The Comedown by Rebekah Frumkin

Author:Rebekah Frumkin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

JOCELYN WOODWARD

(1973–)

1991–2009

Boston and Chicago

Unlike other girls, Jocelyn hadn’t papered the walls of her childhood bedroom with photo collages. In fact, most of the bedroom walls were beige and bare—she’d expressed a vague desire to her mother to paint them light pink when she was eleven, and they’d never gotten around to it. She had a poster of her crush, Ian Curtis from Joy Division, on the wall across from her bed, and a butterfly made of wire and glittery pink mesh hanging from her ceiling—a gift from her grandma on her third birthday. It wasn’t until after her high school graduation that she finally put something on the wall next to her bed: a photo of her and her friends at the party she threw when she graduated from boarding school.

In the photo, taken in 1991, big-haired Jocelyn stands in the center of the frame, all high cheekbones, bow lips, and long legs underneath her party dress, face pinched in imitation of a self-satisfied smile. She’s flanked by her friends, fellow Bostonians: all girls, all white, most of them like her but with bigger-than-normal hips, a mole, jagged bangs. Sandy (the big-hipped girl) had invited her younger brother—who went to Allenton Prep, St. Josephine’s brother school across the lake—to Jocelyn’s graduation party. He’d shown up foggy-eyed and had spiked the lemonade with vodka, getting everyone drunk in the middle of the day. Most of them had only been drunk once or twice before, and the novelty of it, plus the fact that they’d just graduated, had them through-the-roof ecstatic. The adults at the party, Jocelyn remembered, sort of just shrugged their shoulders and joined in. Her dad had gotten a little sloppy at the grill, putting a hand on her mother’s chest when she came over to kiss him. Her friends’ parents, seeing the lieutenant governor act like a teenaged boy, had followed suit. The party lasted until long after sundown.

That night she was supposed to sleep on a cot in her parents’ hotel room a few blocks from the St. Josephine campus, but she didn’t bother to stop by and they didn’t bother to check up on her. St. Josephine was built on a hill that rolled down to a small, man-made lake, on the eastern shore of which stood Allenton. She and her friends paddled a rowboat across the lake, Sandy’s little brother at the helm shouting in his pubescent voice: “Land ho! Land hoooo!” They landed at the Allenton dock, received by a bunch of horny sixteen-year-olds in navy blazers who knew Sandy’s little brother. Jocelyn brushed one of their cheeks with her hand and gave his forehead a kiss. That made everyone cheer. His eyes big underneath her protective hand, he said, “I can get cocaine if you want. I know a guy on campus.”

“You do that,” Jocelyn said.

The blazer boys scattered off somewhere and Jocelyn and her friends ran across campus, which rumor had it was more religious than St. Josephine and very strict. They ran silently, doe-like, communicating through muted giggles.

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