Two Good Girls

The parking lot behind Amanda's school smelled of car exhaust and the first cut grass of spring, and the last week before break had the whole senior class vibrating with it — the countdown, the lists, the girls in clusters comparing swimsuits they'd already bought twice. Amanda's table was the one by the fence, the good one, and the four of them were already there when she walked up — Chloe on the hood of the Civic, Maya mid-story with her hands doing most of the work, Jess fiddling with the speaker, Sydney in sunglasses that hid nothing. They made room for her without being asked, the way you make room for the person who decides where everyone eats. Amanda dropped her bag and took the center of the bench, and the orbit closed around her.

"So," Chloe said. "The sister. She's actually coming?"

"She's already coming. She's driving down from school tomorrow."

"The champion," Maya said, like it was a word she'd been saving. "Are you gonna introduce us, or what?"

Amanda grinned. "Depends. You gonna be weird about it?"

"I'm always weird. It's part of my charm."

"Then no." The laugh went around the table, and Amanda sat in the middle of it, warm, and let the sun sit on her shoulders.

The confrontation came at lunch, in the cafeteria line — Taylor from the private school across town, the one who'd been running her mouth all week. She came up beside Amanda and smiled the way some girls smile, all teeth and no eyes. "Heard your sister's coming to Destin. The wrestler."

"That's right."

"I heard she's a dyke," Taylor said, sweet as syrup. "Is that true, or does she just look like one?"

The line went quiet. Chloe started to move, and Amanda put a hand out and stopped her. "I'll tell her you asked," Amanda said. "She's got a list of people who want to find out."

Taylor's smile flickered. "What, she's gonna fight me? I'm not scared of some—"

"You should be," Amanda said, and turned back to her tray, and the line moved.

But Taylor wasn't done. She grabbed Amanda's arm — hard enough to spin her, loud enough for the whole cafeteria to turn — and said, "Don't walk away from me," and Amanda moved the way Lisa had taught her in the backyard one Thanksgiving, the move they'd practiced on the grass until the neighbors' dog barked: her hand came over Taylor's wrist, her hip turned, and Taylor was on the floor, flat on her back with her arm twisted, staring at the ceiling with her mouth open. Amanda held her there a second, no longer, and let go, and stood up, and brushed her hands off. "Don't touch me," she said, quiet, and stepped over her and walked back to the table, and the whole cafeteria watched her go. By the time she sat down, Chloe was laughing hard enough to cry, Maya was already retelling it, and Sydney had slid her sunglasses down her nose to look at Amanda like she'd grown a second head.

The last class crawled. Amanda sat in the back watching the clock, thinking about the sun and the water and her sister, and she texted Lisa the play-by-play of the cafeteria — I put Taylor on the ground — and Lisa's reply came back in one line: Clean or dirty?

Clean.

Good. Don't tell Mom.

Amanda laughed out loud and showed the phone to Chloe, and the warmth of it stayed with her the rest of the day.

On the way to the parking lot, a freshman — a small girl with a backpack too heavy for her — was getting circled by two boys, the kind who call things out. Amanda veered off without a word and walked straight through the middle of them, took the girl by the elbow, and said, "You coming?" And the girl came, and the boys made noises but didn't follow, because the whole school had seen what Amanda did at lunch and word travels faster than anything. "They're not gonna do anything," the freshman said, small.

"No," Amanda said. "They're not."

That night, packing. The white bikini laid out on her bed, the one she'd bought with her own money and tried on three times in the fitting room, the one that made her look like the girls in the magazines — the ones her sister called unrealistic with a twist in her mouth Amanda had never understood. She folded it into the bag and added the backup, the black one, and she texted Lisa: We leave tomorrow. You're driving ME this time, right? And Lisa's reply came fast: Yes. Chloe's car follows. No getting lost. Amanda rolled her eyes at the phone the way you roll your eyes at someone you love, and she fell asleep smiling, the way you do when the best week of your life is sitting in a bag by the door.

Morning: the curb, the bag, Chloe's Civic idling behind her with the crew hanging out the windows, and Lisa's car coming down the street — Kara in the passenger seat, Dani in the back, and Lisa at the wheel with her sunglasses on, looking like she'd been cut from something. Amanda's heart did the thing it always did when she saw her sister, the thing that had been happening since she was small, since the backyard, since the night Lisa had come home with a trophy and put it on Amanda's dresser instead of her own. "Big sister's here!" Chloe yelled. "I know," Amanda said, and she was already running.