by Sarah Dessen
“Okay,” Morgan said. “I promise I’ll only play this once tonight. I just miss him, that’s all.”
Isabel didn’t say anything. She hardly ever did when Mark came up; his name always made her twist her mouth a little bit tighter and turn away.
Celine Dion kept singing, and Morgan brushed her bare foot across the porch, back and forth, mouthing the words. They didn’t say anything for a while. When the song faded, Morgan stuck out her bottle, and Isabel leaned forward, clinking hers against it.
This was always the truce.
If one or the other didn’t have plans they’d stay out there all night. As it got later they’d get lazy and stop changing the music, letting one CD run its course. Isabel always sang along; she knew the words to everything.
I was amazed that they had so much to talk about. From the second they saw each other, there was constant laughing and sarcasm and commentary, something connecting them that pulled taut or fell limp with each thought spoken. Their words, like the music, had the potential to be endless.
chapter six
Mira had a thing for astrology. She started each morning by reading her horoscope very carefully, then made predictions about the day.
“Listen to this,” she called out as I spread fat-free cream cheese across my bagel. She was halfway through a big bowl of Cap’n Crunch drowning in whole milk, the kind of breakfast that would have horrified my mother. “ ‘Today is a five. You will find yourself challenged, but stay calm: relax and you’ll discover you had the wiggle room you needed all along. Highlight energy, patience, faith. Capricorn involved.’ ”
“Hmmm,” I said, which was my usual response.
“Ought to be an interesting day,” she mused, taking another heaping spoonful of cereal. “I’d better get my errands done early.”
This meant that when I set off for work, Mira rode alongside me on her bike, pedaling slowly. She was wearing leggings, a big paisley shirt, and the purple high-tops, her hair tucked under a baseball cap. And, of course, her Terminator glasses.
She always acted like she didn’t notice that people were looking at her, ignoring the laughter and occasional horn beep. That was fine; I was embarrassed enough for both of us.
When we got to the Quik Stop, right across the street from the restaurant, Mira turned in by the gas pumps and came to a squeaking stop. She waved to Ron behind the counter, who smiled and went back to his paper.
“Okay,” Mira said, getting off the bike and taking her pink vinyl purse from the front basket, “we need some white bread, sliced cheese . . . and what else?”
I thought for a second as a green Toyota Camry pulled up beside us. “Ummm . . . I can’t remember.”
“It was something,” Mira said thoughtfully, pushing up her Terminator glasses. “What was it?”
The door of the Camry slammed and I heard footsteps coming around the front of the car. “Soda?”
“No, no. It wasn’t that.” She closed her eyes, thinking. “It was . . .”
Someone was standing behind me now.
“Milk!” Mira said suddenly, snapping her fingers. “It was milk, Colie. That’s what it was.”
“Well, Mira Sparks,” I heard a woman’s voice say. “Aren’t you something this morning.”
I didn’t even have to turn around; I just glanced into the back of the Camry. Sure enough, there was that baby, in a carseat, sound asleep with its big head hanging over to one side.
“Hello, Bea,” Mira said, acknowledging her. Then she hitched up her purse and said to me, “I’ll see you this afternoon.”
“Okay.” I turned, facing Bea Williamson, who narrowed her eyes at me. I took a few slow steps, unsure whether I should leave.
Mira opened the door to the Quik Stop, then disappeared inside. Bea Williamson took the baby out of the car, settled it on one hip, and followed right behind her.
Maybe nothing more would happen. Maybe Bea would leave it at just that tone, that one question. But I had been the butt of the joke long enough to know not to put much faith in the benefit of the doubt.
I crossed the road to the Last Chance, dodging the morning traffic. But even as I chopped lettuce, the radio up full blast, I kept glancing back at the Quik Stop, wondering what was going on inside and upset with myself for not being there.
It was a Friday, about a week later, when it happened.
