back and screamed at him to stop. He laughed and there was silence. Sloane caught her breath.
Why the fuck did you do that? she said.
Instead of answering her, he laughed and did it again. Sloane shouted again and yanked the wheel, overcorrecting the direction. The car veered toward the grassy median and hit the dip, going fifty. She didn’t have the time to register that they were off the ground before she heard the crash.
It took a moment to realize they were still alive. It was a surreal moment, of course, because their lives had gone from routine to throwaway to precious in a matter of seconds. In those seconds, the car had flipped one revolution in the air across three lanes of traffic. They’d been in the left lane and now they were on the sidewalk, sideways, on the driver’s-side wheels. The car felt like a jangle of bones. Their seat belts, they would learn later, had saved their lives.
Get out of the car, Sloane said.
Lucas was shivering. Are we alive?
Yes. Shut up and get out of the fucking car, now.
What?
Grab your bag and get out of the car.
Lucas did as he was told. The car teetered. She made them walk down the sidewalk, quickly. Her legs were shaking. A block later she had him unzip his bag and throw his bottle of vodka into some bushes. They heard the thud and returned to the car. By that time, the police had arrived. They interviewed Sloane while Lucas sat on the curb, his knees drawn up. Sloane asked the officers, What do I do with the car? Where do I take it?
Honey, one of the officers said, the car is totaled.
She felt her throat close up. The other officer laughed. She felt they still hadn’t answered her question.
Neither Sloane nor Lucas had a scratch. It was a miracle. All the officers said so. Sloane stared at the car. Totaled, she said out loud. She thought about the word, how it looked like the adjective it described.
They didn’t go to the hospital. Their parents picked them up from the police station. Perhaps because it happened like that, Dyan and Peter weren’t able to feel the relief they might have felt otherwise. If, for example, Sloane had gone to the hospital in a neck brace.
Because what was more shocking than the accident itself was that nobody in Sloane’s family said, Thank God you’re alive. Her parents were quiet and discerning. They murmured about what they’d have to do in the morning. They were not exactly angry. Her mother, considering her own past, didn’t react in the manner one might expect. She didn’t clutch Sloane to her chest, for example, sobbing.
But Sloane was most upset about the way Gabe reacted. Gabe was pissed about his car. He looked at her like she was a piece of shit.
Many years later she would realize that this was the precise moment an important man in her life made her feel unloved, but she didn’t see it that way at the time. She felt she was lucky in so many ways. She was alive. The family would not be broken by this mistake of hers. They would be able to sweep it away. Her brother’s eyes, though, paralyzed her in a way the accident had not. Perhaps, she figured, it was because she was okay. They didn’t want to think of what might have happened.
At a certain point Sloane had completely embraced a new identity, Popular Girl Sloane, Party Girl Sloane. To be this Sloane meant being pretty, which she was; being up for drinking and hanging out and hosting parties and arriving at parties at the right time with the right outfit; flirting but not being an all-out slut. It meant being cool. But there were other cool girls, other hot girls, other flirts. Something about the accident, something about her brother, something about her parents, something about her past and never having been the best at anything, made her want to be a superlative. She felt that the only way to be seen was to be remarkable in one department.
So she jiggered the identity into Skinny Party Girl. She wasn’t the prettiest or the most flirtatious, but she saw an empty slot for being the thinnest. It was something she knew her mother would like.
To achieve the goal, she gave herself an eating disorder. She began as an anorexic, because she felt that was the cleanest way. For some time, it worked. She ate