Bulletproof Mascara: A Novel

by Bethany Maines

  “That’s terrible. Y’all might just as well have not burned your bras,” said Jenny, shaking her head.

  “Don’t be silly,” said Ellen. “We burned our bras so that your generation could learn how to change things. I’m not obligated to know.”

  Nikki laughed. “What are we doing after we get back to the ranch? More shooting?” she asked.

  Jenny chuckled again, sliding down in the seat until her butt was off the bench and her knees could be felt through the padding of Nikki’s seat. “Give the girl a gun and all she wants do is shoot things.”

  “I don’t know,” Ellen said, answering Nikki’s question, and smacking at Jenny’s knees through the seat. “I think the schedule said ‘Specialty Items.’”

  “What on earth are Specialty Items?” asked Jenny, still slumped in the seat, her shoulder blades nearly touching the bend of the bench.

  “Search me,” said Ellen as the bus pulled up to the ranch.

  “All right, ladies,” shouted Mrs. Boyer as the girls shuffled off the bus. “Forty minutes to shower and change, and then we’re meeting in Classroom B for our next class.” There was another collective groan from the group.

  “Don’t be late,” snapped Mrs. Boyer, and she headed into the main house.

  Nikki happily raced for the shower and, thirty minutes later, came down the stairs to an empty dining hall. Shrugging, she jogged toward the lecture building.

  The doorway to Classroom B was open, and Nikki could hear someone inside whistling off-key. Pausing in the doorway, she saw a woman in a rumpled lab coat standing over a desk jotting down something on a piece of paper. As Nikki watched, the woman ran her hands through her blond curls, but at opposite angles, so her hair frizzed out in all directions. She had a slightly uncertain expression, as if she had just put her glasses down and couldn’t quite remember where. Nikki cleared her throat, and the woman looked up. A worried furrow began to form on her forehead.

  “The atomic weight of cobalt,” she said. “Shoot! I had it just a minute ago!”

  “Fifty-eight point ninety-three,” Dina supplied, stepping into the classroom after Nikki, practically pushing her out of the way.

  “Oh, thank you,” the blond woman said with relief, and went back to scribbling on her piece of paper. “Yes,” she said, stepping back to admire her chicken scratch, “I think that just might work.” Then she looked back at the two students, her frown creeping back in.

  “Can I help you with something?”

  “We’re here for the class,” said Nikki with a smile.

  “Oh! Right. Class. Right.” She looked around the classroom as if surprised to find herself there.

  “I’m Dina Kirk. I majored in chemistry.” Dina shook the blond woman’s unresisting hand. “I had the highest GPA in the class. If you’d like a student assistant, I’d be more than happy to help.”

  Carmella and Sarah entered the room laughing, but stopped when they saw Dina and the woman in the lab coat.

  “Nice of you to offer, but why don’t you all just take a seat,” said the woman. “I’ll be with you in a moment.”

  Dina tried not to look disappointed and sat at a front table. The other girls walked past her, refusing to sit next to her.

  “Did she just pull the ‘majored in chemistry’ bit?” Carmella whispered as they walked to seats nearer the back of the room. Nikki nodded.

  “Let me guess. She followed it up with the ‘highest GPA in the school’ bit?” Sarah asked, rolling her eyes. Nikki covered her mouth, trying not to hide a smile.

  “It’s easy to get good grades when you never leave your dorm room. Sucks to be a dork,” Carmella said.

  Nikki took a seat somewhere toward the middle of the room and waited for Jenny and Ellen. She felt bad about Dina. She’d spent her share of time feeling friendless and dorky, and she sympathized with Dina. On the other hand, even in her full-blown dork stage, she’d never been as big a bitch as Dina. It was hard to befriend someone who had all the warmth, kindness, and social understanding of a cement block.

  There were eight long tables in the room. They had been covered with what appeared to be various pieces of the Carrie Mae product line. Nikki was seated in front of a bottle of Lilac Mist Body Spray and two tubes of Apricot Spring Lipstick. Carmella and Sarah’s table held compacts in various sizes. More girls began to file in. Jenny sat down next to Nikki and picked up one of the lipsticks. Ellen sat in front of them, examining a pair of red stilettos.

