Marie, the Most Beautiful
We did not mean for this to happen. The boy, bleeding on Marie’s carpet. Marie standing on his chest, tap dancing, as if that will help the situation. The situation cannot be helped. We close the curtains, but they’re sheer. We turn off the twinkly lights, but still we see.
Marie, please! we beg her. The pressure of her feet is only accelerating the bloodspill.
It’s not my fault, she says, arms flapping over her head like wings. By this, she means it’s our fault.
Marie is the most beautiful. She has been since elementary school, when her bangs were first cut, sliced clean across her forehead. A dark density making way for the ice of her eyes.
We knew she would have everything, and we accepted this because we liked to look at her. We liked how long her arms were, how confident her smile, despite the crisscross gnarls of her teeth.
And she liked having us around, because it’s important to be worshipped. It’s important, she told us, as we teetered toward adolescence, to learn the ways of the world. For her to learn them, she meant. That is how come we started on boys.
They don’t smell good, Hazel said, as we sniffed around school, that tall building, those thick walls, filthy windows. We were searching for the perfect specimen.
Hazel is the most ugly, so she became astute, sitting her spectacles on the tip of her nose, keeping her hair ponytailed at the back of her head.
I don’t think this is a good idea, she added, as we went through boy backpacks.
Don’t think, we told her. We lifted a molded orange from a backpack. Thinking is not good for your complexion, we added, looking at the pustules on Hazel’s chin.
Our investigation was irrelevant. Because Marie found one for herself, an older boy, two grades above us, with fuzz over his lip and a nose like royalty. Look how prominent, Marie said of the slope. She had us appreciate him. She had us watch as they kissed, as she moved his hand over her budding chest. Like this, she showed us.
But what’s the point? Hazel asked Marie. We were on the swing set, Hazel and Marie were, the rest of us behind, pushing.
The point? Marie sent her head back, swinging, soaring, legs kicking. What a foolish question.
Hazel looked into the sun, the bright star none of the rest of us dared glimpse at. It seems pointless is all, she said.
Marie jumped off her swing, landing beautifully on her feet. It’s a precursor, she explained.
To what?
To… Marie squinted at the sun. To sex, of course.
The use of this word, this terrible word, gave us newfound respect for our beautiful friend. She was more knowledgeable than we were, practically all-knowing, how had we not seen that? How had we not understood? From her we would learn the ways of the world. The world was a wilderness, no one else was going to help.
She said to meet at her house after dinner. That the boy would be there, she would make sure of it, and they would do sex, and all of us would see the point.
Hazel scoffed from her swing, but of course she was intrigued.
We were intrigued as we shuffled into Marie’s bedroom, as we stood under the twinkling lights, as we saw Him on the bed, his shirt stained, his pants sagging, his body odoring. Marie sat at the edge of the bed in her Sunday best, smiling at us, but without teeth. She was hiding her teeth. She was nervous, we could tell. Her bangs wayward, parted haphazardly. Even the picture on the wall, the one of us, had gone crooked.
Now sex, Marie announced, and her sex partner took his shirt off, revealing the scraggliest scrawniest body we’d ever seen. He leaned back on the bed, as if going to sleep. And did nothing. He was waiting for Marie to start. He told us the girl has to start.
Marie looked at the boy, at the dots of his nipples, the bulge of his belly. Then she looked at us, her eyes squinty, her leg shaking. Tell me what you know about sex, she demanded of us.
We knew nothing, and we were intuiting that maybe Marie didn’t either.
It’s internal, we blurted, trying to think, to remember that day in school. The assembly. The flower bouquets, the shadow puppets. Everyone shouting.
Yes, Marie agreed, internal.
There’s fertilizing, we remembered. Through the hole.
The hole, Marie nodded, staring at the boy on the bed, whose eyes were closed in anticipation. We must make the hole, she said.
Yes, we agreed swiftly.
But where? Marie sighed.
Hazel pushed her spectacles up her nose. By the heart, she said. Sex is a union of hearts.
All of us nodded. It was starting to come into focus. We felt hopeful as we handed Marie the scissors. Marie wanted Hazel to do it. Hazel scoffed and said Marie was the one who wanted sex in the first place. In the end it was a combination of all of us holding the boy down and carving the hole as he screamed. Sex is loud and very violent, we observed. We decided once would be enough. Love him and leave him.
We are not sure now that we did it right. We’re quite sure we didn’t. Marie is dipping her toes into the boy’s bloody chest hole, and it is quieter as he has stopped screaming, due to his deadness. Marie says it feels nice—the warmth, the wetness. That we should try it.
But Marie! we plead. Look at him!
Marie is flapping her arms, nearly floating away with sexuality. We want to be too. We want to be everything she is. She smiles with teeth, toes tinted red.
It’s no one’s fault, she decides.
She shoves her foot inside the boy’s chest hole. She tells us this is growing up. A squelching sounds from the hole, and Marie’s eyes widen, icy, frosty. Glinting. She has never looked more beautiful. Her beauty is ours. We will do whatever we have to, we’ll do anything, to keep it.
Skyler Melnick (@skylermelnick) has an MFA in fiction from Columbia University. She writes about ghost girls, guillotines, and women falling from the sky. Her work appears in Wigleaf, Fairy Tale Review, Fractured Lit, and elsewhere, with support from Yaddo, Vermont Studio Center, and Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference.