Sixteen

by Megan Mccafferty

  For the longest time I wanted to see the pictures Lara took of me in the bathtub at the Hôtel Georges V, naked and skinny. It nagged at me for ages. I could think of nothing else. Then, one day, when I was cleaning out my closet, I found something more important to think about.

  My dungarees. The red ones with the ice creams. Age ten. I found them in a box of old clothes beneath the shoe rack. I freed them gently from the tumble of sweaters and summer dresses, as though working on an archaeological dig. And, incredibly, they fit. Once I discovered I could get them on, I wouldn’t take them off. Mum pleaded with me to get out of bed and she pleaded with me to eat, but mainly she pleaded with me to change my clothes. I heard her talk with my stepfather about hospitals and what they might be able to afford.

  The doctor says that I will starve. Maybe I will and maybe I won’t. My mum called Lara’s mum and she told me Lara promised she would visit. She never did. Lara is somewhere in New York now, doing rich-people things: skating, vacationing, giving insincere blow jobs. I don’t like that a girl I loved and will never see again has a photo of me naked in the bathtub of the Hôtel Georges V. But I don’t need to see it anymore. What’s the point? I know what I look like.

  Mona Lisa, Jesus, Chad, and Me

  Carolyn Mackler

  I first noticed that something was weird when Mona Lisa showed up at my sixteenth birthday party wearing a Little House on the Prairie dress. Seriously. It was straight from the banks of Plum Creek. Calico print, modestly high neck, hem-line way below the knees.

  It was barely even a clothed gathering. My boyfriend, Chad, and his best friend, Jonathan, were wearing their swimsuits. I had on my padded bikini top, jeans shorts, and a straw hat because the sun was descending toward the western shore of Cayuga Lake and the glare always kills my eyes. We were hanging out on the deck of my family’s rented summer cabin, drinking Pepsi, snacking on chips, and spitting cherry pits over the cliff. My mom was starting up the coals on the grill. My dad was inside, frosting the chocolate cake. When I went into the kitchen to get a round of sodas, he’d already written Happy Birthday, Emmy. Now he was squirting the decorating tubes to create a painter’s palette across the top of the cake because art has become my big obsession this year.

  “So when does your friend arrive?” Jonathan asked, shading his hands over his eyes and squinting at me.

  Chad puckered his lips, went, “Tfoooooo!” and blasted a cherry pit off the deck. He kept trying to spit them all the way to the water, but so far he’d only reached the stony beach.

  I shrugged. “I e-mailed her yesterday and said to come around sunset. Her plane lands in Rochester in the late afternoon and then she’s got an hour-and-a-half drive.”

  Jonathan grabbed a fistful of chips. “Mona Lisa is cute, right?”

  “Da Vinci!” Chad exclaimed.

  Leonardo da Vinci painted the famous portrait that is her namesake, so Chad had been saying that ever since I mentioned the idea of fixing up Jonathan with Mona Lisa. But as much as Chad was joking about her name and as frequently as Jonathan was questioning me about her level of attractiveness, they had to admit it was a great idea.

  Mona Lisa was my best summer friend. Ever since we were little, we’d spent the first two weeks of July on the same unpaved road, in cabins that overlook Cayuga Lake. Mona Lisa’s grandparents rent her cabin. When we were younger, she used to come up from Georgia with her mom, dad, and older brothers. Then her parents got divorced and she came with her mom and brothers. Then her brothers joined the military and her mom got some all-consuming job, so for the past few summers she’d come by herself.

  Mona Lisa and I were always inseparable during those two weeks. We’d swim in the lake and lay out on the deck and read magazines and scout for cute boys whizzing by in speed-boats. In mid-July, when she’d return to Atlanta and I’d head back to Rochester, we’d promise to stay in better touch. At first, we’d e-mail every few days and then every few weeks and then it’d get patchy until I received a note from her with the date she was flying to Central New York for another summer, usually right around my birthday.

  The only thing different about this July was Chad. We’d been going out since January and it was really serious by this point. We’d even had sex. Chad was seventeen and had his license, a used Toyota, and a lifeguarding job that gave him relatively flexible hours.

