Chapter Text
Judith saw Coronabeth three times in between the time she texted her the meanest thing she could think of and the time Coronabeth texted her an invitation to her 21st birthday party. The sense of finality Judith had felt when she hit send on, “Thanks for the offer. But not in this life or in any other” had been relative, it turned out. Something as bright and vicious as Coronabeth Tridentarius was not easily erased from the brain.
___
The first time had been the summer after their first year of college. The Tridentarius family threw a party to welcome their daughters home, to celebrate their achievements — Ianthe’s name on the Dean’s List, and Corona’s completion of her first year of college. The Tridentarii had a way of polishing anything into looking like a success worthy of fanfare.
The Tridentarius parents had written to Judith’s father, who had RSVP’d for the pair of them. This was how it had always been, since childhood. Judith had always turned up an only child at the two-of-everything birthday parties for Corona and Ianthe. Judith’s father considered the selection and wrapping of gifts below his rank, and had assigned these tasks to a series of assistants. The boxes had always been pink, and Judith had never looked inside them, just signed her name on the cards and added them to the matching towers of gifts to get them off her hands. She had never had any interest in giving Corona anything, still didn’t.
It was because of the precedent that Judith couldn’t protest too much without looking suspicious. Judith’s father didn’t know what had transpired between them, and he wouldn't find out. Appearances were important. He had taught her this early on. So Judith reluctantly went with her father to the party, and placed the ubiquitous two gifts on a long table in the entry hall. Because it was not a birthday, they were not pink. She knew these events inside and out, which had enabled her to draw up a near-militaristic strategy for the evening’s proceedings.
She knew exactly who to avoid — number one, Coronabeth Tridentarius; number two, her suspicious twin, Ianthe; and number three, their vile next-door-neighbor, Naberius Tern. Judith would have to stick to the passed platters of champagne, as Naberius often waited by the bar to ask invasive questions, surely to collect intel to report back to the twins. Ianthe was the slimiest of the three, and could appear out of nowhere at any time.
Corona was easier to find — she was always the center of a cluster of eager guests fawning over her. Judith wasn’t sure who she loathed most for this — Corona, the guests falling all over themselves, or herself, for how well she understood it. On especially terrible birthdays, like the one before they all went to college, her 18th, Corona could not be trusted not to remove her shiny party dress and slip into the pool in her frilly matching bra and panty sets, not caring which of her family members or their associates saw. Not that Judith had looked closely. For this reason, the pool was firmly off-limits.
Judith began as she always did, making the rounds with her father, issuing quick and sterile remarks about her first year of college to his inquiring colleagues. She made it through the first lap successfully with no sightings of the dreaded trio, and closed herself into the hall bathroom to collect herself.
When she opened the bathroom door, it almost slammed into Ianthe, who was leaning against the wall, resting on a bony elbow. Judith immediately regretted that the door had missed her. The house must have had at least six bathrooms, and she’d chosen this one to lurk outside. The Tridentarius twins were only identical in that they both always had an agenda.
“Oh hi Jody, didn’t expect to see you here,” Ianthe drawled. “Not in this life,” she said with a toothy smile, “or in any other!”
Judith hated the way her words sounded in Corona’s twin’s mouth. Ianthe left Judith no time to respond, only watched her face fall and shrugged before she walked away laughing. All the music had gone to Corona’s laugh, leaving none left over for Ianthe’s, which had the air of rusted machinery. Judith should have known. The twins were partners in conspiracy, of course there were no secrets between them.
Back in the party, Judith was confronted immediately by the sight of one of her worst-case scenarios. Coronabeth, in a gold skirt and flowy white blouse, was talking to Judith’s father.
“There you are, Judith,” he said. There was no escaping this conversation, no escaping Corona’s eyes on her, so deep blue they were almost purple.
“I was congratulating Coronabeth on the great success of her first year of college,” Judith’s father said, and turned to her expectantly.
“Congratulations, Coronabeth,” Judith said through gritted teeth.
