I couldn’t tell if she was mocking herself—or me—until she cracked a slight smile.
“That was a joke.”
“Oh,” I replied. “Ha-ha.”
Her smile faded.
“Girls don’t like me, but you did,” she said. “Until I gave you reasons not to.”
This was the first time Drea had ever directly referred to our elementary school friendship. I sat beside her on the couch, wondering. Waiting. Did Drea want to talk about it? Did Drea want to dredge up the middle school drama that led to us not speaking to each other for more than five years? Did Drea want to apologize for abruptly deciding in seventh grade that I was neither hot nor cool enough to associate with anymore? Did Drea want to express regret for choosing dozens of boys over the one girl who liked her for who she was?
Drea did not.
She opened up a mirrored compact and gagged at her reflection instead.
“Ugh. Tammy Faye Bakker.” She groaned. “I didn’t know this was gonna be a waterproof mascara kind of day.”
Whatever had triggered Drea’s moment of vulnerability, it was over now.
I followed her into the staff bathroom, which was spotlessly clean but small and strictly utilitarian by Gia’s design. Unlike the boutique and the back office, the bathroom was utterly lacking in Bellarosian frills and flourishes because Gia wanted her employees to get back to work. From the drop ceiling to the linoleum floor and the nondescript toilet/vanity/sink set in between, this was a bathroom that discouraged socializing.
I watched Drea wipe away the surface layer of runny mascara with a tissue. Then I continued to watch her at the sink as she swiped away the next layers of bronzer and concealer and foundation. And I watched as she used an astringent-soaked cotton ball to scrub away the most stubborn layers, the stay-put liners for lips and eyes.
“Ugh.”
I watched Drea grimace at the face she was born with.
It was not an exaggeration to say Drea was four inches short of a Cosmo cover. And she knew it too. It was why she never, ever, ever wore flats. She nearly failed gym for violating the athletic department dress code. If she hadn’t designed and customized a wedge-heeled sneaker, she wouldn’t have gotten enough credits to graduate high school.
No, she was not FIT material. But I wasn’t going to be the one to break it to her.
Not now.
Not ever.
35
PINKY PUSH
When Drea picked me up for work six days later, I was stunned to see an application for FIT resting in the passenger seat.
“Surprise!”
“How…?”
The United States Postal Service didn’t work that fast. Drea quickly explained that Crystal—No-Good Crystal—had picked it up for her when she was in the city for a club crawl. She would’ve gotten the course catalog too, but it wasn’t available yet. It was just my luck for a Bellarosa cousin to decide to be dependable for the first time in her entire friggin’ life.
“Now we can really get started!” Drea gushed. “Let’s hit the library tonight after our shift.”
“The library?”
Never in a billion lifetimes did I ever expect to hear Drea suggest a trip to the library.
“Ma will be busy with the fashion show, so it’s perfect timing!”
I smiled so hard, I wore the enamel off my molars.
“Great!” I replied insincerely.
The tonnage of that two-page application weighed heavily on my mind all morning. The pressure to make good on my impossible promise only got more unbearable as the hours ticked by. On my lunch break, I was so nauseatingly stressed that I skipped food altogether in favor of a free chair massage at Electronics Universe.
It wasn’t working.
I closed my eyes and surrendered to the pulsating waves. My body quivered from head to toe, but a million invisible robot fingers weren’t enough to soothe me. All “tension, stiffness, and tiredness” did not “melt away” as advertised.
“What do you think?” asked Doug.
He was Drea’s ex who had given her the memory expansion card for the Mac. He’d shaved the mustache since the last time I’d seen him, and he was a lot cuter without it. He could have passed himself off as the younger brother of Rob Lowe if only he weren’t cuter than the actual younger brother of Rob Lowe. I felt sorry for him, though. The massage chairs were lined up near the entrance to draw customers into the store. But had any of these free demonstrations turned into an actual sale? Doug went through with the pretense anyway because that’s what he was paid for. And I upheld my end of the charade because it was the courteous thing to do.
