All Girls Page 5

  At practice they run eight by four hundred, starting every three minutes, and Macy finishes each interval nine or ten seconds ahead of the next-fastest runner. On the way back from the track she texts Jade—still feeling sick, don’t wait for me for dinner—and takes her time ascending the gentle hill to the gym and then down again to Lathrop. She notices how the sun is setting earlier; in the twenty minutes since practice officially ended, the sky has burst into flames, the underbellies of the clouds to the east bright pink above the sunken sun. It’s too flat in Naperville for sunsets like this: It drops evenly to some far-off horizon, an expanse of blue-to-gold ombré that parallels the land.

  Back in Lathrop, she tosses her bags on the floor next to her bed and slumps into her desk chair. She opens her computer with the intent of checking her email, doing the kind of mindless tabbing around that comes after a couple of hours away from the internet, but when she opens Chrome and finds herself presented with the Google search bar she pauses. She types into the long rectangle the first thing that comes to mind: “high school initiation.” From there, she ends up on a website dedicated to high school football, in the bowels of a forum with an almost psychotic level of emoji usage for a group of (she assumes) adult men. The tone is all wrong: gleeful, almost; nostalgic.

  So she opens a new tab and googles “hazing” instead, and when predictive search offers to add “deaths,” Macy goes with that. The headlines are a nightmare. 4 Members Sentenced in Pledge’s Hazing Death. Police Say 9 Charged in Hazing Death. When a Hazing Goes Very Wrong. Most of the stories have to do with fraternities and most of the deaths are related to alcohol poisoning, at least loosely. In one, a freshman falls down the stairs and the other fraternity members do not think to call an ambulance to check for any kind of internal bleeding. By morning, he’s dead. In another, a student’s underlying heart condition could not handle the task of carrying a backpack full of sand around campus for a day. In several, the victim choked on his own vomit. In several more, the deceased’s blood alcohol level was .44, or .47, or .38, five times the legal limit.

  There seems to be a trend in the articles against chronicling the details of the actual rituals, so Macy tabs over to Reddit, where she does a blanket search on hazing. Here is the specificity she’s been looking for: adult diapers, worn around campus all day; a case of beer in ninety minutes; testicles hooked by the pick of a hammer; branding with twisted hangers; phone sex listened in on; something called a gallon challenge, an allegedly impossible task involving a gallon of milk; something called a “soggy biscuit”; something called a “rainbow party.” She cross-references with Urban Dictionary. It cannot possibly be real, Macy thinks. But how can it not be real? Who would make this stuff up?

  “‘Former child actor arrested in fraternity hazing ritual’?” Jade’s voice cuts through the thick fog that’s descended upon Macy, clouding space and time.

  Reflexively she snaps her computer shut, the metal and plastic smacking like a trap.

  Jade laughs from over Macy’s shoulder, reaches down, and peels the screen up again. “What are you doing?”

  “Just messing around,” Macy says, but only because saying nothing would be worse.

  “Is this about Friday?”

  Macy shrugs. “No. I just—I don’t know. You know how it is. In six more clicks I’ll be reading a recipe for an Instant Pot casserole.”

  “What’s an Instant Pot?”

  “Like a Crock-Pot? But faster? I think? My mom has one.”

  Jade raises an eyebrow. She takes a step back, leaning against Macy’s bed. “Is this what’s been bothering you today? Initiation?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Jade tucks into herself, curving her shoulders, eyes on the floor. It’s an unusual posture for Macy’s roommate, whose default setting is a chin-out swagger Macy only just started to see as less-than intimidating. “You didn’t eat anything today. When Mr. Morgan called on you in math … you should have known the answer to that question.”

  “I wasn’t paying attention.”

  “Yeah, I know, that’s sort of my point. You just seem like something’s off. You can tell us, Mace.”

  “Us?”

  “Me. Bryce, Lauren. Your friends.”

  “So have you guys been talking about me? Having secret conversations—Ooh, what’s wrong with Macy? She’s so stupid, I can’t believe she didn’t know how to solve that equation.…”

  The look that flickers over Jade’s face—her eyebrows, her lips, the movement of her head, subtly—is one Macy has seen before. It’s the universal reaction to a disproportionate response.

