Isabel a watched the tiny girl emerge from behind Mike. She was a pixie! Isabel a hadn’t even noticed her standing there. Al of her features were teeny; her hands and fingers were almost childlike. Isabel a stared at her. She couldn’t help it. It was JonBenét, and no one had been exaggerating about the resemblance. If anything, they hadn’t prepared her for this. Isabel a got goose bumps just being near her.
“Hi, Ben.” JonBenét had a raspy, breathy voice that made her sound like she’d just been running. “Wasn’t the wedding beautiful? I told Mike in the middle of it that if one more person from his fraternity gets engaged before us, I’m done!” She laughed and turned to Mike. “Right, baby?”
Mike ignored her. “You guys want to get over to the reception? It’s not supposed to start for another hour, but maybe we can convince the bartender to get us some drinks.”
“Yeah, sure,” Ben said. “You guys want to ride with us?”
Isabel a gave Mike shotgun so she could sit in the back with JonBenét. “Mike just got a new car,” she said to Isabel a. “And I said to him, What’s that? I can’t wear that on my finger.” She laughed and waved her left ring finger in the air.
Isabel a laughed and caught Ben’s eye in the rearview mirror. They smiled at each other.
The reception was at a country club in some New Jersey suburb. Isabel a felt like she’d been to a mil ion of these weddings. By now, they al blended together in a blur of fabric-covered chairs, pink napkins, and crab cakes. Isabel a looked around. The centerpieces made her sad.
“Isn’t this beautiful?” JonBenét said to them. She sounded dreamy, like she couldn’t believe her eyes. Mike put his hand on her back and she smiled up at him. He didn’t look at her. Isabel a had once seen a TV show cal ed Tarnished Tiaras that exposed the truth behind child pageants. It focused on one mother who offered spray tans to the little girls to make some money. She stared at JonBenét and wanted to ask her if she ever got a spray tan. But she stopped herself.
The bartenders were stil setting up. They looked up warily when they saw the four of them approaching. “Hey, man,” Ben said to one. He lifted his chin in a nod and the bartender did the same back. Isabel a was always amazed at how people just liked Ben immediately. Strangers in bars and people on the street treated him like an old friend. They welcomed him wherever he went. Isabel a didn’t even think he noticed. It was just the way things always were for him.
“You got any Red Bul ?” Ben asked. The bartender shook his head.
“Ben,” Isabel a said. “You can’t order that.”
“Why?”
“What are you, fifteen? We’re at a wedding.”
Ben rol ed his eyes. “Relax,” he said. “They don’t have it anyway.”
“But you can’t drink that at a wedding,” Isabel a explained.
“You have a lot of rules,” Ben said. “I’m going out for a cigarette.”
Isabel a ordered a white wine and stood by herself on the side of the room. She watched the bride and groom arrive and hoped that they wouldn’t come anywhere near her. They had no idea who she was.
When Ben final y came back, about ten minutes later, he was carrying a brown paper bag and smiling a proud smile. “What?” Isabel a asked.
“Red Bul ,” he said. “I got it at a convenience store down the street. Now I can just order vodka on the rocks. Pretty smart, huh?”
Somewhere after the dinner was served and before the cake was cut, Isabel a lost Ben. Everyone at their table was up dancing and mingling.
Isabel a sat there and drank wine. She felt like a fool.
JonBenét smiled at her from across the room and then walked over to the table. “Hey, Isabel a.”
“Hey,” Isabel a said. She was happy not to be sitting alone.
“Where did your date go?” JonBenét asked, smiling.
“Oh, I don’t … I don’t know. I haven’t seen him in a while.”
“He’s probably off somewhere with Mike getting into trouble. Boys can be such shits sometimes, right?”
Isabel a laughed. JonBenét was being very kind, but Isabel a found it hard to look at her straight on for too long. It made the hair on her arms stand up. She thought about the JonBenét footage that showed her in the swimsuit competition of the beauty pageant. She wished she had never seen that part of the documentary. It haunted her.
“So, how did you and Ben meet?” JonBenét asked.
“In a bar,” Isabel a said. Sometimes she tried to make the story a little better, to embel ish it with details. But she didn’t feel like it right then.
“Mike and I met at a wedding,” she said.
“Real y?”
“Yeah, his cousin married one of my friends from col ege. It’s funny, isn’t it? The way things happen?”
Isabel a nodded. “Yeah, it is.”
How she met Ben could have been a cute story, Isabel a realized. If they ended up together, she could tel people, “That Ben! So impatient, so impish!” But for that to happen, Ben would have to be a different person. And he wasn’t. He was just a cocky boy who didn’t want to wait his turn.
That was al . He had to go to the bathroom. That was their story. The next time someone asked, “How did you meet?” Isabel a could say, “Ben had to pee.”
JonBenét chattered on about the different people at the wedding. She talked about her friend’s wedding that she was in next month. “The bridesmaid dresses are beautiful,” JonBenét assured her. Isabel a had never met someone so in love with weddings. She tried to picture JonBenét as a bride, but she kept seeing the real JonBenét, overly made up in a poofy dress.
Ben came back about twenty minutes later, and JonBenét stood up. “I should go find my prince.”
“Where have you been?” Isabel a asked. “I’ve been sitting here by myself for almost an hour.”
“Whadya mean, by yourself? There’s people al around.”
“These aren’t my friends, Ben. You just left me alone. Everyone’s been staring at me. I was sitting al by myself before she came over here.”
“So what? Are you mad because you had to hang out with crazy JonBenét?”
“She’s not that bad, Ben.”
“She’s crazy,” Ben said, like it was a fact. Like it was something everyone knew.
Isabel a felt bad for JonBenét, the way that everyone at the wedding was talking about her, like she was some kind of freak show. No one knew what went on in her relationship with Mike. No one even real y knew her. Maybe she loved Mike more than he liked her. And wasn’t that horrible?
Wasn’t that sad? But people forgot about that. They didn’t see a tragedy, just a good story. To them, it was just some girl they could point to and say, “Wel , at least my life isn’t as fucked up as that.”
“So what if she wants to get married?” Isabel a asked. “Why is that the worst thing in the world? It’s not such a crazy thought. She and Mike have been dating for a while. Isn’t it weirder that Mike is avoiding it?”
Ben shrugged. He took the straw out of his drink and downed the rest of it. “Why do you care?” he asked.
“I just think it’s mean the way that you and your friends treat her. I mean, what about Mike? If he doesn’t want to marry her, then why doesn’t he just break up with her?”
“Not everyone is dying to get married, Isabel a.”
“I’m not saying that everyone is. But she clearly wants to. And if he doesn’t want the same thing, then shouldn’t they just break up?”
“Why are you fighting with me?” Ben asked. She hated when he did this, when he turned things on her. He could act however and say whatever he wanted, and if she cal ed him on it, then she was the bad person who’d instigated the fight.
“I’m not fighting with you,” Isabel a said. She knew that the night was already gone. It was ruined. They should just leave now instead of indulging in an evening of arguments and accusations.