For Better or For Worse

by Robin Palmer

  “Play The World’s Ugliest Outfit with at the Holyoke Mall and then end up in the security office once everyone realizes that the girl wearing the yellow sequined top is the most famous girl in America?” I guessed.

  “Well, I was going to say ‘someone you can rely on,’ but I guess that works, too,” Wendi replied.

  When I looked at Laurel, she was smiling. That had been a great day. Although Laurel had made us stop every two seconds so she could take pictures of things like the food court and the have-your-name-written-on-a-grain-of-rice necklace kiosk because she hadn’t ever been to a regular mall. That had gotten tiring.

  “We actually prefer the term ‘frister,’” I said. “It’s a combination of friend and sister.”

  “That is so cute!” Wendi squealed. “Laurel, you are very, very clever.”

  “Actually, it’s my word,” I piped up.

  “Oh. Interesting,” she said in a way that made it sound like because I was the one who had come up with it, it was suddenly a lot less interesting. She turned to me. “Lucy, I would really love it if you could let us in on what it’s like to like to live with the most famous girl in America.”

  I forced myself to not roll my eyes. The last thing I needed was for people to write all sorts of stuff on message boards after the show aired about how I was jealous of Laurel. But if Wendi pointed out one more time that Laurel was famous and I wasn’t, I was going to scream.

  “It’s…uh…interesting,” I replied.

  Laurel gave a tinkly laugh. Since when had she started to tinkle? “What does that mean, Lucy?” To the average person the question would’ve sounded normal, but because I knew Laurel so well, I could hear the nervousness underneath it.

  “Interesting meaning…interesting,” I said. It wasn’t like I was going to tell all of America about the fact that she had went through a bottle of Purell a week. Although with the way she was acting, she kind of deserved it.

  “Why don’t you girls tell us about the first time you met,” Wendi said. “Was it BFFdom at first sight?”

  Laurel tinkled again. “Not exactly. In fact, it’s a very funny story—”

  My hands got clammy. “You know, Laurel, I doubt anyone wants to hear that story,” I said, trying to sound equally tinkly. Unfortunately, when I did it, it sounded more like a donkey braying. I leaned in to Wendi. “It’s kind of boring,” I whispered.

  “No, it isn’t,” Laurel said.

  “Yes, it is,” I said, giving her a look that said, Okay, Laurel, because we’re fristers, I know you can hear what I’m thinking even though I’m not actually using my voice to say it. So since that’s the case, you know what I’m thinking is that if you tell the story about the Hat Incident on national television, I will have to kill you.

  Laurel smiled at the camera. “Lucy calls it the Hat Incident, which I think is super cute.”

  “Oh, that is super cute!” Wendi agreed.

  This time I let my eyes roll. I bet if Laurel had said, “Pink is a really ugly color,” Wendi would’ve said, “Omigod—so ugly!” even though it’s all she ever wore.

  Laurel went on to tell the story about the first day we met—in front of the Tattered Cover bookstore in Northampton when the director of the movie she was shooting grabbed the hat off my head, exposing the horrible haircut I had gotten after the Straightening Iron Incident that made me look like an egghead. I sat there with my fake smile, holding on to the blanket with both hands in order to stop myself from smothering Laurel with a pillow.

  After she was done, she threw her arm around my shoulder and smiled at me. “And the rest is history, right, Lucy?”

  I studied her face. Had she been trying to embarrass me with that story, or was she just totally clueless and really thought it was super cute? After a second, I decided she just thought it was a super cute. Which, frankly, was a little scary.

  Wendi shook her head slowly. “What a beginning to a friendship.” She turned to me. “Now Lucy,” she said. “What would you say the biggest difference is between you and Laurel? You know, other than she’s famous and you’re not.”

  Laurel raised her hand. “Oh, I know one way!” she cried.

  If Laurel was just a regular girl who went to regular school, she’d totally have a reputation for being a bit of a know-it-all.

  Wendi smiled. “What is it?”

  “Well, I’m a little on the neat side,” she said. “Whereas Lucy…um…” She held up her hands and shrugged.

