The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

On the plus side, death is one of the few things that can be done just as easily lying down.

-Woody Allen

Aidan had been the worst boyfriend in the world.

They'd met in art class, which Tana had taken only because her friend Pauline had promised her it'd be easy and full of other slackers. Pauline was more or less right. Their teacher spent the time painting trompe l'oeils of arched windows leading into darkness-soaked rooms or somewhat grisly still lifes of rotting fruit, flies, and spilled honey. He sold the paintings in a gallery three towns over and told the class at length about how he needed the money since teachers' salaries sucked, especially in these dark times.

Basically, so long as everyone worked on some kind of project more or less quietly, he didn't bother any of them.

Pauline decided that she was going to cut up yearbooks and glue tiny pieces to stiffened linen so that she could make a bra out of the heads of the boys in class. She planned to frame it in a shadowbox and sneak it into the award cabinet once it was done.

Tana was mostly doing nothing, drawing idly with charcoal, and talking to Aidan.

He was just a cute boy in class back then, one with floppy brown hair that fell in front of his eyes when he talked, who wore clean band shirts with hoodies zipped over them, bright red Chucks, and a black-and-white checkered belt. He smiled a lot and laughed at his own jokes and told Tana lots of stories about the unfathomable girls he seemed to find himself dating. He seemed hapless and good-natured. He was always in love. He smelled like Ivory soap.

Pauline teased Tana about him, and Tana just laughed. She got why girls fell for him. He was charming, but he was so upfront about trying to charm her, so obvious, that she was sure she was immune.

Aidan's project was a life-size papier-mache version of himself, posed as if he were asleep in class. He badgered Tana into measuring him for it, and she rolled her eyes as she wound the tape around his upper arms and across the width of his chest.

When he grinned down at her, raising his eyebrows as though they were sharing a joke, she realized she wasn't immune after all.

He asked her out soon after, not on a real date or anything, just to hang out with some friends. And she went and had a few beers. When he kissed her, she let him.

"You're not like other girls," Aidan said, pressing her back against the cushions of the couch. "You're cool."

Tana tried to be cool, tried to act as if it didn't bother her when he flirted with anything that moved-and, that one time, when he was really drunk, with a coatrack. She'd heard all his stories about the possessive girl who texted him over and over again when he was just out with his cousin or the dramatic girl who sent him ten-page letters, the writing smudged with her tears. She didn't want to be the star of another "crazy girl" story.

And it didn't bother her, not really, not in the way Aidan seemed to expect. Sometimes it hurt to watch him with someone else, sure, but what she really minded was that he always seemed to be monitoring her for signs that she was going to scold him. She minded going to parties, where she made awkward conversation, drank a lot, and pretended that everyone wasn't waiting for her to pick some kind of giant fight with Aidan. And she minded not knowing the rules, because any time she asked him about them, he just stammered elaborate conversation-ending apologies.

When she suggested he go to parties alone, he would make an exaggeratedly sad face. "No, Tana," he'd say. "You have to be there. I hate going to things by myself."

"You could go with friends," she'd suggest, laughing at him. Because it wasn't as if he was ever alone. He knew everyone. He had lots of friends.

"I want to go with you," he'd say, his eyes big and pleading, his mouth quirked in a little half smile, as though he was acknowledging how ridiculous he was being. And it worked. It always worked, that combination of flattery and little-boy silliness and, underneath it all, that fear Tana had that she wasn't as cool as he thought she was.

So she went to parties and pretended not to mind. And the more Tana didn't say anything, the more outrageous his behavior got. He would make out with girls in front of her. He would make out with boys in front of her. He would wink at her from across rooms, daring her to criticize him.

That's when things got kind of fun.

She schooled herself to even greater nonchalance. She'd walk over to Aidan after he seemed to be finished kissing someone, curl her arm around his shoulder, and ask to be introduced. She'd assign points for style and take away points when he'd struck out. No matter what he did, she never let him see it bother her.

"You're playing some kind of game of sex chicken with him," Pauline told her, pushing back a mass of tiny braids. "Who cares which one of you flinches first?"

"Sex chicken," Tana said, snickering. "Too bad we don't know anyone in a band-that would be a good name."

Pauline whacked her with the magazine she was reading. "I'm serious. You know what I mean."

Tana couldn't explain why she kept on with it, couldn't put into words the nihilistic thrill that came from suffering a little or the satisfaction of playing Aidan's screwed-up game by his screwed-up rules and still winning. She was cool, and she wouldn't be uncool no matter how much he goaded her. While Aidan sometimes seemed annoyed that she didn't hassle him, there were other times he told her there was no other girl like her. No other girl in the world.

"You can't win when someone else makes all the rules," Pauline warned her. Tana didn't listen.

Then one night, at another party, Aidan motioned her over and introduced her to the boy sprawled on the couch beside him. The boy's mouth was pink, and he looked a little drunk from the bottle of tequila in front of him and from the drowsy kisses he'd been sharing with Aidan.

"This is my girlfriend, Tana," Aidan said. "You want to kiss her?"

"Your girlfriend?" The boy looked momentarily hurt, but he hid it well. "Sure," he said. "Why not?"

"How about you?" Aidan asked her, challenging her. "Are you game?"

"Sure," Tana said, her daring so tangled up with her determination that she wasn't sure which one made her agree. Her heart hammered against her chest. It felt scary, as if she were stepping across some invisible boundary, as if she might not know herself afterward. As if she were becoming the self she'd always thought lurked just underneath her skin. Her coolest possible self.

The boy's lips were very soft.

When she looked up at Aidan, the shock on his face went to her head like a shot of strong liquor. She was giddy with power. And when the boy kissed her back hungrily, she was giddy with that, too.

Aidan leaned forward, and his expression had changed-he had a smile on his face, like they were sharing a joke, just her and him, as if he got that all the parties were games of check and checkmate-as though Aidan knew they were both doing this in the hopes that the adrenaline might blot out every shitty thing that had ever happened to them and he was glad she was with him, that they were together.

It made her think of a year before, when she'd stood alone on train tracks and waited until the train was barreling toward her, until she could feel the heat of it, until her blood sang with fear, before she jumped out of the way.

It made her think of another day, when she'd pressed the gas pedal down on her car and gone skidding through the night streets, slicing through icy rain.

He smiled at her as though he really believed she was special. As though only she had ever really understood what it was to take a dare for the sake of being daring.

But none of that turned out to be true, because Aidan dumped her three weeks and a half dozen parties later, with a message that said only, "I think we're getting too serious & I want to take a break."

After that, she wasn't sure what the game was or if she'd imagined it. All she knew was that she had lost.