“It’s quite an investment,” I said. “I’ll have to think about it.”
Doug gave me his card and brought his five-star customer service over to an unaccompanied ten-year-old who was repeatedly ramming a remote control monster truck into a stack of cordless phones.
I sighed, shut my eyes, and settled back into the now-still recliner. No, I would not be shelling out for the Miracle At-Home Massage Chair. What I really needed was another trip to bliss in Sam Goody’s Chevette. All week I’d found myself wandering past the music store, even though I knew he wouldn’t be there. He wouldn’t be back for another day, but signs of him were all around the store if you knew where to look. The zines hidden in the magazine rack or the Pixies CD he’d snuck into the Billboard Top 40 window display. I nearly swooned at the sight of red clearance tags on soundtracks no one wanted to listen to from sequels no one wanted to see: Ghostbusters II. Short Circuit 2. Caddyshack II.
Sam Goody could be anywhere between Pineville and Cambridge. And even if he were home, I couldn’t call him anyway because I didn’t have his phone number. That’s right. I was officially the type of girl who made out with someone I didn’t know well enough to exchange digits.
My eyes were still closed, but I sensed someone standing over me. For the briefest, most beautiful moment I believed it was Sam Goody. He’d come to the mall a day early to surprise me, to put this vibrating recliner to its most arousing use …
“Cassandra!”
I got the exact opposite of what I wanted. I kept my eyes closed, though I knew it would do me little good.
“I told you to stop calling me that, Troy.”
“Fine, Cassie,” he huffed. “Why do you want my SAT prep book?”
“Our SAT prep book,” I corrected.
“You want a joint-custody agreement?”
Even with my eyes shut, I knew he had a shit-eating grin, the one smeared across his face whenever he thought he was being particularly witty.
“No,” I said. “I don’t want it at all. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Then why did Drea Bellarosa of all people come to my workplace and demand that I hand it over?”
Whoa. A trip to the library and an SAT prep book? Drea was even more serious about FIT than I could have ever imagined. I clutched the arms of the massage chair and held on for dear life. But I would not give him the satisfaction of opening my eyes.
“She’s applying to the Fashion Institute of Technology,” I said, “and I’m helping her.”
Troy was overcome by piggish snorts of laughter.
“Drea Bellarosa? In college?”
Another round of bovine hilarity.
“Didn’t she fail gym? I mean, fashion school isn’t even real school, but I don’t think they would lower their standards that far.”
It should be noted that some of the “lesser Ivies” didn’t meet Troy’s definition of a “real school.” If pressed, I’m sure he had chauvinistic opinions of Barnard as “okay for a girl school.” And yet, he wasn’t wrong about Drea’s prospects. It was that thin-envelope inevitability that had led me to this massage chair nightmare in the first place.
“Drea Bellarosa is a Pineville lifer,” Troy said definitively. “She’ll never be college material. The mall is her pitiful destiny.”
I wouldn’t have used those exact words. But Troy
was saying out loud what I’d kept to myself since agreeing to help her. I squeezed my eyes even tighter as if to prevent—and protect—me from seeing the truth of this situation I’d put myself in.
“Look,” Troy continued. “You can pretend all you want that you’re not interested in talking to me…”
“I’m not pretending.”
It was true. But it suddenly seemed very silly to keep my eyes closed. So I opened them slowly. And when my vision adjusted to the light, I was rewarded with the sight of Troy kneeling at my footrest. And he actually looked … apologetic?
“Okay, Cassie, here’s the truth: I’m sorry for how much I hurt you. Both you and I know that we are the only high-IQ intellectuals this lowbrow town has ever produced. There is an unbreakable bond between us.”
Troy intoned this with great gravity. I pictured him rehearsing in the mirror at home. Was there any truth to it?
