Sharp edges, p.1
Sharp Edges, page 1
Praise for Sharp Edges
“As addictive as it is disturbing….
I couldn’t look away.”
ALICIA ELLIOTT, AUTHOR OF A MIND SPREAD OUT ON THE GROUND
“Leah Mol’s debut novel explores the burgeoning sexuality of teenaged Katie, and delves into what it feels like to live in the female body…. Mol is a brand new talent with a sly, devastating, and remarkable eye for details of the female experience.”
HEATHER O’NEILL, AUTHOR OF WHEN WE LOST OUR HEADS
“Sharp Edges is a visceral portrait of a millennial teen girl exploring her sexuality, mending broken friendships, and keeping unspeakable secrets in the early aughts of the digital age. Leah Mol’s debut novel is a fiery, gut-wrenching must-read.”
ANDREA WERHUN, AUTHOR OF MODERN WHORE
Copyright © 2022 Leah Mol
All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication, reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system without the prior written consent of the publisher—or in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, license from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency—is an infringement of the copyright law.
Doubleday Canada and colophon are registered trademarks of
Penguin Random House Canada Limited
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Title: Sharp edges / Leah Mol.
Names: Mol, Leah, author.
Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20220175217 | Canadiana (ebook) 20220175330 | ISBN 9780385697224 (softcover) | ISBN 9780385697231 (EPUB)
Classification: LCC PS8626.O448635 S53 2022 | DDC C813/.6—dc23
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
The excerpt from Bye Bye Blondie by Virginie Despentes, and translated by Siân Reynolds, has been reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC, on behalf of The Feminist Press at the City University of New York, www.feministpress.org. All rights reserved. Copyright ©2004 by Editions Grasset & Fasquelle. Translation copyright © 2016 by Siân Reynolds.
Cover design by Jennifer Griffiths
Cover images: (girls) Jena Ardell, (stripes) golubovy, both Getty Images
Published in Canada by Doubleday Canada,
a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited
www.penguinrandomhouse.ca
a_prh_6.0_140788410_c0_r0
for sixteen-year-old me
“She murmurs words she likes to hear…”
—Virginie Despentes, Bye Bye Blondie
Contents
Cover
Praise for Sharp Edges
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Acknowledgments
About the Author
one
I didn’t get my first period until grade nine. I thought it was supposed to be red like blood, so when there were brown stains in my underpants I was pretty sure I was dying. After a couple days of stuffing my underwear with toilet paper and waiting for the end, I did a search online and found out it was my period. I wasn’t excited like I thought I would be; it felt like something else. Disappointment, maybe, that something so scary had suddenly become normal, something other people dealt with all the time. Everyone knew more than I did. I just felt stupid. I went home after school on the third day and told Mom about it, but I pretended it’d just happened, that I’d known all along what it was supposed to be like. She told me periods change everything, that I had to be more careful, that I could get pregnant now.
At the end of the week, there was a bag sitting on my bed. Inside it was a ring in a small box and a card that said Congratulations, Love Mom. I wonder if her own mom gave her jewellery after her first time, or if she looked it up on the internet—first period gifts. The ring has a real gold band and my birthstone. The box it came in is plain blue, and it’s soft like animal fur. That’s where I keep my razor blades now.
* * *
Lillian puts on Avril Lavigne because that’s what we always listen to in her car. There’s only a tape player and the Avril tape got stuck in it last year when Lillian put it on to bug her dad—he was the only one who drove this car back then. Lillian screams the words to “Complicated” and I laugh at her for a minute and then scream the words, too. There are lots of things I’d be embarrassed to do if Lillian wasn’t around.
Lil doesn’t have her full licence yet, but her parents let her take the car as long as we don’t leave town. I’ll be sixteen this year, but I don’t know if I’ll get my licence anytime soon. Lil says I’ll be a horrible driver.
We go past Wal-Mart and Home Depot, past the car plant that was supposed to open two years ago. We pass the hospital where I was born. Sometimes I look at it and wonder which room it was, the first place I was on my own, not connected to someone else. My mother had to have a C-section even though she always says her hips were made for birthing.
Most of us who were born in this town are still here. We’ve been going to school together since kindergarten. Every year in elementary school, the teachers took a picture of the kids who’d been there from the beginning. The pictures are in a box under my bed. I used to look at them all the time. In my favourite one, Lillian and I are both sitting—it was taken before I got taller than her, before teachers started putting me in the back row. There are a couple kids between us, but Lillian’s leaning all the way forward, looking right at me. New kids moved here every year, transferring from other schools, from big cities and small towns, but the original group of us—the kids from the beginning—didn’t leave. We weren’t all friends, but we knew one another. It felt like having a family. Now that I’m older, though, sometimes I hate it. When I’m with people I grew up with, I’m stuck with a personality. It seems like that should make things easy, but it’s exhausting. I can feel myself being poured into a mould and hardening until I’m a mannequin that looks just like me. Every time I try something new, people ask me what’s wrong.
