In her mind, she keeps saying, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” but she can’t figure out to whom she’s offering the apology.
“Are you okay?” Ned says when he finally checks on her. She’s just sitting there on his made bed. “Are you crying?”
“No,” Nanette says, wiping her eyes.
“Okay,” Ned says, like he’s afraid. “Do you want to come downstairs with us now?”
Nanette nods and then pulls herself together so that Ned’s little brother won’t be worried or upset.
Little Seth mostly keeps his eyes on the TV screen, so he doesn’t notice how red Nanette’s eyes are, and Ned doesn’t ask about her crying again.
33
Coach Seems Very Pleased
Somehow Nanette finds herself at State College speaking with the women’s soccer coach, lying about all sorts of things—like how Nanette really wants to play college soccer and how she’s learned and grown from the experience of missing her senior year and how soccer is now her number one priority and how much she would love to continue playing alongside Shannon.
They even watch a highlight reel of Shannon and Nanette’s many combo soccer scores, which Coach Miller had put together and sent along. Nanette feels like she is watching a fictional character score goal after goal as she sits in the glow of the TV screen in the coach’s dark office. Her dad can’t help but clap and cheer as the balls go into the various nets.
This new college coach seems very pleased, especially since Nanette’s parents have agreed to pay her full tuition, which means the coach won’t even have to use one of her athletic scholarships to recruit Nanette.
“We’re a family here,” the woman says from behind a huge desk in her office. “One big unit. We do everything together. You’ll never walk alone on this campus. You’ll eat, sleep, study, and train with the team. Once you assimilate, you’ll become part of something larger than yourself—a team capable of doing so much more than any one of us can do alone. That’s our philosophy here. United we stand. Divided we fall. There is no I. There is only us. How does that sound?”
“Perfect,” Nanette says, and even manages to maintain eye contact before her parents and this new coach all trade smiles.
34
You Will Hate Yourself for It
The night before prom, Nanette cannot sleep and around 1:00 AM, she finds herself rereading The Bubblegum Reaper. She hasn’t read it in months, and she falls prey to Wrigley’s spell all over again, which makes her feel guilty about her recent experiment.
Around 3:30 AM, Nanette comes across a line neither she nor Mr. Graves had underlined before, which seems odd, because it immediately sends her searching for a highlighter in her desk.
And then one day you will look for you in the mirror and you’ll no longer be able to identify yourself—you’ll only see everyone else. You’ll know that you did what they wanted you to do. You will have assimilated. And you will hate yourself for it, because it will be too late.
Nanette turns on her bedroom light and looks for herself in the mirror over the dresser.
She sees Nanette, but she also sees all the little bottles and tubes of makeup she has been wearing, and the electric-blue prom dress that her mother and Shannon “helped” her pick out; it’s hanging behind her, on the iron canopy bed.
“I’m sorry,” she says again. “I’m so sorry.”
35
It Feels Like She’s Sitting on the TV Remote Control
On the day of the prom, Nanette leaves school early with the other girls whose parents wrote notes so that they could get their hair and nails done in the afternoon. Riley, Shannon, and Maggie insist that Nanette put the top up on her Jeep because they don’t want their hair to get messed up, even though it hasn’t been styled yet. She does what the group wants even though it’s her Jeep and she prefers the wind through her hair.
A small woman scrapes off the dead skin from the bottom of Nanette’s feet. She has her fingernails and toenails filed and painted sky blue. Her hair is carefully arranged and hair-sprayed. Makeup is professionally applied. She is transformed into someone else.
“Are you okay?” Shannon asks as her nails are drying.
“Yeah,” Nanette says. “Why?”
“You’re so quiet.”
“Isn’t Nanette always?”
“Yeah, but today I can sort of feel your quiet. It’s weird.”
Nanette smiles at Shannon’s use of the word weird.
It’s the worst thing you can be according to Shannon and company, but it’s what Nanette most longs to be—at least the way Shannon means.
Nanette has looked up the word weird, which can mean “supernatural” or “fantastic.”
It can also be used as a noun to mean “fate or destiny.”
But Shannon doesn’t know that.
Nanette’s parents take pictures of her in the electric-blue dress, and they seem so happy to see her all dolled up like this, ready for prom, doing what eighteen-year-old girls in America are supposed to do.
She pretends to be happy.
She’s still doing the experiment.
She smiles with all her might.
The boys have rented a limo, and when they arrive, all the other girls have already been picked up, so Nanette rounds out the number at eight. After a few more pictures in front of her house—the boys goofing around with rented top hats and canes, acting childish in the most innocent of ways, making the parents laugh and trust them—Nanette is seated on Ned’s lap in the limo. He’s stroking her leg with one hand; his other is on her belly. Hidden under Nanette’s ass and the fabric of her dress is Ned’s erection. It feels like she’s sitting on the TV remote control.