You're Invited

by Jen Malone

  “There’s nothing wrong with feeling pretty,” Becca says.

  “I just like having choices, you know? I don’t always want to be the girl in the ponytail and flip-flops. Sometimes I want to look different. But sometimes I don’t.”

  It feels really weird saying this stuff out loud, but Becca’s nodding like she completely understands.

  “People aren’t all one way or another,” she says. “Variety is the milk of life. Or something. Like yesterday, I didn’t do anything with my hair. I only dried it and put it back in a headband.”

  She’s so earnest that I don’t have the heart to tell her that that’s way more than I do with my hair most days.

  “Now watch what I’m doing so you can do it yourself. And don’t tell me you don’t have any hot rollers, because I’m leaving these here.” Becca plucks a curler, or hot roller, or whatever it is, out of the box and winds my hair around it. Over and over and over again until I have a head full of rolled-up hair. I look like a piece of cauliflower.

  “Pizza time! Followed by makeup time!” Becca snags a slice for each of us. “Okay. This is seriously ah-mazing, Vi,” she says, swallowing a bite. “Hold up! Omigosh, omigosh, omigosh! Guess who just had the best idea for RSVP? Moi! We can advertise your fantabulous cooking skills. Like set up a booth in the Visitor’s Center with some samples, and give them out with flyers. Once people taste your food, they’ll be coming up with excuses for parties left and right. Plus we can for sure charge more if we’re supplying the food.” Becca looks happier than she’s seemed all day.

  Which makes it really hard to burst her bubble. “Sorry, Becs. I’m not cooking for anyone besides my friends and my dad.” I bite into the pizza, and it is pretty good. The pineapple was the perfect touch.

  “But whyyyyyyyyyy? Wait. This doesn’t have something to do with that sleepover a bazillion gazillion years ago and how Linney acted about your spaghetti, does it?”

  I look down at the pizza slice in my hands. It does. But it sounds so babyish to admit that Linney got to me like that. So I lie. “No.”

  “Uh-huh. Well, think about it, okay? Pinkie swear? Because you’ve met me, right? I’m so not gonna quit bugging you about it until you acknowledge how totally and completely genius my idea is. Kind of like what I did with Lauren.” Becca shoves the last of her pizza into her mouth and brushes the crumbs from her hands. Then she dances across the room and gathers up nail polish and makeup. And tweezers, which she aims at my eyebrows.

  I duck out of reach. “What are you doing?”

  “Tweezing your eyebrows.”

  “Um, no.” That sounds beyond painful. Why would I want little hairs ripped out of my face?

  Becca crosses her arms. “Come on, Vi. I promise it doesn’t hurt . . . very much. And I won’t do a whole lot. We just need to create a shape, that’s all.”

  “A shape?” Really, I don’t see anything wrong with eyebrows being eyebrow-shaped.

  “Let me just do one, and then you tell me if I should stop, okay?”

  “Okay, fine.” I clasp my hands between my knees and close my eyes. Becca leans in close. There’s a little tugging on one of my eyebrows followed by a pinprick feeling.

  “Okay?” she asks.

  I nod. It does hurt a tiny bit, but it’s not too awful.

  “There,” Becca says after she finishes my other eyebrow. “Done. Now, nails!” She hauls out a bag filled with a rainbow of colors. I pick out a very pale pink (even though she tries to sell me on a glittery blue), and she gets to work.

  Once I have fingers and toes tipped in pink, Becca breaks out the makeup. I try to take notes in my head as she dabs gloss onto my lips and brushes light brown powder across my eyelids. She takes the torture-looking thing and attaches it to my eyelashes.

  “What are you doing?” I say around her wrist, which is right in front of my face.

  “Curling your eyelashes. Trust me. This will make your lashes look ten times longer and your eyes look as big as an anime character’s.”

  What she’s describing sounds like some kind of freakish mutant person. She finishes with the torture machine and swipes at my eyelashes with a mascara wand.

  “There. Perfect. Now pick out something to wear, and then we’ll take your hair down.” Becca caps the mascara, and I glance at the clothes lying around the room.