“Same to you, Judith,” Corona said, smiling easily. “Your father was just saying how wonderful it is that we go to school so close to each other. How nice it is for us to have someone familiar nearby.”
Judith’s father excelled at polite remarks and sounded overly formal when he attempted to be familiar. Judith certainly couldn’t imagine him using the word wonderful. She only spoke because she had no other choice.
“Yes.”
When she attempted to divert her eyes, Corona followed them, not allowing Judith to break eye contact until one of her admirers swept her away into another conversation. There was something sharp in her eyes that made Judith sweat. In front of parents or authorities, golden Corona was a being of limitless charm. It was only when the important witnesses turned their backs that she turned ruthless.
Judith spent the rest of the evening avoiding the Tridentarii and swiping flutes of champagne from circulating platters. By the time her father was finally ready to leave, she had a headache, and had never been so eager to follow him.
___
The next time Judith saw Corona, she saw much more than she wanted to see. Judith was out drinking with her rugby friends, and Corona was distinctly visible, even from across the street. She was sitting outside at an upscale sushi restaurant with a girl who looked far too serious to be in her company.
Judith recognized her distantly as the girl Corona had left with after their run-in in the stairwell at that party at Corona’s school. Corona had looked over the solemn girl’s shoulder and winked back at her, Judith remembered. Her symbols were so often illegible. Their shared history had elucidated nothing there.
At the restaurant, Corona draped herself over the table, resting her chin on her joined hands. Judith could vaguely register the way her neckline swooped low, imagine the way her elbows must be pushing her breasts together. She could see Corona’s legs under the table, which she had entangled entirely with the other girl’s legs in a take on footsie too salacious for a food service establishment.
In between tiny cups of sake, they made out, openly, until the server came to check on them, and Corona giggled, while the other girl looked indifferent or horrified. She was harder to read from that distance. Judith’s stomach turned. She could not imagine what would ever possess a person to be that obvious.
“Earth to Deuteros,” Gideon said, directly into her ear. “We’re getting shots, want in?”
Judith recoiled, shocked back into her surroundings by the excessive volume.
“Fuck, Nav!” she said, and turned her face to her teammate and her back against whatever was happening across the street.
“Sure,” Judith assented.
____
The last time Judith saw her, Corona looked unusually small and powerless. She was sitting on the opposite platform at the small train station in Judith’s college town. It was March, but spring was still unrecognizably far off. Corona wore a pale pink scarf and a matching hat with an oversized pom pom. Her winter boots appeared to have high heels on them. She was unfailingly impractical, Judith remarked to herself.
Corona’s head was bent slightly. She lifted the edge of her scarf to the corner of her eye with uncharacteristic discretion. Was she — crying? Judith was relieved to be on the opposite platform, glad she wouldn’t have to walk right by her with her noisy rolling suitcase.
She hadn’t seen Corona cry since they were children, when she had often seen Corona cry, suddenly and insincerely, in the midst of play-fighting with Judith, Ianthe, and Naberius. The fighting had never been Judith’s idea. As soon as she was pinned down, Corona would wail and point to a nonexistent wound, until Judith rushed over to check and found her skin entirely unmarred. This was how Corona got Judith to concede. She would stop crying as easily and abruptly as she had started. Corona never played fair, and Judith hated herself for falling for it every time.
She hoped seeing Corona cry alone and in public now would make her feel vindicated somehow, after all the years she had suffered over her. Judith had stopped in the middle of the platform and was staring, she realized, when a tiny goth girl with a huge backpack spat, “Excuse me,” and stepped around her with a heavy boot.
Corona looked up, and for one brief, awful second, they made eye contact. Corona’s purplish eyes were swollen and red rimmed. Judith felt no vindication. Something deep inside her felt immediately frantic. She tightened her grip on her suitcase and walked faster, not risking a glance back.
___
Months later, the messages began the way they often did, with a typographical error.
Coronabeth Tridentarius, 11:00 pm:
jodyyyy
it’s corona!
i know it’s been a long time
too long if you ask me
anyway i’m having an early birthday party
Friday night at my place
you should come!!
