the common man. There were probably some dairy farmers here.

I’d practically thrown my shoulder out trying to wave down the damn bartender when this guy in a red shirt and mustache sat down next to me with a cup of coffee.

“Well, hey there,” he said, pushing his John Deere cap back. Maybe this was some form of tipping your hat. Maybe he’d take pity on me and wave down the bartender. “What’s your name?” he said in that voice grown-ups use on children who insist on formally introducing them to their stuffed animals.

“Belinda,” I said, without thinking. I never tell anybody I meet in a bar my real name, or give him my real number. A girl needs to protect herself.

Maybe I forgot because he was a grown-up and I was raised to be polite to grown-ups and have good manners. Maybe I forgot because I’d never seen a man with brown hair but a red mustache, or a person who could smile with just his mouth and not his eyes.

He asked me, “Where you from, Belinda? Not around here.”

“You’re spot-on. I’m from England,” I said in a British accent so thick you could roll me up in it like a rug. “London, actually.” I could talk to anybody with this accent.

“London, huh. Never been,” he said, picking up a hardboiled egg and rolling it between his hands. “Been to Asia, though—you ever been to Asia, Belinda?”

He tapped the egg against his teeth until it cracked, then started peeling it and dropping the bits on the floor. Without its shell the egg looked wet and shiny in his hand. I swear it was the whitest thing I’ve ever seen.

“You’re pretty far from home, aren’t you?”

“Quite right. I’m at university in Wallingford.”

He slipped the egg into his mouth whole. You could hear little bits of the shell crunching between his teeth.

Just kill me now,I thought.

“Yeah, I thought maybe. What’re you doing here?” Then he said, “You sleepwalking?” Shaking me by the shoulder like he was trying to wake me up, and I realized,Oh my god. I’m not wearing a bra. I should’ve worn a bra. What was I thinking?I didn’t think. I never think.

“Hey there, jumpy, jumpy,” he said, massaging my shoulder. “Little jumpy.” I tried to move away, but he had a hold on me.Calm down,I told myself.At least you have underwear on, right?Could he tell I didn’t have a bra on? Sure he could. That’s why he picked me.

Then he said, “That’s a nice necklace you’ve got on there,Belinda,” hooking his pinkie under my pearls. I told myself,Be a good sport, Belinda.Then he gave it a tug, pulling me closer. Tug.Worse things happen at sea.Tug.

I told him to be careful.

“Be careful,” he said, tugging on my pearls. Then he said, “I know why you’re here.” I realized he was looking at the hickey under my chin. He let go.I can do anything for ten minutes.

Then he said, “I know your type. You like it a little rough,Belinda,huh? Or,” he said, a grin cracking across his face, “did you try to get smart with somebody, bad girl?”

He put his arm around me, his hand moving slow as a spider over my shoulder, down my collarbone, hanging there over my tits, then like by accident he touched my nipple, then again not by accident at all.

The sound came out by accident. It wasn’t that loud either, but Deb and Butter must’ve heard because they froze like rabbits. The bartender heard it too, and came walking over to us. He’d make the asshole apologize to me. Give us drinks on the house. And that’s when I’d kiss him. At the very least I’d kiss him.

The bartender stopped in front of us. He folded up his rag and put it down on the counter.Now,I thought.Now you’re going to get what you deserve, motherfucker,I thought,in front of all these people.

“Thank you,” I said to the bartender in my regular voice. I wanted him to know I was like him.

“Look at you,” the bartender said, disgusted. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself. What are you thinking coming in here like this?” It wasn’t until he said, “It’s indecent,” that I knew he was talking to me.

“We just wanted a cocktail,” I said, wanting to explain. “A nightcap.” A pair of white-haired old men playing checkers, shots of whiskey set beside their cups of coffee, stared at me.

“I think it’s time you and your girlfriends left. Now.”

All those men in their baseball caps and overalls, their old Carhartt jackets and windbreakers with FORD or CHEVY on the pocket—all of them, brothers, fathers, grandfathers—they were looking at me with nothing but contempt. I thought,Couldn’t I be one of your daughters?