  She’s grouped them into outfits, complete with shoes (which are all mine, since our feet are completely different sizes) and a purse and jewelry. Becca is nothing but serious about fashion. Buster’s lounging on a blue skirt that reminds me of the pretty blue dresses at Linney’s party. I roll him off and pick up the skirt.

  “That would look ridiculously fabulous with your coloring!” Becca gushes.

  I hold it up to my waist (really carefully so I don’t smudge my nails) and look in the mirror. The skirt comes about halfway down my thighs. Which makes sense since Becca’s like four feet tall. Or, at least, that’s how it feels when I stand next to her. “Um, no. Too short.”

  “What are you talking about? You wear running shorts all the time! They’re the same length.”

  “That’s different. Those are shorts. What about this?” I pick up a long yellow maxi dress.

  “Try it on!” Becca hands me the white sandals she picked to go with the dress. The pair of sandals that Meemaw bought for me to wear to Dad’s coworker’s wedding last spring (Dad complained until Meemaw insisted they were an early birthday present). I’ve never worn them since.

  I tug on the dress and stuff my feet into the sandals. They actually aren’t too uncomfortable since they’re flat. But no way are they as comfy as my flip-flops or running shoes.

  “Vi! Omigosh, you look divine, dah-link! Eeeee! Let’s get your hair down.” She pushes me back to the chair and unrolls my hair. Bouncy blond curls bob around my face. It all feels so . . . girly. “Okay, now we just have to squick some of these apart.” Becca separates the curls until I have a lot of bounciness bopping me in the nose and covering my eyes.

  “I can’t see,” I say through the hair.

  “Hang on a sec.” Becca’s rifling through a little bag. She pulls something out and starts gathering some of the hair out of my eyes. Then she slips in a big barrette with white shells glued to it, and fastens the barrette behind my head. “Voila! Stand up.”

  She drags me over to the full-length mirror on the back of my door. This sunshiny person with bouncy hair and huge eyes looks back at me. She’s kind of . . . pretty.

  “You’re totally wearing this to Illumination Night next weekend, you know that, right?” Becca says.

  “I’ll never be able to do this myself, you know.”

  “It’s not that hard, silly. You just need to make the time for it.”

  “I guess . . .”

  “Really, I swear on Dread Pirate it isn’t. Just start small. Like, maybe tomorrow, only put on mascara and lip gloss. Then add something else the next day. Easy peasy.”

  I start to bite my lip, but then think better of it. I don’t want that shiny pink gloss all over my teeth. It can’t be that hard to swipe on some lip gloss, right?

  “Cross your heart and promise me you’ll try? If I don’t see longer eyelashes tomorrow, I’m coming over here and taking home all this stuff I’m leaving for you to use. And your surfboard. And probably all your flip-flops, too. So you better promise, or else.” Becca raises her eyebrows.

  “Okay, okay! I promise. But . . .” I turn away from the mirror so I’m facing her. “You have to promise me that you’ll lay off the whole Vi-cooks-for-the-business thing.”

  “Noooope . . . no can do.”

  “You know how you clearly don’t want to talk about Ryan? That’s how I feel about this cooking thing.” I twist the ends of my hair, and it takes Becca all of a half second to swat my hand away from my head.

  Becca sighs likes I’m asking her to keep the secret of the century. “Fine. You win. But can I take some of that pizza home?”

  “Knock-knock. Vi?” Dad�
��s voice comes from the other side of my door.

  I reach over and pull it open, and Dad peeks his head in.

  “Is Becca staying—wow.” Dad pulls off his Tar Heels cap, runs his hand through the sandy-brown hair plastered to his head, and then pulls the hat back on. Like that’s going to make him see better. “Wow.”

  “Um, thanks?” I kind of wish people would stop staring at me when I look different than usual. It’s not like I’ve turned into someone else. I’m still Vi. Just with a dress and bouncy hair.

  “No, sweetie, I meant . . . wow. You really clean up.” Now Dad’s face is all red, like I’m sure mine is.

  “Okay, thanks,” I say again.

  “But you know you can’t go out with all of that . . . stuff on your face.”

  “Dad, please.” I’ll be lucky if I can even get the lip gloss on right. I turn to Becca. “I think Dad wanted to know if you were staying for dinner. I’m making chicken stir-fry.”