  My parents had agreed that Chad could drive up to the lake and spend his days off with me. Day being the operative word because as soon as the sun disappeared, so must Chad. At first I begged my parents to let him sleep over on the lumpy couch in the living room, but they said absolutely not. Then I thought, Hmmm, what if I turned it into a group thing—like Mona Lisa, Jonathan, Chad, and me—and we went on a camping excursion in the woods behind the cabin? My parents are always urging me to be more outdoorsy, so I knew they’d nibble. Sure enough, when I floated the idea, they said maybe, which of course beats absolutely not.

  I showed Jonathan a picture of Mona Lisa from last summer. Her blond hair was flowing past her shoulders and she was wearing low-rise shorts and a bikini top, except she doesn’t need the padded variety because she’s got boobs the natural way. Jonathan said, “Sure, hook me up.” So I e-mailed Mona Lisa to ask when she was coming and, hey, did she have a boyfriend? A few days later, she wrote me only with the date and time of her flight, so I took that as No Boyfriend. I e-mailed her and told her to stop by for my birthday barbecue as soon as she got to the lake.

  “You sure she’s coming?” Jonathan asked a half hour or so later.

  I lifted up the brim of my hat. The pink-orange sun was sinking into the horizon. We’d finished the chips and my mom had just put the shish kebab on the barbecue. Chad took another cherry. I sipped my warmish Pepsi. Jonathan was making some comment about Georgia peaches when I heard Mona Lisa say, “Hey, Emmy.”

  The three of us craned our heads around. There was Mona Lisa, standing on the edge of the deck in her Little House dress. Actually, only one of her feet was on the deck. The other was on the grass. The second thing I noticed, after the dress, was that Mona Lisa was wearing sandals. We always go barefoot at the lake, even if the stones murder our feet at the beginning, because after a week our soles become impenetrably tough.

  I jumped out of my lawn chair and ran across the deck. But when I bear-hugged her, she gave me the overcooked-noodle-semi-squeeze treatment.

  “How’s it going?” I asked.

  “Great,” she said.

  “Come join us.” I gestured to the guys. Chad waved. Jonathan half-smiled as he fiddled with the drawstring on his swimsuit. “Want a Pepsi or something?”

  Mona Lisa nodded. “Sure.”

  After I went inside to the fridge, I introduced Mona Lisa to the guys. Chad said, “ ’Sup?” Jonathan double-knotted his drawstring. My parents came out to greet her and then retreated back to the grill/kitchen. Mona Lisa sat in a chair a few feet off to the side, quietly sipping her soda. Chad and Jonathan started joking about this last-day-of-school bash we’d all gone to the previous week and, basically, how I got so wasted on Jell-O shots I was clutching the walls and tripping over my feet. I hissed that they should shut up because my parents were in earshot. Chad let it go, but Jonathan kept singing things like “It wiggles, it wobbles . . . J-E-L-L-O!”

  Mona Lisa didn’t say much while we were goofing around. She watched us, smiling now and then, almost with that strained patience my parents exhibit when they’re driving me and a friend somewhere and we’re being loud and you can tell it’s pissing them off but they don’t want to be the buzz killers.

  Mona Lisa didn’t say much during dinner, either. She complimented my mom’s shish kebab and politely answered questions whenever my dad or I asked her about her year. And then, when my parents went inside to light the birthday cake, she touched my shoulder and said, “I’m going to head back to my cabin.”

  “Are you okay? Don’t you want to stay for cake?”

  Mona Lisa shook her head. “I’m really tire
d. Let’s catch up tomorrow, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said, shrugging.

  Mona Lisa called out good-byes to my parents. Chad reached across the table and scooped the last cherry out of the bowl. I watched Mona Lisa walk across the deck, her dress swishing from side to side. I could hear Jonathan mumbling something about how you could barely see anything with that frock she had on. I glanced back at them just in time to see Chad go, “ Tfoooooo!” A cherry pit cannonballed through the air and landed with a distant plink in the lake.

  “Da Vinci!” Chad sang as the two of them high-fived.