Lillian rolls down her window even though it’s freezing outside. Her car doesn’t have heat anyway, so it’s almost as cold inside. My hands are bare but I keep them warm between my legs. Snow hits us in the face and Lil opens her mouth to catch some. This’ll be the last snow of winter, I think. But lately, every single storm feels like the last.
* * *
We end up at the McDonald’s downtown, because the new one by the highway is under construction again and the one inside Wal-Mart is shit, and we each get a double cheeseburger off the dollar menu. Lillian bets me she can eat hers in one bite, and watching her shove it into her mouth makes me laugh so hard it hurts.
I leave the last bite of my burger and Lillian eats it without asking. I never eat the last bite of anything; it feels horrible to empty a plate. It used to drive my mom nuts. She tried everything—pleading, bribing, forcing—but that just made it worse. I’d sit at the kitchen table for hours because she wouldn’t let me leave until I finished. I guess now she doesn’t care if I eat.
On our walk back to the car, Lillian stops outside a restaurant and points to a sign in the front window. “They’re hiring,” she says. “More than one job, too. We could work together. Want to go in?”
“Okay.”
“Finish your Coke first.”
I suck until I hit air, then throw the cup into a garbage can on the sidewalk.
Lillian’s been looking for a job for a couple weeks. She says it’s better to get one now while less people are applying, and then by the summer you can just pick up more hours instead of starting from nowhere.
The door jingles when we go in, and the only two people eating turn and watch us walk through the restaurant. I’ve never actually been in here before—it feels like an old-person place. I move to ding the little bell on the counter, but Lillian grabs my hand before I can touch it.
A woman comes out from the kitchen a couple seconds later.
“Hi, could we speak with a manager, please?” I’m impressed Lillian knew to ask that.
The woman smiles like she’s tired, like things aren’t perfect but she’s trying. “That’s me.”
“Oh, hi. We’re looking for applications for the waitress positions?”
“Lovely. Did you bring résumés?” She has a slight British accent, so slight that I bet most people just think she pronounces some words weirdly, and I wonder how she ended up here. The only British people I’ve ever met are the exchange students who came over last year and spent two weeks with the
“No,” Lillian says. “Sorry. We saw the sign so we just came in.”
I wonder if it’s a bad thing that Lillian’s doing all the talking. Lillian always does the talking, though, so at least it doesn’t feel like I’m faking anything.
“That’s fine. But you’ll need that to apply. Why don’t you take these application forms home, and you can bring them back with résumés. But come back quickly, okay? By tomorrow. The owner wants to do interviews soon as possible.”
Back in the car, Lillian says, “We should fake interview each other.”
“Do you actually want to work there?”
Lillian shrugs. “I mean, the manager was nice.”
“You only think that because she’s British.”
“What?”
“Never mind,” I say.
“So? Interview me.”
“What celebrity do you look the most like?”
“Seriously, Katie.”
“What? It’s a good question. It’ll tell me if you’re full of yourself, or if you have bad self-esteem, which I think is important when you’re a waitress. The good ones are confident but not too confident, right?”
Lillian glares at me. “I’ll ask you first, then.” She turns a corner and drives over the edge of the sidewalk. “Oops. All right, why do you want this job?”
I think about it. I don’t really want the job. It seems like a waste of weekends. “It’d be fun to work together?”
“No. Answer like I’m the owner.”
“People tell me I’m really good at pouring coffee. I feel like I’m finally ready to accept my destiny.”
Lillian rolls her eyes. “Come on.”
I poke her elbow with one finger. “Okay. I’m sorry. Are you going to drive back tomorrow? Or should we walk?”
Lillian’s focused on something in the rearview mirror. “I guess it depends on the weather. We probably shouldn’t go back together, though, right? I mean, the owner might think we always want to work together or something. Next question—what are three words other people would use to describe you? Please be serious—I really want to do this with you.”
It hits me that only Lillian might get the job, and if she did, she’d take it. That’d be worse than neither of us getting it. Loser, needy, stupid, I think. Be serious.
“Hardworking, responsible, punctual.”
Lillian smiles. “Perfect.”