Deb and Butter were waiting for me at the door. As we were leaving Deb pulled open the door, turned to face the room, and said loudly, “Fucking hicks.”

And then we ran for it. I was halfway across the parking lot before I felt the first pearls spill down inside my nightgown, across my stomach, and out under the hem. I tried to grab the broken string but couldn’t; the pearls were shooting through my fingers, bouncing and rolling across the parking lot, under cars and trucks, leaving a trail.

Ahead of me Butter and Deb, holding hands, bolted toward the car. “Bender, come on!” Deb screamed. Butter saw what happened and dared to slow down. “Your pearls, your pearls,” she yelled, reaching down and grabbing at the gravel.

“Just go,” I yelled, “it doesn’t matter.”

I wanted to stop. I wanted to stop. I wanted to stop and get down on my knees and rescue as many of my pearls as possible, but I couldn’t. Why did I even have them on? They were the best things I had.

We jumped in the car. Deb gunned the engine, and we took off like a rocket, gravel shooting out from under our tires. Deb cranked up the radio—and music came blaring out of the speakers. “Woo-hoo!” she screamed, pumping her fist.

Butter, who’d jumped in the front, reached back between the seats and said, “Hold out your hand.” And then she handed me a pearl. “I’m sorry it’s only one, ducks,” she said, like it was breaking her heart.

In the rearview mirror you could see the cloud of dust we’d raised still hanging there. I should have been happy, right? But I didn’t even want the pearl. It would just remind me that I’d lost the rest.

“Thanks,” I said, wondering if I should maybe just drop it out the car window. Maybe some farm kid walking down the street would find it and think,Wow, look at this.And then they’d think that maybe the world wasn’t as ugly as they thought it was. Maybe there was magic in it, after all.

When I wake up it’s one o’clock in the afternoon, the Wake and Bake is over, and I’m in Andy’s bed. Not on top, but under the sheets, tucked in, under an afghan you know somebody made him, still wearing his sunglasses. Being in my nightgown, like that, like I’d put it on last night to get into bed with him—I don’t know, it wigs me out. And did I crawl into his bed—just snuggled right in—or had he put me in it?

Balanced on top of his bookcase are some artsy-looking black-and-white photographs of trees. There is a guitar in the corner, and a pile of library books. I didn’t even know he had a guitar.

“Hey, sleepyhead,” Andy says. He is sitting at his desk like he’s been studying, but I don’t think he has been. “I was getting worried about you. You were dreaming.”

“How did I get up here?”

“I carried you, of course. You fell asleep on the couch in front of the TV.” He doesn’t saypassed out.He saysfell asleep.This is why I loved him.

I could see a life with Andy, a fun, wonderful life. The two of us traveling around the world, me speaking French, him speaking Spanish, cocktailing in all the most fashionable bars, me getting drunk and dancing on tables, and him carrying me out in his arms, my high-heeled shoes dangling from his fingers.

My angel,he’d say, looking down at me.

My hero,I’d say, looking up at him.

Strangers would look at us and think how glamorous we were. They’d look at us and think,There is a perfect couple.

He says, “Deb was threatening to give you a mustache. You know, so you’d look like a pirate—for Cutty Sark.”

“What a sweetheart. She worries about my inability to accessorize.” I sit up in bed. “Did Charlotte ever show up?”

“Don’t know but I’ve been up here studying for Econ. I haven’t seen her.” He looks embarrassed.

“I need to call her.” I keep forgetting. “How did I get up here?”

“I carried you. You fell asleep on the sofa.”

“No, no, no. What is going to become of me?” I groan. Without thinking I touch my eye. It still hurts.

He blushes. “It’s my pleasure. I’m sure you’d look real cute with a mustache too, but . . .”

“No, really, Andy. What would I do without you?”