  “That’s really nice, Mr. Husky,” Becca says. “But I have to get home.” When we were little, Becca couldn’t ever say my last name, Alberhasky. It always came out like Alberhusky. Dad thought it was hilarious, and started calling himself Mr. Husky, and the name kind of stuck.

  “Well, I have some great news to share,” Dad says.

  Becca and I look at each other. I twist the ends of one bouncy curl, and Becca doesn’t even stop me. Dad’s good news isn’t always good news. Once, it was him scoring a bag of cheap clothes from the Church of the Victorious and Forgiving Holy Redeemer’s yard sale, only for me to open it and find out they were all Linney’s castoffs. Another time, the good news was him being interviewed by Channel 8 Wilmington about the union strike he was on and how hard it was for families to put food on the table during the strike.

  So I’m not really sure I want to hear his good news right now.

  But he’s grinning like crazy, and Dad’s smile always makes me smile. Even if I’m dreading what he’s going to say. So I smile back and wait for it.

  “I got a new job!”

  “What! Really?” I fling my arms around him.

  “Awesomesauce, Mr. Husky,” Becca says. “Where?”

  “I’m making a career change,” Dad says. “Getting out of construction and going into maintenance. And the best part is . . . I’ll be working at Sandpiper Beach Middle School!” He grins even wider.

  “You’re . . . what?” Did he say Sandpiper Beach Middle School? Like, my school?

  “I’ll be working at your school, sweetie,” he says. “Isn’t that great?”

  I can’t say anything.

  “That’s excellent news,” Becca says. Except the look she gives me shows that she’s super glad it’s my dad coming to work at school and not one of her parents. “And you’re gonna do maintenance? Is that like fixing up the school?”

  “Sort of,” Dad says. “Handyman stuff, and general cleaning duties.”

  “Like the janitor?” I feel completely numb as I talk.

  “Well, yeah, that’s one word for it. It doesn’t pay a lot more, but it’s steady work. No more waiting to see what the weather does.”

  “That’s . . . great.” I plaster a smile on my face, even though my stomach is sinking down, down, down to my pink toes in their white sandals.

  Dad, working at my school, cleaning up my classmates’ messes. This can’t be happening.

  Linney will eat me alive.

  Sadie

  TODAY’S TO-DO LIST:

  ■ practice using grill lighter

  ■ print out beach quote on paper disks

  ■ hang fairy lights on front porch

  Vi, do you see where I put the other box of candles?” I ask, rooting through my garage for the plastic tub marked ILLUMINATION NIGHT. We only have two hours to put the paper disks around all the candles and set up the tables before the fish fry starts, and no way, nohow am I gonna be late to that.

  “I’m on it,” she answers, poking her head out from between two beach umbrellas and a wagon. I’m glad I talked Vi into hanging out with me today. She’s been sort of mopey since she found out her dad’s gonna be a janitor at our school this fall. I totally get it, but I can’t help being a tiny bit jealous that he’s taking jobs to be closer to her while my mom’s jobs only seem to send her farther away. Vi hasn’t really talked about it that much with me, though, and I think it’s because she feels bad complaining about her dad when she knows I’d give anything to have mine alive.

  Especially on Illumination Night.

  Sometimes it’s a hassle to live on a tiny island forty-five minutes from the closest mall. Other times (well, most times, really) I wouldn’t trade it even for an apartment in the Eiffel Tower. And I for sure wouldn’t trade it on Illumination Night. Today I don’t even care that we haven’t booked any more parties, even though we’ve been working like crazy on new ways to get the word out (like taking out an ad in the back of the Sandpiper Beach Daily Gazette), because it’s Illumination Night.

  Illumination Night is the last Friday in July every year and it’s kind of like Christmas. In July. Except just with lights, not like, presents or plastic lawn reindeer or anything.

  According to a brochure the Visitor’s Center puts out, Illumination Night started way back in the 1940s as a way to give Christmas in July to a group of hometown boys from the island who were drafted into World War II and would be in France or Italy or Japan when December rolled around. Now it’s just a purely fun tradition. Practically the whole town and all the weeklies meet up at seven in the town square for a giant fish fry, and there’s always a band playing in the gazebo and the old people and little kids dance on the grass or under the statue of Merlin.

