I can only imagine how many things they “can’t believe” about me.
At school the next day, Annie plays her trump card, right before lunch when she and the rest of the Viperess Four come up to my locker. I’m putting my books away and pulling out a lunch of a sandwich, carrot sticks and an apple that I put together this morning when everyone was up in bed.
“Stephanie,” she says in what I now recognize as her classic condescending tone. “I think you owe the girls here an apology.”
I wait. Her eyes are sputtering torches, needing to be lit by my insecurity and social fumbling.
I stand tranquil.
A hard sneer transforms her pretty mouth as she moves in for the kill. “I told the girls and Andrew that everything you said about Boston was a lie. That your mom is a total alcoholic who left you and that’s why my family is stuck with you, because now she’s in rehab or something and your dad is, like, totally pathetic and can’t manage. And, of course, you’re poor.”
I stand and absorb, and the moment is frozen. It’s like in that book by George Orwell, 1984, when everyone has a room, 101, which holds whatever is their greatest fear in the world. This is mine. Being publicly unmasked. Stripped for all to see, right down to my ripped and faded underwear, with the elastic hanging loose.
I should be shaking and cringing and my stomach filled with the familiar eels clicking their tails and snapping at each other, but I’m not. I look at the dark, mean faces in front of me with their vampire eagerness, wanting to feast on the blood of my humiliation, and I just shudder. I shudder for the cold chambers where their hearts are supposed to be. I realize that I could be humiliated in front of them only if I held them in any respect.
“You’re right,” I say directly to Annie. “I do owe them an apology.” I turn to face the three girls. “I’m sorry I lied to you.”
Not waiting for any answer, I turn, snap my locker shut, and then take off for the library. I get there just as Amal is leaving. Her disappointed face lights up at the sight of me, like she was afraid I wouldn’t be there, even though we said warm hi’s in math and English this morning and walked down the hall together twice.
We automatically go out to our spot on the lawn. While we unwrap our sandwiches, I ask her if she ever noticed that Mr. Specter looks like a wizard. She almost falls over, she’s laughing so hard.
“Totally,” she gasps and bursts out laughing.
I laugh too, then take a carrot stick and point it at her, “Calculomus! Algebreus!”
She laughs even harder, which makes me laugh harder, and a warm incredible lightness of being floats in my chest. We finish our sandwiches and she takes a small wrapped pastry from her lunch bag and hands it to me. “My mom made this for you,” she says.
I pick up the pastry and stare at it. Its flaky layers of golden brown crust rise in misty rays and bend toward me. I picture a woman, a mother, mixing ingredients, leaning into an oven and mopping back her hair, all for me.
I nod because I’m too full to speak.
“I hope you like it,” she says in a shy voice. “It’s baklava. Like with honey and nuts and stuff.”
I unwrap the plastic. A fragrance of unbelievable sweetness hits my nostrils. For a second I think maybe I should say that I’m not that hungry. Because maybe I’m being disloyal to my own mother if I eat this. Then, I remember that my mother left me, and my mouth waters for its texture and the insides of my cheeks ache for the first taste.
When my teeth finally break through the crust and into the thick mortar of honey and nuts, all guilt about hungering for a mother who isn’t hungering for me is suspended. Unearthly comfort presses down on my tongue and onto the roof of my mouth. In the cave behind my lips I am lifted into another mother’s embrace.
I open my eyes, not even realizing that I’d closed them. I brace myself for a blow from Amal like Annie delivered about my being in love with a cinnamon bun. Instead, she takes a bite from an identical pastry in her hand and closes her eyes. She is naked and unashamed of the pleasure on her face. She opens her eyes and smiles with our shared experience. “I knew you’d like it,” she whispers.