  I turned to her. “What does that mean?”

  “Nothing. Just that you’re a little on the…other side,” she replied.

  “Are you saying that I’m on the messy side?” I demanded. “We’ve talked about this before. I’m not messy,” I said stubbornly. “I’m…creatively organized.”

  Wendi nodded. “’Creatively organized,’” she said. “I like that.”

  I smiled. Score one for Lucy B. Parker. Finally. “Thanks. I came up with it the other day.”

  Laurel laughed. “I guess that’s one way of putting it.”

  Okay, that was it. To tell embarrassing stories about your frister was one thing, but to accuse her of being messy on national televsion? That was crossing a line. My eyes narrowed. “At least I don’t wipe down my blinds for fun. Or sneak into other people’s rooms and wipe down theirs.”

  If Dad were there, he’d tell me that a true Buddhist doesn’t try to get back at someone by saying something mean to her, but (a) I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be a Buddhist yet anyway and (b) between mentioning the Hat Incident and my creative organizing to the entire world, Laurel deserved a dose of her own medicine.

  Laurel sat up straight and crossed her arms. “Dust is a silent killer,” she replied. “There was an entire special about it on the Discovery Channel last week.”

  I couldn’t believe she had just admitted she watched an entire program about dust. And not just to me but to the world. I didn’t have to worry about embarrassing her—she had just done it herself.

  “Yeah, well, a certain amount of dust is also healthy,” I shot back. “It helps your immune system.”

  “Who told you that? Sarah?” Laurel asked.

  “I can’t remember,” I replied. Okay, so maybe I hadn’t exactly heard it. But even though I hadn’t, I bet that someone, somewhere had once said it. “Plus, a little bit of unorganization is good for your brain.” Maybe I hadn’t exactly heard that, either, but I was even more sure of that one than the dust-being-healthy one. “It makes it…work harder.”

  She laughed. “I guess we have different ideas of a ‘little’ and ‘a lot.’”

  “I guess we do,” I tinkled as I smiled for the camera.

  As Wendi continued the interview and Laurel and I pretended that nothing was wrong even though, because we knew each other so well, we both knew something was wrong, I thought about how it now seemed like we had different ideas about a lot of things.

  That night, after Wendi and her crew left, for the first time since it had come on the air, Laurel and I didn’t watch The Real Ghost Housewives of Des Moines together. Usually we crawled into her bed together (not surprisingly, she didn’t like watching in my room…probably because of the invisible dust that apparently really bothered her even though she had never actually told me that). During the really scary parts (and there were many because some of those housewives were mad) we’d grab onto each other. But that night I was forced to watch it by myself. At first I tried to make Miss Piggy watch it with me by locking her in my room, but being hissed at isn’t much fun—especially when you’re already scared. I tried to ignore the fact that once I let her out, she ran straight for Laurel’s room and pawed at the door until Laurel opened it (it took her a few tries because of the blind thing).

  After the show was over I decided to do some brainstorming about how to make things go back to the way they used to be. Taking out my favorite purple marker and my notebook that was titled “Miscellaneous Lists and Other List-Like Things” (there weren’t actually
any other list-like things in it, but to use Wite-Out to take that off the cover would’ve made it look ugly), I turned to a clean page and wrote “Things to Do to Make Things Go Back to How They Were Pre-Change aka Before Everyone in My Family ESPECIALLY My Mom and Laurel Started Acting All Weird).”

  1. Invent a time machine in order to turn back time. Which isn’t going to happen because (a) I’m not an inventor-type person and (b) that only happens in movies and children’s books.

  2. Follow Rule #7 of the Official Parker-Moses Family Rule Book, which states, “All family members must try to resolve any and all conflict that arises within the family so that it does not turn into a resentment.” But that’s not going to work because that would mean going into Laurel’s room and saying I wanted to talk to her, which she would take to mean I was there to APOLOGIZE, which I AM NOT because I DIDN’T DO ANYTHING WRONG.

