by Sarah Dessen
So a few days later, back at Delia’s after working a late-afternoon bridal shower (in a log-cabin lodge, no less, very woody) and encountering another disaster of sorts (soda water dispenser explosion during toasts), I’d made it through another day with Wish that was pretty much like all the others. Until now.
“Hey Macy,” Kristy said, wiping something off the hem of her black fringed skirt, part of the gypsy look she was sporting, “You coming out with us tonight?”
It was our routine now, how she always asked me. As much part of the schedule as everything in my other life was, dependable, just like clockwork. We both knew our parts. But this time, I left the script, took that leap, and improvised.
“Yeah,” I said. “I am.”
“Cool,” she said, smiling at me as she hitched her purse over her shoulder. The weird thing was how she didn’t even seem surprised. Like she knew, somehow, that eventually I’d come around. “Come on.”
Chapter Seven
“Oh, man,” Kristy said, carefully guiding another section of my hair over the roller, “Just wait. This is going to be great.”
Personally, I wasn’t so sure. If I’d known that going out with Kristy meant subjecting myself to a makeover, I probably would have thought twice before saying yes. Now, though, it was too late.
I’d had my first reservations when she’d insisted I shed my work clothes and put on a pair of jeans she was absolutely sure would fit me (she was right) and a tank top that she swore would not show off too much cleavage (she was wrong). Of course, I couldn’t really verify either of these things completely, as the only objective view was the mirror on the back of the closet door, which was now facing the wall so that, in her words, I wouldn’t see myself until I was “done.” All I had to go on was Monica, who was sitting in a chair in the corner of the room, smoking a cigarette she had dangling out the window and making occasional ummm-hmm noises whenever Kristy needed a second opinion.
Clearly, this was a different sort of Friday night than I was used to. But then, everything was different here.
Kristy and Monica’s house wasn’t a house at all but a trailer, although, as we approached it, Kristy explained that she preferred to call it a “doublewide,” as there was less redneck association with that moniker. To me, it looked like something out of a fairy tale, a small structure painted cobalt blue with a big sprawling garden beside it. There her grandmother Stella, whom I’d met the night I was lost, grew the flowers and produce she sold at her stand and to local restaurants. I’d seen lots of gardens before, even fancy ones in my neighborhood. But this one was incredible.
Green and lush, it grew up and around the doublewide, making the structure, with its bright cobalt color and red door, look like one more exotic bloom. Along the front, sunflowers moved lazily in the breeze, brushing a side window: beneath them were a row of rosebushes, their perfumelike scent permeating the air. From there, the greenery spread sideways. I saw a collection of cacti, all different shapes and sizes, poking out from between two pear trees. There were blueberry bushes beside zinnias and daisies and coneflowers, woolly lamb’s ear up against bright purple lilies and red hot pokers. Instead of set rows, the plots were laid out along narrow paths, circling and encircling. Bamboo framed a row of flowering trees, which led into one small garden plot with tiny lettuces poking up through the dirt, followed by pecan trees next to geraniums, and beside them a huge clump of purple irises. And then there was the smell: of fruit and flowers, fresh dirt and earthworms. It was incredible, and I found myself just breathing it in, the smell lingering on me long after we’d gone inside.
Now Kristy slid another bobby pin over a curler, smoothing with her hand to catch a stray piece of hair that was hanging over my eyes.
“You know,” I said, warily, “I’m not really a big hair person.”
“Oh, God, me neither.” She picked up another roller. “But this is going to be wavy, not big. Just trust me, okay? I’m really good with hair. It was, like, an obsession with me when I was bald.”
Because she was behind me, fussing with the rollers, I couldn’t see her face as she said this. I had no idea if her expression was flippant or grave or what. I looked at Monica, who was flipping through a magazine, not even listening. Finally I said, “You were bald?”
“Yup. When I was twelve. I had to have a bunch of surgeries, including one on the back of my head, so they had to shave all my hair off,” she said, brushing out a few of the loose tendrils around my face. “I was in a car accident. That’s how I got my scars.”