  Still, Macy cannot help herself. “You’re here on scholarship, Jade. You think you won’t be the first to go when we all get caught?”

  “Watch it, Macy.” Jade’s voice is even.

  “No, you watch it, Jade. Hazing is against the law.”

  “Did you figure that out on your little research spree?”

  “I did, actually.”

  Jade issues a quick sharp half laugh, half sigh. “God, you know what? You should join the Heron. You’d fit right in.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Anjali Reddi is the most self-righteous person on this campus, and Louisa Manning isn’t far behind.” She pauses, collecting herself. “It’s just—you’re being ridiculous. Listen to yourself. Against the law? First of all, we’re the ones being hazed, so even if this were to reach the status of legal prosecution I doubt we’d be the ones held to account. You don’t charge the victim. Second of all, do you really think that anything that dangerous or demeaning would have survived generations? You read about a bunch of hazing-related deaths, right? And I’m guessing they were all at frats? Boys falling down stairs, everybody too drunk to realize how seriously they were hurt?”

  Macy is quiet.

  “Yeah. That’s not what’s going to happen here, Mace. Think about it logically. We have Dorm Parents. When the seniors party they go to Addison’s country house. When anybody else drinks they do it in the woods or in their rooms in groups of, like, three or four. Whatever you’re imagining just isn’t possible.”

  “It doesn’t have to be dangerous. It just might be embarrassing.”

  “Embarrassing? So you’re embarrassed. And guess what? I’ll be embarrassed right along with you. And Bryce and Lauren, too. All of us.” Jade pauses. “But you’ve gotta get it together, Macy. I am being very patient right now because you are clearly going through something, but you are losing your shit over nothing at all. It’s a silly tradition. There are going to be, like, two hundred more of them in our four years here.”

  “Well,” Macy says, “maybe I’m not cut out for this place.”

  “No, Macy. You can tell me you’re not cut out for this place when your grades are in the tank or when you’re pulling your eyebrows out over college applications. You cannot tell me you’re not cut out for this place because you’re intimidated by a stupid tradition. Now, it’s late, and I’ve got homework to do, and we’re not going to talk about this again until whatever happens on Friday happens.” She walks over to her desk, grabbing her computer from its resting spot. Just as she reaches the doorframe, she turns to face her roommate. “And, when you’re ready, you’re going to apologize to me for saying that thing about my scholarship. And you’re never going to use it against me again, or—I swear to God, Macy—that’s the end of our friendship.”

  * * *

  The next morning, Macy climbs out of bed as soon as there’s enough light to justify the hour as dawn. She changes quickly and quietly, fumbling for her clothing in the half-darkness, using her phone light to find a matching pair of socks in her top drawer. She grabs her sneakers in her hand and pads out of her room barefoot, twisting the knob as she closes the door behind her.

  Outside, the sun shoots across the Bowl, throwing long, amber-tinged shadows on dewy grass that was just twenty minutes ago a muted gray. The brightness confuses her, causing her to briefly question her outf
it selection. Fall morning runs are always hard to dress for—crisp but not cold, with stretches of sun-drenched road that can get, after three or four or six miles, uncomfortably warm. With the sun rising fast, Macy wonders if she should ditch the light long-sleeve she wears over her tank top—but she doesn’t want to risk waking Jade, or running into Ms. Brown, and the confrontation either would entail. A little extra sweat won’t kill her, she thinks, so she kicks her legs a few times, rolls her hips once, twice, and begins.

  Her loop is straight out of campus, down through the gate and right up 126. The roads are quiet, and when Atwater is safely behind her—around a turn and beneath a few rolling hills—Macy is able to relax into her stride. She focuses on her breath, which is even but rattling slightly, at the end, from the cold. A small cloud issues on the exhale. These are the mornings she loves. The chill shakes out the tiredness in the first three minutes, but it’s warm enough that she has a good sweat going by the second mile. She turns her attention to her stride, running through a mental checklist: Arms low? Forward lean? Chin down? Forefoot strike?