  3. Try that praying thing again because back when I was scared to tell Beatrice about my crush on Blair and I did it, it kind of worked. But from what I had heard, you can’t really control when you receive an answer to your prayer and I need one immediately.

  4. Write Dr. Maude an e-mail asking for advice. Also not going to work—see #3 for why.

  5. Get into bed and go to sleep and hope that things will be better in the morning.

  I looked at the list and realized that nothing I had come up with so far seemed all that inspired, so I decided it was time to step things up. Which, in this case, meant doing a headstand. According to Alice, doing headstands helped you come up with answers to problems. (“Something about the blood leaving your brain or the dizziness when you stand up.”) The whole thing sounded pretty fishy to me, but because (a) I was out of ideas and (b) I wanted to see if by any chance my coordination had improved at all, I decided to give it a try.

  When you’re a person with coordination issues, getting up into a headstand takes a few tries. Like, say, five. It also results in your mother standing outside your door demanding, “Lucy Beth Parker, what is going on in there?!” and you saying, “Nothing. Just trying to practice doing a headstand,” and her replying, “Your bedroom is not a yoga studio so unless you can do it away from the wall like Laurel, save it for gym class.” (One thing I had noticed post-Change was that Mom compared me to Laurel more than usual. And not in a good way but more like pointing out things that Laurel was better at than me.)

  Finally, I made it up. But once there, I wasn’t sure what to do—did I think about my problem and hope that the answer came to mind while I was up there? Did I not think about my problem? Did I try not to get grossed out by the dust bunnies under my bed that I could now see and worry that maybe Laurel was right and if we ever made up, I should let her move my bed and sweep under there like she was always begging to do? Did I worry about what my life would be like if I broke my neck while in the headstand and became a paraplegic? (I wondered if that happened, if Laurel would want to play me in the movie version.) After what seemed like about a half hour but, when I looked at my bedside clock, was only more like two minutes, I came down. Not only solutionless, but with a crick in my neck.

  “So much for that,” I sighed as I stood up and cringed at the heel prints I had left on my purple walls. Although there was nothing in the Parker-Moses Family Rules Book that stated, “No heel prints on walls,” I had a feeling that, in Alan’s eyes, it was almost as a bad as sneaking food into the bedroom. But then—as I walked over to my desk to make a new list titled “Things NOT to Do to Make Things Go Back to How They Were Pre-Change” where number one would be Do a headstand to help with brainstorming for an answer—it hit me.

  I would come up with the best, most fantastic, unbelievably awesome wedding toast ever. It would be a video and when everyone saw it, Mom would be so impressed that she’d go back to being normal, and Wendi would see that Laurel wasn’t the only talented, creative person in the family.

  And I would ask Blair to help me because he was the ex-president of the AV club.

  Although I preferred the idea of asking Blair via e-mail—especially because I had dots of zit cream on my face—I decided that asking someone for such a big favor for nothing other than payment in fried Oreos (that was what I had paid him in when he did the video for my class president election) meant I should probably do it in person.

  After washing off the zit cream and changing out of Mom’s holey Smith sweatshirt into my new Woodstock Animal Sanctuary one (we had gone there for a field trip a few weeks before and other than the fact that I got stuck sitting next to Mallory Sullivan on the bus, who, apparently, was not familiar with the word “deodorant,” it was an awesome day), I took the elevator down to Beatrice and Blair’s apartment on the tenth floor.

  Well, first I stopped on the twelfth floor, which was where Dr. Maude lived. Pete was always telling me that stalking other residents was “severely frowned upon” by the co-op board (that was the group of snooty adults who were in charge of saying who could move into the building, and whether or not people could leave their bikes in the basement), especially since he was the person who had originally let it slip that she lived there. But after I explained to him that it wasn’t stalking unless you actually went up to the person’s door and put your ear to it to see if you could hear whether or not they were home, he let it go.