  Since it was my birthday, my parents let Chad and Jonathan stay late. I ended up sleeping until eleven the next morning. When I woke up, my dad was out in the kayak and my mom was in the garden, searching for bugs. That’s her latest thing. She spends hours gaping at daddy longlegs and caterpillars and iridescent beetles.

  I ate a cinnamon Pop-Tart and sat on the deck, my sketch pad in my lap. I attempted to draw a willow tree with streaks of black charcoal, but I kept smudging my hand across the page and messing up the perspective and making it look more like a mushroom cloud or an obese porcupine. Finally, I set my supplies on the chair next to me and stared out at the lake.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about how strange it had been to see Mona Lisa. Any other year, she would have hugged me hard, stolen the straw hat off my head, flirted with Jonathan. She would have leaned down to scratch her ankle, deliberately giving him the opportunity to check out her cleavage, which would not have been covered in calico fabric. She would have matched my Jell-O story with some tale about getting high or going to a keg party. She would have whispered in my ear that the shish kebab was too weird and did we have a hot dog to throw on the grill?

  I grabbed my pad and charcoal pencil and headed down the dirt road toward her cabin. We’d only been here a few days, so I walked on the grassy center, wincing as stray rocks poked into my feet. Her grandparents’ car wasn’t in the driveway and no one answered when I knocked, so I walked around to the front yard.

  Mona Lisa was sitting in an Adirondack chair, reading a book. She was wearing shorts and a T-shirt. In summers past, she would have been in a skimpy bikini, but it was a definite improvement over the frock.

  “Hey!” I said, skipping across the grass.

  Mona Lisa smiled. “Hey, there.”

  I flopped down next to her. “How’s it going?”

  “Fine. How about you?”

  “Fine,” I said.

  I glanced at the book on her lap. It was called Simple Faith . Last summer Mona Lisa was devouring the Gossip Girl series.

  “Is everything okay?” I asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You just seem . . .” I paused. “You left so early last night.”

  “I was tired.”

  “You didn’t look like you were having any fun.”

  Mona Lisa shook her head. “That’s not really my thing anymore.”

  Huh?

  “I was hoping you and Jonathan would hit it off,” I finally said. “He’s Chad’s best friend, you know.”

  Mona Lisa ran a finger up and down the spine of her book.

  “What did you think of Chad?” I asked.

  “He seems nice.”

  I grinned. “Isn’t he cute? We’ve been together since January.”

  “I know . . . you told me in that e-mail.”

  She said the word that as if it were an odor. I had a feeling she was referring to the e-mail I sent her in April, when I told her Chad and I had done it. She’d already lost her virginity, so I hardly thought she was going to get judgmental on me.

  “I’ve gotten into a new relationship this year, too,” Mona Lisa said.

  “Really? Why didn’t you tell me? When I asked if you had a boyfriend and you didn’t reply, I thought it meant—”

  “Oh, no,” she said, shaking her head. “Not like that.”

  “Okay, I’m confused. Who’s it with?”

  “Jesus.”

  I was dumbfounded. I mean, what do you say? Jesus is such a hottie! But isn’t he a little old for you?

  As I stared at her, my jaw hanging, Mona Lisa told me how she’d been having a really hard time this past winter and then a friend took her to a Bible-study group and it was so great and then she started going to that friend’s Christian church and it was so great and how she’s been talking to God every day and it’s so, so, so great.

  I still didn’t know what to say. Great?

  But I didn’t have to say anything because Mona Lisa went on to describe how Jesus had saved her. She told me that he’d changed her life and how, if I were searching for answers, she was sure I’d find them in God as well.

  As she talked, I began sketching her profile on my drawing pad. I used a moderate dark line for her forehead and the skinny side of the pencil for her eyelashes. I scribbled a shadow along the side of her nose. But when I got to her mouth, I was perplexed. I couldn’t figure out what expression her lips were making, almost as if they were changing every second. For some reason, this unknowing bugged the hell out of me.

  Over the next few days, I avoided Mona Lisa. I guess you could say she freaked me out. I’m usually good at fielding random tidbits, but that whole Jesus thing came hurtling from out of nowhere. Well, not completely out of nowhere. Sometimes in e-mails, Mona Lisa used to put song lyrics at the bottom. Other times, she’d include quotes from the Bible. I’d always dismissed it as her coming from the South, where that kind of thing is probably more normal.