When Amal invites me over to her house for Saturday afternoon, I don’t even think before “yes” flies out of my mouth, and an unbelievable joy ripples through me, tasty and blissful, like that first bite of baklava.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Excitement buzzes through Annie’s house. Apparently, one of Uncle Michael’s clients is a professor at the American Film Institute who likes a teenage audience to watch some of his student films before they’re entered in any festivals.
So, Annie’s family gets to host the Sullivan Family Film Festival in their movie theater, and Annie and her crew get to grade them. I didn’t even know they had a movie theater in their house when I first got there; I thought it was like some weird extra garage or something.
Annie has sent out engraved invitations that say “black tie optional.” Most of the guys have already told her that they’re sticking to jeans, since it did say “optional,” but all of the girls have purchased new, resplendent gowns. Annie’s mom hired two makeup and hair people to come to the house to do Annie’s core group. Altogether, Annie has invited thirty people and her mother has invited another thirty of her and Uncle Michael’s friends.
I’m lying on my bed just trying to figure out how to tell Aunt Sarah I have the flu so that I have a legitimate excuse to stay in my room and read during the festivities when there’s a knock on my door. Aunt Sarah walks in looking flushed and excited, which is how she always looks before any event that promises to showcase her daughter’s beauty and popularity.
She’s carrying a couple of garment bags. “I figured you probably didn’t bring any of your formal wear.” We avoid eye contact at the obviousness of her lie and I almost want to laugh at the sheer ridiculousness of the idea that I would own anything “formal.”
I start to protest that I wasn’t thinking of even going to “the event” with my flu and all when Aunt Sarah shuts me down. “Of course you’ll come. Many of our friends will be here and they know you are staying with us.”
So, finally she is being direct. It is clear that it would be bizarre and socially embarrassing if her friends were to find out she had some sort of miscreant guest hiding upstairs in raggedy hand-me-downs during the family’s big premiere.
“Anyway,” she continues matter-of-factly, “I got you a couple of dresses to choose from for tonight. Just pick one that you like. You can keep it. The others will be returned.” She lays the garment bags down on the bed.
I sit up straight. I don’t know how to respond. Even though she got the dresses for me to ward off any social stigma directed at her, shouldn’t I still say that I know how expensive they undoubtedly are and how grateful I am? Should I thank her for all the time she must have invested in picking them out?
“Um,” I start. “Thank you so much. I’m sorry you had to go to so much trouble.”
“No problem at all,” she says breezily, walking toward the door. “Annie and I have a personal shopper. I described you for her. She just dropped them off today. Ideally, one of them will work. Carmen will bring up a selection of shoes. I figured you for around a six or six and a half. And you’re scheduled for hair and makeup at five o’clock.”
She leaves in a whirl, almost knocking over Annie, who is coming in. I swallow the dread that bubbles in my throat and look up expectantly. What now?
Annie closes the door behind her. “I just wanted you to know,” she says in a fake-helpful voice, “that, um, unfortunately, word has sort of gotten around about your true past, like about your mom and all, and the lies you told. So, if it makes it any easier for you, when you meet new people tonight, you don’t need to bother inventing any stories about yourself. They already know the truth.”
Without waiting for my response, she flounces out of the room, no doubt to deliver to her minions word that she gave me the “news.”
I drop back ont
o the bed totally drained of any energy. It wouldn’t be so bad if I had anyone to call. I think about Amal, but it’s way too soon for that. I’m barely even friends with her, and to give her the whole impact of the evil of Annie, I’d have to start in with all the lies I told. Not a very good way to kick off a friendship.
I sit up again and stare at the bags on the bed. Going into this party is going to be excruciating.
I lift up the first garment bag and unzip it. Inside is a beautiful teal cocktail dress. I pull it from the bag and it flutters through the air as light as a butterfly wing. If I were going to something with Amal as my best friend, this is the dress I’d love to wear. It’s almost too delicate to try on. I lay it down and then open the next three bags. Each one has a dress more beautiful than the one before.
