Like Mandarin - Kirsten Hubbard [74]
“Don’t just stare at everything. Put it on. We’re gonna whore you out tonight.”
I paused, then laughed uncertainly. “What are we really doing?”
“I’m being serious. I know you’d like to meet a guy, and this is the best place I know to catch one. Besides the bar, of course.” She handed me a makeup brush.
“But …”
But what? I knew I couldn’t protest after I’d worked so hard to be like Mandarin. I’d told myself a million times I’d follow her lead anyplace, any which way, if only she’d agree to lead me. “It’s just …,” I began again. “You know I’ve never …”
“Obviously.”
“That’s not what I meant. I’ve never even kissed a guy.”
“No big deal. Although …” Mandarin looked at me, her expression intense. “Do you want to practice first?”
I stared at her a little too long. Then she laughed, and I looked away.
“You’ll be fine!” she said. “Quit worrying. Just ditch that idiotic bumblebee sash.”
The story behind the Washokey quarry was another one of those local legends, like the Virgin Mary rock, documented in self-published books available at Wyoming souvenir shops.
The quarry, so the story went, had been carved sixty years earlier by a single obsessive-compulsive man with a desire to dig. What he’d expected to find wasn’t clear. Some people claimed diamonds. Others said gold, oil, or dinosaur bones. After a decade and a half of digging, the man suffered a heart attack. It took weeks for his son to find his body, still propped atop his shovel. Since he had never found whatever substance he’d sought, he was said to haunt the quarry forever after, et cetera, et cetera.
All his work had been futile, anyway. The only substance worth mining in the Washokey Badlands Basin was boring old bentonite—mineral rubbish used as a filler in candy and lipstick. Probably including Frisky Flamingo and What in Carnation.
Nature had since reclaimed the quarry. Because it collected rainwater and winter melt, it served as a sort of badlands oasis. Its edges were crowded with cottonwoods and scraggly shrubs. The center was perfect for beer bashes.
Or so I’d heard.
Music echoed off the walls as Mandarin and I descended the hand-carved steps running down the quarry’s side. Shadows cast by the twin bonfires flickered all around us. I concentrated on placing my ill-fitting high heels on rocks I hoped wouldn’t dislodge, willing myself to look at my feet instead of the people below.
Once we reached the bottom, Mandarin led me through the crowd. Everybody from school was there. Or at least, all the upperclassmen. I glimpsed a few freshmen and sophomores and was thankful Alexis & Co. seemed to be missing, though I did see Brandi Shelmerdine. I recognized Kate Cunningham, and Peter Shaw, and Joshua Mickelson, and Tag Leeland, and other juniors and seniors from homeroom.
It was so bizarre that parties like this existed—and had always existed. All these everyday faces congregating and having the time of their lives, without my even knowing.
There were strangers, too. “Kids from other towns,” Mandarin told me. “They come all the way from Worland and Thermopolis and Benton. Our quarry’s the best.”
I wondered if I should feel proud.
Everybody stared as Mandarin walked by. But how could they not? Her skin looked flawless in the dark, her hair impossibly black. The firelight made her hazel eyes flash. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d crouched on all fours and roared, her true primal self revealed.
Meanwhile, I clung to her finger as if it were a twig on a cliffside, the only thing anchoring me above a bottomless pit. Without the sash, my dress looked like a skanky nightgown, swishing around my bare legs. I tried to saunter, but my heels snagged on the uneven ground. Every time I blinked, Mandarin’s mascara threatened to fasten my eyes shut.
I felt like at any minute, somebody would call me out: “What is she doing here?”
It seemed like forever until we emerged from the far sideb of the crowd. Mandarin pulled me closer. “Want me to get you a beer?”
I’d never tasted beer before. I’d never even had the chance to. Momma didn’t keep