Free Sisterland by Curtis Sittenfeld Page A

in fourth grade had explained to us the meaning of the line “They keep their boyfriends warm at night” from the song “California Girls.”
    Yes
, the board told us, and all the girls exclaimed with disgust and delight. But I wasn’t caught up in the excitement. I felt distracted by whatever it was—the energy—that had been summoned by the Ouija board; the girls had invited the energy in, and their invitation had been accepted.
    “When will he try to kiss me?” Marisa asked.
    V-E-D-R-Y, the board spelled out. As Marisa and Abby’s hands kept moving, Beth Wheatley said, “Does that mean Wednesday?”
    “Shh!” Marisa said.
    S-O-O-N.
    “Oh,” Beth said. “It just misspelled it.”
    “Beth.” Marisa had lifted her head to look at Beth directly. “Shut up.” Beside me, I felt Beth flinch.
    “Ask if anyone likes me,” said Debby.
    “Nobody cares if anyone likes you,” Marisa said. She smiled. “Whohere tonight will be the first person to die?” As the other girls gasped, I did it without deciding—my hand shot out, stilling the planchette.
    “No,” I said. “Don’t.”
    “Because you think it’s you?” Marisa said.
    It wasn’t me. It was Brynn Zansmyer, who at that moment lay on the far side of the rec room in her sleeping bag. She wouldn’t die immediately, but it wouldn’t be in such a long time, either. The energy, the presence, told me this without using words.
    “Because it’s sad,” I said. Marisa and Abby wouldn’t have come up with Brynn’s name except by coincidence. That was the irony, that they believed they wanted to know the answers to their questions, but they weren’t listening.
    “Fine,” Marisa said. “Then how about this: Is it true that Violet Shramm gave Mike Dornheiss a blow job behind the cafeteria?”
    Right away, and not because of the presence, I knew.
But a blow job?
I thought.
An actual blow job? And Mike Dornheiss?
Mike was pale and red-haired and freckly and on the seventh-grade field trip to the Daniel Boone Home in Defiance, Missouri, on the bus ride out, he had been sitting across the aisle from Vi and me and had lifted his backpack from the floor by his feet, unzipped it, vomited inside, then zipped it up. And besides all that, why hadn’t Vi told me? I was myself completely sexually inexperienced, which had the effect of causing me to withhold judgment—a blow job wasn’t much more foreign or hypothetical than a kiss.
    “I’m going to bed,” I said.
    “Me, too.” Beth stood as I did, and Marisa said, “You guys are lame.”
    I had made a mistake in sitting down by the Ouija board, but my bigger mistake had been attending the slumber party in the first place. Marisa was, as Vi had warned me, a rich bitch, though mostly just a bitch. Standing in the rec room, at what had somehow become almost four in the morning, I wished I were at home and that I’d spent the evening lying on our living room floor with Vi, watching Rob Lowe bite into an apple. Gesturing toward the board, I said, “You should be careful with that.”
    “You’re scared of it, aren’t you?” Marisa said.
    “Ask if I should quit violin,” Debby said.
    Marisa looked at me. “You are scared. Your sister is a penis licker and you’re a scaredy-cat.”
    “Here’s a question,” I said. “Is Marisa’s dad having an affair?” As in the moment when I’d set my hand on the planchette, it didn’t feel like I’d decided to blurt this out before doing so.
    Very quickly, Marisa overturned the entire board. “Fuck you, Daisy,” she said. She seemed to be biting back tears, which I had never seen her do and which made me feel panicked rather than triumphant. Then she said, “Fuck all of you.” She stood, whirled around, and stomped up the basement stairs, leaving us hostessless.
    Beth, Abby, Debby, and I hardly spoke after Marisa’s departure; we retreated to our sleeping bags, but none of us had shut off the rec room lights, and I could feel their brightness when I