I try them all on, putting on the deep red dress last. It’s strappy with a very low-cut back. It shimmers when I walk. It’s definitely a dress for an older and much more sophisticated girl. It’s a dress I’m sure Aunt Sarah would never have picked for me. I have a feeling the personal shopper grabbed it without even noticing the dramatic cut of the back. Everything about it screams bad seed, although in a very expensive, bad-girl actress sort of way.
Obviously, I’ll wear this dress.
I slip out of the dress and hang it up while I shower. Exactly at five, there’s another little tap on my door. I open it and admit a trendy young woman named Mandy who tells me she is here to do my hair and makeup. She hands me a bunch of shoe boxes that Carmen left outside my door.
I almost tell her I don’t wear makeup, then think that it wouldn’t be fair to the bad-girl red dress and the people who all know the “truth” about me and my alkie mother. I sit in the white plush Sullivan robe while Mandy changes my eyelids into smoky hoods and my cheekbones into haughty ridges. She pauses at my lips and asks me if I’d like to just wear gloss. I shake my head vigorously and point to the ruby red lipstick. If I’m going to go as the dark villainess Annie and her crowd expect me to be, I don’t want to disappoint anyone.
Mandy leaves and I slip on the red dress and a pair of heels. I turn and face the full-length mirror and suck in my breath. My mother looks back. Minus, of course, the boobs.
I smile grimly and leave the room. The alkie spawn is on her way. Already I can hear the guests gathering in the foyer. I consider standing at the top of the stairs, waiting for all eyes to train on me, then descending dramatically. That’s only good in movies, though, when the boyfriend of the tomboy comes to call for prom and suddenly sees her all gussied up.
I turn to walk down the hall and take the back stairs. Halfway there, I stop. What am I doing, sneaking out the back? I didn’t wear the bad-girl dress for nothing. Let the scandal rage. I do a one-eighty and go back to the front staircase. I stand at the top.
It’s all Annie’s crowd down below; her parents’ friends are having cocktails on the back lawn. I wait, scanning the group. All the girls are totally decked out in very fancy dresses and high heels. The boys wear jeans and sport coats.
I spot Andrew in the crowd and immediately blush and feel like a fool in this getup. Then I remember that he knows about all my lies and my true past. I pull impregnable from my trusty arsenal of Warrior Words and feel its force field settle over my skin. Here goes. The Bad Seed Cometh.
Andrew and Annie notice me at the same time and I can feel their shock like hard punches in the festive air. Annie immediately starts whispering to everyone in her orbit, and heads whip around to look. Andrew stares at me. I walk with my head held high, right through the crowd, not looking directly at anyone. I go straight into the theater and take a seat in the very back. I’m the first one in here. I was basically ordered to get dressed up to see a movie, so dressed up and at the theater I am.
After about half an hour, the other kids filter in. Several girls I don’t even know look at me and giggle. The adults aren’t coming in to see the films, they are just here to have dinner out on the lawn and get reviews from the kids. The theater holds fifty. Annie invited thirty. It fills up from the first row outward, as the first row is not very close to the screen, but more in the middle of the room. No one sits in my row or directly in front of me. I am an island in a shimmering scarlet dress.
The lights go out. I figure I’ll sit here for a while and then slip up to my room, change into my pajamas and read more about Eleanor Roosevelt.
The movie starts. It’s a poignant tale about an overbearing father and his sensitive son. Not that I’m a film critic or anything, but, ah, hasn’t this type of thing been done?
Whatever. I’m going to be here only for about another ten minutes. I relax against my seat, bathed by the darkness.
There’s a stirring in the air to my right. I look up in the dim light. Andrew slips into the seat next to me. He’s wearing trendy jeans, an untucked shirt, and a blue blazer. “Hey,” he whispers.
I turn away and stare intently at the screen.
I can feel him beside me. I can smell him. Despite everything that’s happened, he still has the same effect on me. I’m pulled by the rage inside him, the dark dancers in the backs of his eyes.