“I know you feel totally lost without the plan.” His voice was escalating. He was building up to his final argument. “Let’s get back to building our future. We are a power couple, stronger together than we are apart.”
Troy took my hand in his. His touch felt cold and rubbery and lifeless, reminding me of the fetal pig we dissected in AP Biology. As a vegetarian, I should have refused to experiment on animals for ethical reasons. Instead, I picked up the scalpel without complaint. Why? Because Troy was my partner in the lab and—according to the plan—in life. I couldn’t let him down. For two years I chose him over my convictions, but I would not repeat that mistake. Not with Troy. Not with any other boy. Not ever again.
“I’m not lost!” I snatched my hand from his and stood. “In fact, I’ve already found someone new. And he is nothing, nothing like you.” I poked the center of his chest. “Goodbye, Troy.”
With the tiniest push of a pinky, I sent my ex sprawling backward into the massage chair where—for all I know—he might still be to this very day.
36
MIRACLE
Nine hundred thousand square feet wasn’t adequate for the distance I needed to put between me and Troy. I needed to be as far away from him as possible. I needed to breathe unrecycled air. I needed to escape the mall and go.… where?
The nearest exit brought me to the sidewalk abutting the Macy’s upper level parking lot. The sun was shining, but the damp air was fragrant with impending rain. I closed my eyes, tilted my head to the sky, and filled my lungs as the first droplets of water splashed off my forehead, my nose, my chin. I don’t know how long I stood there, but when I opened my eyes, I was rewarded with the most majestic sight:
A double rainbow stretched across the firmament, a turd-brown hatchback idling underneath.
I wasn’t religious, but Sam Goody’s arrival felt like a miracle, an act of God. The passenger side door was open wide, and I didn’t hesitate to get in beside him.
“I came back a day early,” he said.
“You came back just in time,” I said.
Without another word, he threw the car in gear and sped to a more secluded section of the parking lot.
“I missed you,” he said.
He kissed my forehead, my nose, my chin.
“I missed you too,” I said.
He kissed my mouth.
* * *
My mind left me as I kissed Sam Goody. But not in a distracted way. I wasn’t thinking about the fall of communism or unfunny sitcoms. I wasn’t thinking about getting even with my ex, making peace with my parents’ split, or telling Drea the truth about her dismal college prospects. I wasn’t thinking about anything at all, not even how easy it would be for a straggler shopper to see two half-naked teens going at it, that is, until we fogged up the windows to completely obstruct the view.
As we kissed in the front seat and did even more on the hatchback floor, I wasn’t thinking about how strange it was for me to lose my virginity to someone I had met a little over a month ago, to strip down to next to nothing and unabashedly share my body with this person I barely knew yet trusted completely, a person who, in tacit alignment, made himself equally available—and vulnerable—to me. With only the drumming of rain on the roof as our soundtrack, I let him discover places I hadn’t allowed anyone else to go to. I sought out parts of him too, an eager skin-to-skin exploration I never before needed to pursue. In the back of that busted, rusted Chevette, cognition surrendered to sensation. I was completely immersed in Sam Goody’s scent, taste, and touch. There was no past, no future, only the exquisite present.
I was fully in the moment for the first time in my life.
37
FRESH STARTS
Kathy drove me to the mall early on the morning of the Back-to-School Fashion Show. If she had any idea her only daughter wasn’t a virgin anymore, she didn’t let on. And I certainly wasn’t going to tell her.
“Being alive,” she sang along with Barbra. “Being aliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiive.”
I was so giddy, I nearly joined in. I didn’t want to go there with Kathy, but I couldn’t wait to share the big news with Drea. She’d be so proud of me! I’d proven I was over Troy by getting under someone else! Maybe I could hit her up for some techniques. Surely someone who’d subscribed to Cosmo for over a decade had a tip or two to share.