  “What’s all this stuff?” Jenny asked.

  “Specialty items, I guess,” answered Nikki with a shrug, as the blond woman walked to the front of the room.

  “Good afternoon, everybody. I’m Rachel White and I’m head of Research and Development for the Carrie Mae Foundation. In front of you, you’ll find examples of our work. You’ll note that each item looks very much like a standard Carrie Mae product.”

  “Uh, Ms. White.” Heidi raised her hand. “Is mine supposed to be beeping?” Heidi held up a tube of lipstick. Its top flashed neon purple and emitted a whining beep.

  Rachel White snatched the lipstick from Heidi’s hand with a speed that was the antithesis of her laid-back attitude. She twisted the lipstick case a few times and set it gently back down on the table. The flashing and beeping stopped promptly.

  “However,” continued Rachel, as if she had not been interrupted, “these are not ordinary products, so please don’t touch anything until you’ve been given permission.”

  Everyone in the class leaned away from the items on the tables in front of them, as Rachel began a highly informative lecture on pepper spray perfume, flash grenade lipsticks, mini-scanner compacts, knockout breath mints, acid nail polish, plastic explosive foundation, and stiletto stilettos. Many of the compacts had Lego-like qualities. They could be pulled apart to create bugs, tracking devices, or stun guns. Many of the liquids and powders could be combined to create various serums, gases, or a highly irritating itching powder. Nikki couldn’t quite figure out why someone might need an itching powder, but it was still a pretty cool invention. From there, Rachel moved on to items that only looked like Carrie Mae compacts to the casual observer. She proudly displayed a holographic projector, a satellite uplink, and a fingerprint falsifier.

  Rachel eventually ended the lecture and divided the trainees into groups, giving them instructions to rotate throughout the classroom examining each device. Nikki was holding a blusher brush and trying to decipher its alternative usage when she caught a whiff of smoke.

  “Do you even have any idea what that thing does?” asked Valerie, leaning in the window frame from the outside. She was wearing a motorcycle-style leather jacket and her black hair was tucked back behind her ears.

  “No,” said Nikki, honestly. “We’re supposed to figure it out and write it down on the questionnaire. But I haven’t got a clue as to how.”

  “It’s in the UPC code.”

  Nikki flipped the brush over and looked at the sticker on the bottom. A string of letters and numbers ran around the edge of the sticker.

  “KNI001,” Nikki read. She stared thoughtfully at the blusher brush for another moment and then turned it clockwise gingerly.

  “Twist harder,” advised Valerie. Nikki did as instructed until, suddenly, a sharp double-edged knife blade slid out of the brush end.

  “I get it!” exclaimed Nikki. “KNI for knife?”

  “Very good!” Rachel said from the front of the classroom. “That’s right, everyone. The weapons identification is in the UPC code.”

  “That’s not fair,” said Dina loudly. “She had help.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with help, Dina,” Rachel said. “The whole point of Carrie Mae is women working together to better themselves.”

  Valerie blew smoke in Dina’s direction and stared at her until Dina turned her head away and pretended to fill out her questionnaire.

  “Well, Valerie Robinson,” said Rachel, coming over to the window. “What are you doing here?”

>   “I’m teaching a war games seminar tomorrow,” she said, boosting herself into the room and sitting on the window ledge. “I thought I’d see how the ducklings were doing.”

  “They seem to be doing well,” Rachel said. There was something slightly refrigerated in her demeanor toward Val that Nikki couldn’t quite put her finger on. “If you’re going to smoke, will you go outside, please?” Valerie chucked her butt out the window, but showed no inclination to leave.

  “So, they’re doing well? That sounds unlikely.” Valerie pushed herself away from the window and began to walk between the tables, examining the students and their papers. She walked with deceptive casualness over to Dina and peered at her paper.

  “Dina Kirk,” purred Val. “You’re a team leader, aren’t you?”

  “Well, yes,” Dina said, pulling herself up straight.

  “Going to lead your team to victory, are you?”

