Girls in White Dresses - JENNIFER CLOSE [20]
“So what if she wants to get married?” Isabella asked. “Why is that the worst thing in the world? It’s not such a crazy thought. She and Mike have been dating for a while. Isn’t it weirder that Mike is avoiding it?”
Ben shrugged. He took the straw out of his drink and downed the rest of it. “Why do you care?” he asked.
“I just think it’s mean the way that you and your friends treat her. I mean, what about Mike? If he doesn’t want to marry her, then why doesn’t he just break up with her?”
“Not everyone is dying to get married, Isabella.”
“I’m not saying that everyone is. But she clearly wants to. And if he doesn’t want the same thing, then shouldn’t they just break up?”
“Why are you fighting with me?” Ben asked. She hated when he did this, when he turned things on her. He could act however and say whatever he wanted, and if she called him on it, then she was the bad person who’d instigated the fight.
“I’m not fighting with you,” Isabella said. She knew that the night was already gone. It was ruined. They should just leave now instead of indulging in an evening of arguments and accusations.
“Really, well, that’s what it feels like. I need a new drink,” Ben said, and walked away.
Ben loved this stupid game show called Deal or No Deal. He loved the part when people had the chance to walk away with a ton of money and then made the wrong choice and left with nothing. It made him laugh out loud.
“Don’t you feel bad for them?” Isabella would ask.
“No,” he always said. “They’re stupid. They deserve it.”
When Isabella watched him laughing at those people, she felt like she was sitting next to the cruelest person in the world.
Less than a week after the wedding, Ben moved out. They had finally broken up, and it was just as awful as Isabella thought it would be. She couldn’t sleep and so she stared into the darkness every night. She was alone, and she felt the aloneness in everything she did. But that was just at first. It went away after a while, or maybe she just stopped noticing it.
She never ran into Ben, although she always thought she saw him in a crowded bar or walking down the street. Her eyes played tricks on her everywhere she went. But that, too, went away and then the only time she really thought about him was when she smelled pot.
The weird thing was that long after she got over Ben, Isabella thought about JonBenét. She couldn’t even recall the girl’s real name, and still she entered her mind with alarming frequency. Isabella remembered how she had laughed at JonBenét without really knowing her and how kind the girl had been to her that night. She thought about how everyone gossiped about her behind her back and wondered if she knew. And mostly, Isabella wondered if JonBenét was finally engaged or even married by now. She almost e-mailed Ben once, just to ask. Isabella wished for JonBenét when she threw pennies into fountains, when she blew on eyelashes, and when the clock read 5:55. She wished for her that she was married. She wished for her that she had a beautiful wedding. She hoped she was happy.
Abby’s family was weird. She had, on some level, always known this, but as she got older it became much more clear. When Abby was four, her dad’s uncle died and left them all of his money—and there was a lot of it. Instead of using it to buy a house or a boat, like normal people, her parents bought a farm in Vermont and spent their days smoking pot and refurbishing antique furniture. Sometimes her dad called her mom Lil’ Bit, and sometimes they let their friend Patches park his trailer on their property and live there. Yes, Abby’s parents were weird, her sister was even stranger, and the whole lot of them together was sometimes too much to bear.
Abby didn’t try to hide this information. In fact, it was usually the first thing she told people. “My parents are weird,” she’d say, as soon as the topic of family came up. “They’re hippies,” she’d add. A lot of times, the people she was talking to would nod their heads like they understood