Judith lay awake. Her body was exhausted but her brain was whirring, trying to make sense of what Corona had sent her. They hadn’t spoken in two years now. What did she want? Judith had spent many years untangling the threads between what Corona said and what she meant, but she still didn’t understand her entirely.
Her phone buzzed again, and the bright screen stung her eyes.
Coronabeth Tridentarius, 2:00 am:
i m iss you
Was she drunk in a crowd? Was she alone, lying awake as Judith was?
Judith wondered then about the cards she’d received in the intervening time since they’d last spoken. A note of congratulations when she’d made the Dean’s List, a bouquet of flowers when her rugby team won the regional championships. She had assumed these tokens came from Corona’s parents, part of the ongoing series of perfunctory formalities that marked the way the two families overlapped. She’d thought it strange that such important people followed her life so closely. Whose loopy handwriting had it been on those envelopes?
Judith considered the factors and performed a careful risk assessment. The party was at Corona’s on-campus apartment, not at her family home. There would be no stifling conversations with parents. Thankfully, Naberius went to school hundreds of miles away. And even Ianthe was abroad this semester. There was something intriguing about a new context, a break from the well-trod paths of their past. It could be a terrible mistake, but this was an unusual opportunity. What was the worst that could happen if she took this opening? She did not allow herself to answer that question. She would sleep on it.
___
On Friday evening, Judith stood before her full-length mirror, straightening her denim jacket and fussing with her hair. She wore a red henley shirt and dark blue jeans. Judith still sported a version of the haircut Marta Dyas had given her in a dorm bathroom what felt like forever ago. Now Marta had graduated and moved away for a job, and Judith went to the queer barbershop in town regularly to maintain the clean lines of her fade.
She looked different from the last time she’d talked to Corona, so that must mean she was different, right? She had let herself get too close to Marta. It was easier to misunderstand things when you were so close. She looked into her own uncertain eyes and thought, I will not make that mistake again. With a deep inhale, Judith laced her sneakers and headed for the bus.
___
From the outside, Corona’s apartment building was one of many indistinguishable gray concrete rectangles of student housing. Before Judith could take her finger off the bell, the door flew open and Corona was in front of her, face alight, wearing a blue dress and sparkling eyeshadow. Her hair seemed bigger and shinier than Judith remembered.
Corona embraced her. “Welcome, Judith! Come in!”
Judith stiffened and said, “Happy birthday, Corona,” into the taller girl’s shoulder.
Inside, the apartment was wholly unordinary, the light somehow just too warm and too bright. The gray floor was covered with a lush carpet, and the furniture was strewn with jewel-toned throw blankets so that it was barely identifiable as the blocky university-issued lot.
The living room was decorated abundantly with string lights, and Judith found herself seated on a loveseat in between two strangers wearing body glitter. She clutched a can of blood orange pomegranate craft hard seltzer, the least objectionable flavor available from a selection of exclusively craft hard seltzers. What a perfectly Coronabeth thing to do, Judith thought. Pick one ridiculous thing and make everyone else go along with it . Coronabeth fluttered around the room, greeting guests with a kiss on the cheek, making sure everyone was equipped with craft hard seltzer.
The room was full of well-dressed strangers, all of whom seemed to know each other. Corona had always been followed around and doted on by large groups of people, but now she had a whole new and separate life, one so full of people that she probably never even thought about Judith. Notably absent among the guests was the girl with the bangs from the lewd display at the sushi restaurant.
“It’s my birthday, so you all have to do what I want,” Corona announced, smiling wickedly. “Let’s play a game.”
Of all the nightmare scenarios Judith had pictured and prepared for in the days leading up to the party, she had somehow overlooked Truth or Dare. But now it was unfolding before her, more horrible than she could have imagined. As the questions moved around the circle, Judith thanked a god she didn’t believe in that she had managed to avoid “What’s the weirdest thing you’re into?” and the heavy-handed “How do you like to get yourself off?”
The body-glittered girl to Judith’s left had fared worse, and was instructed to remove her clothes and apply more glitter. Now her bare thigh was getting glitter on Judith’s jeans. She longed for the solitude of her room, or for the ground to open and consume her, really anything but this.