  Because what I was doing was not stalking. I just pushed the button in the elevator so that the door just happened to open on her floor, which allowed me to possibly run into her if she was coming out of her door at that moment. That was more like attempting to get to know my neighbors because I’m a very friendly person. Well, except when it comes to crazy people on the subway who mutter to themselves about how that morning as they were eating a hardboiled egg, the egg turned into a goblin and whispered that the world was going to end in six days and thirty-two hours. In that case, I just stared at the ground like all the other passengers with a don’t-even-THINK-about-talking-to-me look on my face.

  As usual, when the elevator doors opened, there was no sign of Dr. Maude. There was, however, a sign of what I was pretty sure was Dr. Maude’s umbrella (black, with a real wooden handle, which made me think it was kind of expensive as opposed to the small ones you could buy on the street for five bucks—seven, if it were particularly rainy—that always blew inside out and almost took your eye out before you had even made it down the block). Not only that, but there were two pairs of dog booties—one pink, one blue—neatly lined up next to it. I knew they belonged to her dachshunds, Id and Ego, and was a little tempted to go knock on the door and, if she answered, tell her that usually I found dog booties to be pretty silly looking, but in this case they were super cute. But because that came somewhat close to stalking, I stopped myself and let the doors close and continued down to the tenth floor.

  When Beatrice opened the door, she was holding a yellow highlighter. “Here you go,” she said, thrusting it out to me. I had decided that while it was a little bit of a stretch (i.e., somewhat close to a lie) for me to text Beatrice and ask if she had a yellow highlighter I could borrow, and if so, could I come down to her place and get it, it wouldn’t affect my karma too much.

  “Thanks,” I said, taking it.

  “But why didn’t you ask Laurel for one?” she asked. “She’s got an entire desk drawer of them.”

  That was true. Not only that, but they were all lined up perfectly. “Because we’re kind-of, sort-of in a fight,” I replied. I wasn’t sure if that was entirely true, but to find out would have meant asking Laurel, and I didn’t want to do that.

  “Oh. Okay. Well, I’ll see you in the morning,” she said as she started to close the door.

  I put my foot out to stop it. “Wait!” I cried.

  She opened it. “What?” she asked impatiently. “Pageant Queens Rehab is on.”

  Pageant Queens Rehab was Beatrice’s favorite show. The rehab that they sent the girls to wasn’t for drugs but for makeup and diet food and hairspray. Basically, they got them off all that stuff and turned them into no
rmal people again. Usually, Beatrice only liked documentaries about chimps in Africa or travel shows about Paris (she was planning on moving there when she grew up and becoming a famous writer), but after Alice forced us to watch it one night when we were having a sleepover at her house (“I know you guys are guests and all, but because it’s my house I get to pick what we watch on TV”) Beatrice was hooked. I found the way the women all looked like dolls with big blue eyes and spider-like eyelashes kind of creepy, but because I was a huge Hoarders fan, I wasn’t in any position to judge.

  “Okay, okay. I just…need to use your bathroom,” I said. In an effort to look somewhat believable, I crossed my legs. And then added a hop and a wince. It would’ve made things so much easier if I felt more comfortable about having a crush on my best friend’s brother.

  She narrowed her eyes. “Where’s your zit cream?” she demanded.

  “Huh?”

  “You always put your zit cream on at seven thirty.”

  Whoops. That was the problem with having a best friend who knew everything about you. “I, um…see, the thing is—” I mumbled.

  She cocked her head. “Ohhhh. I get it. You’re here to see him.” She gave me a look of utter disappointment. Much like Miss Piggy did when I walked toward her with my arms open so we could spend some quality bonding time together and she ran to the nearest small space where it was impossible for me to get to her. “He’s in his room,” she said as she padded back to the couch.

  “It’s a business thing,” I called after her. “Not, like, you know, a crush thing.”

  “Whatever,” she said.

  I tried to think of something else to say to help my case, but I figured it was easier to just let her go back and watch her show. When I walked over to Blair’s room, the door was closed and there was some sort of weird music playing. It was one thing to show up at someone’s apartment to ask them something, but it was another to knock on their closed door behind which they were doing who knew what. Which is why I did what any normal person in my situation would do: I went and waited in the bathroom for him to come out.