  “Assuming my team follows directions adequately,” answered Dina stiffly.

  “Well, yes, you are only as good as your team, it’s true.”

  Nervously, Nikki put down the pepper spray deodorant she was examining and went to the next station. There was a gleam in Valerie’s eye that she didn’t trust. Dina seemed oblivious and beamed as if Val had complimented her. Val wandered some more, ignoring Nikki entirely.

  “All right, class,” said Rachel, checking her watch. “That’s all for today. Please stack your papers on the desk and remember to check the website for your homework.”

  As the class began to file out, Val walked toward the front of the classroom.

  “Oops, sorry,” she said, bumping into Nikki and knocking her notebook and pens across the floor. “Let me help you with that.” Val quickly gathered up Nikki’s scattered items and put them into her hands, but at the bottom of the pile Nikki could feel a strange metallic object—it felt like one of Rachel’s specialty items. Nikki frowned in puzzlement, and with a wink, Val glanced in Dina’s direction. Nikki shook her head, but Val nodded and shoved everything into Nikki’s arms.

  “See you all tomorrow,” she said, and waved at the trainees.

  Nikki walked out last, looking at Valerie Robinson over her shoulder. What had Val given her?

  CALIFORNIA VII

  You Make Me Sick

  “Breath spray?” Nikki muttered, holding up the object Val had given her. Turning the slender tube upside down, she checked the label. “ILL-zero-zero-one,” she read. “What weapon is I-L-L?”

  “Ill,” translated Jenny without looking up from her notes. “It’s for making people sick.”

  “Oh,” Nikki said, and nervously stashed the breath spray in her pocket. “What’s on the agenda for tonight?” she asked, changing the subject.

  “Fight night!” exclaimed Jenny, squashing her notes together and ramming them into her bag.

  “Facials,” Ellen said.

  “Facials and XFC,” Jenny said happily. “Tito’s team is gonna whup ass!”

  “Oh,” said Nikki doubtfully. “The girl’s are really going to go for that?”

  “I know it’s a little odd,” Ellen said, “but once you know a little something about fighting, you do kind of get into it.”

  Nikki nodded but found it hard to believe that the entire group of women was really going to be happy about tuning in for the Extreme Fighting Challenge. But after dinner, the common room was packed, and the smell of popcorn and mint pedicure lotion filled the air, along with the sound of a dozen conversations. Nikki was having a hard time concentrating.

  “You know, it’s that sound?” asked Jenny. “When you get hit really hard? Sort of a squeak and a ting at the same time, only silent?”

  Nikki stared blankly at Jenny, who was sitting on the couch across from her eating popcorn. She hadn’t really been paying attention—she’d been thinking about how to offer Dina ILL001 and not seem suspicious.

  “Don’t bother,” Sarah said. She leaped over the back of the couch and landed with a jarring impact on the cushions next to Jenny, bouncing the bowl and throwing popcorn into the air. Jenny threw Sarah a dirty look and grabbed the bowl before it upended entirely. It was hard to take Jenny seriously when she was wearing a Strawberry Shortcake T-shirt, two ponytails, and a face covered in green goo.

  “She has a hard head,” Sarah continued. “She’s probably never heard the sound.”

  “What sound? You guys are making this up,” said Nikki irritably.

  “No, it’s when you get hit so hard that your senses sort of separate. You hear, but you can’t see,” Jenny assured her, her blond hair bouncing.

  “That makes no sense,” Nikki said.

  “Told you,” Sarah said. “She has a hard head. I hit her so hard in sparring the other day I thought I was going to cause some sort of permanent damage, but she just walked through it.”

  “It wasn’t that hard,” protested Nikki, remembering Sarah’s reaction rather than the actual punch. “Well, I mean, I’m sure you punched hard, but it didn’t connect hard. I kind of ducked a little. It probably looked worse than it was.”

  “No, I’m pretty sure you just have a hard head,” Sarah said, grabbing a handful of Jenny’s popcorn.

  “Shhh,” commanded Carmella from across the room. “The fight’s starting.”

  “I’ve got more face mask!” Ellen said, coming out of the kitchen with a blender full of green stuff. “Or possibly veggie dip.” She dipped a finger in and sucked off the liquid.

