The Mall

by Megan Mccafferty

  “Do you have an appointment?” She didn’t look up from the latest issue of Celebrity Hairstyles magazine.

  “Sorry, no,” I said. “Do I need one for a haircut?”

  The receptionist scanned the appointment book with a rhinestoned fingernail.

  “Not for Carla,” she said. “Carla’s wide open.”

  I was a little nervous to be assigned the stylist who was “wide open,” but I didn’t have much time to wait for a more in-demand beautician.

  “Okay,” I said. “Sure. Carla it is.”

  The receptionist stood and gestured for me to follow her to an empty station. I sat and she spun me around in the chair toward the brightly lit mirror.

  “So what are we doing today?” the receptionist asked.

  “Um, shouldn’t we wait for Carla?”

  Drea laughed.

  “I’m Carla.” The receptionist who was actually my stylist draped a plastic cape over my shoulders. “What are we doing today?” she repeated.

  My first impression of Carla did not give me much confidence in her abilities. But the clock was ticking.

  “She wants it short,” Drea answered on my behalf.

  “How short?”

  “Like…” I hadn’t quite settled on how much higher above my chin I should go.

  Carla flipped through Celebrity Hairstyles magazine until she found “5 Fall Trends to Watch Out For.” She showed me a photo of the porcelain-skinned, doe-eyed indie movie princess captioned, “Edgy and Effortless.” It was exactly the look I wanted. But I hadn’t known it until Carla pointed it out to me.

  “Did you recently go through a breakup?” Carla asked. “A cut like this usually means a breakup.”

  “See?” Drea elbowed me in the ribs. “I told you.”

  Carla’s intuition cleared away any doubts I’d had in her. She’d seen some things in her two decades of salon service. She knew things. So in Carla I trusted.

  And Carla did not let me down.

  When she finished cutting, I had a glossy, earlobe-skimming bob that put my double piercings on prominent display. It was a beautiful, piss-off-my-ex twofer.

  “What do you think?” Carla asked, removing my cape with a flourish.

  “I love it! It’s perfect!”

  I tipped Carla twice as much as I normally would, spending down to the last dollar in my wallet. By the time my spree was over, I’d blown a good chunk of my paycheck.

  “This is the best money you’ve ever spent,” Drea promised.

  And she was totally right.

  30

  WHAT A FEMINIST LOOKS LIKE

  Troy nearly dropped my veggie combo on the food court floor.

  “What happened to you?”

  His hands were shaking. Oily lo mein noodles trembled.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Hair…” He was at a loss for all but the most basic words. “Ears…”

  He unsteadily set the tray on the table and slid into the opposite side of the booth. Our booth. That had been one of my concessions. I’d negotiated him down from an hour-long dinner by agreeing to sit in our old spot. The stage was empty, though. No performances to distract us from ourselves.

  “You’re not the same person from this morning!”

  “I am absolutely the same person from this morning.” I rubbed my chopsticks together. “I’m the person I’ve always been.”

  He grabbed my knapsack to get a better look at the buttons I’d affixed to the outside flap.

  Silence = Death

  Keep Your Laws Off My Body

  This Is What a Feminist Looks Like

  He tossed it back over to my side of the booth and sniffed in disgust.

  “Is this what a feminist smells like? Bong water and butthole?”

  He wasn’t wrong about the jacket’s stench. But I was not going to concede even the smallest point.

  “As the future president of College Republicans at Columbia, how will you explain to your fellow conservatives why you’re familiar with either one of those scents?”

  He sat back in the booth and gave me a long, hard look. The change in my appearance had definitely thrown him off his game. And he was studying me now, trying to make sense of what it all meant, urgently calculating how he could possibly retain the upper hand. I looked at my watch. Eight minutes down. Twenty-two minutes left in this date-like transaction to go. A length of a sitcom, minus the commercials. I wondered if I could persuade Troy into reenacting an episode of The Golden Girls until our time was up. I could be Dorothy and Blanche. He could be Sophia and Rose.