* * *
Lillian parks at her house and we walk the block over to mine. My house just has a main floor and a basement, so it’s not huge, but it’s better than a lot of people’s houses. Mom’s probably lying on the couch. Lately, she spends most of her time watching reruns and soap operas and talk shows. Sometimes, if it’s a good day, she goes to the grocery store or puts something frozen in the oven. Sometimes she goes on diets. A couple weeks ago she was only eating green foods. She feels better for a few days and then something happens and she ends up on the couch again. Today she says my name like a question as soon as I open the door. Lillian sits down in the kitchen to wait, on the only chair with a cushion. I thought she’d come say hi, but maybe she can hear something in Mom’s voice, too.
In the living room, the TV is muted.
“Hey, Mom?”
“Hi, hon.” She keeps her eyes closed.
“There’s this job I want to apply for. But I need a résumé.”
“That’s good,” she says.
“Do you think you can help me with it?”
“Yeah, maybe this week, okay? I have a migraine right now.”
I bite the inside of my cheek. “I need to drop it off tomorrow, though, so I wanted to do it today maybe?”
“Katie, I can hardly open my eyes right now without blinding effing pain. And you want me to read something? Or write something?”
She says effing all the time now. She must have heard it on a TV show. It’s kind of cute when I’m not mad at her. I’ve even said it accidentally. I can’t help her rubbing off on me.
“Can’t you wait a couple days?” she asks. “There’ll be other jobs.”
“Okay.” It was silly of me to ask, anyway. I can do it myself, look it up online. It was mostly for her; I figured it’d make her happy. She used to help me with homework and make me feel like every single one of my ideas had potential, that I could make any project exciting. In grade nine, I had an English assignment where I had to keep a diary from the point of view of Juliet. Mom stayed in character as Lady Capulet the whole week I was doing it. I got an A-plus.
“Can you get me an Advil?”
When I pass through the kitchen, Lillian isn’t there anymore, and the door to the basement is wide open—she wants me to know she went down.
I go into the bathroom for the Advil and shut the door behind me without thinking about it. I sit on the toilet for a minute because it feels like I should, but I don’t even need to pee. Afterward, I look in the mirror and push my boobs together, pull up my jeans so there’s no fat spilling over the edges. I feel like a mess of flesh. The Advil bottle is already open on the counter, so I shake out two pills.
The living room is dark because the curtains are closed, and Mom’s face changes colours with the television. I drop the pills into her palm.
Lillian spins her chair to face me when I get down to the basement. “You okay?”
I bite my cheeks when I’m upset and I always thought nobody could tell. Then I did it in the mirror once and realized my whole jaw puffs out. But it’s already a habit. I can feel my chin getting bigger, my jaw pulsing. I must look like Popeye. “Yeah, I’m fine. Why?”
“All right.” She shrugs and turns back around.
Lillian and I spend a lot of time in my basement. The couch smells like mould but we don’t really care if it’s gross—it’s private and we can do whatever we want. The computer used to be up in my mom’s room, but she started worrying about the radiation.
Lillian’s on the rolly chair, so I take the metal one I brought down from the kitchen table a few months ago. Mom and I hardly ever use the chairs in the kitchen anymore. The metal one gives you little shocks every time you sit down, so Lillian hates it and always calls the rolly. I don’t mind, though. It’s familiar. Sometimes I use it even when I’m by myself.
Lillian signs in to the chat room we’ve been going on the past couple weeks. Our password’s just a bunch of numbers—I wanted to make it our names or something easy, but Lillian always says she remembers numbers better than anything. She says if everyone’s name were a number, she’d never forget a name. She’s terrible at math, but she does have all our passwords memorized.
There are chat rooms for everything. One of our favourites is for anorexic girls. There’s another one we’ve been going on for forever that seems like it’s just for regular people but it’s actually full of weirdos. So many weirdos. The first time we went on it, Lillian clicked on this guy’s name and typed Hello, and he sent her a picture of his dick. No warning. We both screamed and tried to close the chat window and Lillian fell off her chair. When Mom yelled at us to see if everything was okay, we couldn’t stop laughing. We’ve seen a lot more dick pics since then. We had internet boyfriends for a while last year—we called them our IBs. We acted like it was a joke, but sometimes I had dreams about mine. Lillian’s IB told her he loved her and then disappeared from the chats; mine just disappeared. There are a few people we talk to all the time. None of them know who we really are.
Lillian waits until I’m paying attention before she clicks on a name and writes, ASL? Age, sex, location. The response is just a link to another site. Lil clicks on it and there are pictures of a girl wearing a bra and underwear and nothing else.
“Stop it,” I say, batting at her hand. “You shouldn’t click on random things.”
“I just wanted to see.”