He picks up an autographed baseball he is using as a paperweight off his desk. Downstairs someone put Neil Young’sRust Never Sleepsback on; everyone was singing along to“Hey Hey, My My.”

“When I was a kid, my friends and I used to sing,Hey, hey,my, my, none of us will never die.Isn’t that stupid?” I say. Actually, no one but me had sung that.

“Not stupid,” Andy said. “Just immature, you were a kid. I can see the point. I like your way better too.” Sometimes he seems so much older than me.

“Me too,” I say, thinking,I could wake up every day in this bed. That’d be good, wouldn’t it?“What would I ever do without you?” I tell him. “I’d be lost.”

Andy gets up from his desk like something is about to happen, but then he just walks over and looks out the window. “I guess when school is over, this is all over too?” he says in a faraway voice. “We’ll go to different cities, get jobs . . .”

“Don’t say that,” I say. “What about Paris? I want to go to Paris.”

“City of lights, city of love,” he says. “You’d do great there. You could be an actress, or something else creative.”

“I think I would.” Why not Paris?

“You would too,” I say. He’d get used to it.

He sort of laughs, and comes over to sit on the edge of the bed. Then without warning he reaches over and starts to take his sunglasses off my face. “Let me see,” he says. “Up close. Someone should look at it.”

I curl up into a ball. “No, no, no. Trust me. You don’t want to.”

“They’re mine, aren’t they?”

He knows they are. I wouldn’t lie and say they were some other guy’s. So, I let him do it. He studies my eye, like it’s a problem he’s pretty sure he can fix. He very gently examines the swelling, the bruising on my eyebrow, without ever looking into my eye.

“Don’t worry, you can’t hurt me.”

When he pulls down my lid with his thumb, I automatically shut the other one. I feel his breath, then the pressure of his lips against my eyelid.

He stays like that for just a second, then sits up. When he does, he has the look, his eyes sort of dreamy and half closed; he is staring at my mouth, he is tilting his head—

His sheets are tucked in so tight around me. I can feel the stubble on my legs.

“Hey, Belinda,” he says leaning in and I panic. I turn my head and yawn, like I have no idea he was about to really kiss me, but he knows and I know. It’s impossible to un-know something. The way he recovers by pretending he’s reaching past me, across the bed to adjust the afghan. I hate myself. Just kill me now, I think.

“Okay, so, yeah, since the patient seems to be resting comfortably, I’m going to go and grab a cold one,” he says heading for the door. “You stay here. I’ll be right back. Can I get you anything?” His voice has like ice in it.

“Surprise me.” In a minute I’ll be gone.

Before I leave I pull the covers so you’d never even know I’d been there.

There’s this other Neil Young song that should be on my funeral playlist, but I can’t have two and I can never remember the title anyway, but the line that always gets stuck in my head is:And once you’re gone you can’t come back. When you’re out of the blue and into the black . . .It’s like the saddest song in the world. You can’t stand it.

Back home I chug the last half of a bottle of NyQuil and climb into my turned-down bed. When I wake up it is dark, and Butter, Deb, and Teddy are all gone. There is a note from Butter on the floor by my bed.

Charlotte’s gone. Her parents came and got her.

I have to read it a couple of times. Then I get up and start digging through my drawers, pulling books off my shelves.Frankenstein, The Bell Jar, Now We Are Six,but goddamnit—I gotnada. I have this thing where I like to hide drugs from myself. That way when I find them it’s like this nice surprise. I’m happy. Finding a snow seal of cocaine is better than Christmas. On the plane ride home at Easter, I had one of those Bic pens in my mouth, and suddenly my tongue went numb. I guess I’d taken it apart so I could do lines in the library bathroom during midterms. That was sweet.

Only I can’t find anything, nothing except for two NoDoz, which I chop up on my dresser with my school ID and halfheartedly try to snort. But it’s real sticky, so mostly, I have to jam it up there with my finger. Hey,if you got ’em, snort ’em.

It occurs to me that I could call Andy—Charlotte is gone—and we could go to his party together, but then it seems like more trouble than it’s worth.