Fridays were usually crazy, with day-trippers and weekenders stopping in before hitting the beach. Morgan had almost every Friday off, in case Mark was in town, which left me to suffer through them with Isabel. I’d already had two large tables and at least ten small ones and it was only one-thirty.
“Your food’s up,” Isabel snapped. She balanced a huge tray on her shoulder, hurrying past the line of people still waiting to be seated.
“How’s it going out there?” Norman asked as I started traying my food. The music on the kitchen CD box was Stevie Wonder, loud. Isabel had been in a good mood that morning. Norman had on his green sunglasses and was grooving out at the fryer, with Bick making salads and humming behind him.
“Crazy,” I told him. “At least three tables waiting.”
“Four or more,” Isabel said from behind me, reaching around to grab a side of fries. “I need that burger, Norman,” she said, leaning closer to the window. “Pronto.”
I stepped aside and Norman raised his eyebrows, smiling. He had kind of grown on me. He might have been an art freak, but he was a sweet art freak: he always remade my food quickly, even when the error was my fault, and made a point of setting aside the leftover bags of low-fat potato chips, which he knew I loved. On slow nights when we closed together we’d stand, him on his side of the food window, me on mine, and just talk. Days I worked with Isabel he was my only ally, but from the kitchen he couldn’t do much.
“This is yours,” Isabel said, pulling the rest of my order and dropping it on my tray. “You need to get this stuff out, not leave it sitting there getting cold and taking up space.”
“I was getting it. But then you—”
“I don’t give a crap.” She didn’t even turn around. “Just do your job, okay? That’s all I’m asking.”
“I am,” I said, with that hot frustrated feeling I always got around her.
“Look, Morgan’s not here to coddle you today,” she snapped, grabbing the burger Norman handed her. “And I don’t have time to explain how life is like coffee or whatever. Just stay out of my way and do your own shit.” And with that she picked up her tray, bumped me aside again with her hip, and was gone.
I just stood there. Every time this happened I thought up a great response—about three hours later, which didn’t help much. Waitressing may have forced me to be braver with strangers, but Isabel was different.
“Colie, she’s just like that,” Norman said, like he always did. No matter how busy he was, Norman somehow noticed everything. I’d look up in the middle of a rush to see his eyes on me, just keeping track of where I was. It was strangely reassuring. “She doesn’t—”
“I know,” I said, taking a deep breath and turning back to my tables. I ran my food out and kept working, my fake smile plastered across my face. I lost myself in the buzz and busyness, avoiding Isabel until two-thirty, when things had slowed down. Then, as my last table left, I took off my apron and went out the back door.
I sat on the steps facing the Dumpsters and let my feet dangle down. In the afternoons it was sunny and bright enough to make you squint, and if the wind was blowing the right way you couldn’t even smell the garbage.
A car pulled up out front and I heard the bell ring as someone came in. I looked at my watch: one minute to close. Through the back screen I could just see two girls leaning against the counter.
I started to get up but Isabel was there first, pulling a pen out of her hair. She had that snippy look on her face, like she was just waiting for these two to make her mad. “Can I help you?”
“We need takeout,” one of the girls said. “Um, two cheeseburge
rs and an order of onion rings. And two Diet Pepsis.”
“Two cheeseburgers,” Isabel called out to Norman, stabbing the ticket on the spindle. “Be a few minutes,” she told the girls. Then she walked towards the back door, glanced at me, and went in to the bathroom. From the kitchen I could still hear Stevie Wonder, jaunty and cheerful.
I closed my eyes, letting the sun warm my face. I could smell those cheeseburgers, and my stomach grumbled. I’d stuck to my Kiki Food Plan for the most part, with just a few french fries and onion rings here and there. Still, I was always tempted. “One day down, one victory won,” my mother would say. It was the name of her best-selling inspirational tape.
I heard someone coming down the hallway and I turned, thinking it was Isabel. But it wasn’t. It was one of the girls from the counter, and even squinting through the screen between us I could recognize Caroline Dawes.