  Something about Carrie Mae training still seemed unbelievable. The other women walked through days filled with classes and physical training and never seemed to notice, but Nikki was still experiencing profound moments of incredulity.

  She glanced down at the pile of flash cards she was supposed to be studying during the commercial breaks. The chemical compounds in Specialty Items were way beyond the basic chemistry she had taken, and she didn’t want to fall behind. She idly flipped through the cards, with one eye on the blender full of face mask as it was passed around. She didn’t want to miss this batch.

  Ellen had taken over the seat next to Jenny’s, and Nikki looked at the pair curiously. They were her friends now, but sometimes Nikki wondered if it was real friendship or the kind that only existed because everyone had to be friends with someone. Nikki scrutinized the two. Ellen had the clean accent of a newscaster and occasionally used the fragmented and overwrought language of someone “encultured” in higher education—a holdover from her days as a professor’s wife. Her darling Dale, an astronomy professor, had passed away two years ago of a heart attack. Jenny, Southern and proud, but still class-conscious, yin-yanged from sweet to crass in a matter of moments, her linguistic choices clearly displaying her own uncertainty about where she belonged.

  Nikki felt a similar doubt and tried to watch her own language for signifiers. The trick was to be consistent and not to deviate from the average language choices too much.

  She wondered if anyone else felt as if they were only here through some strange coincidence of fate, in no way connected to actual ability or merit. She definitely wasn’t here on merit. She remembered a face full of lipstick and shuddered.

  Nikki’s hand jerked, trying to push the memory away, and scattered her flash cards on the floor, drawing strange looks from the others. She smiled in embarrassment and knelt to pick up the cards. She was not thinking about that particular evening. She was not thinking about handcuffs or anything related to that night.

  The program cut to a commercial for a dental hygienist program at a local community college.

  “I was going to do that,” Carmella said, pointing to the TV. “If I hadn’t come here, that’s what I was going to do.”

  “I was on the waiting list for the nursing program,” said Sarah.

  “I just graduated from college. I was supposed to go work with my dad,” Heidi said gloomily. “He was kind of pissed that I came here instead.”

  “I’d be twenty pounds heavier,” volunteered Ellen, “and I’d be up to date on
Days of Our Lives.”

  “I’d probably have gotten engaged to Ben Mitchell,” Jenny said. “He was a lawyer. Mama really liked that I’d never have to work again. My family didn’t really understand why I wanted to leave.”

  “Mine, neither,” agreed Heidi. “And I couldn’t say it was because I wanted something better, because Dad doesn’t think there’s anything better than his business.”

  “I was in the army for a while,” Sarah said. “Good benefits and everything, but my mom kept freaking out that I was going to go die while I was in Iraq. She doesn’t understand why I’m wasting a slot in the nursing program to come here.”

  “How about you, Nikki? Where’d you be, if you weren’t here?” asked Jenny.

  “Jail,” said Nikki, unintentionally answering honestly. Everyone stared. “Joke.” she said, hastily gathering the last flash card and resuming her seat. The girls exchanged glances, and Ellen shook her head.

  “I don’t think so,” said Cheryl.

  “There was a slight incident when I tried to sell makeup,” Nikki said. Jenny and Ellen exchanged glances.

  “I see,” Carmella said.

  “And did this incident involve some sort of police action?” asked Heidi, leaning forward with a grin.

  Nikki shifted uncomfortably; she did not want to talk about this.

  “Fight’s back on!” Ellen said, rescuing Nikki.

  “We’re coming back to this,” threatened Sarah.

  “Later,” said Jenny, around a mouthful of popcorn. “During the commercials.”

  But commercials came and Jenny immediately launched into a story about throwing up during a beauty pageant. By the time the contestants were diving for the tiara, the fight was back on.

  “Thanks,” Nikki whispered, as they walked upstairs to their rooms.

  “I could see you didn’t want to talk about it,” Jenny whispered back.

  “But you realize that now you have to tell us,” put in Ellen.

  “It’s embarrassing,” Nikki protested.