“Oh,” I said, and suddenly I was worried I had been staring at them too much, or she wouldn’t have brought it up. “I didn’t—”
“I know,” she said easily, hardly bothered. “But it’s hard to miss them, right? Usually people ask, but you didn’t. Still, I figured you were probably wondering. You’d be surprised how many people just walk right up and ask, point-blank, like they’re asking what time it is.”
“That’s rude,” I said.
“Mmm-hmm,” Monica agreed, stubbing her cigarette out in the windowsill.
Kristy shrugged. “Really, I kind of prefer it. I mean, it’s better than just staring and acting like you’re not. Kids are the best. They’ll just look right at me and say, “What’s wrong with your face?” I like that. Get it out in the open. I mean, shit, it’s not like it isn’t anyway. That’s one reason why I dress up so much, you know, because people are already staring. Might as well give them a show. You know?”
I nodded, still processing all this.
“Anyway,” Kristy continued, doing another roller, “it happened when I was twelve. My mom was on one of her benders, taking me to school, and she ran off the road and hit this fence, and then a tree. They had to cut me out of the car. Monica, of course, was smart enough to have the chicken pox so she didn’t have to go to school that day.”
“Donneven,” Monica said.
“She feels guilty,” Kristy explained. “It’s a sister thing.”
I looked at Monica, who was wearing her normal impassive expression as she examined her fingernails. She didn’t look like she felt particularly bad to me, but then again so far I’d only seen her with one expression, a sort of tired blankness. I figured maybe it was like a Rorschach inkblot: you saw in it whatever you needed or wanted to.
“Besides the scars on my face,” Kristy was saying, “there’s also one on my lower back, from the fusion, and a big nasty one on my butt from the skin graft. Plus there are a couple on my scalp, but you can’t see those since my hair grew back.”
“God,” I said. “That’s horrible.”
She picked up another curler. “I did not like being bald, I can tell you that much. I mean, there’s only so much you can do with a hat or a scarf, you know? Not that I didn’t try. The day my hair started to come in for real, I cried I was so happy. Now I can’t bring myself to cut it more than just a tiny bit every few months. I relish my hair now.”
“It is really nice,” I told her. “Your hair, I mean.”
“Thanks,” she said. “I’m telling you, I think I appreciate it more than most people. I never complain about a bad hair day, that’s for sure.”
She climbed off the bed, tucking the hairbrush in her pocket before crouching down in front of me to secure a few loose wisps of hair with a bobby pin. “Okay,” she said, “you’re almost set, so let’s see. . . . Monotone.”
“Nuh-uh,” Monica said, sounding surprisingly adamant.
“Oh, come on! If you’d just let me try something, for once, you’d see that—”
“Donneven.”
“Monica.”
Monica shook her head slowly. “Bettaquit,” she warned.
Kristy sighed, shaking her head. “She refuses to take fashion risks,” she said, as if this was a true tragedy. Turning back to her sister, she held up her hands in a visualize-this sort of way. “Look. I’ve got one word for you.” She paused, for dramatic effect. “Pleather.”
In response to this, Mon
ica got up and started toward the door, shaking her head.
“Fine,” Kristy said, shrugging, as Monica went down the hallway, grabbing her purse off the floor by the door, “just wear what you have on, like you always do. But you won’t be dynamic!”
The front door slammed shut, responding to this, but Kristy hardly seemed bothered, instead just walking back to her closet and standing in front of it, her hands on her hips. Looking out the window beside me, I could see Monica start up the driveway, altogether undynamically, and as usual, exceptionally slowly.
Kristy bent down, pulling a pair of scuffed penny loafers out from under the hanging clothes and tossing them to me. “Now, I know what you’re thinking,” she said, as I looked down at them. “But penny loafers are entirely underrated. You’ll see. And we can do your cleavage with this great bronzer—I think it’s in the bathroom.”