My next imaginary boyfriend is going to be named Tex, he’s going to have a gold tooth and a motorcycle and carry lots of cash.

In the hall I check my wench costume—the low-cut blousy white shirt pulled off the shoulder, a tight red-and-black skirt that laces up the back—in the full-length mirror, admiring the great job I’ve done masking my black eye with foundation and lots of liner (I only look a little bit like a battered wife), and then—hope springs eternal—I lift the mirror off the wall, lay it on the floor, and on my hands and knees lick around the edges.

I arrive at the party at 8:00. I’ve had two beers and hope that Andy has had twice that many. The NoDoz has done nothing but make me jittery. Even though I’m fashionably late, nothing seems to be happening yet. The lights are bright, and the music isn’t loud enough, and everybody looks about thirteen. All I can see are these dorky little sailor boys and Captain Hooks, paired up with their perky wenches, all of them drinking punch. I feel like I’m spying on Peter Pan’s bar mitzvah. I can’t be sure Andy’s even there.

Across the street, I spy that stupid painted dog from town, staggering back up the hill toward the fraternities. TheDon’t Paint on Meis wearing off. Now it says,Don’t Pain on Me.That’s pretty funny. I whistle for it to come, but it ignores me. No one else even notices this dog, or cares. That bloody dog slept with guys who fed it mushrooms, and laughed when it peed on itself. And it couldn’t stop for me? Here I was feeling all sad for it, and maybe it liked being painted on.

Down the street on the lawn outside of his fraternity is Josh, along with the rest of the rugby team in their black-and-yellow striped jerseys, like a bunch of bees, hovering around the keg. I know what I need to do. One last time, just say good-bye. Make it official.

I go in through the back. Downstairs, the hall smells of dirty shorts, spilled beer, hash, and peanut butter. It makes me sort of sad to think that after college I’ll never smell this boy-smell again. I sit down at Josh’s desk and stick one of his paper clips in my pocket.

Then I’m up in his loft bed. When he comes in and locks the door, I am pulling off my blouse.

“I have a girlfriend. A serious girlfriend.”

I wait.

“You can’t keep coming here like this.”

“Like this? When was the last time I was here?” I say, trying to sound lighthearted, and teasing, but I want to know. I wait for him to say something, anything. Just one clue about whether I’d been with him last night.

“You’ve got to go,” he says. I can hear his resolve slipping away. After all, we have a thing. I know he wants me.

“This is the last time—” I say.

He sighs.

“Uh-huh,” he says, turning off the lights so it is totally dark except for the ones on the stereo, and they don’t look like stars, just bright yellow holes.

He climbs up into the loft and pulls off his shirt and shorts. He smells like sweat and beer. He turns me over, lays me facedown, stretches my arms and legs into an X, lifts my butt, and pushes in. “You’re going to take this?” he says, his voice shaking, going farther. He collapses behind me. He doesn’t lie beside me and fall asleep. Nothing normal.

I don’t get a chance to ask him if he has any coke.

Then groggily he says, “I gotta go. Don’t fall asleep.” He runs his hand over my head, not unkindly, like I am a doll.

I wake up with a start, the party in full thunder over my head, and unable to breathe. It is almost midnight. Outside I take off like I’m running for my life and I will press charges against whoever is chasing me. I would. I would do it.

The fraternity house looks like it is on fire inside. All the lights are on, blazing. Two guys in bandannas, striped shirts, and raggedy cut-up pants are up on the wall outside the house, beers in hand, waving plastic swords and screaming, “Shiver me timbers!” Fun. The front hall is just a mass of people. Smoky and hot. As soon as I walk through the door I’m swallowed up, sucked into the center, spun around, squeezed, and then forced out the back door. Someone hands me a cup of rum punch and I pound it. I can’t stop shaking, my arms and legs all loose in their sockets. I don’t see Andy anywhere. Not on the dance floor, or by the bar in the other room. I need a minute to think. Maybe he just didn’t feel like dancing since I wasn’t there. That would be like him, not to dance with another girl even though his date hadn’t shown up yet. How could I have made him wait? Made him worry. I hear someone say I’ve just missed seeing a guy who had tried to throw an empty keg off the back porch sail over the wall still holding on to it, and fall two stories. He’d gotten up, perfectly fine. I take this as a sign that this is a lucky night.