I lean away from him to lessen his effect.
“Can I talk to you?” he whispers.
I jerk my head toward the film to remind him how rude he’s being to the other guests and shake my head.
“Can we go outside?”
I ignore him.
“Please.”
I sigh. “Fine,” I whisper. “Five minutes.”
He stands up and we both tiptoe out of the theater. The crush of adult voices and laughter rises from the backyard. He puts his hand on my shoulder, steering me onto the broad sweep of the front yard. As I walk, my heels dig softly into the ground, making my balance precarious. Involuntarily, I lean against him.
We get to a bench between two huge trees and I pull myself quickly away from him and stand with my arms folded across my chest. He motions for me to sit, but I remain standing.
“You look beautiful,” he offers.
I steel myself. “What do you want, Andrew?” I say coldly.
“I want to get back together.”
Despite my determination to make this quick, get it over with and retreat to my room, my heart jumps. “I didn’t know we were ‘together.’” I make my fingers into quotation marks.
I’m glad I’m dressed like my mother. It helps me be witchy.
“We both knew we were together,” he says.
“And how would we both know that?” I say, enjoying being contrary. “How could we be ‘together’ when you never asked me out?” I learned this last bit of social protocol from listening to Annie and her friends. Apparently the way it plays is this: a guy and a girl can hook up and still not be “going out”; a girl can go to a specific location with a guy, like to a movie or something and still not be “going out.” “Going out” is a state of mind of mutual understanding and is accomplished only when the guy actually says, “Will you go out with me?” and the girl says, “Yes.”
“Okay, then,” Andrew says. “Will you go out with me?”
I look straight at him. I know I should say no. I know I have the perfect opportunity to walk away after a cold, smartaleck, witchy comment, but I’m suddenly thinking about my mother, coming into my room while I’m freshly bruised and crying from being hit and meekly holding out her brush. Stephanie, may I brush your hair?
Each time, even though I vowed I would never talk to her again, I’d fold. Within minutes, I’d break and let her stand behind me and run the brush through my hair, a caress against my scalp, even as my swollen eyes and red, puffy face looked back at me in the mirror.
“I’ll think about it,” I say, wobbly.
“Can I help persuade you?” he says. He leans forward and kisses me, light as a whisper, yet sending a blowtorch scorching throughout my entire body. Without thinking, I kiss him back, falling back into the tunnel, just like I always did with my mother.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Now Annie is in the unenviable position of having me, an apparent enemy, both living in her home and going out with a key guy in her group. I can tell that despite the, no doubt, endless analysis with her advisers, she hasn’t decided what to do.
She leaves for cheerleading practice, neither snubbing me nor saying good-bye. Until she makes an official decision, she’s trying to keep her options open.
I know I should call my father this morning and make a new demand to be sent home. But even though I have Annie as an enemy and feel acute discomfort whenever Uncle Michael walks into the room and runs his eyes over me, searching for any visible hints of something I have stolen, I secretly want to stay now.
I not only have a friend—I have a boyfriend.
I am like one of those kids from Ethiopia, with a starved and weirdly extended belly, who finally found food and is feasting, feasting, feasting, with no end in sight.
I don’t call my dad and hope that he doesn’t call me. For once, I am grateful for his pathetic passivity. I don’t even have to shove down any feelings of rage for him this morning. I vaguely feel sorry for his lack of control over his own life. I take a minute and just let all feelings about him run up my spine and float, like smoke, out the top of my head. There’s not much room for all the bad stuff inside me anymore.
Aunt Sarah’s in the kitchen when I come down. It’s not nearly as hard to be around her as Uncle Michael because she seems used to being pushed around by stronger-willed people who always get things their way. The inconvenience of my remaining presence is almost like just another pain-in-the-butt thing on her plate, like having to pick up the dry cleaning, or drop Annie and her friends off shopping when she’d really rather be playing tennis.
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