She saw me, too, and looked just as surprised. For some crazy reason I thought that maybe, just maybe, things would be all right. We weren’t at school. We weren’t even at home. We were miles away. So I smiled at her.
“Oh, my God,” she said, her nose wrinkling as if she’d seen something disgusting. “What are you doing here?”
Sucker.
There it was, that dry spot at the back of my throat, and instantly I was fat again, my face broken out, pulling my black trenchcoat tighter to hide myself. Except I didn’t have my coat, or those forty-five-and-a-half pounds. I was a wide-open target.
Then she laughed. Laughed and shook her head, stepping back from the door with one hand covering her mouth. And she ran back to the counter, her sandals making light, cheerful slap-slap-slap noises.
I turned back to the Dumpsters and closed my eyes. I could hear myself breathing.
“Who was that?” her friend asked as she got closer.
“Colie Sparks,” Caroline said. She was still laughing.
“Who?”
“She’s this girl, from my school. She is like, the biggest loser.” Caroline was talking loudly, loud enough for me to hear all the way across the restaurant. I knew Norman could hear her, too, could imagine what he was thinking, but I wouldn’t let myself turn around. “She will sleep with anyone, I swear to God. They call her Hole in One.” She laughed again.
“That’s awful,” her friend said, but I could tell she was smiling by her voice.
“She totally deserves it,” Caroline said. “She’s the biggest slut in our school. Plus she thinks she’s so cool because her mom is Kiki Sparks. Like that impresses anyone.”
I pulled my legs up against my chest, balancing my chin on my knees. I could have been back at school, in the locker room, the day Caroline and her friends opened up my gym bag and took out my big panties for everyone to see.
Every time I’d thought it couldn’t get worse, I was wrong.
If I’d been Mira, I would have pretended to ignore it altogether. If I’d been Morgan, I would have stood up and walked in there to give Caroline a piece of my mind. If I’d been Isabel, I probably would have thrown a punch. But I was just me. So I pulled myself tighter and tighter, closed my eyes, and waited for it to be over.
“I just can’t believe she’s here,” Caroline said. “If I have to see her ugly face again it’ll, like, ruin my vacation.”
Then I heard something behind me, in the hallway. Something close.
I turned around, my eyes blurring as they adjusted to the shade. It was Isabel. She was standing on the other side of the door, arms crossed over her chest. And she was watching and listening to Caroline Dawes.
Oh, great, I thought. Now she can hate me for a reason.
I waited for her to say something, one of those snarky, half-grumbled Isabel remarks. But she didn’t. After a few seconds, Norman yelled that the order was up, and she walked back down the hallway.
I heard her ringing up their food, the drawer popping out with its cheerful bing. She made change and the front door creaked as Caroline or her friend pushed it open.
“There you go,” I heard Isabel say. “Y’all have a good day.”
“You too,” Caroline’s friend said, and the bell rang again as they left. Isabel came out from behind the counter and flipped the sign to CLOSED.
Whatever fresh start I’d wanted, whatever I’d wished she and Norman would think of me, was gone. Isabel would take this information and run with it.
I heard her walking back toward me, taking her time, and I swallowed hard, preparing myself. She stood on the other side of the screen. I could feel her.
“Just don’t say it,” I said. “Okay?” Even to my own ears, my voice sounded weak and sad.
She didn’t say anything for a long time. I just concentrated on the sky, memorizing the blue. And I was startled when she said, quietly, suddenly, “Come on.”
“What?” I turned around. She was looking at me.
“You heard me,” she said, and she took off her apron, tossed it on the counter, and started toward the front door. She didn’t look back to see if I was following her. She just went. “Come on.”
We walked out to the Rabbit, leaving Norman to lock up behind us. Isabel got in and fished for the key, which was on the floor.
She cranked the engine, the CD player immediately blasting. She turned it down, but not much.
I felt like I should say something.
“Look,” I said, “about that girl—”
She shook her head and reached for the volume, turning it back up and drowning me out.