“What’s the most sensitive part of your body?” the other body-glittered girl asked when Corona chose “Truth.” Though the other girl was giggling, Corona’s tone was light but serious.
“My thighs,” she said.
Was she looking at Judith as she said it? Why on earth would she be looking at her? There was no time to evaluate this, as Corona took a sip of craft hard seltzer and looked at her straight on. “Judith hasn’t gone. Truth or dare?”
Judith should have known coming to this party would be a mistake. She had fallen for the idea of a new opportunity, only to be roped back into the familiar routine of a humiliating game. There would be no way to make it out of this entirely unscathed. Her only remaining hope was to get it over with as quickly as possible.
“Truth,” she said, fiddling with the seam of her jeans.
“If you had to sleep with someone in this room, who would it be?” asked the nearly-naked girl to her left.
Judith felt her face heat up. “No,” she said, and took a long swig of her drink, hoping that would count for her turn.
“You have to answer,” the girl insisted.
“No,” she said again, and the room went tense and quiet.
“Jody,” Corona said, businesslike. The direct eye contact did something to Judith’s stomach. “I dare you to come outside and have a cigarette with me.”
Judith, who had never considered smoking a cigarette in her life, obeyed, but only to get the eyes of the rest of the circle off her. Outside, she stood very straight next to Corona, who was leaning against the building and rifling through her pockets.
“I don’t smoke,” Judith said.
“I don’t either,” Corona said, removing her hands from her pockets and opening them to show Judith two large, empty palms. She held her hands out like that for a moment, looking at Judith so intently that it made her feel cold under her arms.
“I’m glad you came,” Corona said, as if it had ever been possible for things to be casual between them, and put her hands back in her pockets. “I didn’t think I’d see you.”
For two years now, Judith had imagined what she’d say to Corona when given the opportunity. She imagined it at the gym, as she braced herself through five extra reps, and sometimes, on weak nights, before sleeping, she imagined it in the words she typed and deleted in text messages that went unsent.
Now, with Corona leaning against the wall, tucking a strand of blonde curls behind her ear and examining her manicure almost patiently, it was difficult to remember what it was she had done to make her so angry. It was exhausting to be so angry. Judith couldn’t say, It’s still impossible to say no to you. Or worse, that she’d never really wanted to.
And so she said, “we should go back inside.”
Corona laughed. “You want to play truth or dare? I have questions. Truth. What happened with that hunk from your rugby team?”
This was a familiar feeling. Somehow outdoors she was more trapped than she had been in the crowded living room. There was no way in the universe Judith would disclose the finer points of what had happened between her and Marta Dyas, and that those finer points, however excruciating, had amounted to nothing. She looked at her shoes and said, “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Older women, Jody? It’s okay, I get it. You followed her around like a puppy.”
Judith was indignant. This was a complete misunderstanding of the situation, a childish oversimplification.
“What happened with you and that girl? With the ...bangs?” She had intended to sound mean, but had only revealed that she’d remembered this in too much detail.
The beautiful mask of Corona’s face wavered slightly. “Camilla. She — we broke up in March. She said that I lack emotional depth, that I couldn’t truly be present. Do you think I can be present?”
Judith rolled her eyes. “You cannot expect me to answer that question.”
Corona set her jaw and drew in a furious, whistling breath.
“Won’t you say one real thing to me?” She gripped Judith by the lapels of her jacket and pulled, pinning her against the building.
“Won’t you show me one single solitary human thing?” Corona urged, crowding her. Her eyes were gleaming and desperate. She was so close Judith could see spit shining on her lower lip as she finished her sentence.
Judith couldn’t look at her as she did what she did. She had been asked another question that was impossible to answer with words, so in a moment of sick bravery, she closed her eyes and tilted her head up, pressing her mouth hard against Corona’s. The moment of impact was inexact and toothy, but then Corona’s hands were at the back of her head, and her tongue was harsh and eager in Judith’s mouth. Judith kept her balance.