  Truthfully, I’d never thought much about religion. My family puts up a tree at Christmas and sings about silent nights and mangers, but that’s as far as it goes. We don’t go to church. My dad has told me outright that he doesn’t believe in God. My mom says she thinks God is a feeling inside all of us, in nature, in the universe. I side more with my dad. God seems about as realistic to me as the Easter Bunny.

  When Mona Lisa called to see if I wanted to take a walk, I said I was beat. When she stopped by the cabin and invited me down to the lake, I said I’d just been swimming. When I was tanning at our beach, I spotted her and her granddad at their dock, pushing a rowboat into the water.

  “Want to come along?” she yelled over to me.

  “Maybe some other time,” I shouted back.

  My parents kept asking me why I wasn’t spending time with Mona Lisa, but I didn’t know what to say, so I shrugged it off and said she was busy and I was busy. As if there was anything to do at the lake but shuck corn and listen to Jet Skis droning in endless circles and swat at horseflies.

  One morning, my mom and I were in the garden. She was watching a spider spin a shimmering web. I was painting a watercolor of my foot. When my mom asked again about Mona Lisa, I told her the truth this time. I told her how she’s gotten all into Jesus and how she practically tried to convert me.

  My mom surprised me by not being surprised. She said how Mona Lisa had a difficult childhood, with her parents divorcing and her dad moving to Arkansas and her mom never being around and her older brothers being bullies. She talked about how sometimes, when people are feeling vulnerable, they turn to religion for comfort and support.

  I dipped my paintbrush into a Dixie cup of water. “But I just feel like I can’t even relate to her anymore. It’s like she’s all brainwashed.”

  My mom poked at the spiderweb with a blade of grass. “That’s one of the sad things that happens as you get older. Friends sometimes slip away from each other and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.”

  As I painted my foot this deep red, I thought about how at least I should try to yank back the old Mona Lisa before she disappeared entirely.

  That afternoon, the sky was cloudy and the air was heavy, like a thunderstorm was on its way. But when I saw Mona Lisa swimming in the lake, I headed down our stairs and walked over to her dock. I sat on the pebbly shore until she spotted me and stepped out of the water. She was wearing a one-piece suit and mesh shoes. As she grabbed her
towel, I cut right to the chase.

  “What did you mean when you said that it wasn’t your thing anymore, hanging out with Jonathan, Chad, and me?”

  “Hi to you, too,” she said, cracking up.

  “I’m not joking. I want to know what you meant.”

  Mona Lisa flipped her head upside down and began toweling off her hair. After a minute, she said, “I guess that you guys are all into sinning, you know, drinking and fooling around and stuff.”

  “Are you serious?”

  Mona Lisa stood up straight again and twisted her hair into a knot. “Unless you can let Jesus into your heart, you’re going to go to hell.”

  My pulse sped up. I couldn’t believe she’d actually said that.

  “But it’s not like you’ve been any better than me,” I said. “What about the guys you’ve been with? What about the partying you’ve done?”

  “But I’ve asked Jesus to save me, so it’s all okay now. You can do that, too, if you want.”

  I was getting frustrated by this point. “Mona Lisa,” I snapped, “can you quit it with Jesus for a second?”

  There was an awkward silence. I could tell by her expression that I’d hurt her feelings. I picked up a flat stone and flung it into the water. It skipped three times. Mona Lisa and I used to have skipping contests down here. Whenever either of us skipped a rock, the other one would shriek, “I can do better!” And then we’d throw and throw until our shoulders were sore and our voices were parched.

  “It looks like a storm’s coming,” Mona Lisa said. “I’m going to head upstairs. Want to come?”

  I shook my head.

  Mona Lisa secured her towel around her waist. “I’d be happy to talk more about this, if you want. I can even loan you some books.”

  I bit my bottom lip. It was probably best for me to shut up right now.

  Mona Lisa stood there for a moment before heading toward the staircase that leads up to her cabin.

  I watched as the clouds got darker and the wind picked up. A major storm was about to hit, but I remained on the beach, staring at the thrashing water, my eyes stinging and my throat tight.