We must have driven back at about seventy miles an hour. Not that I could be sure; the speedometer was broken, along with the rearview mirror, which was lopsided, and the gearshift, whose missing knob had been replaced with one of those squeezy balls painted to look like the Earth. The floor and back seat were littered with lipsticks, more CD cases, Vogue and Mirabella, and about twenty pairs of sunglasses, all of which rattled from one side to the other every time we took a turn. Isabel didn’t say a word as she drove; her mouth was set in a thin, hard line.
We barely slowed down when we hit the dirt road. Since my seat belt was also broken, I just hung on to the door handle the entire way. By the time we screeched to a halt in front of the little white house, I felt like I’d knocked a couple of fillings loose.
Isabel got out, grabbing some CDs from the backseat. “Take these,” she said, and I did. I watched her kick off her shoes on the porch and get the key from under a dead plant on the steps. She unlocked the door and went inside, stepping over a few magazines and discarded articles of clothing, heading for the kitchen. I stood in the doorway.
She went to the fridge, got a beer, and knocked off the cap on the side of the counter. Then she sucked some down, burped, and put a hand on her hip.
“The world,” she said, “is chock full of bitchy girls.”
I came inside.
It was easy to tell which side of the bedroom was Isabel’s. One had its bed made, pictures straight, the clothes on the shelves folded and sorted by category and color. The other was covered, from the floor to the bed, with stuff. Clothes and CDs and socks and magazines and bras and empty cigarette packs, all burying and supporting each other. But the thing I noticed most was the mirror.
It was over a dressing table, and all around it, stretching out at least a foot from each side, were hundreds of faces cut from magazines. Blonde girls, brunettes, redheads, all staring out hollow-cheeked and seductive. There were girls with drastic makeup, girls with no makeup, all of them skinny, some of them smiling. They were taped up kind of slapdash, overlapping each other, spreading out like a cloud from the mirror’s edges. Here and there, mixed in, you could see pictures of real people: some of Isabel and Morgan, family pictures, a couple of babies and several of smiling, good-looking boys. Next to the models, they seemed smaller, and you noticed every imperfection.
“Sit down,” Isabel said, kicking aside one white sandal and a pair of shorts to pull out the chair. The dressing table itself was a sea of little bottles and container
s, so covered with cosmetics that you couldn’t even see the surface. I looked at myself in the mirror, surrounded by all those beautiful girls, and wondered what I was doing there.
Isabel pushed some more stuff aside and leaned against the dressing table, taking another swig of her beer. “Look, Colie. I have something to say to you, and I’m just gonna shoot it straight. Okay?”
I considered this. It couldn’t be any worse than what had already happened. “Okay.”
She tucked her hair behind her ear, took a deep breath and let it out. Then she said, “I really think you should pluck your eyebrows.”
This hadn’t been exactly what I was expecting.
“What?” I said.
“You heard me,” she said, coming to stand behind me and turning my head to face my reflection. “And it wouldn’t hurt to do something about that hair, either.”
“I don’t know,” I said uncertainly as she went to the closet and yanked the door open, pulling out a large box of hair coloring kits. And here I’d thought she was a natural blonde.
“That black is just too uneven,” she said. “You can’t dye over it, but at least we could try to do it again and get it all. It won’t fix it totally, but—” She dropped the box on the floor and abruptly left the room, still talking to herself. I listened to her open and shut cabinets in the kitchen.
I looked back up at the pictures, taking in each of the faces. And then I saw it; one, stuck at the top, that I hadn’t noticed before. It looked like a yearbook picture. The girl in it was fat, with glasses. She had a pudgy face and limp brown hair, and she was wearing a thick turtleneck sweater that looked really uncomfortable and itchy. She had a necklace with a little gold frog on it, something her mother or grandmother must have given her. She was the kind of girl that Caroline Dawes would have made miserable. A girl like me.
I leaned closer, wondering why she was there. Even with the pictures of the babies and Morgan and all those boys, she didn’t fit in.