I hope Andy is drunk. Maybe he won’t know what time it is. Maybe he’s been drowning his sorrows, afraid I wasn’t going to show up. I ask a guy I think is his little brother if he’s seen him. “Last I saw he was serving punch,” he says.

Thinking of Andy standing there alone by the punch, sober, a ladle in his hand, bandanna on his head, and a plastic eye patch, serving people, breaks my heart. Is is possible that he just left? He’s mad at me, no, worse, worse, disappointed. Maybe he is at home watching TV in the dark and finishing off the keg. I’d do another circuit, ask around, then I’d call. No. I’d just run to his house. I’d surprise him. I’d show up with something—some ice cream, some wine, a twelve-pack. We’d get a little wasted and I’d let him kiss me, and I’d like it. A few more and one thing would lead another, and I’d want him. I know I could do it.

That would make everything all right, wouldn’t it? I wondered what he thought I would be like. He must have wondered.

I am on my way out, pushing my way through the crowd, when I feel it. An idiot girl, not even in costume, has doused me with punch. My hand flies to my throat. No pearls.

I stand there dripping wet, my white shirt soaked red, stuck to my skin and stained beyond repair.

“Oops,” she giggles, and covers her mouth, which seems to be all gum. “Ouchy, you have a black eye.” Another time I’d have returned the favor, and thrown my drink back at her, but I don’t.Don’t let her know you felt it,I say to myself. I’m not supposed to be alone. I am supposed to be with Andy. I am his date. They should all know that. I’m not alone. Are that girl and her friend laughing at me?See, Andy . . . what did we tell you?I’m sure I heard my name. I don’t recognize any of them.

I don’t know where the voice comes from, but I hear it clear as day. “Andy’s gone. He left.”

With who?

“Hours ago.”

I have to push people away to keep moving, saying to myself.Keep going. You’re doing great. You can do anything for ten minutes. Just get outside.But there are people on the lawn too; I can’t tell where the party starts and where it ends.

I’m going to run home. I’m going to run to Andy. I’m going to as soon as I catch my breath. I notice someone has left a full beer on the wall behind me. A gift. I sit down and lean against the wall.

But what if Andy didn’t go home? Had he gone after Charlotte’s guy? What if I went home and he wasn’t there? Then, there I’d be, all alone. He might be looking for me. I should just wait. He had to come back.

And when Andy comes back, he is going to say, “I’m sorry I left.”

And I am going to say, “Oh, it doesn’t matter now. We found each other.”

And he’ll say, “You’re right.”

And I’ll kiss him and say, “I guess it’s destiny.”

And he’ll say, “I always knew it was.”

And we’ll both be thinking—I don’t ever want to forget how happy I am right now.

So, I wait and I wait. Once, I see a shadow of a boy that looks like Andy, walks like Andy, coming up the hill but that boy’s holding someone’s hand, so it can’t be him. When the real Andy finally shows up it’s almost dawn.

“It’s done,” Andy says staring at his shoes, his mouth looks pink and puffy. He doesn’t have to tell me. I already knew. I know.

I say, “Better late than never.”

I want to tell Andy that Charlotte’s already gone home, but what’s the point? I pick my cuticle till it bleeds. Andy looks up, studies the empty sky hard, like he’s afraid it’s going to storm.

I say, “Here is a good one. A cat and a dog are sitting next to each other on a plane . . .”

He gives me a tired smile. I know he has low expectations.

“However, it is a short flight and they do not talk to each other.”

He says, “Is that supposed to be funny?”

“No,” I say. “It’s sad.”

© 2011 Elissa Schappell