And then she was gone, pulling open the bedroom door and heading down the hallway, still muttering to herself. My head felt heavy under the rollers, my neck straining as I looked down at the tank top she’d given me to wear. The straps had tiny threads of glitter woven throughout, and the neckline plunged much farther than anything I owned. It was way too dressy to go with the jeans, which were faded, the cuffs rolled up and frayed at the ankle; a heart was drawn on the knee in ballpoint pen. Looking at it, the solid blackness at its center, the crooked left edge, not quite right, all I could think was that these weren’t my clothes, this wasn’t who I was. I’d been acting out against Bethany and Amanda, but I was the one who would really pay if this went all wrong.
I have to get out of here, I thought, and stood up, pulling one of the curlers by my temple loose and dropping it on the bed. A single corkscrew curl dropped down over my eyes and I stared at it, surprised, as it dangled in my field of vision, the smallest part of me transformed. But I was leaving. I was.
My watch said 6:15. If I left now, I could get home in time to be back on my schedule as if I’d never strayed from it. I’d tell Kristy my mom had called me on my phone, saying she needed me, and that I was sorry, maybe another time.
I stood up, pulling another curler out, then another, dropping them on the bed as I hurriedly slung my purse over my shoulder. I was almost to the door when Kristy came back down the hallway, a small compact in her hands.
“This stuff is great,” she said. “It’s like an instant tan, and we’ll just put it—”
“I’ve just realized,” I said, plunging right in to my excuses, “I really think—”
She looked up at me then, her eyes widening. “Oh, God, I totally agree,” she said, nodding. “I didn’t see it before, but yeah, you’re absolutely right.”
“What?”
“About your hair,” she said, as she came into the room. I found myself backing up until I bumped against the bed again. Kristy reached past me, grabbing a white shirt that was lying on one of the pillows and, before I could stop her, she’d slid my arm inside one sleeve. I was too distracted to protest.
“My hair?” I said, as she eased my other arm in, then grabbed the shirttails, knotting them loosely around my waist. “What?”
She reached up, spreading her fingers and pulling them through my hair, stretching out the curls. “I was going to brush it out, but you’re right, it looks better like that, all tousled. It’s great. See?”
And then she walked over to the closet door, pushing it shut, and I saw myself.
Yes, the jeans were faded and frayed, the heart on the leg crooked, too dark. But they fit me really well: they could have been mine. And the tank top was a bit much, glittering in so many places from the overhead light, but the shirt over it toned it down, giving only glimpses here and there. The shoes, which had looked dorky when I put them on, somehow went with the jeans, which hit in such a way that they showed a thin sliver of my ankle. And my hair, without the clear, even part that I worked so hard for every morning, drawing a comb down the center with mathematical precision, was loose and falling over my shoulders, softening my features. None of it should have worked together. But somehow, it did.
“See? I told you,” Kristy said from behind me, where she was standing smiling, proud of her handiwork, as I just stared, seeing the familiar in all these changes. How weird it was that so many bits and pieces, all diverse, could make something whole. Something with potential. “Perfect.”
It took Kristy considerably longer to assemble her own look, a retro sixties outfit consisting of white go-go boots, a pink shirt, and a short skirt. By the time we finally went out to meet Bert, he’d been waiting for us in the doublewide’s driveway for almost a half hour.
“It’s about time,” he snapped as we came up to the ambulance. “I’ve been waiting forever.”
“Does twenty minutes constitute forever now?” Kristy asked.
“It does when you’re stuck out here waiting for someone who is selfish, ungrateful, and thinks the whole world revolves around her,” Bert said, then cranked up the music he was playing—a woman wailing, loud and dramatic—ensuring that any retort to this would be drowned out entirely.
Kristy tossed her purse inside the ambulance, then grabbed hold of the side of the door, pulling herself up. The music was still going, reaching some sort of climax, with a lot of thundering guitars. “Bert,” she yelled, “can you please turn that down?”
“No,” he yelled back.