  Just as soon as the sun sets, we run home to switch on our light displays and then the entire crowd strolls (or bikes, or scooters, or skateboards—no one drives unless they want to go five miles an hour and get nonstop dirty looks) around the streets and checks out the houses all lit up. Well, except for the houses right on the beach, because if any sea turtles hatched on Illumination Night, they’d head right for the twinkly strands instead of using the moon’s light to guide them back to the ocean, which would be totally terrible. It’s basically the only day of the year the people who live beachside are jealous of the townies!

  I pretty much have the best of both worlds because I live right across from Pirate’s Cove, which is tucked around a corner from the rest of the ocean, with only a tiny sandy beach and the rest rocks, so the turtles don’t lay eggs there. Plus it’s protected from the wind. Which means our cove gets to host the very best part of Illumination Night: the beach candles.

  Every year, Izzy and I set up two folding tables at the entrance to the cove and we hand out hundreds of white taper candles slipped through round paper circles to catch the drippy wax. Mom always prints some quote about summer or the beach on the paper disks. Like, for instance, this year it’s one by e.e. cummings that goes, “for whatever we lose (like a you or a me) / it’s always our self we find in the sea.”

  Then people walk up the path to the beach, light their candles, and place them in the sand. By the end of the night, there are hundreds and hundreds of little flames there.

  It’s magical.

  Becca, Vi, Lauren, and I always arrange ours like a heart, and sometimes people try to spell out words with theirs.

  This year, instead of handing out the candles with Izzy, I actually get to be on the beach lighting them because Mom says I’m finally responsible enough to use the long grill lighter without getting burned. I have to bite my tongue to ask her how she knows this because it’s not like she’s come to any of my parties, and she’s been so busy with a slew of new clients that she’s barely even home for dinner most nights. But whatever. I’m totally not getting in a bad mood about her and ruining Illumination Night.

  “I found all your dad’s old fishing stuff. Would it be near that?” Vi asks. I can only see hints of her curlier-than-usual ponytail through the metal shelving unit.

&nbs
p; I swallow the lump in my throat. It’s been three years now, and even though we have pictures of Dad in almost every room of our house, most of his stuff has been donated or put in the attic, so it’s not like a constant reminder of how he isn’t around to wear the barn jacket in the coat closet. But Mom hasn’t gotten to the garage yet, so there are Dad traps everywhere.

  I sigh. It’s like there’s a bad-mood conspiracy going on today. And bad moods are totally not allowed on Illumination Night. (Which, FYI, was also Dad’s favorite night of the year. Which, FYI, could also be the reason my bad mood is lurking in the first place.)

  “You know what? Let’s just bike over the bridge to Whitemore’s Hardware and grab some new candles. I bet most of the leftover ones are stubby anyway.”

  Vi peers around the shelf. “Sounds good to me. I’ll treat to lemon pops.”

  Whitemore’s keeps a tiny freezer in the back with Popsicles for customers’ kids. I make a face at Vi because we both know the Popsicles are free. She grins back.

  “Are you looking for these?” My sister, Izzy, stands in the doorway to the garage and dangles two candles from her hands.

  “What? Brat! Were you hiding those on purpose?”

  Izzy squints at me. “Noooo. Geez. Why do you always jump to the worst conclusion? I was trying to help by getting started early; I already have thirty done.”

  Oh. Oops. Stupid bad mood.

  “Sorry, Iz. I’m kind of in a funk today,” I mumble, shooting Vi a guilty look.

  “On Illumination Night?” my sister asks, wide-eyed. We follow her around to the side yard, where she’s already got a candle-papering operation under way.

  With Izzy’s help, we knock out the rest in record time and drag the tables into place by the entrance to the cove. We hang a handmade DO NOT DISTURB sign on the tables and rush back to our houses to get changed into sundresses (yes, even Vi—color me amazed) for the fish fry.

  Of course, Mom’s still not home. She’s been needing to scout a potential wedding location, and she had to wait for a day there would be a ceremony so she could see it all set up. But there’s a text from her saying she’ll meet us there later.