I was already fantasizing about our next tryst. I was counting on Drea and Gia being so caught up in fashion show chaos that they wouldn’t even notice if I disappeared for an hour … or two … or long enough for Sam to drive the Chevette somewhere we couldn’t be caught with our pants down in broad daylight. Having sex in the parking lot was reckless and risky in a way neither one of us was accustomed to. But achieving an uninhibited level of solitude wouldn’t be so easy. Jersey was already the most densely populated state in the country even without the influx of a billion out-of-state bennies every Friday through Sunday in the summer …
“Cassandra!”
My Sam Goody fantasies were making it tough for me to concentrate on making minimal conversation with my mother.
“What?”
“We need to go shopping before you leave for school next week,” she said. “Get you all the dorm room essentials!”
“Not necessary,” I said. “Dad and I already took care of it.”
She slowed down as she approached the pedestrian drop-off.
“When?”
“A few weeks ago, when we were buying stuff for the guest room at his condo,” I said. “I just made it easy by getting two of everything.”
I’d picked a jewel-toned paisley bedspread because it was more sophisticated than the pastel florals I’d grown up with. Simone Levy from Rochester, New York, was a little irritated that I hadn’t waited to consult her on our shared room’s aesthetic, but that was her own fault for waiting over a month to write me back.
“So, your dorm room at school will have the exact same decor as the guest room at your father’s?”
Two bedspreads, four decorative pillows, two area rugs, two desk organizers, two trash cans.
“More or less.”
“No!” She accidentally honked the horn, startling us both. “Your dorm room will not be a facsimile of your father’s guest room…”
Honestly, she seemed more upset about my duvet than she did about the divorce.
“But you’ll like it, Mom,” I said. “It’s blue. Which, apparently, is your favorite color.”
Kathy was too exasperated by the shopping trip with Frank to pick up on my sarcasm.
“I hope he kept the receipts, because it’s all going back,” she said. “You need a fresh start at school, Cassandra. You need to put the past behind you and move forward toward an uncertain future…”
When her voice quavered, I realized we weren’t really talking about duvets anymore.
“If we put history totally behind us,” I said, “how do we learn anything about ourselves?”
For two years I was with someone who never laughed at my jokes. Sam Goody—who, again, was nothing, nothing like Troy—laughed at all my jokes. But if I h
ad ignored history and pretended like I hadn’t spent two years with a boy who never laughed at my jokes, I might have set myself up to make the same mistake again. What a tragedy it would be if Kathy called it quits after twenty years only to end up with another well-intentioned but clueless man who thought her favorite color was orange.
“At forty-five, I thought I already knew everything I needed to know about myself,” she said. “But I was totally wrong.”
When she laughed at herself, I knew it was okay to laugh with her. Was it a coincidence that my parents and I were embarking on new phases in our lives at the same time? Or was it my impending departure that inspired them to start over again? The Volvo had come to a stop, but I didn’t want this conversation to end. I was ready to finally ask these questions, but I guess Kathy wasn’t ready to answer them.
“Just don’t settle for the first duvet that comes your way,” she said. “Even if it’s really comfy.”
“I’m not settling,” I said, thinking of Sam Goody. “I promise.”
Kathy angled closer to me. I braced myself for the insult, thinking for sure she was about to chastise me for not putting peroxide on my piercing. Instead, she planted a light kiss on my cheek.
“Your father and I love you very much.”
I was almost too overwhelmed by this unusually affectionate gesture to assure her I loved them too.
38
THE CROSSROADS
I arrived at Bellarosa an hour early to spill all the details to Drea about my devirginization. Evidently, this was already too late.
“Where have you been, Cassie?” Gia brayed. “The show starts in less than three hours, and I need to make sure everything is in order! Get dressed now!”
“Get dressed?” I asked. “What are you talking about?”
She pointed to the electric-blue tube dress.
Yes, the electric-blue tube dress.
“We’re already seeing more traffic this morning,” Gia explained. “I’m counting on you to work the sales floor with Drea while I’m going over all the last-second details for the fashion show.”
The Mall Page 17