  After about a mile she hangs a right, and then another right a half-mile down that road, completing the smallest, narrowest side of the long, thin rectangle she’s running. Cars have a tendency to whip around these generally traffic-less county routes, so Macy is careful to hug the shoulder, her ankles threatening to slip where the blacktop cliffs into dirt and grass. She’s in a rhythm now, two and a half miles away from school, the midpoint of her run. Her mind is empty, clear, meandering meditatively.

  Macy and running were love at first sight. The coaches at her local high school held a summer running camp—they used it as an opportunity to scout up-and-coming talent, hooking promising middle schoolers before they had the chance to get good at one of America’s more popular youth sports: soccer, lacrosse, basketball—and Macy decided to give it a shot. A husband-and-wife duo who’d led Neuqua to a dozen state championships in the last twenty years, the Keatings disguised their running in games: Interval training masqueraded as red light-green light; long runs took the shape of particularly grueling battles of capture the flag. Macy showed up that first Monday morning, undersize and underweight, her sports bra barely necessary beneath a ten-dollar camisole tank top, dirty-blond hair tucked into a frizzy bun—and Mr. and Mrs. Keating saw four years of championships and a scholarship to Duke or Michigan or, if her grades weren’t quite up to snuff, Oregon.

  Running gave Macy a singular focus. When she ran—just three or four miles at a time then—her mind didn’t exactly go blank, but it hummed along, churning through thoughts in the same fleeting way it did under a hot shower at the end of a long day. But it was the feeling she got after running that she started to crave most: blissful, linguine-legged exhaustion. That summer she would finish her half day at running camp and then retreat to the couch for the afternoon, her only priority to nurse the weariness she felt bone-deep. The two weeks of camp were the first time Macy remembered feeling somewhat at peace.

  When seventh grade started, she applied for the athletic director’s permission to compete on the high school cross-country team. Middle schoolers were technically allowed to play their sport at a higher level than the middle school modified team, but they needed to pass a basic fitness test to ensure that they were physically mature enough to train alongside young adults five years older than them. Macy had no trouble with the push-ups and sit-ups and twelve-minute running test; it was at her physical with her pediatrician that the problem arose. Her iron was low. So were her B12 and vitamin D levels. Her hair was growing abnormally thick on her forearms, her doctor said, holding one up by Macy’s wrist for her mother to see. Is she eating a balanced diet?

  Macy’s mother’s chin quivered, an ugly wrinkling that made Macy embarrassed. She burst into tears, babbling about how Dr. Shapiro must think she’s such a bad mother but she won’t eat anything, she just won’t, only beige foods for years now, I’ve never seen anyone so picky in my life.…

  Dr. Shapiro, bewildered and too busy to spend more than seven minutes with each of her patients that afternoon, reached for a Kleenex and gave Macy’s mother a pat on the shoulder before turning to Macy.

  “If you want to run,” she said, “you have to eat. Have you ever had Ensure?”

  Macy shook her head.

  “It’s a nutritional supplement traditionally for the elderly. They sell it at the grocery store. It comes in little blue-and-white plastic bottles. I need you to drink it at least twice a day, three times if you can stomach it.” Turning back to her mother, Dr. Shapiro added, her voice stern: “And this is only a stopgap. She needs a balanced diet.”

  As Macy turns right back into campus—Professorville to her right, the Head of School’s house at the end of the oak-lined drive to her left—she keeps her chin down, not wanting to catch the eye of anyone who might be out this early: swimmers coming back from morning practice or faculty walking their dogs or even Vinny and the maintenance guys mowing the lawns. She jogs around the back of Lathrop, where she’s less likely to catch an upperclasswoman wandering across the Bowl on her way to an early breakfast.

  The rising sun hits the back of the building, bathing the small parking lot behind Lathrop in warm golden light. Macy lingers in it for a little bit, walking in tiny circles as her heart rate slows and the muscles in her legs cease twitching. She takes a seat on the blacktop—still cool from the night—and begins to move through a series of lazy stretches. She has her left leg wrapped over her right and her right elbow hooked over her left knee when the back door of Lathrop clangs open.