“Pink Floyd. It’s my punishment, he knows how much I hate it,” she explained to me. To Bert she said, “Then can you at least turn on the lights back here for a second? Macy can’t see anything. ”
A second later, the fluorescent light over her head flickered, buzzed, and then came on, bathing everything in a gray, sallow light. It was so hospital-like I felt the nervousness that had been simmering in my stomach since we’d left the house—ambulance phobia—begin to build. “See, he’ll do it for you,” she said. She stuck out her hand to me. “Here, just grab on and hoist yourself up. You can do it. It’s not as bad as it looks.”
I reached up and took her hand, surprised at her strength as she pulled me up, and the next thing I knew I was standing inside the ambulance, ducking the low ceiling, hearing the buzz of that light in my ear. There was now an old brown plaid sofa against one wall, and a small table wedged between it and the back of the driver’s seat. Like a traveling living room, I thought, as Kristy clambered around it, grabbing her purse on the way, and slid into the passenger seat. I sat down on the couch.
“Bert, please turn that down,” Kristy yelled over the music, which was now pounding in my ears. He ignored her, turning his head to look out the window. “Bert. Bert!”
Finally, as the shrieking was reached a crescendo, Bert reached over, hitting the volume button. And suddenly, it was quiet. Except for a slow, knocking sound. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.
I realized suddenly that the sound was coming from the back doors, so I got up, pushing them open. Monica, a cigarette poking out of one side of her mouth, looked up at me.
“Hand,” she said.
“Put that out first,” Bert said, watching her in the rearview mirror. “You know there’s no smoking in the Bertmobile.”
Monica took one final drag, dropped the cigarette to the ground, and stepped on it. She stuck her hand out again, and I hoisted her up, the way Kristy had done for me. Once in, she collapsed on the couch, as if that small activity had taken just about everything she had.
“Can we go now, please?” Bert asked as I pulled the doors shut. Up in the passenger seat, Kristy was messing with the radio, the wailing woman now replaced by a boppy pop beat. “Or would you like another moment or two to make me insane?”
Kristy rolled her eyes. “Where’s Wes?”
“He’s meeting us there. If we ever get there.” He pointed, annoyed, at the digital clock on the dashboard, which said 7:37. “Look at that! The night is just ticking away. Ticking!”
“For God sakes, it’s early,” Kristy said. “We’ve got plenty of time.”
Which, I soon found out
, was a good thing. We’d need it, with Bert behind the wheel.
He was a slow driver. More than slow, he was also incredibly cautious, a driver’s ed teacher’s dream. He paused for green lights, came to full stops before railroad crossings that hadn’t seen trains in years, and obeyed the speed limit religiously, sometimes even dropping below it. And all the while, he had both hands on the wheel in the ten-and-two position, watching the road like a hawk, prepared for any and all obstacles or hazards.
So it seemed like ages later that we finally turned off the main road and onto a gravel one, then began driving on grass, over small rises and dips, toward an area where several cars were parked, encircling a clearing with a few wooden picnic tables in the center. People were sitting at them, on them, grouped all around, and there were several flashlights scattered across the surfaces of the tables, sending beams of light in all directions. Bert backed in, so we were facing the tables, then cut the engine.
“Finally,” Kristy said, unbuckling her seat belt with a flourish.
“You could have walked,” Bert told her.
“I feel like we did,” she said. Then she pushed her door open, and I heard voices nearby, someone laughing. “I’m going to get a beer. Anybody else want one?”
“Me,” Monica said, standing up and pushing open the back doors. She eased herself out with a pained expression, then started across the grass.
“Macy?” Kristy asked.
“Oh, no thanks,” I said. “I’m fine.”
“Okay.” She climbed out the front door, letting it fall shut behind her. “Be right back.”
I watched them cross into the clearing and walk past one of the picnic tables to a keg that was under some nearby trees. Two guys were standing by it, and one of them, who was tall with a shock of red hair, immediately went to work getting Kristy a beer, eyeing her appreciatively as he did so. Monica was standing by with a bored expression, while the redhead’s friend shot her sideways looks, working up to saying something.