Two or Three Things I Forgot to Tell You by Joyce Carol Oates Read Free Book Online Page B

judgmental. As they resented receiving grades lower than A-minus.
    Secretly, Merissa thought that Mr. Kessler was absolutely right. Even those classmates whom she liked, in many cases, imagined themselves entitled —to get high grades, to get into the best colleges, to take their places in their parents’ worlds, in upscale towns like Quaker Heights, New Jersey. They would work—to a degree. But they expected to be rewarded, and could be mean and spiteful when they were not.
    The fact was that Quaker Heights Day School, though it had been founded in the late 1960s, in an era of idealism, as a place in which “high-quality education” was administered in “egalitarian surroundings,” was dominated by a hierarchical social structure that most teachers pretended to know nothing about, even as, in the classroom, they deferred to its rankings. For here was a social pyramid firmly in place, as in any suburban public school: popular kids at the top; misfits and losers at the base; in the middle the majority of the student population, anxious not to sink further, ever-hopeful of rising by a notch or two.
    Merissa and her friends—the girls of Tink, Inc.—were somewhere near the top. While Tink had been their friend, and Tink had had an outsider reputation—famous (in another lifetime, as a child actress) even as she was controversial (that’s to say, Tink had numerous detractors)—Merissa and the others had been envied for their nearness to Tink; now that Tink had departed, some residue of her reputation lingered, like a slow-fading ghost.
    And now that Merissa was going to a “top Ivy” school, her status remained high.
    And she was good-looking: pale blond hair worn straight past her shoulders, delicate features, large gray-blue eyes, and—when she could force herself—a “sweet” smile.
    Merissa looked like perfection. She looked as if she must be very, very happy.
    She’d been told there were guys who were afraid to approach her. Without knowing what she did, Merissa sent a disdainful signal that seemed to say, Don’t come near. If you like me, I can’t possibly like you.
    Still, Merissa Carmichael was what you’d call a “top” senior.
    Though how easy it would be to sink—as it would be easy to sink in quicksand. Just let go.
    How had Tink let go ? The rumor was, she’d drunk half a bottle of her mother’s most expensive French wine, taken an overdose of her mother’s barbiturates, and just gone to bed, in her usual grungy black leggings, her long-sleeved GUERRILLA GIRL T-shirt, barefoot and her freckled face scrubbed clean, her teeth freshly brushed and flossed.
    Tink had a thing about flossing . Tink cheerfully described herself as OCD—(obsessive-compulsive disorder)—in minor, weird ways.
    Tink must have known about cutting . For she had had several little tattoos on her shoulders and upper arms, and you could say that cutting was a form of self-tattooing.
    Tink, I miss you so!
    Why did you leave us, Tink?
    We loved you. Why wasn’t that enough?
    â€œHey. Merissa?”
    It was Shelby Freedman, who sat just behind Merissa. Poking Merissa’s shoulder, as if to wake her—but she hadn’t been asleep, had she?
    Shelby was an old friend from middle school. Never a close friend, but Merissa liked Shelby, and would have liked to be a closer friend—except there wasn’t room for Shelby in Merissa’s life.
    She was not a girl in Tink, Inc.
    (Did Shelby know this? If she did, she didn’t seem to hold it against Merissa.)
    â€œYou okay, Merissa? What’re you doing?”
    What had Merissa been doing? In the midst of Mr. Kessler’s science class—trying to talk to Tink?
    Trying to hear Tink’s faint, teasing voice?
    Sure I love you, M’ris.
    But first, love yourself.
    Shelby had nudged Merissa, alarmed at what Merissa was doing: She’d seized a strand of her