  “Cassandra!”

  “What?” I snapped. “And I told you to stop calling me that!”

  “Casssssssie,” he overenunciated. “Did you ever hear from Simone Levy?”

  Wow. An attempt at pleasant conversation. Well, fine.

  “I finally got a letter from her last week,” I replied. “She wants to study art history and philosophy.”

  “Her family must be loaded,” Troy said knowingly, “because that’s a double major designed for poverty.”

  And as much as I hated to admit it—even to myself—I’d thought the same exact thing.

  “Honestly,” Troy continued. “Can you think of a more pointless use of tuition? What a terrible ROI.”

  Return on investment.

  That’s how Troy determined the worthiness of his time, energy, and attention. He always wanted to get more back than he ever put in. I recognized in that moment that I had ended up being a very poor ROI and that was probably the only reason Troy wanted to get back together with me: to salvage what would otherwise be a colossal loss of his high school years.

  I had felt the same way not too long ago.

  “Not everyone has to go to college to be a Wall Street Master of the Universe,” I said. “I know someone who dropped out of the Wharton School of Business and has never been happier.”

  Troy didn’t deserve to know about me and Sam Goody. But I didn’t want him not knowing about me and Sam Goody either. Alluding to Sam without mentioning him by name was my way of getting around this conundrum.

  “That person,” Troy said with total conviction, “is an idiot.”

  And that’s exactly why I didn’t want Troy to know I was maybe interested in someone new. What bothered me most about Troy’s comment? Knowing that eight weeks earlier, when I was still in full thrall of the plan, I would’ve absolutely agreed with him.

  I checked the time. Fifteen minutes down. Fifteen to go.

  “Can you stop looking at your watch?”

  “There’s nothing in our contract that says I can’t look at my watch.”

  “There’s nothing in our contract that says I can’t do the Lambada right on this table, but you won’t see me doing that throughout our meal.”

  I choked at the thought of Troy gyrating his hips to the “forbidden dance.” At this point, he was as sexless to me as a Cabbage Patch Kid.

  “Why don’t you just give me the doll and the documents, and we can just put an end to this awkwardness?”

  I swirled a spring roll in a puddle of duck sauce and bit it in half. Troy steepled his fingers. It was one of his “power moves.”

  “Is that the technique,” asked Troy with a snide smile, “you used on Slade?”

  A few weeks ago, a comment like this from Troy of all people would have made me burn red with humiliation. It brought me great relief to know for certain that Troy didn’t have that kind of influence over me anymore.

  No, I would not flee the food court in shame.

  No, I would not give him the last word in this closing argument.

  No, I would not let him treat me like an Odyssey of the Mind problem that needed solving.

  No, I would not erase who I really was to become who he wanted me to be.

  “Oh, Troy.” I popped the rest of the roll in my mouth and chomped down. Hard. “That’s something you will never, ever know.”

  Then in one swift movem
ent, I picked up my untouched lo mein and dumped the soggy heap of soy noodles right over his head.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Troy spluttered, shaking the wormy tangle from his hair. “No way I’m giving you that doll now!”

  “I don’t need the doll from you,” I replied. “I don’t need anything from you.”

  I hated disappointing Drea, but I could not, would not let Troy think he was doing me any favors. Not now. Not a week from now. Not ever again.

  I’d found fulfillment through fashion. Achieved self-actualization through accessorization. An article of clothing transformed me into the best possible version of myself. Adopting a new look didn’t make me superficial or stupid. On the contrary, I felt empowered and emboldened enough to tell Troy exactly what I thought of him and the plan.

  “There are over seven million people in New York City,” I said. “Let’s not run into each other when we get there.”