  Louisa Manning is the kind of girl who looks serious and studious even in sweatpants, and this morning is no exception. She scampers down Lathrop’s back steps with her head down and a novel tucked underneath her left armpit, an apple in one fist and a to-go coffee mug in another. Unlike Anjali Reddi, whose dark hair is looped into a sleek topknot, Louisa’s shoulder-length blunt cut is tousled in the way of models going for a bed-head look. The Heron’s editors are far enough away from where Macy sits that their conversation reaches her as little more than a melancholic murmur, and Macy hopes that this distance will mean they ignore her. But instead of heading left around the building toward Whitney, they head to the right, in Macy’s direction, cutting at a diagonal across the lot—

  “Hey.” They slow to a stop a few feet from where Macy sits in a frog stretch, easing her knees toward the ground.

  “Hey.”

  “Macy, right?” Louisa asks. Next to her, Anjali taps into her phone.

  Macy nods.

  “Were you out for a run?”

  “Just a few miles. Trying to shake off yesterday’s workout.”

  “Kit says you’re fast,” Anjali adds without looking up from her screen.

  Macy never knows what to say to this.

  “She also says that you’re thinking about joining the Heron?” Louisa peers over the top of her horn-rimmed glasses.

  Macy picks at a piece of blacktop wedged between the tread of her shoe. “I mean, I was thinking about it.”

  “What’s holding you back?” Anjali slides her phone into her back pocket.

  Macy does not say: Because I don’t even know where the Heron room is and I don’t know anyone else on the staff and I don’t know what I would write about and I don’t know if anyone would like my writing, anyway. Instead she says: “I just have a lot going on.”

  Louisa drops her chin and raises an eyebrow.

  “It only gets worse,” Anjali smiles. “You should think about it, at least. We meet on Mondays during club block.”

  Macy nods. “I’ll think about it.”

  “Good. And I’ll see you on Friday, right?”

  Looking down at her thighs, Macy imagines a large, black circle drawn oblong along the fat that sheaths her adductor. Her chest swells; a lump lodges in her throat. “I guess so,” she manages.

  “Cool,” Anjali says, beginning to turn on her heels.

  “And let me know if
you wanna talk about the Heron,” Louisa adds.

  Anjali ticks her chin up once, a quick nod. “Later,” she says, like an afterthought.

  Macy smiles and lifts her hand in a small wave. She watches the friends from her place on the pavement until they disappear over the hill in the distance.

  * * *

  Despite the extra workout, Macy eats neither breakfast nor lunch that day. She avoids the dining hall entirely, her stomach cramping as though her body is engaged in some wholesale organ rejection. In biology, Ms. McCann explains the difference between smooth and rough endoplasmic reticulum. Next to Macy, Bryce is furiously drawing the organelle on her notes and labeling it exactly as it appears on the slide at the front of the classroom. At the lab table in front of them, Leah Stern rotates on the top of her stool, spinning slowly to the left, then to the right.

  Macy begins to scribble RER—proteins and SER—fats, hormones, but as she does so she notices a small nick in the cuticle on her right thumb. She sets her pencil down and draws her hand toward her stomach. She traces the nail of her index finger along the half-moon of her thumbnail, feeling where the dry skin that overlaps at the base of the nail peels away from the shell. She moves her fingers across one another until she feels the nail of her index finger catch against the frayed cuticle, and then she gets to work. She chips and twists, flicking and picking at the skin until she has a hold on it—and then pulls, dragging the skin from where it meets the nail. It comes easily at first, following the natural curve of the nail bed, dead skin shearing easily from the living—but then it grooves away from the nail, and suddenly the flap Macy holds pulls toward her knuckle. She tries to redirect, angling the skin back toward the nail itself, but it’s too late: the blood blossoms in tiny droplets that swell into one another like raindrops forming a puddle.

  It does not hurt, but Macy exhales quickly anyway, loud enough that Bryce turns her way. Macy drops her finger into her lap, discreetly rolling her thumb into the hem of her shorts, using the fabric like a tissue, willing it to stem the tide.