Other Childhood Rebellions

by Jayne S. Wilson

Nobody in Acorn Dorm wants to share a bunk with Marlowe. She’s the overflow, the odd number from the other school’s eleven-year-olds, tossed in like an afterthought because not even her own wanted her, and she’s stupid, the dumbest, because she actually asks Livvie if she wants the bunk above hers.

Livvie doesn’t say anything because Livvie never really does except to Alice, who knows that Livvie can make a swear word out of anything, that Livvie is dynamite when you let her, and who glowers at Marlowe and nudges Livvie to a bunk across the room.

Everybody knows Livvie is Alice’s, that Livvie would bunk with Alice for the week because, of course. Because it’s Livvie who always holds the door closed for Alice when Alice uses the bathroom stall with the broken lock, and it’s Livvie Alice always saves a seat for, like she did on the bus to camp this morning, singing Spice Girls songs on the way to the Sonora foothills, only shutting her mouth when Livvie fell asleep. Because it’s been Alice’s and Livvie’s heads together since kindergarten, Alice’s hair red like dragon breath and Livvie’s the ash that follows, whispering pacts and pinky-swears while the rest stand by and exist.

The only clueless one is Marlowe, whose name is Sharpied on the tags and labels and undersides of all her things in her mom’s handwriting like she’s announcing herself over and over again with embarrassment: I’m Marlowe with the giant yellow duffel bag with the tag still on. I’m Marlowe with the coffin-shaped sleeping bag that can’t fill the edges of my mattress, and I don’t have a pillow. I’m Marlowe in the brink of summer with a Sherpa-lined winter coat and a Christmas beanie, Marlowe in the too-big hiking boots my mom bought for the last day’s night hike and, no, I didn’t bring other shoes.

But Marlowe catches on in the mess hall, when she grumbles, “You can’t get seconds of anything in this place,” and Alice looks at Livvie so Livvie knows she shouldn’t laugh, shouldn’t look when Alice hip-chucks Marlowe into the creek during Field Science and tugs Marlowe’s drawer open right before Acorn’s turn at the ropes course where they leave Marlowe teetering on the Mohawk Walk, right before dorm inspection so that when Acorn comes back with Teddy the counselor it’s Marlowe’s underwear he sees first thing, all faded cartoon characters and baby shades.

But Livvie doesn’t tell Alice and the Acorn girls when Marlowe trudges with her shampoo into the communal bathroom full of shower curtains wearing flipflops and a giant Bugs Bunny t-shirt, trying to shrink around everyone else who had the sense to wear their swimsuits. Livvie doesn’t tell Marlowe she’ll hold the shower curtain closed all the way round so no one will see, but she does it for Marlowe, who doesn’t own a swimsuit anyway.

And when Livvie opens her eyes one night to a spider on the underside of Alice’s bunk, it’s Marlowe who hears her breath catch, who was already awake because earlier she’d rolled off her bed in her sleeping bag from a sleep deeper than anything because at home Marlowe can feel all the sofa bed’s wires through her mattress. It’s Marlowe who coaxes the spider into the empty thermos that her mom said was as good as a water bottle like everyone else’s, who tip-toes past the sleeping Acorn girls and tugs their window open to nudge the spider back outside.

Livvie watches next to her, mumbles, “Thanks,” as they smile like two girls who’ve reached for the same book at the library, knows when Alice sits up in the dark and says, “Shut that window, it’s cold,” that Alice would have killed it. Alice with her training bra and her other childhood rebellions, who feels absence in the cheap red nail polish peeling from her fingernails, in the phantom presence of missing teeth, and who overheard her mom on the phone with Livvie’s dad years ago and can’t tell Livvie about it, but listens in on the cordless now, palm over mouthpiece, every time. Who tells the other Acorn girls that she’ll get her period by the end of sixth grade, she can feel it, and unfolds a fortune teller to predict when for the others but doesn’t need it to say Marlowe’ll be the last of them, the bloodless maid.

For the night hike, all the dorms line up single file outside the mess hall in reverse-alphabetical order, holding hands into the woods, the seven Acorn girls last. And dead last, palm-to-palm with Livvie, is Marlowe, who blinks into a whole lot of stupid nothing because she doesn’t know she needs glasses, that this sky might be the only sky dark enough for her to see stars; whose feet drag and squelch on the nothing until one too-big boot dips and sinks into something—a hole, or a pit, the perfect one, like her name’s Sharpied on it—and who whispers, “Wait, Livvie,” three times before she can yelp it, leg pulling at her foot until something pops with warm pain, and who tugs at her pantleg, at Livvie, whose hand she squeezes as she bites blood out of her lip, staring at all she can’t see, whose hand tugs back and tugs and tugs, and who tells Alice, “It’s Marlowe, she’s stuck.”

And Alice goes, “Let go, Livvie, let go,” and Livvie knows the whole sentence is an end-stop that Marlowe can hear, Marlowe blinking at where Livvie must be, Marlowe slackening her fingers around Livvie’s, to let her. So Livvie doubles her grip on Alice’s palm, follows her toward a voice in the dark calling out, “The Seven Sisters, see,” and everyone looks up, but through Canis Major and the Big Dipper, for the whole way back and after, in her pocket Livvie keeps her fingers crossed for Marlowe. That somebody will come looking for Marlowe.

Jayne S. Wilson’s fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in North Dakota Quarterly, SmokeLong Quarterly, Jellyfish Review, and elsewhere. She was nominated for a 2019 PEN/Robert J. Dau Prize, and is currently working on a novel and a collection of short stories. She is of mixed Filipino-Caucasian descent and is a self-proclaimed riffraff. Find her on Twitter @thisJayneperson and online at jayneswilson.com.