  I left the table with a renewed sense of purpose. Was Sam Goody working a double shift? Would he be at the store until closing? Would I have to wait until tomorrow to make up for how I’d acted? I started out in a trot and increased speed as I got closer and closer to my destination. By the time I hit Concourse F, I was in a full run, dodging oldsters and ducking youngsters who weren’t in a hurry to get anywhere. When I burst through the entrance to the music store, I nearly took out a huddle of preteens giggling over a New Kids on the Block fanzine.

  I spotted Sam at one of the listening stations with his headphones on. His back was to me, so I crept up behind him to sneak a peek at what he was listening to. I’d never heard of the album or the artist—Nevermind by Nirvana—but getting the newest music before anyone else was one of the advantages of working in a record store. Sam cranked the volume way up, but I could barely make out screaming vocals, thrashing drums, and hard, fuzzy guitars through the headphones. Nirvana was no competition for the NKOTB remix Freddy the manager played to please the store’s most faithful customers.

  I gently tapped Sam Goody on the shoulder.

  “Hi.”

  He turned around, took me in, and grinned.

  “WOW,” he shouted. “That’s a great look on you.”

  I laughed and he laughed, and a blush heated up my cheeks. If I saw red earlier, I was feeling red now. But, like, in a good way. Sam turned off the music and slipped off his headphones.

  “I’ve been thinking about what you said,” I said, “about independence.”

  Sam Goody nodded cautiously. “I’m listening.”

  “Will you teach me how to drive?”

  31

  ALL THE FUSS

  The mall had only closed fifteen minutes earlier, but the lot was already mostly empty. Sam Goody assured me it would be a safe space for my first driving lesson.

  “Here it is,” he said, sweeping his hand over the hood of his car.

  “Oh,” I said. “It’s … oh.”

  It was an aggressively ugly car. A fecal-brown Chevy hatchback, with rusted-out patches around the wheels, a crooked back bumper, dented front fender, and too many side-door dings to count. I didn’t know if I should be relieved by the sorry state of this automobile—I couldn’t mess it up that much more than it already was—or worried that I was being taught to drive by anyone who could do so much vehicular damage.

  “I got it like this,” he said, sensing my apprehension. “I have a spotless driving record. Not even a speeding ticket.”

  He chivalrously opened the driver’s side door for me. Or, at least he tried to.

  “Sorry—” He yanked on the handle. “It sticks sometimes.”

  He had not bothered locking the door because no one would steal this car. After a few more tugs, it finally swung open with a creaky whine.

  “After you,” he said, gesturing at the driver’s seat.

  Upholstered in a phlegm-colored vinyl, the Chevy was equally ugly on the inside as it was on the outside. It was, however, scrupulously clean. The immaculate interior was especially remarkable considering the impromptu nature of the lesson. I mean, it’s not like Sam Goody had any time to quickly clean his car in the effort to impress me. This was its natural state.

  And I was impressed.

  Until I got a better look.

  Sam had put the rear seats down and loaded the hatchback with ropes, metal clamps, a kinky sex-harness type thing…?

  Oh my God, a serial killer travel kit.

  I knew next to nothing about Sam Goody! What had I been thinking when I followed him to this dark, deserted parking lot? Murders were at a record high in Manhattan, but it was just my sucky luck to fall for a hometown killer.

  Sam Goody saw me eyeing the serial killer travel kit and laughed.

  “Rock-climbing equipment,” he explained.

  “Rock-climbing equipment?” I replied incredulously. “You’re a rock climber?”

  I really knew next to nothing about Sam Goody.

  “Since I was thirteen,” he said. “A hippie cousin took me out for the first time when we were visiting family in Oregon one summer. I loved the challenge of it—like figuring out where to grab and grip and get myself up there. I was always a cautious kid, not much of a risk-taker, but rock climbing was my way of, I don’t know, being a bit of a daredevil.” He popped open the hatchback and removed a J-shaped metal device. “I guess you could say I was…” He held the clamp up in the space between us. “Hooked right away.”

  “That pun,” I groaned, “was way worse than the possibility you were a serial killer.”

  “Believe or not, I wasn’t exactly the sporty type in high school.” He swept his hand through his hair and reconsidered. “Actually, that’s not true. I was athletic, but I wasn’t sporty.” A wistful smile crossed his face. “I was the king of the Presidential Physical Fitness Test in elementary school. Remember those?”

  I grimaced at the memory of this annual assessment of our athleticism—or lack thereof.

  “I could do more pull-ups and climb the rope ladder faster than the jocks—you know, the real jocks—the football, basketball, baseball meatheads,” he said. “And they hated me for it. Especially when I refused to join any of their teams because I wanted nothing to do with all that macho gorilla rah-rah locker-room chauvinism.”

  He grunted and pantomimed like a primate—or a typical Pineville High linebacker.

  “No high school rock-climbing teams,” I said.

  “No championship tournaments,” he added. “No varsity letters.”

  “Not much rock climbing in the City of Brotherly Love either, I imagine,” I said, referring to the home of the UPenn campus.

  He gave a regretful nod.

  “I didn’t think about that when I applied or when I was accepted,” he said. “But I thought about it all the time after I got there.”

  This made me wonder what I wouldn’t know I’d miss until after I got to Barnard.

  “Let’s get this lesson started, shall we?”

  I lowered myself into the driver’s side bucket seat. He walked around the front of the car, opened the passenger door—no sticking this time—and got in next to me. Separated by the center console, it was still the closest we’d ever been.

  “What’s that smell?” I asked.

  He reeled back, alarmed.

  “You smell something bad?” he asked. “I try to keep this car clean…”

  “Oh no! It’s a good smell! It’s like…” I sniffed. “Lavender?”

  “It’s my Yardley Brilliantine hair pomade.” He seemed slightly embarrassed to admit this. “It’s British.”

  Sam Goody’s hair was longer than it was when we first met. The pompadour still crested off his scalp, but in a shaggier, less sculptural way. I liked this looser look on him. He wore it well.

  “Well, it’s a good smell.”

  “Thank you,” he replied.

  Mercifully, he did not comment on the funk emanating from my borrowed denim.

  From me.

  Just to be safe, I took off Sonny’s
jacket before pulling my seat belt across my chest.

  “So,” Sam Goody said.

  “So,” I said.

  He dug into the front pocket of his jeans.

  I wanted my hand to join his.

  I wanted to dig deeper.

  I wanted …

  He extracted a set of keys on a simple silver ring and dangled them in front of me. I liked that he wasn’t someone who expressed his individuality through quirky keychains. When he dropped them into my outreached palm, I felt a palpable disappointment that our fingertips hadn’t touched. Maybe I had misread Sam Goody yet again. He wasn’t interested in me in the way I was starting to think I was interested in him.

  “You’ve really never driven before?” he asked.

  “Nope. I passed the written test but never got behind the wheel. So, how do we get started?”

  “Key in the ignition,” he instructed.

  I did as I was told. The dashboard controls lit up.

  “Step one.” He held up a cassette. “The right soundtrack.”

  He popped Nevermind into the tape deck. Watery guitars washed over us.

  “Okay,” I said. “What’s step two?”

  Sam slowly and deliberately looked me up and down. I didn’t experience the overwhelming urge to cover up as I had when Slade or Sonny ogled me. Just the opposite. I wanted Sam to keep looking. I wanted Sam to see more. I wanted to reveal, not conceal.

  “Your feet aren’t touching the pedals,” Sam said. “You need to move the seat up.”

  “Oh,” I said, trying not to sound as deflated as I felt. “Okay.”

  He wasn’t objectifying me after all. He was just crossing off all the boxes on the pre-drive safety checklist. I felt underneath for the seat adjuster. I pulled the lever and I thrust my pelvis to make the seat move forward. It stayed put. After a few jerky attempts, Sam offered to help.

  “Do you mind?”

  I shook my head. No, I don’t mind. I don’t mind this one bit.

  He leaned across my lap, reached down between my legs and pulled.